by Gwen C. Katz
Yours,
Valka
TWENTY-NINE
THE COMMAND DUGOUT, LIT ONLY BY A COUPLE OF artillery-shell lamps, was even darker than the evening outside. Other airwomen had already claimed the miscellaneous crates and boxes scattered about the dugout in lieu of chairs; they were not talking and joking as they usually did, but sitting tense and quiet. As I entered, I gave a start. Bershanskaya was not in her usual spot but stood off to the side with her arms crossed. At her desk sat Tamara Kazarinova.
“Glad you decided to join us, Koroleva,” she said. I bit back the desire to point out that I wasn’t even late. She hadn’t changed a bit. Same crew cut, same stern crease between her eyes.
My heart instinctively sped up with the knowledge that something was wrong. Everyone said she’d left the 586th in disgrace, headed for a desk job and an early retirement. What was she doing there? Had she come after Iskra? I turned a searching look to Bershanskaya, who shook her head silently. No, we would not get an explanation.
Kazarinova didn’t seem interested in my cousin. She turned her attention to the marked-up map spread across the desk as if this were a regular briefing and her presence didn’t signify anything out of the ordinary. “There is a small partisan camp located here in the ruins of an abandoned village. There are about two hundred partisans there at the moment.”
Tanya grumbled something about wasting bombers on supply runs. I asked, “What’s the signal-fire pattern?”
“Junior Lieutenant, you will not interrupt during a briefing,” snapped Kazarinova. “And this is not a resupply mission.”
She slid the map to the side, revealing a photo of a bearded middle-aged man in a long leather coat and a flat cap, brandishing a submachine gun. “This is Viktor Malakhov, the leader of the company. They have been operating with apparent success since summer, but recent intelligence has proved that Malakhov is a Trotskyist saboteur.”
Malakhov. The name nibbled at my memory. Where had I heard it before?
“Their supplies have already been cut off in the hope that they would weaken and be overrun, but they’ve proven to be a resilient bunch, so more direct intervention is required. We’ve been ordered to make sure that they don’t survive the war. Malakhov, in case you should spot him, is the primary objective, but all the partisans are secondary objectives. If we can disperse the camp, the Hitlerites ought to do the clean-up work for us. No flak is anticipated, naturally, so I expect you to keep it neat and accurate. You are dismissed.”
I wanted to dart away immediately, but I waited for Iskra, afraid to let her out of my sight while Kazarinova was around. We stood in the long shadow our plane’s tail cast in the dying light as if we were hiding.
“What’s she doing here?” I asked in a low voice. “She’s not . . . she’s not replacing Bershanskaya, is she?”
“Not as far as I know,” said Iskra carefully. “Bershanskaya just said she’d be with our regiment for a while and that she would brief us on tonight’s mission.”
“Well, it’s safe to say she has a plan. And she’s not wasting any time. This mission has her fingerprints all over it.” My fingers sought my mouth. “Those are Russians we’ll be bombing. Our own people.”
“Valka, you would say that anything you didn’t like had her fingerprints all over it,” said Iskra, adding, “Did she mention the bombing altitude?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then go ask.”
I would have said, “Go ask yourself,” but I figured Iskra had earned the right to avoid Kazarinova.
When I reentered the dugout, I found Kazarinova with her boot off, massaging her injured leg. I’d known there must be a scar, but the size of it startled me. An irregular patch of red slashed diagonally from her knee to her ankle and was crisscrossed with several deep, straight surgery scars. She was looking at a photo on the desk that had nothing to do with the night’s mission. It depicted a sleek, clean-lined interbellum biplane. A young pilot stood straight and tall next to it and a beaming teenage girl with messy bobbed hair sat on the lower wing.
I recognized the look in that young pilot’s eyes. It was the same look that had shone from the face of every girl in Aviation Group 122 on that very first day in Moscow. That look said, I’ve made it. I worked so hard and so many people tried tried to stop me, but I’ve finally made it.
