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My Dear Davidya:

If you are reading this, it means I have died. Most likely been killed fighting in service of the glorious homeland. At least I hope so. I have this terrible nightmare that I am killed, not in the air fighting Fascists, but because a propeller blade falls off just as I am walking under the nose of my Yak and cuts my head off. People would make a good show of pretending to mourn, but they’d be laughing behind my back. My dead back, so I won’t notice, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. There’d certainly be no Hero of the Soviet Union for me, would there? Never mind, we will assume I perished gloriously in battle.

Please tell all the usual to Mama and Da, that I am happy to give my life in defense of you and them and Nina and the homeland, as we all are, and that if I must die at all I’m very happy to do it while flying. So don’t be sad for me. I love you.

Very Sincerely: Raisa

“Raisa!” Inna called from outside the dugout. “We’re up! Let’s go!” “Just a minute!” She scribbled a last few lines.

P.S. My wingman, Inna, will be very upset if I am killed. She’ll think it’s her fault, that she didn’t cover me. (It won’t be true because she’s a very good pilot and wingman.) I think you should make an effort to comfort her at the very first opportunity. She’s a redhead. You’ll like her. Really like her, I mean. I keep a picture of you in our dugout and she thinks you’re handsome. She’ll weep on your shoulder and it will be very romantic, trust me.

“Raisa!”

Raisa folded the page into eighths and stuffed it under the blanket on her cot, where it was sure to be found if she didn’t come back. David’s name and regiment were clearly written on the outside, and Inna would know what to do with it. She grabbed her coat and helmet and ran with her wingman to the airfield, where their planes waited.

The pair of them flew out of Voronezh on a routine patrol and spotted enemy planes even before reaching the front. Raisa breathed slow to keep her heart from racing, letting the calm spread to her hands to steady them, where they rested on the stick.

“Raisa, you see that? Two o’clock?” Inna’s voice cracked over the radio. She flew behind and to the right—Raisa didn’t have to look to know she was there.

“Yes.” Raisa squinted through the canopy and counted. More planes, dark spots gliding against a hazy sky, seemed to appear as she did so. They were meant to be patrolling for German reconnaissance planes, which only appeared one or two at a time. This—this was an entire squadron.

The profile of the planes clarified—twin propellers, topside canopy, long fuselage painted with black crosses. She radioed back to Inna, “Those are Junkers! That’s a bombing run!”

She counted sixteen bombers—their target could have been any of the dozens of encampments, supply depots, or train stations along this section of the front. They probably weren’t expecting any resistance at all.

“What do we do?” Inna said.

This was outside their mission parameters, and they were so far outnumbered as to be ridiculous. On the other hand, what else were they supposed to do? The Germans would have dropped their bombs before the 586th could scramble more fighters.

“What do you think?” Raisa answered. “We stop them!”

“With you!”

Raisa throttled up and pushed forward on the stick. The engine rumbled and shook the canopy around her. The Yak streaked forward, the sky a blur above her. A glance over her shoulder, and she saw Inna’s fighter right behind her.

She aimed at the middle of the German swarm. Individual bombers became very large very quickly, filling the sky in front of her. She kept on, like an arrow, until she and Inna came within range.

The bombers scattered, as if they’d been blown apart by a wind. Planes at the edges of the formation peeled off, and ones in the middle climbed and dived at random. Clearly, they hadn’t expected a couple of Russian fighters to shoot at them from nowhere.

She picked one that had the misfortune to evade right into her path, and focused her sights on it. She fired a series of rounds from the 20mm cannon, missed when the bomber juked out of range. She cursed.

Rounds blazed above her canopy; a gunner, shooting back. She banked hard, right and up, keeping a watch out for collisions. Dicey, maneuvering with all this traffic. The Yak was fast—she could fly circles around the Junkers and wasn’t terribly worried about getting shot. But she could easily crash into one of them by not paying close enough attention. All she and Inna really had to do was stop the group from reaching its target, but if she could bring down one or two of them in the meantime … One second at a time, that was the only way to handle the situation. Stay alive so she could do some good.

The enemy gunner fired at her again, then Raisa recognized the sound of another cannon firing. A fireball expanded and burned out at the corner of her vision—a Junker, one of its engines breaking apart. The plane lurched, off balance until it fell in an arc, trailing smoke. It waggled once or twice, the pilot trying to regain control, but then the bomber started spinning and it was all over.

Inna cried over the radio, “Raisa! I got him, I got him!” It was her first kill in battle.

“Excellent! Only fifteen more to go!”

“Raisa Ivanovna, you’re terrible.”

The battle seemed to drag, but surely only seconds had passed since they scattered the formation. They couldn’t engage for much longer before they’d run out of ammunition, not to mention fuel. The last few shots had to count, then she and Inna ought to run. After those last few shots, of course.

Raisa caught another target and banked hard to follow it. The bomber climbed, but it was slow, and she was right on it. By now her nerves were singing and instinct guided her more than reason. She squeezed hard on the trigger before the enemy was fully in her crosshairs, but it worked, because the Junker slid into the line of fire just as her shots reached it. She put holes across its wings and across its engine, which sparked and began pouring smoke. The plane could not survive, and sure enough, the nose tipped forward, the whole thing falling out of control.

Inna cheered for her over the radio, but Raisa was already hunting her next target. So many to choose from. The two fighters were surrounded, and Raisa should have been frightened, but she could only think about shooting the next bomber. And the next.

The Junkers struggled to return to formation. The loose, straggling collection had dropped five hundred meters from its original altitude. If the fighters could force down the entire squadron, what a prize that would be! But no, they were running, veering hard from the fighters, struggling to escape.

Bombs fell from the lead plane’s belly, and the others followed suit. The bombs detonated on empty forest, their balloons of smoke rising harmlessly. They’d scared the bombers into dropping their loads early.

