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  “Huy’s ney,” I swore. “Fuck it.”

  There was no time to drag over a mechanic’s work stand and climb up to strip off this web of canvas and elastic cords. I would have to fly without the major instruments or target acquisition systems. At least I had the angle of attack tube. That instrument, the radar altimeter, and the standby magnetic compass would have to see me through.

  I was back on the left side of the nose, scrambling up the orange steel ladder to the canopy. Pausing at the top, I scanned the nearby ramps, the duty-alert building, and operations control tower. To my amazement, I saw no one. They had slept through the noise of the firing. Then I spotted Chomayev, peeking from behind the tail of the number four plane. My vision was still slightly blurred from the blow to my forehead, but I raised my pistol, sighted carefully, and fired. He disappeared. All this firing had to wake someone. I had four minutes at the most before they showed up here on the apron. There was no more time to waste.

  The canopy was ajar, still sheathed in the dew-damp ground cover. I couldn’t reach the cover-release points on the other side, so I just shoved the canvas back. It would blow off when I closed the canopy and taxied. I reached inside awkwardly with my left hand, then twisted the canopy opening lever.

  I jumped into the cockpit, slid into the ejection seat, and wedged the pistol between my thighs, so that it would be there if I needed it. The unbuckled straps of the ejection-seat harness were stiff against my back. But I had no time to pull the safety pins from the system and strap into the harness. The cockpit felt familiar, even though I hadn’t flown for two months. Then I recalled the generator truck cable still plugged into the left wingroot. Never mind that. The plane’s big engines would blast out enough thrust to pop the cable the moment I advanced the throttles.

  Now I had to work fast but well. I breathed in deeply and exhaled to clear my head. My left hand jumped across the main electrical integration panel beneath the right cockpit sill. I used the panel’s quick-start frame to snap on all the circuit breakers with one movement, then flipped off the unneeded switches. The cockpit hummed with power from the onboard battery, and the main caution and warning panel’s red lights blinked on.

  I had to ignore the urge to start both engines manually, blast free of the generator umbilical, and taxi out for takeoff. On this advanced aircraft the automatic engine-start sequence I had selected was actually faster than attempting a manual start.

  I reached across with my left hand to hit the button for the number two engine auto start. Nothing. Just the dry clicking of the igniter.

  My eye shot forward to the voltmeter. The battery was at full charge, twenty-four volts. I hit the starter again. Nothing. I turned and craned my neck out of the cockpit, but saw no one near the apron or alert building. I engaged the starter a third time. Nothing, just that bone-dry click.

  I knew I was dead. The Osobists must have installed some secret new coded lock on the starting system of the alert planes. They had locked the throttles of the nonalert aircraft after an intelligence report that Western espionage agents planned to infiltrate the base and steal one of our MiGs. But I never thought they would go so far as to disable the alert planes.

  I sagged in the ejection seat. The duty dispatcher was probably already on the emergency radio in the tower. The guard van from regimental headquarters could arrive in less than a minute. I suddenly recalled the last time I had flown, a clear, bright February day. On that final training sortie, I had been alone over the Black Sea, only twenty-five miles from Turkey. As I maneuvered in the mock dogfight, I had dropped below the ground controllers’ radar. How easy it would have been to escape. I had been a fool not to do it then. Now I was finished.

  But my years of training would not permit surrender. When a system failed, there was a reason. A good pilot does not panic.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Mikha Tskhakaya “Ruslan” Air Base

  February 13, 1989

  It was a perfect afternoon to fly. The Georgian winter sunshine poured through the canopy warming the cockpit as I taxied the MiG-29 slowly down the ramp from the 1st Squadron apron to the end of Runway 09. The sky above was a deep, aching blue: ceiling and visibility unlimited. In my curved center mirror, I saw my wingman, Captain Nikolai Starikov, trundling along behind. As always, Nikolai maintained the correct interval between the two fighters.

  Steering with the nosewheel control button on my number two throttle, I quickly scanned my engine instruments. Oil pressure and RPM were identical for both of the big Leningrad Klimov RD-33 turbofans rumbling behind me. Their tail pipe temperatures were normal.

