“Burn it, Ackov.”
* * *
Mili would not abandon the rifle; she had it slung across her back. The Teacher had a Sten gun and kept checking back, looking to see if the Serbs had closed the trail.
“Look,” she said suddenly, pointing. “He’s burning the village.”
“Had to happen. It’s the way his mind works. Here or at Lidice, anywhere the partisans strike, the people pay.”
No details were available through the trees. Instead, columns of heavy smoke drifted upward and over the crest of the mountains, then mingled into a single miasma by the thrust of the winds. It didn’t take long for the odors to reach them, a mesh of crispy burned wood, the bloody tang of burned animal meat, a slight petroleum bite from the stench of the flamethrower’s Flammoil-19. No screams were heard, but how could they be from such a distance?
“Enough smoke,” said the Teacher through gasps of air as the oxygen debt put pain into his lungs. “He burned it down, the whole thing.”
Then came the sound of the dogs. The sound rose and ebbed, depending on whether the waves caught some freakish echo effect. But it was clear that the animals were howling with the excitement of the hunt.
For the longest time, as they headed along the path, the dogs seemed distant. At one point they even seemed to disappear. But the dogs were strong and the young men running them were strong. When Mili heard the barking again, it seemed much closer.
Then, somehow, it got closer still.
“We’re not going to make it,” she said. “We can’t outrun the dogs.”
Another few minutes passed. The barking grew louder. They broke into a trot, and then Petrova fell, chopping up her knee.
“All right,” she said, “closer. Give me the machine pistol. I’ll stay and kill as many as I can. Then I’ll spend the last bullet on myself.”
“Sorry, not possible,” said the Teacher. “I will be the one who stays behind. I hate dogs. To kill as many as possible will be a pleasure. Go, go.”
Then they saw them. Six muscular, tawny beasts, unleashed at last, coming like rockets, all muscle and speed, dashed into view, driven forward on that bounding hound run, a coil and uncoil action, as of a powerful spring or piston. On they came.
He shoved her. “Run,” he said. “Damn you, run!” and turned with his Sten gun to face the horde.
* * *
The smoke from the village obscured everything, so Salid moved his position about a half mile down the Yaremche road. From there he only saw a wall of smoke, drifting columns in the sky and the flames eating the odd building. It was better for his men, too, for they could not hear the screams of the villagers locked in the flaming church as the fire dissolved their bodies, although Salid himself did not really notice.
“Anything?” he barked in Serbian to Ackov.
“Nothing,” said the sergeant, who stood guard at the field telephone.
The captain shivered. He had to capture the woman. She meant more than anything. With her, he could turn his life into a triumph and his return to the sun and the sand of the desert into a mythic passage. It wasn’t ambition.
He did this all for Allah. At his core he believed in the primacy of Allah over all nations and men and that those who had not given themselves to Allah were infidels, unworthy of life and doomed to an afterlife in the fires of hell. As much suffering as they would endure in the forever, what difference did it make to them now?
O Allah, he prayed, humbly I beseech Thee to look with favor upon the enterprise of Your servant Yusef Salid, who seeks only to please and obey in his hope to earn the right to come to heaven in the afterlife. Please, please, can You give me this one gift, it is all I ask, it is all—
“Sir,” said Ackov. “It’s Graufeldt.”
Salid took the phone.
“Graufeldt reporting.”
“What is happening, man?”
“I believe they’ve made contact. It’s the dogs, sir. They yowl and yelp when chained, fighting and feeling frustrated by the chain, but when they’re released, their voices achieve the full throaty barking and are more widely spaced because they are running flat out. They wouldn’t have released them unless they’d made visual contact. The dogs, sir. The dogs are on her.”
* * *
On came the dogs, by now their white canines gleaming like SS parade daggers in the sunlight, foam flying from open jaws, throats undulating with the working of their larynxes as they growled, on to the kill.
