Zaitsev folded the letter into the envelope. According to custom, the snipers applauded. Tania thought, He’s not embarrassed by the attention. He’s gotten used to the spotlight.
Zaitsev sat, and Danilov stepped to the middle of the room, holding high the second, unclaimed letter.
“I have a letter here from a girl in Chelyabinsk. She has written on the envelope instructions that this must go to the bravest soldier. Who would that be?”
Tania looked around the bunker. Her eyes settled on Anatoly Chekov. He, like her, had not received a letter since leaving his home. His family was in the Ukraine, behind German lines. Anatoly often talked with Tania about his worries, knowing that she, too, had family in an occupied republic. Lately he’d shown signs of strain. The ripples of tension circled his eyes and played on his brow and lips. The ugly scene with Chebibulin; that was not the brave, easygoing poacher. Chekov was cracking. Tania and Shaikin had talked about it just the morning before, how his drinking had increased and his moods swung unpredictably. They spoke of the solitary regimen of the sniper, how it was so different from the foot soldiers’. Not enough sleep, constant assignments into danger along the front line, the brooding presence of competition amongst the snipers—despite Zaitsev’s and Danilov’s attempts to keep the unit free of it and dedicated to socialist ideals— and the killing. Even silently, from a great distance, you saw the magnified blood, the flailing of the unsuspecting. All this tired the spirit. Tania knew how barren was the place inside where the sniper turned for relief. It was as jagged and bleak as the bombed city waiting outside in the cold night. There was no break in the pressure, no release other than pulling the trigger. Over the past few weeks, Chekov had quelled the visions by trapping them in a bottle. Yet all the hares liked him despite his drinking. The liquor never quenched his courage even when it clouded his good humor.
“Anatoly!” Tania called out. “The letter is his, of course.” Heads nodded, Zaitsev’s, too.
Danilov walked to Chekov’s place on the floor. His legs were splayed in front of him; the toes of his boots shook nervously. Danilov handed down the letter and motioned Chekov to rise.
Chekov fingered the envelope. After a halting glance at the snipers, he tore the letter open.
“ ‘Dear brave soldier.’ “ He paused and looked behind him at the vodka bottle resting next to his journal.
“Read, Anatolushka,” Shaikin prompted him. “We want to hear what your new girlfriend says.”
Chekov licked his lips and continued:
“My name is Hannah. I do not know who is reading this letter, but I am sure you are the bravest one if it was given to you.
I am seventeen years old. If that makes me your daughter, then I will call you father. If not, I will call you brother. The girls in my plant have gathered presents for the defenders of Stalingrad. We know it is hard for you in the trenches and our hearts are with you. We work and live only for you. Even though I am far behind, the Urals, I have hopes of returning to my native Smolensk. I can hear my mother crying in the kitchen. Kill the Nazis so we can go home. Let their families wear mourning in their motherland, not ours. Let their families wet themselves with tears. I am just a girl, and I stand in a line assembling parts for trucks and tanks. But I feel I am fighting, too, just by staying alive, just by hating the Germans every minute. I do not like to hate; it is not natural for a Russian, don’t you think? But we must, until they are gone. Fight hard, my father, my brother, and I will, too.”
Chekov rolled his head back, turning his gaze to the beams supporting the bunker’s ceiling. His chest worked; the thin letter shook in his hand.
Kulikov applauded twice, then stopped, embarrassed. No one else had clapped. Chekov was clearly troubled by the letter. Tania wondered how Kulikov could not have seen it.
Chekov handed Danilov the sheet.
“Keep this for me. I’ll lose it.”
He walked to a corner, picked up a bag of grenades, and grabbed his submachine gun off a hook on the wall. He left the bunker without looking around.
Danilov looked at Zaitsev. “Where is he going?”
Zaitsev motioned sharply to Kulikov.
Kulikov jumped up. Tania rose to go along. Zaitsev told her to sit. Kulikov was a good friend to Chekov. He’d bring him back.
Heavy silence lay on the snipers. Danilov refused to sit, pacing in short strides. His stubby hands barely reached each other behind his back. Then Chekov came through the doorway. Behind him, Kulikov carried the sack of grenades and the gun.
Chekov slumped near the vodka bottle. He eyed it and rubbed his chin, grimacing as if he were composing a response to a comment the bottle had made.
Kulikov stepped to the middle of the room. “Chekov has a plan,” he announced. “It’s a good plan, and I propose we carry it out. It’s a raid on a German officers’ bunker.”
“Where is it?” Zaitsev asked from his corner.
“Sector six.”
That had been Sidorov’s sector. Now it was Tania’s.
Kulikov looked at Tania. “Do we have your permission?”
Tania set down her journal and stood.
“I go.” She met Zaitsev’s eyes.
“Of course.” The Hare stood. He was going, too.
Zaitsev asked Kulikov, “Do you know how to find the bunker?”
Kulikov pointed at Chekov, who was still staring at the vodka bottle. “I think Anatoly should lead us. It was his plan.”
Zaitsev stood over Chekov.
“Anatoly, can you point out the location on a map?”
