The Fly Boys (35 page)

“There’s a hundred of us,” Evans said. “Besides me, five other TCG people, and nine USAF instructor pilots to fly those combat
missions. Everyone else is Korean. ROK troops are responsible for base security.”

“
Is
the base secure?”

“Very. So’s the road we’re on, thanks to the September offensive,” Evans said. “We’ve had FEAF brass come by for a visit,
and currently have a civilian newsreel contingent visiting from Japan. But like I said before, you can still find scattered
groups of commies holding out in the hills.”

“Hear that last bit, DeAngelo?” Steve demanded. “There’s no way I’m bailing out. Evans, who’s in command at Cha-Cha?”

“That would be Major Kell.”

Steve checked his altitude: seventeen thousand feet and starting to drop a bit more steadily. Still plenty of glide time to
reach Cha-Cha, however.

“Okay, Captain. After you set down, you tell your major to close all traffic and clear the strip of any parked airplanes.”

“The major ain’t going to like it,” Evans warned.

“I’m not concerned about that,” Steve said.

“He’s going to deny you permission to land.”

“He can’t deny me,” Steve said. “By the time I’m over your base, this Shooting Star will have completed its transition into
a
falling
star, and it will be falling on Cha-Cha. It would be in Cha-Cha’s best interests to try and catch it. You read me, Captain?”

“Affirmative,” Evans chuckled. “I hope you live long enough to meet Kell, Bugsy. The sparks would fly. You boys got our coordinates
on your maps?”

“Affirmative,” Steve replied. “But I’m not sure about any of my compassess.”

“Okay,” Evans said. “Bugs Two, your instruments functioning?”

“Affirmative,” DeAngelo said.

“Okay, Bugsy. You let your wingman guide you until you see a main road heading toward the west. Then you can just follow that
road to Cha-Cha. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to see that the welcome mat, such as it is, is out for you.”

“Thanks,” Steve said quietly. “Mike?”

“Yeah, Steve,” DeAngelo replied instantly.

“First of all, how’s your fuel holding out?”

“I’ve got enough. I never took that second run at the target site, remember?”

“Okay, then,” Steve replied, “what I want you to do is get me to that road, and then beat it home. You don’t wait around.
You get home safe. That is a direct order, Lieutenant. Do you read me?”

“Affirmative,” DeAngelo said reluctantly.

DeAngelo moved out ahead to take the lead. A couple of minutes later the road, looking like scar tissue slashed across the
leathery Korean landscape, came into view.

“Good-bye, Bugs Two,” Steve said firmly.

“I could stick around a little longer….”

Steve heard the concern in DeAngelo’s voice. “Appreciate it, but there’s nothing more you can do for me, Mikey,” he consoled.
“Now carry out your orders, Lieutenant.”

“Wilco. See you later, Major.” DeAngelo paused. “See you
home
,” he added fervently.

“See you,” Steve murmured.
I hope
—

He watched with longing as DeAngelo’s sleek bird pulled away. In an instant the F-80’s tailpipe was a distant speck glowing
white-orange in the pale blue sky. Then DeAngelo was gone, and Steve was alone.

He steered with feather-light touches to the controls, wanting to conserve as much of his hydraulic boost as possible. He
was traveling at a little over two hundred miles an hour. At that rate it would be just a few minutes to Cha-Cha. That was
a good thing. He was going to want to radio contact with Cha-Cha’s control, and the F-80’s battery had to be fading.

Steve took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He felt keyed up and tense with anticipation, but he also felt strangely relaxed.
The wind was whistling soothingly. His own breathing reminded him that he was alive and well. The radio white noise whispering
inside his helmet reminded him of the sound a seashell made when it was held up to the ear.

He found himself thinking back on jet fighter training school. He’d found the strict discipline an ordeal after his cushy
assignment in Washington. The cool, sarcastic instructor pilots hadn’t cared that he was a captain and an ace from the last
war, that he was on line to become a major. As far as the IPs were concerned, Steve was just another know-nothing cadet who
was going to have to prove himself all over again.

And he had proved himself, although it hadn’t been easy. Steve had hated all those hours spent in the classroom, and his nights
spent studying goddamned mathematical formulas that seemed to go right out of his head as soon as he shut the textbook. He’d
just squeaked by the written exams.

