Nina battled yawns until the target showed below. “Wake up, rabbit,” she called to Yelena, rapping gloved knuckles on her pilot’s head. “Dusia’s lining up.” Bombing headquarter-designated buildings was always hell; the searchlights and the ground fire were twice as fierce.

“I’m awake.” Yelena shook her head to clear the cobwebs, then took control again and dropped them neatly down behind Dusia’s U-2. Nights like tonight they flew in pairs: Dusia would blaze through first, flinging herself sideways as shells ribboned into the sky in pursuit . . . and the Rusalka came floating silently behind while searchlights and guns were busy. Yelena slid the Rusalka neatly under the one questing searchlight that didn’t dive after Dusia’s U-2, lining them up in perfect darkness. Nina triggered the bombs, and Yelena looped around.

“Nod off, Ninochka,” she called through the interphones. “I’ll wake you on the descent—”

But she broke off as the plane rolled left, fighting her efforts to level out. Nina swore, leaning out over her cockpit and suddenly very, very awake. “Bring us around! There’s still a twenty-five kilo on the rack.”

All traces of weariness bottomed out of Yelena’s voice. “Can you see it?”

“Yes. Last bomb didn’t drop.”

Yelena was already taking them back out wide, past the target into the darkness. Nina caught a flash glimpse of the next U-2 lining up to descend, pilot probably wondering if they’d lost their bearings. No time to worry about that. Nina toggled the bomb’s release, but nothing dropped. “Stuck fast. Level out on the straight, and throttle back.”

“Why?” Yelena called even as she fought the plane’s left-leaning roll, applying opposite aileron and stick to take them flat and steady. Nina unclipped her safety harness. “Ninochka, what are you doing?”

“Giving it a push,” Nina said reasonably and stood up.

“Nina Borisovna, get back in the plane!”

“Keep just over stall speed,” Nina overrode her, “and steady.” Then she slung a leg over the side.

The airstream was rigid and icy as a current of water, knifing down her sides as she put one boot and then the other on the lower wing. Her body locked in the chill of the wind, and her teeth set up a chatter. Nina clung, gloved fingers clamped around the lip of the cockpit, for a moment utterly unable to move. It wasn’t fear, she was just frozen as though swallowed in ice. The wind was a malevolent bitch, wanting to scoop her off toward the ground floating past eight hundred meters below. She’d spin turning and turning through the wisps of cloud, and Yelena wouldn’t be able to do anything but watch . . .

Move, night witch. Her father’s voice. Nina clamped her clattering teeth, then slithered her body along the lower wing between the wires. The Rusalka wobbled and for a moment Nina wondered if she was going to slide into the void, but Yelena steadied them. Inching along the wing, feeling the slipstream’s icy lingering hands run across her back, Nina swatted blindly below but couldn’t feel anything. Peeling one glove off with her teeth, she fumbled at the bomb rack, bare fingers sticking painfully to the frozen metal. Naked skin at this altitude felt like it had been set on fire, not dipped in ice. How long before her fingers stopped working altogether? Nina yanked at the unseen rack, more imagining the bomb’s release than feeling it, the wing shuddering beneath her. If they hit a mountain updraft while she was clinging here one-handed, she’d get flung off like a fishing line sailing into a lake . . .

Something pinched her fingers and gave way. Nina saw the bomb drop silently into the dark. Pity to waste it on what was probably a barren hillside. She slid back along the wing, then levered herself upright and tipped almost headfirst into her own cockpit. The wind seemed to give a spiteful, cheated hiss when she dropped out of reach. Yelena’s voice squawked out of the interphones, and Nina clawed hers back in place.

“We can turn around,” she told her pilot through chattering teeth, and then, “D-dammit.”

“What?” Yelena shouted.

“I dropped my glove.”

“Is that all you have to say? Climb out on my wing again and I will tip you fucking off, you little Siberian lunatic!”

“You s-swore.”

“What?” Yelena was bringing the plane around now.

“You swore, Miss Moscow Goody.” Nina tucked her ungloved hand under her armpit. Her teeth were clacking, but she still managed a grin. “Yelena Vassilovna, you swore!”

