James Huston - Fallout

“What was Sunil doing here?”

“Don’t worry about it. It was about me. I explained everything to him about what we are doing.”

“But he was headed over here.”

Vlad nodded with understanding. “He thought I was in this airplane.”

Luke watched him disappear into the left wheel well, then reemerge after thirty seconds. He gave Luke a nod and a thumbs-up as he ran back toward his own airplane.

Luke quickly lowered the canopy. He shook his head as the first thought that came to him was that Vlad had somehow disconnected the left landing gear or released a fitting in the hydraulic system. As soon as he got up to speed, the MiG would lose the left strut and veer off the road, killing him. He was angry at himself for not trusting Vlad but unable to rid himself of lingering doubts.

He turned on the electrical power from the battery and quickly switched on the auxiliary power unit. It began turning his number one engine as the Indian ground crew watched. Two men stood to the left of the MiG with fire extinguishers in their hands, and a plane captain stood in the grass directly in front of Luke. Luke squinted to see him and realized that his windscreen was covered with mist. Great weather brief. He glanced up at the sky but couldn’t see it through the darkness and the tree covering him.

As the engine turned, Luke watched a man by the road working with a box that had a long electrical line coming from it. It clearly wasn’t responding as he would like. He adjusted something, and suddenly the highway was lit by a mile-long string of lights on either side, creating a rough, wet, uneven, poorly maintained runway. It was the very kind of strip the MiG-29 was designed to operate from.

The first engine roared to life, and the fuel flow, turbine inlet temperature, and RPM climbed into normal ranges. He deselected the auxiliary power unit and quickly did a cross-bleed start of the number two engine, redirecting some of the jet air from the first engine across to the second engine to get its turbine spinning. He watched the RPM of the first engine dip slightly as the second began to turn. As soon as the second engine reached 10 percent RPM, he pulled its throttle off the stops, automatically lighting the engine off. The RPM jumped to 65 percent, idle, and he deselected cross-bleed. He turned on all the electronics and prepared to taxi.

The plane captain began signaling for the preflight checks—flaps, control surfaces, and the like. Luke was having none of that and shook his head vigorously. He had to get in the air.

Luke signaled to the plane captain to pull the chocks away from the wheels, and the plane captain signaled the men on either side of Luke’s MiG. They removed the large wooden blocks in front of the oversize tires. Luke switched on his taxi light, advanced the throttle, and the MiG-29 rolled down the grass toward the road thirty yards ahead. The MiG drew in the night air from the louvers that were open on the shoulders of the airplane. The large intakes that would feed the hungry engines with the air it needed while airborne remained closed, to avoid sucking anything off the ground and damaging the turbine blades.

Luke looked to his right and saw the light on the nosewheel of Vlad’s MiG bouncing as he taxied forward from his position. As Luke headed toward the road in the pale moonlight that fought its way through the mist, the Indian ground crew saluted him. He returned their salute and turned on his radio. They had agreed to keep their radio communication to a minimum, and only on the frequency that Luke alone would choose.

Luke pondered the idea of taking off from a state highway in the night to intercept an F-16 without the use of any ground or airborne early-warning radar to help him run the intercept. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that the only information they had on Khan’s whereabouts was from a border guard. The heading information they’d received was marginal at best, but Luke could imagine the heading, or calculate it, if Khan headed directly for his target. If he didn’t, Luke knew he would never find him.

Luke scanned his engine instruments, glowing in the dark cockpit. He turned his MiG to face down the makeshift runway. He looked ahead of him at the narrow road with the lights on either side. It was slightly downhill and curved to the right in the distance where the lights stopped. The lights rose up and down with the road. It gave Luke the impression of trying to take off from a piece of bacon.

He advanced his throttles and moved forward slightly, trying to point his MiG exactly down the center of the road. Then he glanced into his rearview mirror. Vlad was directly behind him. Luke looked at the clock on the dash and knew he had to go. He pushed the throttles to full military power, waited until 100 percent RPM was generated in each engine, did a quick check of the engine instruments and flight controls, and released the brakes on the Fulcrum. The plane sped down the road, the lights disappearing under its wings one by one. The bulbs reflected their white light off the inside of Luke’s canopy as if he were dashing into a movie theater.

The MiG accelerated through eighty knots, then one hundred. The road dipped and the nose gear compressed but threw the Fulcrum’s nose back up as it headed out of the dip. The airplane almost had enough air over its wings to fly, and the impulse of climbing the small hill nearly threw the Fulcrum into the air before Luke was ready. He pushed the stick forward and held the Fulcrum on the ground waiting for the proper rotation speed.

The curve in the road was coming up too quickly. He knew he had to be airborne before he reached it. He had disabled nosewheel steering and was able to keep the MiG on the road only by using the rudder pedals to control the big rudders behind him. He put in more rudder and checked his airspeed. He was passing through 135 knots. He hated the idea of taking off with rudder input, but he was afraid of losing control around the turn.

He pulled the stick back smoothly, and the Fulcrum’s nosewheel came off the road. The louvers closed and the large engine intake doors opened, sucking in the fresh, moist air. The nose dipped, Luke trimmed it out, and the MiG lifted off. Luke could suddenly feel the crosswind he hadn’t even been aware of, having attributed all the side force to the curve. The rear wheels lifted off, and Luke felt himself drifting hard left over the road. He pushed the stick to the right and pulled back on the nose to climb over obstacles, the invisible trees and bushes and wires that surrounded the area. He wanted to get away from the earth as rapidly as he could. He punched in a little afterburner to climb faster, then immediately deselected it to save gas. He raised his flaps, sucked up the landing gear, and pulled away from the road and Vlad behind him.

Vlad released the brakes on his Fulcrum as soon as the lights on Luke’s airplane showed him airborne. He rolled down the undulating road, acutely aware of the crosswind he’d seen Luke’s plane absorb. He gave himself a little afterburner just before liftoff to avoid the curve he’d seen Luke fight. He was promptly airborne, and he rendezvoused with Luke at five thousand feet over the local navigation aid they had agreed to use.

Luke and Vlad kept their radars off. They knew they had to make the intercept without any help from a ground controller. They would get course corrections if absolutely necessary, but they wanted any communication kept to a minimum to avoid detection.

Luke steadied on a heading of 220 to take them fifty miles ahead of Khan’s expected course. He suddenly realized he had no idea how many airplanes were with Khan. The border guard had simply said “airplanes.” That could mean two, or four, or six. It would be a rare person indeed who could distinguish the sound of two low-flying jets from that of three or four, especially if they flew directly overhead with their lights off.