Red Phoenix (61 page)

The supply officer straightened. “Absolutely, sir.”

McLaren returned his salute and moved off toward his waiting helicopter. He saw the look on Hansen’s face. “You think I was too hard on the man, Doug?”

“Well, General…” Hansen stopped, but it was clear that he did.

McLaren grinned at him. “Prerogative of rank, Captain. When a general throws a temper tantrum, it’s called ‘exercising command authority.’” He clambered into the Cobra and buckled himself into the copilot’s seat. “Let’s get back to HQ. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

The gunship lifted and clattered off into the night sky. Another snowstorm was expected before midnight.

KUNSAN MILITARY TERMINAL

Anne looked at the disorder around her. Not her own group. They had adapted well to this ridiculous situation and almost looked on the MAC terminal as home now. Almost all were asleep, curled up as best as comfort allowed. They had been stuck here for four days, caught up in the logistic logjam they were supposed to be solving.

First there had been problems with the paperwork catching up with their move to Kunsan. Then there were priority squabbles, then wounded being evacuated. Weather complicated everything. If she hadn’t been so familiar with the supply system, she would have thought it impossible.

The airfield was a mess. Crates, boxes, and equipment were piled everywhere.
Every hour of delay added to the chaos they would have to fight when they finally arrived in Japan.

Meanwhile, they sat at the airport. She remembered Kimpo Airport, and waiting for another airplane. Intellectually she knew she was safer here, but her imagination put smoke columns wherever she looked.

She waited for the airplane and hoped Kunsan really was well-defended.

Tony had insisted that it was, four days earlier at lunch. They’d arrived just after noon that day, and after they said good-bye to Captain Hutchins and his men, the entire staff had been invited to the Officers’ Club for lunch. Tony and Anne had taken a small table some distance away from the main group. Anne was sure her staff were gossiping about them, but she couldn’t hear it, so she didn’t care.

“Please, Anne, don’t worry about air attacks. The ‘Kun’ hasn’t been hit since the third day of the war. We’ve even got a Patriot SAM battery guarding the place.”

“Should you be telling me that?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, talking around a mouthful of salad. “The NKs already found out about it—the hard way.”

“Oh.”

They were sitting at a table with tablecloths and silverware, having the salad bar and sandwich special, and Anne marveled at how novel it all seemed. She imagined what it must be like for men really in the field, who had lived in the killing cold and mud for over a week now.

They talked, mostly about what Anne would do in Japan, and Tony’s experiences there. Tony was trying to clue her in on the best places to go. “There’re a lot of great restaurants in Misawa. Just outside the main gate, if you take a left—”

“Tony, I’m going to be working twenty-hour days when we get there. I’ll be lucky if I have time to eat. I may even be too busy to miss you.” She smiled when she said it, though.

“I guess you’ll be too busy to think about us, then.” He smiled back, but his expression was serious.

“Please, Tony, too much has happened. Things need to calm down.”

He looked sour. “It could be a long time.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll call, and write every day.” It was her turn to look unhappy. “I worry about you.”

He waved her off. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to get my butt shot off. They say if you survive the first ten missions you’re good for the duration. I hit the tenth three days in. Besides, the NKs are running out of airplanes.”

He looked at his watch, then sighed. “I’ve got a briefing in twenty minutes. I’ve got to go.”

“And who knows when we’ll be together again,” she said.

“Soon, Anne.” He stood up to leave and she got up as well. Stepping around the table, she came up and embraced him.

Surprised, he hugged her back but protested, “Isn’t this a little public?”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do. Let’s go outside.”

As they walked to the door, Anne suddenly felt very sad, more than she wanted to admit, at going to Japan and leaving Tony.

Just outside there was a grassy area with a few bare trees. There were plenty of people about, but they were all strangers, too busy with their own concerns to care about two people kissing good-bye.

She wondered where Captain Hutchins was now and then worried about Tony. He had came by to see her twice for a short while, but they were hurried visits, overlaid with her concern for his safety. Moreover, he couldn’t really console her. She was right, combat flying…

An Air Force general was coming toward her, with a group of junior officers and enlisted men in tow. He was tired, but determined, and definitely looked in charge. He strode up to her briskly and she fought the urge to salute.

“Miss Larson? I’m Frank Sheffield, base logistics officer.” He saw the recognition in her face. “Yes, ma’am, I’m in charge of that disaster outside. Your orders have been changed. We’re going to have you set up shop right here in Kunsan.”

Raising his voice a little, he said, “Sorry, folks, no trip to Japan this time. Lieutenant!”

A short, chunky officer stepped forward. The general introduced him. “This is Lieutenant Pettigrew. He will act as a liaison between your group and me.

