Red Phoenix (55 page)

RED DOG LEAD

“Oh, shit!” Bouchard spun the Tomcat up and away as an Apex streaked past and started turning after him. “Do something, Mike!”

“Doing it!” Esteban was already busy punching out a stream of chaff to confuse the incoming Russian-made missile.

Bouchard tightened his turn and saw his airspeed bleeding away. Crap, they might dodge this missile, but they’d be dangerously slow if another one came after them. He went to afterburner.

Other Tomcats and Hornets were busy dodging, too, spiraling away from the radar missiles launched by the MiG-29s. Esteban had his head craned practically all the way round, watching the Apex turning after them. “It’s still coming, Corky!”

Fuck this. Bouchard rolled back out of his right turn to the left and pulled up even more sharply. The missile lost track of the F-14 and veered off into nowhere.

Two Tomcats and an F-18 weren’t so fortunate and fell into the ocean wreathed in flames. The score was evening out. Now there were nineteen American fighters left to tangle with the thirty-one NK planes closing on them. The Hornets reduced speed to let the F-14s catch up. They would go in together.

FULCRUM LEAD

Eight miles. Borodin throttled back slightly. They would be in IR missile range shortly, and he didn’t want to have too big a heat signature when the missiles started flying. He glanced back behind him and made sure that Moskvin, his wingman, was still in position. Satisfied, he brought his eyes back to the MiG-29’s HUD, searching the box his radar had placed around the closest American plane. Six miles.

Ah. Borodin’s mouth tightened as the enemy fighter came into view, rushing toward him at over five hundred knots. Twin tails, swept-back swing wings. An F-14! It would be his fifth confirmed kill. He slid his thumb over to the switch that would fire an AA-11 Archer right into the Tomcat’s face.

Three miles. The missile warbled in his earphones. Its seeker head had found the enemy and was tracking. He fired and saw a similar streak of flame pop out from under the F-14’s starboard wing.

RED DOG LEAD

“God!” Bouchard couldn’t believe it. The MiG-29 had fired an IR missile at him from the front and it was guiding on him. Where’d these bastards get those things? He pulled hard left, grunting as his weight quintupled in seconds, trying to follow the MiG and line up for a shot while Esteban popped flares to decoy away the enemy missile. It swung away and exploded one hundred yards behind the turning Tomcat. Bouchard felt the shock wave ripple through the F-14 and ignored it as he fought to bring the plane around on the MiG’s tail.

C’mon round, baby. C’mon round. Almost. Bouchard’s thumb reached for the firing button.

“Left!” Esteban’s frantic shout brought his head around as orange-white tracers sprayed across the Tomcat’s flight path. He jerked the stick hard left, turning toward the new threat. There. A gray-white camouflaged MiG
flashed past and rolled away. He’d lost the first MiG somewhere in the sun. Jesus, this was turning into a mess.

THE FURBALL, OVER THE YELLOW SEA

Jets were all over the sky, turning, diving, climbing, weaving, and falling in flames. The air battle between the MiGs and the American fighters had turned into a constantly changing series of deadly, short-range duels. Move and countermove. Shot and return shot. At such close range the North Korean and Soviet edge in numbers more than made up for their slightly inferior aircraft and weapons.

An F-14 blundered into the path of an AA-11 and blew up, throwing pieces of itself in an arc hundreds of yards across. Seconds later an F-18 avenged its counterpart with a quick cannon burst into the belly of a rolling MiG-21. A second MiG soon fell prey to a Tomcat-launched Sidewinder, and another nine lima tore the wings off a scissoring Fulcrum.

The edge shifted back quickly, though, as a Soviet-piloted MiG-29 turned inside an F-18 and got off a high deflection shot that shredded the Hornet’s cockpit and sent it spiraling down into the sea.

As the air battle continued, more planes on both sides tumbled away on fire or simply blew up. Losses, fuel consumption, and missile and cannon ammo expenditure were all appalling. But the American F-14s and F-18s were doing their job. They were keeping the MiGs fully engaged, protecting the heavily laden strike aircraft now approaching the Korean coast.

