Antanas Sileika - Underground

The slayer walked and talked for so long that he began to feel like a fool. A light rain started to come down and then grew heavier, drops gathering and falling from the bare lower branches of the pine trees. A degree or two lower and the rain would turn to snow. He was cold, and the boredom of this task irritated him more as the vodka wore off. He was becoming hungry too. But the lieutenant signalled to him to keep it up. The lieutenant was a patient man.

The faint smell of smoke reached him. Not tobacco. The slayer looked around carefully, but he could not see where it was coming from; the wisps were too small to be visible in the rain. He looked up to the lieutenant and signalled to him. The Cheka soldier could smell the smoke as well.

There were men below the ground somewhere, burning documents.

The slayer followed the smell to where it was strongest. The damned rain was dripping off the end of his cap, distracting him, but he cleared away a few leaves, scraped aside a sheaf of pine needles and revealed a clay pipe set in the earth. The ventilation hole showed the smoke more clearly once the leaves were gone. The pipe was too narrow to drop a grenade down it, but a shot fired below might get lucky.

He gestured for the lieutenant to come over and see for himself, but the lieutenant refused. Instead, he had four men go back to the farm, and they returned with rakes. They set about clearing the leaves and pine needles from the ground, exposing two more air vents and, finally, the lid of the opening, which had been covered with a woven matt of moss and pine needles. Once it was exposed, the lieutenant assigned three men to cover the exit.

“Keep talking,” said the lieutenant, and so the slayer walked from air vent to air vent, cajoling the partisans, urging them to give up. As the hours passed, the soldiers became ever more restless. The light was already noticeably poorer by early afternoon. Finally the lieutenant instructed the slayer to stuff a rag into each of the air vents to speed up the deliberations below.

“Did you recognize the voice?” Lukas asked.

Elena shook her head.

“It’s Ignacas. I’m sure of it. I just wish I could get my fingers around his neck.”

“Let’s find a way out of this,” said Elena, her lips pressed close to Lukas’s ear. He looked into her eyes. There was only a single candle burning inside the bunker, its light unreflected by the bare wooden walls. He looked to see if any of the others had heard her. What she said was almost treasonous, a suggestion that they should take their chances with the amnesty.

She understood his disapproving look but refused to avert her eyes. They had talked often of this moment, trying to anticipate how the end would come—to lessen their fear by rehearsing it. But there was no way to accustom herself to her own death, especially not now.

Life had become harder and harder over the past year. So many of their kind had died. Some were taken prisoner and Flint’s band had had to relocate more than once in case the captured partisans broke down under torture and betrayed the locations of the bunkers. But in a way it had been an exhilarating time too. She and Lukas fought together and slept together, and she had never imagined she could live so wholly in a relationship. Flint sent them out on missions together, because the anxiety of one was always high if the other was gone. They were both husband and wife and comrades, and she was not afraid as long as he was with her. Until now.

She had hoped that death, if it came, would catch them unawares— a swarm of bullets in an ambush. These last few hours and this slow reflection on their impending death had been unbearable. The danger nauseated her. Before she married she might have accepted it, but now she wanted to hold on to life more than ever before.

Elena was the only woman among ten people who sat tensely in the bunker. The most important documents were burned and the air was getting scarce since the slayer had plugged the air vents, but they did not spread out, although someone should have been listening by the other two trap doors to determine if they had been uncovered as well.

The bunker was a command post, with a small storage room and a latrine in addition to the room where they were huddling. It was a fine piece of work, for all the good it did them.

The fact that they were still alive was contrary to standard operational procedure, which called for partisans to blow themselves up with grenades as soon as all documents were burnt. The grenades were to be held close to their faces.

The thought of destroying Elena’s features was intolerable to Lukas, but what choice did he have? Elena’s brown hair curled to her shoulders, though she gathered it with a band at the back. He knew her brown eyes and lashes, the fine nose and strong cheekbones. He should not think of details like that. One should simply do what one must do. Lukas held her hand as they waited.

The feel of her hand in his was bittersweet.

Flint should have made sure they were dead by now. Lakstingala would have reminded him of his duty, but Lakstingala was not there, off on some mission. It would be within Flint’s rights to drop a grenade to stun them and then finish them off. But he seemed unwilling to do that, delaying as long as he could, having them search the bunker’s two rooms for the smallest piece of paper, empty their pockets of anything that might give them away.

There was precious little air in the bunker now. The partisan named Vilkas had wanted to fire a shot up through the air vent to dislodge the rag that blocked it, but that would have been a fool’s game. He was restless and needed to do something.

“The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be,” he said. He was the toughest of them all, a realist. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Just a moment,” said Lukas. “They found the main hatch but not the back ones. We could take them by surprise and try to shoot our way out.”

“Too risky,” said Vilkas.

Flint should have been leading the discussion, but he hesitated. No one talked about accepting the amnesty, but it was hard not to consider it.

“What are we waiting for?” In one smooth movement Vilkas drew his Walther from his pocket, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

The smoke and the noise made them jump, but even in his shock Lukas noted that the shot blew out the back of Vilkas’s head but not the front. To protect Vilkas’s parents, Lukas reached for the butt of his light machine gun and smashed in the face of his dead comrade. The others looked away, but Flint did not stop him. Elena made a sound of disgust in her throat and moved to the far corner of the bunker.

The slayer formerly known as Ignacas walked up to the lieutenant.

“They’re starting to kill themselves. I suggest we throw a couple of grenades through the hatch and then wait. Some of them will survive and we can take them for questioning.”

“How many did the farmer say they were?”

“He didn’t say. A lot, whatever that means.”

“Once the hotheads have shot themselves, the others might give up. We wait.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

Just before nightfall, the hatch flipped open and a stick came up with a white handkerchief on the end. It seemed unnaturally bright in the last light of day.

“You’ve made the right decision,” called the slayer. He stood behind the three men whose automatics were trained on the opening. They lay on the ground, but he knelt behind to see over them and to speak to the surrendering partisans as they stepped out of the bunker.

“Remember your discipline,” the lieutenant shouted in Russian. He didn’t want anyone getting nervous and firing.

“Show your hands first as you come out of the hole,” said the slayer.