The Fly Boys Page 38

  A couple of weeks after that, Steve had traded a couple of fifths of booze to a file clerk assigned to base Operations Center in return for the opportunity to scan the reports the flight leaders filed after each CAP. The first mention of Yalu Charlie sightings had appeared in yesterday’s reports.

  Today Steve had initiated “Operation Back Door.”

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best that Steve could come up with. The first part of it called for Steel Fist Flight to keep mum concerning the fact that Steve wasn’t with them. This was for the benefit of any GCI operators who might me monitoring their chatter. Of course, Steve wasn’t showing up on GCI’s screens, but he was hoping that the busy radar jockeys wouldn’t notice.

  Meanwhile, Steve was flying above forbidden Chinese territory at maximum ceiling to conserve fuel. If commie radar picked him, Steve hoped that they would figure that he was one of their own, maybe with radio trouble, which would explain why he wasn’t answering their calls. Along that line of wishful thinking, Steve was hoping that the GCI radar jockeys surveying enemy air space would also assume from his position and altitude that he was a MiG.

  Steve glanced at the clock in the upper right-hand corner of the BroadSword’s instrument panel. Larsen was certainly taking his time calling back.

  It’s got to be Charlie, Steve thought. / feel it. Come on, Charlie. It’s today, or maybe tomorrow.

  Or never….

  He knew that he could only pull a jury-rigged dodge like this once or twice before it fell apart and he was caught and hung out to dry for disobeying orders not to cross the Yalu…

  “Back Door, Back Door, come in.” It was Larsen, and from his excited tone Steve knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “Back Door here,” Steve said, already bringing his BroadSword around toward Bao Kung Cheng field before he’d even heard Larsen say:

  “You’re a go, Back Door. Repeat, you are a go.”

  It was the prearranged signal that meant that the Yalu had been sighted, and that he and his flock of fledgling pilots were on their way home to Bao Kung Cheng.

  “Affirmative. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Larsen said dryly. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Back Door out,” Steve said, smiling as he remembered what Larsen had said to him this morning on the ready line:

  “I’m not worried about you getting past Bao Kung Cheng’s guns or beating Charlie. I’m worried that you won’t survive the drubbing our own side is going to give you when you get home.”

  Steve guessed that he was breaking just about every rule in the book this time around. Back in November 1950, the Air Force had briefly entertained the idea of allowing its pilots the right of hot pursuit across the Yalu, but the outcry from America’s allies in Korea had forced the brass to drop the idea.

  And all that ruckus had only been over the issue of hot pursuit: a few moments’ flying time over Manchuria while in the heat of a dogfight. What the hell was the UN going to say when it found out a USAF pilot had intentionally invaded Chinese airspace for an extended time period in order to carry out a premeditated, illegal attack on a Soviet pilot?

  The second half of the plan was as cunningly simple (or foolishly naive; take your pick) as the first part. The idea was to intercept Charlie as he was coming in for a landing at his home airfield.

  The tactic had a couple of advantages, Steve reassured himself as he pushed the stick forward and the BroadSword began to lose altitude. First and foremost was the element of surprise. Steve was gambling that the commies would never expect a BroadSword to attack their heavily fortified base from deep within their own territory. Hopefully he could get in and out before the commies would have time to bring their antiaircraft defenses to bear, or scramble their jets. The second advantage came from the fact that Steve was planning on bouncing Charlie as the Russian was preparing to land; at low altitude his Broad-Sword had superior performance capabilities over Charlie’s MiG.

  The gray-green, tobacco-brown terrain was rising up at Steve. He punched his tanks, checked his guns, and began his approach toward the Red airfield. He was now in the enemy’s backyard, so he went down on deck to avoid being picked up on their radar. There were no trees—the commies had likely chopped them all for firewood. Steve concentrated on his flying as he got real low. His screaming Broad-Sword rose and fell with the hills and dips of the North Korean terrain as he flew at four hundred knots toward the enemy airfield, his jet wash throwing up rocks and dirt in his wake as the bramble tickled his fighter’s silvery belly.

