David Robbins - Last Citadel

Plokhoi wheeled his horse, forty-two others turned with him. Katya guided Anna to the rear of the partisans riding off into the starry fields. The yellow light of flames from the burning house flickered across their backs.

Five miles away in a neighbor village, Plokhoi collected fifteen more fighters. He did not have to burn any homes there, he left the place dim and intact. The village starosta himself stepped forward and joined the partisan band. Standing beside Plokhoi, the elder announced it was time to rise. His followers, most of them family, brought along rifles they’d cached from the battles of the past year or stolen from careless German garrisons in the area. These men mounted good horses and rode away from their wives and peasant lives with a flair that struck Katya as both brave and comic. The new recruits raised the spirits of the ten farmers Plokhoi had commandeered from the other village an hour before. Katya rode in the middle of the expanded pack. These newest men surrounded her, the only woman in the cell; it seemed natural for these farmers who were riding off to be heroes to protect a woman, even a partisan woman who rode away with them.

Plokhoi led the cell into the center of a vast bean field, away from any village or road. Far off, on the edges of the field, the lights of a vehicle or two bumped over dirt trails. These were German security patrols making a half-hearted effort, none of them wanted to encounter a partisan group in the dark. None of the riders made a sound or lit a cigarette, the new men picked up the clandestine ways quickly. Plokhoi dismounted, carrying his box radio.

Colonel Bad squatted in their middle, hidden by the many haunches and hooves. The radio came to life and Plokhoi’s features glowed lime by the dials. He held a receiver to his ear, a microphone to his lips, and muttered, talking with partisan headquarters somewhere. She could not hear him, she only caught him saying one thing: ‘I have a druzhiny again.’

Plokhoi finished with his radio and took his seat in the saddle.

‘We have orders,’ he said. ‘North of us, the Germans have broken through between Syrtsev and Alekseyevka. They’re stepping up their rail traffic to keep supplied. We’re to move to the Borisovka line and break the tracks in as many places as we can.’ He checked his watch. ‘We need to move if we’re going to get it done tonight. Ivan, how much wire have we got?’

The heavy-set partisan reached behind him to pat his saddlebags. ‘One,’ he said. Two others in the crowd did the same and counted off.

‘Three reels, Colonel,’ Ivan concluded. ‘Who’s got the C-3?’

Five men sounded off.

‘Caps?’

Another five said yes.

‘Alright,’ Plokhoi said. Without another word, he urged his horse out of the center of the riders. The partisans fell in behind him. Plokhoi did not break into a canter, he kept his band at a brisk walk across the bean field. They moved with eerie quiet for fifty-seven riders, like a moon shadow. Katya had no idea that for days she’d been riding with men carrying explosives, blasting wire, and caps. She didn’t know much about such things, but she guessed these were dangerous things to gallop with in your saddlebags. This partisan cadre wasn’t just stolid men with rifles roving the countryside: They were a bunch of disassembled bombs waiting to be put together, aimed, and exploded. Riding in their dark core, with them spread out on both sides of her like wings, she felt a little like a pilot again, part of a dark shape gliding through the night, loaded with bombs, heading for the target.

Skinny Daniel, big Ivan, and glum Josef were never far from her. Plokhoi must have assigned her to them, since they’d rescued her instead of Leonid. A punishment, perhaps. That would explain Josef’s instant dislike. She pushed Anna through the crowded partisans, to pull alongside Plokhoi.

‘Witch,’ he said.

‘Colonel. Has there been any information about Lieutenant Lumanov? On your radio?’

‘No.’

‘Have you asked?’

‘No.’

‘Colonel…’

‘I take orders. When I’m told to pick up a downed pilot, I send men to do it. When he disappears, I send men to do something else. Watch the sky tomorrow, Witch. There’s a downed pilot every two minutes. What do you expect?’

There was no coldness in the man’s voice. He expressed what all of them knew and feared most, that each was expendable in the higher goal of defending Russia. So what did Katya want more? To search for Leonid or to stop German supply trains from feeding the enemy’s armies? She wanted to say Leonid; Katya thought, Couldn’t it be that way, just once?

Plokhoi watched her with an intent expression.

‘Tonight I’m sending two teams, five men in each. I can’t risk more than that. You’ll go with…’

‘I know. Ivan, Daniel, and Josef.’

‘What’s the matter, Witch? You don’t like your bodyguards?’

‘I don’t need bodyguards.’

‘We’ll see. I’ll send along one new man with each team. You take the starosta . He’s got spunk, that one.’

Katya knew she could trust the starosta . He could not be the traitor, none of the villagers could, they’d just joined the partisans tonight. But what about Plokhoi himself? Why doesn’t he want her to find Leonid? What is he afraid of? Is Colonel Bad himself the informant? If she finds Leonid, will she find the secret to the spy in their cell?

Katya nodded. She glanced at the radio, the size of a bread box, strapped to Plokhoi’s back alongside his carbine. The metal box was the only way to find Leonid, to speak into it and beg for whoever was the power behind these murky partisans to send more men to find him. The radio voice, the unseen authority in the air, would ask her, What do you want, Katerina Berkovna? What would she answer?

Plokhoi said, ‘Go back, Witch. We’ll be splitting up in ten minutes.’

Big Ivan lay in the dirt beside Katya.

‘Pour some more,’ he urged in a whisper.

Katya tipped the little bottle of vegetable oil and dribbled it over the man’s meaty hands.

‘See,’ he spoke with the voice of a purring bear, ‘the C-3 is hard like a brick when you take it out of the wrapper. You got to do it like this, like bread dough, to make it soft. That way, you can shape it any way you want. Here. You do it.’

Katya did not reach for the gray explosive clay. Ivan held it out to her.

‘It’s not going to blow up, girl.’

Ivan smacked a fist into the lump. Katya jerked. Nothing happened.

‘It takes an explosion to make it go off. That’s what the caps are for. Here.’

Still, Katya hesitated. He stuffed the clay in her hands. Under the cast of a slim moon dicing through the leaves overhead, Katya noted Ivan’s palms were stained. Kneading the C-3, her own hands began to turn gray.

‘It makes your skin yellow,’ Ivan said, grinning, showing teeth that were gray, too, under the moon and branches.

While Katya and Ivan molded the explosive, Daniel and surly Josef re-wrapped the long coil of electric detonation cord out of Ivan’s knapsack. The starosta knelt, peering through the bushes where they hid. The village elder’s name was Filip Filipovich Platonov. He had a son – also Filip – fighting somewhere with the Red Army. The boy’s letters had stopped a year ago, and the elder knew nothing more. Katya guessed how old the man was, probably more than sixty. His face had collapsed around his hawk nose, he had high cheekbones and a brow like a white awning to make his face sharp, years of hunger and labor had rooted in his flesh. Many of the men from his village who’d joined that night carried the same lean look, the same predator’s nose.