MiG Pilot

by John Barron

  Turning on his radio, Belenko spoke to the control tower. “This is Number Oh-six-eight. Request permission to start engines.”

  The tower answered quickly. “Number Oh-six-eight, you have permission to start engines.”

  “Understood. I am executing,” Belenko said, waving to his flight engineer, who backed down the ladder, ordered the ground crew to remove the engine covers, and signaled that the hydraulic systems were functioning. As Belenko flicked switches and pushed buttons, the engines produced a soft whine that soon swelled into a roar. “This is Oh-six-eight,” Belenko radioed the tower. “I request permission to taxi.”

  “Oh-six-eight, you have permission.”

  “Understood. I am executing.”

  Belenko taxied the MiG-25 to the end of the taxi ramp about half a mile away. Four MiGs were ahead of him, and he had to wait until a green light authorized him to turn onto the runway. “This is Oh-six-eight. Request permission to take off.”

  “Oh-six-eight, you have permission.”

  “Understood. I am executing.”

  He hesitated a few seconds to look once more at the surrounding forests. Above all else in his homeland, he loved the rugged, open expanses and the forests where he had wandered since boyhood. There he could explore and discover and meditate, be alone with a girl or with himself. Only there and in the cockpit had he ever felt free. Under brilliant sunshine, the leaves were turning copper, gold, and ruby, and he thought that the forest never had appeared more majestic, never more impervious and antithetical to human squalor.

  With ignition of the afterburner, the aircraft vibrated, bucked, and strained forward. “Oh-six-eight, you have afterburn,” the tower confirmed. “We wish you all good.” Belenko released the brakes at exactly 12:50 P.M., and the MiG surged down the runway and within fifteen seconds into the air. While still perilously low, he shut the afterburner prematurely to conserve fuel, which was precious, so precious that he gladly would have exchanged some of his own blood for extra fuel. Also to conserve, he ascended more slowly than usual to 24,000 feet and took five minutes instead of the normal four to enter Training Zone No. 2 on a course of 090 degrees. Beginning the wide 360-degree turn which ground controllers were expecting of him, he saw numerous other MiG-25s in the area, fully armed and fueled. The needle, rotating swiftly around the compass dial with his continuous change in heading, showed that he rapidly was approaching the point of no return. For upon completion of the circle, he would have to proceed either with the programmed flight or with his own.

  You can still go back, and nobody will know. If you go, it’s forever. I’m going.

  Now he began his own secret flight plan.

  Back on a course of 090, he let the plane glide downward, hoping the descent would be so gradual the radar controllers would not at once notice. At 19,000 feet, Belenko suddenly jammed the stick forward and to the left and plunged the MiG into a power dive toward the floor of a valley ahead, shrieking and hurtling straight down so that the whole earth seemed to be jumping right into his face until he managed to level off at 100 feet. Never had he attempted such a dive, nor had he ever tried to fly a MiG-25 so low, for below even 1,000 feet it was clumsy and difficult to control. Yet from study of American tactics in Vietnam, he knew that at 100 feet he would be safe from the thickets of SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) and antiaircraft batteries emplaced on the peaks of the valley and that these bristling peaks would hide him from radar.

  Applying power, he thundered through the valley and in two minutes shot out over the Sea of Japan. He pushed an emergency button which started broadcasting a continuous signal indicating his plane was on the verge of crashing. After about forty seconds he turned off the signal to persuade all listening on the distress frequency that it had crashed. Simultaneously he shut down his radar and all other equipment whose electronic emissions might be tracked. Lastly, he switched off his radio, even though it gave off no emissions. He did not want to be affected or distracted by what they might be saying, what they might be doing, how they might be pursuing. He needed now to concentrate purely and intently on the equations of fuel, speed, altitude, time, and distance, which he calculated mainly in his head, aided by only a pencil and tablet. Perhaps use of the cockpit computer would have been more practical and efficient. But he was resolved, as he had done in all crises of his life, to rely on, to trust only himself.

