Fulcrum Read online

  That was either Shatravka or his wingman, or both. I hoped they were still searching for Nikolai’s bait.

  The rectangular radar cursor jumped from one group of glowworms to another, and finally settled on a fast-moving blip crossing from left to right. I was climbing a bit too steeply for easy visual acquisition, so I had to strain forward against the Gs to peer around the HUD. There he was, a gray dart, sweeping straight and level to the south at 12,000 feet altitude. I saw no flashing navigation strobe and knew the target was not Nikolai.

  On the inner throttle knob, I clicked the white button to activate the radar lock-on system. Once the radar computer calculated the target’s course and speed, the data would be fed to the Alamo missile’s radar-seeking nose sensor. The computer would interrogate the entire system for verification, and the friendly, synthesized female voice of “Rita” would sound in my earphones announcing, “Pusk razrayshon. Launch is approved.”

  When we had received our new aircraft, four years before, Rita’s voice had been a scratchy monotone, hardly the sexy companion most pilots wanted. So we had asked Natasha, one of the maintenance dispatchers, to rerecord all the announcements of the female voice warning system. She had the sweet voice of a television star. Now as I topped 9,000 feet, I heard Natasha’s recorded voice announce, “Launch is approved.”

  I flipped over the missile trigger to arm it and squeezed off two simulated Alamos. I wasn’t squandering weapons. If you launched only one of the big missiles, the unbalanced load on your wing pylons limited your dogfight maneuverability to a maximum angle of attack (AOA) of only fifteen degrees. I wanted a full twenty-four-degree AOA when I mixed it up at close range.

  Now that I had acquired Shatravka visually, I switched to his radio channel as a safety precaution. I also intended to probe him psychologically. Even as my simulated missiles were electronically converging on Shatravka to “destroy” his aircraft, I unveiled my next deceptive gambit.

  “Rubege odin,” I called, a message I knew both Shatravka and the opponent battle controller would also receive. “Radar lock-on.”

  I wanted them to think I was still at maximum lock-on range even though I had already launched.

  Then, as my simulated missiles closed on Shatravka, I called, “Range Two” and “Range Three,” as if I had just launched my missiles.

  “Enemy on the right,” I heard his controller warn.

  He banked into a diving roll toward me in a vain effort to break my lock-on. But it was too late. He was already dead. As I had hoped, Shatravka was blinded by the afternoon sun and unable to achieve “tallyho,” visual contact.

  Now I planned to kill him again, first with my infrared missiles and then with the gun.

  I switched the sensor control knob from “radar” to “close combat infrared” and my HUD lit up with IRST target imagery. Shatravka was still banking into me, and I hoped that we were closing too fast for him to use his helmet-mounted sight. But my standard IRST sensor in the dome on my nose was tracking him. The two narrow vertical range lines of the IRST lock-on zone hung in the center of the HUD. My finger was poised on the missile trigger as I banked hard right into his approach. As soon as the gray blur of his aircraft entered the “ladder” of the lock-on zone, my headset buzzed with launch approval and I squeezed the trigger. A simulated Archer was on its way.

  “Pusk,” I called, announcing a lock-on launch of an Archer. Shatravka was “dead” again. Actually, had I fired a real missile, he might have survived, but his plane would have been destroyed. The R-73, which NATO called the Archer, was almost impossible to evade in these close, highly dynamic encounters. The heat seeking sensor head was linked to its own logic memory system that resisted IR decoy flares. And because the missile employed a thrust vector system, it could turn inside any known fighter, no matter how skilled the pilot. An Archer literally followed its nose straight up the tail pipe of the enemy to explode inside his engine. But the missile’s warhead was relatively small. We called it our “humane” weapon; it killed the enemy’s engine, but not the pilot, who would hopefully be able to eject even after a solid hit.

  Shatravka was still closing, and I rolled harder with him to keep his aircraft locked on. The beauty of the new Archer was you could engage these rapidly converging targets head-on. I still had a good tone, and another simulated missile automatically launched.

  “Pusk,” I called again.

