the runway at the main guardhouse. Down on the alert apron I found the guard pacing slowly around the four aircraft. He stopped when he saw me approach.
“All quiet, Comrade Captain,” he said.
“Fine,” I muttered, “but I don’t want to hear of you sleeping out here. With all these strikes and riots, we’ve been told to expect trouble.”
“Yes, Comrade Captain,” the boy replied.
Then I saw a glow from the window of the nearby maintenance building. “What’s that light in there?” I demanded.
“Nobody’s there, Comrade Captain,” the guard answered. “I checked myself.”
“Carry on,” I told him, striding away to inspect the maintenance building myself. As the boy had reported, the room was empty. I snapped off the light. Leaving the building, I saw the young guard marching along his post on the apron. I certainly hoped the guard sergeant had saved him a piece of cake.
Just to be certain, I made several circuits of the nearby buildings. The only guard I encountered was on the duty-alert apron.
Back in the dormitory, everyone was still sleeping. Ivan Groinov had taken the couch in the alert room. He didn’t hear me when I drained the samovar to drink several glasses of strong dark tea. I sat in the easy chair trying to keep my breathing even. It was well past 0400 now, but I hadn’t seen the relief guard leave the station.
I went down the hall to the desk and shook the Ukrainian sergeant awake again. He seemed even more groggy now. It was his job, I reminded him coldly, to make sure the guard was changed on time.
“What’s the relief guard’s name?”
“Chomayev, Corporal,” the clerk said, consulting the stenciled roster sheet.
“If I put anybody on report for this,” I said, “you’ll share the punishment.”
The young man’s face was confused, unfocused, his voice slurred. It was 0420 when the apron guard was finally changed. I went back outside and circled the building. The guard bunk room was dark again. When I looked back in the alert building, the desk guard was sound asleep, head down on his folded arms, as he had been earlier.
Once more, I circled the area like a stalking cat. Then I entered through the dining room door. With my back turned to the operations desk at the end of the corridor, I hefted the armory padlock and thrust the thin metal file into the key slot. I broke off the file and jiggled the lock, making sure the slot was securely jammed.
Outside, a mist was rising in the still, damp night. The lopsided quarter-moon was low in the western sky. I took the keys from the duty section van and the fuel truck and dropped them through the grate of a storm sewer. The vehicles could no longer be used to block the runway.
Unfortunately the phone lines from the control tower were exposed to view. Twice I approached the end of the tower where the wires looped away from the junction box just above head height. Twice I stopped when I saw someone moving up in the greenhouse.
I paced in the shadows of the nearby maintenance hangar, wiping my sweaty hands on the legs of my flight suit. I could see my plan unraveling. I fought back panic and the urge to bolt, to just scramble under the barbed- wire fence, toss away the incriminating wire cutters, snatch my escape kit from the weeds, and keep running south.
At exactly 0506 I managed to cut the six phone lines from the control tower junction box. I strode away quickly to wait behind the maintenance hangar. If cutting those phone lines had triggered an alarm, the guard van from regimental headquarters would arrive soon. Ten minutes passed. The tower and alert building were silent.
Off to the east, the serrated ridges of the Caucasus steadily gained definition in the first peach glow of dawn. I was still on schedule. But there was no telling how long the neozepam would work.
A terrible sequence of events rolled through my mind like the lantern slides of an illustrated tactical lecture. The division duty clerk tries to phone Natasha in the tower. Dead line. He tries the emergency line. No answer. He sends a runner to the guard captain. They return to check the phone lines and find the cut ends. They then decide to arm the guard section, but discover the jammed lock. An alarm is sounded and the drugged officers stumble awake. Where is Zuyev? Where the hell is he?
But this was only panic. The base was quiet. I marched directly to the side door of the dining room and entered silently. Crouching in the dark corner, I felt each wire with my thumb and finger, then cut it. As I snapped down the cutter blades on the last wire, the thin strand slipped. It took me four stabs to cut it. Then I heard a loud single ding of the telephone bell in the dormitory. Again sweat beaded on my face. Cutting that last line had broken the circuit, triggering the bell’s magnet. This was fourth-form physics. Why hadn’t I thought of it?
I have to hurry now, I thought, grabbing my helmet bag of papers.
But outside I forced myself to stop and slip into the hedge beside the dormitory window. Just as I had feared, I saw Petrukhin on his feet inside. In the faint light I watched him lift the telephone, then bang down the receiver. Now he was in the doorway to the hall. I didn’t want to watch.
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
