The Defector

Book 2: The Apollo Murders Series

by Chris Hadfield

Genres: General Fiction; War & Military; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"A full throttle, adrenaline-laced espionage page-turner . . . Get ready to blast off and enjoy the ride!"—Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL Sniper and #1 New York Times bestselling author of the James Reece Terminal List series

"Continuous action, Mach-speed mayhem, sharp intrigue, and well-rounded characters—what more could you want from a thriller?"—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The 9th Man and the Cotton Malone series

From the author of the #1 bestselling thriller The Apollo Murders comes the supersonic hunt for a shadowy Soviet defector.

Israel, October 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MiG fighter is racing at breakneck speed over the arid scrublands below . . . and promptly disappears.

NASA Flight Controller and former top US test pilot Kaz Zemeckis watches the scene from the ground—and is quickly pulled into a dizzying, high-stakes game of spies, lies and a possible high-level defection that plays out across three continents. 

The prize is beyond value: the secrets of the Soviets’ mythical “Foxbat” MiG-25, the fastest, highest-flying fighter plane in the world and the key to Cold War air supremacy. But every defection is double-edged with risk, and Kaz needs to tread a careful line between trust and suspicion. Ultimately, he must invite the fox into the henhouse—bringing the defector into the heart of the United States’ most secret test site—and hope that, with skill and cunning, the game plays out his way.

For Chris Hadfield’s second heart-stopping thriller, we move from Space to another rich and exciting part of Chris’s CV: his time as a top test pilot in both the US Air Force and the US Navy, and as an RCAF fighter pilot intercepting armed Soviet bombers in North American airspace. Full of insider detail, excitement and political intrigue drawn from real events, The Defector brings us the nerve-shredding rush of aerial combat, as told by one of the world's top fighter pilots.

Release date: October 10, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 464

Sample

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.

It was excellent beach weather.

A light wind off the Mediterranean, clear blue sky, the big thermometer on the breakwall already showing 28 Celsius. Kaz did the math. Eighty-two degrees. Nice. The beach was emptier than normal too, which he appreciated. It was the day before Yom Kippur, the end of Jewish High Holy Days, and many people were home in celebration.

“Get you another drink, Laura?”

The woman turned in her striped beach chair towards him, her face shaded by large round sunglasses and an oversized straw hat. She held out her empty glass. “Sure! More lemonade would be great.”

Kaz padded up across the warming sand to the Hilton beachside bar and got them two refills. He turned and paused as his eye caught a long-tailed kite in the sky, a child and her father running along the shore to keep it aloft in the gentle breeze.

When he got back to Laura, he found her watching the kite as well. She smiled at him as he handed her the drink. “I’m really glad we came, Kaz.”

Kaz smiled back—he was too. He had family in Israel, relatives who had fled Lithuania during the war, people and a country he’d never visited. He and Laura had rented a small car and taken day trips, navigating the narrow roads to meet Zemeckis second cousins and elderly aunts who called him Kazimieras, smiling as he struggled to communicate with his few words of Hebrew as they looked through photo albums together. They’d drunk endless cups of strong coffee and toasted new family connections with small glasses of plum brandy.

The vacation was a reward. Kaz and Laura worked in Houston, Texas, and had been deeply involved in Apollo 18, NASA’s ill-fated last voyage to the Moon. US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts had died under circumstances that needed to remain secret for national security’s sake. When the seemingly endless classified debriefs and scientific analyses had finally wound down, they’d both needed a break.

Mostly, they were in Israel to be together. They’d been dating for nearly eight months, and when they’d transferred to board the big, new El Al 747 in New York for the long flight to Tel Aviv, it had felt like an important next step for them both.

Kaz took a sip, watching Laura still gazing up at the kite. The small white bikini hugged her long, lithe body; her thick black hair was unruly under the hat. They’d never been able to spend so many consecutive days together, and he’d relished every one of them.

“What’s that, Kaz?” Laura said.

She was pointing into the sky above the kite. Kaz squinted against the bright sun, his good right eye instantly watering at the glare; he’d lost his left eye as a US Navy test pilot in a birdstrike. He spotted a high, straight contrail, moving fast down the coast, but couldn’t see the jet that was creating it.

She noticed where he was looking, and said, “No, there. Look lower.”

