tumbled back into bed, teeth chattering and the skin over her thighs marbled blue, and seemingly seconds later the Klaxon was sounding the dawn, calling the women of Aviation Group 122 to rise and take the old U-2s up for practice bombing runs over the treeless plain where the Engels airfield stretched flat and barren, catching every implacable puff of wind that blew off the Volga.
“Did you hear the men laughing at us this morning?” Yelena came back to the makeshift dormitory, sweat freezing to the shorn ends of her hair so it spiked in all directions. “They think we’re a joke in these uniforms, they make fun of our marching—”
“They’re just jealous because we’re getting new planes and not the old crates.” Nina sat stitching up a hole in her glove with thread borrowed from Yelena. They had cots side by side; they shared everything from socks to sewing needles. What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine, as Yelena had said the first day in Moscow, and they all lived by it—on Nina’s other side, Lilia was using Nina’s razor to slice fraying edges off her coat sleeve. “Did you hear Raskova’s trying for Pe-2s?” Nina said.
“I heard the Pe-2s are a bear to get off the ground,” Lilia volunteered.
“Better than those Su-2s they have the pilot group in now. Those are a joke.” Yelena stripped off her gloves, flexing stiff cold hands. “They smoke, they leak, they’re slower than a cow on ice—”
“They’re putting the navigators in TB-3s and R-5 trainers in the new year,” Nina said. “After we take the oath. Lilia, you put a nick in my razor, I’m kicking you all the way back to Moscow . . .”
“Try it, you little Siberian runt.”
“Runt, yourself!”
The military oath was taken in November, and Marina Raskova made one of her easy speeches in that intimate voice like she was talking to you alone in the whole crowd. “In our constitution, it is written that women have equal rights in all fields of activity. Today you took the military oath. So let’s vow once more, together, to stand to our last breath in defense of our beloved homeland.” They all cheered themselves hoarse, and Raskova pressed every hand that stretched toward hers, kissed every cold-flushed cheek within reach. As hard as they all worked, Raskova pushed harder. Nina came to make a report one afternoon in December and found her commander fast asleep across a table heaped with papers. “I’m awake,” she said, when Nina tried to tiptoe out again, though her eyes were still closed. “Make your report.”
Nina rattled it off. “Get some rest, Comrade Major,” she finished.
“We’ll rest when the war’s over.”
The year turned; flight training started for the navigators. Flying at night, getting used to the pulse of the blackness around them in the open-air cockpit, cruising under an icy sliver of moon and learning to land with no more aid than a few makeshift runway lights. Everyone knew Raskova would be sorting Aviation Group 122 into its three regiments soon: the day bombers, the night bombers, the fighters. Only the best would be in the fighters, and Nina already knew she wasn’t going to be among them.
It was a strange thing, not to be the best—she’d been the best for so long, certainly the best female in the air club, but here there were hundreds of women who had all been the best in their air clubs. Three members of an aerobatic team had enlisted; they could flip and twirl a plane like birds of prey. Lilia was impervious to air pressure; she’d push her machine to its limit without ever getting dizzy. Yelena could land featherlight on the roughest field in the region. Nina couldn’t match any of them, and she knew it. That hadn’t been a very pleasant realization at first, if she was being honest—her mouth had been sour with envy, realizing she was outclassed. But it hadn’t taken long for envy to fall away under the grinding stones of work and practicality. They were all fighting the damned Hitlerites in the end, if they ever got off this cheerless stretch of airfield by the Volga. When that happened, Nina wanted to fight wingtip to wingtip with fliers even better than she was.
“You’re a high-flying eagle,” Nina told Yelena, “and I’m a little hawk.”
Yelena slid an arm through Nina’s, giving the warm squeeze of reassurance that enchanted Nina every time. Maybe because she’d never really had a woman for