Chapter 2 – Forged in Discipline
Yeisk Military Aviation School — November 2015
The knock came like always—0430 sharp for sure not a soft tap and neither a gentle wake-up. It was a strike, hard, final, cold like a command from God himself.
Leonid's eyes were already open because he had opened them ten minutes earlier, as they had every morning for weeks now. His boots were laced, his bed folded, his tracksuit pressed and ready at the edge of the mattress and he was already standing by the time the whistle blew down the hall.
Outside, the corridor filled with footsteps. Twenty cadets dressing in complete silence. There was no idle chatter, no muttered complaints, no groans of exhaustion. A rule that was learned quickly by the cadets, beside that also: your voice belonged to your instructors. Your thoughts to your mission. Your rest to the grave.
In the open square behind Dormitory Block C, the frost had already swallowed the concrete. It shimmered like broken glass under the pale floodlights, that was the place where the cadets formed up, each one trembling—not from the cold, but from the anticipation of pain.
Captain Sidorov—an instructor whose leg brace made more noise than his voice—paced slowly before them. He was ex-VVS, a Su-27 pilot who'd flown sorties over Georgia and trained combat squadrons until his bird got caught in an updraft over Vladikavkaz and slammed belly-first into a mountainside. Now he trained cadets, and he made sure he trained them hard.
"You are not men," he said calmly. "You are not pilots, you are not worthy of touching the sky. At least not yet."
He pointed toward the sandbag obstacle course with his cane.
"Four rounds. Sprint, crawl, roll, return in Fifty seconds if you Fail, we start again."
The whistle blew. Leonid ran.
His muscles burned before the first drop while frost clawed at his face as his palms slid across the frozen concrete. His knees struck ice, then gravel, then hard-packed snow. He crawled under the metal rods, rolled over the tarp-covered trench, and launched himself back toward the line.
Forty-seven seconds. He wasn't the only one who made it.
But nine others didn't.
They did it again.
And again.
By the fifth round, someone was coughing blood,another had sprained an ankle but no one asked to stop. Because asking meant removal.
---
By 0600, they were inside Hangar 9 preparing for physiology training. The centrifuge stood at the far end, its shell dented and chipped from decades of service. Above it, faded Soviet lettering still marked the steel frame because the current instructors never bothered to repaint it. They wanted the past to remind them.
Each cadet stepped into the capsule alone,oxygen lines were tested and Heart monitors strapped in place. The cockpit was barebones—just a basic display, a headset, and a camera to record every expression.
One cadet blacked out at 4.8 Gs. Another at 5.5. One vomited mid-spin.
Leonid's turn came mid-cycle. He stepped inside with steady breath, repeated his emergency procedure checklist three times under his breath, and secured the harness.
"Call signs?" the operator asked through the headset.
"Cadet Vostrikov, no call sign yet."
"Earn one."
The machine began to spin.
At 3.2 Gs, his vision narrowed.
At 4.6, he started the anti-G straining maneuver that consisted in legs tight, diaphragm locked and Short, sharp exhales.
"Target identification," came the voice. "MiG-31, Su-30SM, F-15EX."
"MiG-31, interceptor, high-speed radar suite. Su-30SM, multirole, twin-seat. F-15EX, Gen 4.5, American, heavy loadout."
"6.4 Gs Hold."
A red blur encroached the edge of his vision.
"Enemy missile, Evasive action?"
"Split-S * Pffff uhhhh* Drop chaff * Pffff uhhhh* Descend and roll left."
( * hard breathing noises)
"Hold."
At 6.8 Gs, he felt his grip start to slip.
"Recover."
The machine slowed. The lights faded back to white.
"Better than expected," the technician said as Leonid staggered out. "You'll keep your vision next time."
---
Classroom Block D.
Inside: old wood desks, paint peeling from the radiator, while on the board: radar signature charts, aircraft silhouettes, engine schematics stood ready.
Instructors fired questions like bullets.
"Vostrikov."
"Sir."
"Difference between PESA and AESA?"
"PESA uses single transmitter with multiple phase shifters while AESA uses multiple transmitters, faster scan, better jamming resistance."
"And the Su-35?"
"Uses Irbis-E, hybrid passive electronically scanned array with high peak power output."
"Pass."
Cadets scribbled notes, eyes wide. Yuri leaned across the aisle.
"Someday you'll forget one and I'll be there to laugh."