“Go to hell,” Yelena said. A second later, through the interphones, a stifled laugh.

Nina leaned back, sleep already cooing in her ear again, telling her to close her eyes. “Where are we?”

“South of target.”

“Right.” The sky was already lightening; it was nearly dawn. “Adjust north-northeast and we—”

The shots came from nowhere, ripping down through the U-2’s wing with a flat brutal sound like steel punching cardboard. The dark shape zipped overhead even as Yelena yelled “Messerschmitt—” and hurled the plane down. Nina twisted in the cockpit, staring wildly past the Rusalka’s tail, mouth paper dry. They had never tangled with German fighters, only antiaircraft guns. It had disappeared into the dark, but the Messers were so fast—too fast to match a U-2, which sailed along so slowly that any fighter would stall out trying to match speed. It would have to keep making strafing runs.

Another screaming pass, another line of fire tearing down one wing. If Nina had still been lying along that wing trying to pry a bomb off the rack, she realized, she would have been stitched the length of her spine.

The Rusalka lurched as Yelena took her into a straight dive. Not enough cloud to hide in, Nina knew, and evasive maneuvering took fuel—at this point they’d burned too much while circling to drop the final bomb. Land and scatter, those were Bershanskaia’s orders for such occasions. Land and scatter, ladies; they won’t pursue you on the ground. Already the Rusalka was careening downward at two hundred meters.

Shot down, Nina thought with curious clarity, we are being shot down. Better than burning in the air as the fuel line ignited—better than crashing with so many broken bones that it was nothing but a slow death hanging in your cockpit. Having to land and scatter left you a chance. “Field,” Nina heard herself shouting into the interphones. Where was the Messer? “Field, thirty degrees right—”

Yelena saw it and brought the nose around. Shot down. The others would set Nina’s and Yelena’s breakfast dishes out at their usual places, waiting for their return. It was what the 588th always did when a U-2 failed to come back. Two days, maybe three, and only then did the plates stop being set, when no one could pretend it was still likely you’d come limping in alive . . .

The Messer swept overhead like a dark kite, firing another burst. Yelena dropped the U-2 from two hundred meters to a hundred to fifty, the fastest, roughest landing Nina had ever seen her pull off. Another heartbeat and wheels bounced on frozen winter earth.

“OUT,” Nina bellowed, kicking free of her safety harness for the second time this flight. Yelena was already clawing free of her cockpit, cheeks burning crimson; their boots hit the earth at the same time. Some kind of rough field, shadowed scrub all around. The day was coming cruelly fast, pale light flinging their shadows in front of them. A flat chopping sound rose and the Messerschmitt came back around, painted swastikas flashing like spiders.

They reversed and bolted for the scrub, Nina never feeling more like a rabbit sprinting for cover. Lines of bullets crossed the field, and Nina wasn’t even aware she’d flung herself flat—she just found herself on the ground, arms clamped around her head as puffs of soil jumped around her. She had no idea if she’d been hit or not. She felt nothing but the roar in her blood.

The plane passed overhead. Nina’s ears rang. She dragged herself up, heart flipping in sudden panic as she saw Yelena’s long form stretched on the ground ahead of her, but then Yelena’s head turned. “Ninochka—” she gasped, and they were both up, stumbling for the scrub. They crawled in, and when the sound of the Messer’s engines droned overhead again they froze, clamped together, Nina’s face buried in Yelena’s shoulder, Yelena’s in hers.

The Messer made another pass over the field.

“Wait,” Nina breathed.

They muffled the cold cloud of their breath in star-covered scarves. Another droning pass, another stipple of bullets.

“If the Germans capture us,” Yelena whispered, “promise you’ll kill me.”

“They’re not going to capture us.”

“If they do—”

“Stop!”

A third pass.

“You know what they do to women pilots. They’ll rape us and murder us.” Yelena’s whisper rattled faster like hailstones on a roof. “And we’ll be branded traitors for allowing ourselves to be taken—”

“We aren’t traitors. We followed orders—”

“No one sees it that way if you’re caught.” Yelena’s breath hitched. “I left my pistol in the cockpit.”

“Sshh!”