They flew in a four-ship that skimmed out over the Barents Sea. Ges took them down so low their wings lifted froth off the flat slate-gray waters.
A call came from Nagurskoye. “White Formation, you are ordered to steer 350, climb flight level 50.”
Ges responded, “Copy, Nova. 350, 50, White 1.” His voice was calm and crisp. In person Ges was clean-cut and handsome and had the knack of being liked by his superiors while still getting along with his peers. He’d volunteered for patrol on a national holiday.
They turned and entered a climb. Yefgenii’s eyes were trained upward, already searching for contrails. They crossed George Island, the glaciated south slipping under their noses, then the tundra of the northern tip. The vast polar ice field was opening out ahead of them, and slabs of cloud hung in scatters from horizon to horizon. The MiGs were tilted up, each with two missiles and a pair of drop tanks slung beneath them, laying twisted columns of contrail behind. At 5,000 metres Ges ordered them to level out. He reported to Nagurskoye and they were ordered to continue north.
Ges asked, “Nova, White 1. What’s going on?”
“Continue north, White 1. Information will follow.”
Something was happening. Yefgenii’s pulse quickened. He said, “We need to know what we’re looking for.”
A pause hung. The air rushed, their jets roared.
Ges answered, “I concur.” He dialed the Nagurskoye frequency and transmitted, “Nova from White Leader, I respectfully request further information for air recognition purposes.”
There was silence. The MiGs pressed north. The volcanic islands were far behind them now, a mottling of dark patches on the pack ice behind their tails.
At last Nagurskoye cut in. The air defense radar was tracking an unidentified contact at 20,000 metres or higher, heading north from the Plesetsk region at about 600 kilometres per hour. It was too high and too fast for interceptors and antiaircraft artillery. There were fighters in the air from every station in the Volga-Ural Command, but only the MiGs from Graham Bell stood any chance of making contact. They were to rendezvous with an M-4 tanker that was already airborne 100 kilometres to the north, and to await further instructions.
Yefgenii’s heart beat. He understood what must be up there. He knew the prize.
The ice cap curved toward the Pole. In the distance Yefgenii saw the top of the world with ridges of white cloud above and above them just the emptiness of the clear sky into which they pressed, with frost in crystal patterns glistening on their canopies. Waves of turbulence shook their ships.
Yefgenii was first to spot the tanker. His back was numb — the flesh stone-cold, the muscles rigid.
It was many minutes before Ges and the others could see it. They heard radar control advise that, on their present course and speed and on the contact’s extrapolated course and speed, the contact would be crossing through their overhead in about forty-five minutes. That’s how long they had to take on fuel and climb to ceiling.
Yefgenii peered ahead at the tanker. The converted M-4 glinted silver in the sun. Vortices corkscrewed off the tips of its huge swept-back wings.
Ges gave the order to line up for refuelling. Turbulence buffeted the MiGs. A couple of times it shook the pilots in their straps. Ges, in the lead, advanced into the tanker’s wake. An umbilical dropped out of the rear and began to snake toward the MiG’s nose. The end of the umbilical enlarged into a receptor. Ges bounced in the airstream, trying to line up the MiG’s refuelling probe with the bobbing waggling receptor. He drove into the umbilical and the probe locked into its receptor. He shifted a lever to open his tanks and fuel flowed into them from the M-4. Ges disengaged with a full tank and the next MiG took his place. The pilot accelerated past the receptor and had to throttle back. He lost height and had to let the tanker move ahead again so he could climb back into position. He tried to line up the probe on the receptor but he was veering from side to side. The receptor struck his nose and canopy and he throttled back out of range again.
Over the radio Ges was getting impatient. Soon their target was going to be coming overhead. He gave the MiG pilot one last go and, when he failed to engage the umbilical, he ordered the next MiG to take his place.
The turbulence was roughening. The third MiG bounced in and out of range, dropping and climbing and banging into the receptor without latching onto it.
“Shit, shit.” Ges was getting worried. The clock was ticking.
Yefgenii couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Get the fuck out of there and let me get this fuel.”
