Air Force Eagles (27 page)

They were all dead, killed and burned eight years ago. But how they would have enjoyed it. He laughed to himself—they used to enjoy a potato peel, a frozen turnip, anything. The steaming line at Scholl's would have been too much for them, of course, but it was a pleasant fantasy—after all, if he could imagine those wraithlike skeletons alive, he could imagine them eating all they wished.

When he finally went through the line, he ate simply—usually some bread, bad as the American stuff was, soup, and a piece of fruit. Habit. And thrift. The stipend he received from the nameless people in Israel didn't permit high living and hardly covered the travel he had to do.

It was to have been his last day in Washington on this strange assignment. For the first time, his target was not a German expatriate but an American. He had become expert in eradicating people and making it appear like routine crimes. It was going to be tough to do that in an orderly, peace-loving town like Washington.

*

K-13, Suwon, Korea/September 15, 1952

Marshall knew he was earning his pay, no doubt about that, and Ostrowski was already openly referring to him as "my maintenance genius." The week after he had arrived, Ozzie had immediately assigned him the additional duty job of "Special Assistant to the Commander, for Maintenance." The job title caused immediate resentment with the group maintenance officer because it meant Ozzie considered his work unsatisfactory.

And it was. Half of the F-86s were AOCP—out of commission for parts—primarily a lack of replacement engines. Bones nosed around and found out that there were plenty of engines waiting to be shipped out to Japan for overhaul, but there were not enough engine dollies to mount them on. The dollies were relatively simple structures, designed to transport engines easily without damaging them.

He collared his young wingman Menard and told him they were going to take a personal count. They found twenty-four engines awaiting overhaul, supported on sandbags because there were no engine dollies available.

For the next four hours they walked the base, poking into hangars, looking in trucks. By six o'clock they had found fourteen dollies stuck away in odd corners, covered by tarpaulins or being used for nonessential purposes. One had been converted to an altar by stacking boards on it and draping it with cloth.

Menard kicked down the door of a locked-up Quonset at the edge of the field.

"Bingo, Bones! Look at this." There were another eight brand-new dollies, still in their crates. "Let's go to the maintenance shack!"

"No, we'll do it my way."

Bones was popular with the troops and arranged for. an early morning work party of a hundred airmen from different units—headquarters, mess hall, the motor pool.

"Okay—let's put four men on a dolly and form up in a column of fours. Menard, you lead the parade in Ozzie's Jeep. I'll be in the M.O.'s office."

At nine o'clock, Marshall was talking to the M.O. about a parts problem, when the siren on Ozzie's Jeep blared. The maintenance officer groaned as Bones followed him out of the room. Menard came by, standing up in the rear of the Jeep saluting, followed by a parade of twenty dollies, each one pushed by airmen.

Marshall didn't say another word to the maintenance officer—he didn't have to.

The dollies were just a start. The Sabres were chronically short of a whole variety of parts, primarily because the paperwork and the chain of command intervened. Without any authorization, Marshall placed an order with the North American civilian technical representatives on the field for a quarter of a million dollars' worth of the items in shortest supply. North American, entirely at its own risk, chartered an air freighter and shipped the parts immediately. Within ten days of his request, the parts were on the field, being installed. As far as the paperwork went, he assumed that someone would sort it out later, or else he'd go to jail.

Dave Menard turned into a first-rate officer in the process. At first Marshall would have to pull him away from the volleyball court or the makeshift baseball diamond—sports were big at Suwon. But within days, Menard had taken the challenge, and, following Bones's lead, got his hands greasy changing brakes or pulling engines. Some of the senior NCOs tried to hard-time him at first, but by varying his good humor with tough military discipline, Menard gained their respect. Between flying days and working nights, the two men grew close, and it dawned on Marshall that Menard was the first real friend he'd made since Bayard Riley. It helped a lot.

