Dan Smith - The Child Thief

With that done, I turned so I was face on to the ridge, and shuffled closer to the edge, pushing the rifle in front of me, keeping it sideways on so all I had to do was swivel it out, raise my head and put my eye to the scope.

I carefully parted the snow directly in front of me so the ground was clear for the weapon. I took a long breath, closed my eyes and said a short prayer. Then I spoke quietly but clearly.

‘Ready.’

For a moment I heard nothing, then a crack. A familiar sound that split the air at almost the same time as Viktor swore, and I turned my rifle to point down the steppe, resting it on the ridge. From my slightly elevated position, I could see Viktor and Petro lying several metres to my left.

I estimated where I thought the shot had come from, somewhere in the line of the hedge, and I imagined the shooter lying prone, working the bolt of his rifle, preparing for his next shot. I hoped his attention had been so focused on Viktor that he hadn’t noticed me add my profile to the land.

And then Petro raised his hat. The shooter would think he had hit his mark, that we were panicking, moving erratically, looking to help our comrade. He would see the second movement as a mistake upon which he could capitalise, and he fired again.

This time I saw him.

I saw the muzzle flash from the rifle, and I put my eye to the scope, magnifying the spot where the child thief had chosen to wait for us. But I had been wrong. The shooter wasn’t by the line of hedge that marked the end of this field. He was much further away, hidden in the treeline beyond. A small pile of dead wood, a fallen tree trunk with protruding branches. And behind it, the outline of a man either dressed entirely in white or half-buried beneath the snow.

I eased the rifle back so the snow on either side of it would hide the muzzle flash as much as possible, then I took another deep breath, let the air escape slowly as I steadied the rifle and squeezed the trigger.

The German rifle kicked against my shoulder and in my scope I saw the snow rise in a fountain beside the prone man, many metres away. Without taking my eye from the scope, I chambered another round while calculating the adjustment I’d need to make to hit my target. But already the figure was moving, the snow breaking, the dark shape rolling away from the spot where my bullet had hit the ground. This was not to be a shooting competition; we were not going to trade shots. Escape was the child thief’s intention now.

‘Get up,’ I shouted as I prepared for a second shot. ‘Quickly. Over here. Now.’ I had to keep shooting, keep the man suppressed while I brought my sons to safety.

‘Now!’

I heard Viktor and Petro’s movements in the snow, heard their heavy breathing as they dropped into the trough beside me, but I ignored them, concentrating on the figure down there in the trees.

Hitting a target at this range was difficult enough, but now he was moving, it was an impossibility. I fired again anyway, seeing the snow erupt close to the rolling figure, then the child thief took his chance. He knew I would be working the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge, pushing a new one into the chamber, so he rose to his feet, rushing back into the trees.

I fired once more at the escaping figure, seeing a plume of snow and bark tearing away from one of the trees, and then he was gone.

‘Did you get him?’ Viktor asked. ‘Did you shoot him?’

I withdrew my rifle and ducked back behind the dip. ‘No.’

‘Did you even see him?’ Petro said.

‘I saw him. But he was too far away. I missed him.’

‘But he’s gone?’

‘If it was me, I’d be looking for somewhere else to shoot from.’

‘Then we should move?’

‘Let me think.’ I had been shot at before, but this was different. There were factors I’d never had to deal with. I had to consider my sons and their mother waiting for them at home. And I had to think about Dariya, whose father now lay on the steppe, his remaining blood freezing in his veins.

I took the cloth from my head and put my hat back on, telling Viktor and Petro to do the same. ‘We may be here a while; we can’t afford to get cold.’

‘Shit, look at this.’ Viktor showed me his hat, put his hand inside it and poked his finger through the hole the bullet had made. ‘I never saw anyone shoot like that. He has to be using a scope like yours, Papa. No one could shoot like that without one.’

‘Even with a scope, he’s good.’ I said. ‘Impressive.’

Petro inspected his own hat, holding it out so we could see there was a hole in that too. ‘He meant to kill us like he killed Dimitri. Why would he do that, Papa?’

‘Put them on,’ I said.

Petro hesitated, thinking what would have happened if the hat had been on his head. He looked at me and took a deep breath, blowing it out with puffed cheeks. ‘Shit,’ he said, putting it onto his head, grabbing the flaps and tugging it tight. ‘Shit.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I told them. ‘We’ll get out of this.’

‘How?’ Viktor asked.

I didn’t reply.

‘You don’t know, do you?’

‘I’m thinking about it.’

‘We’re stuck here until dark,’ Viktor said. ‘It’s the only way we can be safe. We have to wait here until dark and then we have to go back.’

‘Go back?’ Petro said.

‘That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it, Papa?’ Viktor asked. ‘We have to go home.’

‘No,’ Petro said to his brother. He was shocked by what had happened and he was afraid, but he was surprised at Viktor’s words. ‘We have to keep going. Dariya needs us more than ever now.’

‘We can’t walk out there, onto the steppe, while someone is waiting to take a shot at us,’ Viktor said. ‘And the way he shoots…’ He shook his head. ‘He shoots even better than Papa.’

‘No one shoots better than Papa,’ Petro replied. ‘Anyway, I didn’t mean walk down there now . I meant wait until dark, then follow.’

‘You don’t think he’ll be waiting somewhere in the woods?’

‘It’s too hard in the trees,’ said Petro. ‘That’s why he waited until we reached the open field.’

‘He can shoot us just as easily in the woods as he can in the field,’ said Viktor. ‘Isn’t that right, Papa?’

I nodded but I was only half listening. I was trying to think of a way out of this spot. We couldn’t afford to stay here for too long because there was a possibility the shooter was looking for a better position – perhaps one from which he could see us where we were right now – and if that were the case, it was only a matter of time before he was able to take his shot.

The other problem was the cold. The temperature was low but not low enough. A few degrees colder and we would have been all right, but at that time of day the temperature was just on the wrong side for us. The snow was not dry and powdery, but wet, and I could already feel it soaking into my clothes. Our bodies were warm enough now to melt the snow beneath us but it would drench us and we’d grow colder and colder. We couldn’t afford to wait for that to happen.

‘We can’t go back. We can’t leave Dariya,’ said Petro. ‘We have to bring her home.’

Viktor spoke quietly: ‘Maybe we do have to leave her. There’s no sense in us all being killed. ‘I mean… maybe she’s already…’

‘What?’ Petro would know how his brother was feeling because he felt it too. Viktor was looking for the right thing to do. He was weighing our options, just as Petro was doing, but they’d each come to a different conclusion. ‘Where’s your fighting spirit? It should be me wanting to go home and you wanting to go on.’

‘I’m as willing to fight as anyone, you know that,’ said Viktor, ‘but I’m not stupid. I won’t run into a bullet.’