“I want to go.” Tears welled in Chekov’s eyes.
“No, friend, you stay here. Get some sleep, have a drink. Show me on the map.”
Zaitsev spread out a map of sector six. The sad little sniper rubbed his nose on his sleeve while Zaitsev waited.
“Here.” Chekov pointed at the southwestern corner of the sector at the end of a long run of trenches, one kilometer beyond the Russian forward positions.
One kilometer, Tania thought. Not so great a distance for a single pair of snipers to operate, especially under cover of night and snow. But to mount a guerrilla action that far into the German rear? Getting in is simply a matter of staying out of sight, a specialty of the hares. Getting out is different. Once the noise starts, the sticks know you’re there.
Shaikin stepped forward. “I know every meter of sector six. I can get us there through sector five ...” Shaikin ran his finger over the map. “. . . then down behind these shacks. There’s a German trench here that Sokolov’s Forty-fifth took last week. It’s not on the map. But I know it. It goes right there.”
“Nikolay,” Shaikin said, looking up from the map to Kulikov, “is it still snowing?”
“Harder than ever.”
Shaikin looked back to Zaitsev, excited. “Good. Vasha, we can move as silently as snowflakes.”
Zaitsev handed Shaikin the map. Tania saw on his face that he was still considering the merits and dangers of the mission. It’s spontaneous, she thought. This is not on orders; this is just for us, for the sorrow in Chekov’s red eyes and in all us snipers. Will Zaitsev risk it?
She looked at Chekov curled on the floor. This man should be home in the Ukraine, chopping chicken necks and poaching quail on the state’s property, not here in a dirt bunker, drunk and destroying himself even while the war destroys him. She looked at quiet, handsome Kulikov, so willing to fight, so eaten up inside by something she’d never heard him speak of, some blood in his past, that he could only cover it with more and more German blood. There stood skinny Shaikin, away from his children and wife. And behind them, in the air like corpses in catacombs, lay the dead. And all the dead to come.
“All right,” Zaitsev said. “Everyone bring a submachine gun. Leave the rifles here.” He walked to where Chekov sat sniffling.
“Anatoly,” he told him, laying his hand on the man’s head, “stay here. We can talk later. We’ll do it right for you.”
Chekov blinked,
troubled and ashamed. Tania looked away before she could pity him more. She took Medvedev’s submachine gun from the corner; she hadn’t yet used a machine gun in Stalingrad. But it felt good in her hands; it was a weapon.
Zaitsev dug into his pack for the tin of grease. He tossed it to Shaikin. “Let’s go.”
Shaikin opened the tin and headed for the doorway.
“Wait.”
Danilov, who until now had stood aside watching the dynamics of the hares, had both hands on his hips. The posture made him resemble a big gray sugar bowl.
“I’m going.”
Zaitsev looked at the little commissar. He sighed, lowering his head in thought.
Danilov cut through the silence. “Don’t waste your time finding a respectful way to tell me I cannot come. I’m not going to stay here and nursemaid your drunken sniper. I want to see this action for myself. I am coming.”
Zaitsev raised his head. A thin smile was there, though his eyes told of his displeasure.
“Comrade,” he said, “this is very dangerous. You are not trained for this type of maneuver.”
Danilov, without moving, without even losing his smile, invoked his power. It was a dark force; it seemed to come from his jowls, which rose on his face while his neck lengthened out of his chest like a snapping turtle’s. The commissar’s single black brow gnarled over his eyes.
“Comrade Hare,” he said in a voice murky with malevolence, “I do not want to remind you of the dangers I am trained in.” Danilov glowered about the bunker. “The Communist Party will be present at this raid. That is . . . understood?”
With that pause and final word, Danilov released his hold on the room. His smile beamed genuine again.
“Comrade Zaitsev, I will put myself completely under your orders until we return. Is that sufficient?”
Zaitsev nodded.
“Besides,” Danilov chuckled, his coat shaking up and down on his sliding belly, his small hands on his buttons, “this won’t be dangerous for me. I’m with the hares. You are the best.
“Now,” he said to Shaikin, “toss me the greasepaint pot.”
* * * *
A WOMAN’S UMBRELLA KEPT THE FALLING SNOW OFF THE soldier huddled behind the heavy machine gun. Tania could not tell the exact color of the umbrella. In the moonlight drifting down with the flakes, it looked pink. He doesn’t use that during the day, she thought. Russian snipers would crawl through hell for shots at a German machine gunner under a pink umbrella.
The gun was mounted behind a high revetment of sandbags in the center of a twenty-meter-long trench. At one end of the trench, to the gunner’s left, was a bunker entrance blocked by a blanket. The bunker was covered in debris to disguise it.
Shaikin had guided them here in under two hours, on a straight line through sector five, passing two Russian machine gun positions with sector five passwords. They’d entered this corner of sector six through a long, empty trench under the silence and limited visibility of the night and the snow, moving with near invisibility. Shaikin scurried in the lead, followed by Kulikov, Danilov, then Zaitsev. Tania brought up the rear, the place for the second in command. Zaitsev allowed her the proper prerogative. Sector six was hers.
