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.
Is there freedom in the West, in America? What would it be like there? I don’t know. I know they have lied about everything else, so maybe they have lied about the West, about the Dark Forces. I know that however bad it is in the West, it cannot be worse than here. If the Dark Forces are the way they say, I can always kill myself; if they are as bad as they say, there is no hope for the world or mankind.
All right. I will try. And I will try to hurt this system as badly as I can. I will try to give the Dark Forces what this system most wants to keep secret from them. I will give them my plane and all its secrets.
The fever had broken, replaced by a serenity, a purposefulness exceeding any he ever had known.
On a navigation map Belenko drew from Chuguyecka an arc representing the maximum range he estimated he could expect to attain, considering the evasive maneuvers and altitudes he would have to fly. Within the arc he discerned only one potentially hospitable airfield large enough to accommodate a MiG-25, the military field at Chitose on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. All right. It has to be Chitose.
He could not attempt the flight until two conditions obtained simultaneously: The planes had to be fully fueled, and the weather very good. Because a MiG-25 cannot land safely with much fuel aboard, they were not loaded to capacity unless they were going to try to intercept the SR-71s or engage in an important exercise such as the firing of missiles. To prevent MiG-25 pilots from talking with foreign pilots, the radios were restricted to a very narrow frequency band that permitted communications only with other MiGs and Ground Control. Thus, he would be unable to tell the Japanese of his intentions or to ask their guidance. He could only hope that Japanese interceptors would force him down or that he could locate the field himself. In either case, clear weather was essential.
Any commander had the right at any time to ask a pilot the most recondite technical questions about his aircraft, tactics, production, or any other professional matter. To prepare himself for these quizzes, Belenko kept notes in a thick tablet which he carried in a flap pocket of his flight suit. Now he began methodically and cryptically recording in the tablet every Soviet military secret he had ever heard, every thought, and all data that might be beneficial to the United States.
There was one more thing to do. It was imperative that as soon as he landed, the Japanese take all measures necessary to protect the MiG-25 and prevent its recovery by the Russians. He wanted to tell them that, but he could speak not a word of Japanese or English. So he decided that he must write a message in English to hand to the first Japanese official he met. He drafted the message first in Russian: “Immediately contact a representative of the American intelligence service. Conceal and guard the aircraft at once. Do not allow anyone near it.” Laboriously, with the aid of a little Russian-English dictionary, he translated as best he could the message into English.
That done, he could do nothing more except wait for the day, not knowing when it might come. He knew that when it came, the chances would be very much against him. But he was at peace with himself. For the moment he had found a purpose.
CHAPTER IV
In a Japanese Prison
Barely maintaining airspeed, Belenko slid the MiG-25 downward through the seemingly interminable darkness of the clouds, each second of descent diminishing the chances of success and survival. He watched the altimeter…, 600 meters…. 500…. 400…. 300…….
I’ll pull up at one-fifty if I’m still in the clouds. Any lower would be suicide.
At 250 meters, the world lit up; he was under the clouds and could see… an airfield. It was not the base of Chitose he sought but the commercial airport at Hakodate, ninety miles to the southwest. The runway was shorter by a third than any on which he had ever landed a MiG-25, and he knew it would be impossible to stop on the field. But maybe he could keep the plane and himself largely intact.
He banked steeply to the right, turned about 260 degrees, and began his approach toward the south end of the runway. Then, within seconds, he had to make an excruciating choice. A Japanese airliner, a Boeing 727, was taking off, right into his flight path. The gauge showed empty, and he could not be sure that he had enough fuel to circle again for another approach. If the fuel ran out and he lost power during another turn, the aircraft would plummet straight down like a twenty-two-ton boulder and smash itself into mostly worthless pieces. If he continued his approach, he might collide with the airliner, and the range between it and the MiG-25 was closing so rapidly that neither the commercial pilot nor he would have any margin for a mistake.
No, I cannot do that. I was not born to kill those people. Whatever I think, I do not have that right. Better one life than many.
He jerked the MiG into the tightest turn of which it was capable, allowed the 727 to clear, dived at a dangerously sharp angle, and touched the runway at 220 knots. As he deployed the drag chute and repeatedly slammed down the brake pedal, the MiG bucked, bridled, and vibrated, as if it were going to come apart. Tires burning, it screeched and skidded down the runway, slowing but not stopping. It ran off the north end of the field, knocked down a pole, plowed over a second and finally stopped a few feet from a large antenna 800 feet off the runway. The front tire had blown, but that was all. The tanks contained enough fuel for about thirty more seconds of powered flight.