Daughters of the Night Sky, page 24
The moment she was given the all clear for takeoff, Oksana soared back to the front. We were only a twenty-minute flight to the camp, so there wasn’t much use in resting before we arrived. Just as we came to the edge of the German camp, Oksana cut the engine before we would be heard. We deployed our bombs, one after another, making a mess of their barracks. The searchlights caught us as we dropped the final bomb, and I was ready with the newly equipped machine gun they had mounted to the rear of my cockpit in case any of the Germans gave chase.
Oksana’s movements, usually efficient and assured, became agitated, then panicky. “The engine won’t start again,” she called into the interphone. I felt the metallic taste of fear at the tip of my tongue. “We’re out of starts.”
“How? We should have two left.”
“I have no idea. We must have miscounted.”
The searchlights locked in on us, and the antiaircraft guns had no problem finding their mark. The wings were shredded in short order, and we were losing altitude quickly. If the impact didn’t kill us, the Germans would do the job. I saw visions of Vanya and Mama, my breath catching with the realization I wasn’t going to see them again. I gripped the open edge of the cockpit on either side of me. The ground was spinning closer. There would be no recovering from the dive, though Oksana still wrestled with the throttle.
“We’ll have to bail out,” I called back to her, grateful for the large pack on my back.
Oksana gave her assent, and we deployed, pulling our chutes almost the instant we were free of Snowdrop. Neither of us had practiced jumping with parachutes in years—even in military academies, we’d rarely had the chance. It was too risky for the aircraft. I felt a cold sweat on my brow despite the frigid air. The German searchlights tracked us, and I was jolted in the air as their bullets pierced my chute, my descent accelerating with every new puncture. I gripped my parachute harness until my fingers grew numb, hoping the chute would hold. I felt exposed as a newborn babe, and just as able to defend myself. I wanted to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see the bullets that seemed destined to riddle my flesh, but I had to see the ground if I wanted to land without breaking a leg on the forest floor. Or worse.
I had little control over where I landed but tried to urge my course toward a clearing I could just make out by the light of the moon. Getting tangled at the top of a fifteen-meter pine was a complication I didn’t need. The drop was short, and despite the Germans aiding the speed of my descent, my landing on the edge of the clearing was only rough enough to twist an ankle. It would ache tomorrow, I was certain, but not so much I wouldn’t be able to walk.
But a walk wasn’t enough. We needed to run.
More of our planes were overhead, and the constant rat-a-tat of the antiaircraft guns sounded above us. I ducked as though I expected the bullets to fall on our heads like leaden raindrops. I couldn’t recognize who flew the plane that hovered over the camp, but I was mesmerized to see it from this perspective. It wasn’t fast but looked remarkably graceful as it glided over its target. The eerie silence, followed by the crash of bombs, then the thrumming of the small engine as it roared overhead was enough to unnerve the most battle-hardened pilot. The careening whistle as the plane dove before releasing the bombs was otherworldly. The nickname “Night Witches” made more sense than I cared to admit.
A thud a few meters away told me Oksana had landed much harder than I did. I discarded my harness and dashed as quickly to her side as I could manage. “We have to move. Into the trees,” I said, eyeing the swooping biplanes overhead. Our bombs were anything but precise, and we could easily get caught in a blast. The forest wasn’t particularly dense, but it should give us the benefit of cover.
Oksana struggled to her feet, looking woozy and disoriented.
“Put your arm around me,” I commanded, supporting her as we shuffled to what I hoped was the northeast, away from the German camp. It was impossible to be certain without my compass, which had been lost in the crash.
The barrage of bombs, grenades, and antiaircraft guns caused me to flinch every few steps, and it never seemed to grow quieter. Despite the dark of night, the path was illuminated by the glow of gunfire against the ankle-deep bed of snow, so I clung to the shadows as best I could, supporting Oksana through the drifts and brambles.
“Katya, I need to stop for a bit,” Oksana said through gasping breaths.
I hated to stop, imagining somehow that our movement would make us a less likely target. The reality was that whether we moved or kept still, the only thing protecting us from the bombs raining down was luck until we reached our camp. Oksana’s face was ashen when I looked over and opened my mouth to persuade her to keep moving. One glance at her gray features and I snapped my mouth shut again. She was wounded, and I had to assess how badly before we made any attempt to return to camp.
My arms trembled around Oksana as I scanned the countryside, looking for a decent place to take cover. As though I’d called it into being, there appeared what proved to be a small opening to a cave ahead to my right. It seemed relatively well secluded and, if of any depth at all, would provide protection from carelessly thrown grenades or stray bullets—even a measure of cover from the small bombs we dropped. I held no illusions about its ability to protect us from the soldiers who were probably already on patrol, looking for the crew of the downed plane, or better still, the mangled bodies that would serve as trophies. We were worth an Iron Cross to them, and we never let that fact slip far from our minds.
“In here,” I whispered needlessly as Oksana leaned on me. We stooped to enter the little opening, and I hoped none of the more vicious creatures were sheltering in our sanctuary. What an embarrassment it would be to escape the hands of the Germans only to be maimed or killed by a starving wolf.