In a crater twenty-five meters from the gunner, Danilov lay on his back catching his wind with deep breaths, his own hand over his mouth. His greatcoat was wet with snow, his shiny black boots were checked, and the knees of his pants were soaked through.
Zaitsev ducked at the lip of the crater, Shaikin at his shoulder. Zaitsev whispered something, then handed his submachine gun over. He slid out under the fine lace of hissing snowfall.
Tania moved beside Shaikin and watched. Kulikov crept up, too. Danilov rolled over and tried to crawl beside Tania, but there was no room and she shoved him back.
Lying on his back, the commissar tugged at her foot. Tania slid down and brought her greased face close.
“Comrade,” she whispered, “while he is gone, I’m in command. You will stay low, understand?”
She did not wait for a reply but turned and resumed her spot next to Shaikin.
In the dark, Tania saw the outline of the Nazi soldier’s head behind the gun, under the umbrella, but no more detail. She’d lost sight of Zaitsev slipping into the enemy trench. She could only imagine the Hare’s movements along the wet floor of the trench, waiting, holding his breath, feeling ahead for debris that might creak or snap to give him away. In her mind she waited with him, held her own breath, flexed her fingers as his must have to dig through the cold dirt and mounting snow. She widened her eyes to increase her night vision with his. She came up behind the guard with Zaitsev, saw the soldier standing behind the machine gun, one leg up perhaps to ease his back; they waited for the man to yawn or stretch or rub his eyes. Then they sprang, slapped their left hand over the guard’s mouth and slashed the blade held in the right fist down and across the neck, cutting the windpipe, deflating the lungs, keeping the left hand clamped over the gasping mouth, then thrusting the knife through the ribs into the heart or the aorta. They leaned the body against the trench, putting a piece of wood or a pipe under the chin to keep the head up. They righted the umbrella, settling it back into the snow, still wondering what color it was in the murky night.
A snowball landed in front of the crater with a quiet thump. Tania nodded to Shaikin. He rose out of the crater, not crawling but walking quickly, bent over. Tania followed. Behind her, Kulikov helped Danilov to his feet and over the crater rim.
Tania slid into the enemy trench behind Shaikin. Zaitsev met them. The Hare took back his submachine gun from Shaikin. Tania saw the blood darkness glistening on his hands, staining his sleeves. Kulikov and Danilov arrived and Zaitsev wagged his finger to send Kulikov and Shaikin to the far end of the trench to check for more sentries. Zaitsev squatted on his haunches on the trench floor, Tania next to him. Danilov sat in the snow.
Shaikin and Kulikov returned. Tania stood next to Zaitsev. She was glad for the cover granted by the dark and snow, but she knew that whatever kept the hares from sight could also hide the enemy.
At Zaitsev’s signal, the group moved. They passed the standing dead sentry under the umbrella and moved to the end of the trench, to the blanket in the doorway.
Suddenly, Danilov elbowed his way past Zaitsev to stand in front before the hanging blanket. In his hand was a pistol. He pushed the blanket aside and stepped into the bunker.
Zaitsev ducked in quickly beside Danilov. His machine gun was leveled and ready. Shaikin, Tania, and Kulikov followed.
Inside the bunker, a lantern dangled from a rafter. The lamp’s light was low, yellowing the still air and the earthen walls. On pegs beside the doorway were hung several submachine guns. Under the guns were helmets and flashlights.
Along the walls were three rows of berths, stacked four to a wall. Uniforms showing the stripes and bars of officers were folded and tucked on shelves. Snoring, easy breathing, and a sleepy mumble greeted the Russians while they formed a firing line.
Tania braced the stock of her submachine gun against her waist. Her barrel was level with the guns of Zaitsev, Kulikov, and Shaikin. The Russian PPSh submachine gun had a rate of fire of nine hundred rounds per minute. She ground her teeth and planted her feet firmly in the dirt.
Danilov raised himself at the shoulders and spoke. “For the ruthless murders of children and mothers, you Nazi predators are sentenced to death.”
Danilov lifted his pistol and fired into the berths. The report filled the bunker. Tania breathed the smoke of the powder. Heads and bodies in the berths sprang up, their voices buried in the hanging bang of the pistol. Before the others could react, Tania squeezed her trigger.
The submachine gun leaped in her hands. The barrel jerked above the berths to spit bullets up the bunks into the ceiling. Tania let go of the trigger to bring the barrel level again.
In that lapse, Zaitsev’s gun roared, joined by Kulikov’s and Shaikin’s. Tania gripped hard and fired again. Danilov stepped back and
the four gunners, side by side, blew a gale of lead into the berths.
Tania swept the gun across the bunks, shattering them, ripping everything in front of her, wood, mattresses, flesh, dirt. She could not tell where her bullets struck, mingling them with the pounding rounds spewed by the men at her sides. The bodies in the berths, still shrouded in the shredding blankets, rocked against the walls and spasmed on the beds. The jarring seconds passed and the room filled with noise like a bottle filling with water, the air shoved out and replaced with clattering explosions, smoke, and splinters.
War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] Page 21