The Fly Boys (32 page)

“On the other hand,” Gold said, smiling, “from the little I heard this morning, something tells me Horton and his bunch have
on occasion
funded
some Air Force operations.”

“Well, maybe once in a while we’ve gotten them to pay their fair share for projects that were of mutual interest,” Simon grumbled.

“There you are, Howie,” Gold said. “They pay, so they figure they’re entitled to have a say in things.”

“Enough about this,” Simon said sourly. “Catch me up on what’s going on with you. For instance, how’s your son doing?”

“At the moment he’s in Texas, learning to fly jets,” Gold sighed. “Learning all about electronic navigation, principles of
flight and gunnery, and so forth. He wrote to me saying that he’s finding it exciting but a whole new ball game.”

“Well, it
is
a whole new ball game,” Simon chuckled. “What else would you call playing follow-the-leader in a mock dogfight at five hundred
knots?”

“Ow! Please!” Gold winced. “Erica and I are nervous enough about it.”

“Hey, he’ll be okay,” Simon said.

“At least I can take some comfort in the fact that he’ll be flying the finest jet fighter in the sky.”

“What do you mean?” Simon asked, puzzled.

“A BroadSword,” Gold boasted. “I twisted a few arms, and called in a couple of favors to set it up for Steve to go directly
from training school to March Air Force Base in California. The FG at March is probably the best the Air Force has.”

“I know that,” Simon said, “but—”

“I figure to have some newsreel cameras rolling when my son takes possession of his BroadSword. Pretty good PR idea, huh?
Herman Gold builds them, and his son flies them, so they’ve got to be the best!”

“Herman—”

“And believe me,” Gold continued, “the fact that Stevie is going to be stationed only fifty miles from home has made his mother
very happy. And if Stevie comes home on leave more often, who knows? Maybe I can expose him a little at a time to what’s going
on at GAT, and get him to agree to come work with me.” He smiled thinly. “Someday….”

“It sounds good, Herman,” Simon shrugged. “Did Steve say when he’d changed his assignment?”

“What?” Gold asked. “What assignment?”

“In his letters to you,” Simon explained, “didn’t he mention when he…” He paused. “Herm, you
have
told Steve about all of these plans you’ve made?”

“Well, no,” Gold replied slowly. “I figured it would be a surprise. I didn’t think there’d be any problem. I mean, what fighter
pilot in his right mind wouldn’t want to fly a Broad-Sword?”

Simon looked uneasy. “When I heard from you that your son was returning to flight duty, I asked around about him.”

“Yeah? So? What did you find out?”

“That Steve had his choice of assignments. He chose to take command of a squadron flying Lockheed Shooting Stars.”

“He chose an F-80?” Gold echoed in disbelief.

“He’s going to be stationed in Japan, Herman.”

“Japan?” Gold was stunned, but all at once it made sense. “I guess he wants to be as far away from me as he can get,” he said
softly.

“I’m sorry, Herm.”

Gold shrugged. “I’m suddenly feeling tired, Howie.” He signaled the waitress for the check. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll
go up to my room to rest.”

Simon looked away, obviously embarrassed. “I—I thought you would have
known
all this.”

Gold laughed bitterly. “You would
think
I would have known, given the fact that we’re talking about
my son
—”

“Herman,” Simon began hurriedly, “maybe I heard wrong.”

“But when it comes to my son,” Gold continued harshly, “I guess I don’t know anything at all.”

Steven Gold’s Lockheed F-80C Shooting Star was over six miles high. His was the lead jet fighter in a finger-four formation
that raked white contrails against the curved blue dome of the sky.

Far beneath the combat air patrol the smudged gray clouds moved like ponderous elephants across the ancient Korean landscape.
Down on the ground it was a pleasant sixty-eight degrees, but at 36,000 feet the razor-cold air was as thin and clear as fine
crystal. The sun beating down through the Shooting Star’s teardrop canopy pleasantly heated the cockpit, taking the edge off
the air conditioning. The ride was incredibly smooth and peaceful. The only sounds Steve Gold heard were his own raspy breathing,
routed from the microphone in his oxygen mask into the radio earphones built into his rigid, visored helmet, and the steady,
lulling roar of the airplane’s General Electric J-33-A-23 turbojet.

