Zhenia shook out her hands in the air. “She’s got an iron grip. She can fly.”
“No, she can’t. She’s still in pain.”
“As squadron commander, I have the right to pick my pilots for a flight. She will be my responsibility.”
“Absolutely not, Lieutenant,” Tamara said with bite. “She is my responsibility. Her plane is my responsibility, and the success of your escort is my responsibility. I’ll not risk multiple lives and multiple fighters because she’s overeager.”
“But you’ll risk multiple lives and multiple fighters sending us on an escort short one plane. One plane can turn the tide of a dogfight, if it comes to that. Hell, an extra plane can stop a dogfight from even happening if the fascists don’t like the odds. Do you want to explain to Marina why you lost a VIP when you didn’t send the proper number of fighters?”
Tamara crossed her arms over her chest. Her jaw was set like a vice. I held my breath, waiting for her reply. She was considering it. She had to be. What else would she be thinking about? I bit the inside of my lip, not knowing if I should say something or if I would be better served to keep quiet.
“Fine,” she said. “You’ll have another pilot.”
“Thank you!” I said, shouting with glee. Tamara held up a hand, and though I quieted, I couldn’t stand still. I was too giddy.
“Not you,” she said.
My heart skipped a beat. “What?”
Zhenia’s face scrunched. “If not Nadya, who?”
“Take Klara,” Tamara said. “I think she’s due for her first combat sortie.”
“What? You’re taking a mechanic over me?” I said. My face flushed. My muscles tightened in my shoulders and back. Fire raced through my arms. “She can’t even fly!”
“She’s got almost three hundred hours flying in an air club before the war,” Zhenia said with a downcast face.
“And you’ve been training her for three weeks,” Tamara added. “You said yourself you thought she’d make an excellent pilot one day. If Nadya doesn’t heal, I’ll need a replacement.”
“You can’t do this to me!” I said. My body trembled. Tears ran down my cheeks. A large part of me wanted to throttle Tamara where she stood. The other half wanted to grab the wooden chair behind me and smash it over her head. My rage built ever more as she looked at me without the hint of compassion. “You can’t ground me forever! I fought with Martyona! I swore to avenge her!”
“Nadya, this isn’t up for debate,” Tamara said, glaring. “You will recompose yourself this instant or you’ll rot in the box for two days. Choose your next words carefully.”
“You might as well send me to the grave if you’re clipping my wings!”
“Have it your way. That’s two. Want to make it two more?”
“Make it a goddamn week for all I care!”
And so she did.
Chapter Six
The guard jabbed the barrel of his PPSh-41 submachine gun into the small of my back. I stumbled into a tiny room with a curse under my breath. He’d hit me in the same spot for three days straight now, and the bruised area was tender to the touch. Though we were an all-female regiment, there were a few boys that had been stationed at the airfield since the start, and more had trickled in over the last few days, helping with construction and logistics. Rumors had it even more boys were coming. If they were all as gentlemanly as this one was, I had a suspicion I’d turn my own wings in just to be free of their company.
My prison was a small wooden shack with a dirt floor and no windows save for the tiny one in the door. A single beam ran underneath the pitched ceiling from which a rusted lantern hung—a leftover from when the structure had been a storage shed. The air smelled of mold and sweat, the latter coming from myself. My only regular visitors were the guards, whoever brought me food and water, and a handful of mice that scurried in through a hole near the corner and would serenade me with squeaks from time to time.
Twice a day I was allowed to use the latrine and receive my meager rations and water, once in the morning and once in the evening. The rest of the time I was forced to quietly stand. I’d run combat scenarios in my head until ten o’clock at night, at which point I was permitted to lie down and sleep, giving much relief to my aching legs.
I felt the punishment was tough, but fair. I did mouth off to my commanding officer. I had no one to blame but myself. It could’ve been much worse. I could’ve been sent to the labor camps, stripped of rank and honor, and I was thankful I hadn’t. Still, I was irritated Tamara hadn’t put me on escort with Zhenia and wondered when my mouth would land me back in here.
Occasionally my thoughts turned to Martyona and why the world was cruel and unfair. She had done everything right, yet I was the one who survived. I wondered if it would be worse that no god existed or one did who allowed evil to not only exist, but thrive. A god who let horrid things happen was confusing at best, and truth be told, I wasn’t sure which of the two possibilities I would’ve preferred. I never came up with an answer. The best I could hope for was she’d gone home, her eternal one, and one day I’d see her again.
I wasn’t always so gloomy when thinking about that terrible flight. Several times I managed to think about it objectively, trying to learn as much as I could, and I came away with two things. First, the unseen enemy was the deadliest. I had known that in theory before, but the German who’d killed Martyona had shown what it looked like in practice. Second, which played off the first, bait was both simple and lethal. I’d need to be mindful about taking it and skilled at offering it, especially where an ace was concerned.
Occasionally my mind focused on that nameless German ace as it tried to piece together who he was. He had to have been toying with me on the ground. What other explanation was there? I could see him now, reclined in a leather chair, cigar in one hand and brandy in the other, laughing with his fellow Luftwaffe pilots about how he’d knocked me out of the sky and then played God with me at the crash site. Maybe he felt shooting me in the back wasn’t sporting enough. Or maybe he simply wanted to score another aerial victory on me so he could paint another kill tally on his tail.
It was frustrating not having an answer.
On the third day of my incarceration, I heard the guard outside talking to another. “Can’t speak to her,” he said. “Leave it and go.”
The exact time eluded me, but I thought it was mid-morning, which meant breakfast had arrived. There was some muffled commotion, and then the guard chuckled. “Fine. One minute and you’re done.”
The door creaked open, and Klara walked in, holding a torn hunk of bread in one hand and a canteen in the other. Despite being parched and hungry, I scowled at her arrival. “Put it on the ground. I’ll eat later.”
“Look, I don’t have long,” she said after she wiped her mouth as if she’d tasted something repulsive. “But I have a couple of things you need to know.”
“Such as you replacing me as a pilot?” I tried to come across as if her actions hadn’t hurt me, but as I spoke those words, I could feel her knife in my back twist. My throat tightened, and a torrent of emotion pushed against my ruse like backwater on a failing dam. At that point, I stopped pretending. “How could you? I’m struggling enough to keep my sanity and you come along and steal my slot.”
“It’s not like that,” she said, handing me my breakfast. “I don’t want to stay on the ground, but I’m not after your slot. I swear it. I’d die before betraying you.”
I snorted. “No one else is grounded. Hard to think otherwise. Why didn’t you tell me?”