And I realized that, whatever my destination, I would have to fly low, right down on the deck, below radar detection, where fuel consumption was maximum. And I would have to fly fast, at least until I was well clear of Soviet airspace. If I actually managed to steal a MiG-29, there would be other fighters sent up to intercept and destroy the plane before I crossed the frontier. Flying fast and low would limit my escape radius to three hundred miles. I measured that distance on the chart and looked for suitable airports within the fan-shaped wedge of my flying range.
I immediately spotted the civilian airport at Trabzon, a port 130 miles west of the Soviet border along Turkey’s mountainous Black Sea coast. Given the steep coastline, the Trabzon airport was down at sea level and looked long enough to accommodate civilian airliners. At least I hoped it was. Trabzon became my primary destination.
The next problem was obvious. I had to find a safe course to Trabzon, a route that offered the maximum chance of survival. Flying a direct southwest course from Tskhakaya across the Black Sea would take me over the Soviet naval base at Poti, which was defended by a PVO brigade, armed with low-, medium-, and high-altitude missiles, as well as with radar-controlled antiaircraft artillery. Equally bad, the Soviet naval contingent at Poti was almost exclusively antiaircraft missile frigates and destroyers. On any given day during the coming good spring weather, a number of ships from the flotilla would be at sea on maneuvers, fully armed with Dvina and Neva antiaircraft missiles. Those naval units’ specialty was intercepting both low- and high-flying intruders.
But if I chose the wiser course of hugging the mountainous coast and flying through the narrow valleys and hopping ridges when necessary, I would have to pass right over the extensive PVO missile complex at Batumi on the Soviet-Turkish frontier. Using the coastal mountains for terrain masking from both Soviet and Turkish radar, however, was the attractive feature of that route.
So my Plan One would be to fly south from Tskhakaya, right down on the deck, cut a sharp dogleg around our air base at Meria, and climb into the mountains well east of Batumi, still north of the frontier. I would then climb a valley, masked by the ridges, and pop over the summit ridge into Turkey to descend down the opposite valley. That would be risky flying, but the whole escape was a risk. If for some reason that route was not possible, my Plan Two would have to be the direct course over the Black Sea.
My next hurdle was obvious: how to gain access to one of our armed and fueled MiG-29s without being challenged. I needed an armed plane to destroy our parked aircraft.
All the MiG-29s parked on the aprons were fueled and carried a full cannon magazine of 150 shells. But seizing one, even late at night, would be difficult. Since the Tbilisi massacre, the guard patrols had been increased and the normal guard roster on the parking aprons doubled. So merely climbing into one of the parked aircraft at night would arouse suspicion.
And there was another problem. When the maintenance officers put our regiment’s MiG-29s “to bed,” they always secured the throttles with a thick split-pipe lock that slipped right over the rails and held the throttle knobs in the stop position. Locking the throttles had acquired the status of an important ritual in 1986, when the Osobists had warned us that a Western spy had been ordered to steal a MiG-29 and fly it out of the Soviet Union. But there was no way a spy or one of our pilots could fly an aircraft with that lock in place, and the maintenance officers kept possession of the keys. I certainly could not climb into a cockpit and start cutting away with a hacksaw without being arrested.
There was another possibility. The keys to these locks were kept in the technical maintenance building, a facility I visited regularly, day and night, as part of my newly assigned duty. It might be possible to steal the keys, make impressions of them, and have duplicates made in the bazaar. Copying keys from wax or clay molds was illegal, but this was Georgia.
The fighters on the main aprons, however, did not carry the one-ton belly tank of extra fuel, which might be the deciding factor between success and failure. I would certainly need as much fuel as possible, and that belly tank would increase my range to 430 miles. So why bother with the squadron fighters when there would always be four MiG-29s — carrying full belly drop tanks and armed with cannon and missiles — ready for immediate takeoff on the duty-alert apron, nicely isolated at the far western end of the runway?
By strict regulation, the duty-alert planes had to be in perfect mechanical condition, ready for takeoff within five minutes of the first alert. And I knew for a fact that the throttles of the duty-alert planes were never locked. Even the Osobists could not risk having a scramble for the intercept of an actual intruder aborted because some mechanic could not find his key.
At an absolute minimum, I could be airborne in under four minutes after I climbed into the cockpit of an alert plane. I made this calculation carefully because my life obviously depended on its accuracy. It would take fifty seconds to start one engine and begin taxiing toward the end of the runway. I could start the other engine while rolling along the ramp. Call it forty more seconds for the taxi, and twenty more for the engine thrust to stabilize. Round that off to two minutes, then double it to be on the safe side: a minimum of four minutes from the time I climbed over the cockpit sill until I slammed the throttles forward for a full afterburner takeoff.
Now another obvious conclusion fell into place, like more tumblers in the combination lock. I had to think beyond my attack on the regiment’s parked aircraft, to my reception in Turkey. Stripped-down models of the MiG-29 had already appeared at Western air shows, so the fighter itself was no longer a mystery to the American Air Force. But the MiG-29’s advanced Archer infrared- and Alamo radar-homing missiles represented a coveted prize for the American military. A duty-alert plane became doubly attractive.
More imaginary tumblers clicked. I would not be able to take full advantage of the belly tank fuel, after all. In order to fire the cannon, I had to drop the belly tank. After engine start, the first 220 pounds of fuel came from the main inboard tanks. Then the fuel was drawn from the drop tank. On an afterburner takeoff I would use more than half for taxi and takeoff. Depending on how long I held the tank on my climb, I might burn an additional 200 pounds. So flying a duty-alert plane with a belly tank would present a net gain of about 500 pounds of fuel, no small consideration in an emergency. Of course not attacking the parked planes would allow me to keep the fuel. But this was an act of vengeance, not just an escape.
Of course I could never simply climb into one of the alert plane cockpits, start the engines, and taxi away. Stopping such unauthorized, nonsanktionaire takeoffs was the principal responsibility of the alert apron guard. The guard would have to be disarmed and neutralized without alarming the men of the duty section in the alert building. Somehow. Another seemingly impossible challenge.
Ironically, as controller of flight operations, one of my principal duties was preventing such takeoffs. I was well versed in the procedures employed to stop a hijacking. At the first sign of trouble, the twelve-man guard section had orders to draw their AKM assault rifles from the armory in the alert building, then quickly block the runway with trucks. The duty-alert officer would then ask division headquarters to pass the alarm to the PVO units in the region. From experience, I knew the PVO missile batteries needed thirty minutes to warm up their terminal intercept radars and prepare their weapons for launch. Whenever the Ruslan Air Base runway was blocked by snow in the winter, we had to turn regional alert responsibility over to the PVO at Poti and Batumi. Their officers constantly reminded us that we had to give them at least a half hour before they were “up.”