An alarm came at dawn.
By reflex, she tumbled out of her cot, into trousers and shirt, coat and boots, grabbing gloves and helmet on the way out of the dugout. Inna was at her side, running toward the airstrip. Planes were already rumbling overhead—scouts returning from patrol.
Mechanics and armorers were at the planes—all of them. Refueling, running chains of ammunition into cannon and machine guns. This was big. Not just a sortie, but a battle.
There was Commander Gridnev addressing them right on the field. The mission: German heavy bombers had crossed the front. Fighters were being scrambled to intercept. He’d be flying this one himself, leading the first squadron. First squadron launched in ten minutes and would engage any fighters sent with the attack. Second squadron—the women’s squadron—would launch in fifteen and stop the bombers.
The air filled with Yak fighters, the drone of their engines like the buzz of bees made large.
No time to think, only to do, as they’d done hundreds of times before. Martya helped Raisa into her cockpit, slapped the canopy twice after closing it over her, then jumped off the wing to yank the chocks out from under the tires. A dozen Yaks lined up, taxiing from the flight line to wait their turn on the runway. One after another after another …
Finally, Raisa’s turn came, and she was airborne. It was a relief, being in the air again, where she could do something. Up here, when someone attacked, she could dodge. Not like being on the ground when the bombs fell. She’d rather have a stick in her hand, a trigger under her finger. It felt right.
Glancing back through the canopy, Raisa found Inna on her wing, right where she should be. Her friend gave her a broad salute, and Raisa waved back. Once the squadron was airborne, they settled into an echelon formation, following Gridnev’s squadron up ahead. They’d all flown with Gridnev’s men; they’d all had months to get used to each other. Men or women, didn’t make a difference, and most men realized that sooner or later. Which was something of a revelation if she stopped to think about it. But no one had time to stop and think about it. All she needed to know was that Aleksei Borisov liked diving to the left and would loop above if he got into trouble; Sofia Mironova was a careful pilot and tended to hang back; Valentina Gushina was fast, very good in combat; Fedor Baurin had the keenest eyesight. He’d spot their target before anyone else.
The Yaks flew on in loose formation, ready to break and engage as soon as the target was sighted. Raisa scanned the skies in all directions, peering above and over her shoulders. The commander had the coordinates; he’d estimated twenty minutes until contact. They should be in sight of them any minute now …
“There!” Baurin called over the radio. “One o’clock!”
Gridnev came on the channel. “Steady. Remain in formation.”
She saw the enemy, sunlight flashing off canopies, airplanes suspended in the air. Hard to judge scale and distance; her own group was traveling fast enough that the enemy planes seemed to be standing still. But they were approaching, rapidly and inexorably.
While the heavy bombers continued on, straight and level, a handful of smaller planes broke off from the main group—a squadron of fighters as escort.
Well, this was going to be interesting.
On the commander’s orders, they spread out and prepared to engage. Raisa opened the throttle and sped ahead, planning to overshoot the fighters entirely: Their goal was preventing those bombers from reaching their target. Her Yak dipped down, yawed to the left, roared onward.
A flight of Messerschmitts rocketed overhead. Gunfire sounded. Then they were gone.
Inna had followed her, and the bombers lay ahead of them, waiting. They had a short time to be as disruptive as they could before those Messers came back around, no matter how much the others were able to keep them occupied.
As soon as she was within range, she opened fire. The rattle from the cannon shook her fuselage. Nearby, another cannon fired; Raisa traced the smoke of the shells from behind her toward the Junkers: Inna had fired as well.
The bombers dropped back. And the fighters caught up with her and Inna. Then chaos.
She watched for stars and crosses painted on the fuselages, marking friend or foe. They chased each other in three dimensions, until it was impossible to track them all, and she began to focus on avoiding collision. The Messers were torpedo shaped, sleek and nimble. Formidable. Both sets of pilots had had two years of war to gain experience. The fight would end only when one side or the other ran out of ammunition.
They had to bring down those bombers, if nothing else.
The others had the same idea, and the commander ordered them to their primary target, until the bombers scattered, just to get out of the way of the dogfights. Now the Messers had to worry about hitting their charges by accident. That made them more careful; it might give the Yaks an edge.
The grumble of engines, of props beating the air, filled the sky around her. She’d never seen so many planes in the air at once, not even in her early days of training at the club.
She looped around to the outside and found a target. The pilot of the fighter had targeted a Yak—Katya’s, she thought—and was so focused on catching her that he was flying straight and steady. First and worst mistake. She found him in her sights and held there a second, enough to get shots off before tipping and diving out of the way before someone else targeted her.
Her shells sliced across the cockpit—right through the pilot. The canopy shattered, and there was blood. She thought she saw his face, under goggles and flight cap, just for a moment—a look of shock, then nothing. Out of control now, the Me-109 tipped nose down and fell into a spiraling descent. The sight, black smoke trailing, the plane falling, was compelling. But her own trajectory carried her past in an instant, showing blue sky ahead.
“Four!” Raisa gave a shout. Four kills. And surely with all these targets around she could get her fifth. Both of them for David.