“Thank you,” Oksana whispered through a grimace as I helped her to sit.
“Where are you hurt?” I asked, wishing I’d had more training as a medic. I’d bring it up the next time the brass was in earshot. I fumbled in my breast pocket for the flashlight that I hadn’t dared use before now. Oksana gestured to her side, and my fingers flew to remove her flight suit to assess the damage. Her entire left side was a bloody mess.
“You’ve been shot,” I said, unzipping the top of my suit and unbuttoning my blouse. It wasn’t pristine, but it would do for bandages until I could get her back to the base for proper medical attention.
“I already deduced as much,” she said in a flat voice.
I began tearing my blouse into strips. “I need to get you patched up and back to base. You need a medic. A surgeon,” I corrected as I assessed the damage to her side.
She sat still as I tried to stem the flow of blood. Her breathing was strong, though raspy, as I applied the strips of cloth to the angry red flesh in a makeshift bandage and held my hands over the covered wound, hoping to stem the flow of blood. I didn’t seem to be making much progress, so I zipped her suit back up, hoping her blouse and suit would do their part to help the wound clot before it claimed too much of her blood, and I maintained pressure on the injured area. Oksana was a pale woman by nature, but she had gone from alabaster to crystalline in color from the loss of blood.
“Do you think you can walk?” I asked, barely audible, the image of German soldiers looming in the back of my brain. I could accept a death from being shot down. A good, clean death. What we would suffer at their hands would be worse than any fate I could conjure from the deepest crevasses of my brain.
“I’m not sure. I just need to catch my breath,” Oksana whispered. She took in a deep, raspy breath. “I’m cold. It’s always so damned cold.”
I lay beside her and pulled her into my arms, tucking her head under my chin, doing all I could not to upset her injury. I willed every ounce of my warmth into her broken body. I expected her to rebuff my embrace, as self-reliant as she always was, but she turned her face into my chest and took in a deep, ragged breath.
“You always smell like vanilla sugar somehow,” she said. “Sweet and wholesome. Like Yana’s cookies.”
“I’m sure she’ll have platters of them waiting when you get home,” I said, wondering how soon that day would come for Oksana. Sooner than for me, I wagered. I was certain she’d need time to heal from this injury and hoped the advances westward would have the war tied up before she was fit for service again.
“No, Katya,” Oksana said, her whisper even lower. “She’s gone.”
I gingerly tightened my embrace for a moment. “When did you receive word?”
“She died before the war started. When Stalin had his head up his ass and refused to stop the German army until they practically set up offices at the Kremlin.”
“What reason could they have for killing a young girl?” From the few times Oksana had mentioned Yana, I couldn’t imagine she was like us. She wasn’t the kind to take up arms.
“She was Jewish.” Oksana sighed. “They killed her, her parents, her baby brother. Gunned them down like stray dogs.”
“My God, Oksana. I had no idea. You always spoke of her as though she lived and breathed still.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to say otherwise,” Oksana said. “You keep alive for your Vanya. Taisiya had her Matvei. I had to have something to cling to.”
The meaning of her words seeped into me like the cold, dank air of the cave. She could never have spoken this way before. One word about exactly how dear Yana had been to her could well have resulted in her losing her wings and her place in the regiment.
What words of solace could I offer? This sullen girl now made perfect sense as I held her bleeding in my arms. She wasn’t simply angry. She’d been grieving. She used her churlish mask to protect her from the reality of life without Yana. She needed that mask to fight—to exact some revenge from the people who had cut short a life that had been so precious to her.
“Oksana, I wish I’d known. I would have tried to understand . . . tried to help you cope with it all. I would have been a better friend.”
“You were always a good friend to me, Katya. Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
“Nonsense,” I said, wishing I could think of more instances when I’d reached out to her when we’d first met. Tried to get to know her when she was still reeling from her loss.
“I need you to do something for me,” she said.
“Anything,” I said, stroking the back of her head, my fingers brushing over her silver-blond tresses.
“Can you take word to my family in Aix? My parents are gone, but my aunt and uncle, my cousin—I want them to remember me. And I don’t want them to hear about it in a letter. Take Yana’s drawing to them. You can take whatever you want from my effects and give them the rest.”
“Don’t talk like that, Oksana. We’re getting up. We’re going now if you’re going to try to give in like this.” I moved to release her from my arms and stand, but she summoned the strength to clutch my suit and keep me seated.
“It’s too late for me, Katya. Too much blood. I feel light. Like floating. Please just promise me.” The color in her lips had gone from rosy to blue, and she’d begun to shiver. She spoke the truth, and there was nothing I could do to save her.
I gripped her close to my chest, hoping to spread my warmth to her. “I can’t promise,” I said, not wanting any of our final words to be half-truths or empty promises. “But if I survive, I will do my best. I’ll beg for papers. I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s all I can ask,” Oksana said. I felt her muscles relax, as though I’d relieved her of a heavy burden. “Take your Vanya with you. Have a proper honeymoon by the sea.”