  The scruffy hills dropped away, and then he was traveling down a broad slope, toward Bao Kung Cheng’s airdrome and complex of runways. Dead-on, Charlie’s flock of MiGs were raising dust as they taxied along the concrete airstrips toward their revetments. The blue lightning MiG was still in the air. As Steve had hoped, Charlie had waited to land last. He was just committing to his landing approach.

  Steve pulled up to get the altitude he would need to bounce Charlie. The commie maintenance workers and other base personnel were all staring up at Steve in what he guessed was disbelief at seeing the red, white, and blue over their heads. He had no time to think about them, however. He cobbed the throttle to come around fast and hard, sustaining punishing G’s through the 180-degree turn that put him on Charlie’s six-o’clock high.

  Evidently Charlie hadn’t noticed Steve, and clearly nobody had radioed the Russian to warm him of what was coming. The blue lightning MiG was still settling down toward the runway as Steve dived, then chopped his throttle and popped his speed brakes. His shoulder harness strained to keep him from bashing his visor against his gun sight as he centered the cherry-red circle of his gun sight on the MiG’s spine and squeezed off a burst.

  Armor-piercing incendiaries spilled out from the Broad-Sword’s six .50-caliber nose guns. The APIs raised dust spouts and chips off the concrete runway, and blindingly white sparks off the blue lightning MiG’s dirty aluminum wings and fuselage. Charlie’s airplane began to yaw as Steve’s tracer rounds caged it in bars of fire.

  Steve held down his trigger, spraying Charlie with APIs. It’s all over, he thought. You’re one cooked commie goose. With the runway a few feet below you, and me point-blank above, you’ve got nowhere to go.

  He was gently bringing up the BroadSword’s nose in order to dance the APIs along the MiG’s fuselage toward its canopy, when the Russian pilot touched down on the concrete runway.

  Beautiful move, Steve thought, even as he cursed Charlie for outsmarting him. As the Russian’s tires hit the runway, the suddenly earthbound MiG experienced an abrupt drop in speed which caused the BroadSword to overshoot.

  Steve was suddenly looking at empty runway. He pulled up to execute a hard starboard chandelle to try to once again come around behind Charlie, who had only bounced the concrete and was now airborne again. Steve watched as Charlie retracted his landing gear and came around in a chandelle of his own.

  Airborne, Yalu Charlie was one wet hornet, shaking off water and spoiling for a fight.

  And I’m the guy to give it to you, Steve thought.

  The MiG might have been faster at high altitude, but at any altitude the BroadSword could make the tighter turns. As Charlie did his best to come around, Steve rolled his BroadSword inside of Charlie’s wide turn and again locked on to the commie’s six o’clock. He centered the gun sight’s red circle on the MiG’s glowing tailpipe and squeezed off a burst. Once again the MiG began sparkling with hits. Charlie pitched and yawed, trying to throw off Steve’s aim as he led his tormentor back over the field.

  Steve guessed that the Russian was hoping that Bao Kung Cheng’s antiaircraft batteries might put the Broad-Sword on his tail out of business, so he stayed close to the MiG, just outside the turbulent reach of Charlie’s jet wash. As the two jets streaked the field at great speed and low altitude, there was no way the commie gunners could fire without the risk of hitting their own airplane.

  Charlie made a climbing
turn away from the field, avoiding the hills to the north and heading out toward the lower ground approaching the Yalu.

  Steve grinned. Charlie had obviously realized that the ground defenses couldn’t help him, and had probably decided that the smart thing for him to do was clear the airspace over the field so that other MiGs could take off to join the fight. Whatever Charlie’s motives, taking the chase toward the Yalu suited Steve as well. For one thing it took him closer to home. For another, it gave them some privacy—at least five minutes’ worth—in which to conduct their business.

  “Now you get the idea, Charles,” Steve muttered. “This little dance is just between you and me.”

  The MiG’s desperate attempt to gain altitude exposed its upper fuselage and canopy to Steve’s guns. There was no time to aim. Steve just led the MiG with his own jet’s snout and held down the firing button.

