Ascent by Jed Mercurio Read online

  Those who heard laughed.

  “No, I’m serious, there’s so much going on in the heat of battle, I wasn’t sure at the time, but now I can remember seeing my tracers hit him—”

  “Well, I was sure at the time, and I’m sure now. Jabara’s eating a Texas steak and your tracers are floating on the Yellow Sea.”

  “Are you saying you won’t back me up when I claim it?”

  No one was laughing now. Glinka had friends in high places. Dolgikh shrugged and shook his head. After all, it was only damage. You could damage every plane in the U.S. Air Force and it still wouldn’t amount to a kill.

  In the bar Yefgenii watched Kiriya get drunk on bad vodka. Kiriya’s mood appeared joyous. Though a formality on becoming an ace, he looked forward to being awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union; but in his stomach stung an ulcer of truth that, despite the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin and the five stars on the Ops scoreboard and the five stenciled on the side of his plane, he had only four and a half kills because one half belonged to Yefgenii Yeremin.

  He became so drunk he could no longer stand and had to slump in a chair pushed under him by little Gnido. Kiriya made loud talk of going to find the ugly young widow in her barrack-room bed. Pilipenko leaned over him and whispered, “She’ll bring bad luck.”

  Yefgenii stood outside under the black sky. The cold air carried the noises of banter and drinking coming from the mess. Treetops rocked in the breeze. Patches of cloud drifted over stars. Planets turned. A man was nothing. Yefgenii’s head sank and his shoulders heaved.

  OVER ŬIJU the sky flickered with tracer fire. The radio spat out ranges and vectors that collided with the shrieks of combat. Across Korea the chosen pilots were going up twice, even three times in a day. Sabre and MiG jockeys alike were claiming multiple kills while on the ground a hundred thousand Chinese reinforcements trudged to the battlefront. Men were fighting and dying over patches of land that to the pilots were no more than dots on a map.

  At Antung the air rumbled. It reeked of oil, fuel, and hot metal. Enemy shells had dimpled the fuselages of nearly all the returning ships and every cannon was charcoaled. Skomorokhov had got one, of course. Kiriya had got one too. Pilipenko claimed a kill — now he had seven and a half. Kapetan Dolgikh had been shot down with no reports of a parachute being seen.

  The fourth wave was already airborne over the Yalu and reporting more contacts with the 51st FIW. Skomorokhov demanded another mission. Pilipenko was pushing to go up again too. Yefgenii’s name had been on the board but it got scrubbed to make room for the aces.

  Glinka’s jet rolled in off the third wave. He threw back the canopy and stood on the seat, punching the air. He ripped off his helmet and in that moment Yefgenii saw the sharp red print of his mask crease into a smile. As Glinka came down the ladder the Starshina questioned him and then they were shaking hands.

  Pilipenko descended his ladder. He glanced at Glinka with a quizzical expression. But the look was lost as he fielded questions from the ground crew.

  Yefgenii turned away. He’d come to Korea to write his name in the sky but his tour was becoming an unbearable creep into oblivion. Life was falling behind him like a runway. The takeoff strip was shortening.

  Kiriya was standing outside the Ops hut with binoculars, waiting for the latest wave to rejoin the circuit. Pilipenko joined him, drinking from a flask. He took a gulp of water, gargled and spat it onto the ground. It bubbled in the dirt. Pilipenko said, “We engaged eight Sabres and six flew home. That makes two kills, one for me and one for Kubarev. Glinka didn’t shoot shit.”

  Kiriya lowered the binoculars. “It’s chaos up there.”

  “I can count to eight, boss.”

  “So can the Americans, but they’ll admit one lost to engine failure and claim a couple of ours into the bargain.”

  Kiriya raised the binoculars back to his eyes. The air looked tranquil. Its hundred churning vortices were invisible. He said, “They claim, we claim — you know, Pip, when this war’s over, someone’s going to add it all up.”

  “Who’s going to?”

  “Whoever wins.”

  The CO was content with his kill for the day. That ulcer was healing. Whether he had six kills or only five and a half, he was still an ace and deserved to be called one and was worthy of his decorations. Kiriya didn’t need to fly again today, so he ordered Pilipenko to see that Yeremin’s name was restored to the board.

