“Are you saying you won’t back me up when I claim it?”
No one was laughing now. Glinka had friends in high places. Dolgikh shrugged and shook his head. After all, it was only damage. You could damage every plane in the U.S. Air Force and it still wouldn’t amount to a kill.
In the bar Yefgenii watched Kiriya get drunk on bad vodka. Kiriya’s mood appeared joyous. Though a formality on becoming an ace, he looked forward to being awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union; but in his stomach stung an ulcer of truth that, despite the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin and the five stars on the Ops scoreboard and the five stenciled on the side of his plane, he had only four and a half kills because one half belonged to Yefgenii Yeremin.
He became so drunk he could no longer stand and had to slump in a chair pushed under him by little Gnido. Kiriya made loud talk of going to find the ugly young widow in her barrack-room bed. Pilipenko leaned over him and whispered, “She’ll bring bad luck.”
Yefgenii stood outside under the black sky. The cold air carried the noises of banter and drinking coming from the mess. Treetops rocked in the breeze. Patches of cloud drifted over stars. Planets turned. A man was nothing. Yefgenii’s head sank and his shoulders heaved.
OVER ŬIJU the sky flickered with tracer fire. The radio spat out ranges and vectors that collided with the shrieks of combat. Across Korea the chosen pilots were going up twice, even three times in a day. Sabre and MiG jockeys alike were claiming multiple kills while on the ground a hundred thousand Chinese reinforcements trudged to the battlefront. Men were fighting and dying over patches of land that to the pilots were no more than dots on a map.
At Antung the air rumbled. It reeked of oil, fuel, and hot metal. Enemy shells had dimpled the fuselages of nearly all the returning ships and every cannon was charcoaled. Skomorokhov had got one, of course. Kiriya had got one too. Pilipenko claimed a kill — now he had seven and a half. Kapetan Dolgikh had been shot down with no reports of a parachute being seen.
The fourth wave was already airborne over the Yalu and reporting more contacts with the 51st FIW. Skomorokhov demanded another mission. Pilipenko was pushing to go up again too. Yefgenii’s name had been on the board but it got scrubbed to make room for the aces.
Glinka’s jet rolled in off the third wave. He threw back the canopy and stood on the seat, punching the air. He ripped off his helmet and in that moment Yefgenii saw the sharp red print of his mask crease into a smile. As Glinka came down the ladder the Starshina questioned him and then they were shaking hands.
Pilipenko descended his ladder. He glanced at Glinka with a quizzical expression. But the look was lost as he fielded questions from the ground crew.
Yefgenii turned away. He’d come to Korea to write his name in the sky but his tour was becoming an unbearable creep into oblivion. Life was falling behind him like a runway. The takeoff strip was shortening.
Kiriya was standing outside the Ops hut with binoculars, waiting for the latest wave to rejoin the circuit. Pilipenko joined him, drinking from a flask. He took a gulp of water, gargled and spat it onto the ground. It bubbled in the dirt. Pilipenko said, “We engaged eight Sabres and six flew home. That makes two kills, one for me and one for Kubarev. Glinka didn’t shoot shit.”
Kiriya lowered the binoculars. “It’s chaos up there.”
“I can count to eight, boss.”
“So can the Americans, but they’ll admit one lost to engine failure and claim a couple of ours into the bargain.”
Kiriya raised the binoculars back to his eyes. The air looked tranquil. Its hundred churning vortices were invisible. He said, “They claim, we claim — you know, Pip, when this war’s over, someone’s going to add it all up.”
“Who’s going to?”
“Whoever wins.”
The CO was content with his kill for the day. That ulcer was healing. Whether he had six kills or only five and a half, he was still an ace and deserved to be called one and was worthy of his decorations. Kiriya didn’t need to fly again today, so he ordered Pilipenko to see that Yeremin’s name was restored to the board.
Pilipenko led them across the border. The MiGs patrolled as far south as the Chŏng-ch’on River. There they climbed back toward Chŏsan. Pilipenko kept them airborne, but the realization developed that they’d get nothing today, not even scraps. Soon the needle of his fuel gauge was slipping toward minimum. “Recover to base.”
They crossed the Yalu into China and turned southwest. Yefgenii retracted the throttle and lifted the nose to hold altitude. Power drained. Airspeed plummeted. He transmitted, “Blue Six.”
“Blue Leader.”
“I’ve got a rough-running engine.”
“You can make it back?”
“Affirmative.”
“How’s your fuel, son?”
“I’ve got enough, sir.”
Gnido transmitted, “Blue Leader from Blue Five, I’ll escort him home.”
“OK, boys. See you on the ground.”
Yefgenii watched the MiGs stretch ahead. Gnido tucked in beside him. The two of them made slow progress down the Yalu. The Suiho Dam drifted under their port wings. Yefgenii waited till the other four planes had shrunk to gray points, then he opened up his throttle again.
Gnido saw the MiG lurch ahead of him. “What’s happened to your engine?”
“It got better.” Yefgenii was turning back into Korea.
Gnido watched Yefgenii’s wings tilt. The Yalu swung beneath him. Streamers threaded off his wingtips.
“Fuck it.” Gnido opened his throttle and together they dropped down to 5,000 metres. Down in the thick air, the American Sabres were the predators, but Yefgenii trusted his sharp eyes to preserve him.
A bank of white floated beneath them. The shadows of their planes slithered over the undulations of the cloud top. Their wings sank and a moment later they worked within a white shroud with their heads immobile and their eyes flicking from gauge to gauge. First the white thinned and then the Sun’s light burst into their canopies and then the earth opened below them like the leaves of an atlas.
Yefgenii turned a wide circle from which he scanned the sky over and over and over again. His eyes darted to the fuel gauge. He was approaching minimum.
A speck crossed under the nose. Yefgenii pulled round 30 degrees and the speck popped out low in his eleven o’clock. Dark over dark terrain, it could’ve been seen by few, perhaps by him alone. His heart drummed. He pulled his harnesses tight and toggled down.
“Contact.”
Gnido couldn’t see anything, but Yefgenii was dropping a wing and pitching hard over. He followed him down. The VSI dropped and the long thin white needle of the altimeter spun through the hundreds to a blur while the short stubby white needle wound down through the thousands. Air streamed over the canopy. It thickened as the planes plunged and it made their wings shudder. The Mach meter needle trembled on 0.9.
Yefgenii drew back the throttle. The airframe snaked. The airstream blasted like a hurricane. At 1,000 metres he began to ease up and at 500 the plane was flying straight and level onto his target’s tail.
Here was his scrap. A dark blue F4U-4 Corsair was chugging southwest for the coast, keeping low to creep under radar. The Corsair didn’t represent a bomber returning from a raid or even part of an escort. It didn’t represent anything apart perhaps from a lost aviator and for sure an unlucky one.
Gnido was a few seconds behind. He saw Yefgenii’s wing tanks drop. The MiG lofted as its load lightened. The tanks floated down toward woodland. One landed in a clearing and Gnido saw it shatter. Birds took wing with a flapping that was infinitesimal compared to the metal machines above. Yefgenii pressed in behind the Corsair as it plunged across hinterland and out into Korea Bay.