Red Phoenix (9 page)

Tony started to relax. Unlike the States or Europe, there were few restrictions on where or how to fly. Few complaints were received about supersonic flight at treetop level. The bad guys were too close.

As they approached the bombing range, Tony rocked his wings to signal Hooter and changed his Heads-Up Display—the HUD—to air-to-ground mode. He armed his practice ordnance, then descended to five hundred feet. This was the minimum peacetime altitude allowed for nighttime flight. In wartime they would fly as low as the light and terrain allowed, one hundred feet or even less. From here on, they would use wartime procedures.

The target range was in a small plain, with several north-south valleys leading down to it. The two F-16s dropped into one of them, relying on the valley walls to mask their approach from enemy radars that weren’t there now, but that would be if this were the real thing.

They had arranged for Hooter to make the first attack. Tony rocked his
wings again and they accelerated, changing formation. Hooter held back, allowing Tony to take the lead. He selected “Flare” on his weapons panel.

The two jets screamed out onto the plain at four hundred knots. As they cleared the valley, Tony pulled up and hit the weapons release. Behind him a million-candlepower flare lit up the plain with white magnesium light. Tony imagined all the attention he would be getting right now and practiced evasive maneuvering, popping chaff and flares to decoy any missiles that might have been fired at him. The wild maneuvering alternately pushed him into his seat, then pulled him out of it. If he hadn’t been strapped in, his head would have been thrown against the canopy.

Hooter pulled up behind Tony, too, but only until he could see the target—a ten-meter-wide paint mark on the ground. Then he nosed over into a shallow dive. He steadied up and pressed his stick’s “pickle switch,” locking the F-16’s weapons computer onto the target’s location. The HUD changed, showing lines leading to the target and the range. As soon as he was happy with the lock, he increased throttle to full military power and closed on the aim point at over five hundred knots.

The light from the flare was starting to fade, and shadows flickered on and off the target. The landscape streamed by, flashing past almost too fast to consciously see, and Hooter concentrated on lining his nose up exactly with the target line on the HUD. The word
RELEASE
flashed in the corner and he pressed the release button on the stick, simultaneously twisting it hard to the right. He grunted hard, tensing his muscles as his weight suddenly quintupled. The practice bomb flew off the rack, literally thrown toward the target as the plane turned away.

They both turned south and headed out on a prearranged bearing. Hooter called, “Good timing on the flare, Saint. Any earlier and I wouldn’t have locked on in time.”

Tony looked over to pinpoint his wingman’s plane against the dark night sky. “Your run looked good, Hooter. My turn now, watch the interval on approach.”

They reversed roles and prepared for another run on the target. In wartime, making a second run on a now-alerted enemy was a good way to suddenly lose an airplane. But this was training, and each aircraft had enough bombs for three attack runs.

Tony’s first run on the target was good, but Hooter’s evasive maneuvers were pretty limp. They switched again and Tony told John to keep one eye on him as he threw the ship around. On the next attack run, Hooter’s flare didn’t ignite so they bugged out of the target area and reformed. As they turned back south for Hooter’s final go at the much-abused paint spot, Tony shifted in his seat. He was starting to get tired and he had a few runs left to go. He frowned and settled in to concentrate on the oncoming target.

As Tony pulled up and hit the flare release, he heard a
beep-beep-beep
sound in his earphones. He spared one glance at his threat display, then pushed the ship over into a six-g turn to the left. At the same time he called, “Hooter! Scrub the run and join on me! Inbounds.”

His mask pressed into his face, and he tensed his body to fight the g forces.

Hooter’s voice was excited. “Roger, you have the lead. I’ll come up on your right.”

As he heard his wingman’s voice in his helmet, Tony thumbed a button on his throttle. The radar display changed to air mode, the pattern on the HUD display shifted, and the word
CANNON
appeared in the lower left corner. Although the bombs and Sidewinders were practice versions, the 20-millimeter ammo in his M61 gun was live. The weapons computer automatically selected cannon when he pressed the dogfight button.

As his nose swung around, the radar picked up two contacts about twenty miles out. Both showed positive IFF. They were friendlies. Whew. He turned the radar off, to avoid revealing his position.