  Pilipenko led them across the border. The MiGs patrolled as far south as the Chŏng-ch’on River. There they climbed back toward Chŏsan. Pilipenko kept them airborne, but the realization developed that they’d get nothing today, not even scraps. Soon the needle of his fuel gauge was slipping toward minimum. “Recover to base.”

  They crossed the Yalu into China and turned southwest. Yefgenii retracted the throttle and lifted the nose to hold altitude. Power drained. Airspeed plummeted. He transmitted, “Blue Six.”

  “Blue Leader.”

  “I’ve got a rough-running engine.”

  “You can make it back?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “How’s your fuel, son?”

  “I’ve got enough, sir.”

  Gnido transmitted, “Blue Leader from Blue Five, I’ll escort him home.”

  “OK, boys. See you on the ground.”

  Yefgenii watched the MiGs stretch ahead. Gnido tucked in beside him. The two of them made slow progress down the Yalu. The Suiho Dam drifted under their port wings. Yefgenii waited till the other four planes had shrunk to gray points, then he opened up his throttle again.

  Gnido saw the MiG lurch ahead of him. “What’s happened to your engine?”

  “It got better.” Yefgenii was turning back into Korea.

  Gnido watched Yefgenii’s wings tilt. The Yalu swung beneath him. Streamers threaded off his wingtips.

  “Fuck it.” Gnido opened his throttle and together they dropped down to 5,000 metres. Down in the thick air, the American Sabres were the predators, but Yefgenii trusted his sharp eyes to preserve him.

  A bank of white floated beneath them. The shadows of their planes slithered over the undulations of the cloud top. Their wings sank and a moment later they worked within a white shroud with their heads immobile and their eyes flicking from gauge to gauge. First the white thinned and then the Sun’s light burst into their canopies and then the earth opened below them like the leaves of an atlas.

  Yefgenii turned a wide circle from which he scanned the sky over and over and over again. His eyes darted to the fuel gauge. He was approaching minimum.

  A speck crossed under the nose. Yefgenii pulled round 30 degrees and the speck popped out low in his eleven o’clock. Dark over dark terrain, it could’ve been seen by few, perhaps by him alone. His heart drummed. He pulled his harnesses tight and toggled down.

  “Contact.”

  Gnido couldn’t see anything, but Yefgenii was dropping a wing and pitching hard over. He followed him down. The VSI dropped and the long thin white needle of the altimeter spun through the hundreds to a blur while the short stubby white needle wound down through the thousands. Air streamed over the canopy. It thickened as the planes plunged and it made their wings shudder. The Mach meter needle trembled on 0.9.

  Yefgenii drew back the throttle. The airframe snaked. The airstream blasted like a hurricane. At 1,000 metres he began to ease up and at 500 the plane was flying straight and level onto his target’s tail.

  Here was his scrap. A dark blue F4U-4 Corsair was chugging southwest for the coast, keeping low to creep under radar. The Corsair didn’t represent a bomber returning from a raid or even part of an escort. It didn’t represent anything apart perhaps from a lost aviator and for sure an unlucky one.

  Gnido was a few seconds behind. He saw Yefgenii’s wing tanks drop. The MiG lofted as its load lightened. The tanks floated down toward woodland. One landed in a clearing and Gnido saw it shatter. Birds took wing with a flapping that was infinitesimal compared
to the metal machines above. Yefgenii pressed in behind the Corsair as it plunged across hinterland and out into Korea Bay.

  “Yeremin!”

  The blue waters blackened as the seabed dropped away from the shelf of land. White gulls scattered. A shoal of fish glided under the waves as if one beast. Yefgenii pressed on.

  Gnido refused to contravene regulations by overflying the sea and so he swung back toward land.

  Yefgenii closed in on the Corsair and after only the opening burst from his 23 mm cannons it stuttered in midair. Its nose tipped forward, and propeller first the aircraft plunged into the sea. Under a plume of spray the Corsair stood for a fleeting moment on its nose then toppled onto its back.

  The aircraft rocked on the waves. One wing broke loose and floated free. Fronds of spray mixed into the gray rolls of water. A gull perched on an up-pointing wreck of undercarriage. The Corsair’s inlets funneled in water till at last it slipped under and the gull took flight. The sea frothed for a time before it flattened, then it rolled over like a great gray slab.

