Ascent by Jed Mercurio (3 page)

Pilipenko transmitted, “Get in close, son, and follow me up.”

Yefgenii aimed the nose at Pilipenko’s drop tank and snuggled into formation just off his tail. Women and children were working in the paddies below. Some gazed up and waved. Pilipenko waggled his wings back at them. They ascended through 1,000 metres, 2,000. At long last the heat thinned out. Cool air filled the cockpit. Yefgenii tugged out the collar of his vest to let it onto his skin.

Shreds of cloud were slicing past the canopy. The forests and fields had shrunk to green and brown oblongs. In sunlight wheat fields shone in yellow dabs. Villages dotted the country, but the people had become too small to see. At 5,000 metres Yefgenii gazed down and could’ve been one of the last two men on earth.

“There’s the river.”

Ahead of them the Yalu ran like a blade between low gray foothills. Boats were gliding over waters the colour of steel. Yefgenii was learning the landmarks. He studied the shapes of the hills, which way their slopes pointed, the turns of the river itself, its bridges.

“This side is Manchuria, the other is Korea,” Pilipenko said. “We’re safe on this side — they’re forbidden to cross. The other is the theater of war. There they’re fair game — but, the moment you cross, so are you.”

They flew upstream, keeping the river off their starboard wings. In the far north a mountain range was pushing up at them. Its peaks wore caps of white snow. The horizon was sharp. Sparse white cumuli were heaped below, looking like coral. A little cirrus drifted above, not thick enough to be white, only blue-white.

“The Suiho Dam.”

Pilipenko orbited to give him a good look and then they turned back downriver. Roads and railway lines hatched the land. Yefgenii noted bridges and villages. A sector map lay in his thigh pocket visible through a cover of clear plastic. When he picked out a feature he related it to the map. Soon the river was opening into an enormous bay.

“The Yellow Sea. Korea Bay. Do not overfly.”

Pilipenko pulled round, hard and tight. Yefgenii’s g-needle flicked as he followed. Pilipenko didn’t roll out. He kept in the turn past 360 degrees. The games had begun.

Pilipenko opened the throttle all the way to the stop. He pitched up the nose and rolled hard over to select the attitude for a max-rate turn in the opposite direction. Yefgenii matched the maneuver. The two MiGs circled in an MRT, pulling 6 g. Pilipenko was guessing that, because Yefgenii was big, he’d have problems at high acceleration. It was the easy way to break him before the sortie even got interesting. Yefgenii sucked in short sharp breaths and strained during expirations like shitting a brick. The planes cut up the air. Vortices hung and swirled. When the planes struck them on the next orbit, it came as a kick in the seat of their pants. Yefgenii was still holding tight on Pilipenko’s tail. The formation was no looser now than when they’d been in a gentle climb.

Pilipenko grinned; it was going to get interesting after all; he rolled out and pulled up. They tilted almost to the vertical. Their wingtips cut the horizon. The altimeter wound up to 12,000. Speed bled away. Soon the stubby white needle was barely moving, the longer thinner one making only a slow creep round the clock. The aircraft trembled. They were on the buffet. A stall threatened. Yefgenii saw Pilipenko’s plane tip over and vanish under his nose. He pushed hard over, minusing 2 g.

Pilipenko reappeared. They were plunging straight down. The wide green earth was swallowing them. The altimeter spun down, the airspeed built. With Pilipenko still on his nose, a hurricane of air rushed over Yefgenii’s canopy. Soon he was bouncing in Pilipenko’s slipstream. The planes burst through layers of cloud. In split seconds sunlight flashed off then back on. Yefgenii saw Pilipenko’s wings rotate through 90 degrees and the elevators on his tailplane waggle up. He reacted at once. Pilipenko glanced over his shoulder expecting to see clear sky. The nozzle of Yefgenii’s intake loomed in his five o’clock position.

“Fuck.”

Pilipenko levelled out at 5,000 metres and stirred the control stick out and back. As his nose tilted it began to describe a circle. His wings slashed the horizon and he rolled through the inverted. Again Yefgenii had reacted at once and matched the speed and angle of the maneuver. Pilipenko was corkscrewing round in a barrel roll hoping to loop onto his tail. Yefgenii made his roll wide enough and slow enough to hold formation. Pilipenko’s head twisted round again and again the nose of Yefgenii’s MiG was right behind.

“Fuck.”

