Jiro’s second Sidewinder sprayed the belly of Dixie Elitch’s fighter with shrapnel. The plane continued to respond to the controls and the engines seemed okay, but horrible pounding and ripping noises reached Dixie in the cockpit. It sounded as if the slipstream was ripping pieces off. Automatically, she retarded her throttles, deployed her speed brakes, and pulled the nose skyward to convert airspeed into altitude.
After Cassidy and Scheer fired the last of their Sidewinders, only two of the eight high Zeroes were still under their pilots” control. Still in loose formation, these two nosed down steeply and went to full afterburner. They didn’t turn or weave, just kept descending until they were within thirty feet of the valley floor. Their sonic shock waves raised a dust cloud behind them.
Cassidy leveled at ten thousand feet and came out of burner. He didn’t want to use all his fuel chasing these two. “Can you get “em, Paul?”
“I think so.”
Scheer was gaining on the fleeing pair when Cassidy turned back toward the low fight, which was still being waged near the base.
Preacher Fain was ninety degrees off Jiro’s heading and a mile behind him when the Japanese pilot saw him with the infrared goggles. Jiro knew most of his comrades were dead, and if he continued to fight he soon would be, but to ignore this F-22 in his rear quarter would be suicide. Kimura pitched up hard and rolled toward Fain. Fain was surprised. This was the only Zero that engaged the F-22’s. This guy must see me, he thought. Perhaps the chameleon gear is not working He too pitched up, committing himself to a vertical scissors. Corkscrewing around each other, the two fighters went straight up, each trying for an angular advantage and each failing to get it. Jiro was beside himself. He was 950 miles from home base, surrounded by enemies, and time was running out. Time was on his opponent’s side. He had to end this quickly. He pulled the throttles to idle, popped the speed brakes. Going straight up, the Zero slowed as if it had hit a wall. Preacher Fain squirted out in front. Jiro rammed the throttles forward and thumbed in the boards as he pushed the nose toward Fain. Sensing his danger, Fain pulled back on the stick with all his strength. The F-22 came over on its back and dipped its nose toward the earth as bursts of cannon shells squirted past. The shells were going by his belly. Fain continued to pull. Then he realized the ground was rushing toward him. He was descending inverted, seventy degrees nose-down, in burner, passing eight thousand feet. Preacher Fain flicked the F-22 upright and pulled until he thought the wings would come off. The G meter read twelve G’s when his fighter struck the earth at Mach 1.2.
Dixie Elitch ejected when her airspeed dropped to 250 knots. The airplane was burning by then. She had shut down the left engine when the Left Fire warning light came on, but now the flames were visible in the mirror behind her.
“Dixie’s bailing out,” she said over the radio.
She took a deep breath and pulled the handle between her legs with both hands.
The fight had lasted just two minutes.
The maintenance troops at the base saw someone descending in a parachute, but they had no idea it was Dixie. Four of them went after her in a Humvee. The hardest part was finding her, a mile out in the forest from the nearest road. She was hung up in a tree. It took them twenty minutes to get her down, which they accomplished by chopping down the tree. Although shaken, she was none the worse for wear. An hour and a half after her ejection, Dixie and her rescuers walked out of the woods.
Jiro Kimura taxied into the revetment at Khabarovsk, opened the canopy, and shut down. The plane captain installed the ladder while Jiro unstrapped, then scampered up. “Sir, where are the others?”
“Dead. Or out in the forest. I don’t know.”
The plane captain couldn’t believe it. He thought Jiro was joking. As he walked across the ramp with the night-vision helmet and his flight bag, Jiro met his squadron executive officer. “Where are they, Kimura?”
“They were shot down, sir. All of them. I am the only one left.”
“Including the wing commander?”
“He died first, I think. My flight was well below him then, but I think his aircraft was struck by a missile and disintegrated. Then the Americans jumped us. It was over quickly.”
“F-22’s?”
