Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

As far as the scouting duties, they, too, took care of themselves. Wili had drawn up a master rotation way back in Italy, and though much reduced of manpower, it still governed turns by which, at any given moment, six men were on sentry duty. They moved to places beyond the northern outskirts of the position, on the assumption that if this mythical Red-White Witch were to come, she would come from that direction. If she cut lower, good for her and too bad for her stalkers, as she’d evade. But the betting was that she’d head to the Womb if on the run, for the simple reason that beyond it would be safety, since any Germans would be interested only in fleeing to Uzhgorod far below that side of the Carpathians and wouldn’t be looking about for snipers. She could go to ground for a few days, wait till the situation had calmed, then sneak over the crest and link up with Red Army units.

Pipes were smoked, as were Effekt, Ring, and Select cigarettes; uniform regs were ignored; some genius really put in a hard day’s labor making the latrine as pleasant as possible and built a shower out of a six-gallon water can; schnapps was drunk; candy and cookies and Ukrainian bread were eaten; and generally it was not a bad little excursion. Jokes were told, card games with penny-ante stakes were played, memories were recalled, masturbation ignored, there was a whole pile of Der Signal magazines to use for clean-up duties.

All preparations done, all duties fulfilled, there was not much left to do but the eternal ordeal, waiting for action that might or might not come. However, the next morning, after an eventless evening, the odor of burning trees drifted up, carrying the information that the SS Police Brigade was back.

“Wili,” said Karl, “they must be close to done with those damned things. Take the Kübel down with Deneker and see if you can pry our Flammenwerfer loose. Get two if you can. They’ll buy us extra time if it comes to that.”

“Be back in a couple of hours.”

“Bring some Ukraine gals and beer back, too, Wili, if you can,” one of the parachute infantrymen hollered, to the delight of all.

The run to Yaremche was easy enough, just a few kilometers, especially now that the cart had been detached from the Kübel. Wili and Deneker arrived in an hour and a half, sighting nothing on the long crank down the road. They found the village shielded in smoke, though not as densely as before, and could see crews deploying Flammenwerfers on a last stand of trees, which blazed almost colorlessly in the hot sun, sending out waves of heat. But where there had been ten or so, now only two of the fire-spurting units were in play. In fact, six of them lay in the shade of the hut that Wili saw was Salid’s command location on the Yaremche road, for he noted that a hole had been punched in the roof and the triangular wire unit that formed the aerial of a radio transmitter extended through it. A panzerwagen and a truck also denoted the spot as important.

A couple of SS fellows came out, including a sergeant like himself, swarthy fellows, familiar in their battle tunics, though foreign in the silhouette of some kind of curving Arabian sword on their tunic collar. It was a festival of camouflage, with the spattered mud pattern the SS favored competing in busyness with the Parachutists’ bonebag splinter pattern, splashes versus slashes. In Wili’s opinion, the splinter was far more amusing than the splatter.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” said Wili. “I’m Bober, Twenty-one Para, Battlegroup Von Drehle, from up at the canyon position. I’m here for one of those Flammenwerfers. General Von Bink set it up for us to relieve you of one. I’d take two if I could get ’em. Ivan does not like flamethrowers.”

It developed that none of the SS men spoke German, only Serbian. But in a few minutes—the SS guys meanwhile offered the parachutists some water and cigarettes—a man with both languages arrived.

Wili repeated his request, the German speaker translated it to Serbian, and the answer, in time, came back through the same conduit.

“Do you know Von Bink is no longer in command of anything? I can’t let you have the equipment without my commanding officer’s okay. And he’s currently occupied.”

“Please,” said Wili, “I don’t have time for any runaround. Think of the order as coming from Command, not Von Bink, but we can’t wait here for your guy to show up. What is he, shitting in the woods or screwing a whore?”

The humor did not translate well, even if Deneker thought it was funny. And the Serbian NCO started to make some kind of excuse, so Wili cut him off airily with, “Look, let’s make this easy. Hop in, we’ll drive around and find your CO, he can give you the okay, and we’ll be out of here before nightfall. No one knows when Ivan’s coming, and no one knows how fast he’ll get here. We need those weapons on our line.”

The Serbs looked at each other, and Wili picked up some kind of odd signal between them, as if they weren’t sure whether to comply, were uncomfortable with the idea of compliance, but at the same time didn’t want to get in some kind of dispute with the two parachutists, which might have its own ramifications.

In time, the senior NCO agreed, if reluctantly, and Deneker climbed into the tiny backseat while the Serbian sergeant—Ackov seemed to be his name—climbed in front.

“Point the way,” said Wili, and Ackov pointed into Yaremche proper. It was the usual Ukraine shit, a lot of shoddily constructed wooden houses with hay roofs, each with a chicken yard, the grid more approximate than precise, though the waterfall and the pedestrian bridge over the river that cut the village in two was an interesting touch. No one had trimmed grass or pulled weeds this century, which the precision-oriented Bober found offensive. No one had planted flowers, no one had raked plots or swept the wooden sidewalks. Such peasants! What could you do with them? Before they reached the bridge, they reached the village’s only substantial structure, a church, also wooden and not constructed of stone; it looked like a strong wind would blow it down. Parked in front stood another camouflaged panzerwagen with a tall radio antenna, clearly the command vehicle of Police Battalion.

“Hmm,” Wili said to Deneker, “I guess our fellow is a pilgrim to the holy land,” and Deneker laughed, because both knew Salid was a Muslim.

Outside, a couple of 13th Mountain SS thugs stood guard with MP-40s, but under Ackov’s nod, they cleared the door, and Wili and Deneker stepped in behind the Serbian sergeant.

Wili expected religious darkness lit only by stained glass, but that was not what he got. He got illumination. At the far end of the church, where the altar once was the centerpiece, a bright beam—dazzlingly bright—defined a rectangle, and it was so bright that its harshness bled the image of color. Laboring in the pitiless glare, three husky Serb SS men, stripped of tunic and smock and down to undershirts, labored sweatily with hammer and nail to erect some sort of wooden gantry, its crossbeam perhaps seven feet off the ground. They were not accomplished carpenters, and the construction looked fragile, supported by a clumsy network of buttressing lumber. But they seemed to be nearing completion.

Then Wili noticed what appeared at first to be some sort of mechanism on a tripod, but since it was outside the zone of illumination, its identity wasn’t clear. He stepped closer, and it resolved itself into a moving picture camera.

Next to it stood a cluster of men who turned at the intrusion. They were all SS, but only one was in Mountain Division camouflage, and he came forward as Ackov hailed him, and Wili recognized him as Sturmbannführer Salid, with his dark glossy hair, his penetrating eyes, the delta of mustache against his mouth, under his prominent nose. His skin was coppery, his expression so earnest and duty-driven that Wili doubted he’d ever laughed at anything in his life.