Just visible against the blue, arcing up towards the high contrail, was a new line of white. He scanned the sky, but couldn’t see the jet that had launched the missile. Likely an F-4.

“That looks serious, Laura,” he said, still tracking the contrails. “Most probably an Israeli Phantom firing an AIM-7 missile up at a Soviet MiG-25 reconnaissance plane.”

No way it will reach it, he thought. He’d fired AIM-7s and knew their performance limits. The missile had fared very disappointingly in Vietnam. Just the Israeli Air Force warning the Russians off.

Now, post–engine burnout, the missile became invisible as it coasted higher, steering autonomously with small aerodynamic fins, refining its radar-guided aim towards the target. Kaz counted seconds in his head, guessing on altitudes and distances. He figured if there was no explosion by the time he got to 20, it would be a clean miss.

“What are you seeing, Kaz?”

He raised a hand, palm open, asking her to wait as he counted.

When he reached 17, he swore. The MiG-25’s contrail had visibly changed thickness, and then stopped.

Kaz turned to Laura, frowning. “We need to go,” he said.

It was Catherine the Great who had been the first to station Russian ships off the coast of what would become the state of Israel. From her subarctic capital in Saint Petersburg in 1769, she had ordered Russian naval forces to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean, to tactically support—and win—a key eastern land battle.

On this October Friday, two centuries later, as Grief’s MiG-25 was racing south towards Tel Aviv, a high antenna on a Soviet ship named the Krasny Krim had seen the distinctive radar return signal and was now tracking it.

For an aircraft at 72,000 feet, the ship’s tall MR-310 Angara-A radar antenna had direct line-of-sight well beyond the visible curve of the Earth’s horizon. The captain of the Krasny Krim—“Red Crimea”—had been carefully steering a course well clear of the coastal waters and now he listened to his electronics officer’s update.

“That high-flier has steadied on a north-to-south track, Captain, altitude 22 kilometers, speed 825 meters per second.” He checked his conversion table. “Mach 2.8.”

The captain nodded. One of ours, no question. He drummed his fingers lightly on the fake leather armrest of his command chair. The cat-and-mouse game of the Cold War navies was delicate, and demanded patience. The Soviet Mediterranean Squadron had 52 ships and submarines patrolling on high alert due to the Arab-Israeli tensions, against 48 vessels of the US Sixth Fleet, including two aircraft carriers. A force deployment capability the Soviet Union lacked.

“Any threats?”

“Da, Captain, the Israelis have several mid-altitude fighters airborne, as usual.” The tech watched his scope intently, evaluating the blips, looking for telltale signs. A flash of new data registered as one of the targets showed a rapid Doppler shift. “An Israeli jet has fired a missile.” His voice remained calm; no air-to-air missile had ever reached the Soviet MiG-25 overflights.

The captain peered eastward through the ship’s large, square side window, seeing nothing but sea and sky. No surprise. We’re 150 kilometers away. He waited.

“Captain, I’m seeing something unusual.” A different tone in the tech’s voice.

Several seconds passed. “What is it?” the captain tersely demanded.

“I see two returns now, and a rapid deceleration.” The tech’s eyebrows drew together as he stared at his screen, willing it to give him better data. Different data. “Also descent, Captain.”

He turned to face the man in the chair.

“I think the Jews hit our plane!”

Ten a.m. in Tel Aviv was four a.m. in Washington, so when Kaz hurriedly dialed long-distance direct to Sam Phillips’s office, the night desk answered. A male voice with the flat vowels of a Michigan accent sounded bored and robotic.

“Andrews Air Force Base, United States Air Force Systems Command, please state your name and rank.” USAF standard protocol: get the facts out front.

“This is Commander Kazimieras Zemeckis, US Navy. I’ve worked with General Phillips and need to get a message to him ASAP.”

A pause. General Sam Phillips headed the entire Command. Not a typical phone request.

“I copy, Commander Zemeckis. This is Master Sergeant Henderson. Do you have access to a secure line?”

“I’m in a hotel room in Tel Aviv, Master Sergeant.” He read the phone and room number off the center of the dial. “Please tell the general that it’s urgent, concerning an air combat event I just witnessed.” He’d been thinking about next steps as he and Laura had hurried up from the beach. “I’ll contact the US embassy here in Tel Aviv and can be over there within fifteen minutes.” He’d noticed the embassy while driving, and knew it wasn’t far.