Kazarinova’s gaze broke away from the photo. “What is it, Koroleva?” she asked in her usual businesslike tone.
“Oh, um, my navigator wanted to know the bombing altitude.”
“Six hundred meters, standard procedure,” said Kazarinova, then looked at me like she was wondering why I was still there. I momentarily wanted to say something like “I’m sorry about what happened to you,” but her stern expression silenced me.
As I rejoined the other pilots, I couldn’t get the image of that jagged scar out of my mind. I thought about my own accident and the doctor telling me that in another minute I would have lost my leg, and I found that, despite everything, I couldn’t hate Tamara Kazarinova.
As we did our preflight check by the raking orange light of the setting sun, Iskra asked me, “Any word from Pasha?”
I took the cap off the fuel tank so I could double-check the fuel level. The smell of gasoline bit my nose. “Why are you asking me? The entire regiment knows every time I get a letter from him. Sometimes before I do.”
“Only because we love you, baby cousin.”
“Does the concept of privacy mean nothing to you?” I asked as I replaced the cap. My tone was harsher than I meant. Tonight’s bizarre mission had me on edge.
“Are you seriously asking that question after a year in the military?” Iskra replied, adding, “Valyushka, I know you better than you think. I can tell that you’re worried. It might help to talk about it. Believe it or not, you aren’t the only person who cares what happens to Pasha.”
I was worried, even though it had been less than a week since Pasha’s last letter. He was caught up in something that neither he nor I could control. Anything could have happened since his last letter. When I was feeling good, I entertained the happier possibilities. The photos had already been recovered by someone else. The mission had been a resounding success and no one had been hurt and the whole squad were being named Heroes of the Soviet Union for their valor. (I couldn’t entertain that idea for long before it collapsed under its own improbability.)
In darker moods, other possibilities came to mind. The worst was one where the letters simply stopped coming. Days pass into weeks, then months. How long would I wait? When would I stop hoping that the next day a letter would come?
But it was none of Iskra’s business. I glared at my cousin through the propeller and said, “Don’t call me Valyushka.”
We were first in the flight order, a treat under normal circumstances, more like a punishment today. Bershanskaya came up to us, looked at me, looked harder at Iskra, and told us, “This is a sortie like any other, girls. Complete the mission.”
We took off, our wheels skidding on the icy ground. A light snow had begun to fall. The snowflakes that settled on our noses and lips melted into speckles of cold water. Those that settled on our goggles remained snowflakes. Operation Mars would launch in a few days, and by the looks of it, it would launch in the middle of a snowstorm.
“How many soldiers do you think were encircled here at the salient?” I asked Iskra. An unhappy realization had crept into my head.
Iskra replied with uncharacteristic indifference. “I don’t know. Half a million? Why do we care?”
Because they were ordinary people who did not deserve their fate. Because they had families and futures and maybe even girls who loved them but had never quite worked up the nerve to say so. “What would you do if you were a Red Army man trapped behind the lines? You’d join the partisans.”
“Oh, that’s what this is about, baby cousin.” The pet name sounded weary, not affectionate. “I promise, we can’t possibly end up dropping bombs on Pasha. The
offensive hasn’t even started. He’s still safe behind the Russian lines.”
“But all those other soldiers . . .”
“I don’t like this mission any more than you do, so drop it,” said Iskra curtly. “I get to nap on the way there. You nap on the way back. That was our agreement. Your heading is 290 degrees. Wake me if anything changes.” She pulled the speaking tube out of her ear so I couldn’t reply.
A layer of white blanketed everything, fields and trees, rubble and ditches and craters. It blunted the edges of the tank stoppers and quietly disguised the husks of damaged houses. The snowfall melted the horizon into a uniform white haze. I should have felt reassured by this tranquil isolation, but in the silence, with Iskra asleep, I found myself thinking about the mission, and that was unwise. I could have raised an objection. I could have refused to go. They would have court-martialed me, but at least I would have been able to live with myself. When had I become this person? I repeated Bershanskaya’s words to myself: “a sortie like any other.”
