He pulled the lever and as he did so he felt a clunk and the airplane lurched to the right. The port tank was tumbling down to earth but the other remained slung under his wing. He’d got a hung tank. The asymmetrical weight and drag were tilting the right wing down into a turn and swinging the nose round in the same direction. He trimmed out all the forces and threw the lever again, but the tank wouldn’t drop.
“Fuck it. Let’s go.”
They swooped down into the Sabres. He picked out the trailing plane and his guns hammered down at its tail and spine and shattered the glass of the canopy. He saw the pilot’s helmet cracking open like a nutshell and the spurt of blood before the aircraft listed and began the long fall.
He sailed over the others but they were already splitting into element pairs. He called, “Break!” and the MiGs astern selected their opponents; it was the last order he gave; from now on it was every man for himself.
As he began his first turn back into the arena, he glimpsed over his right shoulder that three Sabres were following but were crossing each other’s lines to get on his tail. They’d seen the red star. They were battling each other to be the one who conquered Ivan the Terrible.
He rolled hard right, as the drag of his hung tank would help the turn. Ahead of him appeared a Sabre side-on. His cannons ripped into its fuselage from wings to tail and an orange globe ballooned out of its rear. Its forward section broke off and plummeted. As it fell, it crossed a trail of black smoke being left by a MiG that was also on its way down.
A Sabre barrel-rolled in behind a MiG and its guns began ripping apart the tailplane. That was Glenn scoring his third kill. Another Sabre nailed another MiG; a MiG was chasing a damaged Sabre to its death.
Above him a Sabre floated into view. He pitched up and opened fire. Metal showered from its belly. Pieces the size of hubcaps were tumbling down, spinning fine threads of smoke as they went. The Sabre banked hard left and Yefgenii struggled to match the turn.
The first of the three Sabres behind him had closed. Tracers flickered past the canopy. Again he swung hard over to the right and tried to pull round. The Sabre reappeared behind his right wing. Gunfire hammered along his fuselage. Pain exploded in his right leg. A. 22-caliber shell had pierced the cockpit armor and buried itself in his thigh. Blood dribbled over his knee and he could smell the singeing of his own flesh.
He dropped his flaps and throttled back. The Sabre flew by and he managed to fire off a burst into its tail. Black smoke billowed and the American swung south, running for home. At the same time he glimpsed two trails of soot pointing north. Two MiGs were damaged and fleeing for their lives with Sabres in pursuit.
Now he was alone with two Sabres. He throttled up again and the aircraft crabbed and banked to the right. He levelled the wings, kicked in some rudder with his good leg and trimmed it all out again. In despair he pushed and pulled the lever but the tank wouldn’t drop, it was never going to drop.
The Sabre pair locked in behind him. They were leader and wingman. The leader opened fire. Pings and clangs reverberated along the fuselage as Yefgenii swung up and over in a barrel roll. He passed through the inverted and out of the top of his gaze he glimpsed the land tumbling round and the Sabres entering the same maneuver. As he rolled round and then pulled up to the horizon the Sabres appeared on his right wingtip and he jerked the stick across in that direction striking his leg and making himself shriek in pain.
He sliced between the two Sabres. Now he had the wingman on his tail and the lead ahead. He banked hard left and for a fleeting moment had the lead in his crosshairs. His shells tore off the Sabre’s tailplane and the aircraft veered into a flat spin. A second later the canopy flicked up, the pilot rocketed clear and his parachute blossomed.
The remaining Sabre opened fire into Yefgenii’s tail. He pitched forward and began to dive. The Sabre looped in a split-S and followed him down through thickening bands of air and cloud. He made a sudden pitch up, pulling round hard to the right. For a split second the g-meter flicked to 8. Every joint in the aircraft’s body groaned. The hung tank ripped free, shed like a teardrop.
Now he was sleek and maneuverable and, though he was in the weaker position, he had a fighting chance. If he could get the turn going he could kill this Sabre and live to make it home. The MiG began to judder round, nibbling the buffet, pulling 6 g. Yefgenii was gasping and straining, gasping and straining.
The Sabre was making the same turn, describing a circle in the sky. They were at opposite ends of a diameter, canopy to canopy; the pilots could see each other. Their heads were still. Theirs could’ve been the heads of mannequins.
He held the turn tight. Every needle was motionless on its mark of speed or power or altitude. Any small error lost him valuable energy and gave his opponent an advantage of speed or of height or of turn. He was still pulling 6 g and straining. He was getting tired. The gray iris started to close and he had to strain harder to get his eyesight back. He had to settle for tunnel vision. When he breathed in he lost half his field. Still he wasn’t gaining on the American. The turn continued, the great circle in the sky, canopy to canopy, and whoever tired first would perish.
The minutes passed. He felt sick and light-headed. Blood spilled out of his boot. His hands and feet were tingling. His fingers were turning numb inside his gloves. He peered up through a haze of sweat with his field of vision contracted to a narrow coin of light in which the Sabre’s swept wings and yellow flashes were tracking round the diametrically opposite patch of sky.
Neither man was going to surrender. The American was a wingman, probably a first lieutenant with only a few missions to his credit, an officers’ club wallflower. But he could fly. Now he was on the brink of being the man who brought down Ivan the Terrible.
They went on turning at full throttle. They were burning fuel, litre after litre, and maybe the loser would just be the poor bastard who ran out first.
To Yefgenii the American appeared to be losing height. He glanced at his instruments. With a massive strain he pushed open the fringe of his vision. As it opened he read the gauges and they told him his turn was flat. The American had made a tiny error in his turning attitude and it had accumulated into a height difference. Yefgenii let the nose sink a fraction toward the horizon. His airspeed increased by 10 kilometres per hour and he used them to tighten the turn. He was pulling 6 1/2g but he was getting inside the American. He sucked in breaths and pushed them out but the nickel of light in which the Sabre sparkled was getting smaller. He fought to keep the straining maneuver going. Sweat pooled in the well of the seat. He could feel the dampness seeping through his pants.
The American was drifting onto his nose past two o’clock then a minute later he was on one o’clock. They kept on turning. He was floating into Yefgenii’s gunsight. His left wingtip brushed the crosshairs. The Sabre was bobbing but Yefgenii held the turn. With every breath in, the iris closed and with every strain out it opened. Every time it opened the Sabre’s tail neared the crosshairs. He breathed in again. Blackness closed round him. He pushed out. The tail was there. He opened fire. His cannons ripped into the American’s tail. He held the trigger even when he was blind and when he could see again he saw black smoke billowing out of the Sabre’s jet exhaust.
The Sabre rolled out of the turn and tried to accelerate away. Yefgenii levelled his wings and let the stick forward. The g-force abated. He could see again. He could breathe again. Blood had congealed into a jelly that coated his seat and boot and rudder pedal. The needle of his fuel gauge pointed at the stark red line at the bottom of the scale. The Sabre was hurtling into the west where the sun had wheeled round and now glimmered through clouds heaping over Korea Bay. The aircraft had dropped to a few hundred metres and was running for the coast. Yefgenii could turn north and see how far he could get before his fuel burned out, but if he went down and the Sabre made it home then the American would be entitled to claim a victory over Ivan the Terrible.