MiG Pilot Read online

  Certainly, his assessment of the crisis of the Western world was valid. The grip of the Dark Forces which controlled governments, policies, events, and the people of Western societies was weakening. The Dark Forces, that shadowy cabal, comprised of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the American military, the Mafia, Wall Street, corporate conglomerates and their foreign lackeys, clearly themselves were in retreat and disarray. Everywhere in the West, signs of decay and impending collapse were apparent.* However, he was not so sure that the progress of Soviet society was as real and fated as his paper asserted. And he personally doubted the perfectibility of the New Communist Man, whose evolution and character he delineated in detail.

  Maybe it was guilt that caused him to speak out to his detriment. His Russian literature teacher, in some casual comment, said that light is matter. “Of course it isn’t,” Viktor interjected. “That’s basic physics.”

  What began as a polite discussion degenerated into an angry argument, and Viktor embarrassed the teacher before her class by opening his physics book to a page that stated light is not matter. She ordered him to report to her at the end of the day.

  His excellent work, she noted, ordinarily would entitle him to a grade of five. But literature taught, among other things, proper manners. She could not in good conscience award a perfect mark to a student so unmannerly. The difficulty could be eliminated were he to acknowledge his error, recant before the class, and apologize for his impertinence.

  No! Why should I say I am wrong when I am right? In science, at least, you must be honest. I will not be dishonest.

  The teacher gave him a grade of four, and as a consequence, he was graduated with a silver medal instead of a gold. Still, he had his academic degree, a diploma certifying him as a Grade 3 Mechanic (Grade 6 being the highest), and a letter from school attesting to his good character and ideological soundness. He also had a plan.

  The Soviet Union maintains a military auxiliary, the Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force and Navy, which is known by its Russian acronym DOSAAF. Among other functions, DOSAAF provides young volunteers with technical military instruction preparatory to their entry into the armed services. Viktor learned that the branch in the city of Omsk, 380 miles away, offered flight training. By finding a job in Omsk to support himself, he reasoned, he could learn to fly through DOSAAF.

  His farewell to his father and stepmother was awkward, for all pretended to regret that he was leaving home, while each knew that everyone was relieved. His father gave him a note to a cousin living in Omsk and, shaking hands, pressed twenty rubles into his palm. He did not know whether his father wished to conceal the gift from Serafima or whether he simply was too embarrassed to make it openly. He did realize that his father could ill afford the gift, which equaled roughly a sixth of his monthly takehome pay.

  Omsk, larger, busier, and colder than Rubtsovsk, was an important center of armament production, a major waystop on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and a hub of air traffic between Siberia and the rest of the country. When Viktor arrived in June 1965, the factories manufacturing tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, aircraft engines, and other military hardware were running full blast day and night seven days a week, and they continued to operate at the same forced pace as long as he was there. Jobs were plentiful; the problem was finding a place to live. Therefore, his father’s cousin steered Viktor to the repair garage of Omsk Airport, which maintained a dormitory and cafeteria for its employees, gave them substantial discounts on airline tickets, and issued them warm work clothing, including heavy jackets and comfortable boots lined with dog fur.

  The garage, a cavernous brick hall with an arched tin roof that rattled loudly in the rain, was cold and dark. A dozen mechanics were under the supervision of senior mechanic Igor Andronovich Yakov. He was a big, husky man with thick white hair, a red nose, deep voice, and huge hands calloused by forty years of labor on the roads and in the garages of Siberia. For some three decades he had driven heavy trucks until, after repeated arrests for drunken driving, he finally lost his license. The airport nonetheless was glad to have him as a Grade 6 mechanic because, drunk or sober, he could fix vehicles. He shared his skills with anyone who asked his help, and he could not resist lending money, no matter how many times the borrower had previously defaulted. He was the undisputed and popular boss. And his standing and kindness possibly saved Viktor’s life on his first day at work.

  About 11:30 A.M. the master welder shoved some money at Viktor and in a patronizing tone said, “Kid, go buy some juice.”

  “I don’t want anything to drink.”

  “I didn’t ask what you want. I told you to go buy vodka.”

  “No! I won’t.”

  Brandishing a wrench, the welder approached Viktor. By not retreating, he created a confrontation which neither man could back out of except through humiliating surrender.

  He will swing from the right. I should duck under to the left. No. If I fail, the wrench will kill me or cripple me.

  Viktor jumped at the welder and with a succession of rapid jabs knocked him against the wall and twisted the wrench out of his hand.

  He turned and saw three other mechanics coming at him with wrenches. Stepping left, then right, then backward, he tried to prevent any of them from getting behind him, but they succeeded in maneuvering him toward a corner.

  “Enough!” Yakov shouted. “All of you!”

  Wielding a wrench of his own, Yakov grabbed Viktor by the arm and, jerking him away, announced, “The young man and I will buy the vodka.”

  They walked four or five minutes before Yakov spoke. “You realize they would have killed you.”

  “Maybe I would have killed some of them first.”

  “And in your grave, would you have been proud? Listen to me, young one; I know. In a socialist society do not be a white crow among black crows; else you will be pecked to death. If you want to be a different kind of bird, never let the others see your true colors.”