Raisa smiled at the image.

With nothing left in their bomb bays and no reason to continue, the Junkers peeled off and circled back to the west. Lighter and faster now, they’d be more difficult for the fighters to catch. But they wouldn’t be killing any Russians today, either.

Raisa radioed, “Inna, let’s get out of here.”

“Got it.”

With Inna back on her wing, she turned her Yak to the east, and home.

“That makes three confirmed kills total, Stepanova. Two more, and you’ll be an ace.”

Raisa was grinning so hard, she squinted. “We could hardly miss, with so many targets to pick from,” she said. Inna rolled her eyes a little, but was also beaming. She’d bagged her first kill, and though she was doing a very good job of trying to act humble and dignified now, right after they’d landed and parked she’d run screaming up to Raisa and knocked her over with a big hug. Lots of dead Germans and they’d both walked away from the battle. They couldn’t have been much more successful than that.

Commander Gridnev, a serious young man with a face like a bear, was reviewing a typed piece of paper at his desk in the largest dugout at the 101st Division’s airfield. “The squadron’s target was a rail station. A battalion of infantry was there, waiting for transport. They’d have been killed. You saved a lot of lives.”

Even better. Tremendous. Maybe Davidya had been there and she’d saved him. She could brag about it in her next letter.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Good work, girls. Dismissed.”

Out of the commander’s office, they ran back home, stumbling in their oversized men’s flight suits and jackets and laughing.

A dozen women shared the dugout, which if you squinted in dim light seemed almost homelike, with wrought iron cots, wool bedding, whitewashed walls, and wooden tables with a few vases of wildflowers someone had picked for decorations. The things always wilted quickly—no sunlight reached inside. After a year of this—moving from base to base, from better conditions to worse and back again—they’d gotten used to the bugs and rats and rattling of distant bombing. You learned to pay attention to and enjoy the wilted wildflowers, or you went mad.

Though that happened sometimes, too.

The second best thing about being a pilot (the first being the flying itself) was the better housing and rations. And the vodka allotment for flying combat missions. Inna and Raisa pulled chairs up close to the stove to drive away the last of the chill from flying at altitude and tapped their glasses together in a toast.

“To victory,” Inna said, because it was tradition and brought luck.

“To flying,” Raisa said, because she meant it.

At dinner—runny stew and stale bread cooked over the stove—Raisa awaited the praise of her comrades and was ready to bask in their admiration—two more kills and she’d be an ace; who was a better fighter pilot, or a better shot, than she? But it didn’t happen quite like that.

Katya and Tamara stumbled through the doorway, almost crashing into the table and tipping over the vase of flowers. They were flushed, gasping for breath as if they’d been running.

“You’ll never guess what’s happened!” Katya said.

Tamara talked over her: “We’ve just come from the radio operator; he told us the news!”

Raisa’s eyes went round and she almost dropped the plate of bread she was holding. “We’ve pushed them back? They’re retreating?”

“No, not that,” Katya said, indignant, as if wondering how anyone could be so stupid.

“Liliia scored two kills today!” Tamara said. “She’s got five now. She’s an ace!”

Liliia Litviak. Beautiful, wonderful Liliia, who could do no wrong. Raisa remembered their first day with the battalion, and Liliia showed up, this tiny woman with the perfect face and bleached blond hair. After weeks of living in the dugouts, she still had a perfect face and bleached blond hair, looking like some American film star. She was so small, they thought she couldn’t possibly pilot a Yak, she couldn’t possibly serve on the front. Then she got in her plane and she flew. Better than any of them. Even Raisa had to admit that, but not out loud.

Liliia painted flowers on the nose of her fighter, and instead of making fun of her, everyone thought she was so sweet.

And now she was a fighter ace. Raisa stared. “Five kills. Really?”

“Indisputable! She had witnesses; the news is going out everywhere. Isn’t it wonderful?”

It was wonderful, and Raisa did her best to act like it, smiling and raising a toast to Liliia and cursing the Fascists. They ate dinner and wondered when the weather would change, if winter had a last gasp of frigid cold for them or if they were well into the merely chilly damp of spring. No one talked about when, if ever, the war might be done. Two years now since the Germans invaded. They’d not gotten any farther in the last few months, and the Soviets had made progress—recapturing Voronezh for one, and moving forward operations there. That was something.

But Inna knew her too well to let her go. “You were frowning all the way through dinner,” she said, when they were washing up outside, in darkness, before bed. “You didn’t hide it very well.”

Raisa sighed. “If I’d been sent to Stalingrad, I’d have just as many kills as she does. I’d have more. I’d have been an ace months ago.”

“If you’d been sent to Stalingrad, you’d be dead,” Inna said. “I’d rather have you here and alive.”

Frowning, she bit off her words. “We’re all dead. All of us on the front, we’re all here to die; it’s just a matter of when.”

Inna wore a knit cap over her short hair, which curled up over the edges. This, along with the freckles dotting her cheeks, made her look elfin. Her eyes were dark, her lips in a grim line. She was always solemn, serious. Always telling Raisa when her jokes had gone too far. Inna would never say a bad word about anyone.

“It’ll be over soon,” she said to Raisa under the overcast sky, not even a dim lantern to break the darkness, lest German reconnaissance flights find them. “It has to be over soon. With the Brits and Americans pounding on the one side and us on the other, Germany can’t last for long.”

Raisa nodded. “You’re right, of course you’re right. We just have to hold on as long as we can.”

“Yes. That’s exactly right.”

Inna squeezed her arm, then turned back to the dugout and a cot with too-thin blankets and the skittering of rats. Sometimes Raisa looked around at the dirt and the worn boots, the tired faces and the lack of food, and believed she’d be living like this for the rest of her life.

