War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01]

by David Robbins

  The first men boarded and sat on the deck. Two soldiers in the line in front of Tania, boys no more than eighteen, took a few steps, then froze in place. The other men ignored them, sliding past them in the line as if the two did not exist.

  Tania came up behind them quickly. “Keep moving,” she said. “Don’t do this. They’re watching.”

  Tania walked in front of the boys to face them. She saw their eyes fixed across the river at the inferno.

  She shook one of them. “Move to the boat. Move!”

  The young soldiers turned to Tania, then looked to each other. One licked his lips. An older soldier grabbed Tania’s arm to pull her away.

  “They have their fates, comrade. We have ours. Come.”

  Tanja let herself be tugged several steps, still looking back at the youths. She turned her head and marched in line.

  After a few steps she heard Danilov scream from the deck of the barge.

  “Stop! Stop immediately!”

  All the soldiers halted and turned back toward the crowded landing. The boys had bolted out of line to run for the trees beyond the beach, dropping their rifles and ammo belts and shedding their packs to leap over barrels and cartons. Their quick footfalls, hard and hollow on the planks of the landing, mingled with the muffled roar from across the Volga. The dock grew silent while the two young cowards ran out their lives.

  Tania heard their cries to each other, frantic and afraid. “Run! Oh, God! Keep running!”

  Guards fired over the boys’ heads and yelled for them to halt and come back. The two ran.

  Three more guards in greatcoats appeared from the trees at the edge of the sand. They hustled toward the boys, shooting.

  One boy went down, wounded. The other stopped running. He turned, looked, and died where he stood. A guard walked to the wounded one, put his pistol to the boy’s forehead, and fired.

  Tania and the soldiers resumed their march to the barge. The older soldier walked beside her.

  “A waste,” she said to him.

  He looked down at her. “Boys,” he said. “Boys the age of my children.”

  Tania heaved her pack higher onto her shoulders. She moved away from him.

  “Forget your children,” she said.

  * * * *

  TANIA CHOSE A SPACE NEAR THE PORT RAIL. SHE SAT with her knees pulled up to her chest. Several men asked her to move to the safety of the middle of the deck. Tania tossed her shoulder-length hair and held her place.

  The barge moved onto the river.

  Three Stukas found the boat quickly. The crooked-wing fighters banked, buzzed high in triangle formation, and screamed down. Plumes of water erupted in the white light of phosphorus flares. Tania blinked at the geysers licking at the barge.

  Along the rails, NKVD guards, known as “Green Hats,” stood with arms folded. A few had their hands inside their coats. Fingers on triggers, Tania thought, in case anyone gets a notion to jump overboard. Tania knew the Green Hats well, knew them to be the grimmest and most ruthless organ of the commissariat. She’d seen plenty of their work: they examined credentials and asked curt questions. Any soldier caught leaving the front without orders was dealt with swiftly. Hundreds of bodies had littered the road to Stalingrad, dreadful reminders to Red Army deserters to rethink their fears.

  Another detonation sounded deep off the starboard rail. Shrapnel bit into the hull. Cold water soaked the soldiers on deck. No diving Stuka had shrieked before the explosion. That was a mortar shell, Tania thought. The big cannons are throwing in alongside the Luftwaffe. We’ve been spotted by the whole German army.

  Water ran off the sides of the tilting decks. Commissar Danilov made a show of marching to the bow, swinging his boxlike torso and arms. He climbed onto the large stack of ammunition cartons where everyone could see him. He raised his arms over his head and pointed his hands straight up like antiaircraft guns into the noisy, deadly night.

  “Fuck you!” he cried at the sky. “You fuckers of mothers. You whores!” Danilov scowled down at the soldiers. They were bunched together, wet on the trembling deck.

  “Come on, you Russian heroes! Fuck those Germans up the ass! Come on! Let them hear you!”

  A few voices rose. Then, like an engine catching and throttling to a roar, every one of the soldiers screamed out curses, exiling their fears into the night at the planes and flames and explosions of water and earth.

  Tania thrust her fist in the air. “Bastards!” she screeched. “Murderers!”

  While the troops spent their rage, Danilov called for the postman to come forward. “Mail call!” he shouted.

  The postman handed up his canvas sack of letters. The commissar dug into the bag. Above the bedlam, he called out the names on the envelopes.

  “Tagarin!”

  “Here!”

  “Antsiferov!”

  “Over here!”

  The postman took the letters from Danilov and scurried among the men. Twice he fell into their laps when the boat shifted on the roiling river.

  Another tower of water reared off the port stern. A hand tapped Tania on the shoulder. Behind her sat the older soldier who’d pulled her away from the two deserters on the landing.

  “Would you like some bread?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. I have my own.”

  “Please,” he insisted, “have some of mine.”

  Tania looked at the cropped white beard and tanned face. The man’s blue eyes were set in the middle of deep, strong wrinkles like indigo marbles laid on straw.

  “Of course,” she said, “but only if we share my cheese.”