“Sounds good, Commander. Please call this number again when you get there. I’ll have more info by then.”

Laura drove him to the embassy, and realized she must be looking worried when Kaz paused as he was climbing out of the passenger seat, leaned in and kissed her. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

She watched him walk up to the uniformed Marine at the door, fish in his pocket and then hold out his passport and Navy ID. The Marine scrutinized them carefully, then saluted and pushed a button. The door swung open, and Kaz disappeared inside.

As she pulled away from the curb, twisting in her seat to hook a U-turn back to the Hilton, Laura swore loudly. “Damn!” There was always news of conflict in Israel, and it had made her quietly hesitant about them traveling here. This was definitely not the way she’d wanted their first vacation together to go.

As she picked up speed back along the narrow road, she sighed. What can I expect with a man who always seems to run towards a crisis?

It took several urgent explanations for Kaz to work his way up through the embassy’s approval layers, and he glanced at his watch as a staffer finally sat him in a secure room, handing him an oversized handset, dialing. It was already 10:45. He listened to a series of clicks and noises, and then heard Master Sergeant Henderson’s voice. Distorted by encryption, but clearly not nearly so bored this time.

“Commander, General Phillips is expecting your call, let me patch you through.” Kaz heard a succession of low tones, and then ringing on the other end. With a sharp click, the general picked up.

“Kaz, good morning. I hear you’re in Israel.” The distinctive, calm voice oddly digitized, but immediately recognizable.

“Yes, sir, sorry for the early hour. I’m on vacation, but I saw something from the beach in Tel Aviv just under an hour ago that you and Washington will be interested in.” He described exactly what he’d seen, and his appraisal of what had happened.

Phillips had been director of the National Security Agency. After a birdstrike had partially blinded Kaz and put an end to his test flying, Phillips had recruited him to work in electro-optics and high-altitude intelligence gathering. Now, as the recently assigned commander of USAF Systems Command, Phillips was responsible for research and development of all new weapons for the US Air Force and its Foreign Technology Division. The MiG-25 Foxbat was still a prime Soviet threat.

The general gave a low whistle. “Worth getting me up for, Kaz.” A short pause as he thought. Phillips had been an air combat fighter pilot in World War II. “Did you see any ensuing smoke trail or crash?”

“No, sir, though it could have splashed well out in the water, or somewhere farther inland. The Foxbats cruise up over 70K, and that’s a long way to fall.” He paused. “Didn’t see a parachute either.”

“I’m going to call my contacts in the Israeli Air Force there, and get Washington woken up to the news too. If Israel has found a way to knock down MiG-25s, we need to know about it. And if the wreckage has anything worth salvaging, I want to see it.”

Phillips said, “Give me your hotel info,” and after he had copied it down, he paused. “Kaz, I may need you to go look at things there for me. You have time to do that?” Phrased as a question, it was undeniably an order.

“Yes, sir. I’ve already visited all my relatives here, and we only had beach time planned for the last couple days. Can extend as needed.”

“Good. This’ll likely get taken out of my hands pretty quick by the State Department, but I’ll be in touch soon.”

The Air Force reaction to the airborne intruder had been by the book.

When the high-flying MiG-25 had first entered Israeli airspace, the northern region air defense technician had assessed it on her green-and-black radarscope, recognized the distinctive trajectory and speed, and marked it with a hostile tracking number, instantly alerting IAF command and control center operations, near Tel Aviv. Two airborne combat patrol jets, F-4 Phantoms, already orbiting in a high, fast racetrack pattern north of the city, rapidly received a hot vector from their tactical controller. They turned hard and climbed to get a radar lock-on, pushing to full afterburner to accelerate into a favorable geometry to release their missiles. Permission to fire was rapidly transmitted, and at the optimum moment the lead F-4 pilot squeezed the trigger on his control stick and called, “Fox One, Fox One, Fox One,” watching as his radar-guided Sparrow missile raced from under his wing, arcing sharply skyward.