Raisa arrived at the command dugout for a briefing—a combat mission, she hoped, and a chance for her next two kills—but one of the radio operators pulled her aside before she could go in.

She and Pavel often traded information. She’d give him the gossip from the flight line, and he’d pass on any news he’d heard from other regiments. He had the most reliable information from the front. More reliable than what they could get from command, even, because the official reports that trickled down were filtered, massaged, and manipulated until they said exactly what the higher-ups wanted people like her to know. Entire battalions had been wiped out and no one knew because the generals didn’t want to damage morale, or some such nonsense.

Today Pavel seemed pale, and his frown was somber.

“What is it?” she asked, staring, because he could only have bad news. Very bad, to come seek her out. She thought of David, of course. It had to be about David.

“Raisa Ivanovna,” he said. “I have news … about your brother.”

Her head went light, as if she were flying a barrel roll, the world going upside down around her. But she stood firm, didn’t waver, determined to get through the next few moments with her dignity intact. She could do this, for her brother’s sake. Even though she was supposed to die first. The danger she faced in the air, flying these death traps against Messerschmitts, was so much greater. She’d always felt so sure that she would die, that David would have to be the one to stand firm while he heard the news.

“Tell me,” she said, and her voice didn’t waver.

“His squadron saw action. He … he’s missing in action.”

She blinked. Not the words she was expecting. But this … the phrase hardly made sense. How did a soldier just disappear, she wanted to demand. David wasn’t like an earring or a slip of paper that one wandered the house searching for. She felt her face turn furrowed, quizzical, looking at Pavel for an explanation.

“Raisa—are you all right?” he said.

“Missing?” she repeated. The information and what it meant began to penetrate.

“Yes,” the radio operator answered, his tone turning to despair.

“But that’s … I don’t even know what to say.”

“I’m so sorry, Raisa. I won’t tell Gridnev. I won’t tell anyone until official word comes down. Maybe your brother will turn up before then and it won’t mean anything.”

Pavel’s hangdog look of pity was almost too much to take. When she didn’t reply, he walked away, trudging through the mud.

She knew what he was thinking, what everyone would think, and what would happen next. No one would say it out loud—they didn’t dare—but she knew. Missing in action; how much better for everyone if he had simply died.

Comrade Stalin had given the order soon after the war began: “We have no prisoners of war, only traitors of the motherland.” Prisoners were collaborators, because if they had been true patriots they would have died rather than be taken. Likewise, soldiers missing in action were presumed to have deserted. If David did not somehow reappear in the Soviet army, he would be declared a traitor, and his family would suffer. Their parents and younger sister would get no rations or aid. Raisa herself would most likely be barred from flying at the very least. They’d all suffer, even though David was probably lying dead at the bottom of a bog somewhere.

She pinched her nose to hold the tears back and went into the dugout for whatever briefing the commander had for the flight. She mustn’t let on that anything was wrong. But she had a hard time listening that morning.

David wasn’t a traitor, but no matter how much she screamed that truth from the mountaintops, it didn’t matter. Unless he appeared—or a body were found, proving that he’d been killed in action—he’d be a traitor forever.

Terrible, to wish a body would be found.

She had a sudden urge to take up a gun—in her own two hands, even, and not in the cockpit of her plane—and murder someone. Stalin, perhaps.

If anyone here could read her mind, hear her thoughts, she’d be barred from flying, sent to a work camp, if not executed outright. Then her parents and sister would be even worse off, with two traitors in the family. So, she should not think ill of Stalin. She should channel her anger toward the real enemy, the ones who’d really killed David. If he were dead. Perhaps he wasn’t dead, only missing, like the report said.

Inna sat beside her and took her arm. “Raisa, what’s wrong? You look like you’re going to explode.”

“It’s nothing,” Raisa answered in a whisper.

She kept writing letters to David as if nothing had happened. The writing calmed her.

Dear Davidya:

Did I mention I have three kills now? Three. How many Germans have you killed? Don’t answer that, I know you’ll tell me, and it’ll be more, and I know it’s harder for you because you have to face them with nothing but bullets and bayonets, while I have my beautiful Yak to help me. But still, I feel like I’m doing some good. I’m saving the lives of your fellow infantry. Inna and I stopped a whole squadron from completing its bombing run, and that’s something to be proud of.

I’m so worried about you, Davidya. I try not to be, but it’s hard.

Two more kills and I’ll be an ace. Not the first woman ace, though. That’s Liliia Litviak. Amazing Liliia, who fought at Stalingrad. I don’t begrudge her that at all. She’s a very good pilot, I’ve seen her fly. I won’t even claim to be better. But I’m just as good, I know I am. By the way, you should know that if you see a picture of Litviak in the papers (I hear the papers are making much of her, so that she can inspire the troops or some such thing) that Inna is much prettier. Hard to believe, I know, but true. After my next two kills, I wonder if they’ll put my picture in the paper? You could tell everyone you know me. If you’re not too embarrassed by your mouse-faced little sister.

I’ve gotten a letter from Mama, and I’m worried because she says Da is sick again. I thought he was better, but he’s sick all the time, isn’t he? And there isn’t enough food. He’s probably giving all his to Nina. It’s what I would do. I’m afraid Mama isn’t telling me everything, because she’s worried that I can’t take it. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?

You’d think I had enough to worry about, that I wouldn’t worry about home, too. They can take care of themselves. As I can take care of myself, so do not worry about me. We have food, and I get plenty of sleep. Well, I get some sleep. I hear the bombing sometimes, and it’s hard to think they won’t be here next. But never mind.

Until I see you again, Raisa

Like dozens of other girls, Raisa had written a letter to the famous pilot Marina Raskova asking her how she could fly for the war. Comrade Raskova had written back: I am organizing a battalion for women. Come.

Of course Raisa did.