  I slid the throttles back to idle and braked to a stop at the maintenance checkpoint. While the enlisted mechanic on the ramp checked for leaks and verified that my control surfaces were unblocked, I completed my preflight cockpit check. The canopy was closed and locked. The navigation systems display in the lower left instrument panel was properly aligned and the heading matched the small standby magnetic compass mounted between my center and right cockpit mirrors. I made sure there were no red lights on the caution and warning panel. The fuel gauge read 7,056 pounds, the proper amount for an air-combat training sortie. Now I pulled the lever at my left hip to tighten the harness of the ejection seat.

  Below the canopy the young conscript mechanic stared up, then saluted, the signal that he had completed his checks. This was my third and last scheduled training sortie of the day, and, as always, the airplane was behaving well.

  That was good. I certainly did not want a maintenance scrub. Although none of my friends back in the ready room or the regimental officers observing the takeoff’s and landings from the control tower could possibly have guessed, I had secretly planned that this training sortie would be my last flight as a Soviet Air Force pilot.

  I was glad a dogfight scenario was scheduled. Once Nikolai and I took off’ and headed west for the air-combat zone over the Black Sea, our flight would be immediately followed by the two MiG-29s flown by our opponents, a pair of regimental staff officers. The opponent lead was Lieutenant Colonel Dmitri Shatravka, the newly appointed deputy regimental commander for operations. His wingman was Major Valera Chayka, the regimental intelligence officer. In theory they were more experienced fighter pilots than Nikolai and me. But we had chalked up much more air-combat training in the MiG-29 than either of these two staff officers, and I planned to kick them both squarely in the ass on this flight. An indisputable dogfight victory over senior officers would be a fitting end to my Air Force flying career.

  I advanced the throttles and steered carefully down the center of the ramp, keeping well clear of the soft grassy margins. Ruslan had been built after the Great Patriotic War on spongy, reclaimed swampland, and was ringed by reedy drainage canals. The long, single east-west runway was made of huge precast-concrete blocks laid side by side with tar-line joints. In effect, the blocks floated on a wet layer of crushed stone and gravel. Rumor had it that there were at least two sunken runway layers beneath this one. And in wet weather when planes exited the eastern end of the runway, blocks would shift and swamp water would squish through the joint lines.

  With my left hand I slid back the throttles to idle and simultaneously squeezed the beavertail brake handle on the forward edge of the control stick with my right hand. The aircraft slowed at the end of the ramp. Working the nosewheel button, I allowed the residual momentum to swing the plane left onto the runway. The MiG-29 taxied as smoothly as it flew It was a true pilot’s airplane, and I was going to miss it. I stopped exactly midway between the white stripes marking the two-plane takeoff lane on the left side of Runway 09. In my right cockpit mirror, I saw Nikolai turn into the correct takeoff position behind me. His nose was forty-five feet right and seventy-five feet behind my right wingtip, close enough to follow my visual signals, but clear of my turbulent engine exhaust and wing vortices.

  Here at Ruslan we kept radio communications to a minimum between planes in a formation and between aircraf
t and ground controllers. There were American electronic ferret satellites overhead constantly, sweeping the air for our radio transmissions. And this near the frontier with Turkey, the problem was even more acute. That mountain frontier only fifty miles to the south bristled with NATO electronic eavesdropping posts.

  After the MiG-29 from the 2nd Squadron that had just landed cleared the runway, I swung my head in a wide arc, double-checking that the runway and landing approach were free of other aircraft. The takeoff light at the side of the runway flashed from red to green. The tower had cleared my flight for immediate departure. I knew everyone in the tower was watching us closely. Nikolai and I were in the 176th Frontal Aviation Regiment’s “Dogfight Masters” 1st Squadron. People expected to see a perfectly coordinated takeoff when we flew. And I certainly did not want to disappoint them today.

