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,