David Robbins - Last Citadel

More planes landed, none as badly as the first wounded plane; that pilot was hauled away on a stretcher and his plane was pushed by a ground crew to its hardstand. Three more in Leonid’s squadron of a dozen trailed smoke when they touched down. The eleventh plane landed and Katya scanned the maroon sky for his green and red running lights. Vera’s hand tightened around hers.

‘He’s coming,’ Katya said.

The eleventh and last plane was the squadron commander. Katya watched this pilot park his fighter, climb off, and speak to his mechanic. The sky did not issue another plane for Katya, the only lights were the first winking stars. The commander headed away to make his report. Katya felt her dread swell with every passing second, each step the squadron leader took was another thing that would make Leonid’s failure to appear final. Without thinking, she released Vera’s hand and ran across the field through the warm smells of exhaust and burned oil. Weaving through the wings she saw the bullet holes ripped into the planes.

‘Captain,’ she called, ‘Captain, please. A moment, sir.’

The grimness of the officer’s face was plain when he turned to her. Katya ran up beside him but he did not stop. She stepped into his path.

‘Captain, please. Lieutenant Lumanov. I didn’t see him land.’

‘No.’

This single word tore through Katya like one of the bullets through the Yaks.

She fought for her composure. ‘Can you tell me, sir, what happened? Where is he?’

‘Who are you, Lieutenant?’

‘Katerina Berkovna, sir. I’m with…’

‘Yes, you’re one of the Night Witches. I know. Leonid tells me about you.’

‘Captain, please.’

‘There was a dogfight over Tomarovka. He was shot down, Lieutenant.’

Katya seized up, her lungs seemed to bite at her from inside her ribs.

Before she could speak, the Captain laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘I flew over his crash site. He sent up a white flare. He’s alive. But he’s pretty deep inside German territory. I don’t have any way to know if he’s injured or how badly. He’s a clever lad, Lieutenant. I suppose you know that.’

Katya muttered, ‘Yes.’ The word was a relief, better than another wounding No, but the comfort was cold. Tomarovka was six miles south of the front line. Leonid might have been badly hurt in the crash. Yes, he survived, but for how long? Until he bleeds to death, or a German patrol captures him? The Captain studied her face. She did not know or care how much she showed him.

‘We’ll alert the partisans in the area. They’ll try to get to him first. That’s all we can do, Lieutenant. You understand?’

Katya nodded. Leonid had been shot down. She’d imagined this fate for herself with every mission over the past year, she’d suffered with her mates when this fate fell on others in her regiment, she’d seen it happen in the sky more than she cared to remember. But never once had she prepared herself for this to happen to Leonid.

But the worst had not happened. He was still alive.

The Captain cleared his throat. ‘I’ve got to make my report. Good luck. Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’d like to tell you something. Leonid has made me appreciate you Night Witches. I… wanted to be sure you knew that.’

The praise was spoiled. Katya wanted to beat the man’s chest: Why didn’t you bring him back?

‘Thank you, sir.’

The Captain sidestepped her. Impulsively, Katya reached for his arm.

‘Captain? West of Tomarovka? East?’

‘East, Lieutenant. Two miles due east. In a small field beside a dry creek.’

‘Thank you, Captain. Thank you.’

Katya turned to hurry away, but this time the Captain stopped her.

‘I hear those broomsticks of yours can set down almost anywhere. Is that true?’

‘Yes, Captain. Anywhere.’

Leonid was on the ground. This notion wrapped Katya as tightly as did the flying night. She tried to keep her mind on the mission, on the train station far inside enemy lines, but like a disobedient horse her thoughts shied from her instruments, away from the wind in her wings. She tightened her mental reins and brought her own head around to attention on the raid.

Only a wedge of moon glowed behind soupy clouds. She and Vera cruised southward at four thousand feet. Far to port, the other U-2 belched little exhaust fires from its engine. The plan was for that crew, Olga Sanfirova and navigator Olga Kluyeva, to attack the station first while Katya and Vera diverted the defenses, then they would switch roles. The darkness tonight was dense enough for them to hide in its folds. Katya kept one eye on the popping blue fires from the Olgas to avoid drifting too close to them. Vera remained quieter than usual in Katya’s earphones. Something was unsaid between the two of them. This added to Katya’s sense of burden in the cockpit. Leonid was on the ground. Katya chugged through the air, distracted and scared, and Vera, never a mystery, was silent.

The air currents were smooth and the flight was even. Vera’s direction brought them in range of the target only forty minutes after take-off. The rail station lay fifteen miles south of Belgorod in the village of Oktabrskaya. The tracks ran alongside the Lopan River, and Vera brought Katya and their bombs down the slim waterway to the lights of the village. They were deeper tonight behind German lines than they had yet flown. Katya checked the two Olgas. They were dead even to port.

‘Cut engine,’ Vera said.

Katya pushed in the throttle and switched off the magnetos. The plane began to sail, and under her gaze the two Olgas disappeared, their motor shut down, too. Katya began to drop altitude, gliding and accelerating to the target. The Olgas would hold up here at four thousand for a count of ten, then begin their muffled dive. Katya looked out through the flipping propeller, the whoosh of wind mounted, and she thought, Leonid, I must leave you for a few moments, please hang on.

‘Steady,’ Vera intoned. Katya grabbed a flare and readied it. No searchlights lashed out yet, their approach was fast and unspoiled. The air she slid down was silken and beneath the rushing wind everything was hushed. The ground below slipped by, wary and dangerous.

Then, high over her head, she heard a snarling deep and unseen in the dark.

The night fighter circled. The Germans had success with this countermove once, so they tried it again. There would be no artillery tonight, just lights and the game of hunter and quarry.

Katya licked dry lips. It was time to find out if the quarry’s new tactic would work.

Her altimeter read twenty-five hundred feet. Vera whispered -she’d heard the howl of the night fighter, too – ‘Drop it.’

Katya struck the flare and tossed it out of the cockpit. For a second, the bottom of her upper wing jittered white from the bursting flare, then she banked away. The train station of Oktabrskaya was made garish by the sparks floating down under the tiny parachute. The flare glittered against the roof tiles and the vacant steel rails. In the next instant, everything was punched out of Katya’s sight by a hard white fist of light.

A searchlight beam drove straight into her face. Katya slammed her eyes shut and whipped the stick to the left, ramming hard on the left rudder to swing the U-2’s nose around in a snap turn. Behind her eyelids the blackness was alive with a starburst of electric swirls and hues.

‘Level out, level out!’ Vera shouted in the intercom.

‘I can’t see!’

Katya felt Vera’s hands on the stick, but the girl was not a pilot, the stick waggled directionless and panicky.

‘We’re in the lights! Katya, come on!’