The Teacher checked his as yet unfired Sten gun, positive that it was cocked, the bolt free and not engaged in the safety notch, sure that in one burst he could kill at least a few of the beasts, maybe get rounds into all six before they were on him. Then maybe he could pull the 6.35mm Frommer that had been his only protection until recently and kill or wound the others. But he knew he would be so slashed and bitten, and there was no way he could—
A screaming came across the sky.
It was a chorus of banshees or other dead creatures or ghastly apparitions: high-pitched, full of vibration, a howl, the yell of death, the fall of civilization, the hungry screaming of the harpies as they tore something into shreds. Then the high pitch went away, buried in a lower, more sibilant roar that spoke of fire and death.
The Teacher recognized it. It was the sound of a battery of seventy-two Katyusha rockets blasting from their truck-borne carriers to obliterate whatever resided in their scatter of random hits. The shriek was so intense it traveled for miles, a pronunciamento for the Red Army, a signifier of battle for the German. To the dogs, with their more refined hearing, it would be hideously loud.
The Red offensive had begun.
If the Teacher knew, the dogs did not. To them it signaled the approach of another predator, a mythic predator; it meant they were to be swept up in dinosaur jaws, crushed, ripped, gobbled. Their brains could not handle the fear.
Thirty meters shy of the quarry, they hit a wall. It seemed to be made of glass, but it was made of terror. They lost their grace and focus, they slid, slithered, slipped, rolled, each pounding into the other, each in the abyss of pure animal panic. And just that fast, they were gone, seeking survival in the cover of the deep woods.
Meanwhile the artillery, a thousand guns at least, maybe two thousand, commenced, a rush of noise swallowed in detonation, a whistle of shells obeying the laws of gravity and descending from their rainbow arcs to vaporize all that lay within their blast zones. It was so loud that the dust fell from the trees, the ground shivered, and the world seemed on the tippy-tippy edge of destruction.
But the Teacher understood it was still miles away to the south, as far as Kosiv, which had been the closest Russian strong point and clearly would be the offensive step-off site; it simply proved an old point—destruction is loud. He turned, hoping to see something through the screen of trees that stood between him and the valley four thousand feet beneath, but he could see nothing.
He turned and headed up the path. Without dogs, the Germans would be helpless. He would catch up with the woman, and the two of them would diverge from this path to the brush, where tracking them by eye would be impossible. Maybe in time the Germans would round up the dogs, get them calmed down, but it would be hours before they found the scent again.
He rounded a slight turn and saw the sniper walking ahead. She turned, feeling his eyes on her, and waved. He raced to her, breathing hard in the thinner air.
“You’re alive!” she said.
“Scoundrel’s luck once again. The noise of the Katyushas. It terrified the dogs.”
“It scared the hell out of me,” she said.
“Come on, this is our golden opportunity. We must get off the path, we must progress overland, through the brush and trees. It’ll take hours to find our trail.”
“Yes.”
“But dump that rifle. It slows us.”
“No, no. You can never tell. Come on, we’re wasting time.”
It took another two hours, but in all that time, they heard no
sign of their pursuers. The journey quickly resolved itself into pure ordeal, the two fighting through thorns and bracken and the needles of the pines, some very sharp, all at an uphill angle, going primarily on faith. They were washed in sweat, which drained into their eyes, as the branches whipped backward to catch them in the faces, or roots tugged and twisted their ankles.
“I think it’s just ahead,” said the Teacher.
They reached a familiar glade.
“COMING IN!” yelled the Teacher, and he and Petrova eased ahead.
* * *
“Why can we not stay here?” asked the Peasant in Ukrainian. “Our army will arrive soon, a day or two. We can just wait and—”
“No, no,” said the Teacher in the same language. “The Germans will gather their dogs in a while. They’ll come after us. Eventually they’ll pick up the scent. They’ll find this cave. We must be long gone when they get here.”
