For a moment Nina thought her ears had burst, that she had gone deaf. The guns, she thought, where are they? There were no shells exploding in the air, the batteries below were silent, and yet a U-2 was falling out of the sky in a shower of glowing red-and-gold fragments.
“Drop!” Yelena was screaming to the next plane in line, but strange flashes were already arrowing in, straight through the dark rather than from the ground. The second plane exploded, falling apart midair, and two more girls were dead. Bile crawled up the back of Nina’s throat. “Night fighters,” she heard herself shouting through the interphones, “they’re lining us up with night fighters—” They had never been hit with that before; the tracer fire was setting the U-2s alight like dry kindling. The third U-2 in line should have been sideslipping, diving out of the line of flight, but it sailed straight into the lights, undeviating. Irina was in the cockpit, Nina thought, Irina who had brought Dusia’s corpse down, then sat frozen for hours afterward. She must be shock-frozen now, Nina thought, shouting fruitlessly at the plane. Shock-frozen the way Yelena had been that time she imagined Messerschmitts where there were none—because Irina didn’t even try to evade the tracer fire. She flew on, straight and slow as a stone lobbed gently into a river, and then she was burning in the air like a sheet of paper.
The next fighter to make its pass would target the Rusalka.
Yelena had already thrown them into a nosedive. “Get under the lights,” Nina yelled through the interphones. They were sinking fast toward the ground, and from the corner of her eye she could see the flaming wreckage of Irina’s plane—charred fuselage, half a wing, a horrendously bright flare that might have been burning hair on a dead woman’s head—settle over the earth in glowing embers. The Rusalka’s altimeter fell, Yelena forcing them down under six hundred meters, five, four—“We’re over the target!” Nina shouted, “keep straight—” Normally Nina would have released the bombs, but they were far too low. Two hundred meters now and still falling. Nina looked back and saw the U-2 behind them tumble out of the sky midway through its own evasive maneuvers, a burning propeller whirling into the night like a star, the navigator’s flares going off in colored bursts even as the plane’s wings broke apart. Nina saw the shape of a German night fighter for the first time, lit jaggedly by the green light of the flares.
“Under one hundred meters,” Yelena called, bringing the engine back to life even as the altimeter needle scraped the bottom. The Rusalka roared, nose lifting as Yelena brought her around still hugging the ground. “I can’t see—”
Nina struggled to get her bearing for the new heading, back to the airdrome. This mission was done. The searchlights were still stabbing the air, but the Night Witches had scattered to the wind, run for cloud cover, turned for home. The ground below glowed with burning fragments. Four planes, Nina thought numbly. They had never, ever lost so many at once. Losses came singly, a plane at a time, perhaps two. Not four.
She could hear Yelena crying in the front cockpit, even as she took them up to a safer height to jettison their bombs. “Tell me where to go,” she was weeping, “tell me the heading. Take me home.”
“HOW DID THE FRITZES know our target?”
“Even they get lucky. Who knows?”
Ten minutes. Eight girls. One moment they were immortal, the Night Witches descending on their targets. The next moment, burning like candles.
“I’ve been promoted to pilot.” Nina mumbled the news into Yelena’s hair, standing outside the schoolhouse that now served as their barracks. “Moved up with three other navigators.” She should have been raging to be moved away from Yelena, but all rage had been drained out of her.
“It’s where you belong,” Yelena said valiantly. “The regiment needs you in a pilot’s cockpit, not steering me around.” But her face crumpled. Nina pulled her closer, openly kissed her wet eyes and her wet cheeks, not bothering to look for privacy. Ever since coming back to the barracks and seeing the eight folded cots against the wall that would not be filled that night, all the women were embracing, clinging, comforting each other. The most disastrous night in regiment history had bloomed into a beautiful summer morning, and they all knew they would be going up again tonight. The word had come down that they’d have night fighters of their own flying, if any German night fighters reared their snouts again.
“They’ve given you a U-2 already?” Yelena asked, wiping her eyes. “For tonight?”