Around midnight, another young flyer was approaching Suwon, feeling lonely and friendless. La Woon Yung was a proud man, but his shame was great as he slipped his PO-2 biplane through the pitch-black Korean night at eighty knots. Windblown and almost deafened by the irregular pop-pop-popping of the small radial engine, the young pilot peered ahead for the glimmer of lights. Under his wings were two small bombs useful primarily for disrupting sleep.

Yung had wanted to fly MiGs but hadn't been skilled enough, and they had relegated him to this laughable job of dropping firecrackers. Women pilots had flown the same wood and fabric crate during the Great Patriotic War; it was a disgrace.

The well-lit airfield lay ahead, beyond the blur of the village, surrounded by a moving ring of headlights as trucks passed around its perimeter. The arrogant Americans used more electricity on a single base than a whole Korean city used. They had not detected him yet—the lights were still on and there was no antiaircraft fire. La Woon Yung pulled the bomb release with total indifference as he passed over the parked F-86s and then turned north.

A bank of clouds ahead blossomed with the sudden reflected glare of the explosion, and he banked around to see an F-86 burning fiercely on the ramp. Keeping the little PO-2 cocked on its wing, he noted that there were other fires. Elated, he considered returning to survey the damage and decided against it. They would learn the results from the local people by tomorrow morning. He was one of the first North Korean pilots to destroy an F-86. He would surely be decorated; perhaps he could ask to be reassigned to MiG 15 training. The war had taken quite a different turn!

At eleven the next morning, Marshall began to have serious concerns about his C.O.'s sanity. Ostrowski was still raving like a lunatic nine hours after the incident, screaming that he wouldn't stand for clapped-out pissant trainers destroying his fighters. So far he'd threatened to fire everybody in the world, from Truman on down to the firemen who had managed to contain the damage to one aircraft destroyed and four damaged.

The week before, Marshall had been given Able Squadron and told to do whatever he wanted with it, as long as he got some kills. Now didn't seem to be the best time to present his new plan of operations, but he took a shot at it. "Colonel, maybe this'll help. Let me tell you how we can get another twenty minutes on station, and get some more kills."

"Kills, kills, by God I want some kills right here on base. How in hell can I run an operation if North Korean lightplanes shoot the shit out of me? I . . ."

Marshall let him rant for a while, then cut in. "We were spending too much time on the ground and in the climb-out. From now on, Able Squadron is going to eliminate the engine run-up and emergency fuel checks on the ramp, and we'll make running takeoffs. We're going to stop circling over the field to join formation; instead I'm going to head straight for MiG Alley, and the troops will form up as we climb. When we get to our combat altitude, we're going to be cruising at a minimum of .8 Mach."

Ostrowski was beginning to calm down, listening closely. "The safety officer's going to be down on you like a ton of bricks—you're talking about violating procedures."

Marshall took a chance, using Ostrowski's language instead of his own. "Fuck him." The verb stretched out as if it had four U's in it. "Who's the CO. of this outfit, you or the safety officer?"

As Ostrowski's rage ebbed, Marshall told him the next part of his plan. Official policy, straight from the President, demanded that there be no intrusion into neutral Chinese airspace, not even in hot pursuit. But there had been signals recently that General Frank McKinley, the new commanding general of the Fifth Air Force, would look the other way on a border violation, if it was done quickly and well.

"You don't have to hear this. But if I see any MiGs I'm going to hit them, no matter which side of the Yalu they're on."

Beaming now, Ostrowski said, "I didn't hear it, but I like it! When do you start?"

"Tomorrow morning. But there's one more thing. I'm going to schedule my troops to have a practice dogfight on every mission we don't engage the MiGs."

"Go get 'em, Tiger."

As Marshall walked away, he realized he liked the sound of his own tactics, and particularly the sound of the words
my troops.

That night, on the way back from the mess hall, he bumped into Coleman and Fitzpatrick, suited up for flying, but not carrying their hard hats.

