Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

“Da?”

“Swagger for Stronski.”

The phone went dead. Five minutes later it rang.

“What’s up?” asked Stronski.

Bob explained his situation.

Stronski said, “Dump the car. They have the numbers on the car, they’re looking for the car. Dump it in a village, take the next out-of-town bus that arrives. The car is death, but you may be all right if you separate from it now.”

“You think these guys are wired in to the police and all the cops are looking for the car?”

“It’s Ukraine, pal. Anything’s possible.”

“Okay, I got it.”

“I’m going to set up an escape for you. You need to get the hell out of town, and I mean it, Swagger. Like the last time.”

“But like the last time, I still have shit to do. Have to get back to Yaremche and look it over. Can you have me picked up there?”

“I’ll work on it. But don’t doodle around. Serious boys are after you.”

“So who?” said Bob, thinking, The gangs, the cops, some oligarch’s henchmen?

“I hear a certain fellow picked up five or six freelance tough guys on an out-of-town job. I was checking on it with police sources, and it just came through that the group went to Ukraine with big suitcases.”

“Who?” said Swagger.

“You’re going to love this. I know who the certain fellow works for. I know who’s behind this, who’s bankrolling it.”

“Who?”

“The Americans.”

New Quarters, Battlegroup Von Drehle

Outside Stanislav

MID-JULY 1944

“It’s not war per se,” said Wili Bober. “Nor is it the prospect of death or maiming. Or a life spent in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp on the far side of the Arctic Circle. No, none of that bothers me. It’s the latrines.”

“War would definitely be more fun without latrines,” said Von Drehle.

The two sat over rude holes in a rude bench over a rude ditch not a hundred meters from their new empire, itself quite rude. It consisted of six tents in a muddy field, each with room for four men. In the squalid heat of July in Ukraine, the tents were unendurable, even with the flaps pinned up. Many of the jägers preferred to sleep outside during the hot nights.

They ate at the mess of the 14th Panzergrenadier, whose vast tank maintenance facility they abutted. Such was the reward for the heroes of the Bridge at Chortkiv. At every minute of every day, the roar of Panzers and Panthers could be heard while Division Workshop struggled to keep as many of the machines in play as possible, which meant the beasts turned over their engines once every few hours to keep the hot-weather-thinned oil in circulation. All well and good for the war effort, but the practical consequence was the constant torrent of exhaust fumes at the 21 Para village.

“I thought we were heroes,” said Wili. “You have at least, what, fifteen or twenty Iron Crosses? You may even be a major.”

“Have to look into the major issue,” said Karl. “I do miss the glorious bathrooms of the Andrewski Palace. I miss the sheets, the decor, the sense of order. This is like a Hitler Youth camp in 1936. Next they’ll have us singing ‘Horst Wessel.’ ”

“You should have shot that little Arabian bugger,” said Wili.

“Think of the paperwork,” said Karl.

“Speaking of paperwork, I think I’m done with today’s operation. I mention it because I seem to lack paperwork.”

Without looking, Karl handed over the latest Signal . Wili paged through it quickly and came up with an article called “National Socialism: Its Spiritual Essence.”

“This will do the trick,” he said, and ripped the pages out. He got through the engagement quite nicely, then enjoyed applying a heroic photo of The Leader to his posterior. He reassembled kit and stepped down from his throne and pushed beyond a sheet hung for privacy. Ouch, bad news. A Kübelwagen had just entered the compound bearing an earnest 14th Panzergrenadier lieutenant. The young man had stopped for directions, and a couple of lounging Green Devils pointed him to Karl, who was emerging from the latrines.

“Major,” said the young man, stepping from the vehicle that had just delivered him. He threw up a completely unenthusiastic “Heil Hitler” salute that looked like a broken-winged sparrow fluttering its bad feathers at a predator, and Karl responded with his normal impression of a drunken clown waving at a lady in the stands whom he wanted to boff. So much for Nazi ceremony in the regular military.

“So you are a major,” said Wili.

“Apparently,” said Karl. “Yes, Lieutenant, what can I do for you?”

“Sir, the general requires your presence. Tomorrow at 1400.”

“Say,” said Wili to the youngster, “you don’t happen to have any copies of Signal lying about? We need it for the inspiration.”

Lviv

Bus Station

THE PRESENT

His spleen hurt, his head hurt, his lips were dry, he was out of breath. That was bus travel in Ukraine. The ancient vehicle, finding a last few potholes to further test its shocks against, turned in to the—well, “station” wasn’t quite the right word. “Station” connotes order, discipline, coherence, a system. Here, the boarding and deboarding process appeared to take place in some kind of Darwinian sink where the buses just butted and bluffed and brazened their way close to the building until they could go no farther. Consequently, the yard was a riot of buses as they jammed this way and that at odd angles, the whole thing mad and fraught. It looked like a bus station after the end of civilization.

The driver nosed his way in, honking and cursing and maneuvering heroically until at last there was no farther to go. End of ride. He turned the thing off—the last dying breath of low-wattage air-conditioning died without a whisper—and cranked open the doors to let his passengers out into the melee.

Late last night, Bob had dumped the car in a copse of trees outside of a town whose name he could not remember, much less spell. He’d hidden in the same trees until full light, then moseyed into town, trying to look inconspicuous in his jeans and gray polo shirt. He’d seen a batch of people waiting in the square and joined them. When a bus came, he got aboard. The driver demanded payment, as this was no longer socialism, and Bob, ever the ugly American, shoved a wad of bills at him, watched him harvest them, and had no idea one way or the other if he’d been robbed blind or given a generous discount. Then the three hours of torture began.

He was pleased, at least, that Lviv turned out to be the bus destination, remembering the pleasant old-town evening of a few days before. Plan: find a hotel room, pay cash, call Reilly, set up a meet in Yaremche, call Stronski, arrange that quick exit, get to Yaremche, and then get out of town. It seemed simple enough. He waited as the pile-up to exit cleared, then eventually stepped free and enjoyed a breath of fresh air, however laced with exhaust fumes. Meanwhile, honking and shouting, shoving, rushing, dodging, broken-field running, various funny walks, and lots of old ladies prevailed in the labyrinth between the buses as passengers from his own and all other buses attempted to negotiate a way out without getting crushed by entering or exiting vehicles. Bob took his time, not shoving, not shouting, trusting that any direction was as good as another and basically going the way of least resistance, and that was when he got shot.

It felt like someone whacked him hard in the side with a near-molten fireplace poker. But there was no sound, even if, ahead of him, he saw a pop of debris as a bullet hole erupted into the skin of bus.