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

He looked at Kulikov and smiled.

“Another odd little piece for the puzzle, Nikolushka.”

Kulikov pulled from his pocket a bottle of vodka, mostly finished. He handed it to Zaitsev.

“The Hare,” he said.

“Nikolay,” Zaitsev answered.

He reached for the bottle with his perforated mitten. He looked at the hole, at the spot on the back of his hand. He froze with an intuition; he could feel the bullet pass through his mitt, the shot burrowing and burning through his hand. In his imagination, he sent the gloved hand, punched through like a railroad ticket, away from his arm and over the wall to follow the bullet’s course backward, the hand pulling itself along as if down a rope, back to the barrel of the rifle that fired it.

There you are, Colonel Thorvald. Hello.

Zaitsev snapped back to his body, his right hand hovering in the air. Kulikov stared at him, waiting for him to grasp the bottle. Zaitsev reeled in his focus and took the vodka.

The Hare raised the bottle to the far side of the park and toasted again.

“The Headmaster.”

NIGHT WAS TWO HOURS OLD. FAR TO THE NORTH, THE sky shivered with artillery flashes. Around the park, it was quiet and black. Zaitsev listened to the rumble of explosions. He thought of the city as a sleeping giant; he was at the feet, the other end was snoring.

Surely Thorvald has crawled away by now. The Headmaster has not shown himself to be a night hunter. Zaitsev reached for the plank. He nodded to Kulikov.

“I think we can do it now.”

Kulikov struck a match and held the flame near the mark scratched across the wall. Zaitsev raised the plank slowly to re-create the exact position he’d held it that afternoon.

“All right, Nikolay.”

Kulikov skidded back from Zaitsev. He hoisted a flare gun and fired.

The pistol blazed with a thumping recoil. Three hundred meters overhead, the flare ignited as its small parachute opened to cast a golden glimmer over the park.

Kulikov set the smoking pistol down and moved quickly to Zaitsev. He raised his face to the board, held by Zaitsev. He looked through the hole as if through a telescope. Kulikov kept his eye to the board for several seconds. Then, while the light from the flare rained down in ocher sheets, he knelt next to Zaitsev. He put his hands on the board to push it against the wall and keep it level with the soap mark.

“Your turn, Vasha.”

Zaitsev released the board to Kulikov. He stood, closed his left eye, and looked through the hole.

The opening framed a section of the center of the park, a level bit of ground fifty meters wide running in front of the wall. Thorvald must be somewhere in this field, he thought.

The shadows from the falling flare were stark, shifting black; the park bore the hue of straw. Zaitsev knew every detail that fell within the bounds described by the hole. Piles of debris and two craters, that was all. The burned-out tank, the bunker, and the larger pieces of the battle all fell outside the circle. This was as Zaitsev expected. He commanded himself to find Thorvald’s nest. It’s concealed in this level area in front of the wall. It’s all so flat—what could Thorvald hide behind? Look. Remember. Think. Feel. Where would you be, Vasily? What would you use for a blind? Fly to that side of the park, then look back over here. Think like Thorvald. What are you behind?

Stop.

There was never any sound from the Headmaster’s rifle! The reports from his shots did not sail across the park. They did not bounce off the buildings around us. Kulikov heard nothing. I heard nothing.

Behind? No.

Thorvald was not behind anything! He was in something!

Or under. Under!

That sheet of metal. Where is it? There. It lay over a pile of bricks, almost flat on the ground. Innocent, simple, nothing notable about it in a landscape of debris. Zaitsev had seen it so many times he’d grown accustomed to ignoring it. But it was there, in this rounded range of possibility through the hole in the board. The park was finally dimming in the flare’s failing glow. Yes, the Headmaster’s shooting cell could be beneath the metal, behind those few bricks. Dig a trench under it. Crawl up before dawn. Be out of the wind. Talk to your assistant ten meters behind you. The assistant stays hidden behind the wall to carry that damned helmet. You’re in shadow all day under a metal roof; all you have to do is lie in the dark and fire away, with no worry about reflections off your scope. Surrounded on all four sides, no rifle report will escape such a hole to float the 250 meters across the park. To spot your muzzle flash, an enemy would have to be staring straight down your barrel when you pulled the trigger, exactly the wrong place to be.

Perfect. So perfect that the Headmaster will violate the sniper’s first rule of survival: shoot and move. Pull the trigger, then pull out. He’s stayed in this cell, first shooting up the medical staff, then Shaikin and Morozov; today he shot Danilov. So many bullets from one spot. He’s confident. Yes. Until we drag him out by his feet.

Zaitsev backed away from the plank. He stood straight, looking over the wall to watch the flare crash into the park. The flare fizzled, a tiny volcano for a few seconds, then extinguished. The park was black again.

Kulikov slipped to his side.

Zaitsev said, “He’s under that sheet of metal. He’s dug a hole under it.”

Kulikov did not speak. This was his way of agreeing.

“He’ll come back to it tomorrow.” It felt good to Zaitsev to stand tall here at the wall. It felt defiant.

Kulikov said, “I’ll sneak across the park and take a look. Let’s see if his nest is really under the metal sheet. What do you think?”

“No, Nikolay. It’s not worth the risk. I think he’s gone home for the night, but who can tell? He may have left a guard just in case we try it. Let’s leave it till morning. He’ll be in there. Trust it.”

Though he’d told Kulikov not to crawl out to look under the metal, Zaitsev’s imagination slithered over the flat park and under the sheet of metal. There indeed lay Thorvald, peering out through the bricks. Hello, Headmaster. Excuse me. Zaitsev gazed through the Headmaster’s scope, back to this side of the park. There, wearing the black cross of the scope, was the head of the Hare. There I am. A nice clean shot, Headmaster. Take it. Congratulations.

Just 250 meters. A bullet covers such a distance in a heartbeat, stopping that heart.

“He won’t move,” Zaitsev said, turning away from the park. “So we’ll have to.”

Zaitsev and Kulikov collected their packs, rifles, and periscopes. On his feet, Zaitsev felt the weight and straps of his gear. He sensed a rush of freedom, like a boy again, packed and ready to head out on a hunting trip. He looked into the dirt at the base of the wall. Under the night, he could not see Morozov’s blood, but he wished it a farewell. He thanked the spirits of this spot for their help, for their insights. Thorvald had shackled him here for three days. Now he was breaking away.

He walked, Kulikov behind him. The night was quiet save for the grinding of their boots in the dirt and pebbles. He heard his own footsteps, then Kulikov’s light steps moving out of sync with his. He tried to lay plans for the next day’s confrontation with the Headmaster, but Kulikov’s presence close at his rear spooked his concentration, like a bevy of quail flushed from the brush.

He stopped. “Nikolay, please. Wait here for a little while. I want to go ahead alone and do some thinking.”

Kulikov sat on his pack.

Zaitsev turned, grateful for the man’s loyalty. He stepped along the wall slowly, listening to the rhythm of his lone tread in the frozen dirt. He looked over the wall into the open park. He saw only pale shapes; the night sky bled bits of light. The light from the stars had been his favorite light in the taiga. He once believed that stars were little rents in the sky where the grand brightness of the universe beyond the sun and moon shone through to the earth. His mother had told him the stars were God’s ten million eyes watching. God. What role, he wondered, has God played in Stalingrad?