He was a Soviet Top Gun - yet left all of the power and glory behind when he engineered the most audacious act of defection in Cold War history. On May 20, 1989, Soviet Air Force Captain Alexander M. Zuyev escaped from an air base in Soviet Georgia, piloting a MiG-29 fighter - one of the world's most advanced combat aircraft - across the Black Sea to Turkey. Under the threat of Russian air defense missiles, and with other fighters in hot pursuit, Zuyev carried out a real-life flight to freedom even more breathtaking than classic works of fiction like The Hunt for Red October and Fire Fox. Now, he recalls the full events of his harrowing story in... FULCRUM.But this thrilling book not only is one man's tale of risk and courage. It also contains many stunning, newsmaking revelations, as only a former key officer of the Soviet Air Force can provide. For the first time anywhere, Zuyev tells the truth about the 1983 downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 by the Soviets; the real story of the American POWs taken from Vietnam to the USSR for intelligence purposes; the fate of a critically placed mole in the electronics lab that produced the MiG-29; the inside view of the ruthless massacre of civilian demonstrators in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1989; the exact nuclear weapon arming procedures of the Soviet military; and why the West is safe from nuclear threat in the newly independent Commonwealth.Groomed from an early age for membership in his nation's fighter pilot elite, Zuyev spent eleven years in the Soviet Air Force, as a star cadet, a pilot handpicked to test the new MiG-29 Fulcrum, and an air combat instructor in a prestigious aviation regiment. Yet gradually Zuyev came to realize that the political system he served was hopelessly corrupt and callously indifferent to the sufferings of the Soviet people. In the aftermath of his sensational escape, Zuyev found himself both a well-guarded CIA asset and the target of a KGB death list.With the assistance of Malcolm McConnell, an acclaimed author on aviation and the military, Alexander Zuyev tells a uniquely powerful story, set against the disintegration of the Soviet empire, that is filled with riveting personal detail and expert high-tech excitement. And every word is true. Read Less