Pilipenko snapped into a hard turn to the left, then to the right. He climbed and fell, rolled and looped. He couldn’t shake loose. Under his vest sweat was gushing over his skin. It was trickling out of his helmet and down the back of his neck. He could taste a gob of it mixed with snot on his top lip. He pushed up his visor to get air flowing round his eyes.

“OK, son, take us home.”

Yefgenii throttled into the lead. Pilipenko sat out on Yefgenii’s wing wondering if he’d radio the tower for a steer. He could see him studying the ground and studying the map. After a few seconds, Yefgenii turned onto the correct heading.

The MiGs sailed over Manchuria. The Sun had crossed its zenith and was beginning the long slide toward the mountains in the west. Pilipenko smiled. He loved days like this, days with clear air from horizon to horizon and hardly any chatter on the radio, when the flying was easy and with good men.

Yefgenii followed the pattern of landmarks he’d learned and it led his eyes to the airfield. In the heat it was shimmering. It appeared not to be part of the world, but to be hovering a few metres above it. No fighter pilot would wish to be anywhere else or to live in any other age.

ON THE CHART in Ops, the name YEREMIN stood against the last wave. The moment he saw it Yefgenii’s heart started drumming. He’d be flying in Kiriya’s
zveno.

Gnido’s name was up there too and he couldn’t sit still for a minute. He gave Yefgenii a playful punch on the arm. Gnido had passed a second check ride with Pilipenko but scabs still mottled his face. They made him look diseased.

They peered at the big map of the Korean Peninsula. Airfields were black circles, danger areas were red — marks crammed the airspace between the Yalu and the P’yŏngyang-Wŏnsan parallel. The infantry lines crawled in months the distance the pilots covered in a matter of minutes, while all the time the borders stayed the same and each side’s war aims got no clearer.

Yefgenii checked the updates every hour, worried his flight would be lost to an operational revision or an unserviceable aircraft. At noon he slipped behind the Ops hut. In the west, the mountains fell back low and vast, driven out of the earth by an eon of tectonic creep. Above them a heap of cloud inched across the sky like a giant snail. He breathed the hot air. Another day was burning away.

At last the fifth wave got airborne. The MiGs became silver beetles crawling across the dome of the sky and as they crawled they shed long white tracks.

The sixth and last wave waited on the dispersal, waiting for visual sightings of enemy or reports of blips on radar screens to be fed through the radio into their ears that were pressed hard, tight and bruised inside their helmets.

Then the report came through that the fifth wave was recovering to base so the tower cleared the sixth to light their engines. By now it was late afternoon.

They crossed the river and climbed into the war. At 15,000 metres they were nuzzling the roof of the world. This place between earth and sky was a great lens with cloud banks embedded in it like cataracts. Outside the canopy the water vapor of the jet exhausts froze into ice crystals. The condensation trails streaked the sky until the crystals drifted apart and melted and then the trails would vanish. They weren’t concerned about leaving contrails. They wanted the enemy to see them, to come looking for a fight.

The MiGs travelled south, and then east. The sky was empty. Minute by minute, their fuel burned to vapor.

A voice came over the radio: “Red Leader, Red Three.”

Yefgenii didn’t recognize the other pilots’ voices yet, only Kiriya’s, which answered: “Pass your message.” The empty sky made him feel safe speaking Russian.

“Min fuel.”

Yefgenii’s fuel gauge indicated he was still holding another twenty litres over minimum. He sighed. Kiriya was going to order them home. Instead he heard, “Five more minutes.”

The MiGs sailed on. The day was ending and no enemy was appearing.

“Red Leader, Red Four, min fuel.”

“Same, Red Two.”

“Red Five, same.”

The needle on Yefgenii’s gauge was nudging the mark. Another minute and he’d have to make the call too. They awaited the click and hiss over the radio and Kiriya’s voice ordering them home. Instead they heard only the rumble of their jets and the rush of air.

Yefgenii sighted a dot on the horizon. It was laying a trail like a fine cotton thread, so small that when he blinked the image skipped with the tidal flow of his tears. He waited a moment, but over the radio no one called it out. Only he had acquired the target. He could let it sail on and the others would never know.

He transmitted. “Contact, Red Six.”

“Where?”

“Three o’clock, on the horizon, moving right to left.”

“I’m not visual. Anyone else visual?”

“Negative.”

“Negative.”

“Neg—”

“Red Six, none of us are visual. Are you sure?”

