Fulcrum

by Alexander Mikhaylovich Zuyev

  As I approached the alert apron, I pulled the Makarov pistol from the left breast pocket of my leather flight jacket, cocked the action but did not set the safety as I normally did. Ahead, the familiar outline of a soldier wearing a black quilted jacket and a floppy southern field hat, an AKM slung on his shoulder, was silhouetted against the flank of the first aircraft. I recognized Corporal Chomayev now, a stocky, broad-shouldered Asian, one of the better soldiers in the guard detachment. He had always been quiet and stoic, but, unlike others, quick to follow orders. Too bad. I did not want to have to hurt Chomayev and hoped I could disarm him quickly. I certainly did not want to fight this tough youngster.

  It was dawn. Time to act.

  CHAPTER 14

  Vengeance

  May 20, 1989

  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. Off to the left, I noticed Corporal Chomayev’s wide-brimmed field hat lying on the oil-stained concrete apron amid a pile of spent brass shell casings from his AKM. He was either wounded or dead, hidden from sight. Luckily the apron guards had only been issued a single thirty-round magazine. But maybe he wasn’t badly wounded, after all. Maybe he was already back at the alert building spreading the alarm. Maybe Natasha was already speaking to Division on the control tower emergency radio channel.

  Then my eye caught something blue lying on the apron near Chomayev’s hat. My helmet bag full of papers. I had dropped it in the fight. But I could certainly not climb down to retrieve it. If I did not start my engines immediately, I would have to try to escape on the ground.

  I engaged the starter a third time. Nothing. Just that bone-dry click.

  I knew I was dead. The Osobists must have installed a secret new electronic lock on the starting system of the alert planes, just as they had padlocked the throttles of the other fighters after the spy scare last year.

  I sagged in the ejection seat. Closing my eyes again, I filled my lungs deeply with the cool morning air. In a minute, two at the most, this fighter would be surrounded by soldiers. Even without their rifles, they could disarm me and drag me to the ground. It would be easy just to sit here with my eyes closed, breathing slowly, waiting for the end. But my years of training would not permit surrender. I remembered the words Lieutenant Tveretin had taught me so many years before on that sun-blasted runway in Azerbaijan. “When a system fails, Zuyev, there’s always a reason. A good pilot does not panic.”

  I opened my eyes and scanned the instrument panel one last time. The battery was fully charged, twenty-four volts. The engine circuit breakers on the PTO electrical panel at my right elbow were set correctly. The throttles were…

  The throttles. My left hand went instinctively to the two throttle knobs. They were spring-locked in the full stop position at the end of the twin rails. The heel of my hand hit the knobs and I released the stop springs with a quick snap. Like a first-year cadet sweating in the front seat of an L-29, I had made the most obvious mistake imaginable. I had tried to start my engines with the throttles at stop. Now I advanced both throttles to idle and hit the auto start button again. The big number two R-33 turbofan roared to life, shaking the cockpit with the familiar rumble. Amber lights winked out on the caution warning panel. The engine’s fuel-flow gauge and tachometer needle sprang alive.

  I had no time to waste with a takeoff checklist. Even if Chomayev had not yet reached the alert building, the noise of this engine certainly had reached the control tower. The number one engine would start automatically in a few moments, once number two reached twenty-eight percent RPM. I flipped on the remaining switches on the PTO panel and grabbed the stick clumsily with my right hand to trip the ducktail brake release lever.

  With my left hand I slid the number two throttle forward to ninety percent, then chopped it back to idle. The plane did not move. I glanced down to make sure my fingers — which were almost numb from the shoulder wound — were properly squeezing the brake release lever. That was not the problem. I leaned out the open cockpit and saw the thick umbilical cable from the starting generator cart anchoring the plane to the apron.

  Again I slid the throttle forward, to ninety-three percent, before chopping it back. The engine roared. Still, the airplane did not move. I took the risk of going to full military power. If the cable suddenly popped before I had cut power and braked, the plane could lunge uncontrollably forward and the nosewheel bog down in the “swamp,” the soggy grass margin beside the taxi ramp. But I had to accept this hazard.

