Gnido had suffered a bird strike. His canopy had shattered. His helmet, visor and mask had protected most of his face, but shards of glass and bone had made nicks like shaving nicks over his cheeks and throat.
Pilipenko met him back in Ops. “Report to the M.O.”
“I’m fine, sir. But you should see what I did to that bird!”
Pilipenko smiled. “See the doc, son.”
“Yes, sir.” But Gnido lingered. “If the doc says I’m OK, maybe we could try again…?”
Pilipenko glanced down and wrote in the mission log: “DNCO” — duty not carried out.
Yefgenii stood in the doorway. He’d donned full flying kit and slung his helmet by its strap. “Sir.”
“What is it, Yeremin?”
“If there’s a slot now, sir, I’m ready to fly.”
Gnido bit his lip. Somehow he felt betrayed by Yefgenii trying to profit from his misfortune. But he shuffled away to see the medical officer.
Pilipenko flicked his pen out of his fingers. It looped through the air into his left hand and then he began to twirl it just as fast on that side. “I’m busy.”
“Yes, sir.” Yefgenii had spent yet another day listening to the thunder of jets and gazing at their trails snaking out into the blue. “Sir, I’m no use to the 221st sitting on my arse all day learning Korean. I came here to kill jets.”
“Hmm.” Then in Korean Pilipenko demanded, “Position?”
“Antung,” said Yefgenii.
Pilipenko grinned.
“Thank you, sir.” Yefgenii folded his maps and stuffed them in the leg pockets of his flying suit.
“You’ll be taking 529.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pilipenko checked his watch and entered the time in the log. “You know, you’re kind of big for a pilot.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you climb into the aircraft, or just strap it on?”
Yefgenii smiled.
“Come on, son, we’ll do a circuit, then we’ll fly.”
Pilipenko called any pilot below the rank of kapetan “son.” He was thirty-three.
From the runway they rose off the plain. A long streak of dust cloud tried to rise with them but fell back to earth. The wooden shacks of the airfield shrank to matchboxes. The forest became a felt mat. Pilipenko made a climbing turn through 180 degrees onto the downwind leg of the circuit. Yefgenii followed. Straight ahead a triangular copse stood on top of a hill. As they turned onto finals his wingtip pointed at a drying bog where ducks skimmed the brown water. From this high angle Pilipenko’s plane seemed to swoop onto the runway. It was flat beneath Yefgenii, its wings swept back in an arrow, with sunlight glinting off the glass of the canopy. Pilipenko’s mainwheels struck the large white numbers and then he began to accelerate again. Yefgenii hit the numbers dead center and accelerated after him. The two MiGs rose once again but this time climbed straight out.
Pilipenko transmitted, “Get in close, son, and follow me up.”
Yefgenii aimed the nose at Pilipenko’s drop tank and snuggled into formation just off his tail. Women and children were working in the paddies below. Some gazed up and waved. Pilipenko waggled his wings back at them. They ascended through 1,000 metres, 2,000. At long last the heat thinned out. Cool air filled the cockpit. Yefgenii tugged out the collar of his vest to let it onto his skin.
Shreds of cloud were slicing past the canopy. The forests and fields had shrunk to green and brown oblongs. In sunlight wheat fields shone in yellow dabs. Villages dotted the country, but the people had become too small to see. At 5,000 metres Yefgenii gazed down and could’ve been one of the last two men on earth.
“There’s the river.”
Ahead of them the Yalu ran like a blade between low gray foothills. Boats were gliding over waters the colour of steel. Yefgenii was learning the landmarks. He studied the shapes of the hills, which way their slopes pointed, the turns of the river itself, its bridges.
“This side is Manchuria, the other is Korea,” Pilipenko said. “We’re safe on this side — they’re forbidden to cross. The other is the theater of war. There they’re fair game — but, the moment you cross, so are you.”
They flew upstream, keeping the river off their starboard wings. In the far north a mountain range was pushing up at them. Its peaks wore caps of white snow. The horizon was sharp. Sparse white cumuli were heaped below, looking like coral. A little cirrus drifted above, not thick enough to be white, only blue-white.
“The Suiho Dam.”
Pilipenko orbited to give him a good look and then they turned back downriver. Roads and railway lines hatched the land. Yefgenii noted bridges and villages. A sector map lay in his thigh pocket visible through a cover of clear plastic. When he picked out a feature he related it to the map. Soon the river was opening into an enormous bay.
“The Yellow Sea. Korea Bay. Do not overfly.”
Pilipenko pulled round, hard and tight. Yefgenii’s g-needle flicked as he followed. Pilipenko didn’t roll out. He kept in the turn past 360 degrees. The games had begun.
Pilipenko opened the throttle all the way to the stop. He pitched up the nose and rolled hard over to select the attitude for a max-rate turn in the opposite direction. Yefgenii matched the maneuver. The two MiGs circled in an MRT, pulling 6 g. Pilipenko was guessing that, because Yefgenii was big, he’d have problems at high acceleration. It was the easy way to break him before the sortie even got interesting. Yefgenii sucked in short sharp breaths and strained during expirations like shitting a brick. The planes cut up the air. Vortices hung and swirled. When the planes struck them on the next orbit, it came as a kick in the seat of their pants. Yefgenii was still holding tight on Pilipenko’s tail. The formation was no looser now than when they’d been in a gentle climb.
Pilipenko grinned; it was going to get interesting after all; he rolled out and pulled up. They tilted almost to the vertical. Their wingtips cut the horizon. The altimeter wound up to 12,000. Speed bled away. Soon the stubby white needle was barely moving, the longer thinner one making only a slow creep round the clock. The aircraft trembled. They were on the buffet. A stall threatened. Yefgenii saw Pilipenko’s plane tip over and vanish under his nose. He pushed hard over, minusing 2 g.
Pilipenko reappeared. They were plunging straight down. The wide green earth was swallowing them. The altimeter spun down, the airspeed built. With Pilipenko still on his nose, a hurricane of air rushed over Yefgenii’s canopy. Soon he was bouncing in Pilipenko’s slipstream. The planes burst through layers of cloud. In split seconds sunlight flashed off then back on. Yefgenii saw Pilipenko’s wings rotate through 90 degrees and the elevators on his tailplane waggle up. He reacted at once. Pilipenko glanced over his shoulder expecting to see clear sky. The nozzle of Yefgenii’s intake loomed in his five o’clock position.
“Fuck.”
Pilipenko levelled out at 5,000 metres and stirred the control stick out and back. As his nose tilted it began to describe a circle. His wings slashed the horizon and he rolled through the inverted. Again Yefgenii had reacted at once and matched the speed and angle of the maneuver. Pilipenko was corkscrewing round in a barrel roll hoping to loop onto his tail. Yefgenii made his roll wide enough and slow enough to hold formation. Pilipenko’s head twisted round again and again the nose of Yefgenii’s MiG was right behind.
“Fuck.”
Pilipenko snapped into a hard turn to the left, then to the right. He climbed and fell, rolled and looped. He couldn’t shake loose. Under his vest sweat was gushing over his skin. It was trickling out of his helmet and down the back of his neck. He could taste a gob of it mixed with snot on his top lip. He pushed up his visor to get air flowing round his eyes.