  It was Charlie who flew into Steve’s hose spray of tracers. The APIs shattered the MiG’s canopy, sending sparkling shards of plexiglass spinning away. As Charlie banked away from the gunfire, Steve saw the wind tear away the Russian’s oxygen mask.

  Steve laughed in triumph. Without a canopy or mask there was no way Charlie could take the fight up into the cold, thin higher reaches, where the MiG had the performance advantage.

  Charlie leveled off at five hundred feet and began to really pour on the speed, but Steve was able to stay right on his six o’clock, firing bursts whenever he could get the gun sight’s red pipper on target. The MiG began smoking as Steve repeatedly raised sparks off its pocked aluminum hide.

  But Steve was beginning to worry about his ammo supply. The BroadSword carried 1,602 rounds, which translated into only 276 shots per gun, and the nose-mounted .50s spat them out fast. What if I run out of bullets before I can knock Charlie down?

  The chase had taken them farther south. They were coming up on the Yalu. Steve once again centered the red circle on Charlie’s tailpipe and mashed his trigger. This time bits and pieces of the MiG began spinning off.

  He’s got to go down any time now—Steve reassured himself.

  The MiG banked out over the river and then dropped down to skim the turbulent waters.

  You are one fucking expert pilot, Charles, Steve thought in admiration. But if you can do it, so can I.

  He nevertheless found himself gritting his teeth in apprehension as he dipped toward the Yalu’s rushing silver waters. BroadSwords did not come equipped with pontoons.

  It immediately became clear just what Charlie was up to. He was flying so close to the surface of the river that the watery wake he was throwing up was splashing Steve’s canopy, obscuring his vision. He couldn’t see to steer, never mind shoot.

  Steve pulled up. The river was a glinting metal ribbon giddily unspooling fifty feet below his wings. Charlie was flying about twenty-five feet above the water, less than one hundred feet ahead. Steve dropped his nose a bit to align his guns on the MiG. He intended to hammer Charlie into the river.

  Charlie must have read his mind. The commie chose that moment to climb to starboard, leaving the river and heading out over North Korean territory.

  Steve wrenched back his stick to stay with the MiG. Both jets were screaming as they clawed their way into the sky. At twelve hundred feet Steve managed to once again get his gun sight on Charlie and fired.

  His guns spat out a handful of rounds and then went dead.

  Nothing left—godammit! Momentarily distracted, Steve didn’t notice Charlie popping his own speed brakes.

  As his BroadSword overshot the MiG Steve turned his head to watch in despair as Charlie raised his MiG’s nose and began firing from point-blank range.

  The first flurry of crimson fireballs from the MiG’s trio of cannon lobbed past Steve’s canopy, but then Charlie adjusted his aim.

  Steve felt the jarring impact, and the BroadSword skidded and yawed out of control as the MiG’s cannon rounds clipped off the BroadSword’s port-side horizontal stabilizer, and the tip of its port wing.

  No question about it, Steve thought. This baby is going down. He was sending out a breathless, speedy SOS when he saw the MiG fly past him and falter in midair before Charlie ejected.

  Evidently Charlie must have been so close behind the BroadSword that some of the whirling debris that he’d shot off the F-90 had gotten sucked into his air intake, totally destroying the MiG’s already ravaged engine.

  Time for me to get out as well, Steve thought.

  He hunched down and pulled up the hand grips on both sides of his seat. His shoulder harness automatically locked as his canopy blew off, exposing him to the shrill wind which bit at him like something rabid. He rocked his body back into the seat, bringing up his knees tight against his chest as he placed his boots in the footrests. He pressed his helmet back against the headrest and tucked in his chin.

  He squeezed the seat-ejection triggers.

  He cried out as the explosive charge brutally booted him up and out of the cockpit. His shoulder harness released, and Steve kicked away from the seat to fall, tumbling in space. The ground was hungrily reaching up to embrace him—

  And then the automatic chute deployed, and Steve’s belly went out through the top of his head as his downward tumble was joltingly checked. As he swung beneath the chute he could see the oily black smoke that marked the spots where his BroadSword and Charlie’s MiG had gone down. The smoke was a mixed blessing. It would act as a beacon to Search and Rescue, but also bring the North Koreans. Their jets must have scrambled by now. They’d be here any moment. The NKPA ground forces would take a little longer.