  They dug into their packs. A third, younger soldier reached out a half-full liter of vodka.

  “Please,” he said, “may we have a picnic?”

  The three began to exchange their food and drink. A shell exploded on the port side, closer than the last. Tania sheltered the bread from the spray.

  The young one extended his hand. “My name is Fyodor Ivanovich Michailov. From Moscow.” He appeared to be eighteen or nineteen, a freshman. His face had a peculiar quality even in the flashing night— Tania couldn’t recall ever before seeing an entire face take part in a smile the way his did. His forehead, nose, chin, and eyes all crinkled at once. He shines, Tania thought quickly.

  “I’m a writer,” he said, taking the cheese.

  “What do you write about, Fedya?” the older soldier asked.

  “Love stories. Poems.” He shrugged. “What can I write about? I’m Russian. My choices are love, government, or murder.”

  “Write about Stalin and you’ll have all three.” The older man laughed alone. “Yuri Georgiovich Pankov.” He took Fyodor’s hand. “From Frunze in Kirghizia. I’m originally from Tashkent.”

  “An Uzbek,” Fyodor recognized.

  “A simple man.” Yuri tapped his chest. “No dreamer like you. I’ve spent my whole life wide awake.”

  Tania looked at Yuri’s hand shake Fedya’s. His fingers were thick and powerful, with blunt nails. The knuckles were gnarled from labor. She guessed he had worked on one of the millions of Soviet collective farms. In Fedya’s smooth white grasp, Yuri’s calloused hand looked more like a tan bag of chestnuts than flesh.

  “Well,” said Fedya, looking across the river at Stalingrad, “I’m awake now, I can tell you that.”

  Yuri smiled at Tania. “And you, little tough one? Miss Sit-by-the-rail? You have a name?”

  “Yes.” She wiped her hands on her trousers to clean off the bits of cheese. “Tania Alexeyevna Chernova.”

  “And where are you from?”

  Tania pursed her lips and hesitated. “New York.”

  Yuri’s blue eyes popped wide. “New York, America?”

  Fedya leaned over the cheese and bread. “New York City?”

  “Yes,” she said in English.

  Another bomb blasted ten meters from the port rail. Cold water cascaded. The bread and cheese in front of Tania were washed overboard. Near the bow, a soldier slumped and moan
ed.

  Yuri and Fedya were distracted from their amazement at Tania. All the men on the deck fell silent save for the groaning soldier. His comrades slid aside to lay him down and cover him.

  Fedya clutched the vodka bottle. He stood. Tania saw how large he was, with great shoulders and a midriff to match.

  A kneeling Green Hat shouted, “Sit down, you!”

  Fedya handed the guard the bottle.

  “Here, give him this. Come on, man! Take it!”

  The guard grabbed the bottle and threaded his way to the wounded soldier. Then Tania’s heart sank: she caught the whistle of an incoming artillery shell, the first one she’d heard in flight. She knew why.

  “Down!” she screamed at Yuri and Fedya.

  The three huddled together on the deck. The mortar shell struck directly amidships. The deck cracked open into great splinters and blew apart in a ball of flame and debris. The explosion deafened Tania. She flew backward, up and out into the flashing waters of the Volga.

  * * * *

  SIX

  NIKKI TRAINED HIS HEAVY MACHINE GUN ON THE doorway. He made sure the gun’s ammo belt was taut. He slid his hand along the broad, round barrel. It was colder than the Russian autumn.

  He stared down the machine gun sight. It’s stupid to wait for the Russians to retreat, he thought. They won’t retreat. The Reds die in their holes. They’re not leaving this building. Neither are we.

  He imagined himself pulling the trigger—saw Russians burst through the doorway, then twist and fall in front of his machine gun. They came, they leaped at him, he caught them with bullets, and they came, the bodies jamming the hall. The machine gun spit and spit, firing and roaring, mowing them down. And they kept pushing the bodies of their comrades out of the way to get to him. He let the trigger go and the gun kept firing on and on. He ran across the room, ran through the ruins. His unit ran after him, streaming out the windows, while here in this empty room the Reds kept running at the machine gun, falling in front of it, building the mound of dead, falling in front of it, falling . . .

  “Mond. Corporal Mond.”

  The voice pulled Nikki abruptly from his vision. Captain Mercker knelt beside him. He put his hand on Nikki’s right fist, clenching the grip. Nikki’s knuckles showed the white of bone.

  “Easy, Corporal,” the captain said. “We’re all a little tense. Back it off a little.”

  Nikki relaxed his hold and wiggled his fingers. The captain offered him a cigarette and a light.

  “Mond, you were in the first group. Did you check that room on the other side of the hall?”

  “Yes, sir. There was nobody in there.”

  “How big is the room?”

  “A little smaller than this one. Three windows like these.”

  Mercker dragged on his cigarette. His cheeks hollowed. “They must’ve had the same plan we did to grab this building. We rushed in the front door while they were climbing in the windows.”

