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

by David Robbins

  * * * *

  THE AFTERNOON SESSION WAS BEGUN WITH ZAITSEV’S call: “Hares! Let’s go! Bring your rifles!”

  He led them up the basement steps with his rifle slung across his shoulders like a yoke. The recruits followed him to the Lazur plant’s first floor. They wove through the maze of twisted metal and charred ceiling timbers to a row of sooty windows facing the no-man’s-land rail yard. Zaitsev halted a few steps from one of the large openings; the window sash had long ago been blown in. His boots crunched on broken glass.

  He pointed out the window at the German-held buildings beyond no-man’s-land. The air drifting in was brisk, the Russian winter’s first white blossom.

  “You are looking west.” Zaitsev spoke. “Right now, the sun is behind you. Whenever possible, set up your shots with the sun at your back. It makes it harder for your enemy to find you. Also, it prevents glare off your scope.”

  Tania looked out at the crater-filled rail yard, across which she and Fedya had crawled two nights ago, and the railman’s shed and the trench they’d tumbled into. Now, in the afternoon light, she saw a dozen Russian machine guns, manned at fifty-meter intervals in the trench, aimed across the yard. Fedya and I could have collected a few bullets that night, she thought back. Nicht schiessen.

  On all fours, Zaitsev crept to the lip of the window to set his rifle on the sill. He took from his pocket a pair of gloves, which he’d lashed together with string; he laid them on the sill. “Make yourself some sort of shooting bag,” he said over his shoulder. “It’ll keep your barrel from sliding.”

  He gazed down his scope. Without moving his head, he said, “See the second German tank, the one with the track blown off?”

  Zaitsev fired. In the distance, Tania heard an impact, metal on metal, ping, ring through the report of the rifle.

  The Hare turned from his shot. “The iron cross on the front fender of that tank is exactly four hundred meters from this wall. This row of windows is called the ‘shooting gallery.’ You will come here to calibrate your sights regularly or whenever you have any doubts about your rifle’s accuracy. Approach the windows carefully, two at a time. Set your sights for the proper distance and wait for my order to fire.”

  Tania crawled to the window in front of her. Beside her was the Armenian woman, Slepkinian. She set her scope for four hundred meters and took careful aim at the Nazi tank’s insignia.

  Zaitsev slid back from his window and stood. He raised his binoculars and walked behind the two hares at the first window.

  “Shaikin. Fire.”

  Tania braced at the report of the rifle to her right. From the field she heard nothing to indicate a hit.

  “Nikolay.”

  Kulikov, next to Shaikin, fired. He, too, missed.

  Zaitsev walked to the next window. Again, he instructed the trainees to fire, one at a time. Each, in his turn, missed.

  Zaitsev said, “Partisan.” She held the black cross on the tank’s fender dead in her sights and squeezed smoothly. The rifle kicked. She listened for the ping of the hit. There was nothing.

  After they had all fired, not one of the hares had struck the insignia. Zaitsev spoke calmly from behind. There was a satisfaction in his voice. Some ruse of his had worked.

  “Firing at a wall in a basement is, as you can see, not the same as shooting at a target in the open air. Out here on the battlefield, you must take into account the wind, the humidity, the temperature, whether you are shooting uphill or downhill, even the time of day. Most of you have experience hunting. But none of you is accustomed to firing with a telescopic sight over these kinds of distances. You must develop the shooting instincts of the sniper. You must read the signs the terrain and nature give you. Now look through your sights at the target.”

  Tania fixed her crosshairs on the tank’s insignia. Zaitsev’s boots ground on the floor behind her.

  “Look just above the fender. Today is cool but bright. The fender is dark. That means it’s going to collect heat. You’ll see heat waves rising off it. Which direction are the heat waves moving, left or right?”

  Several voices answered. “Left.”

  “Yes. This tells you the wind is blowing from right to left. The waves are barely moving, so the wind is slight. But you’re firing across a wide, open plain. You must reason that the wind is blowing unimpeded. Were it humid, or early in the morning after a cold night, you’d need to adapt your aim for those differences as well. Next, you’re shooting slightly downhill. Take that into account. The trajectory of your bullet will decay faster and you will undershoot. The opposite is true when you’re firing uphill; your bullet will sail and you’ll overshoot. Now turn around.”

  Tania lowered her rifle, Zaitsev held a bullet in his fingers straight out from his shoulder.

  “When you’re firing a round across a level plane, do you know how long the bullet is in the air?”

  Zaitsev dropped the bullet. It clattered on the floor in a fraction of a second.

  “That’s how long. Your telescopic sights do more than magnify your target. They help you give the proper loft to your bullet for the distance you’re shooting. This keeps the bullet in the air longer. You must learn to help your scope do its job by taking into account all the factors your bullet has to fight through to reach its target. Turn around and try again, on my signal. Think it through, set it up, then fire.”

  Fourteen rifle bolts rammed new cartridges into their chambers. This time, when the shots rang out at Zaitsev’s command, Tania heard the ping, ping of many of her squad bouncing rounds off the Nazi tank below.