  Shatravka slashed past me in a transonic blur. I retarded my throttles to idle and pulled back hard on the stick. Once more I was pressed into my seat, and I saw the G-indicator on my HUD increase from 6 to 7.5. I was using this high-G energy to reduce speed and minimize my turning radius. Shatravka was out there somewhere below to my right, in his own high-G “arcing turn", trying to maneuver for missile lock-on.

  I kept the stick full back against my left thigh, and the aircraft pitched up toward a low-energy turn with the nose reaching the maximum maneuverable angle of attack, twenty-four degrees. The stall limiter immediately engaged, knocking the stick forward in my hand and reducing my AOA. I had achieved my goal of bleeding off energy and reversing course well inside Shatravka’s wider turn radius.

  Just before a full stall, I jammed the throttles to afterburner and kept the stick in my lap. The Fulcrum accelerated, thrusting me against my ejection seat. I managed the best turn this Fulcrum had to offer and arrived at his six o’clock.

  He had made the common mistake of relatively inexperienced MiG-29 pilots. By keeping his power settings too high, Shatravka flew wide-radius arcing turns, allowing me to get inside of him. I had been flying this powerful Fulcrum as long as any regimental line pilot in the Soviet Air Force. I had learned how to manage my energy and not to arc. It was not how fast you flew through the sky but where you placed your aircraft relative to your opponent in order to achieve a quick kill.

  Shatravka now banked into a tight diving barrel roll and I rolled with him. It was time to kill him with the gun. The horizon spun crazily past my canopy, and I was aware of the altitude digits winding down on the upper right corner of my HUD while my airspeed increased dramatically on the opposite corner. But, like a hound, I had a taste of blood in my mouth. Reaching instinctively with my left hand, I flipped my weapons sensor zone switch to “narrow field of view” so that the IRST scanner would lock on quicker. The gunsight aiming circle wavered across Shatravka’s aircraft, and I eased my nose up and right to move the fixed cross hairs on the HUD to overlap the circle and the opponent fighter. I had set the fire-rate switch to “burst,” which meant twenty-five 30mm rounds would fire for each second my finger was on the trigger. The GSh-301 was a very accurate cannon. When the enemy was within that aiming circle, locked in the cross hairs, he was dead. This cannon simply did not miss.

  I saw a bold ‘A’ appear on the left margin of the HUD and knew my laser range finder was probing him with an invisible finger, feeding the firing solution into my weapons computer. At this close range I hoped that Shatravka did not look back over his shoulder and catch the laser full in the face. He was an arrogant bastard and a Communist true believer, but I certainly didn’t want to blind him with my laser.

  Still he rolled, and still I kept behind him. Almost, but not quite. Shatravka’s gray fuselage slid into the aiming circle. The cross hairs straddled his cockpit and wings. I heard the steady tone of laser/IRST lock-on. Now.

  I squeezed the gun trigger on the stick. “Ogon,” I called. “Firing.”

  Just as I killed my opponent for the third time, I heard Nikolai call, “Pusk.” He had killed Major Chayka with a missile.

  Too late, Shatravka finally did something intelligent. He chopped power and dropped off in a leaf spiral toward the sea, hoping I would dive past him into his own IRST kill zone. If I hadn’t been anticipating his maneuver, I would have lost him. But I had already cut my own throttles and used the air brakes to stay behind him.

  “Ogon,” I called for good measure.

  My flight was victorious. I heard Shatravka’
s gruff, sullen voice announce he was separating. The dogfight was over, and he and his wingman headed north to complete their own individual training maneuvers. Nikolai was scheduled for cannon runs on the Kulevi coastal poligon rectangular weapons range. He checked in with GCI and received an altitude and vector back to the coast.

  I was alone over the Black Sea, still only minutes away from Turkey. But I shook my head, rejecting that final temptation. I knew the Ruslan GCI was watching me on radar, so I leveled off and proceeded with the remainder of my scheduled sortie maneuvers.

  I completed one fast, tight climbing combat turn and rolled into a hard right bank on the second. As the G-indicator on my HUD blinked to 8, I dragged the throttles back and centered the stick, letting the airplane mush into level flight without completing the turn.

  I breathed deeply and licked my dry lips. It was time to begin the deception.

