War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (37 page)

Nikki shook his head. No, the factories were no place for the colonel.

We’ll stalk the lines heading south. The Lazur chemical plant is a strong Russian outpost, behind a giant no-man’s-land of rail tracks. Also, the corridor to the Volga between the Red October and the Lazur has plenty of traffic. A third focus could be downtown in the five kilometers between Tsaritsa Gorge and Krutoy Gully. The gorge is like the spotter’s hill, pregnant with crevices and bunkers, full of snipers and targets. Downtown, the Reds are crawling through the decrepit buildings, clinging desperately to the slopes of the riverbank, in some places within fifty meters of the Volga. The hunting will be good in any of these areas where the fighting has been reduced to waiting.

We’ll draw Zaitsev out, just as the colonel said. We’ll leave a trail for him to follow; then, when we’re sure he’s behind us, we’ll stop hard, turn around, and catch him right between the eyes.

Nikki thought about what he’d seen Thorvald do on the spotter’s hill, the way he’d fired his sniper rifle almost like an automatic weapon. Thorvald scared him, not because he was dangerous to Nikki but because he was too powerful to be left uncontrolled. He was like a machine that needed a strong hand on the wheel. Without a tight grip, the machine would fly into wildness. Thorvald will shoot a thousand men with those eyes and hands of his. In the process he’ll get us both killed. It’s hard to believe, but Thorvald seems inexperienced. He lacks patience and battle wisdom. How did he become a colonel in the SS? Connections? Obviously. No, I’ve got to contain him, manage him into this duel with Zaitsev.

Duel.

I can’t even tell him this
is
a duel, that I made it one when I shouted out to the Russians his presence in Stalingrad.

Nikki stopped in the trench and turned to the colonel strolling behind him.

“Colonel, sir, could we talk for a minute?”

Thorvald held out his hands for his pack. Nikki slid it off his shoulder. The sniper laid it on the ground and sat on it.

“Yes, Nikki?”

Nikki squatted on his heels. “No disrespect, sir, but I’ve been noticing something.”

Thorvald waited. Nikki felt his eyes on him, like hands. He imagined for an instant that Thorvald was staring down a scope at him. It set off prickles under his skin.

“Colonel, I don’t know anything about being a sniper. But I’ve learned my share about staying alive on a battlefield. We can be a better team, sir, if you let me in on some decisions about when and where to shoot. I think if we don’t work together, we’re going to get killed out here. Sir.”

Thorvald rubbed his hands together.

“You didn’t like me shooting at the dummy.”

“It wasn’t that. Neither of us knows enough about what the other is going to do. I know I need to learn more about being a sniper, and you need to know—”

Nikki pulled up, afraid he’d chased his tongue over a cliff.

Thorvald cleared his throat. “It’s all right, Nikki. I need to know more about being a soldier. Too right. Well, I suppose we are a team. Without you, we both know I’d get lost in a minute and wander right into Moscow. And without me, you’d . . . hmmm.” Thorvald rubbed his chin. “Well, I suppose without me you’d be all right, wouldn’t you?”

Nikki grinned. “No more so than anyone else in Stalingrad.”

The colonel clapped once. “I’ll tell you what. When we’re done with this Zaitsev, I’ll see what I can do about keeping the team together and taking you back to Berlin as my assistant. We’ll get you out of Stalingrad. There. How’s that for a deal?” Thorvald spread his palms like a magician who’d just made something unlikely appear. “Now you have to keep me alive.”

Nikki breathed deeply. This was fantastic! It was better than he could have hoped for. He reached out to bind Thorvald to his word with a handshake.

Zaitsev was now Nikki’s prey, too. He was Nikki’s wings back to Westphalia. He thought of Thorvald’s immense abilities in his own hands. We can do this. We can get him. And we can go home.

“Where do we start?” Thorvald asked.

Nikki cooled his excitement and thought about the translations of the several articles he’d read in
In Our Country’s Defense,
the ones he was certain Thorvald hadn’t read very carefully. Zaitsev isn’t like Thorvald. The Hare will wait, he’ll work, even suffer to let loose that one bullet for his one mark. He’s a prideful man, living the legend as it happens to him, a day at a time. He’ll never be unfaithful to the legend. He’ll die according to it before he defiles it.

It’s funny. Zaitsev is the man and we’re the wolf, just like the colonel said. The man is limited by his humanity, his rules of engagement. Zaitsev’s burden is to be a hero, an example for the Communists and his army, even his entire people. But the colonel and I don’t carry that burden. We’re the invaders; this isn’t our land, so we can ravage it. These are not our people, so we can destroy them. We’re not heroes, so we can act with purpose. We’re free from the blinding glitter of humanity.

Nikki knew this about himself: Since his first moments in Stalingrad, he’d killed only to stay alive. Not once had he used a weapon in revenge or battle passion. He killed those who threatened him and his unit in their missions, none others. And though there has surely been enough killing in Stalingrad to fill ledgers and history books, he thought, there can be a few more deaths at my hand. And though it won’t be my finger on the trigger, it will be me who kills Zaitsev.

So let’s begin. Let’s do some killing, Colonel. Just enough to be worthy of Zaitsev. It’ll make him come at us hard and fast. He’ll have every one of his hares out looking for you, Colonel. I know this, though I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter. The Hare will run to wherever they report death that looks like the work of the master sniper from Berlin. We’ll be there waiting.

Nikki considered the corridor between the Red October and the Lazur. He’d watched and made notes for Ostarhild while Russian sniper activity had trebled there in the past few weeks. “Let’s go north,” he said.

“All right. Why?” Thorvald picked up his pack. He tossed it to Nikki and handed him his rifle. Not everything changes just for asking, Nikki observed.