Leonid didn't look up.
---
Lunch was fifteen minutes, some soup a couple of slices of bread and a lukewarm tea.
Then back to the field. This time: pressure drills, firefighting simulation, ground crew coordination and Disassembling and reassembling a Yak-130's ejection system.
In the background: recordings of cockpit audio from real accidents.
"STALL—STALL—STALL—"
"Pull up. Pull up."
The silence after was always worse than the alarms.
---
By 1800, they were back outside. Survival training.
They were dropped ten kilometers from base with a compass and a folded map.
Leonid moved through swampy terrain, waist-deep in snowmelt. He crouched behind fallen logs, he timed his steps flawlessly to avoid detection and navigated under blackout conditions while the wind was biting his ears.
He reached the checkpoint with four minutes to spare.
Senior Cadet Markov was waiting with a clipboard.
"Vostrikov. Only third one in."
"Yes, sir."
"Your bearing?"
"119 degrees east, then 23 south."
"Not bad. You're learning."
---
At night, Leonid sat on his bunk, boots off, legs sore.
He opened his notebook where he drew another MiG-21 and where he wrote:
"Train like your life depends on it. Because it does."
---
Yeisk Military Aviation School – November 2015
There was no room for pride at Yeisk — only performance.
Leonid Vostrikov had never failed a practical or classroom test since his arrival, and he knew that fact irritated some of his instructors. He wasn't the loudest cadet, but he neither bark louder than others on the field or ask pointed questions in the lecture halls. He simply absorbed — everything. And when asked to produce, he delivered like a machine.
Until the morning he didn't.
It was supposed to be a routine navigation sim — just a standard cross-country route plotted across a map of simulated terrain, with virtual storm conditions layered on top. The simulator cockpit was a Yak-130 model, the standard jet for cadet-level airframes. He'd practiced on this system at least ten times prior.
His oxygen mask hissed softly as the canopy slid shut. The digital flight HUD blinked to life. Outside the simulator windows, the environment transformed into a cloudy, mountainous region — meant to replicate Krasnaya Polyana near Sochi.
"Cadet Vostrikov, confirm ready status," the instructor's voice crackled through the headset.
"Systems green. Ready," Leonid replied.
"Objective: Intercept beacon point Bravo, maintain altitude below 2,500 meters, avoid radar sweep, and return to base. Wind factor simulated at 27 knots. Commence when ready."
Leonid engaged the throttle, flaps adjusted. His jet climbed steadily through the valley below. He kept his eyes on the instruments, his mind parsing wind angle, terrain profile, and fuel consumption all at once.
But ten minutes in, something went wrong.
An unexpected sensor warning blinked in the corner of his display — something that shouldn't have appeared in a basic simulation.
Radar warning: Lock detected.
He hesitated. Just long enough to miss a turn.
By the time he responded with a sharp roll, he was off course. Altitude dipped too fast. His turn rate exceeded what the Yak was meant to endure in those conditions. The warning tone shrieked again.
ALERT: Stall imminent.
Leonid corrected, but he was late. The virtual aircraft dropped sharply. The screen flashed red.
Mission failed: Altitude deviation — aircraft lost.
The simulator canopy hissed open.
Captain Sidorov stood just outside with his arms crossed.
"You let yourself get baited," he said flatly. "That radar warning was intentional, It was never a threat — only distraction. But you believed the machine more than your training and that got you killed."
Leonid sat motionless in the cockpit.
"It won't happen again, sir," he said through gritted teeth.
"See that it doesn't," the captain replied, walking off.
---
Back in the locker room, Leonid sat on a bench and stared at the concrete floor. His fists were clenched and behind his eyes, the HUD replayed itself in infinite loop — the false radar tone, the stall alarm, the failure notice.
Yuri sat down next to him, unusually quiet.
"You cracked," he said after a minute. "First time for everything."
Leonid didn't respond.
"It was bound to happen. You've been running perfect for two months. We all wondered when the machine would skip."
Leonid turned toward him. "I made one mistake."
"Sure," Yuri said, standing up. "But now you know what it feels like and that's important. The sky doesn't forgive."
---
The punishment wasn't formal, but it was sharp.
Sidorov pulled Leonid from the next simulator rotation and assigned him to ground support training for the week — loading munitions on dummy pylons, servicing hydraulic systems, sweeping snow off real aircraft with the maintenance crews.
It wasn't glamorous.
