common sight in those days, he says. They ODâd on tower-block staircases, turned up dead in the thawing snow plowed from the railway sidings or under lake ice in spring. The more resilient often washed back down to the âstans, where they took to opium full-time and worked as fixers.
There were other roads. Some clued-in vets from his regiment fell in with the new mafiya gangs springing up across the erstwhile Union, acting as hired muscle, security, drivers, whatever it took. Some got religion, got jailed, or got the fuck out of the country. Aeroflot, suddenly flush with private suitors and cash, soaked up quite a few ex-servicemenâincluding the erstwhile commander in chief Evgeny Shaposhnikov himself, who would become the firmâs director in 1995. Others got entrepreneurial, got settled, and went into business, stayed on the straight and narrow and gritted their teeth. Or they used other skills to start new lives as plumbers, shoe salesmen, and truck drivers.
And some, like Mickey, just kept flying. Hitting forty and still handsome in a lanky, sloping-shouldered way, he simply enjoyed seeing the world, revisiting some of the places heâd last seen in service, and living a little. So long as they were a few bucks ahead of the game and doing the thing they knew best, it was a good life. As Mickey tells it, with a matter-of-fact wave of his cigarette and that eyes-to-the-floor shrug, âThere is no plan. Just me, the plane, the next job. I just do it.â Then he laughs. âTake the aerial view, or you can go crazy.â
Itâs a truism that the turbulent breakup of the Soviet Union created a power vacuum in which crews like Mickeyâs could thrive. But a stockpile is just a stockpile making small change on Arbat Street, an Il-76 cargo plane just a chunk of metal, and even a Vitebsk mafiya boss lording it over his local neighborhood with all the guns he can sell is just a hostage to fortuneâuntil you match supply to demand. And in the freewheeling 1990s, so full of newly independent countries and postâCold War movements struggling to be born, the demand was out there, all right.
It was time to go international.
Â
CHAPTER FIVE
The Birth of the Global Network
Russia, 1993
LIKE SOME LOST TRIBE in search of a promised land, these privatized Soviet crews and their networks of partners, agents, bosses, and fixers scattered across the globe. The vast majority were simply earning a buck any way they knew, doing it honestly and transparently, and founding a wave of aviation outfits, legitimate blue-chip names like Volga-Dneiper and Heavy Lift, that span the world today, making sure Pentagon ordnance, rock bandsâ stage sets, humanitarian relief, and giant wind turbines get to wherever theyâre needed. And with them, across the world, a whole ecosystem of shadowy contacts and fixers sprang up with whatâhad anybody been looking at the timeâwould have seemed uncanny, almost unnerving speed.
Their choice of start-up HQ locations in Africa and the Middle East was about more than the need for Mickey and his like to enjoy a nice spot of distinctly un-Siberian sun and a change of scene. And it will come as no surprise if I tell you there are very few marble corporate offices with brass plaques on the door.
âThereâs no doubt the real reason was strategic,â says international monitor Hugh Griffiths. At just thirty-seven, the young Englishman is a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, whose work in monitoring these mushrooming private airlines has seen him cause more ripples at the UN than many heads of state manage in a lifetime. Heâs become the scourge of the destabilizing commodities trade.
Lucrative aid and reconstruction contracts, he explains, as well as security and peacekeeping supply jobs will always go to places hit by the double-whammy tragedy that famine, terror, earthquake, or humanitarian disasters bring.
There were other roads. Some clued-in vets from his regiment fell in with the new mafiya gangs springing up across the erstwhile Union, acting as hired muscle, security, drivers, whatever it took. Some got religion, got jailed, or got the fuck out of the country. Aeroflot, suddenly flush with private suitors and cash, soaked up quite a few ex-servicemenâincluding the erstwhile commander in chief Evgeny Shaposhnikov himself, who would become the firmâs director in 1995. Others got entrepreneurial, got settled, and went into business, stayed on the straight and narrow and gritted their teeth. Or they used other skills to start new lives as plumbers, shoe salesmen, and truck drivers.
And some, like Mickey, just kept flying. Hitting forty and still handsome in a lanky, sloping-shouldered way, he simply enjoyed seeing the world, revisiting some of the places heâd last seen in service, and living a little. So long as they were a few bucks ahead of the game and doing the thing they knew best, it was a good life. As Mickey tells it, with a matter-of-fact wave of his cigarette and that eyes-to-the-floor shrug, âThere is no plan. Just me, the plane, the next job. I just do it.â Then he laughs. âTake the aerial view, or you can go crazy.â
Itâs a truism that the turbulent breakup of the Soviet Union created a power vacuum in which crews like Mickeyâs could thrive. But a stockpile is just a stockpile making small change on Arbat Street, an Il-76 cargo plane just a chunk of metal, and even a Vitebsk mafiya boss lording it over his local neighborhood with all the guns he can sell is just a hostage to fortuneâuntil you match supply to demand. And in the freewheeling 1990s, so full of newly independent countries and postâCold War movements struggling to be born, the demand was out there, all right.
It was time to go international.
Â
CHAPTER FIVE
The Birth of the Global Network
Russia, 1993
LIKE SOME LOST TRIBE in search of a promised land, these privatized Soviet crews and their networks of partners, agents, bosses, and fixers scattered across the globe. The vast majority were simply earning a buck any way they knew, doing it honestly and transparently, and founding a wave of aviation outfits, legitimate blue-chip names like Volga-Dneiper and Heavy Lift, that span the world today, making sure Pentagon ordnance, rock bandsâ stage sets, humanitarian relief, and giant wind turbines get to wherever theyâre needed. And with them, across the world, a whole ecosystem of shadowy contacts and fixers sprang up with whatâhad anybody been looking at the timeâwould have seemed uncanny, almost unnerving speed.
Their choice of start-up HQ locations in Africa and the Middle East was about more than the need for Mickey and his like to enjoy a nice spot of distinctly un-Siberian sun and a change of scene. And it will come as no surprise if I tell you there are very few marble corporate offices with brass plaques on the door.
âThereâs no doubt the real reason was strategic,â says international monitor Hugh Griffiths. At just thirty-seven, the young Englishman is a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, whose work in monitoring these mushrooming private airlines has seen him cause more ripples at the UN than many heads of state manage in a lifetime. Heâs become the scourge of the destabilizing commodities trade.
Lucrative aid and reconstruction contracts, he explains, as well as security and peacekeeping supply jobs will always go to places hit by the double-whammy tragedy that famine, terror, earthquake, or humanitarian disasters bring.
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