  To evade detection by the long-range radars back on land and the missile-carrying Soviet ships patrolling offshore, Belenko flew so low that twice he had to swerve to avoid hitting fishing vessels. Only when he perceived that the waves were rising so high that he might smash into one did he go to a slightly safer altitude of 150 feet.

  Along with mounting waves, he encountered darkening skies and rainsqualls which buffeted the plane and portended worsening weather ahead. His mental computations portended much worse. At sea level the MiG was devouring fuel at a fatally gluttonous rate, far exceeding preflight estimates. Rapid recalculations yielded the same grim results. Unless he drastically reduced fuel consumption at once by assuming an altitude of at least 20,000 feet, he never would make landfall. Yet he had not flown far enough to go up safely to that height. He still would be within reach of Soviet radars and SAMs. He also might be picked up on the radars of other Soviet aircraft hunting to rescue him, had he survived a crash at sea, or to kill him, were he still aloft.

  Better possible death than certain death, Belenko reasoned, pulling up into the clouds, which quickly encased him in darkness. He had flown on a southeasterly course, dead reckoning his way toward Hokkaido, the northernmost of the Japanese islands and the one closest to his base. At approximately 1:20 P.M. — just thirty minutes after takeoff — he figured he was nearing Japanese airspace and interception by Phantom fighters of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force. To signify lack of hostile intent and facilitate interception, he throttled back the engines and glided down toward Japan, scarcely sustaining airspeed. Each moment he hoped to break free of the clouds and into the clear, where the Phantoms could see him.

  For years he had been taught to fear and fight these planes created by the Americans. Now he awaited them as saving angels. His whole flight plan was predicated upon confidence that the Japanese would scramble fighters to force him down as soon as he intruded over their territory. He knew that the Russians were under orders to fire SAMs at any foreign aircraft violating Soviet territory, and he feared the Japanese would do the same unless he were met and escorted by their own interceptors. More important, he counted on the Japanese interceptors to lead him to a safe landing field. On an old map of Hokkaido he had discerned only one field, the military base at Chitose, which seemed large enough to accommodate a MiG-25. Perhaps the Japanese would lead him to a closer field unknown to him. Regardless, he probably had enough fuel to reach Chitose if they escorted him there promptly and directly. But they would have to find him on their own because his radio frequency band was so narrow he could communicate only with other MiGs.

  Thrice during the descent the MiG sliced through thin layers of blue only to be engulfed anew in swirling dirty gray clouds, and not until it had dropped to 1,800 feet did Belenko find himself in clear sky. He circled, attempting to take visual bearings and locate Japanese interceptors. Nowhere could he see an aircraft of any type. Where are the Phantoms? Where are the damned Phantoms?

  Both Phantoms and MiGs at that moment were all around, desperately searching for him. His plane first appeared on Japanese radar screens as an unidentified blip at 1:11 P.M. when he rose from the sea to 20,000 feet. Nine minutes later, with the blip moving toward the center of the screens, the commander of the Chitose base ordered Phantoms to take off for interception. Simultaneously the Japanese vainly tried to warn him away through broadcasts in both Russian and English. At 1:22, about the time he himself figured, Belenko breached Japanese airspace, and the Phantoms, vectored from the ground, closed upon him. However, at 1:26, as Belenko started to drift down in quest of clear sky, his MiG disappeared from
the radarscopes, which, because of worsening atmospheric conditions, were already cluttered with confusing reflections from land and sea surfaces. Without any more guidance from the ground, the Phantoms flew about futilely in the overcast. Almost certainly, Soviet monitors heard the Japanese broadcasts and concluded that the plane being warned was Belenko’s, for unidentified aircraft, presumably Russian, streaked toward Japan.

  Ignorant of both the Japanese and the Soviet actions, Belenko had no time to conjecture about what might be happening. Neither did he have time for fear.

  The Japanese aren’t going to find you. At least, you can’t count on them anymore. You’ll have to take a chance. You have to decide, right now.