Other planes were falling from the sky. One of the bombers had been hit and still flew, with one engine pouring billows of smoke. Another fighter sputtered, fell back, then dropped, trailing fire and debris—Aleksei, that was Aleksei. Could he win back control of his injured plane? If not, did he have time to bail out? She saw no life in the cockpit; it was all moot. Rather than mourn, she set her jaw and found another target. So many of them, she hardly knew where to look first.
Over the radio, Gridnev was ordering a retreat. They’d done damage; time to get out while they could. But surely they’d only been engaged a few minutes. The motor of her Yak seemed tired; the spinning props in front of her seemed to sputter.
A Messerschmitt came out of the sun overhead like a dragon.
A rain of bullets struck the fuselage of her Yak, sounding like hail. Pain stabbed through her thigh, but that was less worrisome than the bang and grind screeching from the engine. And black smoke suddenly pouring from the nose in a thick stream. The engine coughed; the propeller stopped turning. Suddenly her beautiful streamlined Yak was a dead rock waiting to fall.
She held the nose up by brute force, choked the throttle again and again, but the engine was dead. She pumped the pedals, but the rudder was stuck. The nose tipped forward, ruining any chance she had of gliding toward earth.
“Raisa, get out! Get out!” Inna screamed over the radio.
Abandoning her post, no, never. Better to die in a ball of fire than go missing.
The nose tipped further forward, her left wing tipped up—the start of a dive and spin. Now or never. Dammit.
Her whole right leg throbbed with pain, and there was blood on her sleeve, blood spattered on the inside of the canopy, and she didn’t know where it had come from. Maybe from that pilot whose face she’d seen, the one looking back at her with dead eyes behind his goggles. Instinct and training won over. Reaching up, she slammed open the canopy. Wind struck her like a fist. She unbuckled her harness, worked herself out of her seat; her leg didn’t want to move. She didn’t jump so much as let the Yak fall away from her, and she was floating. No—she was falling. She pulled the rip cord, and the parachute billowed above her, a cream-colored flower spreading its petals. It caught air and jerked her to a halt. She hung in the harness like so much deadweight. Deadweight, ha.
Her plane was on fire now, a flaming comet spinning to earth, trailing a corkscrew length of black smoke. Her poor plane. She wanted to weep, and she hadn’t wept at all, this whole war, despite everything.
The battle had moved on. She’s lost sight of Inna’s plane but heard gunfire in the tangle of explosions and engine growls. Inna had covered her escape, protecting her from being shot in midair. Not that that would have been a tragedy—she’d die in combat, at least. Now she didn’t know which side of the line the barren field below her was on. Who would find her, Russians or Nazis? No prisoners of war, only traitors …
The worst part was not being able to do anything about it. Blood dripped from her leg and spattered in the wind. She’d been shot. The dizziness that struck her could have been the shock of realization or blood loss. She might not even reach the ground. Would her body ever be found?
The sky had suddenly gotten very quiet, and the fighters and bombers swarmed like crows in the distance. She squinted, trying to see them better.
Then Raisa blacked out.
Much later, opening her eyes, Raisa saw a low ceiling striped with rows of wooden roof beams. She was in a cot, part of a row of cots, in what must have been a makeshift field hospital bustling with people going back and forth, crossing rows and aisles on obviously important business. They were speaking Russian, and relief rushed through her. She’d been found. She was home.
She couldn’t move, and decided she didn’t much want to. Lying mindlessly on the cot and blankets, some distance from the pain she was sure she ought to be feeling, seemed the best way to exist, for at least the next few minutes.
“Raisa! You’re awake!”
A chair scooted close on a concrete floor, and a familiar face came into view: David. Clean-shaven, dark hair trimmed, infantry uniform pressed and buttoned, as if he was going to a parade and not visiting his sister in hospital. Just as he was in the formal picture he’d sent home right after he signed up. This must be a dream. Maybe this wasn’t a hospital. Maybe it was heaven. She wasn’t sure she’d been good enough.
“Raisa, say something, please,” he said, and with his face all pinched up he looked too worried to be in heaven.
“Davidya!” She needed to draw two breaths to get the word out, and her voice scratched surprisingly. She licked dry lips. “You’re alive! What happened?”
He gave a sheepish shrug. “My squad got lost. We engaged a Panzer unit in the middle of the forest, and a sudden spring snowstorm pinned us down. Half of us got frostbite and had to drag the other half out. It took weeks, but we made it.”
All this time … he really was just lost. She wished Sofin were here so she could punch him in the face.
“I’d laugh at all the trouble you caused, but my chest hurts,” she said.
His smile slipped, and she imagined he’d had an interview with someone very much like Sofin after he and his squad limped back home. She wouldn’t tell him about her own interview, and she would burn those letters she’d written him as soon as she got back to the airfield.
“It’s so good to see you, Raisa.” He clasped her hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged, and she squeezed as hard as she could, which wasn’t very, but it was enough. “Your Commander Gridnev got word to me that you’d been hurt, and I was able to take a day to come see you.”
