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

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War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] Page 28

by David Robbins


  He’s using the men in the trench for bait!

  Nikki laid the binoculars on the floor. “Colonel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let me go down to the trench. I can draw the snipers’ fire. You can get them.”

  Thorvald shook his head. “No. I need you here.”

  “Then let me warn the men. They’re scared to death.”

  Thorvald’s face went taut. “You’ll stay right here, Corporal. Pick up your binoculars. That’s the best way to help.”

  “Colonel, those men—”

  “Damn it, pick up those glasses.” Thorvald pointed at the binoculars beside Nikki. “I don’t care about those men! Will you understand that? We are not here to save them or accept their thanks. We have an assignment, Corporal! Find Zaitsev. Kill him. Then go home.”

  Thorvald’s eyes narrowed. He paused and leaned forward. Nikki saw him weaving his head just perceptibly, like a snake tasting the air. “I will kill Zaitsev. You’ll help me, or someone else will.” Thorvald turned away.

  Nikki looked down on the men in unit two. We’re playing God up here, he thought. One of those soldiers is a dead man. I know it. I’m making it happen by watching. I can stop it. But I won’t.

  I’m not a hero for those soldiers. They can’t have heroes anymore. Heroes are men, and men can’t save them now. Hitler can’t, Stalin can’t, I can’t—they can’t even do it themselves. Zaitsev is a hero, and he’s going to die. I’m not theirs. I am mine, and I want to go home.

  Thorvald owns me. And Zaitsev owns me. They have a destiny, those two. And I’m sandwiched between them.

  Thorvald stretched. “No, it’s too dark now. They won’t try it again. Go down and get us some food from the nurse.”

  Nikki rose without looking at Thorvald.

  “Nikki.” The colonel faced him. His eyes were softer. “You wanted each of us to do what he’s best at. That was how we were going to get him. We agreed.” The colonel drew his knees up against the cold. “That’s what we’re doing. This is what I’m best at. I’m the killer, and you’re my guide and guardian. Don’t break up the team. We’ll get him and we’ll go home together.”

  Nikki nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Before he could turn, Thorvald added, “We’ll spend the night up here. The snipers will try again at dawn, I’m sure of it.”

  Nikki knew he could thwart Thorvald’s plan. He could give a word to the nurse or slip into the trench after dark to warn the men to stay down, no matter what sounds they heard in the rubble. But he knew he wouldn’t.

  “And Corporal,” Thorvald called after him, “bring back those seven blankets.”

  * * * *

  DAWN RUMBLED AROUND THEM. NIKKI’S WAKING EARS caught the grumble of tank treads grinding concrete into dust and the rattle of weapons carried in a thousand arms. Orders were screamed above the din. Radios crackled.

  This is it, Nikki thought, Paulus’s last-ditch thrust at the Russians burrowed in the factories. Far to his left, from the Banny Gully and the Barricades, came the pounding of artillery. Small-arms fire sizzled in the Red October corridor.

  Thorvald was at his rifle, bearing down his scope.

  “Start looking,” he whispered. “We can’t stay here long. Maybe our friends will take one last jingle on their cans before they’re forced to retreat. Remember, they’re at ground level.”

  Nikki scanned the rubble across from unit three. The sounds of tanks and men swarmed behind him, moving to his left, advancing on the Red October and the Volga.

  “It’s getting busy, Colonel,” he said, pulling his eyes away from the binoculars.

  “A bit.” Thorvald looked agreeably at Nikki.

  Suddenly Thorvald stiffened. His eyes grew wide, then slitted to focus over Nikki’s shoulder. “Nikki,” he said, not blinking or wavering the aim of his eyes, “find the third house in on the far side of the road. Do it.”

  Nikki whirled with his binoculars up. For a moment, before searching for the shacks, he looked down into the trench to unit three. The soldiers’ normal huddle was broken. A few of them crawled away from the group on their knees, others were bent, looking to the floor of the trench. There, between the backs and shoulders of the soldiers, was a bloodied body, face up, shaking wildly.

  Nikki swung the binoculars and found the houses quickly. They were simple brick shacks, part of the workers’ settlement for the Red October, gutted months ago. He counted to the third one.

  As Nikki scanned, Thorvald’s voice came in his ears quietly, like a cinema narration to the magnified scene moving in front of him.

  “Ten meters to the left. What’s there?”

  Nikki fingered the knob on his binoculars to sharpen the focus. “A sheet of corrugated metal. A roof, I think, from one of the shacks.”

  “Yes. Yes, good. All right, now move behind the roof. Find the small shack. It might be a pump house.”

  “Got it. Red shutters.”

  “Right. Now ten, twenty meters more, keep moving left. Is there a trench in front of that building with the . . . what is that?”

  “It’s a banner. It’s . . . it’s a poster of Stalin.”

  “Perfect. Is there a trench? I saw something in that area. Find a trench. Quickly, Nikki.”

  Piles of bricks and stone confused the terrain in front of the row of ruined shacks. Snow blotted out most of the detail. But in a jagged line, the snow and bricks seemed to disappear. There must be a depression there, Nikki thought. A trench.