  Then the number one engine roared alive. I slid both throttles up the rail and felt the plane surge ahead. In a desperate two-handed motion, I cut the throttles back, tripped the nosewheel-steering button on the inner throttle knob, and managed to squeeze the brake lever correctly to slow my momentum.

  The fighter lurched into a hard right turn and I tapped left rudder with my boot to align the nose on the centerline of the taxi ramp. I was free. In the cockpit mirror I saw the heavy generator cart tumbling end over end, sparking wildly in the 22,500-pound blast of combined thrust.

  I was finally moving, but everything felt wrong. The engines seemed so loud because I wore no helmet and the canopy still gaped open. Something hard and sharp jabbed at the base of my spine. It was the rectangular aluminum warning plate connected by elastic lines to the multiple safety pins blocking the arm restraints and igniter system of the K-36D ejection seat. The harness straps and buckles were stiff and jumbled behind my shoulders. Although I could not see the plate, its red warning label, “Remove Before Flight,” seemed to mock me. The pain from the unbuckled ejection harness was more than physical. If the fighter lost an engine on afterburner takeoff, or I was shot down before I could properly strap in and remove those safety pins, the system would be useless. I would die.

  Away to the right, I saw four men moving near the front door of the duty-alert building. One of them had his arm raised, pointing toward me. He might have held a pistol, but it was too far to distinguish it. It was time to close the canopy. My own pistol jammed between my thighs would no longer be of much use. The Plexiglas dome snapped down smoothly, dampening the throaty roar of the engines. I heard the hiss as the pressure seal closed tightly.

  I was taxiing so fast that the plane swayed violently on the rough concrete blocks of the ramp. But I still had to try to align the gyroscopes of my altitude direction indicator (ADI). Without an artificial horizon, fast low-altitude flight would be even more hazardous. As the cockpit wobbled, the aircraft symbol on the ADI ball swung wildly, and the synchronize button flashed its red warning that the gyro platform had not yet aligned. But I certainly was not going to stop here on the taxi ramp and patiently wait for the system to warm up. I stabbed the button with my left thumb to recage the gyros, freezing the ADI aircraft symbol in a drunken thirty-degree left bank, in a slight nose-down pitch. So be it. This was not a training exercise.

  But whichever pilot — Petrukhin or Gromov — followed me in the one undamaged alert fighter would have to wait for his gyro platform to stabilize. And his ground crew would also take the time to pull all the canvas sheaths and apron covers from his avionics probes and missiles. All that would take at least five minutes. Add a minute for the two undrugged pilots to dash down to the apron, followed by their groggy mechanics. Add another minute for general confusion.

  If I took off now, I would have a seven-minute lead on my pursuers. At transonic speed, 630 knots, the direct route across the Black Sea to Turkish airspace would take about ten minutes. Necessity had just intervened to select Plan Two. Whatever Soviet naval contingent was out there waiting for me on this clear spring morning, I would have to face them. Missile frigates were the lesser of many evils. I certainly could not engage a pilot like Petrukhin, or even
Gromov, with just my cannon against their Archer and Alamo missiles. Yet I had to accept the aerodynamic drag of my own full set of missiles on the underwing pylons, even though they were useless still wrapped in their canvas ground covers.

  The end of Runway 09 was coming up fast. Just before I braked again, I checked the PTO panel to verify that the main weapon circuit breaker was snapped on. Even though I was wounded and the duty-alert section had obviously been alarmed, I still intended to attack the MiG-29s parked behind me on the angled taxi ramp.

  I remembered to trip the takeoff flap button on the left console, dumping twenty degrees leading-edge slats and twenty-five-degree flaps. The comforting yellow indicator lights winked on the panel ahead of my left knee. The plane was bouncing now, gathering momentum, even though I had cut the throttles to idle. I was aware that the canvas canopy cover above my head was peeling back in the slipstream like the skin of a rotten fruit.