  “Good!” Zaitsev called out. “Good shooting, hares! Let the Nazi bastards in those buildings out there hear you.”

  Tania set her scope to 425 meters, adding the one eighth required for shooting downhill. She allowed for windage by granting the right-left wind a millimeter. She waited in the midst of the rifle shots around her. Zaitsev gave her the word. She pulled the trigger evenly. The rifle punched into her sore shoulder.

  Ping.

  * * * *

  AFTER AN HOUR AT THE SHOOTING GALLERY, THE BEARS walked through the rubble behind them. Zaitsev called the hares away from the windows, telling them to sit and watch quietly.

  Like Zaitsev before him, Sergeant Medvedev lectured his group on the advantages of keeping the sun at their backs when setting up a shot. The big Bear called their attention to the tank on no-man’s-land. He explained its significance, then moved carefully to the window sill. In seconds, he lined up his sniper rifle and clanged a bullet off the iron cross.

  The hares snickered amongst themselves without rebuke from Zaitsev while one by one the bears missed the target. Medvedev grimaced at them, but it served only to dampen their chuckles, not stop them.

  After the dropped-bullet demonstration and the lesson on aiming, the bears began finding the target. The metal-on-metal sound of striking bullets rang in the rail yard below.

  Once Medvedev was satisfied with the bears’ marksmanship, he called them away from the windows.

  “Come sit beside your comrades, the laughing bunnies.”

  Fedya lowered his large frame beside Tania. He crossed his legs and laid his rifle across his lap.

  Zaitsev knelt at the front of the assembled trainees.

  “This is the end of the second day of your sniper training. Now you know just about everything Master Sergeant Medvedev and I can teach you. You can only add to your knowledge by what you teach yourselves on the battlefield. Practice often, until the windage and distance rules become second nature. And don’t forget: learn not only from yourself but from your enemy. I’ll spare you any more wisdom. I know you’re anxious to use your new rifles on the Nazis. Tomorrow each of you will take part in your first mission as a sniper.”

  Fedya whispered to Tania, “Not me. It’ll be my second.”

  Medvedev joined Zaitsev at the front of the trainees. He looked to be the essence of the Russian fighter, big, dark, determined. Beside him, Zaitsev seemed small and light,
yet like an engine, burning from the inside. They were day and night, these two. But Tania understood their reputations; they might well be the most lethal pair in all the Red Army.

  Medvedev began. “Tonight, Sokolov’s Forty-fifth Infantry is crossing the Volga. At least two battalions will be here by dawn. They’ve been given orders to keep the enemy away from the river between the Barricades and Red October plants. German machine gunners have moved to within five hundred meters of the Volga. That places our last ferry landing directly under fire. If we don’t secure this area, the Nazi infantry will follow behind the machine guns and we’ll lose another portion of the riverfront. Tonight you’ll move to positions on the southern side of this corridor to shield the flanks of the Forty-fifth while they get into place in the morning. Chief Master Sergeant Zaitsev and I will come get you at midnight to take you to your positions. For now, you’re dismissed. Go back to your quarters or go down to the shop and take some more practice shots. And get some rest.”

  Both groups rose and shouldered their rifles. Fedya stood tall next to Tania. Zaitsev and Medvedev left, wending their way into the rubble. The hares and the bears followed.

  Tania said to Fedya, “Stay here.”

  He sat while Tania joined the group heading for the stairs. After walking in the rear of the line for a minute, she doubled back. She found him seated at the foot of a window, looking over the rail yard through his scope.

  Tania sat next to him. She brought up her own rifle and surveyed the field with him.

  “Do you see the railman’s shed?” he asked. “It looks so close through the scope. I can almost see the curtains you were going to put up for me.”

  Tania moved her reticle across the shed’s roof. It did not seem close to her. It looked and felt far away.

  “Fedushka.” She lowered her rifle. He continued to scan the battlefield. The rifle looks good in his big palms, she thought. He holds it well.

  She laid her hand on his shoulder. He lowered the scope.

  “Fedushka. Tomorrow morning we go into battle. It starts for us.” She added softly, “Let’s say our goodbyes now.”

  He set his rifle down. His gaze went into his hands.

  “Please,” she said. “Please, I can’t carry anything more. Don’t add to my weight.” She took his hands in her own. “Another time, Fyodor Ivanovich. Maybe another world.” She smiled. “Say goodbye to me.”

  Tania rose and stepped back from the open window to face no-man’s-land; beyond it lay the horribly scarred city, the enemy running through its veins. She put her hands on the sides of his head and kissed him on the forehead. She rubbed his hair.

  “Tania,” he said quietly, “I can’t.”

  “You will, Fedya. Whether you can or not doesn’t matter. You will. Do it now.”

  She slid her fingers down his neck onto his shoulders and pushed away. She left him sitting at the window looking at the dusk dripping over the ruins.