  At Yakov’s insistence, Viktor attempted an apology to the welder; it was hard, but he offered his hand, which the welder refused. After they drank awhile, though, he slapped Viktor on the back and shook hands.

  Viktor had violated both a daily ritual and a longstanding custom requiring the most junior man to fetch the vodka.

  Typically, about 11:30 A.M. Yakov signaled the effective end of the workday. “Well, enough of that business. We can do that anytime. Let’s talk real business. I have eighty kopecks. Let’s organize something and send the kid. He’ll bring us gas.”

  The ensuing exchanges seldom varied. “I have a ruble.”

  “I’ll support you with seventy kopecks.”

  “I can’t. I have no money today.”

  “Well, I’ll lend you fifty kopecks.”

  “All right, kid. Take the money, and do your job.”

  Viktor jogged or ran, which he liked to do anyway, to a store a quarter of a mile away to arrive before the noon crowd formed. His duty was to bring back the maximum amount of alcohol purchasable with the money collected, after he had set aside enough for bread and canned fish. The cheapest vodka cost three rubles sixty-two kopecks a half-liter, and a bottle of Algerian red wine one ruble twenty kopecks; a kilogram of good Russian bread could be bought for sixteen kopecks, and a can of foul-tasting fish for forty kopecks.

  Yakov entertained his colleagues by lining up the glasses, shutting his eyes, and, measuring by sound, pouring almost exactly the same amount of vodka or wine into each glass. Glasses filled, the party began and lasted until there was no more to drink. The men then settled by the coal stove to play dominoes, smoke, and tell jokes, allowing only an emergency to intrude on their leisure. The garage manager did not bother them; they accomplished in half a day all that was demanded, his superiors were happy, and by keeping in their graces, he could count on the mechanics if serious need arose.

  Viktor in turn empathized with them; he understood that the garage was their prison and that they had given u
p even dreaming of parole. He realized, too, the meaning of the words that followed Yakov’s first swig of vodka. “Ah, this puts a little pink in the day.” For him the garage became a comfortable haven from which he could pursue his overriding goal of flight.

  Having survived scrutiny of his ideological stability, study of his education, and a rigorous physical examination, Viktor was one of forty young men selected for DOSAAF preflight training. Five nights weekly he hurried from work to the cafeteria, then took a bus across town to DOSAAF offices located in a prerevolutionary bank building. The subjects — aerodynamics, navigation, design and construction of aircraft, radio and electronics, meteorology, and rules of flight — were not inordinately difficult. Many cadets, though, could not manage both the volume of study required and a daily job, and by the end of the first month fully a fourth had dropped out.

  Viktor never had been so happy as in DOSAAF classes. They were devoid of cant, pretense, hypocrisy. Defying regulations, the chief instructor omitted the teaching of political theory. Careers and lives might hinge on how much and how well they learned, and there was no time for trivia. The instructors were retired Air Force pilots, and in Viktor’s eyes they stood as real men who had braved and survived the skies. They treated the cadets as both subordinates and comrades, as future partners from whom nothing should be hidden. Direct questions to them elicited unequivocal, comprehensible answers, and for any question concerning flight, they had an answer. The closer they led him to flight, the more its challenge engrossed him.

  The first parachute jump was scheduled in December, and a parachutist, an Air Force major, readied them for it. He said that although he had jumped more than a thousand times, he still was afraid before jumping. “Do not fear your own fear,” he told them. “It is natural.” The temperature was forty degrees below zero as Viktor and eight other cadets climbed into the small AN-2 transport at an airfield thirty miles from Omsk. He was not afraid; he was terrified. He felt only like an automaton irreversibly programmed to proceed to its own doom. When the parachutist swung open the door and freezing air rushed and whistled into the cabin, he had to reach into his deepest reserves of strength and will to make himself stand up and take his place, third in line. Will it open? Will I remember? Am I now to die?

  The parachutist slapped his shoulder, and he plunged headlong into the void. Remember! Count! Now! Pull! A tremendous jerk shook his body, and he yelled in exultation. He was suspended, adrift in endless, pure beautiful space; he was free, free from the earth, unfettered to any of its squalor, confusion, pettiness, meanness. He laughed and sang and shouted. I am being foolish. But what does it matter? No one can hear me. No one can see me. I am free.

  Absorbed in the rhapsodies of the sky, Viktor returned to earth ingloriously, landing squarely on the back of a cow. Under the impact, the startled cow involuntarily relieved herself and bounded away, dumping him in the manure. He only laughed at himself, for nothing could detract from his joy. He wanted to go back up immediately and jump again. Before, he had longed, hoped, imagined. Now he knew. His future was clear. As long as he lived, he would live to be in the sky.

  After written examinations in mid-April, the students met their future flight instructors. Viktor was mortified upon being introduced to his. He had counted on being taught by a real fighter pilot, perhaps one who had flown against the Americans in Korea or Vietnam. Instead, he was assigned to a woman, Nadezhda Alekseyevna, who was about thirty-five. She still had the figure of a gymnast, and despite a rather rough complexion and bobbed hair, she was pretty. It almost would have been better had she been ugly.

