Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rajioon.

To him we belong, to him return.

Having spoken directly to Allah by means of a dua, as such direct declarations were called, Salid came out of his religious trance. It was still the same, only it was five seconds later.

The senior group leader SS lay on his side on the narrow width of the bridge, in a gigantic puddle of blood that soaked his clothes and gleamed in the dull light of the occluded sun; some of it slid through the slats and drained down to the swirling waters below. There was so much blood you could smell it. The corpse’s eyes were open, as was his mouth. Blood ran from his nose and welled into his mouth from his throat but had not overspilled its boundaries yet.

Where could the shot have come from?

It had to have come from a long, long way out, so far out that its noise largely dissipated before it so tragically arrived.

Salid blinked, hoping for the arrival of a clarification. Men looked at him in stupefied horror, waiting for orders. He himself wished someone were there to give crisp, concise, well-thought-out orders. But in the absence of Dr. Groedl, he was the senior officer.

He could think only of himself.

The man I was sent to protect is dead despite my best efforts. I will be blamed. I am, after all, the outsider, the one who does not belong. My greatest sponsor was Dr. Groedl, and now he is gone, the sniper has escaped, I have shamed my father, my grandfather, my cousin the Mufti, my family, my faith, my destiny. The Germans will shoot me for gross incompetence.

Allah, send me wisdom, I pray to Thee help your son Salid at his hour of maximum terror among the infidels, to whom he is nothing really but a nigger of no account who, given responsibility, has failed it utterly.

“Sir, what—”

It was Ackov.

Salid tried to think.

What? What? What?

The dogs.

“The dogs will find her. Nothing has changed. She is up there, somewhere above the burned-out line. No, no, the bullet hit him frontally. The shot had to come from there!” He pointed to a much farther flank of pine-carpeted mountain a full thousand yards distant.“Where’s the field telephone?”

Ackov waved over a man, who had a box containing the Model 33 field phone and the long cord. The field telephone, in its hard-shell Bakelite container, was the primary communications device of German ground forces, as it was far less fragile than the radio, far less temperamental, and wire could be laid quickly to put units at a great distance in contact. Its batteries were more reliable, it wasn’t as heavy, and it never blew a tube. Salid opened it, took out the phone, and turned the little crank to send a signal to the other end.

“Graufeldt here.” Graufeldt was a steady lance corporal, one of the few ethnic Germans in Police Battalion.

“Did you hear the shot?”

“Yes sir. It wasn’t from our area.”

“The dogs, Graufeldt.”

“Sir, I’ve already released the dog teams, and they’re headed in the direction of the shot. They will pick up any scent. Since the shot was so far away, I directed the men to dump their machine pistols and packs and proceed under armament of pistols. I thought they’d have to move quickly and stamina would be the determining factor and—”

“Yes, yes, good. How much wire have you got?”

“Two spools. Another half kilometer. Should I move with them?”

“Yes, stay as close as you can.”

“Yes sir.”

“Keep me informed. I will be moving soon and beyond the reach of the field phones. You will communicate by flare pistol if you catch her, and you will proceed along the high path to the choke point. If nothing else, your presence will drive her into the parachutists.”

“Yes sir.”

“Good man, Graufeldt.”

“Sir, how did—”

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters now is only that we apprehend the woman.”

“Yes sir. End transmit here, as I move to new position.”

Now Salid was thinking more clearly. He handed the phone back.

“Sir, should we mount up for the trip to the Gap?”

“Not yet, Ackov. Have the men roust all the villagers and lock them in the church.”

“Yes sir.”

“Then have a crew use the Flammenwerfer to burn all the buildings. I want the place razed. I want there to be no record of the place where Senior Group Leader Groedl was murdered. There will be no monuments here.”

“Yes sir. And the church, sir? With the villagers.”

“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?