  From the configuration of the coastline, initially visible to him about 1:30, he deduced that he was approaching Hokkaido’s southwestern peninsula. Chitose lay to the northeast, roughly toward the middle of the island, behind a range of mountains still shrouded in clouds. The gauge indicated he had sufficient fuel for another sixteen to eighteen minutes of flight, maybe enough to carry him to Chitose if he immediately headed there. If he went back up into the clouds and over the unfamiliar mountains, however, he would forfeit all control of his fate. Only by sheer luck might he discover a hole in the clouds that would enable him both to descend safely and to sight the military field before exhausting his fuel. Without such good luck, the probabilities were that he would crash into some invisible peak or have to attempt a forced landing on impossible terrain. Had his purposes been different, he might have considered probing for a safe passage downward until his fuel was gone, then bailing out. But to Belenko, preservation of the MiG-25 was more important than preservation of his own life, and he was determined to land the plane intact if there was any chance, even one in a thousand.

  Hence, he decided to stay beneath the clouds, fly eastward past the southern end of the mountain range, then turn north toward Chitose. He appreciated that he did not have enough fuel to follow this circuitous course all the way to the air base. But so long as he could see, there was a possibility of finding some place, a stretch of flat land, a highway perhaps, to try to land.

  A red warning light flashed in the cockpit at 1:42, and an instant afterward a panel lit up, illuminating the words “You Have Six Minutes of Fuel Left.” Belenko reached out and turned off the warning lights. Why be bothered? He was over water again, having crossed the peninsula above Volcano Bay, so he banked into a ninety-degree turn northward toward land, still flying at 1,800 feet. Straight ahead he saw another mass of clouds, but he elected to maintain altitude and plunge into them. They might form just an isolated patch, and the lower he went, the more rapidly the MiG would consume fuel, and the less his glide range would be.

  Suddenly a dulcet female voice startled him. Emanating from a recording he did not know existed, the voice was as calm as it was sweet: “Caution, Oh-six-eight! Your fuel supply has dropped to an emergency level. You are in an emergency situation.”

  Belenko replied aloud, “Woman, wherever you are, tell me something I don’t know. Tell me where is that aerodrome.”

  The fuel gauge stood at empty, and Belenko guessed he had, at most, two minutes left. The clouds had not dissipated, and there was nothing else to do. So he pointed the MiG-25 down toward land and the unknown.

  CHAPTER II

  Viktor’s Quest

  Why? Of all officers, why Belenko? Nowhere in the recorded history of his life and career was an answer discernible. None of the conventional causes that might motivate a man to abandon homeland, family, comrades, and privilege could be found. Belenko was not in trouble of any kind. He never had associated with dissidents or manifested the least ideological disaffection. Like all Soviet pilots, he underwent weekly medical examinations, and physicians repeatedly judged him exceptionally fit, mentally and physically. He drank moderately, lived within his means, was involved with no woman except his wife, and had the reputation of being honest to the point of fault.

  In their initial consternation, the Russians did not believe, indeed, could not bring themselves to believe, that Belenko had vanished voluntarily. They preferred to think that he had been lured by invisible forces beyond his control. In a way they were correct, for Belenko was a driven man. And in his flight from the Soviet Union, he was continuing a quest that had motivated and dominated most of his life, a quest that caused him also to ask why.

  Belenko grew up as a child alone, left to chart his own course according to destinations and bearings fixed by himself. He was born on February 15, 1947, in a mountain village between the Black and Caspian seas, about a year after his father’s release from the Soviet Army. His father had been conscripted in December 1941 at age seventeen, eventually promoted to sergeant, trained as a saboteur and assassin, then assigned to help lead partisan forces. Thereafter he fought with partisans behind German lines, swimming for his life across icy rivers, hiding in frozen forests, and witnessing the slaughter of numberless comrades by enemy patrols, which in combat with irregulars neither gave nor received any quarter. Combat hardened him into a physically powerful, blunt, strong-willed man concerned with little other than survival and the pursuit of women.

