War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (18 page)

The soldier was frozen in place, his right arm extended to a pistol reaching at the girl’s head. Zaitsev guessed the Nazi couldn’t decide what to do next. What was he going to do with his prisoner? The man had to know there were more Russians in the building; the Reds wouldn’t send one woman behind enemy lines like this. His dead mate hanging beside him, nailed to a timber, throat slit and blood dripping, was a fearsome sign. Should he run and save his own skin or take his prisoner down the steps? Or up? If he shouted for help, who might answer his call first?

The German shook the pistol in Chernova’s face.
“Wo sind die Russen? Wo sind sie?”

Again, Zaitsev turned over his rifle, readying it to smash the German if he got the chance. A shot would bring attention.

Hidden just behind the wall, he whispered, “Partisan.”

Instantly, a dull thud was followed by a moan of pain. Zaitsev leaped, his rifle over his head, ready to lash out. There, doubled over but still standing, was the German soldier, with Chernova’s foot clenched high between his legs. The guard’s pistol clattered on the landing, then fell to the street below.

Before Zaitsev could surge forward to crush his rifle against the Nazi’s head, Chernova leaped at the man’s throat like a panther, pressing deep into his windpipe. The soldier gurgled and fought back violently. Zaitsev swung the stock of his rifle past Chernova’s shoulder, hard into the Nazi’s nose. The soldier collapsed backward and lay staring up through watering and panicky eyes. Zaitsev raised his rifle again and hammered it down into the soldier’s face. The skull split against the concrete. He rolled the Nazi with his boot to the edge of the wall.

Chernova stood back, her hands clenched. Zaitsev brought his face close. “Come on,” he whispered. “Fast.”

The two sprang up the steps to the third floor. The charges were set in the dynamite. Chekov stood holding the central fuse.

Zaitsev and Chernova hurried to his side. The others moved to the doorway. “You do it,” Zaitsev said. She took his matchbox and lit the fuse. It sparked to life. “Go!” Zaitsev called in a full voice to the men standing by the door. “Go!”

Forgetting all caution, the hares pounded down the stairwell, their boots clomping on the concrete. On the second-floor landing, Zaitsev passed Kostikev standing beside the nailed-up German. Kostikev yanked out his knife; the corpse crumpled.

They raced down the stairs into the cold open air. Behind them, voices shouted from overhead. Machine-gun fire crackled while they leaped over piles of bricks to speed through the rubble. Bullets ricocheted in the dark, though none came close enough to slow the hares down. They pumped their arms and feet and emerged into a narrow street.

“Go! Go!” Zaitsev called to the sprinters on all sides of him. Almost to the moment he’d expected, a roar shattered the night. The ruins suddenly shifted their shadows, flashing red on their wrecked, sad faces, winking at Zaitsev and the hares galloping straight for their own lines down an avenue leading to the rail yard. The rumblings of the explosion and the collapsing building rolled through the dead structures to veil their dash across no-man’s-land and into the safety of the Red Army’s forward trenches.

The five plunged onto the floor of a trench. They breathed hard, clutching their chests. Exhilarated, Zaitsev looked at the bobbing faces of the recruits. Through his heaving rib cage, he found his voice.

“Damn!” he said. “Damn! You think we used enough dynamite?”

Chekov and Kulikov patted each other on the back, laughing and breathless. Kostikev smiled his gilded grin. Tania coughed, struggling for air. She reached out to Kostikev’s shoulder. She pulled her hand back, bloodied.

“Don’t worry,” Kostikev told her, beaming, as the others quieted. “I’m in love with a nurse. I get to see her now.”

A guard in the trench handed down two bottles of vodka. Zaitsev gave the first swallow to Kostikev. The wounded man drank deeply, then reached the bottle back to Zaitsev. The clear glass was smirched with Kostikev’s scarlet handprint.

Zaitsev looked at Kulikov. “Nikolay.”

Kulikov helped Kostikev to his feet. Zaitsev gave them the vodka bottle. Arm in arm, the two men walked away down the darkness of the trench.

Zaitsev stood. He could not see the icehouse but could tell by a licking glow against the sky where the building had stood.

Chekov spoke. “I guess I’ll get some rest, Chief Master Sergeant. Good night, Tania.”

“Good night, Chekov.”

The little soldier yawned. Leaving, he handed Zaitsev the other vodka bottle.

Zaitsev stood next to Chernova. The two of them were alone except for the silent guard at his machine gun. They watched the jumping light of the burning icehouse.

“A good night’s work, don’t you think, partisan?”

She spoke without turning her head. “My name is Tania, if you please, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“All right, then,” he said gently, “Tania.”

He took a swallow, then laid the bottle on the breastwork.

“Good night, Tania,” he said, and walked away up the trench.

* * * *

TEN

TANIA WOKE IN A TORPOR ON HER BEDROLL. ZAITSEV’S
boot nudged her gently in the dark. A steaming cup of tea was waved under her nose. She accepted it, and Zaitsev told her that Kostikev’s wound was only a grazed shoulder. A few stitches, a roll with his nurse, and he’d be good as new.

At dawn, the hares and bears again assembled in the giant Lazur basement. A moist coolness seeped from the concrete floor and block walls. On the far wall a hundred meters away, a row of white circles had been painted one meter above the ground. The circles were in groups of three. The first circle was small and barely visible, perhaps the size of a fist. The ring to the left of it was slightly larger, and the third was twice the size of the first. Above each grouping was a number, one through thirty. A row of barrels and crates lay before the near wall.

