“The Germans are close here,” Dusia Nosal proclaimed—a girl with a taut, thin face, probably the best flier in the 588th besides Yelena. She’d lost her newborn baby in a German bombing raid at the beginning of the war. “You can almost smell the sauerkraut. If we don’t get orders within the week . . .”
But the commander of the 218th who came for the following day’s inspection had barely a glance for the regiment. “He called us what?” Nina hissed.
“‘I’ve received one hundred and twelve little princesses, just what am I supposed to do with them?’” Dusia mimicked. “He was on the telephone to General Vershinin, or so I heard.”
“He wouldn’t say that to Raskova’s face!”
But Raskova had flown back to Engels, and the 588th received their orders from Major Yevdokia Bershanskaia now. “Two weeks of additional training,” Bershanskaia said over their groans. She had none of Raskova’s blue-eyed glamour, but she was steady, quiet, all brisk maternal efficiency like a hen herding chicks, no patience for stragglers or whiners. She’d wanted to fly fighters, Nina knew, but now she was commander of the 588th, and if she was disappointed, she didn’t show it. “You’re all to be individually flight-tested by a male pilot.”
“What do they think we’ve been doing all that time in Engels?” Nina demanded. “Buffing our nails? We can’t be trusted until one of the men signs off that we know which end of the stick to hold?”
“Ninochka,” Yelena said with a sigh, “shut up.”
Nina, still smoldering, climbed stonily into her U-2 the following morning with a freckle-faced pilot who looked about twelve and threw her plane around the sky so violently that her inspector nearly threw up. “Pass,” he said, green-faced. Yelena’s examiner was a tall handsome Leningrader with a lazy smile, and Nina hated him on sight. “They make damned pretty pilots in Moscow,” he said, laughing at Yelena’s blush. “Virgin ears, dousha? Better toughen up, or you won’t last a fucking minute against the Krauts—” He kept stringing profanities, clearly enjoying Yelena’s bright red cheeks, and when he finally let her climb into the cockpit, Nina hailed him from the side of the runway.
“What is it, little one?” he asked, loping up with a disbelieving glance for Nina’s head, which didn’t even reach his shoulder. “Are you even tall enough to see out of the cockpit?”
He yelped then, feeling the keen edge of a stropped Siberian razor pressing against the inside of his thigh. Nina smiled, angling her body so no one would see the blade between her fingers. Yelena waved from the U-2, clearly wondering what the delay was.
“My pilot,” Nina said sweetly, “doesn’t care for your fucking language, you bonehead Leningrad mule. Keep your mouth clean around her, or I will slice off your balls and cram them up your fucking nose.”
“Women in the air,” he breathed. “World’s gone crazy, giving planes to you bitches.”
“Bitches like my pilot fly better than you will ever fly in your whole goddamned life.” Nina gave another sweet smile. “So take her up there for a loop and keep your fucking language nice, and I won’t jam a propeller up your shit-factory and crank until your asshole flaps like your mouth.”
“He said I’m a skilled pilot and a credit to the Fourth Air Army,” Yelena reported afterward.
“Did he, now?” Nina said placidly.
The Fritzes were grinding toward Stalingrad, reportedly advanced into the curve of the Don River, before the 588th received their orders. “First combat mission to be flown by three planes only.” Bershanskaia’s hand made its signature chop before a single groan went up. “Myself and both squadron commanders. Regard it as an exploratory sortie, girls.”
“Let’s not grudge her,” Yelena said. “For the commanders it’s going to be all paperwork from here on out. She should have the honor of flying the first mission.”
“Don’t be so everlastingly generous,” Nina groaned. “Just admit that you’d walk over your own mother to get into a cockpit by now.”
“I’d walk over my own mother to get into a cockpit by now,” Yelena said immediately. “Just not a sestra.”