For the most part, on the ground, Yefgenii played the role he’d been given. He accepted his status, he surrendered to his exile, he mingled with mild manners among lesser men, but not now, not in the air, not on the brink of combat. His voice was the voice of Ivan the Terrible, and every man flying alongside him knew who he was, what he’d done, what he was capable of.
Ges transmitted, “White 3, disengage. White 4 for refuel.”
Yefgenii powered into position behind the tanker. The wake turbulence bounced his MiG but it was nothing he couldn’t handle and he snagged the fuel line and pretty soon disengaged with full tanks.
Ges ordered, “White 2, try again.”
The refuelled MiGs flew alongside the tanker as the other two took turns trying to engage the umbilical. They were running low on fuel and, if they didn’t get more very soon, they’d not only be unable to climb into combat with Ges and Yefgenii, they’d be unable to make it home at all.
Yefgenii and Ges were watching the clock. Yefgenii transmitted, “Let’s get into this.”
Ges didn’t hesitate. “White 2 and 3, refuel and follow as soon as you’re able.”
They began the climb to their ceiling. Yefgenii’s eyes were trained upward. Nagurskoye Radar had done its best to estimate the contact’s position but it was impossible to be precise given that the MiGs were beyond radar and their target could be as much as 6,000 metres above them.
Yefgenii and Ges had their minds fixed on the prospect of battle and they barely heard the first transmission from their comrades. The other two MiGs now lay far behind; not even the tanker was visible, but the first had abandoned his attempt to refuel and was on an emergency recovery to Graham Bell.
“Shit,” said Ges. Yefgenii said nothing.
Their comrades’ chance of making it back was slim, with only the frozen sea wide and deadly below. A few minutes later the fourth MiG flamed out still struggling to engage the umbilical. They heard his mayday, quiet and remote, the signal breaking up: a man wouldn’t survive long on the ice, if he survived the impact at all.
Ges didn’t say anything this time.
Yefgenii kept his gaze upward, searching the patch of sky overhead. “Contact, twelve o’clock high.”
“I don’t see it.”
A minute cross of black metal soared across the high dome, spinning a cotton-thin trail The enormous wingspan, almost double the aircraft’s length, made its identity unmistakable.
“I’m visual. Contact is a U-2.”
The CIA operated U-2 Spy Planes deep inside Soviet airspace, conducting reconnaissance of military installations from an altitude well above the ceiling of every enemy aircraft and missile system in existence. This one must’ve been returning to a base somewhere in Greenland or Canada, or even Alaska. The U-2 had the range and was aloof to enemy attack.
Ges said, “Shit, we’re never going to catch him.”
Yefgenii said, “Either you want to get this fucker or you don’t.”
Ges searched the sky above. The sunlight was endless, there was nothing else he could see. Nevertheless he transmitted to Nagurskoye, “Nova, White 1, we’re visual with contact, repeat we are visual, contact is a U-2, repeat U-2, requesting permission to fire.”
Nothing came back. They were out of range.
The MiGs continued over the white wilderness. The U-2 soared a full 10 kilometres above them, but at their own operating height, the MiGs could match it for speed. Yefgenii kept
his eyes on the tiny black cross with its gossamer contrail and Ges kept his on the fuel gauge.
Time stretched. They were crossing the white ridge that capped the Pole. Yefgenii’s back had seized. His calves tingled, he couldn’t feel his feet on the rudders. The two men said nothing to each other the whole way. Deep into evening, the sky shone blue as noon. Yefgenii’s eyes strained to keep the enemy in view. A headache tensed in his forehead and probed down into his temples.
Ges didn’t even ask him if could still see the U-2. If he lost it, he’d say so; they would turn back. But Yefgenii didn’t say a thing. The pain in his back made his eyes water. His focus was so strained even the film of tears made a difference, blinking the aircraft into visibility, blinking it back into a blur.
By now they were only 100 kilometres from the Pole. Their compasses were swinging. Yefgenii let out a gasp of relief. “He’s letting down. He thinks he’s safe.”
Ges felt his mouth go dry.
Yefgenii armed his missiles. His head was pounding, his eyes were sore.
They sat behind the U-2 as it drifted down through 15,000 metres. At last it was under the MiGs’ ceiling.
