Look to the Wolves

by Look to the Wolves

  Another of them growled, ‘Grilling those bastards, maybe.’

  ‘Oh – yeah…’

  And the time had come. The moment: there might be a worse one but also there might never be a better. Bob fired, and he’d shifted his aim to the next man before the first had hit the ground, killed this second one and had a third in his sights, but that one went down sprawling right into the fire – Schelokov’s shot, and a leap of flame and sparks as his man collapsed into the blaze. So that was a round saved, and he used it instead on one who was half up to his feet but must have been thinking better of it – hesitating in that half-risen stance and probably about to get down again quick when Bob’s third shot put him down for good.

  None of those had been gut-shots, as he’d promised himself earlier. The timing, sense of urgency, making maximum use of the Godsent illumination didn’t allow for any such indulgence.

  Silence, now. No targets, nothing moving. His head was throbbing and his ears ringing from those shots. Smell of singeing – the one who’d fallen into the fire, of course. Fire still blazing high – flames and shadows dancing, nothing else. No moon – forget the bloody moon…

  He knew he’d killed three, and he’d seen two others go down to Schelokov’s marksmanship. Five, therefore: and five from ten left five. Five still on their feet.

  Except – not quite. One crawling: a hump moving from left to right against the flickering background of firelight, and looking from here like the back of a giant tortoise. The ground sloped mostly upward in that direction, towards the fire and the line of buildings, so that this crawler was – in naval terms – hull-down. Demanded one’s full height, therefore – and a gap in the planking higher than that other. Point of aim behind the shoulder – a certain amount of guesswork in it, but aiming for the ribs close to the armpit – as near as it seemed possible to judge… He fired, the hump convulsed and then dropped flat, out of his range of vision, and in almost the same moment a spurt of flame from above the well – then the hard crack of Schelokov’s rifle – brought a scream and the sight of a man somewhere back beyond the fire – halfway between it and the izba maybe – twisting away – apparently on his knees, but he was as it were hull-down there too – with his arms out and a rifle falling. A second shot – Schelokov driving his point home – finished him.

  Seven? He thought so. Seven down, three to go… And another rifle-crack: but it hadn’t been Schelokov’s, the flash had been somewhere to the right and Bob had only been aware of it in the corner of his eye. Someone shooting at Schelokov, he guessed – rather than at oneself – because Schelokov had fired only seconds before, marking his position at the well; this character would, so to speak, have taken him up on it. Bob was watching that way now, waiting for him to fire again. He had an idea that the shot had been made from a certain height above the ground, and a distinct possibility therefore was the loft – where they’d been hiding when Schelokov had found himself cuddling up to Maltsev.

  Maltsev – for God’s sake. Not thirteen to start with – fourteen. So there’d be four left, not three. That rifle’s flame stabbed into the darkness, and as the sound of it reached him he was squeezing a shot off at the flash. Definitely from that end shed and at the loft-floor level, and there’d been another shot on the heels of his own – from Schelokov, obviously, although he hadn’t seen it. Schelokov must still have a whole skin, anyway – which was comforting to know. And there’d been no reaction this time from their target. So – possibly… Safer to reckon on there still being four, but it might well be only three now. Including Maltsev, of course, who wouldn’t count for much. Meanwhile that was five rounds he’d fired: he’d jettisoned the empty magazine and was snapping in a full one. Five shots – four kills, one result unknown. Not bad: but he was thinking it might be a good idea to move from here now – having made one’s position pretty evident by this time, and with at least three of them still on the loose. And nothing happening – time maybe that something was made to happen… He thought Schelokov would probably not shift his position; he could move from side to side of the well’s surrounding wall, or shoot over the top of it, and this gave him a certain flexibility even though they’d obviously know in general terms where he was. Also, to move from that well in any direction at all would involve crossing open ground – which was now lit up and doubtless under keen surveillance. Schelokov would stay put, for sure.

