Her pilot managed another nod. Nina wasn’t sure she believed her, but nodded back. They worked as fast as they could, bashing at the propeller blade until they could get it evened up with the shortened one; Nina gave the prop a swing to get it going as Yelena coaxed the engine to life, and fifteen minutes later they were airborne, rising sluggishly after a takeoff twice as long as their nimble little plane normally needed. “We need height,” Nina called as they wobbled along. She felt naked, flying in daylight. At least it was deep winter, when dawn looked more like deep blue twilight. Yelena brought the Rusalka up, the engine groaning as though mortally wounded. It’s just a flesh wound, Nina told her plane. A few days in repairs, and you’ll be good as new.
“I meant what I said.” Yelena’s voice sounded tinny, and Nina didn’t think it was the interphones. “If we ever get shot down, I’d rather you kill me than be taken captive.”
“No one’s getting shot down. We’re almost home.” Twenty minutes at most.
“He could still be back there. The Messerschmitt.”
“He’s not back there.”
“He might have lain in wait till we got back in the air—”
“He’s not there!”
No reply. Nina could see Yelena’s shoulders moving as she breathed in unsteady gulps. The Rusalka wobbled along, jolting Nina back and forth in her cockpit like a nut jumping in a frying pan. A frying pan full of hot oil, she thought, and then thought at least the nut would be warm. She could still feel sleep hissing in her ear, that terrible urge to close her eyes and drift. Go away, you dense night-slut, Nina told sleep. We’re a hair from going down in a ball of flame.
The dense fog of night was thinning. “Airdrome should be below,” Nina called. “Correct fifteen degrees east—” The night’s flying would long be over, but the girls would still be there, eyes on the sky. They always waited when a plane was late.
A flare blossomed, red and welcome: Here is the runway. Nina let out a long shaky breath in relief, and that was when Yelena shouted and threw the U-2 sideways.
The Rusalka shrieked as though she’d been gored. She shook so violently Nina thought the wings were going to shear off. “Yelena—”
“He’s lining us up—” Yelena’s voice came through the interphones, rising higher and higher. “I see him ahead—”
“It’s just landing flares.” Nina clawed free of her safety harness, the third time in the last hour. “No one’s firing.”
“He’s firing on us—” The Rusalka gave a sickening shudder, nose dropping. “We’re hit—”
“We are not hit. You’re hallucinating.” It had happened to other pilots; overstrain conjuring danger from nowhere, landing flares becoming enemy fire. Lunging forward over the broken remnants of windscreen, Nina grabbed for Yelena’s hair where it escaped her flying cap. She yanked Yelena off the controls, bringing her head slamming back against her seat. “Stop!” Nina roared, grabbing with the other hand for her own stick. Her ungloved fingers were so numb she couldn’t feel it. She gave a blind yank, and the engine sputtered. The Rusalka flattened out from her lurching spiral, fighting Nina with everything it had. She didn’t dare let Yelena go; if her pilot clawed the stick back and sent them into one more spin, this poor wounded bird would stall out. Nina muscled the nose down, still standing in an awkward crouch half in and half out of her cockpit, one hand anchoring her pilot and one gripping the stick for dear life. Her entire shoulder screamed with the effort of bracing the descent. The Rusalka dived toward the ground, bounced hard enough to rattle every tooth in Nina’s head, then flung her forward over the shattered windscreen. A white-hot sliver of agony bolted through her forearm, but Nina didn’t care, they were on the ground, rolling safe across frozen earth, and Yelena was all right. She was crying out—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—and she wouldn’t be saying that if she were still hallucinating in panic.
Nina sagged back in her seat, pain stabbing her arm, drenched in sweat, shivering all over because the sweat droplets were already freezing on her damp skin. She couldn’t feel her right hand, and it wouldn’t come loose from the stick, but that didn’t matter. They were on the ground. Muzzily, Nina patted the U-2’s shattered instrument panel. “Good girl.” The world tilted.
In the thirty seconds it took for the flood of waiting pilots