Then, for the first time, Ges saw the target. It was floating down a few kilometres straight ahead. Yeremin had placed them in its six o’clock position the whole time, had kept them invisible every step of the way.
“I’m visual,” Ges said. “Engaging.”
Yefgenii didn’t argue. Ges was the leader. It was his prerogative to take the kill.
The two MiGs bore down on the tail of the U-2. From the belly of Ges’s fuselage a missile dropped and lit like a sparkler. It streaked ahead but something went wrong, and it corkscrewed down, trailing a helix of white smoke.
At once the U-2 began to climb again. He knew he was under attack. His ascent wasn’t fast but the MiGs were near their ceiling; they were sluggish in the climb, being left behind.
“Shit,” said Ges. “Shit.”
Yefgenii pulled back his stick. His nose struggled up. An approaching stall buffeted the wings. He kept trying to keep the nose up, fighting the buffet, trying to point the aircraft at the diminishing form of the U-2. He held steady till the last second, and then he released a missile. It streaked upward, a second sun that ascended on a plume of white smoke. Fire flashed and they saw the black shape of the enemy distort into a mash of body and wing, trailing soot. The broken plane plummeted toward the ice with Ges calling, “You got him! You got him!” and in Yefgenii’s vision the shapes blurred and skipped and his head throbbed.
No parachute bloomed. The broken plane tumbled down in fragments, disappearing long before impact like a shattered lifeboat sinking under the ocean.
At once the MiGs turned back. They headed for Nagurskoye rather than Graham Bell; it was only a matter of kilometres closer, but every second counted, every gram of fuel.
Yefgenii peered at the fuel gauge. He was counting down. “What you got, Ges?”
“Maybe enough, maybe not. You?”
“Same.”
They said nothing more. They flew on. The sun blazed, endless, glinting on their visors and on the buckles of their harnesses. Empty ice lay blank below.
Ges dialed the frequency and started transmitting. “Nova from White Leader, come in. Come in, Nova.”
Their engines roared, their fuel burned.
“Nova, do you copy?”
Yefgenii could see shapes far, far ahead, but they were a blur. He wasn’t sure if they were reflections, or a mirage.
“Nova, do you copy, White 1?”
“White 1, we copy.”
He couldn’t contain his excitement. “Nova, we have killed the U-2, 88-30-30 North, 40-30-00 East, White 1.”
Cheering came over the channel as Radar Control congratulated them and confirmed the coordinates.
Ges transmitted, “We are low on fuel. Request visual recovery.”
“Granted!”
They began the descent. “What you got?” Ges asked.
Yefgenii didn’t even need to glance at the gauge. “Not much. You?”
“Vapors,” Ges said.
The MiGs were coming down from altitude, throttled back to conserve fuel, half flying and half gliding.
Ges’s MiG stuttered. It started to drop back and its descent became steeper. He’d flamed out.
Without power the plane was in a glide, its wings still generating lift as they cut through the air, but without any thrust to hold on the approach slope. He was sinking toward the sea. “I’m not going to make it.”
Ges sounded calm but Yefgenii knew what he was facing. He heard the click of Ges keying his transmitter, then an infinitesimal pause, before he heard, “Nova from White 1. Please confirm you’re on tape. I want to record a message for my wife.”
Ges had gotten married only a year ago. He had only a minute or two to tell her everything that was left to say, before he was gone forever.
Yefgenii peered across at Ges. He was already falling behind and below, on his way down.
“We’re recording, White 1. Pass your message.”
Yefgenii closed his throttle and eased back in a descending turn.
Ges spotted the maneuver. “Yeremin? What are you doing?”
He lined up on Ges’s tail. “I’m going to push you. Hold her straight in the glide.”
“You don’t have the fuel, Yeremin. Save yourself.”
Yefgenii had some fuel, maybe enough, maybe not. The way he flew, he was more precise than the other pilots; he wasted less than they did. He said, “We’re too far out. The sea’s too cold. You’ll be dead in the water before the chopper’s halfway here.”
Ges said, “You’re going to waste what little fuel you’ve got. Neither of us will make it. Save yourself. That’s an order.”
