Free Fallout by James W. Huston Page A

over the stick, the throttle, and the innumerable switches throughout the cockpit. He looked at Luke. “Unless you have some nuclear weapons.”
    “Not yet,” Luke said, smiling.
    Luke’s eyes raced from one instrument to the next. He’d seen pictures of MiG-29 cockpits before, but had never studied them to learn specific instrument locations. The Cyrillic notations on the glass gauges threw him. He thought he could probably guess what each instrument was—which was the airspeed indicator, which was the engine temperature, the fuel flow, the accelerometer. But he wasn’t sure. He wouldn’t want to climb into the plane right now and try to fly it. He realized that getting accustomed to this plane would be a longer process than he had anticipated.
    “Will it fly?” Luke asked.
    “Don’t know,” Vlad answered. “Depends more on the engines.” Vlad started to get out of the cockpit, and Luke backed down the ladder to the tarmac. Vlad made straight for the nosewheel well, stood up inside it, and took out a small notebook and pencil. He wrote down the airplane’s identification number and ducked out of the wheel well. Luke watched Vlad head for the engine intake. Luke climbed back up and sat in the cockpit. He held the stick and studied the buttons all over it. He put his left hand on the throttles of the two powerful but cold engines. He found the lever to allow him to adjust the location of the rudder pedals and moved them back until they were at a comfortable distance. He looked at Vlad’s Taurus through combining glass HUD—the Heads-Up Display—and smiled. He felt more comfortable in the cockpit of a fighter than anywhere else in the world. It was where most of what he thought and cared about came together.
    “Sir,” the Captain cried up to him with a hint of distress.
    “Yeah?” Luke replied.
    “I really don’t think we’re supposed to be in the cockpits . . .”
    “I’ll be right down,” he said as he tried to memorize the cockpit and its instruments. He waited as long as he could and still be responsive to her. He climbed out and removed the ladder. Vlad closed the canopy.
    “What do you think?” Thud asked.
    “I think they’ll work,” Luke said enthusiastically.
    “For what?” the Captain asked, deeply confused and a little concerned.
    “Sorry, that’s classified,” Thud said in dead earnest, before Luke could say anything.
    “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “Have you seen enough?”
    “We’d like to see all of them,” Luke answered.
    “I can’t let you open the cockpits,” she said.
    “That’s fine,” he replied. He smiled as he saw Vlad behind her. He’d taken a special tool out of his pocket, opened the engine-access compartments, and was copying down serial numbers from the engines.
    They spent the next hour examining the entire group of MiGs, with Vlad writing down all the identifying information he could find.
    “You get enough?” Luke asked.
    “Never,” Vlad answered as he climbed into the backseat of the Taurus and put his small notebook down next to him. “Can’t get into rest of cockpits? Why not? She should be Russian officer. Stupid rules for no reason. That is what I’m trying to get away from.”
    “I like your spunk,” Luke said as he glanced at Vlad in the mirror.
    “What is spunk?”
    “Determination, sort of, but with a confident . . . I don’t know . . . independence, I guess.”
    Vlad was silent as he considered whether he understood the word or how someone might consider him independent. “Coffee,” he suddenly said. “I need strong, thick coffee, and we will talk about the airplanes.”
    “You got it,” Luke said as he watched for a place to stop. He saw a McDonald’s ahead and pulled into the parking lot.
    They sat in a booth. Vlad took a sip of McDonald’s coffee and frowned. “This is coffee?”
    “Sort of. How long you been with MAPS?”
    “Not long. I retired from Russian Air Force just three weeks ago. I got this job