John Barron: MiG Pilot

As he had done every day except Sunday during the past four weeks, Lieutenant Viktor Ivanovich Belenko awakened himself early to watch what the dawn might reveal. The first light was promising, and upon seeing the fiery, blinding sun rise, he knew: almost certainly this would be the day. Above the vast forests of pine, cedar, birch, and poplar stretching along the Pacific shores of the Soviet Far East, the sky was azure and cloudless. The magnificent weather meant that barring mistakes, malfunctions, or some other vagary, in all likelihood he would fly as scheduled. Probably he finally could attempt the supreme mission which rain, fuel shortages, or bureaucratic caprice repeatedly had forestalled. If the weather held, his chances of reaching the objective would be as good as he ever could expect.

Belenko estimated it all should be over within the next six hours. At age twenty-nine, he would be either dead or reborn into a new world. He felt tension in the muscles of the arms, legs, and stomach, but the stress derived more from the complexity of the mental tasks ahead than from fear of dying. During his training as a MiG (Named for its designers, Mikoyan and Gurevich) pilot he had lived on the edge of death so long and seen sudden, violent death so often that he had given up contemplating it. He had come to regard it simply as an unfathomable phenomenon to be avoided as long as possible, but not at any price. Neither did he dwell on the infinite uncertainties and unknowns that awaited him should he succeed and survive. He had assessed them as best he could before making his decision, and there was no profit in considering them further now. The awareness that he was looking for the last time at his pretty wife and three-year-old son, both sleeping within his reach near the window, evoked no emotion either. She had adamantly demanded a divorce and had announced her intent to take their child back to her parents in Magadan, some 1,250 miles away. The many failed attempts at reconciliation had sapped all emotion from the marriage, and there was nothing more to say. He was tempted to pick up and hold his son. No! Don’t! He might cry. You wouldn’t ordinarily pick him up at this hour. Don’t do one thing that you wouldn’t ordinarily do.

Belenko put on his shirt, trousers, and boots quickly, trying not to awaken his family or the family occupying the other room of the apartment. From between the pages of a tattered Russian-English dictionary he removed a slip of paper on which he had written a three-sentence message succinctly explaining his mission. Preparation of the message the month before and its retention ever since had been dangerous. Yet it was necessary that he deliver a written message instantly if all went well, so he folded the paper into a tight square and buried it in his pocket.

In the small yard outside the frame apartment house reserved for officers, he exercised for fifteen minutes, doing push-ups on soggy ground and chinning himself from the limb of a tree. Then he commenced jogging through the muddy streets of Chuguyevka, a village situated in the taiga 120 miles northeast of Vladivostok, toward the bus stop about a mile away. Running and jumping puddles, Belenko looked like a prototype of the New Communist Man the Party spoke endlessly of creating. He stood just over five feet eight inches and had an athletic physique, with broad, slightly sloping shoulders powerfully developed by years of boxing, arm wrestling, and calisthenics. A Soviet television program once pictured him — yellow hair, fair complexion, and large blue eyes widely set in a handsome, boyish face — as the very model of a young pilot. Women, particularly older women, were beguiled by his smile, which they found simultaneously shy and rakish.

At about seven that morning, September 6, 1976, Belenko arrived in a decrepit bus, built before World War II, at the headquarters compound of the 513th Fighter Regiment of the Soviet Air Defense Command. Outside the smallest of the red-and-white-brick buildings he hesitated. No, you have to eat. You would be missed. Besides, you will need the strength. Go on!

In the officers’ mess, fresh white cloths covered the tables, each set for four pilots, and still-life paintings of fruit and vegetables adorned the walls. The waitresses, girls in the late teens or early twenties, all employed because they were pretty, enhanced the ambience. A physician was tasting the breakfast of goulash, rice, fruit compote, white bread, buttermilk, and tea to make sure it was fit for fliers. After he approved the food, everyone sat down in white plastic chairs and began.

Because Belenko was acting deputy commander of the 3rd Squadron, he customarily dined with the squadron commander, Yevgeny Petrovich Pankovsky. More often than not, by breakfast time Pankovsky’s day had already started unhappily. The regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Ivanovich Shevsov, rose early to survey the wreckage visited upon his domain during the night, and by six-thirty he had the squadron commanders before him to berate and degrade them for the most recent transgressions of their underlings.

Shevsov was a sorely troubled officer. This was his first command, and the difficulties besetting the regiment would have taxed the capacities of the wisest and most experienced leader. He did not quite know how to cope, but he tried mightily, shouting, threatening, and often ridiculing officers in front of one another and the men. Other pilots dubbed him the Monster, but to Belenko he looked more like a toothless boxer dog: short, husky, with receding red hair, a protruding jaw, and a face that seemed in perpetual motion, as if he were chewing or growling.

Belenko greeted his squadron commander as always. “Good morning, Yevgeny Petrovich.”

“You think it’s a good morning? Do you know that already I got reamed? Did you know that our soldiers refused to eat breakfast this morning? They threw their food at the cooks, and one of them hit a cook.”

“Would you eat that food from their mess hall?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t eat that food either. I think if we would take a pig from a good kolkhoz and put that pig in the mess hall, that pig would faint.”

“Well, I agree. But what can I do about it?”

At eight the regiment assembled on the asphalt parade ground before the staff headquarters buildings. Pilots stood at attention in the first rank; flight engineers, their assistants, and the enlisted men in succeeding ranks behind.

“Comrade Soldiers, Sergeants, and Officers!” Shevsov shouted. “Today we fly. Our mission is a vital mission, for we will fire rockets. The results of this important mission will depend on everybody, from soldiers to officers, working together. In spite of all our troubles here, we each must do our best today.

“We must remember that the Americans are not sleeping. We must remember that the Chinese are only a day’s march away. We must remember that aircraft, fuel, and rockets are expensive and that our government which supplies them is not a milk cow. We cannot afford soon to repeat this mission, so we must do it properly today.

“Now, next weekend we will give the Party a Communist Weekend. Everybody will work, officers and soldiers; everybody. Each squadron must gather sod and plant it over the aircraft bunkers so that from the sky they will appear to the Americans to be no more than green, grassy fields.

“I have one other announcement, a very serious announcement. Do you know that our regiment has a great lover? Do you know whom he loves? Not his faithful wife who waits far away, anxious to join him here as soon as quarters are ready; no, he loves a whore in the village, a common whore.” While the officers winced and the enlisted men snickered, Shevsov read aloud a telegram from the wife of a flight engineer, beseeching him to compel her husband to cease a dalliance of which she suspected him. “Here we have a big example of degenerate capitalist morality. Let this be a warning to all. Henceforth in our regiment we will abide by and tolerate only communist morality.