Da had been angry: he wanted her to stay home and work in a factory—good, proud, noble work that would support the war effort just as much as flying a Yak would. But her mother had looked at him and quietly spoken: Let her have her wings while she can. Da couldn’t argue with that. Her older brother, David, made her promise to write him every day, or at least every week, so he could keep an eye on her. She did.

Raisa was assigned to the fighter regiment, and for the first time met other girls like herself who’d joined a local flying club, who had to fight for the privilege of learning to fly. At her club, Raisa had been the only girl. The boys didn’t take her seriously at first, laughed when she showed up wanting to take the classes to get her license. But she kept showing up to every session, every meeting, and every class. They had to let her join. Truth to tell, they didn’t take her seriously even after she soloed and scored better on her navigation test than any of the boys. She never said it out loud, but what made Raisa particularly angry was the hypocrisy of it all. The great Soviet experiment with its noble egalitarian principles that was meant to bring equality to all, even between men and women, and here the boys were, telling her she should go home, work in a factory with other women, get married, and have babies, because that was what women were supposed to do. They weren’t meant to fly. They couldn’t fly. She had to prove them wrong over and over again.

Thank goodness for Marina Raskova, who proved so much for all of them. When she died—a stupid crash in bad weather, from what Raisa heard—the women pilots were afraid they’d be disbanded and sent to factories, building the planes they ought to be flying. Raskova and her connections to the very highest levels—to Stalin himself—were the only things keeping the women flying at the front. But it seemed the women had proven themselves, and they weren’t disbanded. They kept flying, and fighting. Raisa pinned a picture of Raskova from a newspaper to the wall of their dugout. Most of the women paused by it now and then, offering it a smile, or sometimes a frown of quiet grief. More dead pilots had lined up behind her since.

“I want a combat mission, not scut work,” Raisa told Gridnev. Didn’t salute, didn’t say “sir.” They were all equal Soviet citizens, weren’t they?

He’d handed her flight its next mission outside the dugout, in a blustery spring wind that Raisa hardly noticed. They were supposed to report to their planes immediately, but she held back to argue. Inna hovered a few yards away, nervous and worried.

“Stepanova. I need pilots for escort duty. You’re it.”

“The flight plan takes us a hundred miles away from the front lines. Your VIP doesn’t need escorting, he needs babysitting!”

“Then you’ll do the babysitting.”

“Commander, I just need those next two kills—”

“You need to serve the homeland in whatever fashion the homeland sees fit.”

“But—”

“This isn’t about you. I need escort pilots; you’re a pilot. Now go.”

Gridnev walked away before she did. She looked after him, fuming, wanting to shout. She wouldn’t get to kill anything flying as an escort.

She marched to the flight line.

Inna ran after her. “Raisa, what’s gotten into you?”

Her partner had asked that every hour for the last day, it seemed like. Raisa couldn’t hide. And if she couldn’t trust Inna, she couldn’t trust anyone.

“David’s missing in action,” Raisa said, and kept walking.

She opened her mouth, properly shocked and pitying, as Pavel had done. “Oh—oh no. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s nothing. But I have to work twice as hard, right?”

They continued to their planes in silence.

Raisa’s hands itched. They lay lightly on the stick, and she didn’t have to do much to keep steady. The air was calm, and they—Inna, Katya, and Tamara were in the other fighters—were flying in a straight line, practically. But she wanted to shoot something. They weren’t told who it was in the Li-2 they guarded, not that it would have mattered. But she imagined it might be Stalin himself. She wondered if she’d have the courage to radio to him, “Comrade, let me tell you about my brother …” But the higher-ups wouldn’t tap a flight of women pilots from the front to protect the premier. It wasn’t him.

Not that their VIP needing guarding. Out here, the most dangerous thing she faced was the other pilots slipping out of formation and crashing into her. That would be embarrassing.

Just before they’d left, the radio operator had brought news that Liliia had scored another kill. Six confirmed kills. The Germans seemed to be lining up for the privilege of being shot down by beautiful Liliia. And here Raisa was, miles and miles from battle, playing at guarding.

If she died in battle, heroically, with lots of witnesses, leaving behind an indisputable body, perhaps she might help recover David’s reputation. If she were a hero—an ace, even—he could not be a traitor, right?

She stretched her legs and scratched her hair under her leather helmet. Another couple of hours and they’d land and get a hot meal. That was one consolation—they were flying their charge to a real base with real food, and they’d been promised a meal before they had to fly back to Voronezh. Raisa wondered if they’d be able to wrap some up to stuff in their pockets and take back with them.

Scanning the sky around her, out to the horizon, she didn’t see so much as a goose in flight. The other planes—the bullet-shaped Yaks and the big Lisunov with its two wing-mounted engines and stocky frame—hummed around her, in a formation that was rather stately. It always amazed her, these great beasts of steel and grease soaring through the air, in impossible defiance of gravity. The world spread out below her, wide plains splotched in beige and green, trimmed by forests, cut through with the winding path of a creek. She could believe that nothing existed down there—a clean, new land, and she was queen of everything she could see, for hundreds and hundreds of miles. She sailed over it without effort. Then she’d spot a farm, rows of square fields that should have been green with the new growth of crops but instead held blackened craters and scraps of destroyed tanks.

If she focused on the sound of the engine, a comforting rattle that flowed through the skin of the fuselage around her, she wouldn’t think so much about the rest of it. If she tipped her head back, she could watch blue sky passing overhead and squint into the sun. The day was beautiful, and she had an urge to open her canopy and drink in the sky. The freezing wind would thrash her at this altitude, so she resisted. The cockpit was warm and safe as an egg.

Something outside caught her eye. Far off, across the flat plain they soared over, to where sky met earth. Dark specks moving against the blue. They were unnatural—they flew too straight, too smoothly to be birds. They seemed far away, which meant they had to be big—hard to tell, without a point of reference. But several of them flew together in the unmistakable shape of airplanes in formation.