“Miss Larson, the supply situation in Korea is critical. Field units are short of everything while cargo piles up at airfields and ports, and transport assets are being wasted.”

He pointed out the window. “That scene is being repeated all over Korea, and I need you and your people to sort it out. We can’t afford to delay another minute.”

He softened his tone. “You can have anything you want, and the lieutenant is here to see you get it. We’re giving you the aircraft maintenance records offices. Nobody’s keeping track of the stuff properly, anyway. Lieutenant, take over.”

Without waiting for Anne’s reply, the general and most of his entourage left, leaving the lieutenant and two enlisted men behind. The young officer stepped forward and offered his hand. “I’m Tom Pettigrew, ma’am. If you and your people will come with me, I’ve got some buses waiting outside…”

He couldn’t understand why everyone screamed. Luckily it was a short
ride across the base, just long enough to fill in the young officer on the group’s adventures to date. And the buses were heated.

Anne tried to rein in her emotions. Yet another change of plans. If it was so important, they could have told them about this days ago. She wasn’t sure that there wouldn’t be another change, either.

She hoped this one was real, though. Being on the same base with Tony! It was too good to be true. There had to be another change in the works.

Half of her staff was here with her, sitting in the first bus. She decided to get a head start. “Claire, you take the computer center and tell me where we stand. Bill, make up a building plan and assign work spaces for everyone. Set aside some large room as a sleeping area.”

They pulled up outside a concrete-block building and hurried inside, eager to get out of the cold and see their new offices. The previous tenants were still packing, signs of a hurried departure everywhere.

Anne started directing the setup. The chance of actually doing her job, helping to straighten out the supply situation, excited her. It was going to be a long, hard night, the third in a row. She had a list of things to do as long as her arm. But she had to make a phone call first.

______________
CHAPTER
37

Technical Difficulties

JANUARY 5—OVER SIBYON, NORTH KOREA

Tony knew it had been going too smoothly. Seeing Anne almost daily, reinforcements arriving, fewer fighters opposing them. Something had to go wrong.

The afternoon mission was no pushover; airfields never were. This was not a standard package. To keep the element of surprise there would be no warning by reconnaissance or jammer aircraft. Hugging the sides of the valley, his Falcons would make one run, dropping their bombs and then escaping before the defenses were fully alerted. It sounded like a good plan, Tony thought. He had thought it up, briefed it, and was now leading it.

Seeing the hillsides whizz by on either side didn’t leave much time for second thoughts, but he knew they were taking a risk. The only concession he had made was to have two F-16s stand by along their exit route. Armed for air-to-air combat, they would cover his group’s escape and maybe bushwhack any aircraft taking off with revenge on their minds.

The inertial navigation system showed that the last waypoint was coming up. They had been heading generally north, skirting known defenses and using the valleys to stay below enemy radars. Watching the readout, he checked the map strapped to his knee and looked at the hills around him. There was a notch on the right, and he started a gentle turn toward it.

Behind him were ten other Falcons, five pairs spaced at two-mile intervals. His was the easiest position, the lead. Normally he would have taken the rear position, but navigating to the target was also his responsibility, and that could be done only from the front.

The war had been going well in the air. American fighters were doing their jobs, and Soviet-supplied aircraft couldn’t replace the pilots the North Koreans had lost. Tony had nineteen kills to his credit now, but hadn’t made
one in two days. He didn’t expect to make one on this mission either. It was air to ground, all the way.

Their target was an airfield close to the border. Intelligence said that a squadron of attack aircraft, among other things, was based there.

With the number of enemy fighters reduced, UN airpower was being used to hit targets well behind the lines, enemy assets that helped keep their offensive rolling. These included road junctions, bridges, ammo dumps, and airfields. Especially airfields.

This one was located on the floor of a valley where three mountain ridges came together and petered out. The aircraft were kept in hardened shelters dug into the side of one of the ridges. It was heavily defended, with gun and missile batteries sited near the runways and on the hills around.

As tough as it was, it was better to attack them here than wait until they were in the air. The enemy would use these planes to reinforce attacks and exploit breakthroughs. In spite of friendly air defenses, the NK planes could do a lot of damage after they took off.

It had been a long flight. There was a lot of turbulence, both from the wind off the mountains and the sun’s uneven heating of the ground. They would be attacking late in the day, when there was just enough light for the fighters to see their target, but less for the gun crews trying to pick them out of a darkening sky.

He interrupted his musings to check the time, then the armament display. His HUD was set up for air-to-ground mode, and the two bombs were already armed. The thousand-pound weapons would be dropped in one fast pass, and besides the mandatory cannon and the Sidewinders, these were his only ordnance.