  “Yes. Yes, there is.”

  “Follow it. Find them. I saw a muzzle flash in that trench.”

  Nikki strained his eyes. The distance was at least four hundred meters, and the area was in shadow. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Men, yes. But what would he see? A rifle barrel or a face at this distance? Impossible.

  Cooling his frustration. Nikki stopped looking for objects and shapes and directed his eyes to recognize motion. In moments he glimpsed a gray lump bobbing just below the trench line. A helmet! It’s coming this way!

  The Red snipers are making one last round of their lines before they retreat. They’re tugging, then watching for a shot. If a shot is there, they’ll take it and keep moving down the line. Unit five, then four, just now three, next two. Right in front of us.

  “Got him!” Nikki whispered. His eyes locked on the helmet— There! Two of them! Two of them moving in the trench! Nikki talked Thorvald in, bringing him onto the targets.

  He spoke quickly, concisely. He knew Thorvald was looking now through his sniper scope, his vision magnified, too, with a sharper but more limited field than Nikki’s binoculars.

  “The last shack, Colonel. See it? Now down five meters. A small crater, a wagon wheel sticking out of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “To the left again, a pile of timbers lying under another piece of metal.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ten meters down. A water cistern, or a barrel.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Now straight down from the tower. There’s the poster. Five more meters left. They’re right below a pile of bricks.”

  Thorvald paused. Nikki waited with him.

  The colonel hissed, “Yessss.”

  “You’ve got them?”

  Thorvald answered in a faraway tenor. “Don’t speak.”

  Nikki was shackled to the moment, sharing through the binoculars the power and killing art of the Gnössen master sniper. He shuddered with a rush of excitement he knew the colonel did not feel.

  The Russian snipers stopped opposite unit two, three hundred meters away. They split up; one moved ten meters to the right in the trench. They were only slightly more than specks through the field glasses, but Nikki felt that he could see them with the clarity of God’s eye. One of the helmets dipped below the lip of the trench. The other stood firm. The standing one was the shooter; the other was the spotter. He must have ducked to lay down his rifle and take up the string and his periscope. Is this the way Thorvald is thinking? I
s he following their movements like this, guessing what they’re doing, predicting what they’ll do next? Nikki could not ask, only watch.

  He wanted to take his sight away from the snipers for a moment and gaze down at unit two. But he knew it would take him too long to reacquire the tiny shapes of the faraway enemy. He kept his focus on the gray dot, highlighted against the scrambled brown and white background. The other lump did not reappear to the right of it. There, Nikki thought, there’s the shooter. But is it enough of a target for Thorvald to get a clear shot? Is he high enough above the trench? Thorvald won’t waste all our effort just to bounce a bullet off the top of a helmet.

  For two minutes they watched the Red snipers. The spotter stayed beneath the crest of the trench to gaze through a periscope. The shooter hunkered down, too low, waiting for the word from his spotter that a target was making itself available before he raised his eye to his gun.

  Thorvald broke the silence. “They’re not going for it.”

  Nikki was deflated. All this time shivering on the cold floor in this creaking building, sleeping under dead men’s shrouds, and he and the colonel were going to go away empty.

  “Nikki, how far can you throw?”

  Nikki knew what Thorvald wanted from him. The men in the trench weren’t rising to the Russians’ bait. They’d heard enough of the tin can. They weren’t biting, weren’t going to look this last time. There’s a German attack under way, there’s no way the Reds are crawling toward them. They know this down in the trench. They’re thinking, Fuck the Red snipers. We’ll get them in a few minutes when the attack rolls over their position. We’re not looking.

  Thorvald couldn’t shoot. Not yet.

  He needed a soldier to raise his head. To freeze the waiting Russian sniper in his scope, perhaps give Thorvald another muzzle flash to zero in on.

  He needed a new mystery, a new rattle in the rubble.

  The master sniper needed a sacrifice. Now.

  Only for a moment, Nikki considered refusing. But his reluctance flew away home, over his father’s farm in Westphalia, into his sister’s arms.

  I’m defenseless, he thought. What does it matter? Shit, there’s nothing left of me to defend.

  Thorvald asked again. “How far can you throw?”

  “Far enough.”

  Nikki laid his binoculars down and stood away from the window. He selected a rounded bit of brick that fit his hand well. It’ll fly straight and far, he thought. Far enough.

  Nikki readied his feet. “Now,” he whispered.

  He threw the shard with all his might. The brick sailed high over the heads of the German soldiers in the trench, like a hard little angel of death. Nikki didn’t see it land, but he knew he’d thrown it far enough.

  He stood back from the window, afraid a move forward might disturb Thorvald’s concentration.

  Only seconds after Nikki heaved the brick, Thorvald fired. His right hand moved in a blur, off the trigger, to the bolt, back to the trigger. He fired again the moment the smoking cartridge from the first bullet clattered on the floor.