“They never saw them, Colonel. Their airplanes are invisible. Without radar, the others had no chance. I had this.” Jiro held up the helmet. “I borrowed it from the helicopter squadron. I could see them only in infrared, not regular light.”
“Fifteen aircraft!” The colonel was incredulous.
“Yes, sir.”
“How many enemy aircraft were there?”
“Six or eight. I am not sure. No more than eight, I think.”
The exec reeled. He caught himself. “Did we get any of them?”
“I got one, I think, sir. Another F-22 flew into the ground trying to evade me. If anyone else scored, I do not know about it.”
“I want a complete written report, Kimura, as soon as possible. I will send it to Tokyo.” The colonel turned his back so that Jiro couldn’t see his face.
Jiro walked on toward the dispersal shack.
They couldn’t all be dead. Surely some of them had ejected safely. Sasai, Ota, Miura … As he walked, Jiro Kimura wiped away tears.
When Cassidy and Elitch got back to the squadron, Paul Scheer was sitting with his feet up on the duty desk, smoking a cigar. He gave them a beatific smile.
“Hear anything from the others?” Cassidy snapped.
“Nope. I watched the discs from your plane and mine. I’m pretty sure they’re dead.”
“You look awful damned crushed about it.”
Scheer refused to be flustered. He puffed on the cigar a few times, then took a long drag and exhaled.
“Colonel, it’s like this: If I were dead and Fur Ball were sitting here instead of me, I would want him to have a cigar. I would want him to savor this sublime moment. If I could, I would light the cigar for him.”
Scheer stretched out his arms and yawned. “Best goddamned two minutes of my life. The very best.” He sighed. “The sad thing is that it’s all downhill from here. What could possibly equal that?”
Scheer slowly got to his feet. As cigar smoke swirled around his head, he hitched up his gun belt, reached into his unzipped G suit and scratched, then helped himself to a swallow of water from a small bottle. Opening the desk drawer, he extracted two cigars and held them out.
“One each. This was our stash, Hudek’s and mine. When you smoke them, think of Fur Ball and Foy Sauce and the Preacher. Three damned good men.”
Cassidy and Elitch each took the offered cigars.
Paul Scheer strolled out of the room, trailing smoke.
When he was lying in his bunk that evening, Jiro Kimura could not sleep. The morning fight kept swirling through his mind. After a while, he got out his flashlight, pulled the blanket over his head, and wrote a letter to his wife.
Dear Shizuko, Today we had a big fight with the American fighters, the American Squadron that you have been hearing about. Bob Cassidy is their commanding officer!
Ota, Miura, and Sasai are missing in action and presumed dead. By the time you receive this letter, their families will have been notified. As you know, I have been very concerned about meeting Cassidy in the sky. Today I must have done so. He was probably there. Beloved wife, you will be proud to know that I did not hesitate to do my duty. I did my very best, which is the only reason I am still alive. Still, I have worried so about the possibility of shooting at Cassidy that I now feel guilty that my comrades are dead. Strange how even secret sins return to haunt you. That is a very un-Japanese thought, but the Americans always assured me it was so. Secret sins are the worst, they said. I have promised myself to think no more of Bob Cassidy. I will be cold-blooded about this murderous business. I will fight with a tiger’s resolve. I write of these things to you because I may not see you again in this life. It is probable that I shall soon join my friends in death, which is not a prospect I fear,
as you know. Still, the thought of my death fills me with despair that you will be left to go on alone, that we will not live long lives together, which was, we always believed, our destiny. If I die before you, I will be waiting for you in whatever comes after this life. When you are old and full of years, you will rejoin the husband of your youth, who will be waiting with a heart full of love. Know that in the days to come. Jiro THE TRAIN WAS barely an hour north of Vladivostok when it derailed. Isamu Iwakuro felt the engine and cars lurch. He had spent his adult life working as a locomotive repair specialist, and he knew. The car he was in, the second behind the last locomotive, went over on its side and the lights went out. The car skidded for what seemed to be a long time before it came to rest. Inside the car, civilians and soldiers and their baggage were hopelessly jumbled. Someone was screaming. Iwakuro managed to get upright and clamber over several seats toward the door, all the while shouting for everyone to remain quiet and not panic. Then the explosions began. Steel and smoke ripped through the shattered railroad car. Antitank grenades!