A fine summer evening, warm and breezy. Impossible to think that the front was just kilometers away from this prosaic stretch of flat fields and hastily erected bunkers, torn-up roads dotted with trucks and ground personnel in overalls. The horizon showed plumes of smoke rising kilometers away—coal deposits on fire, someone whispered. There was still a little daylight left when the regiment gathered on the makeshift runway to watch Bershanskaia and the squadron commanders make their way to their planes. “They’ll fly to the auxiliary airfield at the front lines,” the whisper went around. “Arm there, fly their run, then back here.”
Three planes took off into a darkening sky. Nina watched, hands stuffed in her pockets, physically aching. Tomorrow, she thought. From the taut, yearning faces all around her, the others were all thinking the same thing.
“Well,” Yelena announced, “I’m not going to bed until they’ve come back. Let’s have some music!”
A girl from Kiev began an ancient folk song, her voice hushed and lilting, and a few of the others took it up, braiding harmony around her soft alto. A Party march followed, brisk and tuneful, and more voices joined in as the stars came out in their thousands. The sky turned to black velvet, and Nina surprised herself by lifting her own voice in an ancient cradle song from the shores of the Old Man. She hadn’t even known she remembered it, all those verses in the lake dialect so old it was barely Russian. The other girls listened raptly. “What was that?” Yelena asked. She sat with her back against the nearest shed, fiddling with a length of cloth across her lap.
“A song about the lake,” Nina said. “All songs from Baikal are about the lake. Waves that rock the boats and the cradles, and the rusalka’s hand setting both into motion. Then something with the moon . . . It doesn’t make a lot of sense, really.”
“Nothing makes sense,” Yelena said. “We’re in the middle of a war, and a few short kilometers from here people are dying. But us—we’ve never been so happy.”
“Yes,” Nina agreed, watching the moon shine on Yelena’s hair.
Dusia was singing now, her sad face smiling for once, and two of the other girls began to dance, swinging about arm in arm, laughter rising through the night. Someone beckoned Nina, but she flopped down by Yelena, tilting her head at the cloth in her pilot’s lap. “Are you sewing?”
“Embroidering my flying scarf. Blue stars on white, what do you think?” Yelena tilted the cloth under the starlight for Nina’s eyes.
“Where’d you get blue thread?”
“Unpicked it from those horrible men’s briefs!” Yelena grinned, and Nina laughed. They were already flying high at the thought of being in the air tomorrow. The anticipation was so sweet it cut the mouth, like winter-cold water from the icy shore of the Old Man.
They were making plans for how they’d celebrate once they flew five hundred missions and were made Heroes of the Soviet Union—“Gold stars on our chests, just like Raskova!” “When you get a medal, I hear you have to drop it in a crystal glass, fill the glass with vodka, and drink a toast!”—when a sawing, droning buzz rose in the distance: the sound of a U-2’s noisy little radial engine. As one, the girls of the 588th sprinted toward the runway.
One plane touched down, then a second. The tails descended to the grass, dragging both U-2s to a halt, and the ground crew on duty went running out to make postflight checks and tie down the wings. Nina saw Bershanskaia’s compact form climbing out of her cockpit, stepping from the wing to the ground. The first squadron commander came after, stripping off her goggles. The regiment was already swarming around them, pouring laughter and congratulations, but Nina’s feet slowed. The returning pilots had blank, stony faces. Nina tilted her face to the rush of stars overhead.
There was no chopping buzz in the air signaling a third plane.
“Where is Squadron Commander—” someone began, but Bershanskaia cut her off. She didn’t say anything. She just shook her head.
The girls stared at each other. Not even one night active, Nina thought with a painful twist in her stomach, and the regiment had its first two losses.
Bershanskaia looked from pilot to pilot, finding the white-faced deputy commander of the second squadron. “The squadron is now yours, Mariya Smirnova.” A silent nod. “Get some rest, ladies. Tomorrow you all take the air.”
MOST OF THE GIRLS trailed back to their quarters, some pale and stunned, some crying. Yelena headed the opposite direction, toward the flat field where the rest of the U-2s waited. Nina fell in at her side, shock still rolling sickly inside her. Two women dead, two women she had known . . .
“You should go to bed,” Yelena said.