  Thorvald ejected the second cartridge and stared through his scope. Then he lowered the rifle and rolled over from the window to pick up the two spent casings.

  Outside, tank and mortar rounds crashed to earth. The clamor, missing from Nikki’s ears for the past several minutes, came flooding in on his senses. He wondered how close they were now.

  Thorvald stood. A circle was pressed into the flesh around his right eye by the scope. It made him appear to be wearing a monocle. He jingled the two brass shells in his hand, trilling them like tiny bells.

  Thorvald looked out across the rail yard.

  “All right, Corporal,” he said.

  Nikki reached for Thorvald’s rifle.

  “I’ll hang on to this for a while, Nikki,” the colonel said. “I have one more chore for you.”

  * * * *

  EIGHTEEN

  WHEN ZAITSEV RETURNED TO HIS BUNKER FROM CHUIKOV’S headquarters, he walked into a celebration.

  The party, fashioned by Medvedev, had gotten under way without the guest of honor. The Bear had told every sector head he could find about Zaitsev’s award, told them that even though Vasha had the medal in his bag, they all had won it.

  Zaitsev pushed back the blanket. Viktor, Tania, Shaikin, Morozov, Chekov, Voyashkin, and Danilov each held aloft a half-liter bottle of vodka, somehow secured by Atai Chebibulin, who’d brought them with the evening soup.

  The snipers admired the medallion, raised bottles in a toast, and patted the Hare on the back. After half an hour of cheer, Zaitsev called the party to a discussion. He told them of the arrival of the Nazi sniper school headmaster and of the German’s assignment: to kill the Hare, their chief. Danilov laughed a little drunkenly and guaranteed that this Nazi bastard would be made short work of. Zaitsev reminded the commissar that the German had the benefit of his notes in In Our Country’s Defense on the Hare’s tactics for the last month, even a photograph of Zaitsev.

  Danilov was cowed for a moment, then smiled a black grin and held up his bottle and toasted, “So much the better!” The snipers waited for him to elaborate, but the commissar weaved out under the blanket with a wave, into his own night.

  The council lasted until midnight. Each sniper expressed his thoughts on how to snare the Headmaster.

  “He’s just a schoolteacher. He’s not a hunter. Go right at him! Challenge him!”

  “No. Take your time. Trap him. Wear him down.”

  “Use your knowledge of the city. He’s bound to be lost up to his ass most of the time.”

  “Get him into my sector. We’ll take care of him there.”

  “Prick him, irritate him, distract him.”

  “Track him down and kill the fuck! What’s the problem?”

  “Don’t wait. Take the initiative.”

  “Easy does it. Make him come to you.”

  Zaitsev listened. Each of the hares was right, each method they espoused had worked at one time or another. Use a dummy, set up false rifle positions, take prisoners, anger him, sneak up on him, follow him, bring him to you, draw him out, and more. This was the fascination of the sniper duel, little battles that would never be written up in strategy books. There were no classic and historic maneuvers to rely on, as there were in the grand tank battles on open ground or in giant infantry campaigns. There was no hedgehog defense prescribed against an encircling force, no flanking action required against an army’s supply lines, no storm group sent in to nullify an enemy stronghold. Sniper against sniper was primitive and intuitive: it was hunter versus hunter, also quarry against prey. Each confrontation was molded from the characters of the duelists, each outcome the result of those characters. Each sniper carried one rifle. Each man worked in the same terrain, under the same sky. The chances and dangers were as evenly distributed as they got in war.

  Zaitsev listened patiently, hearing nothing from his former pupils he did not know and had not considered himself. He would make no plans yet. Better first to learn the ways of this German, then decide. What will he try on me? Will he move or stay in one place? Will he hide or make himself known? Will he—

  Enough, he thought, and took a final swallow of vodka. I know all these stratagems and feints. I taught them.

  He sent the hares back to the Lazur, assuring them he would seek their counsel and keep them advised. He would also welcome any information they could gather about unusual Nazi sniper activity in their sectors.

  Viktor set off on his nocturnal hunt. Minutes later, Tania slid back in.

  She stood in the doorway, wordless, uninvited but possessing the room as if it were her own chamber. She moved toward him silently, her eyes fastened to his. She walked past, then behind him. He turned to keep his face to hers. He joined in her movements as if pulled by centrifugal force to circle behind her while she circled. Tania took off her coat and held it out with a straight arm into the center of their orbits. She dropped the coat and unbuttoned her jerse
y. Zaitsev followed her, prowling behind her, the two tossing their clothes into the center of their ring as if casting flowers onto a pond.

  Two hours later, Tania stole away. They had both dressed in silence, pulling their clothes out of the mingled pile in the dark. One of these days, Zaitsev thought, she’s going to leave the bunker with my pants on by mistake. He laughed: I’d better come up with a good tale for Viktor in advance of that one.

  The next morning, Zaitsev woke late on his bedroll. Gray light dribbled in with the cold. He checked his watch. 6:45 A.M. He rubbed his eyes and scratched away the itching discomfort from sleeping on the drafty dirt.

 

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