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

by David Robbins

  He put away his pad and pencil. I remember the details well enough, he considered. Besides, that isn’t the type of mistake I can expect from Thorvald. The Headmaster will make a far bolder error than just moving a brick or lighting a cigarette. And when he does, the powers hovering above this blood will help me find him, to set loose his ghost to haunt wherever it is he lies last.

  For the first time since he’d learned of the Nazi’s presence in Stalingrad, Zaitsev felt his forest instincts open up. The whispering voices of his father and grandfather and of the ancestors who’d won their lives in the taiga had been silent until he’d come to sit in this place, which he knew Thorvald was watching. The voices had been waiting for clues, familiarities, keys to unlock his deeper knowledge. Thorvald was a prey he’d not hunted before, and the voices had kept their silence.

  But now, with Thorvald finally within range, with the evidence of Morozov’s death and Shaikin’s dying fresh in the winter-hard dirt near him, Zaitsev’s intuitions came alive. Thorvald was a man, certainly, and the Hare had hunted hundreds of them by now. But the Headmaster possessed powers of no man he’d ever faced. This Nazi could shoot marvelously. He could carve a face with bullets in a stuffed dummy in seconds, firing his single weapon as if he were two men. His abilities with distance must be uncanny. He’d killed both Morozov and Baugderis, putting bullets through their telescopic sights while Kulikov and Shaikin, two of the most experienced hares, had watched from beside the victims, then were themselves hit. He knows the battlefield. He’s been traced to Mamayev Kurgan, then to the Red October, and now here to this park in the city center.

  Thorvald is bold. He crawled into Kulikov’s trench to take his rifle. He’s twisted, perhaps even rabid. He shoots anything, wasting bullets on dummies and nurses. He’s cruel. He’s smart. And like any other man of flesh and blood, he’s surely scared to be in Stalingrad.

  The Headmaster is focused, with only one task: to catch me. He’s like a mad timber wolf that no longer eats or drinks but only kills. Everything the beast does is directed toward that lone goal. That’s a weakness. It can betray him.

  Zaitsev stood slowly to look over the square one last time for the evening. The light had decayed, and now the shadows seeped into the ground. It was time to leave. Zaitsev shouldered his sniper rifle, then bent to pick up the periscope. On the trench floor at his hand, somehow darker than the falling night, was the blood mark of Morozov.

  He said to the blood, “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  * * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER, ZAITSEV WALKED INTO THE SNIPERS’ bunker. Kulikov stood.

  “Vasha.”

  “Nikolay!” Zaitsev hugged his friend. He kissed him on each cheek, then held him at arms’ length. “You’re back. How are you? How’s the head?”

  Kulikov tilted his brow to let Zaitsev examine the bandage wrapped above his ears.

  Zaitsev poked his finger tenderly over where he knew the stitches were. “Well,” the Hare said with a smile, “it’s still attached. That’s better than some.”

  Kulikov’s grin faded. !n the moment of jocularity, Zaitsev had forgotten Baugderis. He thought now of the smashed face and of Morozov and Shaikin. And others.

  “I’m well,” Kulikov said. “They shook me out of bed this afternoon. I heard what happened to Ilya and Morozov.”

  Zaitsev laid his rifle and pack in his corner.

  “I’ve found him, Nikolay. Shaikin sent me right to him. I can feel him. The son of a bitch, I can feel him.”

  Kulikov looked into Zaitsev’s eyes. The little sniper swallowed hard, but his face remained a mute mask. Many times Zaitsev had marveled at the silence of Nikolay Kulikov’s face. It told nothing of the man’s inner workings. His features, even his arms and legs, always manifested a stillness, like the moon. Zaitsev was sure this was why Kulikov was the most invisible on the move of all the snipers. He carried silence in his bones.

  Zaitsev thought back four days to the trench where Kulikov and Baugderis had set up their tin-can gambit. Kulikov, unconscious, had awakened to his sins, visited on him by the bloody hole in Baugderis’s head and the gash in his own. Kulikov has a score to settle. And Thorvald has his rifle.