Steve’s eyes flicked across the glittering array of instruments to assure himself that all of his systems were in the green,
and then slowly twisted his head, surveying the thin sky above. Any physical movement was difficult. Steve was encased in
multiple layers of cotton and rubberized fabrics which made up his long underwear, flight overalls, G-suit, and survival gear,
and firmly trussed by his safety harness to his ejection seat.

On the ground Steve’s movements were slow and cumbersome, like those of a medieval knight in armor. But his ungainliness fell
away once he was strapped into and hooked up to his Shooting Star. In the air the steel dart became an extension of his body,
and he became its brain—its soul.

Steve punched his mike button. “Bugs Flight, this is Bugs Leader.”

“Ehhh, what’s up, doc?” Bugs One—Lieutenant Mike DeAngelo—radioed in.

Steve glanced to his starboard side. DeAngelo was Steve’s wingman. His fighter,
Miss Mischief
, was flying close by. Viewed from the side, the Lockheed F-80C Shooting Star’s fuselage was shaped like a stainless-steel
cigar tube. Coming at you, the “Shooter” had a pair of intake air ducts that flared out like a shark’s gills. The F-80 had
stubby, non-swept wings tipped with teardrop-shaped auxiliary fuel tanks. This particular flight of F-80s wore the three concentric
orange nose rings and the tic-tac-toe pattern of orange slashes on their vertical tail fins that identified them as members
of the 19th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. The 19th was attached to the Eighth Fighter Bomber Wing, based at Itazuke Air Base
on Kyushu, the southernmost of the main Japanese Islands.

Steve clicked his throat mike. “Time to go downstairs and bust up some commie tanks—”

“Talk about ‘cwazy wabbits,’” DeAngelo muttered darkly.

“You gonna be okay, Mikey?” Steve asked, concerned.

“Yeah, sure,” DeAngelo said in his flat New England accent. “Gonna be a day at the beach. Chowda and clam cakes at Rocky Point….”

No harm in letting DeAngelo run off at the mouth
, Steve thought as he led his flight in a spiraling dive down toward the river valley.
Do Mikey good to expend some nervous energy before the flight tackles the dirty job at hand
.

Mike DeAngelo was new. He’d rotated into the squadron a few weeks ago, as the big push against the commies began at Inchon.
DeAngelo was in his early thirties, short and stocky, with a round face and eyes as small and black as California olives.
He was an ace who’d flown a P-51 Mustang over Europe during the last war.

DeAngelo was the son of an accountant in Providence, Rhode Island. After the war, he’d finished his education to become a
CPA, and had gone into partnership with his father. He was married, and had two kids. When this Korean thing had flared up,
DeAngelo was called back by the Air Force to take jet fighter training.

Steve knew that Mike had answered that call grudgingly. During a late night bull session over a bottle of scotch, Mike had
bitterly complained that he’d already done his part for his country. Why was he again being asked to risk his life? After
all, this was not a
real
war, like the last one. This Korean thing was only a vaguely understood battle of wills between East and West over some obscure
patch of ground, a patch that the United States had already pretty much admitted was relatively unimportant in terms of American
security.

It was one thing for Steve to be here, DeAngelo had explained. Steve was a professional. War was his job. What DeAngelo could
not understand was why he and a few others had again been plucked out of their lives by the military and told to fight to
the death for Korea, when so many back home who had never fought for their country were continuing on like nothing was happening.

The CPA from New England didn’t much believe in this war, but he was here nonetheless, flying against a savage enemy obsessed
with wiping him from the sky. The bottom line was that the Air Force had told him to do the job, so DeAngelo was doing it.

Steve loved Mike like a brother for that.

Steve’s radio crackled. “Bugs Flight, Bugs Flight, come in. This is Super Snooper.”

Thanks to their morning briefing, Bugs Flight knew that Super Snooper was a captain named Joe Evans. Evans was based at K-32,
an advance airfield a bit north of Chongju that was known as Chau-Chau to the Koreans and Cha-Cha to the Americans.

Steve keyed his mike. “Super Snooper, this is Bugs Leader. Soupie, baby, talk to me. You got any nasty old weeds we can dig
out of MacArthur’s garden?”

