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“Left, zero one two,” Flacht said.

Fifty feet above the terrain, Hohendorf eased the Tornado onto the new heading. Bare, oven-baked rock faces blurred past. The dashes continued to move right.

“All right,” Flacht continued. “Finger on the button.”

Hohendorf pressed it. Nothing would respond until optimum release parameters had been achieved. He kept the pressure on as the aircraft hurtled towards the railroad.

“Weapon gone!” Flacht called. “We’ve got a hit!”

“Now for the next one,” Hohendorf said with satisfaction.

Selby was entering his selected hostile area. He took the aircraft at high speed, constantly reversing his turns, never flying straight and level for more than four seconds, never allowing the same length of time between the changes of attitude. A one-second break could be followed by a three-second turn, then a two-second, then a one, and so on.

McCann, continuously scanning the world outside as well as his displays, crowed: “That’s it, baby! Let’s rock and roll!”

On the ground, Selby’s antics were making life miserable for the defending SAM and anti-aircraft teams. One radar operator in particular, a woman, was having a hard time of it.

“Ooh … he’s giving us a lot of ECM,” she was saying in a voice that was close to exasperation. “We’re getting nothing on this guy. What are we gonna do? Looks like a Tornado.” Suddenly she got excited. “And we’re locked on this guy! ECM, but we’ve got him!” Her words came faster now. “No. We’re barely keeping up with this mother. One point two degrees elevation … he’s diving …” The words were almost running into each other. “Do we have a launch on this guy? Yes! Launch complete … no. And he broke us up. We’re going to have to abort that launch.”

*   *   *

Selby was through, sweeping along the desert floor. Behind him, Beuren’s Tornado popped over a ridge and plunged towards the SAM gauntlet. But as the seconds ticked away, the operator was still chasing Selby, determined to nail him.

“There he is again,” she said. “Let’s get something on this mother. He’s got some good manoeuvres. Down in the dirt. This guy’s in close. Do we have launch? No. He broke us up again.” She didn’t say fuck, but she was thinking it. “This guy’s done some outstanding ECM. C’mon. Where are you?” She was almost seductive about it. “OK. I’ve got him again. This guy is down low. Tornado. We’re getting nothing here. Fuck it all,” she added, giving in.

Beuren was close on Selby’s tail. The operator had taken their measure and was out for blood now. The slightest mistake by the attacking aircraft was going to give her a kill. She was determined.

Beuren entered the fray.

“Here’s another one,” the operator said. “I’ve got lock on this guy. He’s got some manoeuvres, but I’ve still got him. ECMing … breaking us … but I’m still with him.” Her voice was beginning to rise with the excitement of the chase. She counted off range parameters rapidly. “ECM momentarily, but I’m with him. We’re launching on this guy. Launch complete.
No manoeuvres, no nuthin. Just straight plain flying. We’ve got this guy.” She sounded very pleased.

Selby went on to hit his targets, swung back for the SAMs. Behind him Beuren wheeled, hitting targets but in reality out of the battle.

Knowing they had downed one Tornado in their sector, the operators there were eager for the leader. This time, a male operator was tracking Selby.

“OK,” he said. “We’ve got an inbound Tornado. Jamming good. Terrain masking. We’ve got a lock. No we don’t. There he goes.”

“I think we’ll call that a miss,” someone next to him said.

“I reckon,” he said.

They laughed sheepishly.

“And here he comes again!” the operator began excitedly. “Oh boy! He’s in close and coming right for us.” The roar of the Tornado seemed to fill the desert as it screamed overhead, almost touching.
“Woo!
Crazy too! Can’t touch him. Let’s see if we can get his wingman.”

In his sector, Hohendorf was wiping out his targets. Urquhart and Ferris in their Tornado were being almost as devastating. They turned for the SAMs.

*   *   *

On the desert floor and among the rocks, the defense teams waited, chagrined by the lack of success so far.

“I’ve got this Tornado here.” The operator who’d had the first fruitless encounter with Hohendorf hunched forward over his screens. “He’s in real low and oh man he’s giving us some jamming and we’ll never get on to him. He’s down, down in the dirt, just about ready to get out and walk. Some ECM here. Ain’t nothing we’re gonna do about it. There he goes.” A sense of having lost. “Masking and jamming, and on his way. And there’s his wingman. Gone too. We’ve got nothing on these guys. Tornado. Yeah.”