  My eyes shot to the engine gauges on the right side of the panel. Thrust was steady. RPM matched on both engines. And the tail pipe temperatures were in the normal sector. Stable engines. Flaps, slats. That was it. Not much of a takeoff checklist with this drunken ADI, a dead navigation display, and no airspeed indicator. But it would have to do.

  I tapped the left rudder and sliced into a hard rocking left turn without braking again, a dangerous maneuver with that full belly tank. The plane actually seemed to bank, swinging here on the end of the runway. I scanned the entire length of the runway, no vehicles blocking the long concrete ribbon. As soon as the nose swung onto the centerline, I released the throttle spring stops and jammed the knobs all the way forward to maximum afterburner.

  The sudden thrust kicked me back into the seat, forcing my injured shoulder against the jumbled straps. But that was the best pain I had ever felt. Raw jet fuel was streaming into the twin exhaust streams to ignite in the double-walled chambers of the afterburners. On the master board at the upper right corner of the instrument panel, the twin green symbols Ф lit up, forsazh. I had maximum afterburners lit. Nothing on the ground could stop me now.

  The fighter bore smoothly down the centerline, gathering speed with every second. Wearing no helmet, I was acutely aware of the burners’ thunderous rumble behind me. Instinctively my eye went to the airspeed indicator, and for a moment I was shocked to see the needle stationary. On a thousand takeoffs I had waited patiently for a needle just like this to swing smoothly up to 96 knots. But with the Pitot tubes still covered, the instrument was dead. I had to judge my rotation speed by other means. The grassy margins of the runway spun past in a blur. I had been on the takeoff roll five seconds. Holding the stick in my left hand felt weird. But at least with the throttles locked, I had this hand free.

  Then, at the right corner of my panel, I saw the engine inlet indicators switch from the upper louvers of the shark gills to the main inlets. This meant my airspeed had just passed 107 knots. But I held the nose down two seconds longer. I needed adequate airspeed with a full tank and these external weapons.

  I must have rotated at more than 150 knots because there was no hint of hesitation. The nose swung up smoothly as if on a hydraulic piston and I was climbing steeply into the hot eye of the rising sun. The instrument panel clock said exactly 0524 hours.

  I switched hands clumsily and groped for the gear lever, then retracted flaps and slats. My right hand was becoming so numb on the stick that I was afraid of losing control. I kept the throttles on maximum afterburner and grabbed the stick again with my left hand. I certainly did not want to pitch up too steeply and stall. And my climb angle was much too high. In order to execute a proper strafing run, I had to match the angle of my climb with the desired dive slope of the cannon run, thirty degrees. I pushed the stick gently forward to bring down the nose.

  I would have to drop the belly tank in order to fire the cannon. But I hated to waste any of that precious fuel. So I waited as I climbed. My radar altimeter was working, but was only accurate up to 1,500 feet. Without a barometric altimeter, I had to judge my altitude by scanning the terrain for visual cues and taking angular projections on reference points below. The most important of these landmarks was the red-roofed village that lay past the road beyond the air base perimeter.

  I did not want to drop my tank with eighteen hundred pounds of jet fuel into that village. As soon as I was certain my momentum would carry the tank beyond those houses into the empty swamp ahead, I groped on the stick for the tank-drop switch. It was protected by a safety cover, which in turn was secured by a wire. I had never dropped one of these expensive tanks before, and my fingers felt unusually clumsy. Then I snapped it open and the airplane reared up wildly, again threatening a stall. Still on afterburner, the sudden loss of the tank’s mass was almost disastrous. I thrust the stick forward to “parry the moment,” putting all those years of theoretical aerodynamics to practical purpose. Then, with my right hand numb as ice, I cupped the stick and used my left hand to pull the throttles back, first to military power, then down the rails to ninety-four percent.

  I snatched back the stick and centered it, slamming the plane violently level. Lieutenant Tveretin would not have approved; this was not precision flying. Although I had a feeling he and thousands of other dedicated Soviet pilots would applaud my actions secretly. I glanced over each shoulder at the ground below. Six thousand feet altitude. It was time to begin the attack.

