Child Thief

by Dan Smith

  ‘Dimitri doesn’t need to see more blood,’ I told my son. ‘Keep this to yourself for now.’

  Viktor and Dimitri arced in from where they had been searching.

  ‘Anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Viktor said.

  Dimitri shook his head. ‘No sign.’

  ‘Looks like they went this way, then. He’ll be headed for those trees, trying to keep out of the open.’

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ Dimitri said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘And he’s still not trying to cover his tracks,’ Viktor said.

  ‘No way of doing it,’ I told him, and I wondered if the man knew we were following him; wondered why he wouldn’t try to hide himself. ‘It looks like it might snow again. Maybe he’s hoping it’ll cover his tracks. In the forest that would take longer, but out here his prints will be gone in minutes.’

  ‘Then we have to move faster,’ Dimitri said. ‘We haven’t time to stand around.’

  ‘Or maybe …’ And then I understood why the child thief hadn’t tried to cover his tracks. I understood why the disturbance in the snow had been staged here, on this side of the ridge.

  The child thief had expected someone to follow him. This was his game. We were following him just as the man who had come to the village yesterday had been following him. But we hadn’t just been following, we had been led. Whoever had taken Dariya had brought us to this place: left a clear trail and enticed us out into the open to stand on a ridge, four dark figures against a perfect white background.

  And as the realisation struck, so Dimitri jerked beside me. A sudden movement and he fell to his knees, a plume of blood puffing out behind him. He tottered for a second, his head turning to look up at me, his eyes wide in wonder, his mouth open as if he were about to speak, but all that emerged was a rush of breath. And then the sound of a crack reached us, carried by the wind, and Dimitri fell forward onto his face.

  ‘What the hell—’ Petro started to say, but I stepped over Dimitri, grabbed Petro’s shoulder and shoved him to the ground, shouting at Viktor to get down.

  ‘Lie flat.’ I dropped onto my stomach, pressing low. I felt the air over my head change in a way that was impossible to understand and I heard the zip of something moving through it at speed. Somewhere behind us a bullet smacked into the field and, once more, a sharp crack cut into the late morning.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Viktor asked. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘He’s shooting at us,’ I said. ‘He’s shooting at us.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Drew us out into the open. That’s why he didn’t cover his tracks. That’s what I saw. He was waiting for us to come out into the open.’

  I looked at Dimitri, whose face was turned towards me, his mouth biting at the snow as he tried to draw breath. I could hear the wheezing gasp of a chest wound, the gurgle of blood in his throat as my brother-in-law gagged and grasped at his own soul. His face carried a confused expression. Even in his last moments of life he wouldn’t understand what had happened. One moment he’d been standing, and the next he was on his face, drowning in his own blood, unable to keep the air in his body. I held his eyes for a moment, seeing the fear that consumed him. Blood had begun to leak out of him, pooling around his chest, melting into the snow.

  When I looked away from his eyes, glancing across his body, I saw the place where the bullet had exited his back. A hole in the fabric of his coat, the tattered strands of fabric torn outwards, tipped with flecks of blood and tissue from the body it had sought to protect from the cold weather. I stared at the hole and thought about the way he had fallen without a sound. It had been a good shot, probably at the limit of the accuracy of the rifle that had fired it. No. Not a good shot. It had been a perfect shot. I was sure the bullet had struck Dimitri exactly where the shooter had wanted.

  It was not a shot intended to kill immediately. I’d seen men shot this way before. I remembered that the first German sharpshooters we had encountered – armed with magnifying scopes and silent tactics – had used a similar technique. They used camouflage and patience, steel masks and a well placed bullet to wound men with the intention of drawing out further targets. They enticed us out to try to save our comrades, and I was sure that’s what this man was doing now.

  ‘Stay as low as you can’ I said. And as I spoke, something hit the ground beside me, pummelling into the snow, kicking it up in a small plume.

  ‘He’s fixed on us.’ I looked across at my sons. ‘We have to move away.’