The four aircraft made a low-level rendezvous at Yucca Flats and headed back to Nellis. They’d done a good day’s work, marred only by Beuren’s taking a hit. Later, the videos showed only too graphically what had happened.

Beuren had not gone low enough.

Afterwards, when they could talk privately, Ecker said to Hohendorf: “It was his first time out, Axel.”

“That’s not good enough, Johann, and you know it. I had Urquhart and Ferris down there with me. They used the terrain and survived. Selby feels let down …”

“He didn’t say so …”

“Would you in his place? Let’s be honest, Johann. The Englishman must be furious. He could
have had a perfect mission. We beat the defences and eluded the fighters. If Willi had gone down low, we would have had a clean day. I will fly against Selby anytime, but that doesn’t mean I want him handicapped. Next mission, I’m pairing Willi with me … and I want him down on the deck for the attack.”

But the next time, Beuren still held off. His avoidance manoeuvres were good, and he hit a fair number of targets. His only problem appeared to be the ability to go below 100 feet. He was happier at 200. He was good at eluding the defending fighters. However, during the Red Flag visit he fell victim to the SAMs and anti-aircraft guns no less than four times. None of the others had been acquired long enough for a successful launch, and had escaped unscathed.

When they returned to Schleswig Hohendorf let the report on the deployment speak for itself to Wusterhausen. It contained all the relevant information. Besides, as Ecker pointed out to him, many US aircrews had fallen victim to the ferocious enlisted personnel in the rocks, and none had been grounded because of it.

Hohendorf was in as much a quandary as ever. He had no liking for ruining a man’s career, yet an incident that had taken place the day before they had begun their return flight to Europe only added to his worries. An F-lll crew had over-cooked it on a low-level pass, and had ploughed into the mountains.
Both the F-lll crew members had died in their aircraft.

As time drew near for his posting to Scotland, Hohendorf felt no better, but chose to say nothing to Wusterhausen. He hoped he would not regret the decision one day.

A forward airbase on the Kola Peninsula, spring into summer.

Kukarev, the high boots of his summer everyday dress gleaming, stood by the control tower and watched as a pair of Sukhoi Su-27 interceptors, twin-tailed and twin-engined, hurtled down the vast 4.6- kilometer main runway. Made up of geometrically precise oblong blocks of concrete, it resembled a great road that came from nowhere on its way to nowhere.

Kukarev kept his eyes upon the Su-27s as they lit their after-burners and leaped smoothly into the air. They were going out on routine patrol, and would not be back for at least an hour. This was not to be an extended mission.

Ever since his detachment as test pilot to the forward base six months before, he had gradually worked up into a specific routine. He made it his business to know the movements of the other aircraft with which he shared the base. This aroused no suspicions, as his test flight program called for various exercises with and against those very aircraft. There were formation routines, air combat
practice, ground attack manoeuvres, tanker exercises, recce patrols, and so on. He engaged in mock combat with both the Su-27s, and the MiG-29s, noting the styles of the pilots involved.

For example, he knew of one particular Su-27 pilot who in close combat, always began his attack with a high-speed approach; but instead of putting out his airbrakes to slow down and prevent the overtake thus warning an alert potential victim, would go into a high-G barrel roll, displacing about the target aircraft and keeping out of sight while he took the shot.

Kukarev had a counter to that particular move, but never used it. When he eventually made his break, if it was discovered this might be one of the pilots sent to chase him. Painstakingly, he had made himself familiar with each pilot’s idiosyncracies, in preparation for the day of his final take-off.

His detachment was made up of the one aircraft, but there were two other pilots who shared the test program with him; a captain, and the detachment commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Melev. Kukarev felt sorry about Melev, whom he considered a good man. The Lieutenant-Colonel would be severely dealt with for the loss of the aircraft; but he was simply unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kukarev was determined to carry out his plan.