“Zaitsev won’t notice if we shoot a dozen machine gunners or soldiers. Even a few officers won’t make him sit up fast enough.”

Nikki shouldered the rifle. He turned to lead Thorvald down the slope. “But if we take on some of his hares, he’ll get the message. And I know where we can find them.”

* * * *

THREE HOURS LATER, NIKKI AND THORVALD SAT IN THE
basement of a gutted building, the headquarters bunker of Captain Manhardt of the Seventy-sixth Infantry. Manhardt slouched on a stool, speaking to Thorvald.

Nikki squirmed in his chair. The white camouflage parka and drawstring pants the colonel had secured for him that afternoon made him sweat. Thorvald had laughed when Nikki put on the outfit fresh out of a box, pointing at the crease marks: “You’ll blend in well as long as the snow is neatly folded.”

Captain Manhardt scratched under his arm absentmindedly. He fidgeted while he spoke. Twice he interrupted his descriptions of how his men were being butchered in the Tractor Factory and in the corridor to murmur, “Fucking lice.”

He answered Thorvald’s questions. “Seven dead. Maybe more, I can’t be sure.” The man’s misery was palpable, as if he were just trying to finish the interview and be done with these two white-clad meddlers so he could scream alone in his basement.

“Stupid bastards.” The captain laid his tongue behind his lower lip, swelling it like he’d been punched there. After a sad moment, he continued: “They hear a noise in the rubble. A rattling sound, like someone kicking a can. Then some stupid bastard looks up over the trench and gets a bullet for it. It’s been going on since dawn, up and down the railroad mound. I’ve been out there. I’ve told them, goddammit, this is obviously sniper shit! They’re throwing those cans from somewhere or making that noise I don’t know how. I’ve told them, I’ve ordered them! Don’t look up when you hear that! But what can they do? They’ve got to look. They know the Reds. The Ivans’ll do this for a day, two days, and they’ll get the men to where they won’t look over the trench for anything. The men will just sit there, blind, afraid to move, afraid not to move. Then at dawn, the Reds’ll sneak through the heap and jump down my boys’ throats because they wouldn’t look up.”

The captain scratched behind his neck. He wiped his hand across sleepless, shining eyes. “What can they do?” he asked Thorvald. “What can I tell them? Snipers. It’s a goddammed sport to them.”

Thorvald paused before speaking to pay his respects to the captain’s woe.

“Let me see some of the bodies,” he said. He made his voice soothing, as though he meant it to be a poultice across Manhardt’s brow. “The corporal and I will do something about it.”

The captain stood. His body was laden with weapons; he bulged like a deadly fruit tree. Bands of bullets crossed his chest; a bayonet was strapped to his leg; grenades bunched at his waist. A Mauser pistol was jammed under his belt. He slung his submachine gun over his back.

He led Nikki and Thorvald up the steps and out of the basement into a gigantic grotto, a chamber left as a bubble in the heart of the building’s ravaged interior. The high ceiling, like a crazy cathedral, was a jumble of bent steel beams and giant concrete shards. Scattered on the ground were wounded soldiers wrapped in red-soaked bandages, some reaching out their hands, some rocking, others lying still. Moans and whispers mingled with anguished calls for the two brown-clad nurses. These women scurried among the men, talking to them in low tones, nodding when they spoke, touching the men with wet cloths.

The captain faced Nikki. His eyes seemed to say, See all this blood. For what? He said, “The bodies are out here.”

Thorvald and Nikki followed him through the bitter smells of wounds and gauze into a tunnel to the street.

Beside the charred and snowy remains of a German tank, seven bodies lay under gray-green blankets. The captain hung back while Thorvald approached the corpses. “You know your way around,” Manhardt said. He turned and was gone around the corner. As he walked off, the captain’s grenades and bullets rattled.

Thorvald knelt beside one of the bodies and peeled the blanket back from the head. Rivulets of blood had trickled from a hole in the dead boy’s forehead. The blood had pooled in the eye sockets, then dripped alongside the nose and ears to form a dark spider sitting spread out on the gray face.

Thorvald looked up at Nikki. “At Gnössen I have a doctor who comes in to teach my snipers how to read wounds. It’s a bit ghoulish, but often it’s the only trail a sniper leaves behind.” He touched the waxen face gingerly on the cheek. He said with a wan smile, “Now I wish I’d paid more attention.”

The colonel blew out a sigh. He felt around the perimeter of the hole just above the corpse’s left eye. Thorvald’s breathing came in a heavy whisper through his nose.

He slipped his hand under the boy’s head. Instantly he pulled his hand out. He grimaced.

“The back of the head’s gone.”

The colonel flipped the blanket up to cover the face and stood. His arms hung limp at his sides. He wiggled the fingers on both hands.

After a moment, the colonel knelt to uncover the second body. This head was clear and pale; he pulled the blanket down farther and found a rip in the coat, in the center of the chest. He unbuttoned the coat.

“Give me your knife.”

Nikki pulled the knife from his boot. The colonel opened the coat and cut away the buttons on the sweater and the two shirts beneath.

The fatal wound was on the boy’s hairless white breast, like a small crater on the ashen surface of the moon, below the left collarbone and near the heart. Thorvald took a pencil from his coat and inserted the tip a few millimeters into the wound. With his fingers, he worked the flesh around the hole, squeezing and kneading the muscles and skin.

Without a word or a glance to Nikki, he examined the next four bodies in the same manner. Two more had head wounds; in both cases, Thorvald reached under the head to find that the Russian bullet had blasted out the back of the skull. The other two bore chest wounds. Thorvald inserted his pencil into each of these and wriggled it while working the swollen flesh around the hole.