  Petro was breathing hard. He was looking to me for answers, perhaps an easy way out of this.

  ‘Stay calm,’ I told him, but I knew it was almost impossible.

  ‘What about Dimitri?’ Petro asked.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’ I looked at Dimitri again, his pale face, his mouth still moving. ‘If we try, we’ll be shot too.’

  Dimitri’s pupils were wide, the sucking sounds now coming less regularly. He moaned a low and lamenting sound – a sorrow for his inability to save his daughter, for his guilt at having murdered an innocent man and for his fear of death and whatever might lie beyond it. Dimitri’s life was escaping into the cold air, and he knew it. It was leaking out of him as an icicle melts away when the season changes. Fragment by fragment. Drop by drop. And soon it would be gone.

  ‘Nothing we can do?’ Petro asked, but he didn’t look at me. He couldn’t tear his eyes from Dimitri. ‘You mean he’s going to—’

  ‘Yes. Even if we could get to him, there’s nothing we could do. We have to move. Now.’

  I was certain the marksman knew where we were. He had watched us from his spot, waited for us to line up just below the crest of the rise, and he’d taken his first shot. Why he had chosen Dimitri, I didn’t know, but he had seen the rest of us drop into the deep snow and would have a rough idea of where we were. He was continuing to shoot, perhaps thinking he might catch another of us. Pierce the deep snow and hit whatever lay behind it.

  I turned my focus to my sons, remembering what Natalia had said: that the boys would be safe with me.

  ‘Stay low,’ I told them, keeping my voice measured. ‘And stay calm. That’s very important, do you understand?’

  Another shot hit the ground in front, and all three of us flinched.

  ‘Take off your packs, keep your rifles, and roll, crawl, whichever is easiest. He can’t see us – he’s guessing where we are – but we have to move away from here.’

  Lying as we were, in our elevated position, we were deep enough in the snow to be out of the marksman’s line of sight, and I knew that if we moved away and back, he would have no way of knowing where we were.

  ‘Go now,’ I said as a fourth shot hit the ground to Dimitri’s right, smashing into his hand this time. It was a probing shot, but it had found a target. A spray of blood fanned across the snow, whipped across Petro’s face. Dimitri managed only a moan, all feeling faded, but Petro pulled back with a sudden movement.

  ‘Stay low!’ I said. ‘Ignore it. Be strong.’ I looked right at Petro, trying to reassure him. ‘It’s going to be fine. We’ll be fine.’

  Petro stared, spots of Dimitri’s blood glistening on his scarf and hat, flecks of it on his eyelids.

  ‘Tell me you’re all right,’ I said.

  ‘I’m all right.’ Petro nodded.

  ‘Then start moving back. Away from here. But stay low.’

  I shuffled back and to the side, moving away from Dimitri, following Viktor and Petro away from the spot where my brother-in-law was dying.

  Another shot, this time closer to Petro, making him cry out in surprise and fear. The shooter was trying his luck, placing shots to either side.

  ‘He’s going to shoot us,’ Petro said. ‘He’s going to kill us all. We have to hurry, we have to run.’

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘Stay low. Don’t try to look. Don’t run. If you run, he’ll kill you.’

  I continued to move sideways, keeping my head low, my fa
ce to the ground, and when I was a good ten metres or so from Dimitri’s body, I stopped.

  Two more shots hit the earth between me and Dimitri, confirming that the shooter couldn’t see us., If he could, the way he shot, he would have killed all four of us by now.

  Viktor and Petro stopped moving when they saw me halt, and they looked to me for instruction.

  To my left, Dimitri was lying in a wide stain of dark blood. He was looking at us, his eyes still alive, his mouth still moving, but he would die soon. I didn’t think about my sister-in-law Svetlana, waiting for her husband to come home. I didn’t think about Dariya, taken from her parents, terrified, hoping for her father to come to her rescue. I thought about how I was going to get my sons out of this situation alive. I needed to get them back into the line of trees and find some protection.