An expanse of rugged evergreens, their branches sagging under the weight of the snow, came into view ahead. “Target in sight, Iskra,” I called, loud enough to be heard over the engine and the wind. “Is that our forest?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” came my cousin’s groggy voice as she replaced her speaking tube.
We circled over the woods. Iskra spotted a clearing dotted with the remains of a village. We passed over again, lower, barely clearing the treetops. Snow made everything bright, even on a cloudy night. I could clearly make out the tumbledown stone walls of a few dozen buildings, some roofed over with rude boards or corrugated iron to provide a modicum of shelter. The ground was smooth and white. There was a fire in the middle of the clearing, visible by the flickery orange light it cast on the snow, and a cluster of figures standing around it. Malakhov? I didn’t think so. They looked too small. But everyone was an objective.
I tried to slip into my night-bomber mind-set, to see them as nothing but shapes on the ground, a meaningless training exercise. I couldn’t. They were people, our people. The thought of what we were about to do sickened me. And another part of me berated myself for feeling no compassion for the fascists, as if they were not also people who had futures and families and girls who loved them.
“It’s time,” I told Iskra as the houses came in line with the chalk marks on the wing.
“Wait.” Iskra’s voice had none of its usual confidence. She sounded hesitant, lost.
Twenty seconds over the target. “Now or never.”
The bombs did not fall. I muttered a curse under my breath and reached for the bomb release. Ten seconds left. I didn’t need to pull the release, I told myself. It was Iskra’s mistake, not mine. We could drop the bombs harmlessly in the forest and mark it in our flight logs as a miss. Bombers missed all the time.
Iskra’s mistake. And Kazarinova was at the airfield. Watching us. Waiting for mistakes. Five seconds left.
I pulled the release. The bombs fell away. That’s it, it’s out of your hands now, I told myself as I averted my eyes. The heat and pressure of the blast hit us. A direct hit, clean and accurate and entirely my doing. I was suddenly angry at Iskra, as if the whole mission had been her fault. “Dammit, Iskra, do your job!”
“But those were . . .”
I said spitefully, “I sleep on the way back, remember?”
We didn’t speak on the way back, didn’t say a word to the armorers as they met us on the airstrip and turned the plane around. When we neared the target the second time, I only broke the silence to ask, “Have you got it this time?”
“Yes,” said Iskra. Those were the last words we exchanged all night.
We had left our mark. Messy dark splotches marked where bombs had blasted away the snow to reveal the earth below. I spotted one figure crumpled on the ground and two others carrying a third. It was easier that time. The damage was already done.
The winter night felt interminable as we flew, bombed, refueled, and flew again, long after I was sure nothing could have survived. By the end of the night, hardly anything could be distinguished of what had once been the partisan camp. Snow and dirt and stone and wood had blended together like a smeared finger painting.
We were bone tired when Number 18 rolled onto her hardstand for the day. Iskra had taken a couple of the dark blue pills to get through the night, and she massaged her temples through her hand-dyed lavender cap comforter as we stumbled into the command dugout to report. But inside, voices rose.
“. . . hearing disturbing reports about this regiment. Disobedience, lack of discipline, defacing aircraft . . . But that isn’t your biggest breach of regulations, is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bershanskaya. She sat across from her own desk like a child being scolded by her teacher. Her voice was quiet, but not its usual controlled quiet. This was a cowed quiet.
“Don’t play games with me. I’ve been here all night. I’ve confirmed that you aren’t following standard turnaround procedures. Adopting your unauthorized procedure in the first place might generously be considered a lapse of judgment. Continuing after an official reprimand? That’s insubordination.” Kazarinova laboriously got to her feet, leaning heavily on the desk. Pain flashed across her face as she put weight on her bad leg. She said, “I’ll be watching you carefully, Major. If you step out of line, headquarters will hear about it.”
She limped out of the dugout.
Bershanskaya raked a hand through her hair. She turned to us with a pleading look. “Tell me you completed the mission.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, suddenly glad for euphemistic military language. “The objective has been accomplished.”