  “Brigadier…350.” I made my voice hoarse and hesitant, then groaned and spoke through clenched teeth, as if in severe pain. “Finished… finished mission. I have a sharp pain in the back.”

  I groaned again and let my breath hiss audibly in my mask.

  Vitaly replied immediately. “Shto? Povtari. What? Repeat.”

  “Pain… in the back.” Again I groaned, more softly now.

  “Can you control the airplane?” Vitaly’s voice was on the edge of panic.

  “I can.”

  “You are cleared for a straight-in approach. Switch to tower frequency, channel 7.”

  I turned due east and aligned my radio compass needle on the Ruslan beacon. With the throttles set at eighty-five percent, I maintained an airspeed of 350 knots. I would be back in less than five minutes. As I crossed the coast, I opened my oxygen mask and jammed three fingers far back into my throat. I wanted to vomit to make the show even more convincing. But I could not. This was more than ironic. As a young cadet flying L-29 trainers, I had almost been grounded for airsickness and had to conceal my nausea by puking into a plastic bag and hiding it. Now when I needed a convincing display of vomit on my flight suit, I could not produce, even though I was gagging hard.

  The city of Mikha Tskhakaya appeared in the green citrus groves and marshes ahead. I saw the long Ruslan runway. The straight-in approach was easy. And I decided not to overdo the deception by wobbling on final.

  After I touched down and popped my tan, clover-shaped drag chute, the tower called, asking if I wanted to park on the emergency ramp.

  “Negative,” I replied. “I can taxi to the squadron apron.”

  As I turned left onto the taxi ramp, I saw the flashing orange lights of the ambulance and the white jackets of the emergency medical crew. I also saw the faces of the squadron and regimental officers. They looked grave. Obviously Vitaly had announced I was in bad shape.

  I let my shoulders sag in the ejection harness and tried to assume a suitable expression of pain and disorientation. My whole future now depended on my ability to convince the medical staff I had received a serious injury in this last, violent dogfight.

  CHAPTER 2

  Central Aviation Hospital, Moscow

  March 21, 1989

  The early spring sun felt good as I stood at the window, waiting for the nurse who would escort me down the corridor and up to the second floor for my ten o’clock appointment with the psychologist. The hospital was a quiet oasis of luxury surrounded by the melting snow of Sokolniki Park.

  Beyond the park’s budding maple and birch trees, several million of my fellow citizens were struggling through another dreary morning of perestroika. Some stood in endless lines, waiting to buy a kilo of rationed sugar, or for a State shoe store to finally open. There might be imitation-leather sandals for the children to wear this summer. More likely, the shelves would be empty. Others waited in the lines for the promise of a shriveled Cuban grapefruit or a bag of Moroccan oranges. Many crowded the sidewalks like cattle, clutching their avos’ka net bags, simply hoping to find the last of the winter’s bruised cabbage or maybe even laundry soap. Young people were wandering among the stalls of the Riga Bazaar, searching for an authentic pair of Levi’s or Reebok sneakers. This was the fifth year of glasnost, the fourth of perestroika. By all accounts, conditions were still deteriorating, even here in the capital.

  The food shortages were nothing new, but now people lined up to feed a type of hunger many never knew existed before glasnost. They stood patiently beside news kiosks from early morning, waiting for the bundles of Ogonyok, Moscow News, or Argumenti i Facti to arrive. These new, independent publications contained an intangible commodity sweeter than sugar, more stimulating than vodka or coffee. They published the truth.

  For months the men and women who stood in ranks along the sidewalks, clutching their string bags of cabbage, no longer gazed back impassively at the Zil limousines and Volga sedans as the bosses sped from their luxury apartments on Leninsky Prospekt to the Party and government buildings across the river. Now the people had learned the truth about the Party’s “eternal concern” for the welfare of the masses. Now working people, not just intellectuals, recognized the term gulag, and knew the bloody history of the Party’s Organs of State Security.

  The only thing perestroika promised was more degrading shortages and hardship. But glasnost had begun to open the door of a cage that had been barred for over seventy years. People were no longer afraid. The Russian bear had been in hibernation all those decades. Now he was stirring. Soon, like me, he would be fully awake. And, like me, he would be angry.

