professionalism and speed.
The colonel nodded to himself. Yes, mix the pilots he’d seen today with the newer MiG-23s he knew were operating out of other bases, add the even more advanced planes his country was shipping soon, and you’d have a damned good air force. An air force capable of handling almost any mission it was given.
Borodin remembered Kim Jong-Il’s cold, challenging stare. The final liberation he had said. Could he have been serious? What was it General Petrov had said about the North Koreans? Something about Pyongyang being almost inside the Soviet Union’s nets. Borodin began to wonder if it might not be more accurate to turn that phrase around.
CHAPTER 5
Night Flyers
Captain Tony Christopher, USAF, stood outside the squadron building watching the sun set beyond the flight line. One hand held his gray helmet and oxygen mask. The other held a thick stack of papers — flight plans, bomb range restrictions, maps, and divert fields — all the stuff that training missions are made of. He wished again that the F-16 had a bigger cockpit. He always had a tough time squeezing his six-foot frame plus assorted paperwork into the plane.
He squinted into the bright, orangish-red light thrown off by sun as it dipped toward the Yellow Sea. Where in God’s name was his wingman?
Suddenly hands landed heavily on either shoulder. Tony started a bit but kept his voice calm. “Hi, Hooter.”
“Shit, Saint, you’re no fun. I did that to you yesterday and you jumped three feet.” His wingman, First Lieutenant John “Hooter” Gresham, came around to stand beside him.
“Yeah, well my nerves are all worn-out and I need what’s left for this mission. You’ve got four ninety- four.”
“I know.” Hooter looked smug. ‘As your friendly training records officer, I make it a point to keep fully informed.” Every pilot in the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron did more than just play fighter jock full-time. Each also wore another “hat,” doing all the other administrative work needed to keep the squadron flying and combat-ready. Hooter’s second hat kept him busy making sure that every pilot complied with the rigorous training schedule set down by Air Force regulations.
Hooter snapped his fingers. “Say, that reminds me. Speaking in my official capacity, I need to know when you want to schedule your next chemical warfare flight.”
Tony groaned. “C’mon, Hooter. Cut me some slack. I just did it a couple of months ago!”
Hooter grinned. “Nice try, revered boss and flight leader. But you and I both know that a new period started July first. And you’ve gotta fill in the square once every six months.”
Every pilot Tony knew hated chemical warfare training. Trying to fly a plane while wearing the special protective gear it required was like wrestling a giant octopus in a Turkish steam bath.
“Okay, okay. But can I at least wait till it cools off some? That rubber suit is hell. Just let me worry about this hop for right now.”
“You got it.”
This was going to be a night ground-attack training mission, and although the F-16 can fly and fight at night, it does not have sophisticated sensors like the Air Force’s dedicated attack aircraft. To see their target, Tony and Hooter were going to have to coordinate their efforts: one plane would drop flares while the other made the attack run. Simple, until you remembered that each pilot would be flying at four hundred knots, so close to the ground that an unintentional twitch could turn both F-16s and their highly educated pilots into a short-lived fireball and a shallow crater.
They needed teamwork to fly and teamwork to fight. Tony studied his sandy-haired wingman out of the corner of his eye. When you wear the same clothes, have the same job, and talk about the same things, you do not lose your individuality. Differences become more apparent, not less. And there were differences. It was as if somebody in the Air Force personnel office had decided to try teaming opposites as an experiment.
Tony was the quieter of the two. There is no such thing as an introverted fighter pilot, but his unhurried movements and restrained speech contrasted sharply with Hooter’s ebullient manner. Anyone watching the two of them together would notice the wingman in almost constant motion, his boundless energy seemingly uncontainable.
Tony was vastly more experienced than Hooter, which may have explained some of the difference. After the Air Force Academy, Tony had moved directly into the F-16 and had been with the aircraft from the beginning. After his initial tour he had attended Fighter Weapons School, at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Unlike Red Flag, which teaches air combat, Fighter Weapons School teaches how to employ effectively all types of ordnance. Only the best pilots qualify for admission.
The men who graduate from that difficult course teach the rest of their squadrons what they know, which is how to best apply the Falcon’s impressive firepower against any kind of target. Additionally, it was an important ticket to be punched on the way to higher rank and more important assignments.
After the school, Tony had continued to assimilate everything he could find, not only to stay current, but because he knew it might make the difference someday. He was definitely the squadron’s, and maybe the wing’s, best expert on how to blow up things with airplanes. He had been in Korea for over half a year.
Hooter, in contrast, was still in his first tour, fresh from ROTC, and had only been in Korea a few months. He was still discovering the Falcon’s good and bad points. Every flight was an adventure, an experience to be remembered.
Tony welcomed Hooter’s almost constant stream of jokes and tricks, knowing that he applied the same energy to his ground duties and his flying.
Also to his after-hours activities. They were only a few years apart in age, but Tony had to work hard to keep up with his younger companion.
Though he’d never have admitted it out loud, Tony knew he couldn’t consider himself the best flier God had ever made. He was good, damned good, but he wasn’t the best. Instead, he’d found his edge in air-to-air combat with an ingrained ability to look at an adversary’s maneuvers, plan a step ahead, and force the other guy all over the sky. He’d overheard Hooter talking about him in the O-Club one night.
“Now the Saint doesn’t fly the best plane in the sky,” his monumentally inebriated wingman had said, “but he does fly confounded tactical.”
Hooter, on the other hand, was a natural shot and a demon flier, but he lacked experience and sometimes he lacked good judgment. His abilities and aggressiveness could usually get him out of the tight spots he landed in. In Tony’s book, though, “usually” wasn’t good enough. He’d been working Hooter hard to get him to understand the difference between “acceptable risk” and “frigging stupid.” Still, they’d been flying together for months now, and Tony had to admit that they made a damned good team. Their very different personalities and flying styles made a winning combination in the air.
There were differences on the physical side, too. Hooter was shorter by four inches, which meant a lot more room in the cockpit. That was just as well because Tony knew that his wingman had trouble keeping still anywhere. He smiled to himself. Even now he could see Hooter shifting from foot to foot while they waited to get a jeep ride out to the aircraft shelters.
He came out of his thoughts as the jeep they’d been waiting for came careening around the squadron building and slowed down to a crawl in front of them.
Hooter was already in motion. “Hey, Saint! Shake a leg. Daddy’s come to take us to the prom!”
Tony grinned and clambered aboard. They sped off across the tarmac toward the aircraft shelters.
Their planes for the night’s mission, side numbers 492 and 494, were parked in shelters G and H. These were reinforced concrete arches, strong enough to take anything up to a one-thousand pound bomb hit and protect the airplane inside. The armored blast doors in front and back were massive, but perfectly balanced, so that if the power drive for the door failed, they could be pushed open by hand. They could also be sealed against poison
