Ascent by Jed Mercurio Read online

  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.

  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 cl
oud 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.”