  Nikki looked in the young officer’s eyes. He saw calm there.

  “You’re new, sir?”

  Mercker smiled. “Depends on what you call new. I was at Leningrad last year. Moscow this spring.”

  Nikki ground out his cigarette to keep his hands on the machine gun grips.

  “Stalingrad is new, sir. Never been anything like this. The front line can be a thousand meters or it can be a ceiling.” He looked at the door in front of his barrel. “Or a hall.”

  Mercker said nothing. Nikki felt the invitation to go on.

  “Russians are good at house-to-house fighting, better than we are. If they’d been here first, we’d never have gotten in. We’d have to blow the building up with them in it.” Nikki shook his head. “They’re not leaving, Captain.”

  Mercker lit another cigarette. “What did you say about blowing them up in it?”

  Three weeks ago, Nikki’s unit had occupied a house in the workers’ settlement west of the Tractor Factory. They’d found five Reds holed up in the basement. The men would not surrender. They did not retreat. After three days of stalemate, with the Russians fighting like crazy Ivans, they’d had to rip up floorboards and drop satchel charges into the basement. For five Reds, his unit had blown up an entire house.

  Nikki told his captain this story. The moment he was done, muffled voices issued from across the hall. A song. The Russians were singing! Within seconds, a strong chorus formed. The song was loud and lusty. A dirty ballad, Nikki thought, from the laughter accompanying it. The

  Reds are sending a message to the German company across the hall. There are plenty of Ivans in here, they’re singing to us, and they’re not going anywhere.

  An idea gleamed in Mercker’s eyes. “You blew up a house for five Russians,” he said over the racket from across the hall. “We’ll blow one up for fifty.”

  Mercker called for a messenger.

  * * * *

  AFTER TWO HOURS OF NONSTOP SINGING, THE REDS quieted.

  Twenty minutes later, Mercker’s courier returned through the window. He brought with him three sappers and their equipment: twenty kilos of dynamite, six shovels and pickaxes.

  In the center of the room, one of the sappers raised a pickax. He struck a ringing blow on the concrete. Debris scurried from the strike like mice across the floor.

  Mercker raised his hand. “Just a second.” He turned to the men. “Those Reds have shitty voices, don’t you think, boys? We should show them how a German sings a song. Loud. In fact, so loud that it’s all they can hear.”

  The captain began the Nazi party song, “Horst Wessel.” The men joined in, even those with guns trained on the door and out the windows. Mercker stood in the center, swinging his arms like a conductor, whipping up the spirit and volume. The soldiers’ voices climbed to a roar. Mercker pointed with a flourish to the sapper to smack the concrete. The engineer swung down hard and the floor gave way in a jagged dent. The men smiled and applauded, and all they heard was their voices.

  For three hours the soldiers sang. Folk songs, Bräuhaus ballads, popular tunes, even pieces of opera ricocheted off the walls to mask the digging. When the captain signaled the men to stop—again, like a conductor, with a wave of his hands—the tunnel had long since disappeared beneath the floor.

  Nikki took his turn with a shovel for a thirty-minute shift, tossing broken earth out of the hole. The tunnel grew to five meters long, two meters wide at a depth of one and a half meters below the floor.

  Inside there was just enough room for two men to kneel side by side and swing pickaxes. The plan was to burrow to the opposite side of the hall. Once beneath the Russians’ stronghold, two and a half meters below them, the fuse would be lit. “Twenty kilos of dynamite.” One of the sappers grinned and spit on the tunnel floor. “That ought to lift those Bolshi bastards halfway to heaven ... or wherever.”

  Weary and dirty, Nikki slumped against a wall. Three more men were in the hole now, shoveling out dirt. This made very little noise, so no singing was required to mask it. Mercker told the men to rest for a few hours, then another strong medley would be needed before dawn. “Think up some new songs,” he said. “And no opera. I hate that shit. I want songs about women.”

  Mercker sat beside Nikki, drained and grimy. He offered a cigarette and closed his eyes. Nikki thought the young captain was funny, good for morale. He seemed a good leader with a ready ear and plenty of cigarettes. Nikki hoped the best for him, that he would not die here in Stalingrad and that he would live to hate opera as an old man.

  On the other side of the hall the Russian voices struck up another song. “Goddammit.” Mercker’s eyes were still shut. “Can’t there be five minutes without a blasted song?”

  The captain’s eyes sprang open. He sat off the wall, his face close to Nikki. “No,” he hissed, “there can’t.”

  Mercker jumped to his feet. He grabbed a pickax and handed it to a soldier who was not yet dirty. “Get in there! Dig!” He motioned one of the sappers into the hole. He pointed at another soldier and handed
him a pick.

  “Let’s go. There’s no resting now,” he said urgently. “We can’t wait.”

  Mercker carried the last shovel to the middle of the room. He pointed the tool across the hall at the singing Russians. “Those bastards are trying to blow us up, too!”

  Nikki thumped his head against the wall. Of course. Damn. The Reds have a head start on us, maybe two hours.