That was true. But there was more. What the Teacher didn’t say was that he wasn’t eager to simply walk to the Red Army with hands upraised. He had no idea how good these troops would be and if they were of poor quality—many were—they might shoot anything that moved. Then there was the issue of Mili Petrova, quite possibly hunted by her own people. He had to get that settled.
“We have a long journey, at least three miles to the canyon they call Natasha’s Womb. It’s a choke point holding us in this sector. We’ll get through it and find a cave or a glade on the other side. Once the Red Army has driven the Germans out of the mountains, we’ll figure a safe way to return to our side.”
* * *
They walked, they walked, they walked. It took close to two hours to make it to site of the cave at the head of the scree field where the canister was hidden. It was not far from the Womb.
“Here, rest,” said the Mili, “but only for a moment.” She gave the Teacher her rifle. “Replace it now. Your weapon, too. I will strip off my camouflage, and from now on, we are peasants fleeing the battle.”
The Teacher took her weapon and his own and ducked into the cave, replacing the two guns and all the ammunition, then latched the container tightly.
He emerged, finding them both ready for what lay beyond. They were so close.
“Just a little farther,” she said. “Another few miles. When we get close to Natasha’s Womb, we’ll go to ground, and I’ll squirm forward and make certain we’re all right.”
“Petrova, that should be my job,” the Teacher said. “Who knows what lies ahead, better I go than you, who’ve already accomplished so much.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
“Certainly,” he said, “but we should take just that little precaution.”
With faith and vigor renewed, they set out along a higher trail, which seemed to take a downward track as it worked its way to the gap in the mountains at a significantly lower altitude. Still they bent against the incline and felt their thighs fight for strength as the walk became difficult with the need to defy gravity. They went down in silence, except for the sound of their labored breathing, the far-off detonation, the hum of insects attracted to the salty sweat that lubricated their skin and dampened their clothes.
As yet unseen, Natasha’s Womb came closer. So did the sense of other, larger mountains abutting them, which was why the formation afforded a gap, while the others demanded mountaineering.
At one point, Mili called a halt. “All right,” she said, “here’s where you’ll lay up. I’m going to work my way ahead and get a glimpse, just to make sure there’s no mischief up here. And—”
“Sergeant, please,” said the Teacher. “This should be my duty, and I—”
“HALTEN SIE!” came a sudden cry.
Two men stepped out of the brush ten yards away, weapons leveled.
CHAPTER 51
The Carpathians
Above Yaremche
THE PRESENT
Okay,” said Reilly as they advanced toward Jerry Renn, “you should see this. I think it explains something.”
She handed Swagger her iPhone, which displayed a message from Will. After worrying why he hadn’t heard from her, he got to the gist: Got Krulov KGB file. Longer memo to follow, but here’s the key stuff.
Bob read it.
It laid out the life and times of one Basil Krulov, his education, his wartime experience. His upward climb in the ’40s, his domestic situation, his fate.
“There’s the motive we were looking for,” said Bob. “I think I get it now. He thought he was doing the right thing. They all say they’re doing the right thing, the motherfuckers.”
* * *
Jerry lay against a rock, having pulled himself to it from the path. He was in agony, and the bone sprouting from his thigh meant he wasn’t going anywhere soon. His Sig, originally pulled as a show of bravado, lay next to him.
“You move for that gun,” yelled Bob, “and I’ll cut you in half. Offhand, pick it up by the barrel and toss it my way.”
Jerry did it.
“Now the knife. You cowboys all have them folders you think is so cool. You dump it now.”
Out came the knife, and it was tossed.
Bob came out of cover, the Sten gun leveled, and approached.
“Jesus Christ,” said the agent, “where’d you get the fucking World War II shit? What is this, Bridge on the River Kwai?”
“Shut up,” said Bob. “And listen hard. I’m going to lay out two possible futures for you. You get to pick what happens next.”
“I’m bleeding out, man.”
“Nah, you just got a busted leg. You won’t be dead for at least a day, though it’ll be a long day.”