He thought about the early morning PT routines, the afternoon marches through the scorchingly hot Texas countryside while
chanting, “Every man a tiger!” What a joke that had seemed! He was a goddamned combat veteran, an ace, and as aggressive in
the air as any man could be. He didn’t need any candy-ass motivation; he needed wings and armament, and then he would get
the job—
any job
—done.

And then there had been that first, unsettling time he’d settled into the pilot’s chair in the twin-seat cockpit of the T-33
trainer, which was essentially a modified Shooting Star. He’d been dismayed by the multitude of instrument displays, by all
the buttons, switches, and levers.

His IP, picking up on Steve’s confusion, had laughed at him. Through the intercom, his voice crackling with static and sarcasm,
the IP had sneered, “
We don’t fly ‘em by the seat of our pants anymore, Captain
.”

“
Bugs Leader, this is K-32
—” The officious-sounding voice came crackling over the radio. “Bugs Leader, come in, please.”

Steve shook himself alert. “K-32, this is Bugs Leader.”

“Bugs Leader, this Major Kell, K-32’s CO. We have you on radar. We should be coming into your view anytime now.”

The F-80 was at fifteen thousand feet, but now she was dropping fast, silently curving like a spent arrow toward the earth.
As Steve crested a line of hills, he saw Cha-Cha just a couple of miles ahead.

“K-32, I have you in sight,” Steve said. He closed the distance to the base in under a minute, which was ample time for him
to see that Cha-Cha was everything Evans had said, and less.

The ragtag collection of parked vehicles and clustered buildings was just a wide spot in the road. A long, low cinder-block
structure, its flat roof tangled with radio and radar gear, hugged the edge of the clay airstrip, which was ridiculously short,
and from Steve’s vantage looked like a flesh-colored Band-Aid stuck down on the burnt grass. As Steve circled to lose altitude,
he saw that the base’s fleet of World War Two vintage fighters was still parked on either side of the runway.

“K-32, you were supposed to clear the goddamned field—” he radioed.

“Bugs Leader, as CO of the field I am denying you permission to land. Do you read? Permission to land denied!”

“Major, what do you expect me to do?”

“Abandon your plane. Bail out.”

“Negative,” Steve said firmly. “I brought her this far. I think I can save her for another day.”

“Negative, Bugs Leader. We have no heavy-fire-fighting equipment. What if you crash and the fire somehow ignites our fuel
and ammo stores? It’s just too risky. We have civilians here—”

“Oh, yeah, that newsreel outing,” Steve remarked. “Tell me, Major, how’s it going to look to
them
if you turn away a pilot in distress?”

“Dammit, listen to me, Bugs Leader! The runway is only hard-packed clay meant for lighter aircraft. It can’t take the weight
of your plane.”

“I figure it’ll be solid enough, provided I grease her in.”

“You
figure
,” Kell snarled sarcastically.

“Yeah.”

“
Provided
you can grease her in….”

This Kell was starting to piss Steve off. The guy reminded Steve of the sarcastic IP he’d been stuck with that first time
in the T-33’s cockpit. “
You can’t fty ‘em by the seat of your pants
….” that IP had sneered. Well, Steve was about to find out about that.

“Look, Major,” Steve began, “I’ll bet you a case of scotch I can land this bird.”

There were a few seconds of silence, and then Kell came back on the line. “You’re Major Steven Gold, I take it?”

“I am.”

“Well, Major Gold, you are one cocky son of a bitch,” Kell said thinly.

Steve laughed. “
Well
, Major Kell, you and I finally have something that we agree on. Now you get those fucking Mustangs out of my way,” Steve
demanded, growing serious. “And you tell those newspeople to make sure they’ve got plenty of film in their cameras, because
I am about to show them something they’ve never seen before and likely won’t see again.”

There were a few more seconds of silence. “Wilco,” Major Kell finally replied in surrender. “Good luck, Major Gold. I hope
you live to collect on your bet.”

Steve was now spiraling in a constant, circular rate of descent. As he did so he watched as the personnel down below hurried
to push the Mustangs parked along the strip to safety. At six thousand feet he lowered his landing gear, using the emergency
procedure. He made sure the main landing gear handle was down and then pulled and held the emergency release. In the emergency
mode it took a little time—maybe ten seconds—for all the up-locks to be released. The seconds seemed to stretch into eternity.
After fifteen seconds his indicators were still showing that the gear was up.

