apartment in Moscow overlooking the river, Ninochka. I want to sit at the window with a glass of tea, and hold your hand, and watch babies play on the floor. I want to sleep ten hours every night. I never want to kill even a spider again.”
Peace and tea and sunlight. Nina tried to imagine it, an apartment with a wide gray river outside, children laughing, tea sweetened with cherry jam, but all she could see was planes falling through the night like burning flowers. I want to kill Nazis, Nina thought. Whether this war ends tomorrow or in a hundred years, I don’t think I will ever stop wanting to kill Nazis.
“Aren’t you tired of it, Nina? The dark, the jitters, the bad dreams?”
Never, Nina thought. She was heartsick and grief-sick and staggering with exhaustion; she had the usual postflight headache, and a ferocious crash coming when her Coca-Cola tablets wore off—but she already wanted to get back in the air.
Back to the hunt.
“HOW IS IT?” Galina asked anxiously, passing Nina her tea. She really did look about twelve.
“What do you mean how is it? It’s airdrome tea; it’s ice cold and tastes like gasoline.” Nina signed off on the release the mechanic had stood on the wing to thrust under her nose.
“Can we give her a name?” Galina gave their U-2 a pat as she climbed into the navigator’s seat. “Some pilots do.”
“She’s just a U-2. Take the stick when we reach altitude, we’ll give you some practice—” and off they were, following Yelena and the Rusalka up into the clouds. “Light touch, don’t yank . . .”
They were flying missions over the peninsula all that month, coming back to barracks near Krasnodar. Not even a repurposed shed this time but dugout trenches with plank beds, lines strung up so wet underwear and stockings could dry above the mud. Nina took to sleeping on the airfield under old plane covers, arm thrown over her eyes to block the light, hoping Yelena could join her. Long days and lack of proper barracks meant fewer places they could meet alone.
“I’m being sent out on detail,” Yelena said in August, looking bleak. “Eight crews are joining the Black Sea Fleet battalions.”
Nina’s heart clutched. “When will you be back?”
“When we take Novorossiysk.” Yelena kissed her, soft and reassuring, but Nina wasn’t reassured. That was rough flying between sea and mountains, storms blowing off the water . . . she pulled Yelena to her fiercely, burying her face in that delicate collarbone. Promise you’ll come back, she thought, but no one promised that. Yelena went off to Novorossiysk; Nina stayed on flying runs over the peninsula, the Crimea, the wave-shattered coast along the Sea of Azov.
“Nina Borisovna, you will assist the training squadron in your off hours,” Bershanskaia informed her, scribbling at a stack of paperwork. The Forty-Sixth trained replacements within the regiment, pilots training their navigators, navigators training their mechanics, mechanics training their armorers. Any position could be filled within the regiment; they took pride in that. “Four mechanics have just moved up.”
Nina saluted. “Get some sleep, Comrade Major.” They were all frank-spoken with each other, regardless of rank. It shocked the officers from other regiments, but the Night Witches just shrugged.
Bershanskaia smiled, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray made of a flattened shell case. “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
We’re dying off fairly fast now, Nina thought. That night, it was almost her.
Galina read off the headings that evening, giving the night’s target along the peninsula coast. Nina still felt strange to be the one listening to the headings rather than giving them. A night’s uneventful flying, seven runs. “Very low overcast coming in off the water,” Galina began as Nina made the wide returning turn on the last run.
“I see it.” Nina dived down, but the gray masses of cloud snowballed before her eyes as the wind picked up. She pressed the U-2 lower through the dense cloud . . . lower . . .
“Correct course sixty degrees west.” Galina sounded nervous. “We’re pushing out too far—”
“I need to get under this cloud.” The U-2 bounced like a ball in a chute. Three hundred meters, two hundred, and finally the plane bottomed out under the low hover of cloud. Fuck your mother, Nina thought in a sudden drench of panic. They were over the sea. Nina craned her head frantically but there was nothing in sight but lashing, roiling water, no land visible in this dense overhang. “Find me a