CHAPTER ONE

Syria, October 5, 1973

It was a simple mission, to a man of his abilities.

Get assigned to fly the right jet, follow the route, save enough fuel, avoid ground fire and find someplace to land.

Raz plyunut, he’d thought to himself. As easy as spitting.

He hated Syria. The place was a hellhole, compared to Moscow. Everything was brown and filthy, all the way to the hazy, rocky hills that surrounded the Tiyas T-4 Military Airbase. Even when it rained, as it had the evening before, it was just grimy mist falling onto sand. Like warm, dirty sweat from the sky, leaving smeared streaks on everything that was parked outside.

But his jet was inside, protected by an arched shelter that had been hardened against missile strikes and thickly covered with sand to avoid the prying eyes of satellites. There were no hangar doors at either end, so he could start engines, taxi out and get airborne swiftly, and get back inside just as quickly after landing.

His flying boots echoed oddly off the curved walls as he walked towards his hulking silver-and-black jet. A tall, thin yellow ladder, balanced on its tripod base, showed the way up to the cockpit. He hung his helmet on the side hook and stepped back to look at the airplane. One careful walk-around, a last chance to check all systems before takeoff.

Two things about the MiG-25 always caught his attention. The first was the bizarrely tall and thin tires. It was as if they’d been taken from some oversized off-road motorcycle and mistakenly attached to this flying machine. The bright-green hubs of the inner wheels added to the incongruity. He kicked the black rubber as he walked past, like he always did.

For luck.

The other strangeness was the enormity of the engine intakes. Yawning black rectangles, bigger than any jet he’d ever flown, leaning forward like giant shoulder pads on either side of the cockpit. Empty great mouths that could gulp down air fast enough to feed the two voracious Tumansky R-15B-300 engines within. After years of flying MiG-25s, Grief knew the deafening whistling sound they made as well as he knew his own voice.

As a test pilot, he’d pushed the plane to find its limits of speed and altitude, clawing a record-breaking 37 kilometers up above greater Moscow to where he’d seen the blackness of the sky above and the curvature of the Soviet Union below. His squadron mates had nick­named him “Griffon” after the highest-flying of all birds, the griffon vulture. The name had soon been shortened to just one harsh Russian syllable. “Grief.”

The cool of the desert night had soaked into the hardened aircraft shelter’s walls and the metal of the jet, but the day’s heat was already starting to blow in through the open doors. He could feel it on his hands and head; the rest of his body was encased in the tightly laced pressure suit he wore to protect himself from the thinness of the air at the extreme altitudes that this MiG-25 could reach. The same sort of suit that cos­monauts wore. He liked the feel of smooth pressure against his skin.

Completing his preflight inspection, Grief pulled his helmet off the hook, put it on with hoses dangling and started up the skinny ladder.

The Americans called the jet Foxbat. The first letter F had been designated for fighter aircraft in the Western military naming system, and predecessor MiGs had been clumsily nicknamed Fagot, Fresco, Fishbed and Flogger. Grief had seen the words in American reporting and disliked the lack of avian poetry; he was glad they’d chosen better this time. The actual foxbat was a flier, one of the largest bats in the world, with keen eyesight and the ability to fly stealthily and far.

The MiG-25 Foxbat was still the best in the world at what it did. The Mikoyan-Gurevich design engineers had been tasked in 1959 with intercepting and shooting down the new Cold War American high-altitude supersonic bombers and spy planes, and that deadly pur­pose had shaped everything: the big radar dish in the nose, oversized wings optimized for lift in thin air, underwing racks for multiple air-to-air missiles, and big enough fuel tanks to give long range. Mikhail Gurevich himself, late in his career, had taken charge of designing it, and the end product had made him proud; the Foxbat was a crowning glory that could cruise high in the stratosphere at Mach 2.8, nearly three times the speed of sound. Even faster in an emergency.

