galloped, Katya wondered, Was it harm Leonid and I averted just now, or was it something else, something secret revealing itself on this mournful day? What would I have said to Leonid if I’d let myself speak? Would it have been… ? The sky had no answers for her, only endless room for asking. No, she thought.
Comrades have died, and comrades can be saved with this new tactic.
There’s a mission to be flown, and a major battle looming. I have my answer.
She entered the command tent and found the captain of her squadron, Nina Vasi Pyevna Smirnova. She told the captain the new strategy. Smirnova was impressed and asked Katya to write it up. Katya would address the pilots and navigators at their briefing in a few hours.
Tonight’s mission would be above a rail station deep inside enemy lines. The partisan network had identified a trainload of German heavy tanks being transported to Belgorod. Efforts were being made to stop this train.
One partisan cell was planning to attack the train itself. The partisans needed the Night Witches to take out the station, its water tower, maintenance shed, and tracks to slow the train’s progress.
Tonight, she and Vera were assigned to fly one of the two lead planes.
* * * *
July 1
2130 hours
Katya lay inside the tent and did not see dusk settle over the steppe, but she knew it had come when she heard the first Yak-9 fighters tear away from the field. The pages of her report jostled and mingled on her cot when she jumped off it to run outside.
She was too late. Leonid’s plane was the third to take off. His climb was beautiful to watch, his sleek fighter rose and Katya thrilled to the engine’s power. She saw the top of Leonid’s helmet through the clear bell of his cockpit and felt a palpable rising in her chest, as though part of her heart were flying off with him, banking hard in line with the others on night patrol. The rising went into her hand and she hoisted it in a wave he would not see. The last of the Yaks bounded off the grass field. The pilots closed ranks over the airstrip, then flew beyond sight and sound. Once they were gone, Katya listened to the wide silence return under the vast and bruising steppe sky, serrated only by crickets and some mechanic hammering at something stubborn.
Katya trod back to the tent. She completed the report and closed her eyes. Other girls filtered in, squeaking their cots for some rest before the night’s mission. No one spoke, a few snored, and Katya drifted away. She awoke a little while later when the other girls stirred. There was a change in her when she sat up. She recollected a vague sense from a dream she must have had while napping. The dream was of her and Leonid. She remembered a closed door between them. She did not recall if the door ever opened in the dream. She felt bereft of him; he’d taken off before she could see him and explore again what she’d wanted to say, perhaps even what she wanted to hear. The door in the dream was closed, she knew that now. Sitting upright on the cot, she rubbed her eyes awake and made a decision, to leave the door open. Vera walked past on her way to the briefing. She stopped in front of Katya’s cot.
‘What?’ Vera asked.
Katya looked up at her navigator. The girl wore a kind and silly grin.
She leaned down to Katya, to read something in her eyes as though on one of her maps.
‘Hmm?’
Vera leaned down farther. ‘What’s with you? You’ve got a look on your face.’
Katya made no response. She stood from the cot and grabbed her report. Vera blocked her way. She called to the other girls, ‘Did you see the look?’
‘Yes,’ a few answered. ‘A definite look.’
Katya snorted and spun away from Vera. Laughing Night Witches hooted behind her, ‘A look, yes, yes. I saw it.’
Vera caught up with her outside the tent.
‘So, Katyusha. Did you and Leonid…’
‘No!’ Katya held up the pages she’d prepared. ‘We’ve got a mission tonight. Do you think you could get your crazy brain to focus on that right now?’
‘Yes, Katyusha.’ Vera feigned shame. ‘Of course, my pilot.’ She stabbed a finger into Katya’s face. ‘But you’ll tell me everything when we get back, or I’ll ask Leonid. We’ll see what he says.’
The briefing took an hour. The pilots and navigators discussed Katya’s proposal, refined it, then accepted it. Katya received a round of applause. Captain Smirnova sent them out to get ready. Take-off would be in fifteen minutes, at 2200 hours. The sun’s long goodbye over the steppe was still in progress when Katya strode outside the command tent. In the remaining glimmer, she spotted the fuselage lights of the first Yak-9
returning to the field. In moments the sound of the plane came within range.
The engine sputtered. Something was wrong.
Men ran past Katya to the edge of the grass landing strip. Many carried fire extinguishers, a few hauled medic boxes. Katya kept her eyes in the dimming sky, on the flashes from the oncoming plane. Then the Yak came into view. Smoke trailed behind it, blacker than the congealing night.
The engine coughed and the plane pitched, dipping and unsure. Katya crept closer to the field, some of the other girls in her squadron came with her. The fighter came in too steep. Katya’s lips formed the words
The Yak touched down and stayed, running fast over the grass, but the dulled propeller slowed and the fighter turned off the runway in a sharp pivot. The engine was throttled back. The Yak did not taxi to its assigned station but halted where it was off the runway and quit. An acrid haze billowed from the engine until runners doused it with white chemicals.
Others climbed the wing, shoved back the cockpit bell, and clotted around the pilot. Fingers touched the back of Katya’s fist. Vera stood beside her.
Katya opened her balled hand and took Vera’s in hers.
More planes landed, none as badly as the first wounded plane; that pilot was hauled away on a stretcher and his plane was pushed by a ground crew to its hardstand. Three more in Leonid’s squadron of a dozen trailed smoke when they touched down. The eleventh plane landed and Katya scanned the maroon sky for his green and red running lights. Vera’s hand tightened around hers.
‘He’s coming,’ Katya said.
