businessmen at the bar of the Hyatt, before it all goes black once more. The shadow roars over the river and dives into the forest of office blocks on the far side. At the very last second, the wingtip rises clear of the tallest high-rise, and the fuel-laden Candid screams on through the city center, low enough to tear aerials from skyscraper roofs. Eyes wide in the black, the pilot peers into pitch darkness beyond the cockpit glass. Theyâre eyeball-deep in the shit now, and no two-thousand-dollar bonus payment on earth is going to get them out of it.
The pilot is a man named Vladimir Starikov, a jobbing cargo pilot and former Soviet air force comrade of Mickeyâs, on a run from Ekaterinburg in Russia, south via his last stop, Belgrade. An old hand, he refuses to panic, but he knows heâs running low on options as he circles his Il-76 endlessly above the darkened streets, blocks, and bridges of Belgrade, searching for a way down. Heâs been in tight spots before and heâll get out of this one just the same.
What had started as just another night flight from Ekaterinburg to points unknown, stopping over for a change of cargo in Belgrade and with another planned in Malta, will, by dawn, become one of aviationâs great mysteries, up there with Bermuda Triangle flight 19 and the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
The crossroads of East and West are studded with sketchy refueling and off-loading stop-offs; tiny islands like Malta and Cyprus, where import-export is the only business there is, and nobodyâs watching. Both were popular with the Yugoslav regimeâs gofers. Since the 1970s, Northern Cyprus had been a popular ops base for Middle Eastern terrorists and KGB agents directing âblack opsâ in the Med and Middle East. âIn the 1990s,â reported Zavtra âs Valentin Prussakov, âthousands of âredundantâ secret service agents lost no time in shedding their epaulets and going into private business. Many opened offshore companies based on the island, followed by a heavy flow of Russian capital.â But it was not all Russian. By 1996, both islands were much-loved flags of convenience, letterheads, and stopovers for a host of postâSoviet bloc contraband-trafficking boats and planes alike.
For this shadow world of international smuggling, trafficking networks, and secret agents, tonightâs repercussions will continue long after the fires have been put out. But right now, for the pilot and crew, the fight of their lives is just beginning.
Starikov orders up wheels: no wheels. Lights: no lights. He curses the chances. On landing in Belgrade after their inbound flight from Ekaterinburg, heâd headed off for some rest while the crew, and some ground guys, carried out the usual inspection. When theyâd told him how the onboard power fizzled and faded, heâd insisted there was no way they could go on to Malta that night as planned. He hates himself now, silently, like they all do, for having been persuaded by the extra two thousand dollars each that the boss had stumped up. But hell, this is 1996. For a bunch of ex-Soviet air force flyboys living job to job, two thousand dollars cash is a whole lot of money for a nightâs work.
Sure enough, at 12:25 A.M. on Monday, August 19, 1996, just fifteen minutes after takeoff from Belgradeâs Surcin airport en route for Malta, the onboard electrics on flight PAR-3601 blink, surge, then fail completely, plunging them into darkness. The instruments go dead. The radio fails. At the same instant, the planeâs external and landing lights fail. All instruments are now dead. Desperate calls by controllers on all frequencies are in vain. Just radio silence, and the eerie rushing of the breeze around the control tower. To the ground, the Ilyushin is now a silent blip on their screens.
If the cargo is what pilot and crew had begun to suspect, they must be trying hard not to think about it. Inside what is
The pilot is a man named Vladimir Starikov, a jobbing cargo pilot and former Soviet air force comrade of Mickeyâs, on a run from Ekaterinburg in Russia, south via his last stop, Belgrade. An old hand, he refuses to panic, but he knows heâs running low on options as he circles his Il-76 endlessly above the darkened streets, blocks, and bridges of Belgrade, searching for a way down. Heâs been in tight spots before and heâll get out of this one just the same.
What had started as just another night flight from Ekaterinburg to points unknown, stopping over for a change of cargo in Belgrade and with another planned in Malta, will, by dawn, become one of aviationâs great mysteries, up there with Bermuda Triangle flight 19 and the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
The crossroads of East and West are studded with sketchy refueling and off-loading stop-offs; tiny islands like Malta and Cyprus, where import-export is the only business there is, and nobodyâs watching. Both were popular with the Yugoslav regimeâs gofers. Since the 1970s, Northern Cyprus had been a popular ops base for Middle Eastern terrorists and KGB agents directing âblack opsâ in the Med and Middle East. âIn the 1990s,â reported Zavtra âs Valentin Prussakov, âthousands of âredundantâ secret service agents lost no time in shedding their epaulets and going into private business. Many opened offshore companies based on the island, followed by a heavy flow of Russian capital.â But it was not all Russian. By 1996, both islands were much-loved flags of convenience, letterheads, and stopovers for a host of postâSoviet bloc contraband-trafficking boats and planes alike.
For this shadow world of international smuggling, trafficking networks, and secret agents, tonightâs repercussions will continue long after the fires have been put out. But right now, for the pilot and crew, the fight of their lives is just beginning.
Starikov orders up wheels: no wheels. Lights: no lights. He curses the chances. On landing in Belgrade after their inbound flight from Ekaterinburg, heâd headed off for some rest while the crew, and some ground guys, carried out the usual inspection. When theyâd told him how the onboard power fizzled and faded, heâd insisted there was no way they could go on to Malta that night as planned. He hates himself now, silently, like they all do, for having been persuaded by the extra two thousand dollars each that the boss had stumped up. But hell, this is 1996. For a bunch of ex-Soviet air force flyboys living job to job, two thousand dollars cash is a whole lot of money for a nightâs work.
Sure enough, at 12:25 A.M. on Monday, August 19, 1996, just fifteen minutes after takeoff from Belgradeâs Surcin airport en route for Malta, the onboard electrics on flight PAR-3601 blink, surge, then fail completely, plunging them into darkness. The instruments go dead. The radio fails. At the same instant, the planeâs external and landing lights fail. All instruments are now dead. Desperate calls by controllers on all frequencies are in vain. Just radio silence, and the eerie rushing of the breeze around the control tower. To the ground, the Ilyushin is now a silent blip on their screens.
If the cargo is what pilot and crew had begun to suspect, they must be trying hard not to think about it. Inside what is
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