“Good.” Her green eyes softened with regret. “Dear eaglets, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to accept that mission, but I had no choice. I’m under a lot of pressure right now.”
I glanced out the dugout door. “What does she want?”
“To break me,” said Bershanskaya. “To prove I’m not fit for the job. I don’t know if she wants the command for herself or if she just wants us to fail because she failed. Either way, Iskra, I’m afraid you’re the weak spot she needs.”
I reflexively put a protective arm around my cousin. “Are you going to . . . ?”
“No. It’ll be all right. Follow orders, fly your missions, and, whatever you do, don’t break rules while Kazarinova is around.”
Suddenly the whole miserable night made a bitter kind of sense. I said, “It was a test.”
Bershanskaya nodded. “A loyalty test. Iskra’s name was cleared once, but she’ll never be completely free of suspicion. If you hadn’t dropped those bombs, you would have been aiding a known wrecker. Drawing a connection between Malakhov and Iskra’s parents would be easy. I’d be implicated for keeping you here even though I knew your past. It would be enough pressure to crack the 588th apart.” That distant look entered her eyes. I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking, wondering if the lives of the partisans were a price worth paying. She said, “You’re dismissed. Go get some sleep.”
We returned to our own dugout. Most of the other girls in our flight were already asleep. Night bombers learned to drop off instantly. I kicked off my boots and threw myself gratefully onto the hard mattress without bothering to undress, but before I could fall asleep, Iskra whispered, “Valka. I told you to wait.”
In my exhaustion, it took me a moment to figure out the context. I muttered, “What did you want me to do?”
“I . . .” Iskra’s voice faltered. “I don’t know. Drop the bombs somewhere else, I guess. Onto the fascists. They’d deserve it. I know it’s what Kazarinova wanted, but . . .”
“You think Viktor Malakhov didn’t deserve it?”
“Do you think he did?”
I considered. “No. But I’d’ve thought you would. He’s a Trotskyist and a traitor. I’d expect you’d be lining up to drop bombs on him.”
“Malakhov, maybe,” said Iskra w
ithout much conviction. “But . . . that wasn’t Malakhov out there when we were on our first run. I got a good look at them, Valka. Some of them were young. Just kids.”
“Did we kill them?”
“I don’t know. Someone must have survived, because there were no bodies outside at the end of the night.”
“We’re worthless either way, aren’t we? If we didn’t disperse the camp, our mission failed. If we did, we killed a bunch of teenagers fighting on our side.”
“Yeah.” Iskra’s voice sounded hollow, and I thought she might start to cry.
I crawled into her plank bed and snuggled close and warm beside her. She was holding her aeronavigation book in both hands like a talisman. I’d never seen her like this. Even after she lost her parents, she’d been so confident, so sure that she understood the world and her place within it. Stripped of all that, she seemed exposed. So small. So delicate.
“Do you want to see it?” she asked, offering me the book.
Iskra hadn’t let me anywhere near that book since it had mysteriously showed up in her possession. I gingerly took it. I’d half expected it to contain some kind of secret, but no, it was exactly what it looked like, a slim, well-worn volume with nothing on the white cover except the words Aeronavigation: Third Edition.
“Where did you get it?” I asked softly.
“It was after I was arrested, while they were . . .”
Iskra’s voice faded. She searched the dugout’s rough plank ceiling with her eyes. “You can’t understand what imprisonment does to you. The isolation. I could feel my mind eating itself alive for lack of anything to occupy it. God, I missed you so badly.”
I found her hand and squeezed it.
“One day a guard passed this book through the opening in the door. Didn’t say a word. But look!”
She opened the book to the front flyleaf. Written across it in quick, confident cursive were the words Keep studying.
“That book saved my life, baby cousin, and I’m not exaggerating. Without it, I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted before there was . . . permanent damage. I was holding something in my hands that someone else had held in their hands, had read and thought about and written in and knocked the corners off. It gave me something to focus on during those endless days alone in that empty cell.”