  My left index finger went to the cockpit console beneath the throttles to set the flap button in the correct takeoff position. I waggled the control stick to move the horizontal stabilizers to get Nikolai’s attention. Then I pulled the stick back which tilted the leading edge down, the signal to Nikolai to advance throttles to 100 percent: full military power. I slid my own throttles open and waited the mandatory ten seconds for the whining turbofans to stabilize with equal RPM. Then I saw movement in my right cockpit mirror. Nikolai’s plane was beginning to slide forward, even though he had not released his brakes. I realized one of his wheels must have been on a slippery tar line between the concrete runway slabs, and the brakes could not hold. There was no way he could back up now, and we risked a sloppy, unprofessional takeoff.

  This would not do on my last flight, not with all those people watching in the control tower. As I centered the stick to the neutral position, my right fingers popped the brakes, and I clamped my left hand on the spring-loaded throttle release and jammed the two throttle knobs full forward to afterburner. I was thrust back hard in my seat by an invisible piston of acceleration. Cones of flame now pulsed from the twin tail pipes, producing over 36,600 pounds of thrust. With my fuel load today, the aircraft had a positive thrust-to-weight ratio. The rear of my helmet sagged into the hard padding at the top of the ejection seat.

  The triple row of broken, white runway lane stripes flew by in a blur. By going to afterburner, I had kept ahead of Nikolai. In my mirror his plane was pegged in the correct position behind me on the runway. My helmet thrust harder into the seat cushion, and I felt myself grinning inside my oxygen mask. By a lucky quirk, this last takeoff was going to be on afterburner, one of the most powerful experiences a fighter pilot enjoyed. As always on afterburner takeoff’s, rock music seemed to echo in my head. Today it was the crashing rhythms of the Rolling Stones.

  My airspeed hit 100 knots and I pulled the stick back gently to rotate the nose. One second later we were at 135 knots, and the main gear lifted clear of the runway. This was a critical moment on an afterburner takeoff. The hinged, perforated screens protecting the engine air inlets had been in the down, closed position. During taxi and takeoff, engine air was fed through inlets on the leading-edge wing extensions below the cockpit. These louvered ducts in the gray tapered skin of the fighter always reminded me of the gills behind the streamlined head of a deep-ocean shark. At rotation speed the engine airflow was transferred from these upper inlets back to the main lower intakes as the protective screens automatically retracted. The sudden aerodynamic shift always caused a nose-down swing, which I had to parry with the trim button on the stick.

  I retracted gear and pitched the nose up sharply to a fifty-degree climb. As the altitude and airspeed increased, I raised the flaps and glanced back in the mirror to find Nikolai’s aircraft. He had lifted off in perfect position behind me. I could see his left hand raised thumbs-up to show his appreciation at my quick response in going to afterburner.

  Still on the burners, I banked left and leveled off at precisely 13, 500 feet and a heading of 270 degrees, due west toward our training zone, thirty miles away over the Black Sea. Now I throttled back and trimmed for an airspeed of 350 knots. Although this altitude was reserved for westbound traffic, it was always smart to keep your eyes open around a military airfield. The MiG-29’s cockpit, perched high and well forward on the nose, provided great visibility. And today the view was spectacular.

  The layout of the Ruslan Air Base below was typical of Soviet fighter regiments. Hangar and maintenance facilities and the pilots’ ready room were strung out along the parking apron that ran on an oblique angle to the runway. I could see the regiment’s aircraft parked in pairs along that apron. Regimental headquarters was near the far eastern end of the runway, a good twenty-minute walk from the squadron areas. There were two control towers near the western end of the runway, one to handle air traffic, the other for the engineering and maintenance section.

  The duty-alert building, which had its own small dormitory and dining room, stood close to the air traffic control tower There were four fully fueled and armed duty-alert aircraft parked separately just inside the taxi ramp. Normally the alert planes were parked on their own apron right beside the duty-alert building. But that apron had been ripped up for repaving, a repair that could take months, using lazy, inefficient Stroybat construction troops.