Easing up on the turn so that Hooter could join up quicker, he looked over his right shoulder. His wingman was on burner, pulling into position about a mile to the right and back. “Hooter, they’re friendlies. Safety out your ordnance and we’ll play.”

“Arming phasers, Kyptin.”

Tony was unimpressed. “I’m going for a nine-lima slew, then we’re going vertical.” As he said this, he put the aircraft in a gentle dive since a lower altitude made them harder to spot or lock on to. Hooter followed him down automatically.

“Rog. It’s showtime.”

The range had closed to about ten miles. Still nothing visible in the night sky ahead. Tony turned the radar back on and put it in SLEW mode. A new circle appeared on his HUD marking the spot where the radar “saw” the lead bogey closing at five hundred knots. Tony used a small control to move it over to the left, well off his line of flight. This was going to be a difficult shot, but he was the squadron’s weapons officer. He had to teach it to everybody else.

Suddenly a small box appeared around the circle—he was locked on. He selected the AIM-9L Sidewinder on the left wingtip and was rewarded with a growl in his headphones. The IR seeker on the missile had its target in view and was telling him with an audible signal.
SHOOT
appeared on the HUD and he pulled the trigger.

The missiles were practice rounds without propellant or warheads, so nothing left the rail. But if it had been real, his target would be dead. Tony grinned under his oxygen mask. The video recorder would display all the data on the HUD as proof back at debrief.

The two oncoming planes were just visible now, rushing toward him out of the starlit darkness. They were F-16s.

Tony came up on the wing frequency. “Lead Falcon heading south over Range Alpha, this is Bluejay One. Gotcha.” The missile’s growl was audible on the circuit.

There was no answer, but their two opponents broke hard left, turning toward them. Tony saw it and called, “Burner.” He shoved his throttle all the way forward. As the engine responded with a satisfying roar, he pulled back sharply on the stick.

The F-16 Falcon is one of the most agile aircraft in the world. Among its other sterling qualities is an engine that puts out more thrust than the aircraft weighs. This means that it can do very interesting things, like accelerate while going straight up.

They climbed, quickly passing the altitude where their two opponents were still turning left. Tony did a rapid calculation in his head and rolled the aircraft to the right, still climbing, so that he was “facing” their adversaries, who were now behind and beneath him. Hooter kept with him, hanging on to his wing as if he were glued there.

Still pulling on the stick, Tony passed over the top and saw a dark horizon, the ground, climb up the back of his canopy. He searched quickly “over” his head and was rewarded with two bright points of light—the two “enemy” F-16s had also gone to burner, but it was too late. They were still turning left.

Diving on full burner, he pressed the cannon select button on his stick. As the radar shifted he called, “Hooter, I’m going for a gun on the aft ship.” He heard Hooter click his mike switch twice in answer.

The radar locked up immediately and he adjusted his dive slightly to put the “death dot” aiming reticle over the target. He forced himself to count “one potato, two potato” so the gyros could catch up with all his hard maneuvering. The
SHOOT
prompt came on again and he pulled the trigger. “Aft ship, this is Bluejay One. You’re a mort.”

Hooter’s excited voice came over his phones. “Beautiful, Saint. I wonder if we can frame a videotape?”

Without a word the two “enemy” planes pulled up and rocketed off for points unknown, and the Bluejays turned for base. Two blasts of afterburner had significantly reduced their fuel.

“Saint, who were they? I didn’t see any other Falcons scheduled in our area tonight.”

“Probably some Juvets from the 80th ordered to surprise us. I heard a rumor the wing commander was going to try something like this.”

Hooter chuckled, “Well, they can surprise us like that anytime they want.”

“I’ll pass. They might have been real gomers. Thank God we dropped
enough ordnance to mark off the box. If they had interrupted us sooner, we’d have had to repeat the mission.”

“Yeah, then you wouldn’t have safetied out the cannon.”

Ten minutes later they were back at base, and it took just five minutes more to taxi to the arch. Tony climbed out of his cockpit feeling like he’d been there for a year. Pulling five to seven g’s wears you out. It was 2130 and he and Hooter still had an hour of debrief left before they could sleep. But there were two poor bastards in the 80th who’d be up late, too, and they wouldn’t have much fun watching their after-action videotape.

