Daughters of the Night Sky(68)
“You know, I don’t think we’re very different. I’ve always felt better in my own skin up in the air.”
“I miss her, Katya,” Oksana said, her eyes scanning the room, as though searching for listening ears.
“And I miss Taisiya. I always will. She was my dearest friend.”
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “We’ll head up together. I don’t expect that I’ll be able to teach you much, and that’s a relief.” She looked at the women around us, now chewing their celebratory meal in silence, then leaned in close to me. “Now do your job. What can we do to make this seem more like a celebration and less like a funeral? We’ve had plenty of those.”
I handed her my empty cup and took the battered violin case from the corner of the mess hall where I’d stowed it. Though I hadn’t played in months, the chin rest molded to my face like a lover’s caress, and the bow felt as familiar in my fingers as taking Vanya’s hand in mine. After three notes the eyes of the room were all on me. Cheerful, choppy notes made for dancing. A few girls recognized the tune and began to sing. One pulled out a harmonica to accompany me, but there was no piano. No Sofia to play it for us.
The tunes were happy, the party enlivened as Oksana had commanded, but for the voices silenced, our music would never be quite as rich.
Oksana had dubbed our new craft Snowdrop for the sweet little white wildflowers with deep-blue stripes in the center. We painted a chain of the flowers about the cockpits just as Taisiya and I had done. We’d added a slogan on each side: Revenge for Taisiya on one and Revenge for Sofia on the other. Daisy now belonged to someone else, and I thought it was just as well. I didn’t want to fly her with another pilot.
The October air had fangs like January as Oksana aimed the plane to the west. Most of my flying hours had been spent in a state of semiwakefulness, eyes opening and closing like a camera that never quite focused properly. After weeks with better sleep than I had known in two years, I felt as though the scenery soaring past was almost in too-sharp detail.
“Five minutes out,” Oksana called over the interphone. I looked around in the weak light to locate a landmark and found my bearings. Oksana deftly maneuvered the plane as though this were her hundredth sortie as pilot and not one of her first.
The first mark that night was a munitions tent, which I spotted with ease, despite the shadow of night. I took my flare in hand.
“You’re on course. Five . . . three . . . marked! ”
Oksana whistled into the German camp on the stalled engine, deployed the bomb squarely on the marked target, and pulled up to a higher elevation as the engine roared back to life and we maneuvered to return. The rat-a-tat of antiaircraft guns sounded seconds after we made our target, the searchlights now running, hunting frantically for the offending invaders.
Oksana circled back over the camp instead of taking an evasive course back to base.
“What are you doing?” I asked over the interphone. I would have called a course correction to her, but she knew she was well off course. There was nothing inadvertent about her actions.
“We have another bomb. I’m going to use it.”
“Got it,” I said. “There’s a convoy of trucks to the north of the camp. Good a target as any.”
She headed northwest, narrowly evading the searchlights’ blinding ribbons of death. She banked left, dove low, on course to drop her payload on a row of German trucks.
“Pull up,” I called over the interphone. “You’re at least twenty meters below the threshold.”
Ignoring my warning, she deployed the second bomb before she climbed to a safe altitude. I could feel the heat of the blast bounce the plane upward as the bomb made contact with the ground below. The trucks lay in ruins, their fuel tanks making smaller explosions as they ignited. Oksana deftly pulled us up and whipped back onto course for our own camp.
The craft shuddered as we flew, and I scanned all the instruments—such as they were—for any signs of imminent engine failure. I sniffed as intently as a dog waiting for his table scraps, seeking out the first whiff of smoke. Though it would do little good. If the craft was going to catch fire, it would go up quickly and we likely wouldn’t have a chance to land before it became engulfed in flames. In the best case we’d be forced to land in German territory. I doubted my little army-issue pistol would do much good against well-armed German sentries and had little desire to test that theory.
I wanted to growl over the interphone at Oksana for her carelessness. That same mistake had nearly cost Taisiya and me our places in the regiment, and for good reason. I stilled my tongue, knowing she’d respond better to cool logic on the ground, but it cost me every ounce of restraint I had not to hurl insults about her stupidity and that of all her relations—living and dead—over the tinny contraption.
We landed forty minutes later, my knees wobbling as I hopped onto the ground from the wing. We didn’t usually exit the aircraft between sorties these days, but it was clear we needed a mechanic’s assessment. I motioned needlessly to Polina, who was already approaching as I ran my hands over the linen. The scorch marks on the underbelly showed we had possibly been within mere centimeters of disaster, but there didn’t seem to be much damage beyond the cosmetic. I pulled Oksana by the crook of her arm away from the bustle of the ground crews.
“What was that , Oksana?” I asked in a low growl.