  Yefgenii pulled up and inland. Pain bit the bridge of his nose so he untoggled his mask. His shoulders stung. The harness straps had lifted the scabs on his shoulders. He felt blood leaking from the wounds.

  The two MiGs regrouped and headed home. No crowd gathered for them on the dispersal, but the widow noticed black powdering around Yefgenii’s cannons, so she signaled to the Starshina, excited on behalf of the boyish blond Leitenant.

  She gazed up at him as he perched on the ladder. He was vast and drab and seemed to blot out half the sky. He appeared colourless except for the blue blaze of his eyes. “Is it congratulations, sir?”

  Gnido perched on the neighboring ladder. He and Yefgenii exchanged a look.

  The widow held a smile on Yefgenii. Her face was round, her nose a bobble. “Any luck, Leitenant?”

  “No,” he said. “No luck.”

  On the walk back to Ops, Gnido diverted him. “Claim it, Yeremin.” A jet was starting up. No one could hear them. They could barely hear each other. “Say it was on the Yalu. I’ll back you up.”

  “It wasn’t on the Yalu.”

  Pilipenko awaited them in the crew hut. He gave them a short sharp nod as they came through the door. Glinka, Skomorokhov, Kubarev and some others lounged on seats. Pilipenko watched Yefgenii pour himself a cup of water from the near-empty jug with the plate over it to keep out the flies. He studied the quick accurate movements of the boy’s big hands. He wanted to warn him but it was too late.

  Kiriya entered. “Yeremin. Gnido.”

  Yefgenii glanced round but already Kiriya had retreated into his office with the door half closed behind him. Yefgenii gulped down the cup of water and followed. Gnido picked up his beret from the hooks. Pilipenko tossed Yefgenii his — it bore no rank insignia.

  Kiriya’s office was bare except for a wooden desk, chair and cabinet. Flies buzzed at the open window. Yefgenii and Gnido saluted then removed their berets and held them in their hands as they remained at attention. Yefgenii felt a trickle of blood inside his flying suit.

  The Starshina’s report had come straight to Kiriya. Aircraft 529 and 648 had returned low on fuel and 529 had blackened guns. “You’re aware of the regulations regarding minimum fuel.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “How do you account for your aircraft’s fuel levels?”

  “Sir, I had a rough-running engine. It must’ve overconsumed.”

  “Sir, I was flying at low speed to escort Leitenant Yeremin home. My aircraft’s performance was suboptimal.”

  “Yeremin, how do you account for the condition of your aircraft’s guns?”

  “Sir, I engaged an enemy aircraft.”

  “You had a rough-running engine.”

  “Sir, it corrected itself.”

  “It corrected itself?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Gnido?”

  “Yes, boss, it corrected itself.”

  “I’ve been flying these lumps of metal for three years. Not one ‘corrected itself.’”

  Through the window they heard tow trucks revving up. They were starting to return MiGs to the hangars.

  “You engaged what?”

  “Sir, an F-4U Corsair of the United States Marine Corps, I believe.”

  “You believe?”

  “It was distant.”

  “Gnido?”

  “We were returning to base, sir, when we made visual contact.”

  “Then what happened, Yeremin?”

  “It passed out to sea. I shot from a distance. I was hoping for a lucky strike.”

  “You didn’t follow it over the sea?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Gnido?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s how it happened.”

  “If there were an accident, if the Americans recovered one of us from the water, it wouldn’t be the pilot alone who’d suffer.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “It’d be his family. There would be reprisals.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “Sir?”

  “The Corsair — did you get it?”

  “I, er, I’m not sure, sir.”

  “You’re not sure? Gnido?”

  “I, er, I’m not sure either, sir.”

  Kiriya studied them for what seemed like minutes. “Gnido, you will never again fail to observe fuel minima. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Gnido put his beret back on, saluted and exited.

  Kiriya turned his gaze on Yefgenii. “Of course, if there’s more… If you want to claim it… but if the gun camera suggested a violation… that’s not something I’d be minded to overlook. I have to consider how it would reflect on the Polk.”

  Inside he was distraught but Yefgenii didn’t break eye contact. “Yes, sir.”