It wasn't even flying.
But it was part of the system.
One bitter morning, while loading a B-8 rocket pod on a grounded Su-25, Leonid's gloves tore open on a bolt edge. His hands bled, but he didn't stop working. A tech sergeant on the line watched him in silence.
"You want to fly one of these someday?" the man asked.
Leonid nodded, eyes still fixed on the pylon bracket.
"Then respect it. Respect what keeps it flying."
Leonid tightened the bolts and moved on.
---
That evening, he returned to the barracks exhausted. His hands were raw, his uniform filthy, and his body aching from crouching under landing gear all day.
He sat alone at the writing desk by the far wall and opened the worn notebook he kept hidden beneath his bunk.
He flipped past flight diagrams and checklists, past journal entries on avionics specs and turbine configurations. He found a blank page.
He began to write.
"Today I failed."
"I believed a false threat and ignored my instincts."
"I let fear dictate reaction. It cost me the mission."
"I won't let it happen again."
He stared at the final line. Then underlined it twice.
---
At 2200 hours, long after lights-out, Leonid found himself outside in the courtyard under a pale crescent moon. The frost bit his skin, but he didn't move.
He wasn't looking at the sky. He was listening to it — the stillness, the cold whisper of the wind through the flagpoles, the distant mechanical drone of a patrol vehicle circling the perimeter.
He remembered his grandfather's words:
"You don't fight the sky. You learn from it."
---
The next morning, Captain Sidorov called for volunteers to assist in a live breakdown drill — a timed exercise involving disassembly of an L-39's primary control surfaces.
Leonid stepped forward first.
Sidorov didn't acknowledge him. But when the drill began, Leonid's movements were sharp, he knew every bolt, every connection, tool and his hands worked faster than any cadet's in the lineup.
When it ended, Sidorov recorded the times and gave a single nod.
"Back in the air tomorrow."
Leonid didn't smile. He simply saluted.
---
In the simulators, he flew with focus.
Radar warning? He ignored it — until his own logic confirmed its validity.
Engine warning? He ran the full checklist without skipping a line.
He didn't rush or hesitate, He just thought and decided.
The instructor said nothing, but noted every detail.
Leonid exited the simulator two hours later. Not triumphant. Not relieved.
Just ready.
---
The return to the cockpit wasn't triumphant.
There was no applause when Leonid was cleared to resume flight simulations, no handshake and neither words of encouragement. In Yeisk, praise was measured in silence and If no one yelled at you, it meant you were doing it right.
But as he strapped into the simulator and ran through pre-flight, something had changed.
His hands no longer rushed. His breathing came slower and each checklist line had weight. He was still the same cadet who aced his systems tests — but now he understood something more vital:
Humility.
---
Their next module focused on air combat maneuvering — dogfight fundamentals using L-39 simulators wired into a basic adversarial system. Two cadets per pod, one as aggressor, one as defender. Scenarios were simple: visual detection, close-range maneuver, evade or eliminate.
Leonid's first opponent was Cadet Dobrynin — a tall, swaggering boy from Saint Petersburg with a fondness for over-the-top bravado and a loud mouth. He'd once described himself as "the spiritual successor to the MiG-29." No one liked him, but he had decent stick skills and wasn't afraid to take risks.
"Hope you're ready to taste jet wash, Vostrikov," Dobrynin said before the match.
Leonid didn't answer.
Inside the sim, the cockpits were linked. Both aircraft spawned facing away from each other with ten kilometers of simulated separation. Terrain: mountain ridges. Light overcast. Minimal radar support.
The match began.
Leonid tracked Dobrynin's movement visually, not through the radar ping. He eased his stick, maintaining speed. Letting Dobrynin take the aggressive posture.
The other cadet dove into a hard climb and loop — textbook Immelmann. Trying to gain the upper angle.
Leonid didn't react.
He waited.
Then he pulled into a low-G climbing spiral, feeding thrust carefully, cutting Dobrynin's angle with efficient turns and controlling his energy bleed.
Dobrynin overshot.
Leonid rolled left, nudged the throttle, then pulled into position.
Target lock. Tone confirmation.
Missile away.
Sim kill.
Inside the pod, Dobrynin's scream was audible even through the wall.
"Bullshit!"
Leonid stepped out calmly and removed his helmet.
Captain Sidorov watched the playback on the main monitor.
"You didn't chase," he said.