In the darkened operations room, the F-4’s tactical controller scanned his radar screen as the high-speed missile tracked upwards. Ever since the first MiG-25 had flown high over Israel, the combined fighter weapons team had been working on how to shoot them down, but with no luck so far. He watched the blips move rapidly towards each other, counting under his breath, assessing speed and altitude. Expecting another miss, as it was an intercept beyond the capability of the missile.

But this time he saw something different.

Where there had been two blips, there were suddenly three. The speed readout of the Soviet jet instantly dropped, and he stared in surprise as two distinct radar returns plummeted down through the atmosphere. He pushed the transmit button under his foot, his hands adjusting the screen for maximum resolution.

“Kurnas flight, I show a potential hit! What are you seeing?”

Both Phantom crews, pilots in front and weapons operators in back, had been staring upwards.

“We haven’t seen any explosion, but the MiG’s contrail has stopped,” the lead pilot replied, and quickly checked with his back-seater. “We’re tracking it rapidly falling now, maneuvering in for a visual ID.” He turned the jet to intercept and glanced at his fuel remaining. “We’re at Joker fuel, coming out of AB.” He pulled the throttles back out of afterburner, as the fuel level had dropped to the point where they had to end tactical maneuvering. “Should have enough for a quick look.”

“Copy, Kurnas flight, let us know what you see.” The controller thought further. “Tell us if you see a parachute.”

The two Phantoms flew west, out over the water, closing on the radar returns, all eyes straining forward.

“Tally ho! Left eleven thirty, slightly low, descending rapidly.” The flight lead corrected left and dropped his nose to cover the remaining distance. “Looks largely intact, nose low.” He scanned quickly around for the source of the second radar return but saw nothing. He warned his wingman. “Coming right, let’s yo-yo up and come back down to intercept.” He wrestled the Phantom up and inverted, paused as he judged relative motion, and then pulled hard down. “Closing now.”

The controller watched the screen as the blips merged, the wingman remaining behind and clear, in missile firing position. He suppressed the urge to ask what they were seeing, letting them do their job, picturing their actions.

Finally, the lead pilot reported.

“Okay, the MiG looks intact, the canopy’s still in place, and I can see the pilot. He’s not moving, and we’re still diving.” He quickly glanced inside his cockpit, assessing speed versus altitude. “I’ll need to pull out soon.”

“Copy, plan to stay on station as long as fuel allows.” If the MiG crashed into the sea, they would want to get high-speed ships there ASAP to retrieve any useful debris.

“Wait, the MiG is maneuvering now!” The controller could hear the urgency in the pilot’s voice, and then the strain of heavy g-forces in the F-4. “I’m turning with him. He’s leveling off, rolling out towards shore!”

The controller’s mind raced. What is the MiG doing? His superior in the command center had been listening and watching, and his voice now cut in. “Kurnas flight, does the MiG have weapons?”

The pilot had been thinking ahead as well. “Nothing under the wings or belly—she’s clean.” He pushed his throttles up to get closer. Could this pilot be some sort of kamikaze, planning to crash into a ground target?

The superior spoke again, urgently. “Get your AIM-9s locked on, and stand by for fire command.”

The Phantom’s back-seater had already locked up the MiG’s engines as a heat source, and the pilot heard the steady tone. “Roger, we’re locked on and have a firing solution.”

In the command center, they watched the MiG’s new heading steady out on the screen, and quickly assessed the ground track. The senior officer spoke. “Looks like he’s headed for Lod airport! Maybe strafing or an intentional crash. The second you see any hostile action, you are cleared to fire.”

The pilot looked again at his dwindling fuel. “Wilco, cleared to fire.”

The MiG suddenly loomed large in his window, and he yanked his throttles back and moved his thumb to deploy full speed brakes to keep from overrunning. The Soviet jet’s gear doors abruptly opened and the wheels pivoted down into view.

“He’s dropped his landing gear! The MiG is lining up to land on runway zero eight at Lod!”

Shock waves are fickle things.

As the MiG-25 Foxbat had raced through the high, thin air, pushed by its huge afterburners, it was traveling almost three times faster than the speed of sound, covering a mile every two seconds. An observer floating under a high-flying balloon wouldn’t have heard the jet coming. Only as it flashed past would the roaring sound of wind and engine arrive, trailing an invisible, deafening wake.. . .