“Can’t you please try?” I pressed my lips to the top of her silvery head, my tears streaming into her hair. “We can try to get you back to the base.”
“I’ll slow you down too much, Katya. You need to go. Soon. I can’t risk your life for the slim chance of saving mine.”
“Oksana—”
“That’s an order from your superior officer. The others need you, Katya. And I’ve done my part. I can die knowing that I have.”
“I can’t lead them the way you and Sofia did,” I said, wiping my face free of the tears.
“No, you’ll lead them in your own way. Tell the commanders I named you as my preferred replacement, though I’m sure they will know it. Now go, Katya. Stay low. I haven’t heard bombs for a while now, so you should be clear from our side.”
She trembled in my arms, from cold, pain, and exhaustion, I was sure, no longer from fear. I wanted to argue. I wanted to refuse to leave. I did not want to disturb the peace of her last moments on earth with a dispute, however, and knew she would only repeat her order if I countermanded her.
My shivers equaled hers as I pulled away from our embrace. I lowered my face to hers and kissed her lips. She’d gone so long without tenderness. Her lips were cold as I pressed mine against them, wishing the air from my lungs could breathe life into hers.
She looked up with her gray-blue eyes, her gaze distant as she tried to focus on my face. “Thank you, Katya. Go and be well. Go home to your Vanya, and make some little painters. The world needs more painters.”
“And the first girl will be Oksana. For you.”
I kissed the top of her head once more and dashed for the mouth of the cave before I lost the resolve to leave.
The camp can’t be far. I can make it there in time and round up a search crew. The brass will allow it for the commander of the regiment. They have to.
I wasn’t more than ten meters away when I heard the crack of her service pistol. I stopped stock still for a moment and swiveled back to look at the entrance to the cave where Oksana’s body now lay.
I could go back and face the scene she tried to spare me from, or I could follow her orders.
I turned in the direction of the sun, whose weak rays had just begun to break over the crests to the east, and placed one foot in front of the other, back to where my duty called me.
CHAPTER 23
Sorties: 795
It was more than twenty-four hours later before I found our camp due to the blanket of snow, the snarls of roots and branches on the forest floor, and my slow progress as I tried to make my passage as silent as possible. My attempts to avoid the attention of any German sentries made for an arduous slog through the Polish wilderness. With each step farther from the German bases, I grew more certain that Oksana could not have survived the journey. Her orders had been just, and they had very likely saved my life.
We’d been written off for dead, as two other teams had seen our crash. They hadn’t seen us deploy our chutes, and even if they had, any attempt to recover us on the German side of the front would have been a suicide mission.
“If we’d seen you—” Svetlana began.
“You would have stayed put or risked your life for no purpose,” I scolded, sipping from the piping-hot cup of tea that Renata refreshed as soon as it began to empty. Her mother had procured a tin of fine tea leaves from the factory where she worked. A token of appreciation for her daughter’s service to be sent to the front. It was as fine a black tea as one might see on the tables of the highest government officials, perfumed with just the right blend of spices. Renata knew me well enough not to ruin the effect by adding any milk or sugar.
“I can’t believe you walked all that way,” Polina mused for the sixth time, inspecting the damaged skin on my feet. She wrestled with calling a medic to look at them, but I refused to let her, pulling rank despite my own objections to the practice. I’d endured weeks of convalescence after losing Taisiya. I couldn’t bear it a second time while mourning for Oksana.
The women should have been in their tents, attempting to eke out a few hours of sleep. If not sleep, at least some rest before another afternoon repairing planes and another night keeping the Germans from their objectives. Their faces were all the same—haunted. They had once been innocent girls, but they had seen too much. Lost too much.
I remembered Sofia’s orders to me after we’d lost Darya and Eva in training. We had no piano, but I still crated my violin from camp to camp, finding space in my duffel and ensuring its safe passage on the trucks and Jeeps that carried our supplies while we flew overhead. I retrieved the case from my corner of a tent, not allowing myself to look at Oksana’s possessions, which were still as she left them. Tending to them would be a chore for another day, when I had more strength to sort through the treasures she’d found worthy to take with her.
I rejoined my sisters in arms and for the first time in many months put my bow to strings, playing simple tunes that I hoped were a reasonable interpretation of the Ukrainian folk songs Oksana would have learned as a girl in Kiev. The girls who knew them sang along, reluctantly at first, more enthusiastically as I kept playing. We raised cups of Renata’s good tea in a toast to Oksana and her service. She may have seemed joyless in life, but I hoped that in some way she could take joy in this celebration as we honored her as best we could.
As the light grew weak, the women migrated toward the aircraft, the armorers fitting the bombs, the mechanics fueling and making a final check to ensure each plane was airworthy. Polina hung back, waiting for me as I stowed my instrument. I arched a brow at her, for usually she was leading the mechanics and overseeing every check.
“I hoped I might have a word with you,” she said, casting her eyes down.
“Of course, Polina. What can I do for you?”
“You know I’ve been with the regiment since the start, yes?”
“Naturally. You’re the best mechanic we have, and my mechanic on top of it.”
