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

“Shut up! Both of you!” Zaitsev shouted over them. He turned to Shaikin. “Ilya! What’s going on?”

Shaikin yanked his arm out of Kulikov’s grip. He rammed his finger at Sidorov. “I’ve had enough of this bastard! He’s got seventy kills and he thinks it makes him a hotshot. He’s over here running his mouth. But he’s padding his kills.”

Sidorov laughed. “You’re a jealous son of a bitch.” He said to Zaitsev, “He’s only got thirty-six and he’s mad at me. He ought to be mad at himself.”

Shaikin snatched his sniper journal off the floor and shoved it at Zaitsev. “Here,” he seethed, “look for yourself. Every one is a machine gunner, a spotter, a sniper, or an officer. Every one a priority target!” Shaikin glared at Sidorov. “Go ahead, hotshot! Show him your journal.”

Shaikin wheeled on Zaitsev. “You know what he does? He shoots foot soldiers during an attack instead of machine gunners or officers. He’s supposed to be protecting the troops, but he’s just racking up kills for himself. He’s a fucking menace.”

Zaitsev faced Sidorov. He asked quietly, “And?”

The skinny private’s eyes blinked with his own anger.

“That’s crap!” He pointed out through the bunker wall to the battlefield. “The machine guns aren’t operating in my sector. I shot one gunner a week ago and they haven’t replaced him. This lying dick is just too slow to get seventy kills, and he’s mad at me about it.”

Zaitsev handed Shaikin’s journal back to him without looking through it.

“Go sit down, Ilya.”

Shaikin slumped on the floor next to Tania. He slapped his hands in his lap.

Zaitsev spoke now with Sidorov. “You have seventy kills. That’s excellent. You know I have twice that many.”

“Excellent for you as well, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“And what do you think,” Zaitsev asked, “of Shaikin’s thirty-six kills? Truthfully.”

Sidorov shrugged as if to say he would have chosen diplomacy but the Hare specified he wanted the truth.

“I cannot say the same, Chief Master Sergeant.”

“Shaikin is not excellent?”

Shaikin tensed. He moved to push himself off the floor. Tania laid a hand on his arm.

Sidorov shook his head with dramatic reluctance.

“Comrade Sidorov,” Zaitsev said, raising his chin, “you will transfer from this unit immediately.”

Sidorov stepped back as if pushed. “Chief Master Sergeant, what?…”

“There’s no room for your attitude in the hares, Sidorov. We are a small group and we are Communists. We do not bicker over personal achievements. Excellence is not measured in numbers or scores. Private Shaikin doesn’t need seventy kills to be as good a sniper as you. Dismissed.”

Zaitsev stared at the private. He and Sidorov were close in size, but Zaitsev seemed by far the bigger man.

“Dismissed, private.”

Zaitsev waited for Sidorov to collect his journal, rifle, and pack and leave beneath the blanket hanging over the doorway. Shaikin got to his feet after Sidorov left. Tania stood also. She knew Shaikin to be a reliable and resourceful sniper. For the past three weeks, since they’d graduated from the sniper school, the two had worked the same sector. Almost half the kills in Shaikin’s journal bore her signature as spotter and witness. In turn, Shaikin had witnessed twenty-three of her thirty-one kills.

With Sidorov’s departure, there were now twenty-two hares and bears left of the original thirty. Zaitsev said that when the snipers got down to twenty, he would teach ten more to keep the strength of the unit always between twenty and thirty. He’ll be teaching another class soon, Tania thought. Kostikev died last night, blown apart. He stepped on a mine during a commando raid deep behind German lines. Kostikev had been the mission’s point man, their creeping assassin in the lead. The reputation of the hares was growing; their members were being requested throughout the division for special duties with squads outside the sniper cadre. Kostikev had been hurrying back; he was just south of the Lazur when he tripped the mine. Shaikin and Tania had tipped a bottle of vodka for Kostikev, the brave, gold-toothed killer whose mouth always flashed but rarely spoke.

Sidorov was the first in either the hares or the bears to be asked to leave. This was shameful. The others who’d departed their ranks had done so only by giving up their lives.

Zaitsev spoke to Shaikin. “Sidorov’s sector bordered on yours, didn’t it?”

Shaikin nodded. Sidorov had been one of four snipers assigned to an area on the eastern slope of Mamayev Kurgan, about twenty-five hundred square meters. Zaitsev and Medvedev had divided the entire front line into fifteen such sectors. Two two-man teams were assigned by the sergeants to work those areas with the most combat activity or to support Red troop movements whenever word came down from Command.

The sectors were reviewed nightly for shifts in combat activity. At all times, a minimum of ten sectors were manned with capable and experienced snipers. Zaitsev tried not to move the teams too frequently; he wanted them to get familiar with the terrain in their areas.

Shaikin and Tania had been shuttled between sector five, their current sector, and sector six, swapping with Sidorov’s unit. Both were on the eastern base of Mamayev Kurgan.

Each unit was assigned a leader; Shaikin, Kulikov, and Chekov were the heads of their sectors, as Sidorov had been in his. These leaders met nightly, whenever they could attend, here in the bunker Zaitsev shared with Medvedev. Tania had recently begun to attend these evening meetings with Shaikin, at her request. Shaikin, her friend and partner, agreed to let her come to the meetings, but only as an observer. Afterward, the two designed their next day’s strategy together.

Now Zaitsev turned to Tania. He’d kept his distance since her costly error two weeks earlier. He had rarely addressed her in that time, communicating her assignments through Shaikin. For the first week, she was allowed only to spot for Shaikin. Finally, she was granted permission by Zaitsev to shoot. She set herself the goal of learning Shaikin’s care and patience in the hunt, to gain better control over her passions when a Nazi was in her sights. She’d done so with deadly, gratifying results.

Tania thought constantly about the day Fedya had been killed. She knew she’d disgraced herself. After the incident, a chill had spread between her and Zaitsev like the ice growing in the Volga. Standing before him now, looking at his flat face, his hands, his body, all under such control, like a fox or a gliding bird, she wanted him to call her “partisan” again, to look in her journal and see how controlled she had been, what a good hare she’d become. She wanted to swallow vodka with him again in the trenches, to hunt with him, to be with him at dawn, to be in his eyes.

“Private Chernova,” Zaitsev said to her, “you will take over Sidorov’s place. He’s been working with Redinov, Megolin, and Dyenski. You know the bounds?”

Tania nodded. “Yes, Chief Master Sergeant.”

This was the moment she’d been piecing together in her heart, bit by bit like a puzzle. Now it was complete. She was renewed. Zaitsev had put her in charge of sector six. The probation, dating from the moment he’d struck her, was done.

Zaitsev looked at her sternly. “There are several German snipers working in that sector. Mamayev Kurgan is hot.”

Shaikin, still standing beside her, spoke up.

“It’s been hot for weeks, Chief Master Sergeant. Tania has dueled with a dozen German snipers. They’re all in her journal with my signature.”

Zaitsev smiled at her. The first smile from the Hare in too long a time.

Call me “partisan,” Tania wished, but he did not.