______________
CHAPTER
6

Uncertain Welcome

SEPTEMBER 14—KIMPO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SOUTH KOREA

Second Lieutenant Kevin Little was more than a little worried. So far, at least, on his first real day of active duty as an Army officer, nothing—absolutely nothing—had gone right.

It had started with his flight into Kimpo International Airport that morning. Bad weather in Seattle had kept him from making his KAL connection in Anchorage, and he’d had to wait for the next plane. That had turned a planned fourteen-hour trip into a full twenty-four-hour nightmare. That would have been bad enough. But then he hadn’t been able to get through to the battalion travel office at Camp Howze to let them know that he’d been delayed.

So now that he had finally gotten into Kimpo, his transport to the battalion had been and gone. And the Eighth Army captain in charge of ground transportation at the airport was making it crystal clear that sympathy was in short supply in South Korea.

“Listen, Lieutenant whatever-your-name-is, I don’t give a raggedy rat’s ass about your missing ride. We’ve just come off a six-day alert and I’ve got better things to do than to spend time rounding up a car and driver for every woeful, wayward, green-as-grass replacement wandering around in Korea. Like getting some sleep, for example. Got it?” The captain kept his voice low, but Kevin could swear that every lowly PFC and clerk in the room had heard every word.

Cripes, now what? His first, miserable day in ROTC basic training flashed back to him. The captain had asked a question to which there was only one permissible answer.

Kevin drew himself to attention. “Sir, yes sir.” He almost stopped—why was the captain’s face turning bright red? Hurriedly he carried on, “Could the captain please direct me to the nearest cab stand or bus station, then?”

“Oh, shit, boy…” The man seemed to be trying hard not to laugh, “Don’t you know Americans aren’t real popular around this country right now? You might be able to get a cab, but you’d be just as likely to end up way down in Pusan as at Camp Howze.”

The captain turned to bellow at one of his sergeants standing just a few feet away. “Fergie! See what we can do for this little lost lamb! I guess we’re playing nursemaid today.”

He looked back at Kevin. “Don’t expect too much or anything too fancy. General McLaren, the Big Boss here in Korea, doesn’t like seeing officers spending their time riding around like some kind of foreign potentates.” The captain’s Alabama drawl stretched the word “potentates” into something that sounded vaguely obscene.

The captain yawned. “You’re lucky I’m in a merciful mood, Lieutenant. And now that I’ve put your case in Sergeant Ferguson’s capable hands, I’ve done all that I can.” He yawned again. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some important paperwork to clear up.” With that, the captain sauntered into his office and closed the door.

Sergeant Ferguson, a wiry, little man, motioned Kevin over to a chair. “Better take a pew, Lieutenant. This might take awhile. Not a whole lot going up toward the Z today. Should be able to get you something though.” He started flipping through a huge stack of papers on one of the desks.

Kevin sank into the chair. Jesus, here he was. Stuck in Korea. Stuck in the hands of a bunch of Army clerks. His new battalion commander had probably already listed him as AWOL, absent without leave. He could just see writing to his parents: “Dear Mom and Dad, arriving back from Korea tonight. Please write care of Leavenworth Army Prison.” He leaned his head back against the office partition in misery and then sat bolt upright.

The captain snored.

ALONG ROUTE 3, SOUTH KOREA

Two hours later Ferguson came through and Kevin found himself in the cab of an Army supply truck trundling north toward the DMZ. Jet lag was starting to catch up with him; he was tired, sore, and more than a little nauseous, and the truck driver, a shifty-looking corporal, seemed to delight in making hairpin turns, sudden lane changes, and ear-splitting gear shifts.

The driver hadn’t even saluted him when he’d climbed aboard back at Kimpo Airport, and Kevin wasn’t sure if he should report the man for insolence or just ignore it. Maybe they kept discipline pretty casual here in Korea—he just didn’t know.

He looked out the window to hide his discomfort. They’d driven right along the Han River through Seoul before turning north. And Seoul, at least,
seemed pretty interesting. Tall, modern skyscrapers and huge freeways all built right next to delicate, tile-roofed palaces and narrow, winding streets. The place was huge, too—a lot bigger than Spokane or even Seattle. It must have been nearly an hour before they left the city’s sprawling suburbs behind.

