Berlin — June 28, 1948, Monday
The city lookedlike a broken jaw. From a thousand feet up, Berlin was nothing but gray teeth and dark gaps, whole blocks punched out, streets stitched together by rubble and the glitter of shattered glass.
The dragon in me remembered when it all glowed. When the firestorms I helped unleash rolled over rooftops and turned the sky molten. Now there was only dust. Ash. A cold wind, dragging itself across the ruins.
I banked the C-47, making the old girl groan under the weight of flour, milk powder, and salt. Two years ago, I'd dropped bombs over this city. Tonight, I was dropping calories. The world had flipped itself inside out. Or maybe I had.
"Easy Two-Four, cleared to land. Keep it tight." The tower's voice snapped through my headset. Tempelhof's runway glowed below like a wet match in the dark. At thefence, the usual crowd waited—mostly women and kids—faces tilted up, hoping for something to fall from the sky that wasn't fire this time.
They wouldn't touch our cargo. It went to depots, bakeries, and ration centers. Counted by the ounce. But they still came. They stood in the streets to watch the landings, to hear the engines, to remind themselves someone still remembered them.
Halvorsen—Uncle Wiggly Wings—had started dropping candy on tiny parachutes. Wiggle the wings, drop the sweets, make a child smile, was his mantra. Hope with a tail number.
I didn't wiggle my wings. Never had. The kids watching didn't expect anything from me. They just stood, quiet and steady by the fences. The dragon didn't like fences. He liked open skies and clean targets. He rumbled when we passed over the Tiergarten, the hacked-down trees, the broken spine of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church.
We did this,he whispered.You did.
My jaw tightened. The war was supposed to be over, but it didn't feel over when the city still smelled faintly of ash. I'd buried brothers in that fire. Good men who'd sworn we'd never come back to Berlin unless it was to finish it. Now I was flying mercy missions over the same damn rooftops I'd once turned into flames, satisfying the beast inside me.
After Germany surrendered, the victors carved her up. Four zones: American, British, French, Soviet. Andbecause no one wanted to hand over the capital, they carved Berlin into quarters, too. A neat little island dropped in the middle of Soviet territory.
It had looked clever on paper, and politicians love paper. But paper doesn't feed people.
Then, on June 24, the Soviets shut everything off—roads, rails, canals—cutting two million civilians off the supply chain and waiting for Berlin to starve into submission. Waiting to claim the prize they'd wanted from the start.
But they'd underestimated one thing. Us. We answered with engines.
Operation Vittles, it was called, because apparently, saving a city needed a cute name. Day and night, every two minutes, another plane came in like mine, loaded with: flour, coal, medicine, hope. Measured not in lives, but in tons.
In retaliation, the Russians threatened to shoot us down.
We kept flying.
Apparently, the threat of the Reds was greater than that of a country who had started WWII not too long ago.
I adjusted the trim and felt the plane settle beneath my hands. "Easy Two-Four, final approach," I said into the mic.
The C-47 sank toward the runway, obedient as a tired dog. The load shifted with a heavy thud. Later, we'd haul coal, black dust getting into everything, but right now, thecity needed bread more than heat. They said each Berliner needed about 1,700 calories a day to survive. I'd seen men fight on half of that.
The wheels hit hard. Smoke curled off the tires, the dragon purred deep in my gut at the smell of scorched rubber. Ground crewmen waved me in, efficient and fast as always, no wasted motion. The airlift was a machine that couldn't afford to break its rhythm.
I cut the engines, and the sudden silence felt wrong, like a heartbeat skipping. The cargo doors opened. Thin men with ropey arms started unloading sacks into waiting trucks. The rations would be sorted, counted, and passed out across the Western sectors. The people at the fence got nothing but the sight of it. But sometimes, that was enough.
A little boy on his mother's hip caught my eye. Knit cap. Hollow cheeks. He waved, two fingers sticking out like wings. Without thinking, I waggled the C-47's rudder once, a small salute. The boy grinned like I'd handed him gold.
You should hate them,the dragon murmured.They are the enemy.
I knew that without needing a reminder.
Hell, I remembered every tracer round, every night we limped home missing another man. But the kid at the fence wasn't the enemy. He was just hungry.
Politicians, though, they were fair game. They were the bastards who'd sliced Germany into pieces, then acted shocked when the edges bled. They'd stuck Berlin—the damncapital—in the middle of Soviet land and called it balance.
Now Berlin was the golden goose everybody wanted to claim, and the ticking time bomb that could start World War III. All it would take was one mistake. One collision in the air corridor. One trigger-happy Russian fighter.
The dragon liked that idea.
I didn't.