She turned on the radio channel. “Stepanova here. Ten o’clock, toward the horizon, do you see it?”

Inna answered. “Yes. Are those bombers?”

They were, Raisa thought. They had a heavy look about them, droning steadily on rather than racing. The formation was coming closer, but still not close enough to see if they had crosses or stars painted on them.

“Theirs or ours?” Katya said.

“I’ll find out,” Raisa said, banking out of formation and opening the throttle. She’d take a look, and if she saw that black cross, she’d fire.

A male voice intruded, the pilot of the Li-2. “Osipov here. Get back here, Stepanova!”

“But—”

“Return to formation!”

The planes were right there, it would just take a second to check—

Inna came on the channel, pleading, “Raisa, you can’t take them on your own!”

She could certainly try …

Osipov said, “A squadron has been notified and will intercept the unknown flight. We’re to continue on.”

They couldn’t stop her … but they could charge her with disobeying orders once she landed, and that wouldn’t help anyone. So she circled around and returned to formation. Litviak was probably getting to shoot someone today. Raisa frowned at her washed-out reflection in the canopy glass.

Dear Davidya:

I promised to write you every day, so I continue to do so.

How are you this time? I hope you’re well. Not sick, not hungry. We’ve taken to talking about eating the rats that swarm the dugouts here, but we haven’t gotten to the point of actually trying it. Mostly because I think it would be far too much work for too little reward. The horrid beasts are as skinny as the rest of us. I’m not complaining, though. We’ve gotten some crates of canned goods—fruits, meat, milk—from an American supply drop and are savoring the windfall. It’s like a taste of what we’re fighting for, and what we can look forward to when this mess is all over. It was Inna who said that. Beautiful thought, yes? She keeps the whole battalion in good spirits all by herself.

I ought to warn you, I’ve written a letter to be sent to you in case I die. It’s quite grotesque, and now you’ll be terrified that every letter you get from me will be that one. Have you done that, written me a letter that I’ll only read if you die? I haven’t gotten one, which gives me hope.

I’m very grateful Nina isn’t old enough to be on the front with us, or I’d be writing double the grotesque letters. I got a letter from her talking about what she’ll do when she’s old enough to come to the front, and she wants to fly like me and if she can’t be a pilot she’ll be a mechanic—my mechanic, even. She was very excited. I wrote her back the same day telling her the war will be over before she’s old enough. I hope I’m right.

Love and kisses, Raisa

Another week passed with no news of David. Most likely he was dead. Officially, he had deserted, and Raisa supposed she had to consider that he actually had, except that that made no sense. Where would he go? Or maybe he was simply lost and hadn’t made his way back to his regiment yet. She wanted to believe that.

Gridnev called her to the operations dugout, and she presented herself at his desk. A man, a stranger in a starched army uniform, stood with him.

The air commander was grim and stone-faced as he announced, “Stepanova, this is Captain Sofin.” Then Gridnev left the room.

Raisa knew what was coming. Sofin put a file folder on the desk and sat behind it. He didn’t invite her to sit.

She wasn’t nervous, speaking to him. But she had to tamp down on a slow, tight anger.

“Your brother is David Ivanovich Stepanov?”

“Yes.”

“Are you aware that he has been declared missing in action?”

She shouldn’t have known, officially, but it was no good hiding it. “Yes, I am.”

“Do you have any information regarding his whereabouts?”

Don’t you have a war you ought to be fighting? she thought. “I assume he was killed. So many are, after all.”

“You have received no communication from him?”

And what if he found all those letters she’d been writing him and thought them real? “None at all.”

“I must tell you that if you receive any news of him at all, it’s your duty to inform command.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We will be watching closely, Raisa Stepanova.”

She wanted to leap across the table in the operations dugout and strangle the little man with the thin moustache. Barring that, she wanted to cry, but didn’t. Her brother was dead, and they’d convicted him without evidence or trial.

What was she fighting for, again? Nina and her parents, and even Davidya. Certainly not this man.

He dismissed her without ever raising his gaze from the file folder he studied, and she left the dugout.

Gridnev stood right outside the door, lurking like a schoolboy, though a serious one who worried too much. No doubt he had heard everything. She wilted, blushing, face to the ground, like a kicked dog.

“You have a place here at the 586th, Stepanova. You always will.”

She smiled a thanks but didn’t trust her voice to say anything. Like observing that Gridnev would have little to say in the matter, in the end.

No, she had to earn her innocence. If she gathered enough kills, if she became an ace, they couldn’t touch her, any more than they could tarnish the reputation of Liliia Litviak. If she became enough of a hero, she could even redeem David.

Winter ended, but that only meant the insects came out in force, mosquitoes and biting flies that left them all miserable and snappish. Rumors abounded that the Allied forces in Britain and America were planning a massive invasion, that the Germans had a secret weapon they’d use to level Moscow and London. Living in a camp on the front, news was scarce. They got orders, not news, and could only follow those orders.

It made her tired.

“Stepanova, you all right?”

She’d parked her plane after flying a patrol, tracing a route along the front, searching for imminent attacks and troops on the move—perfectly routine, no Germans spotted. The motor had grumbled to stillness and the propeller had stopped turning long ago, but she remained in her cockpit, just sitting. The thought of pulling herself, her bulky gear, her parachute, logbook, helmet, all the rest of it, out of the cockpit and onto the wing left her feeling exhausted. She’d done this for months, and now, finally, she wasn’t sure she had anything left. She couldn’t read any numbers on the dials, no matter how much she blinked at the instrument panel.

“Stepanova!” Martya, her mechanic, called to her again, and Raisa shook herself awake.

“Yes, I’m fine, I’m coming.” She slid open the canopy, gathered her things, and hauled herself over the edge.