  Tania walked away several paces, then turned back to look at his strong, broad outline. His rifle lay at his side. Again, she thought of a stylized image of the Russian soldier, the Red Ivan, defender of the rodina. Fedya’s sad vigil was a snapshot of it, a portrait in the dying light framed by the window.

  It’s good, she thought. It’s proper that the poet from Moscow sits and stares. Keep your eyes and heart open, Fedushka. We will all need your ppems when this war is over.

  * * * *

  KOSTIKEV WOKE TANIA IN THE HARES’ QUARTERS. HIS wound was dressed and he brandished a newer, wider smile to set off his golden teeth. After fifteen minutes and a cup of tea from the samovar, Zaitsev appeared in the doorway.

  He brushed back the blanket. “Snipers, ready?”

  Zaitsev led the soldiers out into the night wind. Tania hunkered into her parka while they hurried through the network of trenches. She wrapped her hair up under a black watch cap. At the edge of no-man’s-land, Zaitsev did not take them across the rail yard. He turned east toward the Volga.

  Walking along the cliffs overlooking the dark water, Tania spotted the outlines of a flotilla disgorging a thousand men onto the threatened landing stage behind the Red October plant. These were the first companies of Sokolov’s division. The sky was quiet; no artillery or darting Luftwaffe planes broke the peace beneath the shrouded moon and the snapping, buzzing breeze.

  The hares arrived at a wide avenue between the Red October and Barricades plants. On the south side of the street, Zaitsev deposited his snipers in twos and threes into the tallest buildings. His instructions were to go as high as they could to watch north across the avenue. Nazi activity was expected to build in the wreckage and alleys after word of the Forty-fifth’s arrival spread to German headquarters. The trainees were only to monitor Nazi traffic. They were not to fire unless given the order directly from Zaitsev or Medvedev. The order would come in the form of two red flares from the western end of the street.

  “No sense stirring up a hornet’s nest if we can get Sokolov into place quietly,” Zaitsev said. “We’ll hunt later.”

  Before dawn Tania was dispatched into a five-story building with the lanky Georgian farmer, Shaikin, and the chubby woman, Slepkinian. They climbed to the top floor. Zaitsev assured them that this side of the street had been swept clean and was firmly in Russian hands. Wary little Shaikin told Tania he’d seen too many unlucky instances where the front line had changed unexpectedly.

  “It moves like a snake,” he said of the imaginary line between armies. Grenades in hand, they tiptoed up the stairwell. Tania was sorry Kostikev was not along. But Shaikin, built like a white whip, looked as though he could handle himself. She could not even guess what good the Armenian would be. For two days, Tania had been calling her “the Cow” behind her back.

  The three slipped into a room on the western corner of the fifth floor, where they could see both up and across the avenue. Now, piercing the red shadows of dawn with her 4X scope, Tania looked over the broken facades to the German trenches beyond.

  She sat as she had the afternoon before in the shooting gallery, at the base of a decimated window. She rested the barrel of her sniper rifle on the lip of a protruding brick, well back and hidden from view. Shaikin and the Cow sat crouched to her right, also eyeing down their scopes from behind cover.

  She watched Germans scurry between trenches, following their movements three hundred meters away with her pointed-post reticle fixed on their hearts. A dozen times she imagined herself pulling the trigger. Her vision sharpened with the rising light, and she recalled Zaitsev’s words on marksmanship: think it through three times; set it up twice; fire once.

  She adjusted the distance in her scope by adding the required one-eighth for downward shooting. She checked the wind; it was at her back, shielded by the building. The air was cold and would stay that way until April. She was ready now for the order, her first order as a sniper.

  The three sat for two hours tracking the Nazis through their scopes. At intervals they took turns stretching, away from the windows. Tania’s legs and hands ached with the tense inaction. Her vision frosted from keeping one eye closed and the other squinting. Her cheek and fingers grew stiff against the gun’s metal.

  The sun climbed, and Tania’s patience chafed. How long do we have to wait? Sokolov must be in position by now. From where we sit, Shaikin, Slepkinian, and I can take out three Nazi machine gun positions in ten seconds. Wasn’t that the idea, to help secure this corridor between the plants? Why are we waiting?

  Shaikin rolled back from the window onto his back. The little man leaped with amazing agility to his feet. Tania looked away from her scope. Her ears picked up what he must have heard. Footsteps coming up the stairwell!

  She reached into her coat for a grenade and rolled onto her belly. Slepkinian did the same. Shaikin laid his back against the wall beside the doorway. He held his open palm to them for silence. A knife appeared in one hand, a pistol in the other.

  The footfalls were careless and loud, scuffing on the gritty step
s. The sounds stopped in the hall just beyond the door.

  Shaikin looked to Tania. She nodded back.

  Shaikin flashed into the hallway, his pistol up.

  Without a word or a glance back, he straightened and lowered the pistol to his side. He took two steps backward. Tania tightened her grip on the grenade. She glanced quickly over at the Cow. No surrender, she thought, clenching her teeth. I don’t care what Shaikin is doing.