they were accustomed to deciphering each other’s words through the tinny interphones. “Take the stick.”
Nina took over, shivering even in furred overalls and mole-fur flight mask. Nothing kept you warm in an open cockpit under a frozen moon. Better than the armorers, Nina told herself. They worked bare-handed even in the dead of winter; they couldn’t attach bomb fuses through bulky gloves. They were losing fingertips, laboring with blank, stoic faces and bandaged hands as blue as wild violets, but they weren’t slowing down. With more than six months’ practice under their belts, the regiment had turnaround down to an art: a U-2 could land, fuel, rearm, and take off again in less than ten minutes. “It’s counter to regulations,” Bershanskaia had admitted, “but it’s our way and it works.”
Nina saw Yelena’s head loll in sleep, up in the front cockpit. In these long winter shifts where eight runs per night stretched to twelve or more, all the pilots and navigators had started sleeping in shifts. Generally Yelena dozed on the way out, and Nina on the way back. Better that than risk us both dozing off at once. Sleep was the enemy on the long winter nights; sleep the seducer luring you to doze off and fall out of the sky.
Nina battled yawns until the target showed below. “Wake up, rabbit,” she called to Yelena, rapping gloved knuckles on her pilot’s head. “Dusia’s lining up.” Bombing headquarter-designated buildings was always hell; the searchlights and the ground fire were twice as fierce.
“I’m awake.” Yelena shook her head to clear the cobwebs, then took control again and dropped them neatly down behind Dusia’s U-2. Nights like tonight they flew in pairs: Dusia would blaze through first, flinging herself sideways as shells ribboned into the sky in pursuit . . . and the Rusalka came floating silently behind while searchlights and guns were busy. Yelena slid the Rusalka neatly under the one questing searchlight that didn’t dive after Dusia’s U-2, lining them up in perfect darkness. Nina triggered the bombs, and Yelena looped around.
“Nod off, Ninochka,” she called through the interphones. “I’ll wake you on the descent—”
But she broke off as the plane rolled left, fighting her efforts to level out. Nina swore, leaning out over her cockpit and suddenly very, very awake. “Bring us around! There’s still a twenty-five kilo on the rack.”
All traces of weariness bottomed out of Yelena’s voice. “Can you see it?”
“Yes. Last bomb didn’t drop.”
Yelena was already taking them back out wide, past the target into the darkness. Nina caught a flash glimpse of the next U-2 lining up to descend, pilot probably wondering if they’d lost their bearings. No time to worry about that. Nina toggled the bomb’s release, but nothing dropped. “Stuck fast. Level out on the straight, and throttle back.”
“Why?” Yelena called even as she fought the plane’s left-leaning roll, applying opposite aileron and stick to take them flat and steady. Nina unclipped her safety harness. “Ninochka, what are you doing?”
“Giving it a push,” Nina said reasonably and stood up.
“Nina Borisovna, get back in the plane!”
“Keep just over stall speed,” Nina overrode her, “and steady.” Then she slung a leg over the side.
The airstream was rigid and icy as a current of water, knifing down her sides as she put one boot and then the other on the lower wing. Her body locked in the chill of the wind, and her teeth set up a chatter. Nina clung, gloved fingers clamped around the lip of the cockpit, for a moment utterly unable to move. It wasn’t fear, she was just frozen as though swallowed in ice. The wind was a malevolent bitch, wanting to scoop her off toward the ground floating past eight hundred meters below. She’d spin turning and turning through the wisps of cloud, and Yelena wouldn’t be able to do anything but watch . . .
Move, night witch. Her father’s voice. Nina clamped her clattering teeth, then slithered her body along the lower wing between the wires. The Rusalka wobbled and for a moment Nina wondered if she was going to slide into the void, but Yelena steadied them. Inching along the wing, feeling the slipstream’s icy lingering hands run across her back, Nina swatted blindly below but couldn’t feel anything. Peeling one glove off with her teeth, she fumbled at the bomb rack, bare fingers sticking painfully to the frozen metal. Naked skin at this altitude felt like it had been set on fire, not dipped in ice. How long