  “You want to come, Nikolay? We’ve both seen him work and we’ve both lived to tell. We can get him.”

  Kulikov blinked. “Tania won’t mind?”

  “What . . .” Zaitsev stopped. He shook his head and walked to the corner. Next it will be Danilov and a damned weekly column in In Our Country’s Defense.

  “No, Nikolay. Tania won’t mind. Sit down.”

  Kulikov plopped to the floor. Zaitsev did not hear him move even while he watched Kulikov slide into the flickering shadow below the lamp’s base. He chooses the darkest place, Zaitsev observed.

  Zaitsev described the details of the location where Shaikin and Morozov had met Thorvald. He didn’t know how the Headmaster had managed to shoot the two snipers. But at this stage, how it had happened was less important than where. He and Kulikov would wage their own, fresh battle against the Nazi supersniper.

  “The sun rises at our backs and sets in front, slightly to our right. So we’ll have the advantage in the morning and early afternoon. We’ll have to force a few shots out of him to get an idea of where he is. That shouldn’t be too hard. The Headmaster seems all too eager to pull his trigger.”

  Kulikov said nothing. His slate-colored eyes were intent; he seemed to listen through them.

  Zaitsev continued. “We can move. But I have a feeling he’ll stay put. He’s found a spot he’s sure will be good enough to get me. So long as he thinks he’s hidden, he’ll stick to his cell.”

  Kulikov spoke. “How does he know he didn’t shoot you when he shot Shaikin and Morozov?”

  Zaitsev thought for a moment before answering.

  “He doesn’t. But I think he’ll watch the place where he shot his last two snipers. If nobody else shows up to play with him tomorrow or the next day, he’ll figure it was me he killed and the game is over. But if someone comes to face him, he’ll guess that finally I’m in the trench across from him, that I got the word about his telescope shot on Morozov and the other nasty tricks he’s played. After all, that’s exactly what he intended. I think we’ve got one or two more days while he sits in his shooting cell waiting to see who drops by.”

  Kulikov rose. “I’ll get some sleep. Oh-four-hundred here?”

  “Yes, Nikolay.”

  Without a sound, Kulikov was gone. Zaitsev sat, looking into the wavering circle of shade beneath the lamp where the sniper had sat. Only seconds after his departure, it seemed Kulikov had already been gone an hour. How does he do that? Zaitsev wondered.

  He turned off the lantern and lay on his bedroll, his pack under his head. He stared into the pitch of the bunker.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow begins the duel.

  The cold air of the dirt floor crept up his cheek. He pulled his blanket higher. He listened to his own breathing and felt his pulse in his neck.

  Thorvald. Colonel Thorvald. Just a name, just bloody holes in bodies, just guesses and conclusions so far. Tomorrow Thorvald becomes fact, becomes real for me, real as a bullet.

  He wondered what a bullet felt like burning into his own flesh. He hadn’t yet been wounded at Stalingrad, though he’d seen a thousand wounds. What was the pain like? And to be killed . . . did the death blackness come riding on the bullet instantly, before pain could grip you, everything silent and calm while you drift over into eternity? Or was it horrible to die with a bullet between the eyes? Was it a sudden bursting of every agony that lies coiled and waiting in the body, set loose, rampant for the few seconds before the senses quit? Zaitsev felt an itch between his eyebrows where a bullet might drill the next day. He rubbed his face to make it go away.

  Thorvald. Zaitsev reviewed his lessons to the hares on how to deal with an enemy sniper. The process of finding the sniper begins with learning the enemy’s front line of defense. View and catalog every physical detail possi
ble. He’d done this hours ago. Next, study and understand how and where others were shot in the area. Zaitsev recalled his ten minutes that afternoon beside the agony of Shaikin and earlier with Morozov’s body. The bullet to Morozov’s head had been deflected off the rifle scope. The scope itself also revealed nothing. Where had Morozov’s rifle been pointing when struck? Shaikin didn’t know. He’d been looking through the binoculars at a moving helmet just above a trench along Solechnaya Street. He was calling Morozov into the shot on the helmet when Thorvald lashed out. Zaitsev reasoned that either there was some troop activity spreading near Pavlov’s House or Thorvald had a helper carrying that helmet on a stick.