Martya was waiting for her on the wing in shirt and overalls, sleeves rolled up, kerchief over her head. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but her hands were rough from years of working on engines.

“You look terrible,” Martya said.

“Nothing a shot of vodka and a month in a feather bed won’t fix,” Raisa said, and the mechanic laughed.

“How’s your fuel?”

“Low. You think she’s burning more than she should?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. She’s been working hard. I’ll look her over.”

“You’re the best, Martya.” The mechanic gave her a hand off the wing, and Raisa pulled her into a hug.

Martya said, “Are you sure you’re all right?” Raisa didn’t answer.

“Raisa!” That was Inna, walking over from her own plane, dragging her parachute with one arm, her helmet tucked under her other. “You all right?”

She wished people would stop asking that.

“Tired, I think,” Martya answered for her. “You know what we need? A party or a dance or something. There are enough handsome boys around here to flirt with.” She was right: the base was filled with male pilots, mechanics, and soldiers, and they were all dashing and handsome. The odds were certainly in the women’s favor. Raisa hadn’t really thought of it before.

Inna sighed. “Hard to think of flirting when you’re getting bombed and shot at.”

Martya leaned on the wing and looked wistful. “After the war, we’ll be able to get dressed up. Wash our hair with real soap and go dancing.”

“After the war. Yes,” Inna said.

“After we win the war,” Raisa said. “We won’t be dancing much if the Fascists win.”

They went quiet, and Raisa regretted saying anything. It was the unspoken assumption when people talked about “after the war”: of course they’d win. If they lost, there wouldn’t be an “after” at all.

Not that Raisa expected to make it that far.

Davidya:

I’ve decided that I’d give up being a fighter ace if it meant we could both get through the war alive. Don’t tell anyone I said that; I’d lose my reputation for being fierce, and for being hideously jealous of Liliia Litviak. If there’s a God, maybe he’ll hear me, and you’ll come walking out of the wilderness, alive and well. Not dead and not a traitor. We’ll go home, and Mama and Da and Nina will be well, and we can forget that any of this ever happened. That’s my dream now.

I’ve still got that letter, the hideous one I wrote for you in case I die. I ought to burn it, since Inna doesn’t have anyone to send it to now.

Your sister, Raisa

An alarm came at dawn.

By reflex, she tumbled out of her cot, into trousers and shirt, coat and boots, grabbing gloves and helmet on the way out of the dugout. Inna was at her side, running toward the airstrip. Planes were already rumbling overhead—scouts returning from patrol.

Mechanics and armorers were at the planes—all of them. Refueling, running chains of ammunition into cannon and machine guns. This was big. Not just a sortie, but a battle.

There was Commander Gridnev addressing them right on the field. The mission: German heavy bombers had crossed the front. Fighters were being scrambled to intercept. He’d be flying this one himself, leading the first squadron. First squadron launched in ten minutes and would engage any fighters sent with the attack. Second squadron—the women’s squadron—would launch in fifteen and stop the bombers.

The air filled with Yak fighters, the drone of their engines like the buzz of bees made large.

No time to think, only to do, as they’d done hundreds of times before. Martya helped Raisa into her cockpit, slapped the canopy twice after closing it over her, then jumped off the wing to yank the chocks out from under the tires. A dozen Yaks lined up, taxiing from the flight line to wait their turn on the runway. One after another after another …

Finally, Raisa’s turn came, and she was airborne. It was a relief, being in the air again, where she could do something. Up here, when someone attacked, she could dodge. Not like being on the ground when the bombs fell. She’d rather have a stick in her hand, a trigger under her finger. It felt right.

Glancing back through the canopy, Raisa found Inna on her wing, right where she should be. Her friend gave her a broad salute, and Raisa waved back. Once the squadron was airborne, they settled into an echelon formation, following Gridnev’s squadron up ahead. They’d all flown with Gridnev’s men; they’d all had months to get used to each other. Men or women, didn’t make a difference, and most men realized that sooner or later. Which was something of a revelation if she stopped to think about it. But no one had time to stop and think about it. All she needed to know was that Aleksei Borisov liked diving to the left and would loop above if he got into trouble; Sofia Mironova was a careful pilot and tended to hang back; Valentina Gushina was fast, very good in combat; Fedor Baurin had the keenest eyesight. He’d spot their target before anyone else.

The Yaks flew on in loose formation, ready to break and engage as soon as the target was sighted. Raisa scanned the skies in all directions, peering above and over her shoulders. The commander had the coordinates; he’d estimated twenty minutes until contact. They should be in sight of them any minute now …

“There!” Baurin called over the radio. “One o’clock!”

Gridnev came on the channel. “Steady. Remain in formation.”

She saw the enemy, sunlight flashing off canopies, airplanes suspended in the air. Hard to judge scale and distance; her own group was traveling fast enough that the enemy planes seemed to be standing still. But they were approaching, rapidly and inexorably.

While the heavy bombers continued on, straight and level, a handful of smaller planes broke off from the main group—a squadron of fighters as escort.

Well, this was going to be interesting.

On the commander’s orders, they spread out and prepared to engage. Raisa opened the throttle and sped ahead, planning to overshoot the fighters entirely: Their goal was preventing those bombers from reaching their target. Her Yak dipped down, yawed to the left, roared onward.

A flight of Messerschmitts rocketed overhead. Gunfire sounded. Then they were gone.

Inna had followed her, and the bombers lay ahead of them, waiting. They had a short time to be as disruptive as they could before those Messers came back around, no matter how much the others were able to keep them occupied.

As soon as she was within range, she opened fire. The rattle from the cannon shook her fuselage. Nearby, another cannon fired; Raisa traced the smoke of the shells from behind her toward the Junkers: Inna had fired as well.