  First things first, he reminded himself. I’ve got to land in one piece. He worked the suspension shrouds the way he’d been taught at jet fighter training school, keeping his eyes on the horizon, resisting the urge to look down at the ground rushing up between his legs.

  Keep loose, he reminded himself. Knees bent, fall and roll when you hit, then move fast to get out of the harness before the wind catches the silk and it begins to drag you.

  A couple of hundred feet away Charlie was also preparing to land. Charlie had tried to work his chute to carry him across to the northern, Manchurian side of the Yalu, but he hadn’t the altitude to make it. He was coming down on the North Korean side, just like Steve.

  Steve just had time to glimpse Charlie hitting the ground, and then it was his turn. He made an awful splattering noise, like what you’d hear at a butcher shop, as he hit the muddy riverbank, and rolled like a rag doll to absorb the impact. Dripping mud, he jumped to his feet, astounded that he hadn’t broken anything, and slipped out of his harness. He disregarded his helmet, Mae West, and the rest of his flight gear, and then looked around for Charlie, fearful that the Red might try to ambush him. He saw the Russian about sixty yards away, still trying to get out of his own harness.

  It must be jammed on him, Steve thought. Hey, my luck’s still holding. If I play my cards right, I can go home with a Russian POW.

  He began to run toward Charlie along the boggy, weed-strewn riverbank. As he closed on the Russian he drew his four-inch-barrel, Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver from his waist holster.

  Charlie had finally gotten out of his chute harness. He was wearing a dark blue flight suit and a quilted jacket. He wore no G-suit. The commies didn’t have them.

  The Russian removed his helmet. He had short-cut blond hair. As Charlie threw the helmet aside, he caught sight of Steve. His right hand began to claw at the flapped holster on his hip.

  Steve was less than twenty-five feet away when he yelled, “Stop!” at Charlie, and then fired a shot in the air.

  Charlie ignored Steve’s shout, but froze at the sound of the gunshot. His hand moved away from his holster. Then both of his hands went up above his head as Steve approached, his .38 leveled at the Russian.

  As Steve got closer he saw that Charlie looked to be in his thirties. He was clean-shaven, with high cheekbones and dark eyes that were spaced wide apart.

  “You speak English?�
� Steve called out over the sound of the rushing river splashing against its banks.

  “Da—yes,” Charlie said.

  “You’re my prisoner!” Steve declared. “Do you understand?”

  Charlie smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” Steve demanded.

  “NKPA forces will soon be here,” the Russian said in heavily accented English. “I think you would be well advised to place yourself in my hands.”

  “Listen, Charlie, I want you to—” Steve paused. “What’s your name?”

  “Vladimir,” the Russian said, and then smiled. “What is your name, might I ask?”

  “Steve.”

  “You are an excellent pilot, Steve.”

  “Same goes for you, Vladimir.” Steve gestured with his revolver. “I’ve got to ask you to get rid of your gun. Take it out slowly and throw it in the river.”

  He watched as the Russian did as he was told, drawing a nasty-looking, flat black automatic out of his holster. Both men watched it splash into the Yalu.

  Just then Steve heard the roar of jet engines and looked overhead. The sun glinted off three MiGs high in the sky to the north. Steve watched them begin to drop down toward the river.

  “You see?” the Russian said gently. “It is useless. Ground forces will soon be here as well.”

  “Shut up, and let me think,” Steve demanded. He anxiously scanned the sky to the south. Where the fuck is the Search and Rescue whirlybird?

  He looked around for some decent cover from which to make a stand, but there was nothing but a low jumble of rocks and some brush about twenty feet away from the riverbank.

  “If you surrender to me, I will guarantee that you receive humane treatment,” the Russian said.

  “I will guarantee that I’ll blow your head off if you don’t do exactly as I tell you,” Steve said, approaching him. “If I’m close to you, those MiGs can’t strafe.”

  “As you wish, but it is useless—”

  “Shut up! Get down on the ground and lie on your stomach.”