  The sullenness with which he etched a hollow outline of his background betrayed to her his disappointment. She recognized all the cues of male resentment, for she was one of the few female pilots in DOSAAF, if not the sole one. She had earned her wings and place only through prodigious determination. At age eighteen, she had joined a parachutist club open to women and subsequently finagled her way into a glider club. Through influence in Moscow, she had graduated from gliders to DOSAAF flight training and so excelled that she won grudging acceptance as an instructor. For the past eight years she had taught, always having to be better to be equal, always having to prove herself anew, always having to tolerate the lack of any separate facilities for women at air bases.

  “Do you really want to fly?” she asked Viktor.

  “Very much.”

  “All right, we will work on it together. I am proud of many of my students. Some now are fighter pilots. I hope you will make me proud of you.”

  By law, the garage had to grant Viktor leave of absence with three-fourths pay during his flight training at an airfield north of Omsk. The field had long ago been abandoned by the Air Force to DOSAAF, and it was closed except during late spring and summer. They had to open the mess hall and World War II barracks and keep wood fires burning around the clock because even in early May the temperature was below freezing. Instructors, cadets, Air Force administrators, mechanics, cooks, and guards all joined in clearing the runways of snow and making the base serviceable.

  On their first training flight in the YAK-18U, an old, yet excellent trainer easy to handle, Nadezhda Alekseyevna told him, “Place your hand lightly on the stick and throttle and your feet on the rudders. Do not exert any pressure. Just follow my movements.” She climbed leisurely to about 5,000 feet. Suddenly she threw the plane into violent maneuvers — dives, an inside loop, an outside loop, barrel rolls, a stall, then a spin. The whole earth was rushing up into Viktor’s face to smash him. He did not know what was happening, only that the end was imminent. Persuaded that she had scared him enough, Nadezhda Alekseyevna deftly pulled out, circled, and landed.

  Viktor stood uneasily, still adjusting to the ground. “Do you still want to fly?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I can teach you?”

  “I know you can.”

  “All right, from now on, let’s work together like adults.”

  On their fourth flight, she instructed, “Make a ninety-degree turn to the left.” He banked and, pulling out a little late, altered course about 100 degrees but otherwise executed flawlessly. “Okay, ninety degrees to the right". This time he watched the compass carefully and straightened out on a heading exactly ninety degrees from the previous course. “I’m going to put us into a spin and let you try to rescue us.” She arched the plane upward and throttled back the power until it stalled, then nosed over into a dizzying spin. “Now it’s up to you!”

  Easily Viktor pushed the stick forward, stepped on the rudder, halted the spin, and pulled back out of the dive.

  “Very good! Try a loop.”

  Viktor dived, then lifted the plane upward and over and backward into a loop. At the height of the loop, when they were upside down, he snapped the plane into a half roll and righted it, effecting an Immelmann turn, a much more difficult maneuver than could be expected of him.

  “Impudent! But good!”

  Without instructions, he did a full loop, then a series of quick rolls.

  “All right! All right! Let’s see if you can land.”

  Unharnessing their parachutes, Nadezhda, who heretofore had addressed Viktor formally as Viktor Ivanovich, said, “Viktor, you can do it. You have the talent. You can be a great flier.”

  Everyone else saw it, too. Viktor could fly, as naturally as a fish swims. And to him the sky had become as water is to a fish. Before his first solo flight, he was cocky and, afterward, still cockier. When he landed after his final flight test, the lieutenant colonel who flew in the back seat shook his hand. “Young man, outstanding. I hope we see you in the Air Force.”

  The instructors and cadets gathered in the mess hall on a Friday night, their last before returning to Omsk, for a great party. Even before vodka began to evaporate inhibitions, Nadezhda abandoned her role as a superior and confided that his performance had won her a commendation. “You have made me proud, Viktor.”

  In the morning melancholy r
eplaced euphoria as Viktor canvassed his immediate future. It was too late to apply this year for Air Force cadet training. He could continue the nightly DOSAAF classes, but now the theory of flight seemed a pallid substitute for the reality of flight. He would have to subsist during the next months in the dark void of the garage without adventure or meaning. What a miserable fix. Well, whining won’t help you. That is the way it is. Do something about it.

  Returning to Omsk in August, Viktor heard that because the military anticipated need for many more doctors, there would be an unusual number of openings in the fall classes at the local medical school. Out of a whim to test his capacities, he took the entrance examinations. Toward the end of the month the medical school notified him that he ranked near the top of all applicants and advised him to report for enrollment. Why not? If you could be a doctor as well as a flier, think of all the adventures you could have! One of the cosmonauts is a doctor. If he could do it, why can’t you?

  Just three days after medical-school classes convened, they abruptly and unexpectedly were suspended so students could participate in the harvest. Legions of young people from factories, the universities, the Army were being trucked into the countryside. The manufacture of goods, the education of physicians, the training of the nation’s guardians must wait. All available manpower had to be mobilized for the frantic, desperate battle of the harvest.

  Why are we so unprepared? The harvest is not something that happens only once every twenty or thirty years. It is known that each fall crops must be harvested. Why do we have to tend to the business of the kolkhozniks?