The notch had widened out into its own valley, and Tony felt a roller-coaster sensation as he followed the rise and fall of the terrain. He waggled his wings and started down. From here to the target the map said the ground was flat. They would halve their altitude of two hundred feet, and Tony was going to do his best to stay below that.

They reached the initial point, and Tony blinked his running lights on, then off. Turning slightly, Tony quickly lined up on the approach bearing to his particular target. He spared one glance over his shoulder and was rewarded by a glimpse of Hooter exactly where he should be, then he moved the throttle to full military power.

The jet leaped forward, shooting out onto the valley floor like a projectile from a gun. Behind him, separated by ten-second intervals, pairs of fighters would be pouring out of the gap.

His radar warning receiver lit up instantly. He set the countermeasures dispenser on
AUTO.
It would kick out chaff and flare cartridges according to a predetermined pattern until he turned it off or until it ran out. The gun and
missile crews had their radars up, which was not unexpected. The question was, were the crews alert? Where were the directors pointed?

Tony was busy trying to spot his target, a set of camouflaged doors carved in the eastern slope of a ridge. The long shadows from the setting sun should make them easier to spot, but it was hard to look for long in a jet moving at over six hundred knots. Especially one only a hundred feet off the ground.

“Hooter, I see it. I’m coming left a squidge.” He heard two clicks in answer and hoped that his wingman saw his target as well.

There were dark half-circles in the hill. The blast doors were inset a few feet, and the edges of the tunnel were throwing shadows onto them. Perfect. He swung the cursor up and locked his radar on the nearest opening.

They had been over the airfield for ten seconds, and the receiver had grown brighter. A
beep-beep
filled his phones, joined instantly by Hooter’s call “SAM left! They’re going for the Two pair.”

Hooter had spotted a smoke trail headed for one of the planes in the pair behind his. That was Dish and Ivan.

Tony couldn’t do anything to help. He and Hooter were committed. Luminous symbols were crawling across his HUD, showing the target, the course to steer, everything else he needed to put a pair of bombs within five feet of where he wanted them. Ten seconds more and they would be on top.

“Saint, I can see the launcher. It’s a Gecko at seven o’clock.”

The SA-8 Gecko was a modern battlefield missile on a mobile launcher. It was a dangerous opponent, equipped with an optical backup in case its radar was jammed. Hooter’s voice rose in pitch. “Ivan’s hit!”

Tony clicked twice in acknowledgment. He was too busy to talk. Five seconds to go. Flak bursts and tracers were starting to appear and were closer than usual. By this time in the war, the gun crews were getting experienced.

And they were well placed. Someone had guessed how an attack would be made. The SAM launcher was well sited to engage aircraft as they entered, and the guns covered the part of the attack run where they would have to fly straight and level.

There. The pipper had crawled down a line until it crossed the target.
RELEASE
appeared in the lower left corner and Tony pressed a button on the stick. At the same time he pushed the throttle all the way forward. The increased thrust pushed him into the seat just as he felt the two bombs leave the aircraft.

Two BLU-109 bombs arced toward the target. Designed to penetrate reinforced concrete, they had thick, hard cases. If either one hit the twenty-foot-wide door, it would go right through and explode inside.

He pulled up and to the right, hard, and watched the indicator run up
from one g to seven times the force of gravity. He was grunting, tensing his muscles to fight the pull when a white smoke trail passed over and in front of his plane.

The bastard almost had him. His first thought was the launcher that Hooter had called earlier, but this came from a different direction. Probably another unit from the same battery. They had launched optically to avoid warning their target. Waiting until the American aircraft finished their run, they fired the SAM as he was turning and climbing, either too busy maneuvering to see the launch or too close to the edge of his envelope to do much about it.

It was blind luck it had missed him. Hooter was still pulling out of his run, so he couldn’t have seen it either. Tony made a decision and instead of leveling out and then diving back down, he kept climbing. “Hooter, SAM launcher on the right. I’m taking it.”

He heard the two clicks as he thumbed his stick and the
CANNON
prompt appeared on the HUD. Tony craned his neck overhead and followed the thinning smoke trail back. There. The wheeled launcher was parked on a level spot, “above” and to the right.

He pulled hard and rolled right, swinging the sky and ground over to their customary positions. It was a steep shot, but he fired and saw hits. SAM launchers were never armored, and hitting the delicate electronics might keep it out of action for a little while, even if the vehicle wasn’t destroyed.