  There’d been no sight or sound of Ibraim, meanwhile. But he’d be there: and they didn’t know he was. So they might for instance try getting to their horses from the rear – out of the top-right corner of the yard into the cattle paddock, and down behind the buildings – but if they did it wouldn’t help them much, as he’d hear the horses reacting to their arrival and be in there himself like a dose of salts.

  So he was well placed and had to stay there. If anyone was going to move, break what seemed to be a stalemate, it would have to be oneself. And the move should be towards the hay-shed or the cartshed, which was surely where they’d have holed up. They’d have backed away from the fire and into those sheds right when the shooting started, he guessed. Not into the izba, which would have been closer to them but was also closer to Schelokov – as well as particularly well illuminated, with the fire right in front of it.

  A problem was that in the course of transferring oneself from A to B – which could only be done by moving round on the blind side of the cowshed – the way they might come to their horses – you’d be leaving a lot of this central area uncovered. Schelokov couldn’t cover all of it from his position – certainly not as far as a man crawling or belly-creeping was concerned – because of the down-slope and general unevenness of the ground. Second problem was that there was no way of letting the others know you were moving or had moved – that you were not something to be shot at.

  Shift from this corner, anyway – for the time being. It would be idiotic to stay put, where they must by now have one positively located. Move to wherever there was a hole to shoot through and a reasonably good field of fire, but somewhere nearer the other corner, the one nearest to the cowshed. That stench on the wind, he realized, was the odour of burning human flesh. The target Schelokov had poached, in the first few seconds of the action, and the fire having burnt away the clothing. It was a sickly, sweetish smell which one had encountered before, at sea. Moving now: the width of the shed being about twenty feet, the limit of one’s range of transfer. Enough, anyway: just so you weren’t where they thought you were… He passed several apertures on his way along the end wall that would have been usable and might have allowed for a better field of fire than he’d get further along, but to maximize the distance from that corner seemed desirable – common sense suggesting that the survivors, whether there were three of them or four – had only two targets that they knew of, were aware of their locations and would be keen to tilt the odds in their own favour.

  Right. Here…

  Long-range firelight flickered on the front wall of the cowshed – its near corner being only a few yards to his right. Ibraim was not visible: but shadows were deep there, this side of the corner. There was dead ground over the slight rise between here and the fire, but only enough of it to hide a man crawling. It wouldn’t be dead ground to Schelokov anyway. The well – its upper part – was still in his sight from here, but to the left of it his view was cut off by the corner he’d just left. While almost directly in front of him – slightly right, in fact, immediately to the left of the cowshed’s obliquely slanting frontage – he had the roofless hay-shed and its loft at about forty or forty-five yards’ range. The fire – still burning well – was from this angle exactly in line with Schelokov’s end of the izba.

  Beginning to find the continuing stillness uncanny. Watching narrow-eyed across the illuminated farmyard area: well aware that the passage of time was one’s own enemy, very much to their advantage: in fact if they could hold out, maintain the status quo, that was all they’d need to do, just hang on and wait for developments from outside…
Then a rifle cracked from the vicinity of the well – of which from here he could only see the timber superstructure – and he was on his toes for any answering shot or shots, ready to shoot at such flashes. But – nothing… Except – he caught his breath: to the right of the carthouse – closer but on that line of sight – glory be, yet another of those humps – moving left – another crawler. Then he’d lost it – before he’d had a chance to get a shot off… About halfway between here and those buildings, he guessed it had been. Confusing, though, in that tricky light and the spread of darkness over low ground where it was blanked off altogether. But crawling left, he’d have been making towards the well? Or at an incline, diagonally across the yard towards the stables – or even – well, here, this—