“Negative, White Leader. I’m coming in. Just hold her straight.”
Yefgenii closed. He was bobbing a little but in the glide the MiG trailed a forgiving vortex. They were pitched down in a shallow dive, passing through 3,000 metres. Ges’s tailplane was a sail drifting down to the seabed, the rudder a blade jutting behind. This close, Yefgenii could see the rudder quivering on its hinges. His nose nuzzled under Ges’s jet exhaust. One of the aircraft bobbed, it was hard to tell which. Yefgenii’s nose struck the rim of Ges’s exhaust. A clang reverberated along the fuselage. Chips of paint sprang out into the slipsteam and vanished. Yefgenii eased back in again. This time his nose settled into contact with the bottom of Ges’s exhaust. One MiG sat upon another. The tailplane loomed over Yefgenii’s canopy and his head was only a few metres from the black opening of the jet exhaust.
Nagurskoye cut in, “White 1 from Nova. We’re recording. Pass your message.”
“Nova, wait, White 1.”
Yefgenii warned, “Throttling up.”
“I’m ready.”
Yefgenii dabbed the throttle forward. His gauges barely flickered. Ges felt a small kick. His wings created a little more lift and he drew back his stick a fraction. He was still pitched below the horizon with his altimeter winding down through 2,500 metres. In slow increments Yefgenii pushed the aircraft sitting on his nose until it was moving fast enough to support more level flight.
The strips of Nagurskoye remained far ahead, possibly they were beyond reach. His fuel gauge was telling him he’d soon flame out himself.
Yefgenii pushed the throttle. Power surged through both aircraft. Ges’s tail lifted and then fell back. The collision rang through the planes like a bell and gouged dents out of both. Chips of metal pinged off Yefgenii’s wings.
He throttled up harder. Metal groaned in the nose as it reared up into Ges’s rudder. The lower hinge ruptured and a small section snapped off the trailing edge.
Ges glanced down into the sea. That’s where he’d be now, freezing to death, if his wingman wasn’t Yefgenii Yeremin. “I think I can see the airfield.” Ges was surprised Yefgenii hadn’t seen it first.
Yefgenii flamed out. The jets were silent. Now they were gliding wit
h only the rush of air.
“I see it,” Yefgenii said. The strips were blurring into each other. His head throbbed. He thought he was going to vomit, but he could read the geometry now. He was on the glide path behind Ges.
The two MiGs touched down one after the other. Fire trucks were speeding toward them but the pilots were already opening their canopies. Ges stood on his seat, his face red and creased where his mask had been, but showing white teeth in a grin. Yefgenii couldn’t get out of his seat. He managed to unhook his oxygen mask and gasp fresh air. At once his head began to clear.
Ground crew helped him out of his straps. They were trying to congratulate him, to shake his hand, but his awareness of them was dim, he was in so much pain all he could say was, “Get me out,” which they did, helping him down the ladder like an invalid as Ges looked on in concern, but Ges got distracted by congratulations and handshakes. The next time he looked Yefgenii was stretched flat on the hard snow, his face contorted in suffering.
Ges dropped to one knee and clasped Yefgenii’s hand. His eyes glistened. “Thank you. My wife thanks you. Ivan the Terrible.”
Yefgenii smiled through the pain. No one had called him that in such a long time.
THE EYES WERE NO LONGER what they’d been. He told no one, not even the widow. He passed his medical examinations because his sight was no less sharp than any other pilot’s, but it was no longer superior. Age had stolen his hair and drawn lines on his face but worst of all it had taken his eyes.
Another winter decked Graham Bell in snow. The wind drove streams of it across the runways and pushed drifts against the sides of hangars and against the walls of the little redbrick house where Yefgenii had lived with the widow and their two children for eight years now. Yefgenii left the house in darkness and took the bus down to the flight lines that pointed like arrows out into the frozen sea; he flew in darkness and returned home in it.
The new year was 1964. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were planning in earnest spaceflights involving multiple crews that would attempt rendezvous, docking, and extravehicular activity, operations essential for a successful lunar landing.
Ascent by Jed Mercurio Page 11