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

The five plunged onto the floor of a trench. They breathed hard, clutching their chests. Exhilarated, Zaitsev looked at the bobbing faces of the recruits. Through his heaving rib cage, he found his voice.

“Damn!” he said. “Damn! You think we used enough dynamite?”

Chekov and Kulikov patted each other on the back, laughing and breathless. Kostikev smiled his gilded grin. Tania coughed, struggling for air. She reached out to Kostikev’s shoulder. She pulled her hand back, bloodied.

“Don’t worry,” Kostikev told her, beaming, as the others quieted. “I’m in love with a nurse. I get to see her now.”

A guard in the trench handed down two bottles of vodka. Zaitsev gave the first swallow to Kostikev. The wounded man drank deeply, then reached the bottle back to Zaitsev. The clear glass was smirched with Kostikev’s scarlet handprint.

Zaitsev looked at Kulikov. “Nikolay.”

Kulikov helped Kostikev to his feet. Zaitsev gave them the vodka bottle. Arm in arm, the two men walked away down the darkness of the trench.

Zaitsev stood. He could not see the icehouse but could tell by a licking glow against the sky where the building had stood.

Chekov spoke. “I guess I’ll get some rest, Chief Master Sergeant. Good night, Tania.”

“Good night, Chekov.”

The little soldier yawned. Leaving, he handed Zaitsev the other vodka bottle.

Zaitsev stood next to Chernova. The two of them were alone except for the silent guard at his machine gun. They watched the jumping light of the burning icehouse.

“A good night’s work, don’t you think, partisan?”

She spoke without turning her head. “My name is Tania, if you please, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“All right, then,” he said gently, “Tania.”

He took a swallow, then laid the bottle on the breastwork.

“Good night, Tania,” he said, and walked away up the trench.

TANIA WOKE IN A TORPOR ON HER BEDROLL. ZAITSEV’S boot nudged her gently in the dark. A steaming cup of tea was waved under her nose. She accepted it, and Zaitsev told her that Kostikev’s wound was only a grazed shoulder. A few stitches, a roll with his nurse, and he’d be good as new.

At dawn, the hares and bears again assembled in the giant Lazur basement. A moist coolness seeped from the concrete floor and block walls. On the far wall a hundred meters away, a row of white circles had been painted one meter above the ground. The circles were in groups of three. The first circle was small and barely visible, perhaps the size of a fist. The ring to the left of it was slightly larger, and the third was twice the size of the first. Above each grouping was a number, one through thirty. A row of barrels and crates lay before the near wall.

Sergeants Zaitsev and Medvedev told the recruits to bring their Moisin-Nagant 91/30 sniper rifles and take a rifle and lie behind the crates and barrels. Each was given a number and told to aim at the largest circle. That circle, Zaitsev said, represented a chest shot at four hundred meters.

After the hares and bears had slid behind cover and leveled their scopes, the two sergeants sat behind them. Tania smelled their cigarettes. She heard laughter from Medvedev. Maybe Zaitsev was telling him about the icehouse mission the night before.

The recruits were left behind the barrels and crates for an hour, eyes straining down their sights. If one turned to speak to the sergeants or even take an eye away from the scope, Medvedev delivered a loud lecture on patience and stamina.

Through her crosshairs, Tania watched the dawn light swell at the far end of the shop. After the first ten minutes, the white circle had begun to rise and fall; her heartbeat had entered her hands. She’d slowed her breathing and eased her grip. Finally, long after her legs and buttocks had begun to tingle from the chilly concrete floor, she heard Zaitsev walk down the line behind her.

“One at a time,” he said quietly, “when I call your number.”

He stood behind the recruits. Several minutes passed.

“Twenty-eight. Fire.”

A shot rang to Tania’s right. She held her breath to bring her target to the center of her crosshairs.

“Fifteen.” Another shot.

“Ten.” Chekov, at Tania’s right elbow, fired. The bang made her jerk left. Immediately, Zaitsev called out, “Nine,” Tania’s number. She corrected a millimeter, squeezed the trigger, and took the jolt, then reacquired the target quickly. A puff drifted on the brick wall dead in the heart of the circle. She smiled on the rifle stock and held still while other numbers were called and more shots barked in the shop.

After the drill, Zaitsev and Medvedev inspected the circles. When they returned, they gave the volunteers permission to fire freely at the targets to practice aim and trigger pressure.

“Stuff something in your ears,” Zaitsev told the recruits, who dug in their pockets for bits of paper and cigarette butts.

The morning wore on, and Tania fired over a hundred rounds. Her shoulder ached as if there were a bullet in it. Each pull of the trigger seemed to carry a different lesson shouted by the two instructors pacing behind the firing line. You’re pulling too hard. You’re drifting to the right. To the left. Get your cheek off the stock. Relax. You’re too loose. Quicker. Take your time.

After an hour, the instructors again inspected the targets. When they returned with serious miens, those trainees who’d erred sufficiently were set back on the line for another session. Tania was not one of them, nor was Fedya.

She rose on legs like India rubber and wobbled from the crates to slouch against a wall. Fedya sat next to her, and she thought how good he looked. He hadn’t shaved in the three days since they’d been flung into the Volga. His new uniform was dirty. His big face was a little less the all-seeing, all-worrying poet, the crazy goose, and showed some of the steel of the sniper volunteer. Something in his eyes was gone; the big stare, the look of wonder, white and broad like an opened book. Now he held his rifle across his lap, excitement on his body.

“Good shots, eh? We’re both good shots,” he said.

Tania touched his knee. “I didn’t know you could handle a rifle that well.”

Fedya sat straighter. “The Bear took me out last night.”

“He what? What did you do?” Tania couldn’t believe it. While she crawled with the hares, Fedya had roamed the darkness with Medvedev. She’d been eager to tell Fedya of her own adventure at the icehouse but now swallowed it. She motioned with her hands as if reeling in yarn, to draw out his story.

Fedya shifted his weight. “Sergeant Medvedev said since I was the only freshman in the group, he could teach me from the beginning and I wouldn’t have anything to unlearn. At midnight we went through the trenches to the Dolgi Ravine. A machine gunner on the ridge was firing at the wounded being evacuated to the river. Sergeant Medvedev let me shoot him.”

Tania leaned forward. “Just like that? You shot him?”

The poet from Moscow had killed his first German and on the morning after possessed so few words for it. Tania was amazed. She thought it would have torn his heart out.

Fedya ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Tania. It was… he was shooting at the wounded and the nurses. I got so angry. I didn’t have any problem shooting him. I just…” Fedya looked at his feet.

After a moment, he arranged his rifle in his lap. “Yes,” he said, bringing his eyes up to hers, “I shot him.”

Fedya pulled from his pocket a fresh black notebook. He showed her the first page.

“There it is. October twenty-sixth, 1942. Two-fifteen a.m. Machine gunner. Three hundred meters. Chest shot. Dolgi Ravine. Witness, V. Medvedev.”