"No need to," Leonid replied.
"Good. Let the others waste fuel."
He said nothing else.
But that night, Sidorov added Leonid's name to the advanced tactics track.
---
The advanced track was quiet.
Only eight cadets.
Smaller classes. Sharper drills. They called it the Ice Line — named for the expression you had to wear at all times. No emotion. Just calculation.
They studied combat case files from Syria, Ukraine, and the Baltic intercepts. Analyzed flight paths from real engagements. Broke down where pilots survived and where they died.
Leonid thrived here.
There were no distractions or unnecessary shouting , just performance.
His reputation grew.
Not among the instructors — but among the cadets.
People began to whisper his name like a rumor: "The Ghost," is what they called him always watching, always precise and never loud or late.
And slowly, that respect turned into something else.
Challenge.
---
One night in the mess hall, Cadet Zabolotsky — a squad lead from a parallel unit — walked up to Leonid and slammed his tray on the table.
"You think you're better than the rest of us?" he asked. Loud enough for the others to hear.
Leonid didn't raise his eyes.
"I think I'm better than I was yesterday," he said quietly.
Zabolotsky sneered. "That's not an answer."
Leonid looked at him, calm as ever. "Because your question was stupid."
A few cadets nearby snorted.
Zabolotsky's nostrils flared. But he walked away.
Later that week, he challenged Leonid to a two-on-two simulated intercept drill. Both served as team leaders.
It was brutal.
The weather sim was cranked to storm conditions. Radar was spotty. Ground control gave only partial updates.
Leonid split his wingman wide, used terrain masking, and coordinated a reverse-hook pincer with perfect timing.
Zabolotsky never saw it coming.
Leonid's team won in under five minutes.
No argument followed.
Only silence.
---
In December, the academy conducted a cross-evaluation.
Each cadet was observed in real-time during a full-scope training day: physical, academic, tactical, and survival. Observers included not just instructors but visiting officers from active-duty squadrons.
Leonid was assigned to Captain Alimov — a Su-34 pilot rumored to have flown combat missions in Syria and been injured by a MANPADS strike. He walked with a limp and said little.
"Don't show off," he told Leonid before the day began. "Just don't screw up."
Leonid didn't.
On the course run, he placed second overall.
In aircraft systems testing, he passed every ID and power flow schematic in half the allotted time.
In simulated intercept and radio jamming drills, he maintained perfect comm discipline and used terrain to regain lock during full ECM loss.
At the end of the day, Captain Alimov wrote one line on the evaluation sheet:
"Quiet, sharp and will kill if needed."
---
One night, while cleaning his locker, Leonid found a package tucked beneath his spare uniform.
It was wrapped in brown paper, tied with string.
No name.
Inside: a sealed envelope and an old, worn patch.
The patch was faded — blue, with the silhouette of a MiG-21 stitched in silver thread. A Soviet-era unit insignia.
And a note:
"For when you've earned your own."
He knew who it was from.
Grigori hadn't written since the first week of term. But Leonid remembered his words: "The airframe is your sword. The patch is your shield."
He folded the patch and tucked it into the breast pocket of his cadet coat.
It stayed there every day.
---
Winter deepened and the days shortened but the training intensified.
More cadets dropped.
Injuries. Burnout. Psychological dismissal.
Leonid remained.
When the others laughed and joked, he read.
When the others groaned about cold drills, he ran faster.
When the instructors handed out missions, he took the lead.
He never gloated, never relaxed. He just moved forward.
One breath at a time.
One step closer to the sky.
---
By New Year's Eve, only forty-seven cadets from the original eighty-two remained.
They were granted a half-day rest and a hot dinner.
Leonid sat outside alone, a bowl of borscht steaming in his hands.
Yuri joined him, rubbing his arms.
"We made it through the worst part."
"Not yet," Leonid said.
Yuri grinned. "Still can't get a smile out of you."
Leonid didn't smile. But he looked up at the stars — sharp, cold pinpricks in the night.
"The sky's waiting," he said. "I'm not there yet."
---
That night, in the quiet of the barracks, Leonid opened his notebook one last time before lights out.
He flipped to a clean page.
And he wrote:
"I failed once, learned, fought, adapted and overcame."
"A pilot is not born. He is built — one mistake at a time."
"My hands will never forget the throttle. My mind will never forget the cost."
He paused.
Then wrote the final line.
"Soon, I will fly."