James Huston - Fallout

Popovich thought of how troublesome this fat Colonel could be. Although Stoyanovich didn’t have the power he thought he had, he was not without resources. Popovich answered reluctantly, his confidence receding slightly, “He has taken a job with a civilian company.”

“ What company?”

“MAPS.”

“How? Those jobs are impossible to get. With his record, he would not be able to do it, not without my help. He should have come to me…”

“He didn’t need your help. He had friends that got him the job.”

Stoyanovich paused. “What friends?”

“New friends.”

“The same criminals you call friends? Those friends?”

“Such words. You do not need to speak like that.”

Stoyanovich took his hat out from under his arm. “Gorgov?” he asked.

“What better friend could one have?”

Stoyanovich stormed out of Popovich’s office. The decay was all around him, closer than it had ever been.

Luke stood in the back of the ready room and made sure all the students from the first class were in their seats. They talked nervously. The minute hand on the clock in the back of the ready room clicked audibly to the 0730 position. Luke nodded to Hayes, who turned off the lights, throwing the windowless room into total darkness. Suddenly the loud sounds of an alternative rock group blared from the Bose sound system hidden in the overhead of the high-tech room. It was a pounding, rhythmic acoustic guitar that sent chills up the spine of every officer in the room. The music was far too loud to permit conversation.

Luke wanted to make Tonopah the true Fightertown, the place where all fighter pilots in the country would want to hang out, leave stickers and plaques on the wall, and build tradition and camaraderie. Ever since Miramar had reverted to a Marine Corps Air Station and TOPGUN had moved to Fallon, there hadn’t been that one place that lived in the mind of Navy pilots as the place where they all wanted to be, where they would spend every waking hour if they could. Fallon was trying, but it wasn’t there yet. Oceana in Virginia Beach was trying, but it lacked a certain something, a certain exotic feel, remoteness, or color.

Flying fighters was as much about morale and pride as it was about any one other thing. Airplanes, training, tactics, courage, opportunity—they all mattered. But without a certain belief in one’s abilities and skills, without pride, these students would almost certainly fail. Everything about the new school, including the first morning, was calculated to build excitement and enthusiasm about what they were doing.

As the music pounded, the screen in the front of the room sprang to life with video images of the MiG-29. The color footage was vivid and impressive. It was an air show routine being flown by Anatoly Kvotchur, a professional Russian Fulcrum pilot. It was probably the most famous flight demonstration ever given by a MiG-29.

The class watched in total absorption as the pilot wrapped the airplane into a tight turn in front of the throngs of people at the Paris Air Show. The airplane twisted and turned beautifully in the blue sky above Paris. The noise of the air show was barely audible over the music. The thirteen members of the new NFWS class sat enthralled by the images and the excitement. They all loved jets. They loved flying fast. They loved the concept of air combat and having the ability to beat somebody in the air. The image was clear as the MiG-29 came across the runway at Le Bourget airport and pulled up into a Cobra maneuver, in which the airplane transferred its forward airspeed into an immediate nose-up pitching maneuver intended to cause a less agile airplane following closely to streak by. The crowd was obviously amazed. But then something happened. A flame shot out of the right engine, and the airplane departed, rolling right. It pitched toward the ground in a steep dive. Everyone watching the film knew that there was no way that airplane could pull out at that attitude. The pilots in the room had all heard of the ’89 air show, but none had ever seen it. They held their breath as they watched. With the MiG-29 barely above the ground, an explosion threw off the canopy, and the pilot’s ejection seat came rocketing out of the airplane. Just as the ejection seat cleared the airplane, the MiG-29 plunged into the grass next to the runway in a ball of flames right in front of the air show crowd.

“The Zvedza K-32D ejection seat,” Luke said into his wireless microphone. “Best ejection seat in the world. He got out when he was sixty feet off the ground, his airplane headed straight down, with one engine dead and the other in full afterburner. He was outside the envelope of every Western ejection seat. Yet in his Russian seat he survived this incident uninjured.” The camera lingered on the burning wreckage as the pilot floated down next to his dead airplane.

The screen faded and the lights came up slightly, showing Luke standing at the lectern in front of the room. He turned down the music. “Good morning. My name is Luke Henry. My call sign is Stick. You may hear that it’s because I’m skinny. That, of course, is false,” he said, as they all snickered, examining his lean frame under his flight suit. “The truth is, I was the best stick at TOPGUN, and my call sign is simply an acknowledgment of that fact by the other pilots.” They laughed.

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. What you have been watching is a videotape of the MiG-29, one of the best fighters in the world. It is the jet you are most likely to face if the balloon goes up.

“The reason you’re here—the reason we’re all here—is that airplane. We have them, we know how to fly them, and we want to teach you how to fight them and fight them effectively. In the course of learning to fight the MiG-29 you will learn fighter maneuvers that will put you in good shape to fight any other fighter you might encounter, because the MiG-29 is about the best fighter out there. It has been the leading export fighter from Russia since 1985.

“Let me welcome you to the Nevada Fighter Weapons School. It is an honor to have you here.” Luke looked at all their eager faces. He glanced around the spotless, fresh ready room. The NFWS colors of desert camouflage and black and silver dominated the entire room. The ready-room chairs were the same chairs one could find in a squadron ready room ashore or at sea. They were the Navy standard-issue one-hundred-pound steel chairs with leather seats and high backs that reached up above one’s head. Glenda, Raymond’s wife and the co-proprietor of the Area 51 Café—as they’d insisted it be called—had stitched head covers for each ready-room chair out of black leather embedded with the squadron’s logo.

“All the instructors have had at least one tour as an instructor at TOPGUN. This is probably the best accumulation of pilots anywhere in the world. That’s the good news for you, because they are really good instructors and they really understand flying fighters. It’s also bad news for you, because you’re going to have to fight for your life every day against those pilots in Russia’s best fighter and the number one threat you will ever face. Let me introduce them to you.” All the instructors stood and were introduced in turn, after which Luke ran through his PowerPoint presentation of the class syllabus.

“We want to get you flying right away. After a couple of lectures we’ll start with basic fighter tactics. 1 v. 1 maneuvering. We will show you how to maintain your lookout, how to make your opponent’s lookout more difficult. We will teach you energy maintenance and various nuances of air combat. Some of you may know most of the things we’ll teach you, in which case we’ll just refine your skills. The first lecture will be given by Stamp—Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamper, the operations officer. That class will commence in”—Luke glanced at the clock on the back bulkhead—“forty-five minutes, at 0830. Other lectures will follow during the morning, including the AIM-9 missile. I will be giving that lecture at 1000. Then we will break for lunch. In the afternoon each of you will have your first 1 v. 1 hop against an instructor.