His expression betraying nothing of his thoughts, the young Russian studied a big Ilyushin
11-76 as it trundled onto the runway in readiness for take-off, its four underslung turbofans whistling as the pilot throttled back and came to a stop. This was a tanker version and Kukarev had carried out several refueling exercises with it. Did its departure mean that the Su-27s were on an extended patrol after all? he wondered. If so, this was a change from normal practice. He would have to watch for these sudden changes in future. It would not do to take-off on his final flight, only to find a tanker set up to attend to his pursuers’ fuel needs.

The base was home to a wide variety of aircraft. It was a special unit, not normally on the operational roster of bases in the area. But it was kept in a constant state of readiness as a deployment and exercise unit. The current occupiers were his own detachment, plus a 28-aircraft regiment of Su-27s, 2 11-76 AW ACS and 2 11-76 tankers, with an assortment of utility and transport aircraft making up the entire complement.

The 11-76 was winding up to take-off thrust; then with a quadruple roar, the high-tailed aircraft urged itself down the runway. Kukarev watched it rumble on its take-off run, sluggish by comparison with the hurtling ‘27s that had gone earlier. Now the nose was coming up and the large aircraft heaved itself into the air, heading north.

Kukarev knew that Murmashi, to the northwest, was an active interceptor base. So was Malyaur, still northwards but a little to the east. A
2-squadron regiment of MiG-29s had recently been rotated there. Here on his detachment base, the Su-27s were due for rotation southwards to the Central Front, but that did not necessarily mean they would be staying there. Whenever he left, if his destination was guessed there’d be plenty of high-tech machinery to send after him.

He had already decided upon the circumstances, though the exact date of his defection had not yet been selected. It would be at the end of the detachment, towards the beginning of autumn. When the Krivak’s test program was over he had already been detailed to fly the aircraft back to one of the manufacturer’s airfields. On that day, it would be flying with full tanks …

“Comrade Major!”

Kukarev turned at the familiar voice, not showing the irritation he felt.

Captain Anatoly Zitkin was the base’s most junior political officer. Kukarev’s antipathy for
Zampolits
exceeded even his late father’s but unlike his father he knew how to keep his thoughts to himself. General Kukarev had often said loud enough for anyone within earshot to hear that there was nothing about patriotism that any political officer could teach him. He spoke with the assurance of a man who at twenty had hurled his fighter into massed formations of enemy aircraft during the Great Patriotic War with a ferocity that had stunned even his comrades. He had become one of the youngest squadron
commanders and in later years, one of the youngest generals to command an air army.

But even that had not made him immune to the schemes of those who had sought his downfall. And even today
glasnost
and
perestroika
would not prevent the old guard from resisting fiercely. In fact, the possibility of reform would ensure it. The Russian spring, if there were to be one, would have a hard time of it. Which was why the general’s son was leaving. What had started as a blind desire for revenge had matured into the belief that he could do more for his country from outside it.

Zitkin arrived, slightly out of breath.

“I hope,” Kukarev began good-naturedly, “you’re not going to scold me for not keeping up with my hours of political instruction.”

Zitkin smiled, but it failed to reach his deep-set eyes. “No, Comrade. I have … a favour to ask of you.”

Wondering at the nature of this favor, Kukarev waited.

“Comrade …” Zitkin began and paused, seemingly unsure of himself.

A revelation, Kukarev thought.
Zampolits
were not normally uncertain, even with someone of higher rank.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time,” Zitkin went on. “Some weeks ago, you had a visitor. I have since discovered him to be a senior officer with the KGB.” Zitkin paused a second time, looking
slightly embarrassed. “Comrade Major, I do not wish you to think me … impertinent … but you appear to have good relations with the Comrade Colonel. I am eager to serve the Motherland as best I can and I thought that perhaps the next time you saw the Comrade Colonel… well, you know my work—if you would put in a word for me, then perhaps….” He tailed off.

Kukarev wanted to laugh. The little bastard was ambitious and wanted a push through the back door, in the time-honored fashion of those his father had spent all his life resisting … What, he now wondered, would Zitkin say if he knew that the KGB senior officer, Sergei Stolybin, was not only a good friend but was also, in Zitkin’s terms, a traitor? That without Stolybin, the plan to take the operational prototype to the West wouldn’t work?