Ascent by Jed Mercurio (2 page)

Yefgenii was up and among the other boys when the men got there. They found them all gazing down at the one in the sewer with his eye mashed.

The foreman looked along the row of boys. “What’s going on here? What happened?” He stared at each boy in turn but none of them would speak. His gaze came to rest on one boy who was big for his age with blond hair and blazing blue eyes who looked like he might be the leader. “What happened to your mate?”

But the boy only straightened up. He shook his head and looked away.

A couple of the men were now carrying Babak by his shoulders and ankles, up into the rubble where they laid him out, the boy who’d now never go to the Air School at Chkalov. Yefgenii felt himself soaring; he imagined sunlight breaking through onto his face.

The foreman asked them again but none of the boys would say anything. So he put them back to work. There was a country to rebuild.

AT FOUR-THIRTY, the falcons of the 221st IAP crowded into the Operations hut. All wore the same olive drab flying suit without name or rank but bearing the insignia of the Korean People’s Liberation Army Air Force. Yefgenii Yeremin stood at the back with the other rookies, while the seasoned fighter pilots took seats in front and chattered about killing Americans.

Polkovnik Kiriya entered first, followed by Podpolkovnik Pilipenko. The room came to attention. As Kiriya took his chair in the front row, the banks of men behind slumped back down. Pilipenko orbited between the map and the chalkboard, twirling a pointer between his fingers like a drum majorette. “Weather for Antung, twelfth of May, 1952, 0400 Zulu, valid to 0600. Surface wind 070 at 5. Visibility greater than 10 kilometres. One-okta scattered alto-cu, base between 3 and 5,000 metres….”

Yefgenii’s eyes drifted to the giant chart at the front of the room. The Korean Peninsula dangled off the northeastern tip of China like a stubby finger pointing at the tail of Japan. A thick red line followed the turns of the Yalu River, which divided Korea from Manchuria. Antung was a black circle edging its mouth. A second red line ran north of the 38th Parallel, the former border between North and South Korea, over which North Korean troops had poured two years earlier to overwhelm the South.

Pilipenko’s pointer struck the map and Yefgenii snapped back to attention. “United Nations aircraft are forbidden to operate north of the Yalu. You are at liberty to operate south of the Yalu. You are permitted to engage and destroy any United Nations aircraft operating south of the Yalu. You will not overfly the sea. You will not enter South Korean airspace — that is, not operate farther south than this line.” His pointer indicated the red line joining P’yŏngyang in the west with Wŏnsan in the east. “You will not transmit in Russian unless absolutely necessary. You are pilots of the Korean People’s Liberation Army Air Force. The VVS is not here. Its pilots are not here. Duties will be notified at 0500.” Then he ended as he always ended. “Thank you for not being here.”

Outside, an arch of light mounted the horizon. Soon the dawn re-created gray mountains to the west and gray paddies east to the Yalu. A blanket of heat was settling on the airfield, raising a scent of oil and kerosene, while ground crews rolled MiG-15s out of the hangars and onto the dispersal. Their shouts and the whir of tow trucks carried into the crew hut, where the rookies gathered at the window.

The MiGs’ nose sections were painted red under three light gray numerals. Between the wing root and the tailplane a red star sat in a white circle that was ringed by red and blue. The rest of the fuselage was silver. These were PLAAF markings — North Korean and Chinese, not Soviet — and the pilots’ names didn’t appear on a single cockpit.

Soon the first wave of pilots were walking out to their ships. On some aircraft small red stars ran in a row under the canopy. Each star represented a kill, an enemy plane shot down. Five stars or more indicated an ace. The pilots who strutted toward these were more lustrous than their aircraft.

“Welcome to Antung,” said Podpolkovnik Pilipenko. The rookies came to attention. “You’re each to fly a check ride with me. The business of the 221st is killing enemy jets. That comes first. You’ll get your rides as and when slots become available. In the meantime, study these.” He handed a manual to each. They were dictionaries of Korean flying terms.

Starshii-Leitenant Glinka took an eager step forward. “Podpolkovnik, what are our operations today?”

“Our operations, Glinka?”

“Yes, sir. Are we escorting our bombers? Are we intercepting theirs?”

Pilipenko smiled. “No, son, we’re just going up.”

“Sir?”