He pulled out, higher than he would have liked, and turned to the exit heading. Looking left and back he could see smoke rising from the shelters. As he craned his neck back farther to see Hooter, black puffs appeared around Tony’s aircraft. The fighter shook, as if it had hit a bump, and suddenly rolled hard left. The right side of the cockpit starred in three places, and the air outside took on a whistling sound.

“I’m hit! Tuba, take over.” Tuba was the alternate package commander, and he acknowledged Tony’s call.

Tony automatically corrected and brought the wings level, but he paused a moment, afraid to look at the instruments. His limbs felt frozen. He knew he had been hit, but how bad?

He gently tried the controls, first the ailerons, then the rudder. Both responded normally. Pushing his nose down, he headed south, which was the exit route anyway. Rule number one for a wounded bird was to get out of Indian Country.

At six hundred knots he was quickly away from the airfield. The air defenses were concentrating on the aircraft now attacking, so Tony’s only problem was getting his damaged Falcon home. A quick scan of the instrument panel showed him one obvious concern. Oil pressure was falling.

Throttling back to cruise power, he called his wingman. “Hooter, I’m hit, losing oil pressure. Look over my right side.”

“Rog, Saint.” Hooter’s plane pulled up quickly until he was flying abreast of Tony’s fighter, fifty feet apart and two hundred feet off the ground.

“You’ve got a couple of good-sized holes in the fuselage,” Hooter reported. “Come up a bit so I can check your belly.”

Tony climbed fifty feet, and Hooter slid underneath and looked him over. “Yep, big black streak coming back from a hole. Something big hit you, maybe a five seven.”

“Rog, Hooter, probably the oil pump.”

Without oil pressure the engine would not get enough lubrication; the bearings would heat up and soon freeze. It wouldn’t happen immediately, but the chance of making a safe landing at base was almost nil.

They could hear the rest of the raid making its attacks and breaking off as well. Tuba, the alternate commander, had led them out along the planned route, while Tony had taken another, so that if enemy fighters showed up, they would be drawn to the larger group and ignore Tony and Hooter.

Normally they would call for combat rescue, but they were still too far north. He would have to fly south another fifteen minutes before he would be in range for a pickup.

All Tony could do was nurse his crippled bird as far south as possible. His fighter was a valuable machine, and if he could make it to an airfield, it could fight again. Also, any landing, on a road or even a cowpath, was better than a wheels-up into a rice paddy or bailing out.

And the longer he stayed in the plane, the closer to friendlies he was. Every minute in the air was worth a day of walking on the ground. In open country, that is. Most of Korea was mountains and valleys, and the time to work through the country below him would be measured in weeks, not days.

Survival classes notwithstanding, Tony was determined to stay with the bird until the last possible second. He started a gentle climb, not wanting to throttle up but still milking every bit of altitude he could without losing speed.

Consulting his map, he saw the closest airfield that could take him was Taejon. Of course he had to bypass Seoul and the front, but one thing at a time.

He climbed above the valley walls and turned to the south. In a few minutes he would be across the old DMZ.

According to the engine temperature, a few minutes might be all he had. He compared it with the earlier temperature and computed the rate of increase in his head. No way he would make it to base. Underneath the aircraft the terrain rose and fell like a stormy sea. Nowhere to even try a wheels-up. “Hooter, I’m losing the engine.”

His wingman’s voice was both encouraging and desperate. “Hang in there, Saint. Don’t leave until the engine falls off.”

“I won’t, buddy, but I’m setting up for an ejection, while I have the chance.” Tony heard two clicks in response.

He looked over at Hooter’s aircraft. He was flying abreast and slightly above him, doing his best to look for threats and monitor Tony’s status. In the cockpit he saw his wingman give him a thumbs-up gesture.

Okay, so he was leaving work a little early today. First he hit the switch that wiped out his IFF codes. If that black box survived a crash with the codes still loaded, the enemy would learn a lot. The only documents in the cockpit were a small code card and his map. He stuffed those in his pocket. He would shred the card and bury it after he landed.

After he landed. Tony forced himself to think positively. The Aces II was a very smart seat and had gotten a real workout since the war began. If the pilot survived the initial hit and was able to pull the ring, the seat was certain to get him out of the aircraft.

The problem was that in order to clear a fast-moving jet fighter, the seat had to move even faster. If not, the ejecting pilot would be struck by the tail of his own plane and certainly killed.

About half the pilots that had ejected so far had suffered some sort of injury on ejection: compression fractures of vertebrae, dislocated shoulders, even concussions.

At six hundred knots air was almost as solid as the ground. Something as nonaerodynamic as a man in a seat would be whipped by winds that made a hurricane look tame. Add little or no oxygen and freezing temperature to a parachute landing, and any pilot would be very reluctant to leave his nice, safe damaged fighter.