“Christ, it hurts,” Jerry said.
“Cry me a fucking river. My friend Reilly and I are going to walk another couple of hours, and a helicopter is going to pick us up. It will fly us to Uzhgorod, and there a private jet will fly us to Moscow. In Moscow, she’s going to write the story of Mili Petrova, and her newspaper is going to publish it. All the dirty wash gets hung out to dry. Now, you can help us, that’s one possibility, and if you do that, we’ll make a phone call to a number you give us. Too bad you dropped your phone as you ran, too bad I found it, but that’s how it goes. Okay, I make that phone call, and I’ll give your people a GPS position, and they’ll get here fast enough to get some plasma into you. Maybe the Carpathian wolves get here first, I don’t know, but I can’t make no guarantee about that. The other way is just the same, except I don’t call nobody, and you become the den chew toy. Or you dehydrate out. Or you bleed out. I don’t know, I don’t care. But you ain’t going home on this op, that I will guarantee you.”
“Swagger, I’m just an action guy. Low-level. An operator. They just give me targets, that’s all.”
“Then you’re dead.”
“But I know enough to warn you that you are betraying your country if you go that way. It’s not too late. You’re the macho man still, if that’s what this is all about. I don’t care. I’ll be beta, it’s fine. Just don’t fuck this up for your country.”
“You ain’t my country. Not with a shoot-on-sight license for Reilly and me.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Jerry.
“I’ll lay it out for you, and you pitch in. I think I got it figured.”
“I tell you, I don’t know stuff. I just run a rifle.”
“Bullshit. First, you wouldn’t go on an op like this without a convincing reason. Second, if you get this info back to them, they can take steps to be ahead of the shit storm, not behind it.”
Grudgingly, Jerry nodded. “I fill you in, you make that call?”
“If I tell you I will, I will.”
“All right, I’m down with it.”
“Near as I can figure, in ’31 or ’32, a kid named Basil Krulov, son of a Soviet trade delegate in Munich, went to some classes at the university under a professor named Groedl, a kind of guru on genocide, racial hygiene, all that crazy Nazi shit, right?”
“I don’t know any of that stuff.�
��
“Take it from Ms. Reilly here, he did. She has the records.”
“My husband dug them out of the KGB archives,” she said.
“It changed Krulov’s life. He bought in a hundred and fifty percent. He went back to his country in ’33, graduated University of Moscow in ’35, and began his climb in Stalin’s outfit. But his heart belonged to Adolf, at least in the war-on-Jews department. Somewhere in there he contacted Groedl and volunteered to do what he could to help the Nazis whack the Jews. He reasoned that he wasn’t betraying Russia, since it wasn’t military info he was giving but Jewish intelligence. So that’s what he did. He became the Nazi Race Department’s own personal mole in the Kremlin. He must have shit a brick when the nonaggression pact came, but he kept playing. Deep in the war, his mentor, Stalin, gives him orders to kill his hero Groedl, but he can’t, so he snitches out that mission. Groedl gets wasted anyway, because Mili’s so damn good, but Krulov knows that if anyone looks too carefully at it, they’ll see for sure Mili Petrova was betrayed, and it had to be Krulov. So he uses his power to erase her from history. Right so far?”
“I told you, this is news to me. I didn’t know anything about it. Maybe if I’d have known, I’d have played it differently.”
“He gets through the war, everything’s fine. No news or suspicion of his treason ever comes out. He’s the aces. But I’m guessing sometime in ’46 or ’47, some American intel team is going through recovered Nazi records, and they get proof that Krulov was a Nazi spy. So now they own him. He has to dance their jig or they burn him and he catches one behind the ear.”
“I just know they recruited him in ’47. They said he was a walk-in. That’s where the story begins for me.”
“So for the next nine years, he’s our number one guy in Russ. I’m guessing it was so top-top they didn’t even run him out, because they thought the Agency had security problems.”
Sniper's Honor Page 30
