MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

The first parachute jump was scheduled in December, and a parachutist, an Air Force major, readied them for it. He said that although he had jumped more than a thousand times, he still was afraid before jumping. «Do not fear your own fear,» he told them. «It is natural.» The temperature was forty degrees below zero as Viktor and eight other cadets climbed into the small AN-2 transport at an airfield thirty miles from Omsk. He was not afraid; he was terrified. He felt only like an automaton irreversibly programmed to proceed to its own doom. When the parachutist swung open the door and freezing air rushed and whistled into the cabin, he had to reach into his deepest reserves of strength and will to make himself stand up and take his place, third in line. Will it open? Will I remember? Am I now to die?

The parachutist slapped his shoulder, and he plunged headlong into the void. Remember! Count! Now! Pull! A tremendous jerk shook his body, and he yelled in exultation. He was suspended, adrift in endless, pure beautiful space; he was free, free from the earth, unfettered to any of its squalor, confusion, pettiness, meanness. He laughed and sang and shouted. I am being foolish. But what does it matter? No one can hear me. No one can see me. I am free.

Absorbed in the rhapsodies of the sky, Viktor returned to earth ingloriously, landing squarely on the back of a cow. Under the impact, the startled cow involuntarily relieved herself and bounded away, dumping him in the manure. He only laughed at himself, for nothing could detract from his joy. He wanted to go back up immediately and jump again. Before, he had longed, hoped, imagined. Now he knew. His future was clear. As long as he lived, he would live to be in the sky.

After written examinations in mid-April, the students met their future flight instructors. Viktor was mortified upon being introduced to his. He had counted on being taught by a real fighter pilot, perhaps one who had flown against the Americans in Korea or Vietnam. Instead, he was assigned to a woman, Nadezhda Alekseyevna, who was about thirty-five. She still had the figure of a gymnast, and despite a rather rough complexion and bobbed hair, she was pretty. It almost would have been better had she been ugly.

The sullenness with which he etched a hollow outline of his background betrayed to her his disappointment. She recognized all the cues of male resentment, for she was one of the few female pilots in DOSAAF, if not the sole one. She had earned her wings and place only through prodigious determination. At age eighteen, she had joined a parachutist club open to women and subsequently finagled her way into a glider club. Through influence in Moscow, she had graduated from gliders to DOSAAF flight training and so excelled that she won grudging acceptance as an instructor. For the past eight years she had taught, always having to be better to be equal, always having to prove herself anew, always having to tolerate the lack of any separate facilities for women at air bases.

«Do you really want to fly?» she asked Viktor.

«Very much.»

«All right, we will work on it together. I am proud of many of my students. Some now are fighter pilots. I hope you will make me proud of you.»

By law, the garage had to grant Viktor leave of absence with three-fourths pay during his flight training at an airfield north of Omsk. The field had long ago been abandoned by the Air Force to DOSAAF, and it was closed except during late spring and summer. They had to open the mess hall and World War II barracks and keep wood fires burning around the clock because even in early May the temperature was below freezing. Instructors, cadets, Air Force administrators, mechanics, cooks, and guards all joined in clearing the runways of snow and making the base serviceable.

On their first training flight in the YAK-18U, an old, yet excellent trainer easy to handle, Nadezhda Alekseyevna told him, «Place your hand lightly on the stick and throttle and your feet on the rudders. Do not exert any pressure. Just follow my movements.» She climbed leisurely to about 5,000 feet. Suddenly she threw the plane into violent maneuvers — dives, an inside loop, an outside loop, barrel rolls, a stall, then a spin. The whole earth was rushing up into Viktor's face to smash him. He did not know what was happening, only that the end was imminent. Persuaded that she had scared him enough, Nadezhda Alekseyevna deftly pulled out, circled, and landed.

Viktor stood uneasily, still adjusting to the ground. «Do you still want to fly?» she asked.

«Yes.»

«Do you think I can teach you?»

«I know you can.»

«All right, from now on, let's work together like adults.»