Dangerous Women Read online

  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 sta
tely. 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!”