  On him. Back on him again…

  For an easy shot, too. That guess a split second ago had been dead right – it was the very recently vacated corner of this shed the man was making for. And bad luck, tovarisch… He had the dark hump of him in the peep-sight now, was conscious of being about to take a very easy shot indeed, therefore taking it perhaps a bit easier and more slowly than he should have done, when the crawler put him off his stroke by – bafflingly, in that instant – seeming to change shape. Rearing up… Then a long arm going back over the right shoulder – a smooth, oddly familiar movement, despite its having taken one completely by surprise – the message to the startled brain being Mills-bomb – grenade: he squeezed his trigger as the bomb went lobbing high towards the corner of the shed where he’d been half a minute earlier, and his shot missed: he’d fired just as the thrower launched himself forward in a natural follow-up dive for cover against the blast of his own missile. He was only too well aware of having missed, but for the moment postponing any second shot, ducking low in the corner with his forearms protecting his head and with his backside to the blast, by the time the bomb either bounced on or broke through the planking near the other corner. Thunderclap explosion, splash of flame: that noise like ripping calico was of grenade fragments whirring through the barn’s dark emptiness and rotten timber.

  Back up then – jack-in-a-box reaction – for the delayed second shot. Bits still falling from as much as remained of a roof… And something – at first impression, could have been a huge dog – bounding from the right, the cowshed’s corner, while another form rose – the bomber – came up from the ground to meet it. Rifle still slung – having needed his hands for crawling and bomb-throwing – and a glint of firelight on the knife in Ibraim’s fist, then the two silhouettes had crashed together, fused into one image, Bob watching over his rifle’s sight – not through it, no chance of getting in a shot at this stage – and seeing the merged bodies separate after three or four seconds’ grappling, one part sliding down and the other stooping over it. Making sure of a job already done, he guessed. Ibraim half-straightened then, came in his loping run with the dead man’s rifle trailing from one hand to this shed’s bomb-blasted corner. Bob was watching for flashes by this time, rifle-shots from any colleague who might have been covering the bomber’s approach. Nothing, though. Nothing except the flickering light and the stink of roasting flesh.

  ‘Gospodin Bob!’

  ‘Here, Ibraim.’ Rather struck by that novel form of address – ‘Lord Bob’, near enough – as well as startled by the style of his arrival. He’d actually smashed his way in through that corner: unstoppable: as though in a frenzy of rage – or triumph. Rage, more like… But muttering to himself now in his own language: mostly expressions of astonishment, it sounded like, and some intermittent praise of Allah. Bob, still watching the sheds across the yard, gave the Tartar’s dark shape a glance and a nod as he arrived beside him. The man had, after all, tried to save his life. ‘Good work, Ibraim… Only two alive now, I think. One for sure, could be two.’

  He’d arrived at certain other conclusions meanwhile – continuing the thought-process about where the survivors might be, and about shifting his own ground, and the need to ferret them out – them, or him – and get this over…

  Point one: he, or they, would be in the loft of the hay-shed. It was the obvious place because they’d been more or less trapped in that line of buildings to start with, the hay-shed was the most distant from the fire’s light, and from its loft you had a more commanding view than from anywhere else.

  Two: he/they might be on the point of trying to break out. If so, they’d try it by way of the cowshed. The grenade attack a preliminary to it? But running for help, knowing you couldn’t get anywhere on foot – in the dark, and wading through snow – with the nearest help or communications at Valki, three or four miles away. And being a horseman…

  So – you had to (a) maintain a guard on the horses, and (b) move towards dislodging the survivor/s from the hay-shed. If they weren’t going to run for it that was where they’d be aiming to sit tight. And the fire, for God’s sake – he’d just noticed this, although it must have been happening progressively for some time – was dying back again.

  Distantly, wolves howled.

  ‘Ibraim. Listen to me now…’

  *

  Minutes later he was at the corner of the cowshed – top-right corner, the cattle-yard side of it. When in less than another minute he moved to give himself elbow-room and poked his rifle around the corner, he’d be shooting diagonally across this end of the shed, upward into the cartshed loft. Range – allowing for the slant – approximately thirty yards.

  As he’d outlined the scheme to Ibraim – who’d just left him, slinking away soundlessly into the darkness – he would have had this job. Ibraim would have used the rifle he’d picked up from the man he’d killed a few minutes earlier, and he’d have been shooting from inside the cowshed, through some aperture or other in this end wall. But the Tartar had pointed out in his distorted, monosyllabic Russian first that he’d never learnt to use a rifle and second that the cowshed wall was solid, built of logs and with no apertures in it. He’d also indicated that in his view he’d be better at the other part of it than Bob would be – lighter, quieter, faster on his feet and handier with a knife.