The bombers dropped back. And the fighters caught up with her and Inna. Then chaos.

She watched for stars and crosses painted on the fuselages, marking friend or foe. They chased each other in three dimensions, until it was impossible to track them all, and she began to focus on avoiding collision. The Messers were torpedo shaped, sleek and nimble. Formidable. Both sets of pilots had had two years of war to gain experience. The fight would end only when one side or the other ran out of ammunition.

They had to bring down those bombers, if nothing else.

The others had the same idea, and the commander ordered them to their primary target, until the bombers scattered, just to get out of the way of the dogfights. Now the Messers had to worry about hitting their charges by accident. That made them more careful; it might give the Yaks an edge.

The grumble of engines, of props beating the air, filled the sky around her. She’d never seen so many planes in the air at once, not even in her early days of training at the club.

She looped around to the outside and found a target. The pilot of the fighter had targeted a Yak—Katya’s, she thought—and was so focused on catching her that he was flying straight and steady. First and worst mistake. She found him in her sights and held there a second, enough to get shots off before tipping and diving out of the way before someone else targeted her.

Her shells sliced across the cockpit—right through the pilot. The canopy shattered, and there was blood. She thought she saw his face, under goggles and flight cap, just for a moment—a look of shock, then nothing. Out of control now, the Me-109 tipped nose down and fell into a spiraling descent. The sight, black smoke trailing, the plane falling, was compelling. But her own trajectory carried her past in an instant, showing blue sky ahead.

“Four!” Raisa gave a shout. Four kills. And surely with all these targets around she could get her fifth. Both of them for David.

Other planes were falling from the sky. One of the bombers had been hit and still flew, with one engine pouring billows of smoke. Another fighter sputtered, fell back, then dropped, trailing fire and debris—Aleksei, that was Aleksei. Could he win back control of his injured plane? If not, did he have time to bail out? She saw no life in the cockpit; it was all moot. Rather than mourn, she set her jaw and found another target. So many of them, she hardly knew where to look first.

Over the radio, Gridnev was ordering a retreat. They’d done damage; time to get out while they could. But surely they’d only been engaged a few minutes. The motor of her Yak seemed tired; the spinning props in front of her seemed to sputter.

A Messerschmitt came out of the sun overhead like a dragon.

A rain of bullets struck the fuselage of her Yak, sounding like hail. Pain stabbed through her thigh, but that was less worrisome than the bang and grind screeching from the engine. And black smoke suddenly pouring from the nose in a thick stream. The engine coughed; the propeller stopped turning. Suddenly her beautiful streamlined Yak was a dead rock waiting to fall.

She held the nose up by brute force, choked the throttle again and again, but the engine was dead. She pumped the pedals, but the rudder was stuck. The nose tipped forward, ruining any chance she had of gliding toward earth.

“Raisa, get out! Get out!” Inna screamed over the radio.

Abandoning her post, no, never. Better to die in a ball of fire than go missing.

The nose tipped further forward, her left wing tipped up—the start of a dive and spin. Now or never. Dammit.

Her whole right leg throbbed with pain, and there was blood on her sleeve, blood spattered on the inside of the canopy, and she didn’t know where it had come from. Maybe from that pilot whose face she’d seen, the one looking back at her with dead eyes behind his goggles. Instinct and training won over. Reaching up, she slammed open the canopy. Wind struck her like a fist. She unbuckled her harness, worked herself out of her seat; her leg didn’t want to move. She didn’t jump so much as let the Yak fall away from her, and she was floating. No—she was falling. She pulled the rip cord, and the parachute billowed above her, a cream-colored flower spreading its petals. It caught air and jerked her to a halt. She hung in the harness like so much deadweight. Deadweight, ha.

Her plane was on fire now, a flaming comet spinning to earth, trailing a corkscrew length of black smoke. Her poor plane. She wanted to weep, and she hadn’t wept at all, this whole war, despite everything.

The battle had moved on. She’s lost sight of Inna’s plane but heard gunfire in the tangle of explosions and engine growls. Inna had covered her escape, protecting her from being shot in midair. Not that that would have been a tragedy—she’d die in combat, at least. Now she didn’t know which side of the line the barren field below her was on. Who would find her, Russians or Nazis? No prisoners of war, only traitors …

The worst part was not being able to do anything about it. Blood dripped from her leg and spattered in the wind. She’d been shot. The dizziness that struck her could have been the shock of realization or blood loss. She might not even reach the ground. Would her body ever be found?

The sky had suddenly gotten very quiet, and the fighters and bombers swarmed like crows in the distance. She squinted, trying to see them better.

Then Raisa blacked out.

Much later, opening her eyes, Raisa saw a low ceiling striped with rows of wooden roof beams. She was in a cot, part of a row of cots, in what must have been a makeshift field hospital bustling with people going back and forth, crossing rows and aisles on obviously important business. They were speaking Russian, and relief rushed through her. She’d been found. She was home.

She couldn’t move, and decided she didn’t much want to. Lying mindlessly on the cot and blankets, some distance from the pain she was sure she ought to be feeling, seemed the best way to exist, for at least the next few minutes.

“Raisa! You’re awake!”

A chair scooted close on a concrete floor, and a familiar face came into view: David. Clean-shaven, dark hair trimmed, infantry uniform pressed and buttoned, as if he was going to a parade and not visiting his sister in hospital. Just as he was in the formal picture he’d sent home right after he signed up. This must be a dream. Maybe this wasn’t a hospital. Maybe it was heaven. She wasn’t sure she’d been good enough.

“Raisa, say something, please,” he said, and with his face all pinched up he looked too worried to be in heaven.

“Davidya!” She needed to draw two breaths to get the word out, and her voice scratched surprisingly. She licked dry lips. “You’re alive! What happened?”