“Just shaking our tails, looking for a fight. They shoot at us. We shoot at them. Then we count how many of theirs we got, how many of ours we lost.”

“That’s all, sir?”

“Yes, boys, that’s all.”

Jet engines were igniting on the dispersal. The first whine built. The rookies pressed their noses against the glass. Soon all six engines were running up and their turbines spun to a blur. The sound rattled the windows. Yefgenii tracked the aircraft as they skimmed out to the runway and then slid up into the sky. Condensation trails formed at around 5,000 metres and soon began rarefying in the vault of air above. From their eastern slope they arched out over North Korea. As they broadened and faded they might’ve been the fossils of great flying snakes.

In the Ops hut, Pilipenko reported to Polkovnik Kiriya. “I’ve briefed the new men, boss.” He offered him the new recruits’ files.

“Glinka is the one whose father is a general-leitenant?”

“Yes, sir.”

Kiriya waved away the files. “Give his check ride priority. I want him getting kills as soon as possible.”

He peered at the scoreboard on the wall. Pilipenko had six and a half stars next to his name, but he was not the leading ace: that was Skomorokhov, with eight. Kiriya had been first to four. Then, somehow, on the brink of becoming an ace, his luck had turned. Skomorokhov and Pilipenko had overtaken. He’d been stuck on four for months.

The rookies were deep in their phrase books when the first wave returned. Word passed down from the tower that they’d met United Nations forces southeast of the Yalu. Already the second wave was lifting off to get into the scrap.

Pilipenko peered through binoculars as the six MiGs of the first wave trundled up the taxiway. “Their guns are black.”

Black powder sooting the tips of their cannons showed they’d opened fire, pockmarks on their fuselages that they’d been fired upon. Still in their bonedomes, the pilots perched on top of the ladders, answering the ground crews’ excited queries. Soon one of them was calling out to Pilipenko. “We got one, sir!”

“A Sabre?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who got it?”

“Major Skomorokhov did, sir.”

Pilipenko made a wry smile. Skomorokhov had now advanced to nine kills — two and a half ahead of him.

Kiriya joined Pilipenko on the dispersal and peered past him at the blackened guns and the pockmarked fuselages. They lured him like sirens. “Change the duty board, Pip. I’m leading the third wave.”

“I was leading the third, boss.”

“I know, Pip, but I also talked to you about making Starshii-Leitenant Glinka a priority.”

Pilipenko blinked. “Yes, sir.”

The other rookies’ check rides were put on standby for tomorrow while Glinka — whose father, the General, had many friends in the Party — would get his ride today.

Yefgenii watched him march onto the dispersal alongside Pilipenko. Glinka nodded as he received instructions to taxi, take off and form up as a
para.
The two pilots ascended to their cockpits. The engines ramped up, the MiGs rolled out to the runway and within minutes they melted into the blue.

Kiriya’s
zveno
returned ninety minutes later. No soot blackened their guns. By the time they’d crossed the Yalu, the Sabres had vanished. Kiriya marched past the ground crew without meeting their eyes or answering their salutes, then locked himself away in his office for the rest of the day.

Yefgenii gazed up at the contrails. In the humid atmosphere they were taking hours to evaporate. White ribbons commemorated the climbs and dives of the earlier battles; they coiled and crossed in signatures. Some ended in the knot of an impossible turn and some pointed home. Some streaked the blue like the tails of comets but they were not left by comets but by men and he longed to rank among the rarefied brotherhood of fliers who’d left such marks in the sky. The previous war had made Yefgenii Yeremin a worthless orphan but this one, he promised, this one would make him somebody.

THE NEXT DAY BEGAN with the sun steaming the haze off the treetops. Yefgenii slumped in the crew hut reading and rereading the pilot’s manual and struggling to absorb the contents of the Korean phrase book. He wore his flying suit unzipped, with the sleeves tied round his waist. Flies buzzed against the windows. Every now and then one would orbit in figures-of-eight round Yefgenii and he’d flap it away. The wind sock drooped. The air was still, clogged with humidity.

By midmorning the first two waves had flown and returned. They’d seen no one, fought no one.

Kiriya shut himself in his office again. He’d been over the Yalu on the second wave. No targets had appeared, so he’d led the
zveno
south through Korea and still no one had appeared. They’d fallen to minimum fuel and had had to turn back, but Kiriya had been close to ordering them to carry on. Now he was determined to keep launching MiGs into the combat zone.

