Collaboration with @silmarilz1701
Svetlana knew how to play the game. She'd been caught in the political drama of Stalin's inner circle since birth. The only child of one of Stalin's closest friends, she grew up in the limelight, scrutinized by frie...
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Instinct took control of her mind somewhere over the English channel. Not long after they were loaded into the planes and the engines started to roar, Zhanna's trembling fingers and anxious thoughts were replaced with a freezing calm. Cold water pouring over her spine, numbing chills splintering down her back. She didn't think, she didn't even comprehend. Not when the air sickness pills started to twist her stomach in knots. Not when the bullets started to fly and most certainly not when she was pushed out of the plane by Buck, throwing her into the air.
Her fingers worked the webbing like it was her sniper rifle. Familiar and comforting, she deployed the parachute like she would a bullet. Quick, painless, numb. The wind whipped her cheeks. Zhanna's heart pounded but it was adrenaline, not fear. There were bullets and explosions and planes falling out of the sky but Zhanna glided toward the dark ground like a leaf in the early days of fall. She didn't notice the men around her, hanging limply in the harness.
She didn't notice when her leg bag, which had been the largest amount of weight to her downward course, was split by a stray bullet and plummeted to the ground. Zhanna did feel the jerk upwards, the sudden lightening of the load. Like her necklace. She had thrown her necklace away and now she was throwing her rifle away. A piece of Zhanna floating away from her.
She slipped between two trees, their shadows casting thin lines across her fingers as they struggled with the effort of removing the harness. Ripping it free, the silk glided away among the underbrush, caught by the breeze. It was a silvery ghost, dancing farther and farther from view before disappearing and leaving Zhanna now quite alone. Zhanna's legs were weak, clearly not understanding that she was numb. She wouldn't have noticed if they weren't shaking so much.
Leaning heavily on a tree, she took several trembling breaths. Her numb lungs didn't want to cooperate but she forced them to take in gasping gulps of smoky air. It felt as if she hadn't taken a full breath in weeks. Perhaps not since she had arrived in England. There had been too much fear, too many things on her mind that were requiring her full attention. Sleeping, and it seemed, breathing had taken a back seat.
Part of the worry that had kept her on edge was this mission, this operation, this day of days. It had been so long in coming that the flight from plane to occupied ground had felt so short. Zhanna glanced around the woods, for the first time taking in her surroundings. She was in a sparse corner of a forest, sliding into its undergrowth by way of a neighboring field. It was more open than she would have liked, providing little shelter and Zhanna could see the bursts of light from what could only be German armaments. The ground shook with the booming of shells. Anti-Aircraft guns that were surely mounted and positioned at the incoming Allied planes.
That was her mission, taking out AA guns with the help of the mortar squad and Lieutenant. Compton. But Compton was nowhere to be found and this wasn't her landing zone. She had spent several hours studying the sand tables with Sveta and this didn't seem right. She was supposed to land near a town but there seemed to be only farmland all around. Zhanna didn't recognize a river from the sandtables yet a river flowed. Wherever she was, Zhanna had to meet up with Easy and she had to find a weapon. Without either, she couldn't complete her mission and she couldn't go home.