  In principle, the alert section could be airborne within five minutes of an order to scramble, in half that time if the pilots had been pre-alerted and were ready in the cockpit waiting to start engines.

  The explosive ordnance and missile maintenance shops were also near that end of the runway. Both the PPR missile shop and the RTB nuclear weapons storage and assembly sites stood within their own guarded compounds. The RTB facility was surrounded by a high wall capped with barbed wire and guarded by a separate contingent of troops who reported directly to the Strategic Forces Command in Moscow.

  I gazed down at the familiar scene I would probably never see again. The base arrangement was designed to efficiently facilitate flight operations. Given this widely dispersed layout, however, nonflight operations — the mundane bureaucratic housekeeping chores of military life — were often inconvenient. From this altitude I could still make out the clunking old bus on its infrequent circuit of the base. It was turning onto the main road to the officers’ housing complex a mile and a half away. Usually the rickety bus was out of service because of a lack of spare parts or the terrible maintenance habits of the conscript soldiers responsible for it.

  Division regulations prevented officers with their own cars from driving on the base because some might steal fuel. Fat chance. No one wanted the base gas. One of our staff officers was a true Socialist “entrepreneur” He stole so much gasoline and watered it down with TS-1 jet fuel kerosene that the stuff couldn’t be safely used in a car. So we often had to ride bicycles or waste time walking when we were summoned from the ready room to regimental headquarters or took our turn in the simulators.

  The base slid past below. Closer, the city of Mikha Tskhakaya was a jumble of orange tile roofs surrounded by citrus groves. To the north, the towering wall of the Great Caucasus range stood, icy white and silent, marking the boundary between the Republic of Georgia and the Russian Federation. The Caucasus were splendid mountains, higher and more rugged than the Alps of Europe or North America’s Rockies. Some Swiss fellows I’d met skiing up there told me the Caucasus had more spectacular and dangerous runs than the Alps. I could believe that.

  I shifted in my seat to stare south over the left wing. The Maliy Kavkaz mountains of the Turkish frontier were only half as tall as the Caucasus, but their summits were still crusted with winter snow. Below, the wide Rioni River glinted in the sun, meandering through the green coastal marshland toward the Black Sea ahead.

  Enough nostalgic sight-seeing. It was time to verify that my cockpit was ready for a simulated dogfight with Lieutenant Colonel Shatravka. The training scenario called for us to use all three of our air-combat weapons systems: the long-range R-27 Alamo radar-controlled missile, the shorter range R-73 Archer infrared-homing missile, and th
e inboard GSh-301 30mm cannon mounted in the left fuselage below the cockpit. These weapons would rely on all three of the MiG-29’s modern sensor systems: the pulse-Doppler radar, the infrared search and track system (IRST), and the laser range finder. On training sorties the radar missiles were simulated by a small electronic pod mounted on the inboard pylon of my left wing. The sensor head simulating the infrared seeker of the Archer missile was in the inner pylon beside it.

  We always flew with a full load of 30mm cannon ammunition — 150 shells — even on training flights. So it was important that the master arm switch on the weapons sensor control panel remain in the ‘off’ position. Once, a zampolit political officer had become confused on a bomber-intercept sortie and had turned on the master switch, thinking he needed that circuit to activate his gun camera. Apparently he had been too busy studying Marx and Lenin to read his aircraft manuals and hadn’t realized the cannon was loaded, even on training flights. The cannon had chattered off fifty rounds before the zampolit realized his mistake. Luckily, like most of his kind, the political officer was a shitty pilot. So he hadn’t shot down the Tu-16 bomber.

  I checked out my aircraft for mock combat in the recommended manner, working from left to right, starting with the missile-select button on the number two throttle, then moving to the systems on the left, lower left cockpit console.

  The MiG-29 was a “fourth generation” fighter that could engage or evade the best NATO aircraft at extreme or short ranges, throughout a wide flight envelope. Its powerful and complex weapons were linked to equally sophisticated sensors. Now I had to verify that I had chosen the correct weapons systems, and that the sensors, both the radar and the infrared search and track system, were ready for combat.