  When Viktor was two, his father divorced his mother, took him away to Donbas, the great mining region of southwestern Russia, and subsequently prohibited her from seeing him. They shared a hut with another woman until his father quit her, consigned him to the care of his own mother and sister, and departed for a job 5,000 miles away in a Siberian factory managed by a wartime friend.

  The grandmother and aunt lived in one of some forty mud and straw huts that constituted a village near Mine No. 24. Coal dust darkened every structure of the village and so permeated the atmosphere that after a storm temporarily purified the air, food tasted strange. The women occupied one room of the hut and built a bed for Viktor in the other, where they cooked and ate. His aunt rose daily at 5:00 A.M. to draw water from the communal well, stoke the fire, and prepare soup and bread for breakfast before she walked to the mine. There she worked from 7:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., sorting debris and alien particles from coal passing on a conveyor belt. She had no gloves, and often her hands were bruised or bleeding. His grandmother, in her seventies, hobbled about with a stick during the day, acting as a good Samaritan, visiting the sick and elderly and attending to an invalid widow who received no pension. Each evening she chanted long litanies before an icon in the corner.

  Winter confined Viktor to the hut because, until he was six, he had no shoes. From the sleeves of an old jacket his aunt sewed slippers useful for dashes to the outhouse but unsuitable for prolonged wear in snow. Incarcerated alone, he could amuse himself only by the exercise of his own imagination and curiosity.

  A few days after his fourth birthday Viktor sat close by the stove, a source of both warmth and mystery. What made it yield such good warmth? To find out, he slid open one of the portals, and a burning coal tumbled out onto the straw covering the clay floor. As the hut filled with smoke, he sought escape by crawling into his grandmother’s bed and burying himself under blankets. Smoke still billowed from the hut when he regained consciousness outside, lying in the snow and coughing under the watch of the neighbors who had rescued him. That evening, after they had scrubbed and straightened the hut, his grandmother said, “Viktor, God is watching over you.”

  During warm weather Viktor wandered and explored, unrestrained, with older boys. A favorite playground was a forbidden area in the woods off the main road between the village and the mines. Here retreating German troops had made a determined stand, and although some nine years had passed, the battlefield had not been entirely cleared. Among trenches and revetments there could still be found live rifle and machine-gun bullets, which the boys used to make firecrackers to scare “witches" — that is, women who scolded them — and small “bombs” for killing and surfacing fish in the river.

  Digging for bullets, they unearthed a large, flat, cylindrical object that seemed to them an authentic treasure — one that coul
d be smelted down for thousands of slingshot pellets. Building a bonfire, they gathered around to begin the smelting. The fire waned, and Viktor, being the youngest, was ordered to gather more wood. As he returned, the land mine exploded, hurling him against a tree and causing a severe concussion. Hours later he awakened in the arms of his grandmother, who said with conviction, “You see, Viktor, it is as I said. God is watching over you.” The blast had killed two of his friends and badly crippled a third.

  That same spring Viktor heard commotion and what sounded like wailing outside the hut. People were gathering in the street, mostly women but some older men also, commiserating with one another, weeping and sobbing, a few hysterically. “Our savior and protector is gone!” a woman moaned. “Who will provide for us now?” The news of the death of Joseph Stalin had just reached the village. Always portrayed by every Soviet medium as a kind of deity, Stalin was so perceived in the village — the military genius who had won the war, the economic genius who had industrialized a feudal society, the political genius who had liberated the Soviet people from capitalist slavery, the just and benign patriarch who had secured the welfare of all.

  Accidents frequently took lives in the mines, so Viktor was familiar with mourning and funerals. He had always seen the villagers confront death with stoic restraint, and their bravery added to his regard of the miners as heroic men who risked their lives for the Mother Country. But never had he experienced such unrestrained outpouring of grief and despair as now. It alarmed him and made him wonder, too, how life would proceed without the noble Stalin.