The countryside wasn’t like anything Kevin had ever seen back in the States either—flat, green, water-logged rice paddies reaching out all the way toward rocky, knife-edged ridges running along both sides of the highway. The tiny villages they passed looked like something out of
National Geographic
with brown-painted cottages topped with curving orange, green, blue, and turquoise roofs. Narrow country roads bordered by tall poplars and gently swaying willow trees bordered the highway. Kevin began to feel a bit better. Then the odor hit him. Charcoal smoke and unleaded gasoline and thick humidity rolled up into a foreign smell that seemed to magnify the strangeness of the place.

The corporal chuckled a bit when he saw Kevin wrinkling his nose. “You won’t notice the smell by tomorrow morning, sir.

“If you think that’s strange, they got that homemade napalm relish they call kimchee. They don’t eat nothin’ without it. Take a bunch of red peppers, cabbage, cucumbers, radishes, and stuff, mash it all up, and let it ferment for months. You can smell kimchee all the way to Honolulu if the wind’s right.

“Course, it ain’t so bad right now. You oughta smell it in July and August when the heat really comes on.” That was just about the last complete sentence Kevin could get out of him all the rest of the way to Camp Howze.

CAMP HOWZE, NEAR TONGDUCH’ON, SOUTH KOREA

Camp Howze looked like an Army camp. The rows of whitewashed barracks, supply warehouses, and office buildings were all laid out with straight-edged, military precision. There was a big difference, though, from the stateside bases Kevin had seen. The camp was surrounded by barbed wired and cleared fields of fire, and he could see camouflaged bunkers guarding the main gate.

A large sign declared that Camp Howze was “HQ 1st Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment—3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.”

The driver let him off right in front of the main entrance and watched while Kevin hauled his bags out of the back of the truck. Then, without a word, the corporal wheeled his truck around and drove off back west toward the highway.

A sergeant walked down from the gate to meet him. “Reporting in, sir?”

Kevin nodded, fumbling in his jacket pocket for his travel orders. “My plane was late. I was supposed to be here last night.”

The sergeant glanced through his orders. “Yes, sir. Battalion left word that you’re to report to Major Donaldson, the XO, as soon as you arrive.”

Kevin looked down at the pile of baggage at his feet and was acutely aware that he desperately needed a shower and shave to look, feel, and smell human.

The sergeant smiled. “I think you could interpret that order a little loosely, Lieutenant. I don’t think we’ll be able to log you in here at the gate for another half-hour. In the meantime, we’ll get you up to the BOQ.”

The sergeant broke off to yell up at the two privates watching from the gate. “Malloy, Brunner! Move your lazy asses down here and help the lieutenant with his bags.” He turned back to Kevin. “Welcome to Camp Howze, sir.”

A quick shower at the BOQ—the bachelor officers’ quarters—left him feeling a lot better, but Kevin still had knots in his stomach when he knocked on Major Donaldson’s door.

“Come.”

He opened the door, stepped inside, marched toward Donaldson’s desk, and came to attention. “Reporting in as ordered, sir.” Damn, why did his voice have to break every time he tried to sound properly military?

Major Colin Donaldson, a short, square-jawed man, looked Kevin over carefully for a brief moment, with all the studied disinterest of a man eyeing a horse he might want to buy someday. The major’s gaze made Kevin feel as though he were being
X
-rayed. He wondered what Donaldson saw.

He knew he wasn’t tall—barely average in fact. And though ROTC exercises and training marches had kept him in good shape, with a trim, flat stomach and muscular arms and legs, Kevin also knew he’d inherited his father’s stocky build along with the older man’s straw-colored hair and pale blue eyes. His father only kept his weight down by working from sunup to sundown on the family’s Eastern Washington ranch. The Littles didn’t have much choice, Kevin thought. It was either sweat or grow fat.

Feeling self-conscious under Donaldson’s gaze, Kevin held his shoulders back and head rigid, resisting the temptation to scope out the maps and personal mementos scattered throughout the major’s office. He had the feeling this wasn’t the right time to give his innate curiosity full rein. Not by a long shot. In fact, if he’d learned anything in the ROTC, it was that there was always a time to just play dumb. A succession of increasingly irritable instructors had made that painfully clear to him over three summers of basic and advanced training. It had been a difficult lesson to learn.