DUSTER LEAD, OVER THE SOUTH KOREAN COASTLINE

Commander John “Smokey” Piper, USN, glanced down out the cockpit of his A-6E Intruder as it crossed the coast, six thousand feet above the spray-marked merger of slate-gray seas and white, snow-covered land. He clicked his mike and said, “Duster is feet dry.” His message confirmed to the carriers at sea and the E-2C aloft that the strike planes were over land and just fifteen miles away from their targets.

Piper looked ahead into a maelstrom of white, gray, and black smoke puffs dotting the sky as North Korean antiaircraft guns sought out the incoming strike. He saw hundreds of tiny flashes on the ground and watched an F-18 pull up and away from its bursting cluster bombs. Another far off to the right fired a HARM missile toward some unseen, but still-operating radar site. The missile ignited on the rail, then seemed to disappear as it flew forward and climbed. It would dive on its victim from high altitude. The Iron Hand flak suppressors had their hands full on this one.

Voices over the radio told their own story.

“Strawman, this is Comanche. You’ve got a SAM launch in your six, break left now! I’ll hit the site.”

“Breaking! Can you see any others?”

“Nega… SAM! SAM! Five o’clock low. Keep breaking left!”

Piper heard the second pilot’s voice quavering under the heavy g’s he was pulling. “Can’t shake it! Can’t—”

There it was. A flash low on the horizon, followed by a searing orange ball of flame as the American plane slammed into the ground at over five hundred knots.

“Pirate, this is Comanche. Strawman’s down. No chute.”

“Affirmative, Comanche. Watch the Triple-A on that hill to the left. I’m rolling in on it now.”

A new INS prompt came up on Piper’s HUD, and he turned his attention away from the radio. They were within seconds of starting their attack run. He glanced across the Intruder’s crowded cockpit and his eyes met those of his bombardier, Lieutenant Commander Mitch “Priest” Parrish. Parrish lifted his oxygen mask for a moment and grinned at him. Then the bombardier bent forward again to stare at the A-6’s radar screen, while one hand stayed busy configuring the attack computer for their run.

Piper checked to make sure his wingman was still in position just aft and to the right. “Orca” Jones would stay there through the whole attack to watch for SAMs or unexpected flak positions.

He pulled the Intruder into a gentle left turn, aware that behind him nineteen other pairs of A-6s and A-7s were arcing around to come in on the target area from all points of the compass. The “wagon wheel” attack had worked well for the Navy over Vietnam. Now they’d see how well it did over Korea.

Piper started searching the rolling hills and open rice paddies ahead for signs of the truck-mounted pontoon bridges and GSP amphibious ferries they’d come to destroy.

II CORPS FORWARD HQ, NEAR THE HAN RIVER, SOUTH KOREA

Lieutenant General Chyong crouched lower in his slit trench as an American attack plane roared low overhead, streaming flares behind it. Another followed seconds later. He cursed when he saw that they were aimed straight for a small stand of trees occupied by some of his precious bridging units.

The lead American plane climbed sharply and then banked away, flinging a pair of bombs off its racks. Both flew straight into the woods and exploded. The second aircraft began its turn away and then shuddered as shells from a
nearby ZSU-23-4 battery found the mark at last, though too late to save their engineer comrades in the woods.

The wounded American jet flew on for several seconds with heavy, black smoke pouring out of its belly, then rolled over onto its back and nose-dived into a hill. Its companion accelerated away, chased futilely by several shoulder-launched SAMs.

Chyong rose from his crouch, staring at the bomb-splintered woods. Four more of his invaluable PMP bridge sections had been destroyed. How many more had fallen prey to the gray-painted American jets crisscrossing his operations area?

He started to climb out of the trench to find out, but an aide knocked him down as another American plane suddenly appeared out of a small valley to the left and turned toward them. Chyong and the young captain clung to the bottom of the trench while the jet’s cannon roared, smashing a camouflaged radio van parked less than fifty meters away.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the plane disappeared. And as Chyong’s hearing came back to normal, he was conscious first of the fading sound of jet engines from the west and then of the crackling flames consuming his bridges. The American air raid was over.

DUSTER LEAD OVER THE YELLOW SEA

Piper keyed his mike. “Duster is feet wet.”

Then he scanned the air around his Intruder, counting noses as the strike planes, Iron Hands, and flak suppressors reformed for the flight back to the carriers. Five were gone, counting Orca Jones, and another seven trailed smoke, showing that they’d been hit by North Korean guns or SAMs.