Sergeants Zaitsev and Medvedev told the recruits to bring their Moisin-Nagant 91/30 sniper rifles and take a rifle and lie behind the crates and barrels. Each was given a number and told to aim at the largest circle. That circle, Zaitsev said, represented a chest shot at four hundred meters.

After the hares and bears had slid behind cover and leveled their scopes, the two sergeants sat behind them. Tania smelled their cigarettes. She heard laughter from Medvedev. Maybe Zaitsev was telling him about the icehouse mission the night before.

The recruits were left behind the barrels and crates for an hour, eyes straining down their sights. If one turned to speak to the sergeants or even take an eye away from the scope, Medvedev delivered a loud lecture on patience and stamina.

Through her crosshairs, Tania watched the dawn light swell at the far end of the shop. After the first ten minutes, the white circle had begun to rise and fall; her heartbeat had entered her hands. She’d slowed her breathing and eased her grip. Finally, long after her legs and buttocks had begun to tingle from the chilly concrete floor, she heard Zaitsev walk down the line behind her.

“One at a time,” he said quietly, “when I call your number.”

He stood behind the recruits. Several minutes passed.

“Twenty-eight. Fire.”

A shot rang to Tania’s right. She held her breath to bring her target to the center of her crosshairs.

“Fifteen.” Another shot.

“Ten.” Chekov, at Tania’s right elbow, fired. The bang made her jerk left. Immediately, Zaitsev called out, “Nine,” Tania’s number. She corrected a millimeter, squeezed the trigger, and took the jolt, then reacquired the target quickly. A puff drifted on the brick wall dead in the heart of the circle. She smiled on the rifle stock and held still while other numbers were called and more shots barked in the shop.

After the drill, Zaitsev and Medvedev inspected the circles. When they returned, they gave the volunteers permission to fire freely at the targets to practice aim and trigger pressure.

“Stuff something in your ears,” Zaitsev told the recruits, who dug in their pockets for bits of paper and cigarette butts.

The morning wore on, and Tania fired over a hundred rounds. Her shoulder ached as if there were a bullet in it. Each pull of the trigger seemed to carry a different lesson shouted by the two instructors pacing behind the firing line. You’re pulling too hard. You’re drifting to the right. To the left. Get your cheek off the stock. Relax. You’re too loose. Quicker. Take your time.

After an hour, the instructors again inspected the targets. When they returned with serious miens, those trainees who’d erred sufficiently were set back on the line for another session. Tania was not one of them, nor was Fedya.

She rose on legs like India rubber and wobbled from the crates to slouch against a wall. Fedya sat next to her, and she thought how good he looked. He hadn’t shaved in the three days since they’d been flung into the Volga. His new uniform was dirty. His big face was a little less the all-seeing, all-worrying poet, the crazy goose, and showed some of the steel of the sniper volunteer. Something in his eyes was gone; the big stare, the look of wonder, white and broad like an opened book. Now he held his rifle across his lap, excitement on his body.

“Good shots, eh? We’re both good shots,” he said.

Tania touched his knee. “I didn’t know you could handle a rifle that well.”

Fedya sat straighter. “The Bear took me out last night.”

“He what? What did you do?” Tania couldn’t believe it. While she crawled with the hares, Fedya had roamed the darkness with Medvedev. She’d been eager to tell Fedya of her own adventure at the icehouse but now swallowed it. She motioned with her hands as if reeling in yarn, to draw out his story.

Fedya shifted his weight. “Sergeant Medvedev said since I was the only freshman in the group, he could teach me from the beginning and I wouldn’t have anything to unlearn. At midnight we went through the trenches to the Dolgi Ravine. A machine gunner on the ridge was firing at the wounded being evacuated to the river. Sergeant Medvedev let me shoot him.”

Tania leaned forward. “Just like that? You shot him?”

The poet from Moscow had killed his first German and on the morning after possessed so few words for it. Tania was amazed. She thought it would have torn his heart out.

Fedya ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Tania. It was ... he was shooting at the wounded and the nurses. I got so angry. I didn’t have any problem shooting him. I just . . .” Fedya looked at his feet.

After a moment, he arranged his rifle in his lap. “Yes,” he said, bringing his eyes up to hers, “I shot him.”

Fedya pulled from his pocket a fresh black notebook. He showed her the first page.

“There it is. October twenty-sixth, 1942. Two-fifteen
a.m.
Machine gunner. Three hundred meters. Chest shot. Dolgi Ravine. Witness, V. Medvedev.”

Tania flipped through the clean white pages. Each page a life. A German life. A broken stick. I want my own notebook, she thought with envy. I’ll fill up fifty of these.

Fedya tucked the booklet away. “I heard about your raid on the icehouse last night. The sergeant and I heard the blast. It was something.”

Fedya waited for her to speak.

“I made a bet with myself you were in on that,” he added.

She nodded. “It was something.”

He reached his hand out to her. She folded her arms tightly over her chest and looked away at the others in the room, some walking about, some sitting in groups, others still with their attention fixed on their rifles. She shook her head, almost trembling.

“Are you all right?” He lowered his hand.

“Yes.”