The explosions popped like firecrackers. All up and down the train, he could hear the hammering of the grenades. And he could hear machine guns, long, ripping bursts. Something smashed into his shoulder and he went down. Another explosion near his head knocked him unconscious. When Iwakuro came to, he could see nothing. Night had fallen, although he didn’t know it. At first, he thought he was blind. His shoulder was bleeding and hurt horribly, so he knew he was alive. He felt his way over bodies, searching for a way out of the railroad car. He saw a bit of light, finally, just a glimmer from a distant fire. Somehow, he managed to crawl through a hole in the floor of the railroad car, which was still on its side. To his right, away from the engine, he saw that one of the freight cars was burning. Iwakuro crawled directly away from the train. When he had gone at least fifty meters, he sat and tried to bind his coat around his shoulder.
He was sitting in the grass, moaning ever so slightly, when someone shot him in the back.
Rough hands rolled him over. A flashlight shown on his face. Now someone grabbed him by the hair and rammed a knife into his neck. Isamu Iwakuro filled his lungs to scream, but he was dead before the sound came out.
The man who had shot Iwakuro finished cutting off his head. He dropped it into a bag with six others. His orders were to decapitate every body he found.
Two hundred miles east of Honshu Admiral Kolchak was at periscope depth, running at six knots on a course of 195 degrees magnetic. Through the main scope Pavel Saratov could see an empty, wind-whipped sea and sky.
After a careful, 360-degree transit with the scope, Saratov ordered it lowered. The navigator was bent over the chart table when Saratov joined him.
“How fast do you want to go, Captain?” As was usual aboard Admiral Kolchak, the navigator asked the question in a low, subdued voice.
“I want to keep a good charge on the batteries at all times,” Saratov answered, automatically making his voice match the navigator’s. “We must be able to go deep and stay there to have any chance against the Jap patrols.”
“We are in the Japanese current, bucking it. We would make better time if we got out of it to the southeast, then headed southwest.”
“Stay in it, right in the middle. We’re in no hurry.”
“Do you really think they are looking for us?”
“You can bet your life on it.”
Askold leaned over the table. “How do you plan to go in, Captain?”
“I have no plans. We must see what develops.”
“Getting out?”
“God knows. We will see.”
“What will you see, Saratov?” The voice boomed in the little room. Esenin was right behind them. As usual, he was wearing the box, a gray metal box about three inches wide, five inches long, and an inch deep. It hung on a strap around his neck. Since the boat had submerged at Trojan Island, he had never been without the box.
“We will see if we can get out of Japanese waters alive,” Saratov said.
“Don’t be such a pessimist. This is an opportunity of a lifetime to do something important for your country.”
“For you, General, perhaps. These men have already struck a stupendous blow for Russia.”
“Don’t be insubordinate,” Esenin snapped. “You are in a leadership position.”
“I’m in command of this vessel, and I won’t forget it.”
Esenin looked into the faces of the men in the control room. Then he turned to Saratov and whispered, “Don’t push me.”
A P-3 came that night. The sonar operator heard it first. The watch officer called Saratov, who was lying down in his stateroom, trying to sleep.
The plane went by about two miles to the south, flying east. “He’s flying a search pattern,” the navigator said.
“Probably,” Saratov said, “but the question is, Are we inside the pattern or outside of it?”
The sound of the plane disappeared. After a few minutes the watch team relaxed, smiled at one another, and went back to checking gauges, filling out logs, reading, and scratching themselves. Esenin had stationed one of his armed naval infantrymen in the control room. The man was trying to stay out of the way, but in a compartment that crowded, it was impossible. He had to move whenever anyone else moved.
