The Captains Read Online Free Page A

I can’t get in here, I’ll go down to Suwon.”
    â€œYes, sir,” the master sergeant said. He had just noticed the fruit salad on MacMillan’s tunic. He didn’t think much of army aviators, and wondered if this one was really entitled to wear the blue ribbon with the white stars on it.
    â€œYou’ll be all right,” MacMillan said to the blond. “They’ve got an evacuation plan, in case something like this happens.”
    She raised her face to be kissed. It turned into a passionate embrace. MacMillan was grossly embarrassed. She was hanging on to him like that not because she was horny, but because she was scared.
    He freed himself, stepped up on the wing, and crawled into the cabin. He busied himself with the preflight checklist, not looking up until he heard the sounds of the jeep starting up and driving away.
    Then he got out of the cabin again and walked around the plane, making the preflight. After that, he got in again and cranked it up. When the propeller was turning and the engine smoothing out, he closed the canopy, released the brakes, and moved onto the taxiway.
    There was no response when he tried to call the tower, so he simply turned onto the active and pushed the throttle to the firewall. Even if he was taking off downwind, he had enough runway to get it into the air.
    He took off toward the city, made a steep, climbing turn to the right, passing over the KMAG Skeet and Trap Club on the banks of the Han River, and then changed his mind about the altitude. The YAK fighters might come back. He lowered the nose and flew at treetop level through the low mountains until he reached Inchon and the sea. Then he pointed the Navion’s nose toward the Ongjin peninsula.
    (Five)
    MacMillan made a power-on approach to the command post of the 17th ROK Infantry Regiment. With his flaps down and the engine of the Navion running at cruise power, he had two options. If he saw the Americans he had come to fetch, he could chop the throttle and put the Navion on the ground. If he didn’t see the Americans, or, as he thought was entirely likely, he saw North Koreans, he could dump the flaps and get his ass the hell out of there.
    There was nobody in sight as he flew over the command post, and he had just about decided the unit had been rolled over when he spotted three people furiously waving their arms and what looked like field jackets at the far end of the short, dirt runway. He was too far down the runway by then to get the Navion on the ground, so he went around again, came in even lower, dropped his landing gear, and when he was halfway down the dirt strip, touched down. He hit the brakes as soon as he dared.
    Now that he was on the ground, rolling toward the three men, he could see they were Americans. As he taxied toward them, he wondered where the hell everybody else was. And then there was an explosion which both shook the Navion and sprayed it with dirt and rocks. He had landed at the 17th ROK Regiment thirty seconds before they blew up the CP.
    The first of the three Americans scrambled onto the Navion’s wing before MacMillan had finished turning around and before he had the canopy open. He lurched to a stop, unlatched the canopy, and slid it back on its tracks. One by one, almost frenziedly, the three American officers climbed into the cockpit.
    MacMillan was pleased to see that the last man to climb in was the senior of the three officers. The senior officer would most likely be the last. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
    â€œIs that all?” MacMillan shouted, over the roar of the engine.
    The officer beside him vigorously shook his head, “yes.”
    MacMillan turned to slide the canopy closed. There was a pinging noise on the side of the fuselage. He turned around and rammed the throttle to the firewall. The Navion began to move. The officer beside him slid the canopy home and latched it in place. The Navion lifted off the ground. MacMillan pulled the