  The mistake had been Shaikin’s and Morozov’s. They should not have been shooting. They’d gone to Ninth of January Square to locate Thorvald, not to engage him. When they bit on the bait, probably the helmet, the Headmaster flexed.

  The next step is to fathom your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Avoid his strengths; aggravate his flaws. If he’s a skilled marksman, like Thorvald, test him with feints and false positions; give him easy targets to lull him into revealing his position without making yourself a target. Mock his skill by pretending to be a freshman sniper yourself; make small, controlled mistakes to swell his confidence in the contest. If he’s impatient, if he’s hot to shoot and go, like Thorvald, then drag him into a long and complicated battle. If he’s stubborn, like the Headmaster, then distract his attention, irritate him through those distractions, wear down his concentration and his physical ability to see through his scope, to shoot accurately. If he’s taken the initiative, like Thorvald, then take it back.

  When it comes your turn to shoot, make it count. Remember the old folk wisdom: measure it seven times, cut it once.

  The blanket in the doorway rose and fell. Careful boot steps crossed the blind floor to Zaitsev’s corner.

  He opened his lids, seeing nothing. He pulled his hand from beneath the blanket. Lying flat on the bedroll, he reached into the night. The cool air nipped at his wrist. A leg brushed against him.

  He heard her curl up on the floor beside him. Her heels ground the dirt when she crossed her legs and settled.

  She took his hand in both of hers and held it without squeezing, as if his fingers were fragile. After a minute in the dark, feeling her cup and fondle his hand, she spoke.

  “Kulikov was a good choice. I’m glad he’s back.”

  He breathed heavily once; it sounded to him, to his surprise, like a sigh. The bunker, so cold and inky moments before, seemed to feather around him now, to pulsate and fan out like a crow’s wings, with Tania at his side. She gives the world, every moment of it, a dynamic, he thought. Things shift in her presence as though she makes them uncomfortable.

  “Stay tonight,” he said.

  He hadn’t intended to say this. But damn, he thought, she draws things out of me, pulls my ideas through my mouth and hands and fashions them into words and actions before I can stop them.

  “No, Vashinka,” she whispered. “You meet Thorvald tomorrow morning. You need to be pure. I’ll wait.”

  She held his hand for another minute of swirling time and darkness. Zaitsev saw nothing, not even the night. His mind stood still, linked into Tania’s while her fingers tumbled softly like a mouse playing in his palm. She surrounds me, he thought. Even sitting beside me, touching only my hand. She takes me.

  He took his hand back and reached to her forehead to dig his fingers deep into her hair. It was thick, the strands like straw; he could not have pulled his fingers straight up and out of it. He slid his hand down her forehead and across her eyes and nose. He touched her face gently, like a blind man, enough only to ruffle water. His heart and his consciousness were in his hand, crowding into his fingertips like tourists to a window for a glimpse of her. At her neck, the flesh at her collar, he stopped. He dropped his hand beside him on the blanket.

  I must be pure, she told me.

  Tania stood. Her clothes rustled and broke the spell.

  She walked to the blanket. “It’s time for the Headmaster to learn a new lesson,” she said into the dark. “How to die. One bullet, one lesson, from the Hare.”

  Tania lifted the blanket. A rim of moonlight silhouetted her legs and waist in the doorway. Her form slipped away.

  “Kill him, Vasha,” she said, and was gone. The blanket tumbled across the opening. A cold gust filled her space in the room and crawled on the floor next to Zaitsev where she had been.

  * * * *

  TWENTY-TWO

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN NIKKI AND THORVALD arrived at Ninth of January Square. Thorvald’s interest soared immediately upon seeing the park.