Piper was shocked by their losses. Seven of Corky Bouchard’s defending fighters had also been splashed, and several others had been recovered on board either
Nimitz
or
Constellation
in a near-crippled condition. His A-6s and A-7s had hit their assigned targets, hit them real hard in fact. But the results were Pyrrhic to say the least. With twelve aircraft downed and an unknown number of others permanently wrecked, the two carrier air wings operating off Korea were going to be mighty fragile instruments of war until they got replacements.

He glanced across the cockpit and saw that Parrish had at last pulled his face away from the radar screen. The bombardier’s eyes were closed, and he had his left hand tightly wrapped around the small, gold crucifix he always wore round his neck. Piper quickly returned his eyes to his instruments. He could pray later. Right now, he had to get this bird back on the deck.

II CORPS FORWARD HQ

Chyong moved out of earshot of the field hospital where medics were working on the badly wounded.

“Well? What do you have to report, Colonel?”

The engineer’s face was grim. Many of those screaming under the doctors’ knives were his own men. “The Americans have wrecked more than half of my pontoons and nearly half of my amphibious ferries. With what I’ve got left, I can’t support both crossing operations you have planned.”

“What about the spares back with our second echelon?”

The engineer shook his shaved head. “I’m sorry, Comrade General. If you could postpone the attack for another day, we could have them in place, but not otherwise.”

Chyong considered that, but only for a moment. Cho’s words had made it clear that further delays wouldn’t be tolerated by Pyongyang. So he would have to gamble. He’d wanted to launch both a primary and an alternate attack across the Han in order to divide the enemy’s attention and defenses. It had been a good plan, but happenstance, as always in war, dictated a change in plans. So be it.

He stared at the engineer. “Do you have enough equipment to support a single-crossing operation?”

The man nodded cautiously.

“Very well, then. We’ll attack tonight. As scheduled. Make sure your bridges and your men are ready. I’ll want heavy tanks crossing the river by first light.”

“And the storm, Comrade General?”

Chyong studied the sky. Heavy, dark clouds were rolling in from the north and the wind was rising again. Small flecks of snow were starting to fall, with more said to be on the way. He turned back to face the engineer. “The weather will be the same on both sides of the Han, Colonel. We attack as planned.”

7TH LIGHT INFANTRY DIVISION HQ, NEAR CH’UNGJU, SOUTH KOREA

Major General Frank Connor turned angrily on his ops officer, “Goddamnit, Art! It doesn’t make sense!”

The shorter man spread his hands. “I agree, sir. But General McLaren confirmed our orders personally.”

“Shit!” Something was way off base here, Connor thought. He’d seen the daily situation maps. The allied forces needed every man they could spare up along the Han River defense line and pronto. And what were he and more than two-thirds of his troops doing? Sitting on their backsides in the same,
camouflaged camps they’d been sent to just after arriving by air from the States. And that, according to his ops officer, was just what McLaren wanted.

Conner paced past the headquarters tent entrance and stopped, watching the last, red rays of sunlight streaming over the mountains surrounding Ch’ungju. He frowned. What was Mad Jack McLaren waiting for?

JANUARY 2—ECHO COMPANY HQ, SOUTH OF THE HAN RIVER

“Sir?”

Kevin Little came instantly awake and reached for the M16 at his side. “What is it?”

Montoya stuck his head through the tent flap. “It’s Major Donaldson, L-T. On the radio.”

Kevin wormed out of his sleeping bag, teeth already starting to chatter as the cold hit him again. His eyes and mouth felt gritty, as though they were filled with sand. Six hours of uninterrupted sleep had helped, but it couldn’t make up for everything that he had lost since the war started.

He rose to a crouch, threw on his parka, and followed Montoya out of the pup tent.

Echo Company lay at rest in a small hollow between two hills several kilometers south of the river line. The hills weren’t much to speak of, but they were high enough to block the wind, and Kevin was thankful for small favors. His men had been on the edge when they’d been pulled out of the line. Another few hours of straight duty and they would have been too slaphappy to do much more than wave hello to the North Koreans.

It was snowing again. Kevin felt the soft, wet flakes striking his face, but he couldn’t see them. The moon was down and it was pitch-dark under clouds that covered the whole sky.