  There were already clear signs that the anger was about to erupt. For the first time in decades, there had been street demonstrations in Moscow. Several times in recent weeks, crowds had gathered in Pushkin Square, demonstrating for independence of the Baltic Republics or demanding the speedy establishment of a true parliamentary democracy. Some were mothers of young men who had been killed in Afghanistan. The demonstrators had been harshly suppressed by the militia and by the newly formed special OMON paramilitary units of the Interior Ministry. Hundreds of people had been beaten or arrested. But they mastered their fear and returned to the square.

  The simmering anger of the people on the street, however, was not the concern of the men who ran this modern, four-hundred bed medical complex. The hospital was reserved for the elite of the Soviet Union: About half the patients were retired senior military and KGB officers or their families; the other half were Air Force pilots. Some came from strategic bomber and helicopter regiments.

  Many were helicopter pilots wounded in Afghanistan. It always made me sad to see these young men, limping on artificial legs or waiting for plastic surgery to repair their rippled burn scars. A few helicopter pilots here were victims of another man-made disaster: the catastrophe at Chernobyl. I’d seen them wheeled down the third-floor halls to the intensive-care ward, prematurely decrepit, shrunken and bald, wasting away from the fatal radiation doses they had received flying above the Chernobyl plant to drop sand and boron into the caldron of the burning reactor.

  But most of the younger pilots here were perfectly healthy. Like me, they flew high-performance MiG-23s or the new “super-maneuverable” fighters-the MiG-29 and Su-27-in elite Frontal Aviation regiments. This hospital was a good example of the primacy of the Air Force, the Voyenno-Vozdushniye Sily (VVS). Supposedly our sister service, the Air Defense Force, Voiska Protivovozdushnoy Oboroni (PVO), had equally modern facilities outside Moscow.

  This was a polite fiction. Everybody knew our hospital was the best in the military. Air Force pilots were brought here from all over the vast country. The pilots of the VVS who flew several of the world’s most advanced high-performance fighters were recognized as the State’s elite warriors. Each of us represented an investment of several million rubles. Like champion race horses, we required specialized care to maintain our competitive edge. So the State invested millions more in scarce hard currency for the West German X-ray machines, the Japanese CAT scanners, and the computerized Westinghouse blood-chemistry apparatus that stood
like polished icons in the treatment rooms I passed along the main corridor of the diagnostic wing.

  Moscow’s Central Aviation Hospital specialized in urology, ophthalmology, and neurology. These departments, I’d been told, were staffed and equipped almost as well as their counterparts in the West. Obviously they were far superior to the State hospitals open to the “workers,” who lacked Party or military connections. In those squalid wards, patients’ families had to bring their food, and you had to bribe the nurse just to empty a bedpan. But you couldn’t even bribe the doctor to provide medication. There was none. For decent treatment, people had to spend their life savings in the new cooperative, private clinics that were springing up like mushrooms in all our cities.

  So the Party elite and the military and KGB nomenklatura who were treated here well understood how privileged they were. Not only was the treatment superior to that of any other hospital; it was free.

  But high-performance fighter pilots were not so pleased to be here, where the medical and personnel bureaucrats of the Air Force, not operational officers, ran the show. All aviation academy cadets had to obtain a Category 1 health certificate, the same as the rigorous standards required of the cosmonauts. So we had all started our careers in absolutely perfect condition. And, by directive of the Ministry of Defense, a pilot qualifying for the MiG-29 or Su-27 also had to be certified Category 1. In reality, however, most line pilots in MiG-29 or Su-27 regiments maintained a Category 2 certificate, which was only slightly less rigorous than the highest standard. And we each had to preserve our perfect “one-by-one” vision if we wanted to keep flying. No one with eyeglasses flew a Soviet fighter. But if any of these pilots developed a medical problem or ejected from a crippled aircraft, he was brought to Moscow for a complete reevaluation. And here in the Kingdom of the Bureaucrats, that damned ministry directive was enforced: A pilot had to be recertified to a full Category 1 before he could fly super-maneuverable fighters again.