  So he was the ferret and Bob would provide the covering fire: giving him one minute – less than that now – to get himself to the side of the hay-shed – the blind side, from the farmyard – from which point when Bob started shooting into the loft he’d creep round to the front, and inside, and then – well, act like a ferret.

  Forty seconds to go.

  Schelokov, Bob hoped, would see which way the shots were going and catch on to what was happening. He’d also realize that the best thing he could do was stay where he was, to prevent any breakout across the yard.

  Bob had five rounds in the rifle in his hands, five in the second rifle – which he’d propped against the wall beside him – and two spare magazines in his pocket. Twenty rounds: one shot every three seconds, say, for the first half-minute, and then – well, depending… The half-minute might be all it took.

  Twenty seconds, now.

  The fire had died down surprisingly fast. Dry tinder very quickly consumed, of course. What had been a blaze as little as five minutes ago had reduced itself to not much more than embers again. The corpse slowly cooking in its glowing core couldn’t be doing much for it, either. But the rapid loss of light was a very good reason for making this move now.

  Ten seconds. Reminding himself to watch out for grenades. Might or might not have some up there, but from that elevation he’d be in lobbing range if they did have.

  He raised his gun, pushed off the safety, murmured under his breath as he stepped out and back a little Good luck, Ibraim…

  *

  Ibraim set off as if the rifle had been a starting-pistol, was round the corner – hugging close to it – with the second shot a spark of flame in the corner of his left eye; and then he was inside – a crouching shadow soft-footed on the carpeting of rotted hay – by the third. This time he heard not only the crack of the discharge but also the bullet’s impact somewhere overhead. Knife in his right hand, left
hand out as an antenna, his slanted eyes boring into the dark: fourth shot, an audible but comparatively soft impact and a gasp that became a groan. Ibraim was by this time flattened against the wall near the ladder – that set of wooden rungs – as still as a post and staring up, getting the rectangular hatchway into focus, the faint vestige of light from outside making it just discernible. Two more shots meanwhile, one burying itself in the front edge of the loft floor and sending splinters flying, the next passing through and out into the night sky; and another now – a steady rhythm of firing, you could have matched the beat of it by counting: two, three, crack – two, three, crack… Ibraim’s eyes riveted on more than just the empty hatchway now, he was watching a bulge of darker shadow curving one side of it, a shape that was manoeuvring itself into the gap, on to the rungs. Crack – two, three – smacking impact – in timber, somewhere up there – and gasps of effort, a hand clawing for the top rung, the body half-filling the splintery-edged hole and the wall creaking as weight came on the rungs: crack, two, three – tenth round, not that Ibraim had been counting, he was watching this man climb slowly, laboriously down the rungs, with a jerky movement due to the fact he was using only one arm.

  Another shot: but there’d been a longer interval, this time. As if he’d known. Which he didn’t, of course, didn’t have the least idea. Half a minute gone and two magazines emptied, that was all, he was spacing the shots out now to make them last, keeping them high, watching for results… Ibraim inched forward slowly into range, then sprang – left arm clamping around the man’s neck, wrenching his head back. The Bolshevik had had his rifle slung on the right shoulder, and it fell, that arm striking back powerfully but ineffectually with the elbow, and then groping – uselessly, Ibraim had him pinned, body arched back against his own, was reaching around now with his knife arm – crack, and a rattle of debris falling – so as to stab upward from the front, locating the exposed throat between the turned-up points of the greatcoat collar, below his own horizontal left forearm. The first prick of the knife’s point galvanized his victim into a frenzy of resistance – a convulsion of terror, shock – straining to turn away from the blade, right arm flailing… Ibraim held him as in a vice, pressed the knife halfway to its hilt in the bulging windpipe and then twisted slowly, letting him feel it while he died.