Saratov eyed the man. He was in his mid-twenties, said almost nothing, obviously understood little of what went on around him. Was he a real naval infantryman? Or was he something else? Apparently, he had never before been to sea, or had he?
The P-3 returned. It went behind the submarine a mile or so to the north, headed west.
“We’re in his pattern,” the navigator said.
“Hold this heading. In about ten minutes, we’ll cross his original flight path. He’ll search behind us.”
That was the way it worked out. Still, the XO and the navigator looked worried.
At midnight, when the captain gave the order to snorkel, the XO wanted to discuss it. “Sir, the P-3’s can pick up the snorkel head on radar.”
“We must charge the batteries, Askold. If we cannot do it here, we will never get into the mouth of the bay and back out.”
Askold bit his lip, then repeated the snorkel order to the chief. As luck would have it, within thirty minutes the sub entered a line of squalls. Heavy swells and rain in sheets hid the snorkel head. The rocking motion of the boat, just under the surface, made the sailors smile. They knew how rough it was up there. Saratov drank a cup of tea in the wardroom while Esenin and his number two, the major, silently watched. Then Saratov went to his cabin and stretched out on the bunk. He couldn’t sleep. In his mind’s eye he saw airplanes and destroyers hunting, searching, back and forth, back and forth … The sonar operator called the P-3 sixty seconds before it went directly over the submarine. The duty officer immediately ordered snorkeling stopped and the electric motors started. The plane went by, fifteen seconds passed, then it began a turn. “He’s got us,” the watch officer said. “Call the captain.”
Saratov heard that order as he came along the passageway. “Take it down to a forty meters,” Pavel Saratov said after the chief reported the diesel engines secured. “Left full rudder to one zero zero degrees.”
“Left full rudder, aye. New course one zero zero.”
Esenin came to the control room. A moment later the major arrived, just in time to hear the sonar operator call, “Sonobuoys in the water.”
He began calling the bearings and estimated ranges of the splashes as the navigator plotted them. “Let’s get the boat as quiet as we can, Chief.”
“Aye, Captain. Slow speed?”
“Three knots. No more. And go deeper. Seventy meters.”
“Down on the bow planes. Up on the stern planes,” the chief ordered. The michman on the planes complied. Saratov looked at his watch. The time was a bit after 0300. “P-3 is coming in for another run, Captain. He sounds like he’s going to go right over us.”
“Keep me advised.”
“Steady on
new course one zero zero.”
“Keep going down, Chief. One hundred meters. Somebody watch the water-temp gauge. Let me know if we hit an inversion.”
“There should be an inversion,” the duty officer muttered, more to himself that anyone else. “This is the Japanese current.”
“P-3’s going right over our heads.”
“Come left to new course zero four five.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Saratov noted Esenin’s facial expression, which was tense. The major, standing beside Esenin, looked worried. “One hundred meters, Captain.”
“Make it a hundred and fifty.”
“One fifty, aye.”
“How deep is the water here?” the major asked the navigator, who didn’t even check the chart before he answered. “Six miles. We’re over the Japanese trench.”
“So what happens if we can’t lose this airplane?”
“He puts a homing torpedo in the water.” The navigator looked at the major and grinned. “Then we die.”
“Two hundred meters, Chief,” the captain said. Passing through 170 meters, the temperature of the water began to rise. The duty officer saw it and sang out. “Just how deep can this boat go?” the major asked the XO. “Two hundred meters is our design depth.”
The captain missed this exchange. He was wearing a set of sonar headphones, listening with his eyes shut. At this depth the boat creaked a bit, probably from the temperature change, or the pressure. Saratov heard none of it. He was concentrating with all his being on the hisses and gurgles of the living sea. Ah yes…, there was the beat of the plane’s props. He opened his eyes, glanced at the sonar indicator, which was pointing in the direction of the largest regular, man-made sound. The enemy airplane was almost overhead … now passing … Splash! A sonobuoy. Or a torpedo. “Deeper, Chief. Down another fifty meters.”
Fortunes of War Page 32