Zaitsev ushered his group into a large, windowless room with a blanket hanging in the doorway. A lantern glowed in a corner. Three buckets of water sat next to a tin washbasin. Beyond these, the room was empty.
“Dinner will be brought in a few hours. Get to know each other, because soon you’ll be teaming up.”
On the way out of the plant, Zaitsev met Viktor.
“What do you think?” the Bear asked when they had ducked into a trench behind the shelter of the huge building. The sun was almost down. The shadows were gone; an edgy chill crept from the ground. Zaitsev knew Viktor’s routine: he’d return to their bunker, eat a hurried snack, read a few articles in today’s In Our Country’s Defense or Red Star, take a nap, and head into the night.
Zaitsev looked at his friend. “Well,” he said, “before the first shot is fired, it’s hard to tell. But I can tell you I’m glad I’m not a German.”
“That’s good.” Viktor bent low to walk beneath the lip of the trench. Such a big man, Zaitsev thought. Not built well for this sniper business. How does he do it?
Zaitsev laughed. “I’m goddammed glad I’m not a bear, either.”
Viktor grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at Zaitsev’s back. The Hare ran full tilt through the trench all the way back to their bunker, with the Bear growling at his heels.
* * * *
NINE
MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT, ZAITSEV ENTERED THE HARES’ QUARTERS.
“How are my rabbits?” His lantern threw amber shades against their blinking faces.
The recruits sat up on their bedrolls. Good, Zaitsev thought. They can sleep. An important skill for a sniper. Rest when and where you can.
He crouched. “I have a mission.” Dark tendrils of shadow played on their faces when he lowered the lamp to the floor. “After school was out today, division headquarters sent me orders. It seems some Nazi prisoners have pinpointed a German forward HQ. Command asked if I could take some snipers, set up positions on no-man’s-land, and see if we couldn’t get lucky with a few shots in the morning. I told them yes, we could do that, but I had a better idea. Why drill holes in just a few Nazi officers? Why not take care of them all at once?”
Little Chekov spoke up. “Dynamite ‘em.”
Zaitsev pointed at the private. “Trainee Chekov gets a star. Exactly. I’ll take four of you with me. We leave immediately. I have the satchel charges assembled, and I’ve got a map of the location. Volunteers?”
All hands went up. Some recruits got to their knees to raise their hands higher. Zaitsev tapped on the heads of the soldiers he wanted on the mission: Chekov, the poacher, a superb shot and intelligent; Kostikev, the silent Siberian killer; Kulikov, the most quiet and vigilant crawler in the class, who could literally blend with the rubble; and the resistance fighter, Chernova.
Each stood and walked to the doorway. Zaitsev turned to those remaining. “Get some sleep. You’ll all have your chances. We’ll be back before sunup.”
The four followed Zaitsev out into the dark October hush. The nervous crackle of a far-off rifle or a machine gun’s burst were the only noises to upset the chilly stillness. Zaitsev walked beside the high wall, holding his lantern low, The shadows of his squad lagged on the wall behind them.
Zaitsev put the lamp down. Waiting in a heap beside the wall were six backpacks and five regular-issue rifles. From his pocket, Zaitsev produced a greasepaint pot.
“Grease up,” he told them. Chekov dug out a gob with two fingers and passed the pot around.
They darkened their hands and faces while Zaitsev spread his map beside the hissing light. He stabbed his finger onto the paper.
“This is the Lazur. Here are the outbuildings of the Red October plant. There,” he said, and pointed again, “is the Stalingrad Flying School. And here between the two is a row of ice warehouses. In this one, on the top floor, is the German HQ.”
He ran his finger along the map across the northern portion of the rail yard, which engulfed the Lazur on three sides. “We’ll crawl north across no-man’s-land. Our outposts are here and here. They’ve been alerted so that we don’t get shot in the backsides. We’ll enter the building from the south, climb to the third floor, plant our charges, light them, and get out.”