  The space was ideal for his mission, he said. He peeked above the low stone wall and swept his hand back and forth over the dusky panorama, 250 meters square, as if feeling it for lumps or irregularities. The park allowed him vision in a wide range. The sun would set at his back and put him in shadow in the afternoon. There were plenty of hiding places in this, the western half of the park: several burned-out tanks, an abandoned redoubt, and lots of rubble. The other side of the park, the Red side of the line, was smoother. Most of the fighting in this area had centered on the building to their right, called Pavlov’s House. The Reds were hanging tough in there, though the park itself had remained an empty fighting ground, a no-man’s-land. “Perfect,” Thorvald called it.

  Nikki crouched behind the safety of the wall while Thorvald rose with his excitement to scan the park’s terrain through his field glasses. After a minute, almost standing upright now, Thorvald said, “Ah, yes. There.”

  He hurried along the wall fifty meters to his left. Nikki followed him. They stopped at a breach in the wall where a tank had smashed through. Ten meters in front of them lay a wide sheet of corrugated metal atop a pile of bricks.

  Thirty minutes later, Thorvald had commandeered a shovel from a soldier to their rear. When full night had fallen, Nikki was set to work digging a foxhole under the sheet.

  He loaded the dirt from the excavation onto a canvas tarpaulin. The colonel dragged the tarp from the hole and dumped it behind the wall. Thorvald told Nikki to be careful while digging not to move or alter in any way the alignment of the bricks facing the Red side of the park.

  Two hours later, Nikki looked out from the shooting cell he’d created. The hole was now deep enough for a man to rise to his knees, just skirting the top of his head against the metal roof. The sheet would keep the colonel totally in shadow all day. The hole, the bricks, and the sheet would hide not only his body but also the noise of his rifle. He could lie here in the neutral zone, out of sight and sound— even out of the Russian wind—aiming east between the bricks.

  Nikki completed his labor, then crawled out of the hole. He sat in a tired heap beside the colonel.

  Thorvald was chipper. “Well, let’s see what we have here, Corporal.” He skittered under the metal.

  Nikki heard him laugh, hidden in the cell.

  “Oh, this is very good.” His voice under the metal was clanging and eerie, its source invisible.

  * * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, THORVALD CARRIED WITH HIM INTO the cell several blankets, two boxes of ammunition, a thermos, and two sandwiches. Nikki was left ten meters back, behind the wall, also with provisions, to wait for the colonel’s instructions.

  Thorvald sat silently in his nest until late afternoon. With the sun behind him, with Nikki watching through binoculars, the colonel fired on several Red medical personnel, visible only for moments hustling in and out of Pavlov’s House with wounded. Nikki winced at every report from the rifle, though they were muffled and swollen and not the sharp cracks he was used to. The shots were like body blows, making his stomach quiver.

  Nikki despised Thorvald’s shooting at nurses and medical workers and the glee the colonel took in hitting them. After each trigger pull, Thorvald counted up the score: “One . . . two . . . aaaand three.” Though Nikki days before had wrestled his conscience to the ground, h
e struggled now to hold it still while the colonel killed more unsuspecting victims. He knew the answer to his own question before he asked it: Was it right? Should nurses, medics, and wounded soldiers be cut down and used for bait for the Hare as if they were nothing more than carrots and cabbage set under a rabbit trap? Yes, of course. Stalingrad is no longer about right and wrong or winning—only surviving. No, these were not military targets. But what I’m trying to do has nothing to do with the military. I want to go home. How many would I let die for that? Nikki couldn’t name a number. All of them.

  The second morning began like the first, before sunup. Thorvald crawled into the hole and again stayed quiet until the afternoon, when he fired twice with automatic speed, paused, and fired a third time. All he said to Nikki was, “Three more.”

  That night, Thorvald and Nikki walked to their separate quarters downtown without conversation. It seemed the colonel had entered a realm of concentration; once he’d laid his eye to his scope, he did not look away or flinch until he’d hit his target. The duel with Zaitsev had been joined; the target was selected but not yet beneath the colonel’s crosshairs.