Evans was assigned to Tactical Control Group. He flew a piston-engined T-6 trainer armed with nothing but harmless smoke rockets.
It was TCG’s job to fly low over enemy-held ground in order to find and pinpoint targets for bombing-strafing runs. TCG usually
found such targets by taking ground fire and then coming around for a second pass in order to fire a smoke rocket to mark
the spot where the ground fire came from. Not surprisingly, the pilots of TCG were widely considered to be the meanest tigers
in the Air Force.

“Oh, I’ve got a lot of nasty weeds for you to pull,” Evans responded. “They’re big, tough red ones. I’m looking at six tanks,
plus maybe a dozen trucks and a lot of troops. The whole shebang is strung out along the riverbank. Now, you cats gonna plow
some dirt or what?” Evans demanded, feigning disgust.

“Coming down through the cloud cover now,” Steve responded.

“Kerrist,” Evans growled. “Why dontcha wait a little longer? Maybe these commies will die of old age.”

Okay by me
, Steve thought. This had turned out to be a nasty little war. Not a fighter pilot’s kind of war at all, even if it had begun
grandly enough….

Back in June, in the days following the commie invasion from the North, Steve’s squadron had helped to fly high cover escort
during the evacuation of American citizens from Seoul. Steve’s F-80 had been among the Shooting Stars flying high above Seoul’s
Kimpo Airfield on the afternoon of June 27, when a trio of North Korean prop-driven Yak fighters made the mistake of bouncing
a flight of P-82, twin-boomed, twin-engined Mustangs. The Twin Mustangs had been flying low for cover for the USAF transports
on the ground to pick up American citizens.

The NKAF Yaks had come in low from out of the clouds to shoot up one of the Twin Mustangs. Steve had heard the excited chatter
among the Mustangs’ pilots, and had descended to get a better view of the action. He’d felt like a spectator watching a sporting
event from high up in a stadium’s bleachers as beneath him the Mustangs swirled like hungry sharks around the Yaks, blowing
the commies out of the sky.

Because of limited fuel capacity—each F-80 Shooting Star had only a short time above Seoul, so Steve had not been present
when later that afternoon some F-80s from the 35th Fighter Bomber Squadron had chopped up a gaggle of Russian-built NKAF IL-10
fighters over Kimpo.

That had been the first time that U.S. jets had engaged in combat. Steve had cursed himself for having missed it, and cursed
the Reds for not having seen fit to attack when he’d been around.

At the time, Steve and the other pilots who’d missed out had taken some solace from their belief that this was only the beginning
of aerial combat in Korea. They’d been sure that commies would give those American pilots who’d racked up high scores in World
War Two the opportunity to become aces in
two
wars.

It hadn’t turned out that way. The NKAF had folded out of the game early on, leaving the battle to the communist ground forces.
Throughout July and August the North Korean People’s Army had made a southward push, spearheaded by battalions of Soviet-built
T-34 tanks. The commies were well trained, and vastly outnumbered the U.S. and South Korean ROK forces, which lacked the weapons
to pierce the thick armor that protected the enemy’s tanks. It had quickly become evident that it was going to be up to American
air power to slow the commies down long enough for the ROK-U.S. ground forces to regroup and rebuild. If the fly-boys couldn’t
do it, democratic freedom could kiss its ass good-bye in Korea.

The NKPA needed bridges and railways to move their tanks and men, so air power proceeded to deny the enemy what he needed,
despite the miserable flying conditions of the rainy Korean summer. The USAF’s B-29 light bombers tore up the bridges and
rail tracks. Its F-82 Twin Mustangs and F-80 Shooting Stars, and the Navy’s Panther jet squadrons flying from offshore carriers,
went after the commie tank and troop carrier convoys that were lined up at those ruined bridges.

Steve had taken part in many of those ground-support missions, and was proud of the job he had done killing tanks and trains,
but on-deck strafing missions, no matter how successful, did not earn a pilot ace status. With NKAF combat planes as rare
as hen’s teeth, it looked like the Korean war was going to be a bust as far as dogfighting was concerned. For Steve, that
made it hardly a war at all.

Toward the end of summer, the commie advance bogged down as they were denied their armor, supplies, and communications. The
respite allowed the UN the time to rally, and allowed American forces to get their second wind. In September, General MacArthur’s
daring landing at Inchon took the Reds completely by surprise. Since then, slowly but steadily the UN forces had rolled back
the commies.