  “And? So?”

  “I’m not making a claim, sir.”

  Kiriya nodded and looked away. Agony flashed in Yefgenii’s face. “You want glory. Of course. There’s nothing else for us in this shitty war. We’re not defending our cities. We’re not winning new lands. The war’s nothing but the chance of glory.” Through the window the two men watched the tow trucks hauling MiGs into the hangars. “I want glory as much as any man does.” He shot Yefgenii a sideways glance. He was awkward. An apology was beyond him, an apology for stealing Yefgenii’s kill all those weeks ago. “I believe, Yeremin, on one occasion I wanted it too much.”

  Yefgenii hesitated. He didn’t know how to answer.

  Kiriya nodded. “Dismissed, Yeremin.”

  Yefgenii replaced Pilipenko’s beret, saluted and left. There was blood on his chest and through his T-shirt it bloomed like a rose.

  In the crew hut, Glinka was recounting his kill to anyone who’d listen. He must’ve been telling it for the twentieth time.

  Yefgenii expected to feel changed in some way, but he didn’t at all. The victory in itself wasn’t enough. What was required was that other men treat him as different, as changed. He slumped in the corner, wearing the same drab overalls as the other men, without name, rank or insignia. They were meant to look the same, yet the celestial ones like Skomorokhov and Pilipenko owned a quality that dazzled. But they weren’t stars or comets; they were like the Moon: they glowed with reflected light. The painted red stars on their cockpits weren’t the source, nor the gold stars of their decorations. The light was cast by the adoration of their peers.

  He wanted to beat his chest. He wanted to scream that he was a killer. He wanted the eyes of other men to turn toward him and recognize his achievement, so that he could blaze in their adulation like the Moon blazes with the light of the Sun.

  Later the Starshina found him and asked him about the film from the gun camera. The widow stood beside him, holding the reel in its small metal capsule.

  Yefgenii hesitated. “The film?”


  “Yes, Leitenant.” The Starshina studied him.

  The widow showed him the reel. She smiled at him almost like mother to child. “Do you want it developed, Leitenant?”

  Yefgenii shook his head. He was a dark body. He gave off no light. “Destroy it,” he said.

  IT WAS THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER, the summer of 1952. Sunlight blazed from the early hours till evening, the sky was blue and open, and the pilots of the 221st were seeing action almost every day. Yefgenii flew as Kiriya’s wingman. He sighted four Sabres operating beneath the contrail level. They were specks, not even cotton threads. While Kiriya and Skomorokhov scored kills he held back to guard their tails with no chance of getting any for himself. Kapetan Baturin got one, his fourth. One more kill and he was an ace.

  On another excursion they made contact with the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing of the U.S. Air Force. Yefgenii recognized them by the yellow slashes on their midsections and tailplanes. Four Sabres of the 334th FIS swung below them, luring the MiGs down into the thicker air. Kiriya ordered the MiGs down. Yefgenii tipped his nose over, opened the throttle and Glinka rolled in behind his wing. The Sabres saw them all the way and splintered into elements. Another flight burst out of the Sun and then it too split up.

  At once the noise struck Yefgenii. Men were screaming into their radios in Russian without even a thought of stumbling through words of Korean. A hurricane of air rushed over the cockpit. Shells banged hot stipples into the fuselage like the rivet guns in the factories where the MiGs were built. He strained round to find Glinka. Glinka had left his wing. A Sabre filled the gap. Yefgenii rolled hard over to the left with the Sabre matching the turn. He continued the roll, passing through the inverted and then he was derry-turning right. Over his right shoulder he could see the Sabre tipped over on its side trying to pull round but slipping wider and wider till it disappeared. Yefgenii was straining to hold the turn and gasping with fear. Again he glanced over his left shoulder but saw nothing; he could only hold the turn tight and strain to keep the black iris from closing over his eyes. Then the Sabre came into view. He was off Yefgenii’s left wing and wide and loose in the turn. The Sabre had lost a few seconds in misreading the maneuver and now Yefgenii was turning inside him. Acceleration hung weight on Yefgenii’s arms and clawed his oxygen mask down his face. If he could hold the turn he’d soon come onto the American’s tail and he’d have a shot at him.