Curiosity, brains, and the itch for adventure were a large part of why Kevin wasn’t back home herding beef cattle from one sun-baked hill to the other. If he’d been the average kid in Ellensburg, Washington, he’d never have wanted to go to college. And if he hadn’t wanted to go to college, he’d never have signed up with the ROTC to pay for it. And now his service obligations to the U.S. Army had landed him smack dab in the middle of this camp just south of the DMZ.

Part of him was still pissed off. South Korea hadn’t been what he’d
bargained for, and his orders to report there had come as both a shock and a disappointment. But another part of him was excited. This posting was sure to be a lot more interesting than the godforsaken spots in Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia that most of his classmates had been shipped off to.

After what seemed like an eternity, Donaldson pushed his chair back and came around the desk with his hand held out. “At ease, Lieutenant. I ain’t going to bite your head off.”

He shook Kevin’s hand, waved him into a chair, and then perched himself on the corner of his desk.

Kevin thought he should explain why he was late. “Sir, I’m sorry I didn’t get here on schedule, but you see, my plane was—”

Donaldson interrupted. “Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant. We don’t expect our officers to control the weather, or even the airlines. Eighth Army phoned this morning to let us know what happened to you.” He paused for a moment. “But don’t get the idea you can be late from now on. I’m going to expect your platoon to be ready to move when I say ‘move’ and to jump when I give the word. Clear?”

Kevin nodded.

“Good. That’s settled then.” Donaldson pulled a file off his desk and started leafing through it. There didn’t seem to be much in it.

“Now, I see from your service record that you’ve had some language training. That was in Korean, I hope.”

Kevin couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. “No, sir. I took four years of German in college—I never expected to …” He decided it might not be a good idea to finish the sentence.

Donaldson looked over at him, amusement clearly showing in his eyes. “You never expected to get sent to Korea, Lieutenant?”

“Well, sir, no. No, I didn’t. I applied for an Army Intelligence posting in West Germany.”

Donaldson shook his head. “Let me get this straight. You took years of German, probably studied their politics and culture and all that stuff real hard, and then you expected the Army to send you to Germany?”

The major tossed the personnel file back on the desk. “Welcome to the real U.S. Army, Mr. Little. Let me clue you in on a well-known secret. The Army moves in mysterious ways. It doesn’t send you where you want to go, or even where you’re best suited to go. It sends you where you’re needed.”

Donaldson stood suddenly, walked over to a map of South Korea, and jabbed it with a finger. “And that’s right here, Lieutenant. It just so happens that we’re short a platoon leader in this battalion. That’s going to be your job for the next twelve months. You read me, Lieutenant?”

Kevin remembered the Eighth Army captain’s laughter at his cadet salute, so he simply nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

Donaldson smiled again. “Good. I know you will. Now let me bring you up to speed on your assignment.”

He walked back over to his desk. “I’m giving you the Second Platoon in A Company. That’s Captain Matuchek’s mob. Matuchek’s a damned good officer, so you live up to his standards and you’ll go far. You’ll also stay clear of trouble and off my shit list—which is exactly where you want to stay.”

The major handed him a thick folder. “Here are the personnel records for your troops. Get to know them. Get to know which ones you can depend on and which you’ve got to watch. But remember, those records are just paper. They don’t tell the whole story. You get to know the real men—the ones behind the paper—and you’ll do all right.”

Kevin didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded again—feeling a bit like one of those little bouncing dogs some people stick on their car’s dashboard.

He looked up as Donaldson asked, “Now tell me, who’s the one man you can rely on to set you straight, spoon-feed you the info you need, and generally make sure you look and act like a proper young lieutenant?”

This sounded like some kind of test, but it seemed straightforward enough. “Captain Matuchek, sir.”

“No. No, Lieutenant, it ain’t Captain Matuchek. He’s got a lot better things to do than try to keep you in line. No, the man you’d better rely on pretty damn heavily is your platoon sergeant. He’s the one with the experience and the motivation to keep you from screwing up too badly.”