John Barron - MiG Pilot

The faintest of hopes, the tinest flicker of light sparked by Belenko’s speech evaporated. Nothing would be done. They filed out silently, Shevsov among them and for once one of them.

Pig! No, that is an insult to a pig. In the order of the universe, a pig serves some useful purpose. You and all you stand for are to the universe like cancer.

I wish I could put you for one night in those barracks and see how you feel when someone shits in your boot. I wish I could march you into that mess hall where a maggot would retch. Oh, there you would learn the science of communism.

Well, go back to your fresh fruits and meat and perfume and lying while our men lie disabled by dysentery, cholera, and alcohol, while the Americans look down and laugh at us from the skies. But you leave me alone.

All my life I have tried to understand, tried to believe you. I understand now. Our system is rotten, hopelessly, incurably rotten. Everything that is wrong is not the result of mistakes by bureaucrats in this town or that; it is the results of our system. I don’t understand what is wrong; but it is wrong. It produced you. You, not the Dark Forces, have kidnapped our Mother Country.

Soon after this climactic and decisive intellectual rebellion, Ludmilla announced that she was leaving. They had tried as best two people could; they had failed; it was pointless to try anew. Her parents were overjoyed by the prospect of having her and Dmitri with them in Magadan, and they could guarantee Dmitri’s future and hers. She would stay until October, when her commitment to the dispensary expired. But after she left it would be best for all if he never saw her or Dmitri, who would only be confused by his reappearance.

Her statement was so dispassionate and consistent with previous demands for divorce that Belenko could find neither energy nor desire to try anew to dissuade her. Besides, she was right about Dmitri.

Conditions at Chuguyevka were not atypical of those throughout the Far East. Reports of desertions, suicides, disease, and rampant alcoholism were said to be flooding into Moscow from bases all over. In late June, Shevsov convened the officers in an Absolutely Secret meeting to convey grave news. At an Army base only thirty-five miles to the southwest, two soldiers had killed two other soldiers and an officer, confiscated machine guns and provisions, and struck out through the forest toward the coast, intending to steal a boat and sail to Japan. They dodged and fought pursuing patrols several days until they were killed, and on their bodies were found diaries containing vile slanders of the Soviet Army and the grossest misrepresentations of the life of a soldier. These diaries atop all the reports of trouble had caused such concern in Moscow that the Minister of Defense himself was coming to the Far East and to Chuguyevka.

The career of every officer would depend on his impressions, and to make a good impression, it would be necessary to build a paved road from the base to the helicopter pad where the Minister would land, about four miles away. The entire regiment would begin work on the road tomorrow.

It never was clear just where in the chain of command the order originated; certainly Shevsov had no authority to initiate such a costly undertaking. In any case, the Dark Forces, the SR-71s, the Chinese, the desirability of maintaining flying proficiency — all were forgotten now. Pilots, engineers, technicians, mechanics, cooks, everybody turned to road building — digging a base, laying gravel, pouring concrete, and covering it with macadam.

It’s unbelievable. For this we could have built everything, barracks, mess hall, everything. We could have built a palace!

But the crowning order was yet to come. Within a radius of about a mile, the land around the base had been cleared of trees to facilitate takeoffs and landings. The Minister, it was said, was a devotee of nature and its verdancy. He would want to see green trees as he rode to the base. Therefore, trees would have to be transplanted to line the mile or so of road.

You can’t transplant trees here in the middle of the summer! Everybody knows that!

But transplanted they were, hundreds of them, pines, spruces, poplars, dug up from the forest, hauled by truck and placed every fifteen yards along the road. By the first week in July they were dead, shriveling and yellowing.

Dig them up and replace them. So they did, with the same results.

Do it again. He may be here anytime now.

So again saplings and some fairly tall trees were imported by the hundreds from the forests. Again they all died. Finally acknowledging that nature would not change its ways for them, someone had had an idea. Leave them there, and just before he arrives, we’ll spray them all with green paint. We’ll drive fast, and he won’t know the difference.

It all was to no avail. In early August they were advised that illness had forced cancellation of the Minister’s inspection. He wasn’t coming after all. It was time to fly again.

To fly well and safely, a pilot must practice regularly. His skills, like muscles, grow flabby and can even atrophy through disuse. Because of fuel shortages and preoccupation with the road, they had flown little since May.

The second day they resumed, a pilot suffered vertigo as he descended through clouds preparatory to landing. In his disorientation he panicked and ejected himself. Scrub one MiG-25 and the millions of rubles it cost.

Subsequently a MiG-25 malfunctioned at takeoff. The runway was conspicuously marked by a line and guideposts. If a plane was not airborne upon reaching this line, the pilot was supposed to abort the takeoff, deploy his drag chute immediately, brake the aircraft; if he did, he could stop in time. But on this morning the pilot neglected to abort soon enough, and the MiG-25 plunged headlong off the runway. By terrible misfortune a civilian bus was passing, and like a great steel knife, the wing of the MiG sheared off the top third of the bus, decapitating or dismembering five children, three women, and two men and badly injuring other passengers. When Belenko went to help, he saw three soldiers from the rescue party lying on the ground, having fainted at the horror of the sight.

The crashes might have occurred in any circumstances, even if the pilots had been flying regularly, even if they were not fatigued from working twelve hours a day seven days a week on the road. But Belenko did not think so. It was murder.

That night he knew it was futile to try to sleep, futile to try to postpone a decision any longer. A fever of the spirit possessed him, and only by a decision could he attain relief. He told Ludmilla that he had to return to the base, and through the night he wandered beneath the moonlight in the forests.

For hours, thoughts, recollections, apprehensions — half-formed, disjointed, uncongealed, contradictory, disorderly — tumbled chaotically through his mind until he realized that, as in other crises, he must gather sufficient strength, courage, and poise to think logically.

I cannot live under this system. For me there can be no purpose or meaning to life under this system. I cannot change this system. I cannot overthrow it. I might escape it. If I escape it, I might hurt it.

Why should I not try? I will have no family. Mother I have not heard from in twenty-five years. Father I have not seen for eight years. They are not like father and mother to me anyway. Ludmilla does not want to see me again. Dmitri, maybe I could see him a few times in my life, but we would be strangers. Privilege, yes, I have privilege; I could retire in 1987. But was I born to think only about whether I eat meat and white bread? No, I was born to find my way, to understand; to understand, you must be free.