“That’s not a fair assessment, sir, but I’ll accept your criticism,” Balboa said, his face pinched and uneasy. “But if I may ask, sir: what’s the chain of command? Who gives those crews their orders? And who takes responsibility for them when those nutcase Nevada Air Guard crews crash themselves into Korea or China?”
“As always, Admiral, I take full responsibility,” the President said. “That should come as an immense relief to you — unless you already found a way to distance yourself from them. Now, get out of my office before I remember that my senior uniformed military officer just wished the worst on one of his own flying units.”
Contact!” the observer/weapons officer of the Han-Guk Kong Goon (United Republic of Korea Air Force) A-37B Dragonfly close-air-support and observation aircraft shouted on his intercom. There was certainly no reason to shout; his pilot was less than ten centimeters to his left in the tiny side-by-side cockpit. The observer put his left hand on the glareshield and pointed at the target. “Two o’clock. A Chinese ML935 locomotive pulling six cars.”
“Can you see the engine crew arrangement?” the pilot asked, making a slight turn to the right.
The observer strained to look through his field glasses. “I need a closer look,” he said finally.
“C’mon, we don’t want to get too close to those guys,” the pilot said. “They have antiaircraft guns.”
“But we gotta try to identify them before we call in a patrol,” the observer said. “Let’s get down in the weeds. Keep the smash up.” Like most Korean fliers, they liked using American military aviation slang.
“Okay,” the pilot said. “Here we go.” He shoved the throttles to full military power, rolled the little Cessna twin turbojet on its right wing, and made a diving right turn toward the locomotive.
It appeared that a section of track ahead was partially broken, and the train was stranded. The crew of men working around the break scattered and ran when they heard the loud high-pitched whine of the Dragonfly’s tiny General Electric turbojets. “That looks suspicious already,” the observer said. Automatically, he checked weapons status. The A-37B, a Vietnam War — era veteran close-air-support plane, was armed with a 7.62-millimeter Minigun with three hundred rounds of ammo in the nose, two “Mighty Mouse” folding-fin attack rocket pods, two target-marking rocket pods, plus four huge fuel tanks, making the little Cessna look ungainly and slow — which it definitely was.
“Fingers off the arming switches,” the pilot warned him. “The last thing we need to do is fire a rocket at a noncombatant.”
“Nose is cold,” the observer acknowledged.
But not for long. As they careened closer, they could see that the men working on the track had retreated back to one of the cars — and soon the roof of the car opened, revealing a single-barreled antiaircraft gun. “Look out!” the observer shouted. “It’s a Type-93! Break left!” The Type-93 was a Chinese-made 37-millimeter antiaircraft gun, murderous to any slow, low-flying aircraft. The pilot yanked his Dragonfly into a tight left turn and pulled until right at the verge of a stall, then relaxed the back pressure until he rolled out heading the other way. He immediately started a climb to get out of the 93’s lethal range.
“Call it in, dammit!” the pilot cursed.
“How do we know they were Communists?”
“We don’t for sure — but they were ready to blow us out of the sky,” the pilot said. “We need backup on this one. Call it in.” The observer got on the UHF radio and called in the position and description of the train.
“Orders are to mark the target for inbound paratroopers, disable the locomotive by any means possible to keep it from moving, and eliminate any heavy weapons that might endanger inbound troops,” the observer reported a few minutes later. “A security paratroop squad from Sunch’on will parachute into the area by cargo plane, ETA thirty minutes.”
“We’ve got an hour before we bingo, so it looks about right,” the pilot said, checking his fuel gauges. “I don’t think we need to worry about disabling the locomotive — that train’s not going anywhere with a torn-up track. Let’s see what we can do about that Type-93.” The pilot started a left turn back toward the train and leveled off at twelve thousand feet. “Give me some markers first and let’s see what they do.”
“Roger,” the observer said, flipping his arming switches. “Target markers armed, your trigger is hot.”
Seven miles from the train, the pilot started a dive at seven thousand feet per minute, accelerating to 420 knots. Winds were mostly calm and the visibility was good, so it was simple to put the aiming pipper right on the car with the antiaircraft gun, and he squeezed the trigger. One target-marking rocket shot out of pods on each wing.
“Guns! Guns!” the observer shouted. “He’s firing!”
The pilot squeezed off two more rockets, then rolled hard left away from the train. “I’m off! Safe ’em up!” he said through his antiblackout straining. The observer clicked the target-marker pods’ safety switches to SAFE.
“Nose is cold!” The observer strained to look behind them as they rolled out of the escape turn. “No damage, no flak,” he said. “They missed us that time.” He checked the target area. Mixed in with the bright yellow target-marking smoke were streams of black smoke, pouring out horizontally as well as vertically. “I see black smoke. Looks like we might’ve hit something.”
“You get a look at that gun mount?” the pilot asked. “It looked to me like the gun was mounted close to the top of the car — almost down inside it.”
“That means they might not be able to lower the barrel too much,” the observer said. “You want to try a low pass?”
“Affirm,” the pilot said. “Give me rockets.”
“Roger… Mighty Mouse is armed, your trigger is hot.”
The pilot started a steeper descent and leveled off barely one hundred feet aboveground. Even so low to the ground, it was easy to locate the train. The terrain was rolling hills, but visibility was good from several miles out. Guesstimating the range, the pilot put the smoky car on the bottom range marker on his calibrated gun sight and fired. The spin-stabilized folding-fin attack rockets flew straight and true, hitting the car square on. “Two good hits!” the observer crowed. Now the car was burning fiercely, with black smoke billowing out. “Nice shooting! You want the Minigun?”
“A-firm. Arm up the Minigun,” the pilot ordered.
“Mighty Mouse safe… triggers clear… Minigun armed, your trigger is hot.”
“Roger,” the pilot said. The Minigun was his favorite weapon — close-range, powerful, exciting. The cannon itself was mounted right below him, with the chamber practically in his crotch — it felt like a massive orgasm every time he fired it. The gun didn’t bang — it hummed. It was the world’s best hum-job.
Same pipper, same range marks… he had to get a little closer, but it was no problem. Even if the Type-93 could fire that low, the gunner couldn’t see anything because of all the smoke. But the Dragonfly pilot could see his target very clearly. A little closer… closer…
Suddenly, the A-37 shuddered and decelerated, as if they had just landed wheels-up. Warning lights snapped on everywhere, including the red FIRE lights on both fire extinguisher handles.