The three fighters that made up our cover stayed slightly above our Pe-2, keeping a close eye on the aerial situation. We flew directly over the clouds, which had become a little less dense by evening, and sometimes we could see the earth between the clouds. At times the cloud cover became multi-layered, and then we lost sight of our escort for a while.

      We passed the front line more or less calmly, but then the problems began immediately. Neither Lieutenant Kalina nor fighter pilots saw any danger yet, but the enemy air surveillance service was well organized, and our flight over the forward positions of the Germans did not go unnoticed.

      Four Messerschmitts were approaching us from the southwest. They were still quite far away, but they were flying confidently, and it was never in my plans to meet them.

      “Course north-northwest,” I ordered the pilot and duplicated the command over the radio to the Yaks.

      Of course, I wasn't going to actually scout the area – satellites were much better for that, but I had to at least visit the areas that would later be bombed, otherwise I would have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions again. Naturally, no one knew about it except me, and everyone else involved, including the Germans, took what was going on with complete seriousness.

      The enemy was extremely negative to the idea of our reconnaissance flight over their territory. We changed course, and this resulted in the Messerschmitts sent to intercept us just not finding us. Nevertheless, more and more ground observers saw us, and soon the computer alerted me to the appearance of three more pairs of enemy fighters in dangerous proximity.

      Of course I was jamming, but frankly, I didn't want to jam the Germans' communications at all. I had already abused this opportunity several times when there was simply no other way out, but the Germans are not idiots, and are quite capable of putting two and two together and realizing that their problems with communication occur exactly in those places, where this strange Russian appears. However, I was going to remedy this situation by arranging a dozen other similar anomalies a little later in various places, including not only the Eastern Front, but also Europe and even Africa. This, of course, should have been taken care of earlier, but…

      After about half an hour, it was clear that we couldn't dodge another unpleasant encounter. We were almost caught in a pincer movement between the enemy planes, and now all that was left was to choose the most inconvenient course for the Germans, which I did. As a result, the main part of the pursuers stretched after us in a long chain of planes flying from different directions and at different altitudes, but we had no way to dodge a pair of Messerschmitts, which flew almost toward us.

      “"Blackbirds", attention! Enemy at two o'clock. Height two and a half,” I warned our escort. “Don't change the course.”

      “Comrade Senior Lieutenant of State Security, maybe it would be better to change course?” the crew commander had not yet seen the enemy, but he did not dare to question the information about him, “If we are discovered, there will be a whole crowd of Messerschmitts here in ten minutes.”

      “The course is the same,” I repeated calmly. “The Germans already know about us. We don't have much time, and I haven't seen everything I need to see.”

      “Yes,” Kalina thought it best not to contradict the NKVD special representative, but it was obvious that in his mind he had only strengthened the thought, that this flight was a meaningless adventure. I understood the crew chief perfectly. Cloud breaks were rare, and he, as an experienced aerial reconnaissance man, knew very well, that it was completely impossible to get a picture of the situation on the ground from these fragments.

      “I see the enemy!” a report came in from one of the "Blackbirds". “A pair of Messerschmitts. We've been spotted. They are in no hurry to attack – we outnumber them.”

      “If they go on the attack, bind them up by battle.”

      “Copy that!”

      I understood the motives behind the Germans' behavior. The enemy pilots did not want to rush into an attack of two against three without the surprise factor. They thought we weren't going anywhere, because other pairs of fighters, lifted from nearby airfields, were already rushing to the scene.

      For a minute we continued to fly in the same direction, and meanwhile the situation was becoming more and more threatening. The fighters following us were slowly closing the distance, and the augmented reality mode drew me the marks of more and more enemy planes joining the hunt. In my opinion, the Germans overreacted, showing a very painful reaction to our raid.

      “Take a course north,” I ordered, realizing that we were already over the territory occupied by the encircled troops of the Southwestern Front, and there was no point in going any farther west.

      A couple of seconds before I changed course, I still jammed the airwaves completely. Only to the Germans, of course. Our escort continued to take my commands.

      In this way I hoped for a time to deceive the pursuers, who were following us, and make them move for a while on the former course, which now was diverging from our course. In about ten minutes I was going to turn east, as it was becoming too dangerous to stay in enemy airspace.

      “The Messerschmitts are attacking!” I heard a shout from one of the pilots in our escort.

      The pilots of the pair of Messerschmitts who had reached us quickly realized that no one could hear their reports about the change of course by the Russians, and decided to bind us up by battle themselves to prevent us from getting far away.

      Having risen to a considerable height, the Germans attacked our escort in a dive. In aerial combat, especially at the local level of technology, the element of chance plays a very significant role.

      The leading Messerschmitt opened fire from a distance of 200 meters. It is not easy to hit from such a distance, but the German was lucky. A machine-gun burst crossed the cockpit of the leading plane of the three Yaks, and the "Blackbird-1" flipped over the wing and went into an uncontrollable fall.

      The return bursts of our fighters did not reach the target, and neither did the shots of the German pair's wingman. But now the balance of power was evened out, unless, of course, our Pe-2 was counted as a fighting