Nina nodded. “Bershanskaia’s pairing you with Zoya for navigator. She’s good—you were right about that. She’ll take care of you.”
Not like I can. But she didn’t say it; this was the time to fill her pilot with confidence.
“Who’s your navigator?” Yelena asked.
“Galina Zelenko.”
“Little Galya? How is that skinny prat supposed to keep you out of trouble?” Yelena sounded unaccustomedly savage. “She looks about twelve!”
“Eighteen, and terrified of me. Am I really that frightening?” Nina’s attempt at levity fell flat. I don’t want to leave you, she wanted to cry. I can’t fly with anyone but you. But this was the way of things: lose a sestra, slot another into her cockpit, keep flying.
They stood in the sunlight, clinging to each other. “I just want this war to be over,” Yelena whispered. “I want an apartment in Moscow overlooking the river, Ninochka. I want to sit at the window with a glass of tea, and hold your hand, and watch babies play on the floor. I want to sleep ten hours every night. I never want to kill even a spider again.”
Peace and tea and sunlight. Nina tried to imagine it, an apartment with a wide gray river outside, children laughing, tea sweetened with cherry jam, but all she could see was planes falling through the night like burning flowers. I want to kill Nazis, Nina thought. Whether this war ends tomorrow or in a hundred years, I don’t think I will ever stop wanting to kill Nazis.
“Aren’t you tired of it, Nina? The dark, the jitters, the bad dreams?”
Never, Nina thought. She was heartsick and grief-sick and staggering with exhaustion; she had the usual postflight headache, and a ferocious crash coming when her Coca-Cola tablets wore off—but she already wanted to get back in the air.
Back to the hunt.
“HOW IS IT?” Galina asked anxiously, passing Nina her tea. She really did look about twelve.
“What do you mean how is it? It’s airdrome tea; it’s ice cold and tastes like gasoline.” Nina signed off on the release the mechanic had stood on the wing to thrust under her nose.
“Can we give her a name?” Galina gave their U-2 a pat as she climbed into the navigator’s seat. “Some pilots do.”
“She’s just a U-2. Take the stick when we reach altitude, we’ll give you some practice—” and off they were, following Yelena and the Rusalka up into the clouds. “Light touch, don’t yank . . .”
They were flying missions over the peninsula all that month, coming back to barracks near Krasnodar. Not even a repurposed shed this time but dugout trenches with plank beds, lines strung up so wet underwear and stockings could dry above the mud. Nina took to sleeping on the airfield under old plane covers, arm thrown over her eyes to block the light, hoping Yelena could join her. Long days and lack of proper barracks meant fewer places they could meet alone.
“I’m being sent out on detail,” Yelena said in August, looking bleak. “Eight crews are joining the Black Sea Fleet battalions.”
Nina’s heart clutched. “When will you be back?”
“When we take Novorossiysk.” Yelena kissed her, soft and reassuring, but Nina wasn’t reassured. That was rough flying between sea and mountains, storms blowing off the water . . . she pulled Yelena to her fiercely, burying her face in that delicate collarbone. Promise you’ll come back, she thought, but no one promised that. Yelena went off to Novorossiysk; Nina stayed on flying runs over the peninsula, the Crimea, the wave-shattered coast along the Sea of Azov.
“Nina Borisovna, you will assist the training squadron in your off hours,” Bershanskaia informed her, scribbling at a stack of paperwork. The Forty-Sixth trained replacements within the regiment, pilots training their navigators, navigators training their mechanics, mechanics training their armorers. Any position could be filled within the regiment; they took pride in that. “Four mechanics have just moved up.”
Nina saluted. “Get some sleep, Comrade Major.” They were all frank-spoken with each other, regardless of rank. It shocked the officers from other regiments, but the Night Witches just shrugged.
Bershanskaia smiled, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray made of a flattened shell case. “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
We’re dying off fairly fast now, Nina thought. That night, it was almost her.