He made an effort to be civil. Coleman was the
CO.
of Baker Squadron, and they had to get along, and Bones asked, "You guys on the roster?"

As usual, Coleman didn't speak, but Fitz said, "Yeah, on Bed-check Charlie's roster. We borrowed a T-6 from the Mosquito Squadron. Our armament guys stuffed a thirty-caliber machine gun in it. We're going out to loiter around the edge of the field around midnight and see if we can hammer him."

"Don't bust your ass."

Marshall walked away, resentful of Coleman's continuing hostility, and thinking that it wasn't very smart to risk two veteran pilots to shoot down some poor North Korean PO-2. Then it hit him. It was part of the change. Coleman had the ace bug as bad as he did—and a victory was a victory, PO-2 or MiG.

At midnight Coleman and Fitzpatrick were circling at four thousand feet. The base wasn't lit up as it was the night before, but the pressure for maintenance kept enough lights on for Bedcheck Charlie to find it.

Fitz had ferried the T-6 over from Taegu West, complete with its standard armament of twelve 2.25 aircraft rockets the FACs used for marking targets. He hadn't flown a T-6 in years, but he'd conned the CO. of the FAC squadron into thinking that he was a high-time instructor in the airplane. The machine gun had been in storage, and it took the armament boys less than two hours to get it installed and belted up.

Airplanes spoke to Fitz the way marble speaks to a sculptor, and he was perfectly comfortable, even in the rear seat, content to be airborne, willing to let Coleman take the credit if the PO-2 showed up and they got lucky. One of a fast-disappearing breed of pilots, he had no interest in promotion or glory. He liked to fly airplanes, all kinds, fast or slow, and as long as the Air Force would let him do that, he'd be happy. He had volunteered for F-86s because they were the hottest thing around, but he had no special interest in shooting anyone down. He'd seen enough combat to know that it was mostly waiting and then blam, instant terror, as sorjie poor schmo got killed. Guys like Coleman and Marshall amused him—they liked to fly, but they were really interested in getting ahead.

Yet Coleman was a handy guy to know, and he was probably going places—his kind always did.

In the front seat of the T-6, Coleman had turned down all the instrument lights to let his eyes acclimate. It was up to him to pick up the PO-2. Radar was no help against the little biplanes, wood and fabric ferrets slinking down the Korean valleys. But if the PO-2 crossed the field, he'd be silhouetted against the lights.

They were loafing along at 100 mph, nose high, Fitz amusing himself doing perfect pylon eights using the middle of the field as the pivot point; he'd just passed through top dead center of his turn when Coleman yelled, "I got it! There he is!"

Two thousand feet below, an elated La Woon Yung, head still turning from last night's praise, toggled off his bombs and turned his PO-2 north. Just beyond the field boundaries, he circled, hoping to see a repeat of the previous evening. There was a small fire, but nothing important. Disappointed, he straightened out as Coleman came level behind him.

"Watch your airspeed."

Fitz was nervous—Coleman was slamming the airplane around at eighty knots, nibbling at a stall, too slow for comfort in drastic turns.

La Woon Yung glanced back, saw the T-6 and half-rolled his PO-2, split-S'ing toward the ground to disappear like sugar into coffee.

La Woon Yung had lost sight of the T-6 and had straightened out, anxious to get back to his own lines, to enjoy again the respect given a Sabre-killer.

Fitz wallowed in at low speed behind the little biplane, making coarse control inputs to track it. Visibility was bad from the backseat, so Fitz crabbed as if he were side-slipping in to land. He knew that if the enemy pilot saw them, he would be able to evade—there was no way the T-6 could maneuver with him. As the North Korean drew closer, Fitzpatrick felt a curious mathematical detachment, interested more in analyzing the performance of an unfamiliar airplane flown in awkward circumstances than concern that he was about to kill. He realized that he was as annoyed with Coleman for not being able to make the machine gun work as he was irritated that the Korean was ruining an otherwise perfect night for flying. Still, they had business to do.