No jets were available to the rookies for check rides.

“I’ve been assigned to the third wave,” Glinka told Yefgenii. He’d be wingman to the third
para
of a six-ship
zveno,
the back man, the greenest. He was strutting as he went to his aircraft, he was pulling down his helmet as he crossed the dispersal, he was pulling on his gloves as he went up the ladder. Glinka’s performance cast him as the duelist and Yefgenii as the holder of cloaks.

Two hours later the third wave returned. The ground crews could see all the aircraft were still bearing their wing tanks so, without even examining the state of their guns or fuselages, they knew the MiGs hadn’t seen action. Yefgenii watched the pilots come down from their cockpits and stroll back toward the Ops hut. No one was clamoring round them for war stories.

“Gnido.” Pilipenko had stepped into the crew hut. “They’ve given us a jet. Check ride.”

Yefgenii watched Gnido and Pilipenko walk to their aircraft. Pocket maps bulked out their legs. Pilipenko swung his helmet on its strap, balancing it over his wrist. Little Gnido’s steps were short and birdlike. Yefgenii watched his helmeted head bob in the cockpit as he carried out his pre-start checks and then lit the engine. The MiGs became blurs as they accelerated along the runway. The leader — Pilipenko’s plane — tilted back on its mainwheels and then leapt into the sky. Something showered around Gnido’s cockpit. At once the aircraft began to slow. It turned off the end of the runway and came to a stop. For a moment there was confusion, then a siren sounded. A fire truck was rolling out.

Gnido had suffered a bird strike. His canopy had shattered. His helmet, visor and mask had protected most of his face, but shards of glass and bone had made nicks like shaving nicks over his cheeks and throat.

Pilipenko met him back in Ops. “Report to the M.O.”

“I’m fine, sir. But you should see what I did to that bird!”

Pilipenko smiled. “See the doc, son.”

“Yes, sir.” But Gnido lingered. “If the doc says I’m OK, maybe we could try again…?”

Pilipenko glanced down and wrote in the mission log: “DNCO” — duty not carried out.

Yefgenii stood in the doorway. He’d donned full flying kit and slung his helmet by its strap. “Sir.”

“What is it, Yeremin?”

“If there’s a slot now, sir, I’m ready to fly.”

Gnido bit his lip. Somehow he felt betrayed by Yefgenii trying to profit from his misfortune. But he shuffled away to see the medical officer.

Pilipenko flicked his pen out of his fingers. It looped through the air into his left hand and then he began to twirl it just as fast on that side. “I’m busy.”

“Yes, sir.” Yefgenii had spent yet another day listening to the thunder of jets and gazing at their trails snaking out into the blue. “Sir, I’m no use to the 221st sitting on my arse all day learning Korean. I came here to kill jets.”

“Hmm.” Then in Korean Pilipenko demanded, “Position?”

“Antung,” said Yefgenii.

Pilipenko grinned.

“Thank you, sir.” Yefgenii folded his maps and stuffed them in the leg pockets of his flying suit.

“You’ll be taking
529.
”

“Yes, sir.”

Pilipenko checked his watch and entered the time in the log. “You know, you’re kind of big for a pilot.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you climb into the aircraft, or just strap it on?”

Yefgenii smiled.

“Come on, son, we’ll do a circuit, then we’ll fly.”

Pilipenko called any pilot below the rank of
kapetan
“son.” He was thirty-three.

From the runway they rose off the plain. A long streak of dust cloud tried to rise with them but fell back to earth. The wooden shacks of the airfield shrank to matchboxes. The forest became a felt mat. Pilipenko made a climbing turn through 180 degrees onto the downwind leg of the circuit. Yefgenii followed. Straight ahead a triangular copse stood on top of a hill. As they turned onto finals his wingtip pointed at a drying bog where ducks skimmed the brown water. From this high angle Pilipenko’s plane seemed to swoop onto the runway. It was flat beneath Yefgenii, its wings swept back in an arrow, with sunlight glinting off the glass of the canopy. Pilipenko’s mainwheels struck the large white numbers and then he began to accelerate again. Yefgenii hit the numbers dead center and accelerated after him. The two MiGs rose once again but this time climbed straight out.