“All the more reason,” Rain replied, looking around for support.
Luke was uncomfortable. He didn’t want a rift. “We may follow a lot of Navy traditions here, but call signs that insult people will not be one of them,” he said to Rain, who looked chastised. “How about we call him Vlad? That okay with you?” he asked.
“Vlad is good.”
“Good. Come up here and talk about the maintenance.”
“Good morning,” Vlad said awkwardly. His hair was plastered to his head, and those in the two front rows could smell him. They curled up their noses and looked at each other, wondering how someone who was such a hygienic wreck could know much about anything. “I’m Vladimir Petkov. We have six of the MiGs ready to go now. The other two will be finished within two weeks, and of course the two-seater has been ready. The ones that are flying are holding up good. The desert air is good for them, and everything is on schedule. They are durable airplanes, but we will certainly have failures. We expect eighty-five percent flying at any given time, and enough spare parts to have a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour turnaround for any airplane the breaks down. I do not think we will have a problem.”
“Thanks,” Luke said as Vlad returned to his seat. “I have given each of you two notebooks. The first is the instructor’s manual with a syllabus. That’s what we will be doing between now and the first day of class. Some of you have been here and have completed a good part of that syllabus. The rest of you need to catch up and make sure that you finish it before classes start. The pilots who finish the syllabus first will act as instructors for the remainder of the syllabus for the others. It will be a large team effort, but I’m sure we can do it.
“We will be going from basic familiarization of the MiG-29 to NATOPS sign-off—which of course stands for Nevada Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization.” He smiled, referring to the Navy NATOPS that everyone knew about, the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization. “The reason we’re doing things the old Navy way is, even though we hated some of the Navy ways, we’re all familiar with them and we know what works.
“The second book that you have is the proposed student syllabus for our first class through the Nevada Fighter Weapons School. It is, as you can see, based on the TOPGUN syllabus. We’ve made some modifications. There isn’t much air-to-ground work. Our objective here is to teach not strike warfare but air-to-air combat. We will do a little air-to-ground, but that’s not our focus.”
Luke looked around at the excited faces. “A couple of other things. As the squadron progresses, we expect to be able to do some road shows. If MAPS can support us, we’ll be prepared to take our MiGs overseas. It’s something that very few others have been able to do, but if we can arrange for the appropriate tanking—which will also require us to modify our airplanes—we can work anywhere in the world.”
“We can start our own war!” Sluf said. “Shit hot!”
“Good old Sluf. You know, you should have stayed with the forest service. At least that way all you’re going to kill are a few trees. Always there with a good idea.” Luke continued, “We’ve got a lot to do, a lot to talk about, and we’re going to be doing most of it for the first time. There will be some bumps in the road, I guarantee you. But give me some room to maneuver and we’ll figure out whatever needs to be figured out. Let’s get this school under way.”
10
The intense bearded man walked quietly off the Qantas flight from Sydney into the terminal at San Francisco International Airport. To someone watching him closely, he looked uncomfortable in his Western clothes. He was careful not to look around for law enforcement people or immigration officials who might examine his passport and other documents too carefully. He had nothing to hide. No contraband, no weapons, nothing that would give him away. Just false documents. Once through immigration, he would have no problems. He knew that the others with him were in the same position. They were all on different flights from different countries with passports from different origins. They would all arrive within four hours of each other.
He gathered his suitcases, full of secondhand clothes he had never seen before yesterday, and put them on the rolling SmarteCarte to stand in line for the customs and immigration stations.
He walked to the “Nothing to Declare” line and was waved through without comment. He maneuvered his SmarteCarte to the INS station and stood behind the yellow line in the “NonU.S. Citizen” line. Finally the person in front of him was done, and the INS agent looked at him as he approached. The agent extended his hand. “Passport,” he demanded.
The bearded man, perhaps thirty years old, handed it to him, trying to look completely unconcerned.
“Final destination?”
“Mountain View,” the man replied.
“Business or pleasure?”
“Family. My sister lives there.”
The INS agent ran the Bangladeshi passport through a scanner and looked carefully at the photograph and the paper. There was something about the man’s eyes that bothered him. “What’s her name?”
He hesitated. He hadn’t expected that question. “We call her Shiri.”
“Is she a permanent resident of the United States?”
“Yes.”
“Is she employed?”
“Yes. She is a computer programmer.”
“What do you do?”
“I am a mathematician.”
“How long do you plan on staying?”
“Four days.”
“Do you have a return ticket?”
“Yes.”
The agent held out his hand for it.
The man pulled the ticket out of his shoulder bag and handed it to the agent.
The agent examined it carefully, looked at the man again, hesitated, and stamped his passport. “Welcome to the United States,” he said, smiling as he handed the man his passport.
The ice blue MiG-17 flew gracefully over the runway at Tonopah and snapped into a left-hand break. Luke and the other pilots standing on the flight line watched carefully, noting whether the MiG pilot was losing altitude, whether he was maintaining a constant angle of bank, and whether he had to correct his turn before rolling level on his downwind leg. He made no corrections. He leveled his wings in a perfect downwind position and lowered his landing gear. The blue jet was being flown with tremendous precision.
It was a beautiful airplane. It most closely resembled the American F-86 Super Sabre from the Korean War. It had made quite a name for itself flying against Americans in Vietnam. It had a T-tail and swept wings with the single jet intake in the mouth of the airplane giving it a sports car look, with a bubble canopy sitting on top of the sleek, clean exterior.
Everyone on the ground immediately wanted to fly it. The MAPS mechanics, half of whom were Russian, looked on with unfettered joy at one of their favorite airplanes.
The MiG-17—the Farmer, as it had been called by NATO for the last forty years—landed perfectly and turned off the runway. It taxied quickly to the flight line.
Paul Stamper had checked in to the school a week before and had finally brought his own MiG. Stamp opened the canopy and scrambled down the ladder that one of the MAPS mechanics put next to his jet. He was wearing a custom-made blue flight suit and a metallic blue helmet. It was his MiG, his own fighter, and he was prouder of it than of anything he’d ever owned. The pilots walked over, gathered around the jet, and studied it as he walked toward them. Stamp called out, “Greetings, earthlings. I have come in peace.”
“Blow me,” Thud said, eyeing the MiG enviously. “Stamp, how the hell’d you get this ride?”
“Bought it.”
Vlad stared at the MiG with the look of someone who knew more about it than every other pilot there, including Stamp. He was almost speechless. He spoke with astonishment, “You can own MiG planes in U.S.? Anybody?”