He looked up from the map at the shiny black faces and white eyes of the recruits. All were looking down to study the layout—all except Chernova, who stared at him. He smiled at her.
“Clean as you please, partisan. Right?”
“Right.”
“Let’s do it.” Zaitsev folded the map. “Each of you take a rifle and a satchel. You’re carrying the dynamite. I’m carrying the fuses.” He hoisted two of the packs over his shoulder. “If anything happens to me, make sure you take my packs.”
He put out the lamp and left it beside the wall. He pulled Chekov beside him. “You know the way?”
The private nodded. “In the last two months I’ve spent a few years of my life in the Red October. I know all the ways there, Chief Master Sergeant. I know the icehouses, too.”
Zaitsev patted Chekov on the back. The soldier was shorter than him by half a head, and he had delicate features and black hair. Chekov possessed the confident manner of an athlete; he’ll make a good sniper, Zaitsev thought. He’s quirky, cool. He’ll be hard to predict.
“Good. You lead, Chekov.” Zaitsev touched Kostikev on the arm. “You next. If we meet trouble, you take care of it.”
The Siberian fingered the knives hanging from his belt, one near each hand. He said nothing but slung the rifle and satchel over his shoulder. He stepped close at Chekov’s back.
“Nikolay,” Zaitsev called to Kulikov. “If something happens to me, you’re in charge. I want you in the middle. Go.”
He turned to Chernova, her hair golden even in the night.
“You go in front of me, partisan. You’ll check the work to make sure the charges are set right. When we’re ready, you’ll light the fuse. Danilov will love that.”
The girl’s brows arched while she hefted her rifle. “Is that why I’m along? To be in one of Danilov’s articles about you?”
Zaitsev tugged on her arm. “Do your job well and it could be an article about you.”
The five soldiers walked in single file for a hundred meters to the north. At a signal from Zaitsev, they dropped into a trench leading to the edge of the rail yard. At the end of the trench, they were met by six guards posted behind heavy machine guns trained across no-man’s-land. With a nod to Chekov, Zaitsev sent the lithe point man over the breastwork and onto the three-hundred-meter-wide plain of cratered earth and twisting rails.
At ten-second intervals, Zaitsev motioned for the next in line to crawl out of the trench. “Stay in Chekov’s tracks.”
Once all four hares were in the rail yard, Zaitsev slung his satchels over his back and greased up his own face and hands. He cradled his rifle and climbed out of the trench, lifting an oiled, dark thumb to the guards.
Once on his belly, he could barely make out Chernova’s legs wriggling ten meters ahead. Neither she nor any of the other trainees made a sound.
For ten minutes, Zaitsev crawled in a crooked line, his eyes locked on Chernova’s heels. He grew irked at the zigs and zags Chekov led them through. But as the route proceeded through craters, beneath rail cars, and behind debris, Zaitsev smiled admiringly at the craft of Anatoly Chekov’s choices. Slow, patient, and silent.
A white flare shot up straight overhead. Zaitsev dug his chin into the dirt. Ahead of him, Chernova, Kulikov, and Kostikev were still as rocks. He was certain they were almost invisible against the dark, rippling dirt.
The flare twinkled and faded, riding a slow fall beneath a tiny parachute. Under the gleam of the drifting light, Zaitsev looked two hundred meters ahead to the huge outline of the Red October plant. Fifty meters to his right, almost astride their position, was the Stalingrad Flight School. Only forty meters more along this course until they would turn left; then the icehouse was just a short distanc
e down that street.
The flare floated behind a row of ghostly ruins and extinguished itself. Zaitsev followed Chernova over the crest of a crater. The hares were there waiting for him.
Zaitsev pointed at a four-story building thirty meters away. The south wall of the building was missing. The stairwell to the upper floors was completely exposed to the outside.
Chekov nodded. The icehouse.
Zaitsev tapped Kostikev’s leg. “You go first. Leave your rifle and satchel here. Light a cigarette from the second-floor landing.”
Kostikev handed his pack to Chekov. Chernova took his rifle.
