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

I am seventeen years old. If that makes me your daughter, then I will call you father. If not, I will call you brother. The girls in my plant have gathered presents for the defenders of Stalingrad. We know it is hard for you in the trenches and our hearts are with you. We work and live only for you. Even though I am far behind, the Urals, I have hopes of returning to my native Smolensk. I can hear my mother crying in the kitchen. Kill the Nazis so we can go home. Let their families wear mourning in their motherland, not ours. Let their families wet themselves with tears. I am just a girl, and I stand in a line assembling parts for trucks and tanks. But I feel I am fighting, too, just by staying alive, just by hating the Germans every minute. I do not like to hate; it is not natural for a Russian, don’t you think? But we must, until they are gone. Fight hard, my father, my brother, and I will, too.”

Chekov rolled his head back, turning his gaze to the beams supporting the bunker’s ceiling. His chest worked; the thin letter shook in his hand.

Kulikov applauded twice, then stopped, embarrassed. No one else had clapped. Chekov was clearly troubled by the letter. Tania wondered how Kulikov could not have seen it.

Chekov handed Danilov the sheet.

“Keep this for me. I’ll lose it.”

He walked to a corner, picked up a bag of grenades, and grabbed his submachine gun off a hook on the wall. He left the bunker without looking around.

Danilov looked at Zaitsev. “Where is he going?”

Zaitsev motioned sharply to Kulikov.

Kulikov jumped up. Tania rose to go along. Zaitsev told her to sit. Kulikov was a good friend to Chekov. He’d bring him back.

Heavy silence lay on the snipers. Danilov refused to sit, pacing in short strides. His stubby hands barely reached each other behind his back. Then Chekov came through the doorway. Behind him, Kulikov carried the sack of grenades and the gun.

Chekov slumped near the vodka bottle. He eyed it and rubbed his chin, grimacing as if he were composing a response to a comment the bottle had made.

Kulikov stepped to the middle of the room. “Chekov has a plan,” he announced. “It’s a good plan, and I propose we carry it out. It’s a raid on a German officers’ bunker.”

“Where is it?” Zaitsev asked from his corner.

“Sector six.”

That had been Sidorov’s sector. Now it was Tania’s.

Kulikov looked at Tania. “Do we have your permission?”

Tania set down her journal and stood.

“I go.” She met Zaitsev’s eyes.

“Of course.” The Hare stood. He was going, too.

Zaitsev asked Kulikov, “Do you know how to find the bunker?”

Kulikov pointed at Chekov, who was still staring at the vodka bottle. “I think Anatoly should lead us. It was his plan.”

Zaitsev stood over Chekov.

“Anatoly, can you point out the location on a map?”

“I want to go.” Tears welled in Chekov’s eyes.

“No, friend, you stay here. Get some sleep, have a drink. Show me on the map.”

Zaitsev spread out a map of sector six. The sad little sniper rubbed his nose on his sleeve while Zaitsev waited.

“Here.” Chekov pointed at the southwestern corner of the sector at the end of a long run of trenches, one kilometer beyond the Russian forward positions.

One kilometer, Tania thought. Not so great a distance for a single pair of snipers to operate, especially under cover of night and snow. But to mount a guerrilla action that far into the German rear? Getting in is simply a matter of staying out of sight, a specialty of the hares. Getting out is different. Once the noise starts, the sticks know you’re there.

Shaikin stepped forward. “I know every meter of sector six. I can get us there through sector five…” Shaikin ran his finger over the map. “…then down behind these shacks. There’s a German trench here that Sokolov’s Forty-fifth took last week. It’s not on the map. But I know it. It goes right there.”

“Nikolay,” Shaikin said, looking up from the map to Kulikov, “is it still snowing?”

“Harder than ever.”

Shaikin looked back to Zaitsev, excited. “Good. Vasha, we can move as silently as snowflakes.”

Zaitsev handed Shaikin the map. Tania saw on his face that he was still considering the merits and dangers of the mission. It’s spontaneous, she thought. This is not on orders; this is just for us, for the sorrow in Chekov’s red eyes and in all us snipers. Will Zaitsev risk it?

She looked at Chekov curled on the floor. This man should be home in the Ukraine, chopping chicken necks and poaching quail on the state’s property, not here in a dirt bunker, drunk and destroying himself even while the war destroys him. She looked at quiet, handsome Kulikov, so willing to fight, so eaten up inside by something she’d never heard him speak of, some blood in his past, that he could only cover it with more and more German blood. There stood skinny Shaikin, away from his children and wife. And behind them, in the air like corpses in catacombs, lay the dead. And all the dead to come.

“All right,” Zaitsev said. “Everyone bring a submachine gun. Leave the rifles here.” He walked to where Chekov sat sniffling.

“Anatoly,” he told him, laying his hand on the man’s head, “stay here. We can talk later. We’ll do it right for you.”

Chekov blinked, troubled and ashamed. Tania looked away before she could pity him more. She took Medvedev’s submachine gun from the corner; she hadn’t yet used a machine gun in Stalingrad. But it felt good in her hands; it was a weapon.

Zaitsev dug into his pack for the tin of grease. He tossed it to Shaikin. “Let’s go.”

Shaikin opened the tin and headed for the doorway.

“Wait.”

Danilov, who until now had stood aside watching the dynamics of the hares, had both hands on his hips. The posture made him resemble a big gray sugar bowl.

“I’m going.”

Zaitsev looked at the little commissar. He sighed, lowering his head in thought.

Danilov cut through the silence. “Don’t waste your time finding a respectful way to tell me I cannot come. I’m not going to stay here and nursemaid your drunken sniper. I want to see this action for myself. I am coming.”

Zaitsev raised his head. A thin smile was there, though his eyes told of his displeasure.

“Comrade,” he said, “this is very dangerous. You are not trained for this type of maneuver.”

Danilov, without moving, without even losing his smile, invoked his power. It was a dark force; it seemed to come from his jowls, which rose on his face while his neck lengthened out of his chest like a snapping turtle’s. The commissar’s single black brow gnarled over his eyes.

“Comrade Hare,” he said in a voice murky with malevolence, “I do not want to remind you of the dangers I am trained in.” Danilov glowered about the bunker. “The Communist Party will be present at this raid. That is… understood?”

With that pause and final word, Danilov released his hold on the room. His smile beamed genuine again.

“Comrade Zaitsev, I will put myself completely under your orders until we return. Is that sufficient?”

Zaitsev nodded.

“Besides,” Danilov chuckled, his coat shaking up and down on his sliding belly, his small hands on his buttons, “this won’t be dangerous for me. I’m with the hares. You are the best.

“Now,” he said to Shaikin, “toss me the greasepaint pot.”

A WOMAN’S UMBRELLA KEPT THE FALLING SNOW OFF THE soldier huddled behind the heavy machine gun. Tania could not tell the exact color of the umbrella. In the moonlight drifting down with the flakes, it looked pink. He doesn’t use that during the day, she thought. Russian snipers would crawl through hell for shots at a German machine gunner under a pink umbrella.