PRELUDE II

 

September 15, 1942

Somewhere over Siberia

 

Irina Marina Yusovsky slipped her arms into the military-issue parachute as she struggled to maintain control of the tossing plane.

Icy air permeated the cockpit, and frost fringed her eyelashes. The temperature had dropped below minus thirty Celsius and she could barely move her fingers from their grip on the controls. The radio had long since died. The fuel was nearly gone.

Since she’d lost her way from the rest of the 73^rd Guards Stalingrad-Vienna Fighter Regiment four hours ago, Irina had had no contact with the outside world.

She’d been forced from an air battle near Stalingrad by three Ju-88s—enemy aircraft determined to shoot her down. Her guns had failed, and Irina banked the plane and zoomed away from the battle.

A sudden storm had taken her by surprise, and she became lost in the buffeting winds. Ice formed on the inside and outside of her YaK-1, causing the radio and navigation devices to fail. The sky was dark with grey snow clouds, and she couldn’t elevate the plane high enough to rise above them and navigate by the stars.

Now, four hours or more from home, lost in the mountains of Siberia, her only choice was to abandon the aircraft.

Fuel was low. She could barely move in her seat, and her only chance of surviving was to eject from the plane.

Irina tried one last time to radio for navigation, for help, to hear any human voice. But the only sound was the blast of wind and the sputtering of the engine as it tried to go on.

She guessed her altitude must be over 7500 feet. It was a long way to drop onto unknown terrain. She nosed the plane into a descent to help bring her closer to the ground.

Tightening the straps, Irina took one last breath and peered into the darkness surrounding the aircraft. If only she could see something below. For all she knew, jagged, icy mountains rose beneath her, ready to catch her fall and slice her to pieces.

When the time came, she moved quickly. Out of her seat, after checking the supplies strapped to her body and the parachute to her back, she reached for the hatch. One quick prayer followed by a flip of the lock, and a blast of air burst into the cabin.

She jumped.

The wind whistled along her, and the roar of the plane above careened off to the side as she plummeted toward the ground. Irina’s chute expanded with a whoosh above her, and her free-fall stopped abruptly, then began to ease down.

She flexed her fingers, moved her ankles, rubbed her arms. It seemed forever that she fell, in the dark and silent world of billowing snow and gusting wind.

She thought about her companions and hoped that they, at least, would survive the fighting. They were tenacious and skillful flyers. Only two days ago, her comrade Lilya Litvyak had become the first woman to shoot down an enemy aircraft. She had shot down not one, but two Ju-88s.

As she descended, Irina thought only of Lilya, and her other comrades—not of her parents, or her sisters, or especially Kostya, her lover. If Marina Raskova, Irina’s mentor and the woman who had commandeered the all-female fighter regiments, had survived in the rugged mountains by living on berries and chocolate bars for ten days, Irina could do the same. She was, after all, descended from the branches of a great and royal line—the Aleksandrovs, who were cousins to none other than Ivan the Fourth’s tsarina: Anastasia Romanovna.

She would live.

She would.

Her feet slammed into ground, one after the other, catching her by surprise. Her knees buckled as she landed on them, her hands following to press palm-flat on the swampy earth. It was still dark, but as she struggled to her feet, she stripped off the parachute’s silk and fumbled for the flashlight strapped to her waist.

Irina pulled it free, her frozen fingers still aching with every movement, and fought with the switch. A beam of yellow glowed in the darkness and she turned in a circle to survey her surroundings.

Her light cut through the dimness and suddenly illuminated three tall figures. They stood, wrapped in furs that covered their faces and arms and legs so that Irina couldn’t even guess at their gender.

One of them brandished a gun.

Anything she might have said died in her mouth.

Another of them stepped forward to snag her arm, yanking her toward the group. Alarmed by his sudden movement, Irina stumbled and tried to pull away, losing the flashlight. But the grip on her fatigued muscles was too firm. He pulled her after him as they started to trudge silently into the darkness.

The third figure picked up Irina’s flashlight from the ground and led the way.

They did not speak, even to each other, as they prodded her through the darkness. The flashlight had been turned off. They needed no illumination to find their way. Irina stumbled along in their midst. They hadn’t left her for dead and they hadn’t used the gun. Perhaps they meant her no harm.

She tripped over tree roots and stones while the men around her walked smoothly and carefully. At last, they came to darkness that loomed in front of them. The base of a mountain.

Before she knew what was happening, Irina was shoved through a small crevice in the wake of the leader and found herself inside: safe from the elements, but in darkness and closeness and in the presence of strangers.

They hustled her between them deeper into the mountain, down into the darkness of the earth.