World in Flames

looking back now at Shirer. “If we can get you a fighter, you can keep your hand in until this bird is ready.” Shirer’s face was transformed — a schoolboy flush.

“Now, just hold your horses,” Freeman warned him. “First I need to know—” He stopped. “Goddamn it, I’m the Supreme Commander Korea—” With that, he shouted above the bevy of aides. “Air Force liaison?”

“Me, sir. Richards.”

“Richards! Doug Richards! By God, I thought you were dead. Someone told me you got an assful of shrapnel up around Nampo.”

“Just half an assful, General.” Loud laughter filled the plane.

“Well, Richards, can we get a Tomcat, F-16—anything fast enough for this gentleman? And I don’t mean those ladies around Itaewon Barracks.”

“Think I can dig one up, sir — a plane, I mean.”

“Good. Because this man wants to shoot Communists. Doesn’t like the idea of being fired on without being able to fire back. Reasonable enough, seems to me. And by God, we can help him partway at least. Flew cover for us at Pyongyang!”

“In that case, I’ll guarantee it, sir,” said Richards. He called through the narrow passageway to Shirer. “See me after debriefing, Major.”

“Yes, sir!” said Shirer, even though Richards, a captain, was a full rank below him. Making their way out of the plane toward the gangway, Colonel Norton thought it prudent to remind the general that his impetuous ad hoc order to let Shirer get his hand back into fighters might not go down well with the Pentagon brass who’d had him transferred for Taj Mahal duty.

“Hell, Jim,” Freeman responded, “don’t be such an old woman. I know it’s a risk. Could lose him. But if we don’t let a man like that fight — he won’t get the shame of turning tail out of his system. I know exactly how he feels. It’s everything to a warrior. That was his job. His raison d’etre. He gets a crack or two at those Commies over the Yalu the next few days— he’ll be back to his old self. Come back and drive this monster without resentment. Method in my madness, Jim.”

“The president,” said Norton, “has specifically ordered us not to antagonize the Chinese. I mean, that goes for our pilots as well as our men on the ground. We’re only supposed to push them back to the Manchurian border and that’s it. Not to go over the Yalu.”

“And let ‘em shoot at us with impunity from the other side?” said Freeman, shaking his head with incredulity. “No, Jim. Last time we tried pussyfooting around with those sons of bitches, we had our boys freezing to death all along the Yalu— facing Chinese regulars — thousands of the bastards — sitting across the river, and we couldn’t fire — by presidential decree. And our boys died — by the bushel. No, Jim—” He caught his breath in the icy blast that funneled its way up from the tarmac as they started down the steps. Freeman buttoned up his coat and saluted the assembled dignitaries below. “Don’t worry, Jim. It’ll be all right. We are going to launch air reconnaissance patrols in force across the Yalu. Purely reconnaissance, you understand. Course, if any Son of Heaven shows his ass, we’re gonna shoot it off. Jim, we’ve got to maintain the Yalu as a moat — if they get close to us…”He stopped as he saw the provisional president of South Korea, Rah, moving forward to greet him.

Freeman was all smiles and diplomacy, thanking the president for his personal greeting, and genuinely touched that he had come out himself, but Freeman was really only interested in General Kim: the commander in chief of the NKA army now recouping and massing troops behind the protection of the North Korean-Chinese border along the Yalu and Tamur, and attacking, mainly at night. The most forward American line, he was told, had collapsed and was now no more than a series of outposts, while General Creigh continued to fall back to Ku-song, with over 70 percent casualties. It had been the worst American retreat anywhere in the war.

“Tomorrow morning,” the South Korean president was informing the general, “we have arranged an official reception—”

“Mr. President,” Freeman interjected. “I thank you kindly, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to attend. I’ll send a representative, of course, but I’ll be heading for the front.”

“But, surely,” began President Rah, “the general will need to rest—”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, my boys aren’t resting on the Yalu front. My place is with them. I thank you all the same. And Mr. President, I’ve been told by President Mayne to convey his best wishes to you and Madame Rah.”

“Thank you, General. Of course I—”

Freeman’s car had arrived.

* * *

As regulations demanded, the 747’s debriefing was attended by Shirer, the copilot, and all console operators, as well as by Jim Norton, who joined in watching the Boeing’s infrared video replays of the attack with a strange combination of relish and exhilaration that owed as much to the safety of the underground bunker they were viewing it in as to Norton’s euphoria at having come so close to death and surviving. Though he would have been loath to admit it, he had never experienced such a high.

“There they are,” said one of the console operators through the haze of tobacco smoke. “You were right, Freddie. MiGs — definitely Fulcrums.” Another fighter was blurred by the heat wash of the missile it was firing. Shirer noted “1931 hrs” registered in the bottom right-hand corner of the video frame, the time the copilot had told him a missile was inbound.

“Hold it!” Shirer called out. “Can you run that back?” The hazy number on the fuselage under the Fulcrum’s wing was due not only to angle of the 747’s camera but to the fact that the MiG had been on full afterburner, further blurring the image. But running the frame back, freezing it, and going in with the zoom, you could see it was number nine — Russian Cyrillic lettering next to it: “Ubiytsa Yanki”.”

“What the hell’s that?” asked one of the operators.

“Number nine, you hayseed!”

“I know that. I mean that other crap — Jimmy?”

Jimmy, one of the 747’s four Russian-speaking intercept operators, had nodded off but said he couldn’t see because of the guy in front of him. They ran back the video. He walked up close to the screen.

“Come on. Professor!” someone urged. “I’m thirstier than a—”

“Um — means ‘Yankee Killer’!”

“That fucker’s mine!” It was Shirer’s voice, unusually profane.

“Bit late, Major,” someone hollered. “Probably home now in Vladivostok giving the missus a bit of surface-to- surface.”

“Well,” put in Richards, the liaison officer, “there’s a good chance you’ll see him if they send fighters back across the fortieth parallel, old buddy.”

“Or if old Freeboot sends you across,” said someone.

“Can’t do it,” countered another operator. “Not allowed.”

“Says who?”

“Says the prez. That’s who.”

Shirer glanced at Richards through the flickering light cast by the video. “You serious. Captain?” he asked. “I mean about it being possible we’d run up against that MiG again?”

“Hell, yes. If you’re on the eastern corridor patrol. From Kimpo here to Wonsan, over on the east coast, then the high-altitude run over Vladivostok. They don’t like us taking snapshots of ‘em, mind. Scramble every time.”

“Thought you weren’t supposed to cross the Yalu.”

“Well, it isn’t the Yalu, is it?” Richards smiled. “I mean, it’s out to sea a bit, right?” His hand was making a sideways-slipping motion. “Anyway, on occasion we get to fire a few bursts ‘fore we head home with the recon shots.”

“That all that happens?”

“Sometimes we mix it up.” The two men were silent for a moment, the operators cheering the explosion of one of the Fulcrums. Richards waited till the hurrahs died down. “Shouldn’t let it get personal, though. That’s dangerous.”

Shirer said nothing. Someone trying to kill you — whether you were in a 747 or anywhere else — was about as personal as you could get.