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

Zaitsev laid his rifle and pack in his corner.

“I’ve found him, Nikolay. Shaikin sent me right to him. I can feel him. The son of a bitch, I can feel him.”

Kulikov looked into Zaitsev’s eyes. The little sniper swallowed hard, but his face remained a mute mask. Many times Zaitsev had marveled at the silence of Nikolay Kulikov’s face. It told nothing of the man’s inner workings. His features, even his arms and legs, always manifested a stillness, like the moon. Zaitsev was sure this was why Kulikov was the most invisible on the move of all the snipers. He carried silence in his bones.

Zaitsev thought back four days to the trench where Kulikov and Baugderis had set up their tin-can gambit. Kulikov, unconscious, had awakened to his sins, visited on him by the bloody hole in Baugderis’s head and the gash in his own. Kulikov has a score to settle. And Thorvald has his rifle.

“You want to come, Nikolay? We’ve both seen him work and we’ve both lived to tell. We can get him.”

Kulikov blinked. “Tania won’t mind?”

“What…” Zaitsev stopped. He shook his head and walked to the corner. Next it will be Danilov and a damned weekly column in In Our Country’s Defense.

“No, Nikolay. Tania won’t mind. Sit down.”

Kulikov plopped to the floor. Zaitsev did not hear him move even while he watched Kulikov slide into the flickering shadow below the lamp’s base. He chooses the darkest place, Zaitsev observed.

Zaitsev described the details of the location where Shaikin and Morozov had met Thorvald. He didn’t know how the Headmaster had managed to shoot the two snipers. But at this stage, how it had happened was less important than where. He and Kulikov would wage their own, fresh battle against the Nazi supersniper.

“The sun rises at our backs and sets in front, slightly to our right. So we’ll have the advantage in the morning and early afternoon. We’ll have to force a few shots out of him to get an idea of where he is. That shouldn’t be too hard. The Headmaster seems all too eager to pull his trigger.”

Kulikov said nothing. His slate-colored eyes were intent; he seemed to listen through them.

Zaitsev continued. “We can move. But I have a feeling he’ll stay put. He’s found a spot he’s sure will be good enough to get me. So long as he thinks he’s hidden, he’ll stick to his cell.”

Kulikov spoke. “How does he know he didn’t shoot you when he shot Shaikin and Morozov?”

Zaitsev thought for a moment before answering.

“He doesn’t. But I think he’ll watch the place where he shot his last two snipers. If nobody else shows up to play with him tomorrow or the next day, he’ll figure it was me he killed and the game is over. But if someone comes to face him, he’ll guess that finally I’m in the trench across from him, that I got the word about his telescope shot on Morozov and the other nasty tricks he’s played. After all, that’s exactly what he intended. I think we’ve got one or two more days while he sits in his shooting cell waiting to see who drops by.”

Kulikov rose. “I’ll get some sleep. Oh-four-hundred here?”

“Yes, Nikolay.”

Without a sound, Kulikov was gone. Zaitsev sat, looking into the wavering circle of shade beneath the lamp where the sniper had sat. Only seconds after his departure, it seemed Kulikov had already been gone an hour. How does he do that? Zaitsev wondered.

He turned off the lantern and lay on his bedroll, his pack under his head. He stared into the pitch of the bunker.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow begins the duel.

The cold air of the dirt floor crept up his cheek. He pulled his blanket higher. He listened to his own breathing and felt his pulse in his neck.

Thorvald. Colonel Thorvald. Just a name, just bloody holes in bodies, just guesses and conclusions so far. Tomorrow Thorvald becomes fact, becomes real for me, real as a bullet.

He wondered what a bullet felt like burning into his own flesh. He hadn’t yet been wounded at Stalingrad, though he’d seen a thousand wounds. What was the pain like? And to be killed… did the death blackness come riding on the bullet instantly, before pain could grip you, everything silent and calm while you drift over into eternity? Or was it horrible to die with a bullet between the eyes? Was it a sudden bursting of every agony that lies coiled and waiting in the body, set loose, rampant for the few seconds before the senses quit? Zaitsev felt an itch between his eyebrows where a bullet might drill the next day. He rubbed his face to make it go away.

Thorvald. Zaitsev reviewed his lessons to the hares on how to deal with an enemy sniper. The process of finding the sniper begins with learning the enemy’s front line of defense. View and catalog every physical detail possible. He’d done this hours ago. Next, study and understand how and where others were shot in the area. Zaitsev recalled his ten minutes that afternoon beside the agony of Shaikin and earlier with Morozov’s body. The bullet to Morozov’s head had been deflected off the rifle scope. The scope itself also revealed nothing. Where had Morozov’s rifle been pointing when struck? Shaikin didn’t know. He’d been looking through the binoculars at a moving helmet just above a trench along Solechnaya Street. He was calling Morozov into the shot on the helmet when Thorvald lashed out. Zaitsev reasoned that either there was some troop activity spreading near Pavlov’s House or Thorvald had a helper carrying that helmet on a stick.

The mistake had been Shaikin’s and Morozov’s. They should not have been shooting. They’d gone to Ninth of January Square to locate Thorvald, not to engage him. When they bit on the bait, probably the helmet, the Headmaster flexed.

The next step is to fathom your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Avoid his strengths; aggravate his flaws. If he’s a skilled marksman, like Thorvald, test him with feints and false positions; give him easy targets to lull him into revealing his position without making yourself a target. Mock his skill by pretending to be a freshman sniper yourself; make small, controlled mistakes to swell his confidence in the contest. If he’s impatient, if he’s hot to shoot and go, like Thorvald, then drag him into a long and complicated battle. If he’s stubborn, like the Headmaster, then distract his attention, irritate him through those distractions, wear down his concentration and his physical ability to see through his scope, to shoot accurately. If he’s taken the initiative, like Thorvald, then take it back.

When it comes your turn to shoot, make it count. Remember the old folk wisdom: measure it seven times, cut it once.

The blanket in the doorway rose and fell. Careful boot steps crossed the blind floor to Zaitsev’s corner.

He opened his lids, seeing nothing. He pulled his hand from beneath the blanket. Lying flat on the bedroll, he reached into the night. The cool air nipped at his wrist. A leg brushed against him.

He heard her curl up on the floor beside him. Her heels ground the dirt when she crossed her legs and settled.

She took his hand in both of hers and held it without squeezing, as if his fingers were fragile. After a minute in the dark, feeling her cup and fondle his hand, she spoke.

“Kulikov was a good choice. I’m glad he’s back.”

He breathed heavily once; it sounded to him, to his surprise, like a sigh. The bunker, so cold and inky moments before, seemed to feather around him now, to pulsate and fan out like a crow’s wings, with Tania at his side. She gives the world, every moment of it, a dynamic, he thought. Things shift in her presence as though she makes them uncomfortable.

“Stay tonight,” he said.

He hadn’t intended to say this. But damn, he thought, she draws things out of me, pulls my ideas through my mouth and hands and fashions them into words and actions before I can stop them.