  ‘Where is he?’ Viktor asked. ‘You see him?’

  ‘Quiet. We don’t want anything to give away our position.’ I closed my eyes for a moment and thought about what I’d seen just before the first shot. That movement at the line of the hedge. I’d thought it could have been a bird, some kind of wild animal, but I didn’t think so any more. It had been our assassin, settling for his shot.

  In my mind I saw the lie of the land, imagined the spot where the man had been. I considered looking, taking a shot, but I knew it would be a mistake. The shooter had a good idea of where we were, and he would be watching. There was a chance he had moved to another position. He had continued to fire probing shots at us, but he had also forced us to keep our heads low as he perhaps found a new place to conceal himself.

  If I were the one pointing a rifle at this place, it’s what I would have done, and now I would be waiting. If I had a partner, he would be scanning the distance with his glasses, or if I were alone, I’d be watching the area, keeping the stock close to my face, my eye close to the sight. I would be looking for any movement. Movement is the key. Movement is visible.

  ‘What do we do?’ Viktor asked, trying to conceal his fear.

  ‘Nothing. Do nothing. Stay low, that’s all.’

  I put my head in my arms and thought about what I was going to do. The man who I believed to be the child thief had every advantage except one. Just a couple of metres behind us there was a shallow dip in the land, providing a natural shield of frozen dirt beneath the snow. If we could get to it, we would have some protection from his bullets.

  Dimitri called to me with a weak voice. He spoke through his own exhaustion, his chest wheezing, the blood frothing at his mouth as he tried to form the words. I watched him struggle, his mouth biting at the deep red snow.

  ‘Why is he making that noise?’ Petro said. ‘Why is he—’

  ‘He’s trying to talk,’ I said.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I looked away from him. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  And then Dimitri began to moan, as if he had managed to draw some of that escaped life back into his body. Louder than before. Gurgling and moaning. He even mustered the strength to move his arm, his broken hand fractured and useless at the end of it. ‘Please,’ he groaned. ‘Please.’

  ‘Make him stop,’ Petro said. ‘Make him stop.’

  Dimitri’s voice grew louder and I half expected another shot to come, but none did. The child thief would be waiting.

  ‘Make him stop.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Viktor told his brother.

  Dimitri called again. ‘Please.’ The last strength of his voice calling through the blood and into the snow. ‘Please.’

  I didn’t know what he was pleading for. Forgiveness? Life? Or perhaps he was asking us to find his daughter and keep her safe.

  ‘Make him stop.’ Petro put his hands to his ears.

  I looked across at Dimitri, our eyes meeting for the last time. ‘I’ll find her,’ I said. ‘And I’ll kill this man.’

  Dimitri nodded, the tiniest movement of his head. He allowed his mouth to relax, the words to die, and he continued his laboured breathing. No more calling now, no more pleading, just the rasping and the wheezing. As if he were breathing water into his lungs, sucking it down and exhaling it.

  ‘He’ll die soon,’ I said to Petro. ‘Then he’ll be quiet.’

  I began to shuffle back, aware that to get to the dip I would have to move higher, into shallower snow, and there was a chance I would be exposed. The only alternative was to wait for the sky to darken, but there were still a few hours until that would happen, and if we stayed still for that long, we might freeze to death. During the war men had succumbed to the cold that way. Strong soldiers, made weak. Sometimes we’d find them when the watch changed, frozen in position at their posts.

  I inched backwards, pushing with my hands, sliding my body through the snow, making sure I scraped the dirt beneath the snow as I moved.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Petro asked.

  ‘Quiet.’

  I continued back until I felt my boots come to the ridge and hang in the air, not touching the ground. I turned sideways on to the dip, then took a deep breath and rolled quickly to the side, dropping down. Another shot thumped into the ridge, in the place I’d been only a second ago.

  Out of sight, I scrambled along the depression so I was in line with the place where my sons were hiding.

  I spoke quietly. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Right behind you. Are you both all right?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’ It was Viktor who spoke.

