David Robbins - War of the Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad

The flare floated behind a row of ghostly ruins and extinguished itself. Zaitsev followed Chernova over the crest of a crater. The hares were there waiting for him.

Zaitsev pointed at a four-story building thirty meters away. The south wall of the building was missing. The stairwell to the upper floors was completely exposed to the outside.

Chekov nodded. The icehouse.

Zaitsev tapped Kostikev’s leg. “You go first. Leave your rifle and satchel here. Light a cigarette from the second-floor landing.”

Kostikev handed his pack to Chekov. Chernova took his rifle.

Kostikev pulled one of his knives from its sheath and gripped it in his mouth like a picture of a Turk pirate. He smiled at Zaitsev, his fellow Siberian, showing a flash of gold in his teeth. The stringy muscles in his neck stood out like buttresses under his jaw.

“See you in a minute,” he uttered around the knife. These were the first words Zaitsev had heard him speak all day.

Zaitsev settled on the rim of the crater to watch the man disappear into the rubble of the fallen wall. Minutes passed. Then, out of the shadows on the second-floor landing, a dark form walked to the ledge. The shape turned and shuffled around a corner without lighting a cigarette.

A minute later a second form appeared on the landing and lit a cigarette. It inhaled deeply, giving off a glowing dot of orange, then flicked the cigarette down onto the debris below to bounce once in a shower of sparks.

Zaitsev whispered, “Stay low to the building. Then up the stairs fast. No noise. Nikolay—move.”

Kulikov hefted his own rifle and Kostikev’s and slid out of the crater. Chekov grabbed Kostikev’s satchel and followed.

“Partisan,” Zaitsev hissed, “go.”

He waited until Chernova slid ahead of him with her rifle and backpack. He followed her over the rim of the crater.

He heard nothing, only the faintest scraping in the rocks from his scurrying hares. At the base of the steps, Kulikov squatted in the shadows, guarding. Zaitsev followed Chernova quickly up the steps, both on tiptoe. He looked out of the stairwell into the open air where a wall should have been. His heart pounded in his hands, which were clutching his rifle. He was unaccustomed to being so exposed in his hunting, as he was now in this stairwell. There was no camouflage, no trench, nothing to cloak him but silence and the gray-black night.

Two steps ahead, Chernova recoiled. She had just reached the top stair and stepped onto the second-floor landing. The girl stumbled back against Zaitsev. She fumbled to raise her gun.

He reached his arm up to the girl’s waist and pulled her down onto his step. He flipped his rifle over, stock first, and lunged forward, the rifle poised to strike.

There in the dark, standing against the wall, was a Nazi guard. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. His helmeted head stared out past the demolished wall. Zaitsev knew what had happened. It was what he’d ordered, but with a flourish. He rubbed his foot against the toe of the German’s boot and felt the slickness of blood on the landing.

Zaitsev reached under the chin and felt the haft of Kostikev’s knife. The Nazi had been tacked to a wooden timber in the wall with his head resting upright on the knife, his chin on the white bone handle.

Chernova stepped up on the landing. Kulikov arrived on the steps below. He’d hurried up from his post on the first floor at the slight sounds of the commotion on the landing.

Zaitsev heard a “psst” from the steps to the next floor. Kostikev’s gold teeth twinkled in the center of a loose grin.

“I had nowhere to put him, Vasha. I didn’t want you to trip over him.” The assassin shrugged, then climbed the steps.

“Guard the rear,” Zaitsev said to Chernova. “Tell Kulikov to bring up his satchel. I’ll come get you when the charges are laid.” He followed Kostikev up the steps.

On the third floor, Chekov led the others into the middle of a large, open room. Thick wooden pillars stood on the outer reaches of an ancient oak floor. This is an old building, Zaitsev observed. It’ll come down nicely.

They laid the four satchels in each corner. Kulikov hooked up the charges and fuses in the center of the room. Zaitsev’s watch read 2:50.

“Ready?” he whispered to Nikolay.

“One minute.”

Zaitsev crept down the steps to the second-floor landing. On his way, he heard not a whisper but a command.

“Hände hoch!”

His stomach tightened. Adrenaline needles welded his fists to his rifle stock. His lips curled in an unspoken curse. Chernova had been surprised by a Nazi on the stairwell, a guard Kostikev had missed. She was certainly at this moment staring down the barrel of a gun. The mission and all their lives were in jeopardy. The next five seconds would save them or lose them.

Zaitsev slipped down the steps quietly as he could. Reaching the turn, he peeked around the corner to the landing.

The soldier was frozen in place, his right arm extended to a pistol reaching at the girl’s head. Zaitsev guessed the Nazi couldn’t decide what to do next. What was he going to do with his prisoner? The man had to know there were more Russians in the building; the Reds wouldn’t send one woman behind enemy lines like this. His dead mate hanging beside him, nailed to a timber, throat slit and blood dripping, was a fearsome sign. Should he run and save his own skin or take his prisoner down the steps? Or up? If he shouted for help, who might answer his call first?

The German shook the pistol in Chernova’s face. “Wo sind die Russen? Wo sind sie?”

Again, Zaitsev turned over his rifle, readying it to smash the German if he got the chance. A shot would bring attention.

Hidden just behind the wall, he whispered, “Partisan.”

Instantly, a dull thud was followed by a moan of pain. Zaitsev leaped, his rifle over his head, ready to lash out. There, doubled over but still standing, was the German soldier, with Chernova’s foot clenched high between his legs. The guard’s pistol clattered on the landing, then fell to the street below.

Before Zaitsev could surge forward to crush his rifle against the Nazi’s head, Chernova leaped at the man’s throat like a panther, pressing deep into his windpipe. The soldier gurgled and fought back violently. Zaitsev swung the stock of his rifle past Chernova’s shoulder, hard into the Nazi’s nose. The soldier collapsed backward and lay staring up through watering and panicky eyes. Zaitsev raised his rifle again and hammered it down into the soldier’s face. The skull split against the concrete. He rolled the Nazi with his boot to the edge of the wall.

Chernova stood back, her hands clenched. Zaitsev brought his face close. “Come on,” he whispered. “Fast.”

The two sprang up the steps to the third floor. The charges were set in the dynamite. Chekov stood holding the central fuse.

Zaitsev and Chernova hurried to his side. The others moved to the doorway. “You do it,” Zaitsev said. She took his matchbox and lit the fuse. It sparked to life. “Go!” Zaitsev called in a full voice to the men standing by the door. “Go!”

Forgetting all caution, the hares pounded down the stairwell, their boots clomping on the concrete. On the second-floor landing, Zaitsev passed Kostikev standing beside the nailed-up German. Kostikev yanked out his knife; the corpse crumpled.

They raced down the stairs into the cold open air. Behind them, voices shouted from overhead. Machine-gun fire crackled while they leaped over piles of bricks to speed through the rubble. Bullets ricocheted in the dark, though none came close enough to slow the hares down. They pumped their arms and feet and emerged into a narrow street.

“Go! Go!” Zaitsev called to the sprinters on all sides of him. Almost to the moment he’d expected, a roar shattered the night. The ruins suddenly shifted their shadows, flashing red on their wrecked, sad faces, winking at Zaitsev and the hares galloping straight for their own lines down an avenue leading to the rail yard. The rumblings of the explosion and the collapsing building rolled through the dead structures to veil their dash across no-man’s-land and into the safety of the Red Army’s forward trenches.