Dan Smith - The Child Thief

I looked at Dimitri, whose face was turned towards me, his mouth biting at the snow as he tried to draw breath. I could hear the wheezing gasp of a chest wound, the gurgle of blood in his throat as my brother-in-law gagged and grasped at his own soul. His face carried a confused expression. Even in his last moments of life he wouldn’t understand what had happened. One moment he’d been standing, and the next he was on his face, drowning in his own blood, unable to keep the air in his body. I held his eyes for a moment, seeing the fear that consumed him. Blood had begun to leak out of him, pooling around his chest, melting into the snow.

When I looked away from his eyes, glancing across his body, I saw the place where the bullet had exited his back. A hole in the fabric of his coat, the tattered strands of fabric torn outwards, tipped with flecks of blood and tissue from the body it had sought to protect from the cold weather. I stared at the hole and thought about the way he had fallen without a sound. It had been a good shot, probably at the limit of the accuracy of the rifle that had fired it. No. Not a good shot. It had been a perfect shot. I was sure the bullet had struck Dimitri exactly where the shooter had wanted.

It was not a shot intended to kill immediately. I’d seen men shot this way before. I remembered that the first German sharpshooters we had encountered – armed with magnifying scopes and silent tactics – had used a similar technique. They used camouflage and patience, steel masks and a well placed bullet to wound men with the intention of drawing out further targets. They enticed us out to try to save our comrades, and I was sure that’s what this man was doing now.

‘Stay as low as you can’ I said. And as I spoke, something hit the ground beside me, pummelling into the snow, kicking it up in a small plume.

‘He’s fixed on us.’ I looked across at my sons. ‘We have to move away.’

Petro was breathing hard. He was looking to me for answers, perhaps an easy way out of this.

‘Stay calm,’ I told him, but I knew it was almost impossible.

‘What about Dimitri?’ Petro asked.

‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’ I looked at Dimitri again, his pale face, his mouth still moving. ‘If we try, we’ll be shot too.’

Dimitri’s pupils were wide, the sucking sounds now coming less regularly. He moaned a low and lamenting sound – a sorrow for his inability to save his daughter, for his guilt at having murdered an innocent man and for his fear of death and whatever might lie beyond it. Dimitri’s life was escaping into the cold air, and he knew it. It was leaking out of him as an icicle melts away when the season changes. Fragment by fragment. Drop by drop. And soon it would be gone.

‘Nothing we can do?’ Petro asked, but he didn’t look at me. He couldn’t tear his eyes from Dimitri. ‘You mean he’s going to—’

‘Yes. Even if we could get to him, there’s nothing we could do. We have to move. Now.’

I was certain the marksman knew where we were. He had watched us from his spot, waited for us to line up just below the crest of the rise, and he’d taken his first shot. Why he had chosen Dimitri, I didn’t know, but he had seen the rest of us drop into the deep snow and would have a rough idea of where we were. He was continuing to shoot, perhaps thinking he might catch another of us. Pierce the deep snow and hit whatever lay behind it.

I turned my focus to my sons, remembering what Natalia had said: that the boys would be safe with me.

‘Stay low,’ I told them, keeping my voice measured. ‘And stay calm. That’s very important, do you understand?’

Another shot hit the ground in front, and all three of us flinched.

‘Take off your packs, keep your rifles, and roll, crawl, whichever is easiest. He can’t see us – he’s guessing where we are – but we have to move away from here.’

Lying as we were, in our elevated position, we were deep enough in the snow to be out of the marksman’s line of sight, and I knew that if we moved away and back, he would have no way of knowing where we were.

‘Go now,’ I said as a fourth shot hit the ground to Dimitri’s right, smashing into his hand this time. It was a probing shot, but it had found a target. A spray of blood fanned across the snow, whipped across Petro’s face. Dimitri managed only a moan, all feeling faded, but Petro pulled back with a sudden movement.

‘Stay low!’ I said. ‘Ignore it. Be strong.’ I looked right at Petro, trying to reassure him. ‘It’s going to be fine. We’ll be fine.’

Petro stared, spots of Dimitri’s blood glistening on his scarf and hat, flecks of it on his eyelids.

‘Tell me you’re all right,’ I said.

‘I’m all right.’ Petro nodded.

‘Then start moving back. Away from here. But stay low.’

I shuffled back and to the side, moving away from Dimitri, following Viktor and Petro away from the spot where my brother-in-law was dying.

Another shot, this time closer to Petro, making him cry out in surprise and fear. The shooter was trying his luck, placing shots to either side.

‘He’s going to shoot us,’ Petro said. ‘He’s going to kill us all. We have to hurry, we have to run .’

‘No,’ I told him. ‘Stay low. Don’t try to look. Don’t run. If you run, he’ll kill you.’

I continued to move sideways, keeping my head low, my face to the ground, and when I was a good ten metres or so from Dimitri’s body, I stopped.

Two more shots hit the earth between me and Dimitri, confirming that the shooter couldn’t see us., If he could, the way he shot, he would have killed all four of us by now.

Viktor and Petro stopped moving when they saw me halt, and they looked to me for instruction.

To my left, Dimitri was lying in a wide stain of dark blood. He was looking at us, his eyes still alive, his mouth still moving, but he would die soon. I didn’t think about my sister-in-law Svetlana, waiting for her husband to come home. I didn’t think about Dariya, taken from her parents, terrified, hoping for her father to come to her rescue. I thought about how I was going to get my sons out of this situation alive. I needed to get them back into the line of trees and find some protection.

‘Where is he?’ Viktor asked. ‘You see him?’

‘Quiet. We don’t want anything to give away our position.’ I closed my eyes for a moment and thought about what I’d seen just before the first shot. That movement at the line of the hedge. I’d thought it could have been a bird, some kind of wild animal, but I didn’t think so any more. It had been our assassin, settling for his shot.

In my mind I saw the lie of the land, imagined the spot where the man had been. I considered looking, taking a shot, but I knew it would be a mistake. The shooter had a good idea of where we were, and he would be watching. There was a chance he had moved to another position. He had continued to fire probing shots at us, but he had also forced us to keep our heads low as he perhaps found a new place to conceal himself.

If I were the one pointing a rifle at this place, it’s what I would have done, and now I would be waiting. If I had a partner, he would be scanning the distance with his glasses, or if I were alone, I’d be watching the area, keeping the stock close to my face, my eye close to the sight. I would be looking for any movement. Movement is the key. Movement is visible.

‘What do we do?’ Viktor asked, trying to conceal his fear.

‘Nothing. Do nothing. Stay low, that’s all.’

I put my head in my arms and thought about what I was going to do. The man who I believed to be the child thief had every advantage except one. Just a couple of metres behind us there was a shallow dip in the land, providing a natural shield of frozen dirt beneath the snow. If we could get to it, we would have some protection from his bullets.