No one else replied. Apart from Kiriya they were Kubarev, Baturin, Dolgikh and Glinka. None of them could see it yet. On the ground civilized men could get by without sharp eyes. They had evolved beyond natural selection and were free of it. The men who fought in the sky were not.
“No contact,” said Kubarev in Korean.
Yefgenii said, “One o’clock.”
Each pilot alone in his cockpit peered southward, through banks of cloud scattered like coral, in search of a fleeting glint of metal. They scanned up to the horizon for creeping black specks and then above for contrails. Yefgenii’s eyes were that much sharper that seconds passed without the others acquiring the sighting.
“Repeat, contact, one o’clock,” Yefgenii said.
“Red Six, lead.”
The words didn’t mean anything to Yefgenii. Kiriya’s pronunciation of Korean was idiosyncratic. “Say again.”
“Red Six. Lead.”
“Say again.”
Kiriya snapped in Russian, “Take us to him!”
Yefgenii slid the throttle to its forward end-stop. The engine roared behind him. It kicked his backside. He held the stick hard forward to keep the nose level and stood on the rudders to hold the aircraft straight. Yefgenii’s airplane accelerated out of formation to assume the lead. The contact was below the contrail level, just a black dot only he could see. As they closed it began to crystallize into its components.
At last the others could see them. Kirya ordered, “Drop tanks.”
Again Yefgenii couldn’t decipher Kiriya’s pronunciation but he saw the others dropping their wing tanks so he reached under his seat and swung the small lever that released them. The fuel tanks broke from the MiGs’ wings and seemed to hold in the air for a moment before tipping over and gathering speed and plunging down toward the green land below. He felt weight fall from the airframe but he held his controls against the rise and pitch the plane wanted to make and then he trimmed out the pressure in the stick.
The MiGs crossed the sky and in crossing to their prey they descended through thousands of metres. The air grew thicker and warmer. Their exhausts remained steam. No trails formed.
Yefgenii’s mouth dried with the taste of rubber on his lips. Noise pounded his helmet. He tightened his straps. He toggled down his mask. The mask began to hurt the bridge of his nose.
They recognized the four aircraft ahead and below as F-86 Sabres of the 334th FIS. The Sabres had snub noses and swept wings. Yellow slashes decorated their tailplanes and midsections. The American squadrons were proud of their identity; each had its own markings, and some pilots even wore individual designs on their aircraft. The MiGs were anonymous.
The Americans broke formation into two elements. They had seen them. They pulled apart and next released their wing tanks which tumbled like meteorites end over end toward land.
“Break!”
Glinka and Dolgikh chased one Sabre element. Under the leader’s canopy a scarlet bonedome glinted in the sunlight. Six stars blurred on the cockpit. The other pair of Sabres streaked between them and Kubarev and Baturin while Kiriya led Yefgenii high above the battle.
Dolgikh was stumbling over his Korean, unable to get his words out. “Fuck it!” he said in Russian. “Red Six, you’ve got a Sabre element under you, should be popping into your two o’clock anytime now.” Then all at once all the voices were speaking Russian.
Yefgenii’s hands were shaking. His knees were knocking against the stick. He swung hard to follow the pair that were crossing beneath him. As his plane rolled, the Sabres reappeared below him and arcing round behind. Their wings glinted in the sun as they tilted into the turn. Yefgenii swung the stick over the other way and pulled back to the edge of a stall. The airframe shuddered. The controls felt spongy but he held the turn. Outside the canopy the sky wheeled round. He hung on his straps with one wing pricking the heavens and the other boring into the earth. He pulled harder on the stick, harder, at full throttle, the turn tightening and g-forces driving his ass hard into the seat and weighting his head forward and leadening his arms. The shoulder straps cut into his flesh. Yefgenii tensed the muscles of his neck to keep his head straight as he craned round to follow the Sabres turning behind him. He was turning too. The nose swung along the horizon at the precise angle to give a max-rate turn. The needles were motionless. Every drop of the plane’s energy was driving the turn; nothing was bleeding into a climb or a descent or a roll or a yaw. The MiG shook. The airflow over the wings was on the verge of breaking up. The boundary layer was tearing away. He held the turn, held her on the buffet, pulling round, harder, tighter, pulling, clenching against the acceleration. Grayness crept into his peripheral vision. It turned hard and black and began to close like an iris on the wheeling lens of blue sky and glinting smoky warfare. He strained hard against a closed glottis, the Valsalva maneuver forcing blood into his head and back to his retinas, not letting it drain into his belly and arse and boots. He strained and it pushed open the black iris.
From under the nose the Sabres reappeared. The nearer of the pair was 100 metres away. Yefgenii lined it up in his gun-sight and clicked the trigger. The 23 mm cannon spat out shells. He felt the recoil in his boots and in his butt. He closed in then fired a second round. Tracers leapt out ahead of his cockpit. They glowed as they crossed the void between him and the Sabre, drifted past it and vanished into the earth.
The Sabre turned and now Yefgenii followed. He fired again. The shells jumped across space and struck the Sabre’s fuselage. Smoke burst from its tail and flashed past Yefgenii’s canopy. The American aircraft shuddered but did not fall. Trailing wisps of white smoke, it turned in an arc to the south and then straightened up. Now Yefgenii was closing in. He made out a charred gouge of metal at the Sabre’s tail where the shell had struck. Damaged, the American was slow; he was heading for base.
Yefgenii followed for the kill. He knew it now. He was a killer. He’d join the brotherhood and he’d wear the small red star on the side of his cockpit that was the star of victory and the star of murder.
The American plunged south. In normal conditions the Sabre might outperform the MiG at lower altitude. The American knew, however, he had no hope of outmaneuvering the MiG and his dive was to gain speed. The twisted shrapnel on his aircraft’s fuselage made him less aerodynamic. An aileron was damaged. His controls were sluggish. His aircraft had become too clumsy for a fight. He was racing for the line between Wŏnsan and P’yŏngyang where Yefgenii would be forced to turn back and the American would live to fly another day.
Yefgenii shoved the throttle to make certain it shunted its end-stop. He fingered the trim tabs on the control column and to the side of the cockpit. Over and over again he trimmed out the controls to make his MiG as sleek and fast as possible. He watched the needle of the Mach meter nudge 0.9. The MiG snaked at this speed but with each minute and each adjustment the American appeared closer and more vulnerable.
The two fighters raced southward, rupturing the air with a blasting of jets and slashing of wings, while the clouds that lay in clumps crept along the horizon like slugs and a patchwork of green fields and brown hills lay still and quiet below. The Nan River drifted toward them. The welcoming land of the South beckoned to the American. In only a few minutes he’d be safe; even if he couldn’t land, he could eject.
Yefgenii hunched into the gun-sight. He glimpsed the Sabre duck and bounce through the crosshairs but never for even a second settle in them. The American swung left and right. His plane was fat and weak and he must’ve known the end was coming.
Diving through thousands of metres, to them the earth grew big again. Soon it cradled their expanding shadows that skimmed over steepening hills and slithered through widening valleys.