“Yes, boss. In our three, on the hor—”

“I can’t see shit.”

“Me neither.”

“Red Six, is it closing?”

“Negative. Looks like it’s moving in parallel, maybe even receding.”

“Well, that’s no fucking use. I’m under min. If there’s anyone out there, he’s 50 kilometres away or more.”

“I’m ten litres under.”

“Five.”

“No way could we chase him down and still make it back over the Yalu.”

“Shit.” That was Kiriya again.

The seconds stretched. Yefgenii tracked the tiny gray point as it crept along the horizon. It was getting smaller.

Still Kiriya didn’t give the order. He was contemplating burning what fuel he had left to hunt down a target he couldn’t even see. He knew Yeremin had sharp eyes. If only he had sharp eyes. If only he’d seen it half an hour ago. He’d been stuck on four so long now. “Fuck it. We’ve got to go home.” He clicked off.
“Shit.”

The MiGs turned north. Yefgenii glanced out past his wingtip at the contact. It was shrinking to nothing, a Sabre of the 16th Fighter Intercept Squadron flown by a Second Lieutenant named Buzz Aldrin. A few moments later the aircraft had gone, leaving only a bare patch of sky. Even the cotton filament of its contrail had vanished. The air was clear, empty and silent. Yefgenii felt the hunger for the first time. It reached down into his gut. It filled the gap between earth and sky.

THEN, AS IF BY CASTING A SPELL, things changed. The Sun rose like glory. Intelligence had reported a wave of B-29 raids on North Korean hydroelectric plants. PLAAF pilots had engaged the B-29s’ fighter escort over Panghyon. Both sides had suffered losses. Sightings were coming in thick and fast. As fighters clamored to join the action, dust erupted from the runways north of the Yalu.

Pilipenko scribbled duties onto the board with flourishes of a black marker. The pilots crowded round. Yefgenii read he’d fly with Kiriya once again. It was because of his eyes — Kiriya wanted them picking out targets for him and not for anyone else.

They sat in their cockpits for an hour. Kiriya called the tower every five minutes. His voice turned shrill. He wanted to know why their orders hadn’t come through yet. He had to get into the fight even if it was only to scavenge for scraps. Just as he was beginning to lose hope, the fighter controller’s voice broke through from the tower: “Clear to taxi.”

Kiriya had them test-firing their guns almost the second they left the circuit, but when they crossed the Yalu the battle appeared over. The blue was empty. Kiriya could’ve wept. For some men there’d been a sky filled with glorious sport, but for him now there was nothing.

Yefgenii clicked the button on his stick to transmit a word of Korean: “Contact.”

“Good boy!” In Russian, Kiriya was almost squeaking.

No one else replied. Apart from Kiriya they were Kubarev, Baturin, Dolgikh and Glinka. None of them could see it yet. On the ground civilized men could get by without sharp eyes. They had evolved beyond natural selection and were free of it. The men who fought in the sky were not.

“No contact,” said Kubarev in Korean.

Yefgenii said, “One o’clock.”

Each pilot alone in his cockpit peered southward, through banks of cloud scattered like coral, in search of a fleeting glint of metal. They scanned up to the horizon for creeping black specks and then above for contrails. Yefgenii’s eyes were that much sharper that seconds passed without the others acquiring the sighting.

“Repeat, contact, one o’clock,” Yefgenii said.

“Red Six, lead.”

The words didn’t mean anything to Yefgenii. Kiriya’s pronunciation of Korean was idiosyncratic. “Say again.”

“Red Six. Lead.”

“Say again.”

Kiriya snapped in Russian, “Take us to him!”

Yefgenii slid the throttle to its forward end-stop. The engine roared behind him. It kicked his backside. He held the stick hard forward to keep the nose level and stood on the rudders to hold the aircraft straight. Yefgenii’s airplane accelerated out of formation to assume the lead. The contact was below the contrail level, just a black dot only he could see. As they closed it began to crystallize into its components.

At last the others could see them. Kirya ordered, “Drop tanks.”

Again Yefgenii couldn’t decipher Kiriya’s pronunciation but he saw the others dropping their wing tanks so he reached under his seat and swung the small lever that released them. The fuel tanks broke from the MiGs’ wings and seemed to hold in the air for a moment before tipping over and gathering speed and plunging down toward the green land below. He felt weight fall from the airframe but he held his controls against the rise and pitch the plane wanted to make and then he trimmed out the pressure in the stick.