She swallowed and the words came slowly. “I was shot. I had to bail out. I don’t know what happened next.”
“Your wingman was able to radio your location. Ground forces moved in and found you. They tell me you were a mess.”
“But I got my fourth kill, did they tell you that? One more and I’ll be an ace.” Maybe not the first woman fighter ace, or even the second. But she’d be one.
David didn’t smile. She felt him draw away, as the pressure on her hand let up.
She frowned. “What?”
He didn’t want to say. His face had scrunched up, his eyes glistening—as if he was about to start crying. And here she was, the girl, and she hadn’t cried once. Well, almost once, for her plane.
“Raisa, you’re being medically discharged,” he said.
“What? No. I’m okay, I’ll be okay—”
“Both your legs are broken, half your ribs are cracked, you’ve dislocated your shoulder, you have a concussion and been shot twice. You can’t go back. Not for a long time, at least.”
She really hadn’t thought she’d been so badly hurt. Surely she’d have known if it was that bad. But her body still felt so far away … She didn’t know anything. “I’ll get better—”
“Please, Raisa. Rest. Just rest for now.”
One more kill, she only needed one more … “Davidya, if I can’t fly, what will I do?”
“Raisa!” A clear voice called from the end of the row of cots.
“Inna,” Raisa answered, as loud as her voice would let her.
Her wingman rushed forward, and when she couldn’t find a chair, she knelt by the cot. “Raisa. Oh, Raisa, look at you, wrapped up like a mummy.” She fussed with the blankets, smoothed a lock of hair peeking out from the bandage around Raisa’s head, and then fussed with the blankets some more. Good, sweet Inna.
“Inna, this is my brother, David.”
Her eyes widened in shock, but Raisa didn’t get a chance to explain that, yes, “missing” sometimes really meant missing, because David had stood in a rush and offered his chair to Inna, but she shook her head, which left them both standing on opposite sides of the cot, looking at each other across Raisa. Belatedly, Inna held out her hand. David wiped his on his trouser leg before shaking hers. What a David thing to do.
“Raisa’s told me so much about you,” Inna said.
“And she’s told me about you in her letters.”
Inna blushed. Good. Maybe something good would come out of all this.
She ought to be happy. She’d gotten her wish, after all.
Raisa stood on the platform, waiting for the train that would take her away from Voronezh. Her arm was still in a sling, and she leaned heavily on a cane. She couldn’t lift her own bags.
Raisa had argued with the military about the discharge. They should have known she wouldn’t give in—they didn’t understand what she’d had to go through to get into the cockpit in the first place. That was the trick: she kept writing letters, kept showing up, over and over, and they couldn’t tell her no. In a fit of fancy, she wondered if that was what had brought David home: She’d never stopped writing him letters, so he had to come home.
When they finally offered her a compromise—to teach navigation at a training field near Moscow—she took it. It meant that even with the cane and sling, even if she couldn’t walk right or carry her own gear, she still wore her uniform, with all its medals and ribbons. She still held her chin up.
But in the end, even she had to admit she wouldn’t fly again—at least, not in combat.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Inna had come with her to the station to see her off. David had returned to his regiment, but she’d overheard the two of them exchanging promises to write.
“I’m fine, really.”
Inna’s eyes shone as if she might cry. “You’ve gone so quiet. I’m so used to seeing you run around like an angry chicken.”
Raisa smiled at the image. “You’ll write?”
“Of course. Often. I’ll keep you up to date on all the gossip.”
“Yes, I want to know exactly how many planes Liliia Litviak shoots down.”
“She’ll win the war all by herself.”
No, in a few months Raisa would read in the newspaper that Liliia was declared missing in action, shot down over enemy territory, her plane and body unrecovered. First woman fighter ace in history, and she’d be declared a deserter instead of a hero. But they didn’t know that now.
The train’s whistle keened, still some distance away, but they could hear it approach, clacking along its tracks.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Inna asked, with something like pleading in her eyes.
Raisa had been staring off into space, something she’d been doing a lot of lately. Wind played with her dark hair, and she looked out across the field and the ruins of the town to where the airfield lay. She thought she heard airplanes overhead.
She said, “I imagined dying in a terrible crash, or shot down in battle. I’d either walk away from this war or I’d die in some gloriously heroic way. I never imagined being … crippled. That the war would keep going on without me.”
Inna touched her shoulder. “We’re all glad you didn’t die. Especially David.”
“Yes, because he would have had to find a way to tell my parents.”
She sighed. “You’re so morbid.”
The train arrived, and a porter came over to help with her luggage. “Be careful, Inna. Find yourself a good wingman to train.”
“I’ll miss you, my dear.”
They hugged tightly but carefully, and Inna stayed to make sure Raisa limped her way onto the train and to her seat without trouble. She waved at Raisa from the platform until the train rolled out of sight.
Sitting in the train, staring out the window, Raisa caught sight of the planes she’d been looking for: a pair of Yaks streaking overhead, on their way to the airfield. But she couldn’t hear their thrumming engines over the sound of the train. Probably just as well.