He gave a sheepish shrug. “My squad got lost. We engaged a Panzer unit in the middle of the forest, and a sudden spring snowstorm pinned us down. Half of us got frostbite and had to drag the other half out. It took weeks, but we made it.”

All this time … he really was just lost. She wished Sofin were here so she could punch him in the face.

“I’d laugh at all the trouble you caused, but my chest hurts,” she said.

His smile slipped, and she imagined he’d had an interview with someone very much like Sofin after he and his squad limped back home. She wouldn’t tell him about her own interview, and she would burn those letters she’d written him as soon as she got back to the airfield.

“It’s so good to see you, Raisa.” He clasped her hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged, and she squeezed as hard as she could, which wasn’t very, but it was enough. “Your Commander Gridnev got word to me that you’d been hurt, and I was able to take a day to come see you.”

She swallowed and the words came slowly. “I was shot. I had to bail out. I don’t know what happened next.”

“Your wingman was able to radio your location. Ground forces moved in and found you. They tell me you were a mess.”

“But I got my fourth kill, did they tell you that? One more and I’ll be an ace.” Maybe not the first woman fighter ace, or even the second. But she’d be one.

David didn’t smile. She felt him draw away, as the pressure on her hand let up.

She frowned. “What?”

He didn’t want to say. His face had scrunched up, his eyes glistening—as if he was about to start crying. And here she was, the girl, and she hadn’t cried once. Well, almost once, for her plane.

“Raisa, you’re being medically discharged,” he said.

“What? No. I’m okay, I’ll be okay—”

“Both your legs are broken, half your ribs are cracked, you’ve dislocated your shoulder, you have a concussion and been shot twice. You can’t go back. Not for a long time, at least.”

She really hadn’t thought she’d been so badly hurt. Surely she’d have known if it was that bad. But her body still felt so far away … She didn’t know anything. “I’ll get better—”

“Please, Raisa. Rest. Just rest for now.”

One more kill, she only needed one more … “Davidya, if I can’t fly, what will I do?”

“Raisa!” A clear voice called from the end of the row of cots.

“Inna,” Raisa answered, as loud as her voice would let her.

Her wingman rushed forward, and when she couldn’t find a chair, she knelt by the cot. “Raisa. Oh, Raisa, look at you, wrapped up like a mummy.” She fussed with the blankets, smoothed a lock of hair peeking out from the bandage around Raisa’s head, and then fussed with the blankets some more. Good, sweet Inna.

“Inna, this is my brother, David.”

Her eyes widened in shock, but Raisa didn’t get a chance to explain that, yes, “missing” sometimes really meant missing, because David had stood in a rush and offered his chair to Inna, but she shook her head, which left them both standing on opposite sides of the cot, looking at each other across Raisa. Belatedly, Inna held out her hand. David wiped his on his trouser leg before shaking hers. What a David thing to do.

“Raisa’s told me so much about you,” Inna said.

“And she’s told me about you in her letters.”

Inna blushed. Good. Maybe something good would come out of all this.

She ought to be happy. She’d gotten her wish, after all.

Raisa stood on the platform, waiting for the train that would take her away from Voronezh. Her arm was still in a sling, and she leaned heavily on a cane. She couldn’t lift her own bags.

Raisa had argued with the military about the discharge. They should have known she wouldn’t give in—they didn’t understand what she’d had to go through to get into the cockpit in the first place. That was the trick: she kept writing letters, kept showing up, over and over, and they couldn’t tell her no. In a fit of fancy, she wondered if that was what had brought David home: She’d never stopped writing him letters, so he had to come home.

When they finally offered her a compromise—to teach navigation at a training field near Moscow—she took it. It meant that even with the cane and sling, even if she couldn’t walk right or carry her own gear, she still wore her uniform, with all its medals and ribbons. She still held her chin up.

But in the end, even she had to admit she wouldn’t fly again—at least, not in combat.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Inna had come with her to the station to see her off. David had returned to his regiment, but she’d overheard the two of them exchanging promises to write.

“I’m fine, really.”

Inna’s eyes shone as if she might cry. “You’ve gone so quiet. I’m so used to seeing you run around like an angry chicken.”

Raisa smiled at the image. “You’ll write?”

“Of course. Often. I’ll keep you up to date on all the gossip.”

“Yes, I want to know exactly how many planes Liliia Litviak shoots down.”

“She’ll win the war all by herself.”

No, in a few months Raisa would read in the newspaper that Liliia was declared missing in action, shot down over enemy territory, her plane and body unrecovered. First woman fighter ace in history, and she’d be declared a deserter instead of a hero. But they didn’t know that now.

The train’s whistle keened, still some distance away, but they could hear it approach, clacking along its tracks.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Inna asked, with something like pleading in her eyes.

Raisa had been staring off into space, something she’d been doing a lot of lately. Wind played with her dark hair, and she looked out across the field and the ruins of the town to where the airfield lay. She thought she heard airplanes overhead.

She said, “I imagined dying in a terrible crash, or shot down in battle. I’d either walk away from this war or I’d die in some gloriously heroic way. I never imagined being … crippled. That the war would keep going on without me.”

Inna touched her shoulder. “We’re all glad you didn’t die. Especially David.”

“Yes, because he would have had to find a way to tell my parents.”

She sighed. “You’re so morbid.”

The train arrived, and a porter came over to help with her luggage. “Be careful, Inna. Find yourself a good wingman to train.”

“I’ll miss you, my dear.”

They hugged tightly but carefully, and Inna stayed to make sure Raisa limped her way onto the train and to her seat without trouble. She waved at Raisa from the platform until the train rolled out of sight.

Sitting in the train, staring out the window, Raisa caught sight of the planes she’d been looking for: a pair of Yaks streaking overhead, on their way to the airfield. But she couldn’t hear their thrumming engines over the sound of the train. Probably just as well.