Halfway up the ladder, next to the large “18” stenciled on the side, Grief paused, and looked to his left. Holding on securely with his right hand, he swung his bare left wide to touch the plane’s silver skin. He liked feeling the deep cold of the stainless steel against his palm, knowing the metal would be able to withstand the intense heat of the upcoming high-speed flight. The sharp leading edges of the wings would get hottest of all, pushing air abruptly out of the way; they were made of titanium.

The metal surfaces inside the cockpit were painted green, the same reliable anti-rust green the Soviet builders at aircraft factory Plant Number 21 in Gorky had used on the tall wheels. The flight instruments and controls were black, and the weaponry buttons were yellow, blue and red. As Grief clambered over the side rail into the jet’s single seat, he glanced around, checking switch positions. As a test pilot he’d helped design the layout and he took comfort in the functional familiarity.

His hands easily found the four heavy straps that attached his harness to the KM-1 ejection seat, pulling and clipping them securely, then tight­ening. He plugged in his cooling, comm and oxygen hoses and clicked his helmet into place, feeling as he always did, like he was somehow transplanting himself into a more powerful host body.

Like the legendary Griffon, with the physique of a lion and the head, wings and talons of an eagle. The ultimate New Soviet Man.

The Foxbat was already alive around him. Its navigations system took time to align; the groundcrew had connected a thick power cable an hour previously, allowing the gyroscopes and racks of vacuum tubes to warm up. Grief ’s eyes flicked across the cockpit instruments, confirm­ing that everything was lit and working.

The Soviet Air Forces had decreed that checklists weren’t allowed during combat missions in case the plane was shot down or the pilot had to eject. He reached into his leg pocket and pulled out the single per­mitted sheet of cryptic, handwritten notes, with key timings, frequencies and navigation coordinates, plus a detailed map that spanned from the Turkish border to Cairo. Centered on Israel. The flight suit that he wore over his pressure suit had a metal clip on the right thigh, and he tucked the two papers securely into place.

He checked his watch, comparing it with the clock mounted in the instrument panel above his left knee; still 20 minutes until takeoff. With engine start and taxi time, that gave him five extra minutes. He held up an open hand so the groundcrew could see all five digits and nodded once. The airmen nodded back, understanding. No reason to waste fuel by starting before the allotted time.

He had woken early that morning, getting up at five a.m. for his regular dawn run on the airfield, his blood quickening and his mind emptying as he pushed the pace. Then back for breakfast at the Syrian Arab Air Force’s makeshift leotchick stolovaya, the pilots’ canteen. Lamb stew, rice, flatbread, and sweet tea to wash down the yellow vitamin pills provided by the Soviet medical doctor, who also gave him the required health check. Nothing unusual.

Four minutes to start. He’d been anticipating this day for months. When he’d seen on the roster that he was assigned to fly plane number 18, with its peculiar capabilities, the excitement of it had started a low, burning feeling in his stomach. He could feel his heart beating faster now and was glad the doctor wasn’t watching.

Three minutes. He was in Syria at the direct request of the country’s president, Hafez al-Assad, to Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Tensions with Israel were near breaking point, and Assad had secretly asked for aircraft and pilots that could photograph what the Jews were up to. Sadat had kicked all Soviet pilots and technicians out of Egypt a year earlier in a pique of tactical nationalism, but Assad wasn’t as wor­ried about upsetting the Americans. War was brewing, and he needed to know what the MiG-25s could show him.

Two minutes. Grief flicked up the top paper on his knee to have a final look at the map underneath. His fingertip traced the route that was programmed in the Foxbat’s nav system: climb just south of Homs across Lake Qatina, stay north of Lebanon, arc hard left at the coast to photograph down the length of Israel, reverse right over the Med for a second look up the coast, and recover back to Tiyas T-4. He leaned close to remind himself of the road that defined the Lebanese border.

Sixty seconds. Time to think of the machine. He reviewed the memo­rized starting procedures, and quickly ran through probable failures like engine fire or abnormal oil pressure, and what his immediate responses would be. He knew the jet intimately.

The second hand on his watch ticked past the 12. Grief raised his right hand over his head with one finger pointed skyward and made a tight spinning motion, signaling engine start.

Time to fly.