Oh fuck
, Steve thought.
i do not want to belly in
. He was cocky, but he wasn’t crazy. If he couldn’t get his landing gear down, he would have to bail out after all.

“K-32, come in please.”

“Hiya, Bugsy.”

“Evans!” Steve exclaimed, pleased not to have to talk to Major Kell. “I think—
I hope
—I’ve lowered my landing gear, but my indicators are showing that it’s still up. Can you visually check?”

“Hold on a second,” Evans said. “Okay, we’ve got binoculars on you, Bugsy. Your gear is down.”

“Great,” Steve sighed in relief. “My indicators are probably shorting out due to a fault in the system.”

“Come on in whenever you think you’re ready,” Evans said.

Steve yawed the airplane, rocking the main gear to make sure it was locked as he switched to a rectangular flight pattern.
Below and ahead of him, the cleared airstrip was waiting. He banked for his straight-on, final approach.

“Evans, this is it.”

“Grease her in, Bugsy,” Evans said quietly.

The runway was rushing up at Steve. He manually locked his shoulder harness and then jettisoned the F-80’s canopy, in case
fire did break out and he wanted to get out fast. He used the alternate system in order to get rid of the canopy without arming
the ejection seat. The released canopy caught the slipstream and lifted off. The wind clawed at Steve, tearing away his oxygen
mask. He gingerly pushed the stick forward to bounce the nose wheel against the clay in a modified touch-and-go in order to
insure that his nose gear was locked, and then he went down for real.

He bounced up against the locked harness, feeling the straps bite into his shoulders as the F-80’s tires bit the clay, transforming
the silky rush of flight into a roaring, vibrating nightmare. Steve pressed the brakes. The jet slowed, but only a little.
The windmilling engine was helping by creating drag, but the heavy jet had touched down at over 120 miles an hour. It was
now rolling onward like the world’s biggest cannonball on wheels. The cinder-block building topped with its radio antennas
and radar gear whipped by in a blur.

Not much runway left. Going to overshoot for sure
, Steve thought, struggling against panic as the end of the clay hurled toward him—

He stood on the brakes and heard the tortured squeal of his tires above the screaming wind. He imagined-the rubber smoking.
If a tire blows and the plane goes over, the fuel left in the internal tanks will ignite. No heavy fire-fighting equipment,
Kell said. No way they could get to me in time
….

“… crazy son of a bitch—” crackled thinly in Steve’s ears.

“One crazy son of a bitch….” Major Kell had said.

“You crazy son of a bitch, you did it!” Evans repeated, laughing.

“Huh?” Steve whispered. He clicked his mike button. “Huh…” he managed. God, his throat was dry!

“You did it!” Evans crowed. “Congratulations!”

Steve, his muscles trembling, was still pressing with all his might against the brakes. He was trying to get the F-80 to stop,
but she couldn’t or wouldn’t. He wondered what Evans was talking about.

Then he glanced sideways and realized that he wasn’t moving after all. He’d thought that he still was, but it must have been
some kind of hallucination his keyed-up nervous system had been playing on him.

The F-80 had stopped, all right. Her nose was only a few feet from the end of the runway, but she had stopped.

“
Oh, you craz—of a bitc
—” Evans was laughing. “
You di—t
.”

“You’re breaking up,” Steve said. “My battery’s about dead. I can hardly hear you. Do me a favor, call Itazuke for me, let
my people know I’m okay?”

“Wilco,” Evans said, almost unintelligible in a burst of static. “Kell’s here. He wants to know what brand of scotch?”

“J&B,” Steve chuckled. “But whatever he can get will be fine. Nobody expects
him
to work miracles.”

A half hour later Steve was in Cha-Cha’s mess hut. He had showered and changed into a fresh set of flight overalls.

A flight crew had appeared to help Steve climb down from the cockpit as he was busy unhooking himself from the F-80. Once
the crew chief had made sure that Steve did not need medical attention, he explained that Major Kell had spun some bullshit
yarn to the press about how they had to remain confined to the pilots’ briefing room because the F-80 could still explode.
This was in order to give Steve some time to clean up and have something to eat.