If she focused on the sound of the engine, a comforting rattle that flowed through the skin of the fuselage around her, she wouldn’t think so much about the rest of it. If she tipped her head back, she could watch blue sky passing overhead and squint into the sun. The day was beautiful, and she had an urge to open her canopy and drink in the sky. The freezing wind would thrash her at this altitude, so she resisted. The cockpit was warm and safe as an egg.
Something outside caught her eye. Far off, across the flat plain they soared over, to where sky met earth. Dark specks moving against the blue. They were unnatural—they flew too straight, too smoothly to be birds. They seemed far away, which meant they had to be big—hard to tell, without a point of reference. But several of them flew together in the unmistakable shape of airplanes in formation.
She turned on the radio channel. “Stepanova here. Ten o’clock, toward the horizon, do you see it?”
Inna answered. “Yes. Are those bombers?”
They were, Raisa thought. They had a heavy look about them, droning steadily on rather than racing. The formation was coming closer, but still not close enough to see if they had crosses or stars painted on them.
“Theirs or ours?” Katya said.
“I’ll find out,” Raisa said, banking out of formation and opening the throttle. She’d take a look, and if she saw that black cross, she’d fire.
A male voice intruded, the pilot of the Li-2. “Osipov here. Get back here, Stepanova!”
“But—”
“Return to formation!”
The planes were right there, it would just take a second to check—
Inna came on the channel, pleading, “Raisa, you can’t take them on your own!”
She could certainly try …
Osipov said, “A squadron has been notified and will intercept the unknown flight. We’re to continue on.”
They couldn’t stop her … but they could charge her with disobeying orders once she landed, and that wouldn’t help anyone. So she circled around and returned to formation. Litviak was probably getting to shoot someone today. Raisa frowned at her washed-out reflection in the canopy glass.
Dear Davidya:
I promised to write you every day, so I continue to do so.
How are you this time? I hope you’re well. Not sick, not hungry. We’ve taken to talking about eating the rats that swarm the dugouts here, but we haven’t gotten to the point of actually trying it. Mostly because I think it would be far too much work for too little reward. The horrid beasts are as skinny as the rest of us. I’m not complaining, though. We’ve gotten some crates of canned goods—fruits, meat, milk—from an American supply drop and are savoring the windfall. It’s like a taste of what we’re fighting for, and what we can look forward to when this mess is all over. It was Inna who said that. Beautiful thought, yes? She keeps the whole battalion in good spirits all by herself.
I ought to warn you, I’ve written a letter to be sent to you in case I die. It’s quite grotesque, and now you’ll be terrified that every letter you get from me will be that one. Have you done that, written me a letter that I’ll only read if you die? I haven’t gotten one, which gives me hope.
I’m very grateful Nina isn’t old enough to be on the front with us, or I’d be writing double the grotesque letters. I got a letter from her talking about what she’ll do when she’s old enough to come to the front, and she wants to fly like me and if she can’t be a pilot she’ll be a mechanic—my mechanic, even. She was very excited. I wrote her back the same day telling her the war will be over before she’s old enough. I hope I’m right.
Love and kisses, Raisa
Another week passed with no news of David. Most likely he was dead. Officially, he had deserted, and Raisa supposed she had to consider that he actually had, except that that made no sense. Where would he go? Or maybe he was simply lost and hadn’t made his way back to his regiment yet. She wanted to believe that.
Gridnev called her to the operations dugout, and she presented herself at his desk. A man, a stranger in a starched army uniform, stood with him.
The air commander was grim and stone-faced as he announced, “Stepanova, this is Captain Sofin.” Then Gridnev left the room.
Raisa knew what was coming. Sofin put a file folder on the desk and sat behind it. He didn’t invite her to sit.
She wasn’t nervous, speaking to him. But she had to tamp down on a slow, tight anger.
“Your brother is David Ivanovich Stepanov?”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware that he has been declared missing in action?”
She shouldn’t have known, officially, but it was no good hiding it. “Yes, I am.”
“Do you have any information regarding his whereabouts?”
Don’t you have a war you ought to be fighting? she thought. “I assume he was killed. So many are, after all.”
“You have received no communication from him?”
And what if he found all those letters she’d been writing him and thought them real? “None at all.”
“I must tell you that if you receive any news of him at all, it’s your duty to inform command.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We will be watching closely, Raisa Stepanova.”
She wanted to leap across the table in the operations dugout and strangle the little man with the thin moustache. Barring that, she wanted to cry, but didn’t. Her brother was dead, and they’d convicted him without evidence or trial.
What was she fighting for, again? Nina and her parents, and even Davidya. Certainly not this man.
He dismissed her without ever raising his gaze from the file folder he studied, and she left the dugout.
Gridnev stood right outside the door, lurking like a schoolboy, though a serious one who worried too much. No doubt he had heard everything. She wilted, blushing, face to the ground, like a kicked dog.
“You have a place here at the 586th, Stepanova. You always will.”
She smiled a thanks but didn’t trust her voice to say anything. Like observing that Gridnev would have little to say in the matter, in the end.
No, she had to earn her innocence. If she gathered enough kills, if she became an ace, they couldn’t touch her, any more than they could tarnish the reputation of Liliia Litviak. If she became enough of a hero, she could even redeem David.
Winter ended, but that only meant the insects came out in force, mosquitoes and biting flies that left them all miserable and snappish. Rumors abounded that the Allied forces in Britain and America were planning a massive invasion, that the Germans had a secret weapon they’d use to level Moscow and London. Living in a camp on the front, news was scarce. They got orders, not news, and could only follow those orders.
It made her tired.
“Stepanova, you all right?”
She’d parked her plane after flying a patrol, tracing a route along the front, searching for imminent attacks and troops on the move—perfectly routine, no Germans spotted. The motor had grumbled to stillness and the propeller had stopped turning long ago, but she remained in her cockpit, just sitting. The thought of pulling