  I rolled the stick left and banked forty-five degrees, then swung the stick onto my left thigh to continue rolling hard past ninety degrees. The snowy line of mountains tilted. And my windscreen filled with the green valley swinging smoothly past the nose. The sheet-metal roofs of the village tilted toward me, then the highway, and finally the rusty wire fence of the air base perimeter. I centered the stick, then eased it forward to align the nose with the long gray runway.

  The base was still in shadow, and wisps of mist hung over the line of parked aircraft on the squadron aprons. I tripped the gun-arm switch on the top of the stick and my head-up display glowed with the pale green funnel of the cannon sight. I selected the malaiya “small” target size. A glowing “M” appeared at the left of the HUD. But I immediately saw my dive angle was too shallow to properly sweep the entire line of aircraft. So, like a raw kursant, I punched the stick forward to pitch down the nose. For a moment I rose in the seat with negative G, only to slam down hard again. That maneuver certainly would displease Lieutenant Tveretin.

  But I had the aircraft lined up right in the middle of the sight funnel. The line of gray MiGs swooped into sharp focus. Two long bursts would be necessary to use the full magazine of 150 rounds. I eased the stick right to correct my aim, then squeezed the cannon trigger. Nothing. I verified the PTO panel. The weapons system switch was still on. I had to have a live gun because the HUD sight was illuminated with the proper symbology. I squeezed again. Silence, instead of the harsh rattle of the cannon.

  The runway was rising fast now. I was below 1,500 feet. I clenched my teeth. Somehow the bastards in the Osobii Otdel had installed a new inhibitor on the cannon. I had no functioning weapons, no way to defend myself.

  Easing the stick back, I leveled at 600 feet, then dropped even lower. The squadron parking aprons swept past in a blur. Ahead I saw men running frantically around the three remaining fighters on the duty-alert apron. The apron floated toward me. The standby magnetic compass swung to 240 degrees. At least I was now on the proper heading for Trabzon. But I had failed in my attempt to avenge the dead of Tbilisi. It was time to leave. Sweeping past the control tower, I rocked my wings back and forth, a farewell to any friends below.

  Then I slid the throttles ahead to military power and gingerly eased the stick forward, dropping down to less than 100 feet. The flat orange groves below seemed almost chartreuse in the early morning sunshine. Off to the right, the straight line of the Tskhakaya-Poti highway and rail line cut across the flats of the Rioni valley. I was too low to see the coast ahead. But I knew it was coming up fast. The meandering brown rive
r snapped past and I was beyond any villages. Now I banked the nose south, onto a new heading of 225 magnetic.

  Even without the airspeed indicator, I knew my speed had stabilized at .95 Mach, 630 knots, at this extremely low altitude. I had never flown so fast so low. Solid objects on the ground seemed to suddenly liquefy and spray past in a blur of colors as I approached them. But I had to stay down here at least another three minutes. The distant rank of high-tension power lines to the northeast marked Poti East airfield, the site of the PVO missile brigade guarding the Navy base. I knew their improved models of V-75 Dvina missiles were deadly within a kill circle ranging horizontally from three to fifteen miles and vertically right down to 900 feet.

  By keeping the fighter at least nine miles from their acquisition radars and at ninety feet altitude, I was probably out of danger. But if the alarm had already been passed to that PVO brigade and they had low-altitude missiles of the modified Romb or Kube class deployed on mobile BRT launch vehicles, I was in trouble. The countermeasure system of this particular fighter was loaded with aluminum-foil chaff bundles, not flares. Chaff was good masking protection from radar-guided missiles, not the infrared-seeking warheads of the mobile launchers.

  The horizon ahead shimmered strangely. For a terrible moment I thought that weird glow was a flash of a missile launch. Then I saw it was the reflection of the first direct sun on the marshy Paleostomi Lake southeast of Poti. I rolled further left. There were thousands of terns and migrating thrushes in those marshes. At this speed, a bird strike, even with a tiny sparrow, could shatter the canopy and kill me. But I could not risk climbing higher until I cleared the coast.