Kostikev pulled one of his knives from its sheath and gripped it in his mouth like a picture of a Turk pirate. He smiled at Zaitsev, his fellow Siberian, showing a flash of gold in his teeth. The stringy muscles in his neck stood out like buttresses under his jaw.
“See you in a minute,” he uttered around the knife. These were the first words Zaitsev had heard him speak all day.
Zaitsev settled on the rim of the crater to watch the man disappear into the rubble of the fallen wall. Minutes passed. Then, out of the shadows on the second-floor landing, a dark form walked to the ledge. The shape turned and shuffled around a corner without lighting a cigarette.
A minute later a second form appeared on the landing and lit a cigarette. It inhaled deeply, giving off a glowing dot of orange, then flicked the cigarette down onto the debris below to bounce once in a shower of sparks.
Zaitsev whispered, “Stay low to the building. Then up the stairs fast. No noise. Nikolay—move.”
Kulikov hefted his own rifle and Kostikev’s and slid out of the crater. Chekov grabbed Kostikev’s satchel and followed.
“Partisan,” Zaitsev hissed, “go.”
He waited until Chernova slid ahead of him with her rifle and backpack. He followed her over the rim of the crater.
He heard nothing, only the faintest scraping in the rocks from his scurrying hares. At the base of the steps, Kulikov squatted in the shadows, guarding. Zaitsev followed Chernova quickly up the steps, both on tiptoe. He looked out of the stairwell into the open air where a wall should have been. His heart pounded in his hands, which were clutching his rifle. He was unaccustomed to being so exposed in his hunting, as he was now in this stairwell. There was no camouflage, no trench, nothing to cloak him but silence and the gray-black night.
Two steps ahead, Chernova recoiled. She had just reached the top stair and stepped onto the second-floor landing. The girl stumbled back against Zaitsev. She fumbled to raise her gun.
He reached his arm up to the girl’s waist and pulled her down onto his step. He flipped his rifle over, stock first, and lunged forward, the rifle poised to strike.
There in the dark, standing against the wall, was a Nazi guard. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. His helmeted head stared out past the demolished wall. Zaitsev knew what had happened. It was what he’d ordered, but with a flourish. He rubbed his foot against the toe of the German’s boot and felt the slickness of blood on the landing.
Zaitsev reached under the chin and felt the haft of Kostikev’s knife. The Nazi had been tacked to a wooden timber in the wall with his head resting upright on the knife, his chin on the white bone handle.
Chernova stepped up on the landing. Kulikov arrived on the steps below. He’d hurried up from his post on the first floor at the slight sounds of the commotion on the landing.
Zaitsev heard a “psst” from the steps to the next floor. Kostikev’s gold teeth twinkled in the center of a loose grin.
“I had nowhere to put him, Vasha. I didn’t want you to trip over him.” The assassin shrugged, then climbed the steps.
“Guard the rear,” Zaitsev said to Chernova. “Tell Kulikov to bring up his satchel. I’ll come get you when the charges are laid.” He followed Kostikev up the steps.
On the third floor, Chekov led the others into the middle of a large, open room. Thick wooden pillars stood on the outer reaches of an ancient oak floor. This is an old building, Zaitsev observed. It’ll come down nicely.
They laid the four satchels in each corner. Kulikov hooked up the charges and fuses in the center of the room. Zaitsev’s watch read 2:50.
“Ready?” he whispered to Nikolay.
“One minute.”
Zaitsev crept down the steps to the second-floor landing. On his way, he heard not a whisper but a command.
“Hände hoch!”
His stomach tightened. Adrenaline needles welded his fists to his rifle stock. His lips curled in an unspoken curse. Chernova had been surprised by a Nazi on the stairwell, a guard Kostikev had missed. She was certainly at this moment staring down the barrel of a gun. The mission and all their lives were in jeopardy. The next five seconds would save them or lose them.
Zaitsev slipped down the steps quietly as he could. Reaching the turn, he peeked around the corner to the landing.
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-la
nd 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?”
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