  ‘Is he still there?’ asked Petro.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. I know what you’re feeling, but you need to stay calm. If we stay calm we’ll be fine. We’ll find a way to get out of this. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Petro said.

  ‘You need to get back here,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got to draw his attention away from you. He’ll be watching for any movement. Any movement at all.’ And I remembered how many times I had waited like the child thief was waiting now. How many times I had remained motionless, my cheek pressed to the stock of my rifle, the smell of its oil and its powder in my nostrils, my eye focused on the iron sight. Waiting for the sun to arc behind me; waiting for the slightest movement in the distance.

  In Galicia there were times when we’d lived like rats in flooded holes in the ground, the enemy not more than a few yards across the wasteland that lay between us. As a sharpshooter, I had shot soldiers who made the mistake of lifting their heads above the parapet of their trench on the other side of that corpse-strewn landscape. I wondered if the child thief had been in similar places, learned his patience and skill in similar circumstances. If that were so, then I would know how to confuse him; how to draw his attention and force him to expose his position.

  I stayed flat and took the rifle from my shoulder. Keeping low, I moved it in front of me and pulled back the bolt, bringing a cartridge into the chamber. I looked at the brass casing lying in the open port, then pushed the bolt forward.

  ‘Viktor,’ I said. ‘Take off your hat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take off your hat. I want you to be ready to hold it up. Put it on the end of your rifle and hold it away from you. You too, Petro.’

  I thought about what the shooter would be expecting to see. The child thief knew there were three of us, perhaps only two if he’d hit his mark with one of the probing shots.

  ‘When I call, I want you to lift your hat, Viktor. Just enough to make a movement.’ It was a weak trick, but it was one that had worked for me before and was all we had to draw the man’s fire. If my sons had been more skilled, I might have offered myself as a target, but if something happened to me, they would be left alone with the child thief. I had to try this first.

  ‘And you Petro, I want you to count to six and do the same thing. Remember to hold it out and away from you, though. He will shoot.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Viktor asked.r />
  ‘I’m going to see where he is. And then I’m going to shoot him. Be ready to move, though. When I say so, I want you to get back here as quickly as you can. Bring only your rifles.’

  ‘What about Dimitri?’

  ‘Leave him,’ I said. ‘He was dead the moment the bullet hit him. If we try to help him, we’ll die too.’

  ‘Can we do something to make him stop that noise?’

  ‘We can’t do anything that will give away our position – not until we want to give it away. Don’t worry about Dimitri,’ I said. ‘He will die soon, and then he won’t make any more noise.’

  It was their first taste of violent death. They were too young to remember the losses of the civil war with any clarity, even though it had touched their lives, and Vyriv had been spared much of the violence and suffering. They had never been this close to the horror, and although both understood my intent, they were shocked by my coldness.

  ‘You know what you’re doing?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, then there’s no need to be afraid. We’ll get out of this.’ But I couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t all die here on the steppe with snow in our mouths and holes in our hearts.

  I took a deep breath and moved beyond the place where my sons were pinned down. I wanted to move further south, follow the curve of the ridge so I was at a better angle and in a place where I wouldn’t be expected. My enemy had positioned himself well, but the sky was darkening now, a thick blanket of grey cloud blocking the sun, and I was thankful for that. The child thief had no advantage of light.

  When I was far enough away from my sons, I stopped and opened my satchel. I took out one of the bundles Natalia had wrapped for us and opened it out in front of me. I put the bread and the sausage back into the satchel and, using my teeth, made a rip in the white cloth, tearing it lengthways into two pieces. The first piece I wrapped over my rifle scope, turning it from black to white. Then I took off my hat and tied the second piece around the top of my head. When I rested the rifle on the ridge and aimed down the sight, these were the two things that would be most visible. The telescopic sight provided magnification, but it also meant I had to raise my head a little higher to take a shot. The cloth was by no means perfect camouflage, but it would help reduce the impact of my movement on the stark white horizon the child thief would be watching.