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

“Now,” he called to Kulikov.

Zaitsev knew what his partner was doing. A minute before, Kulikov had laid a brick on top of his head and donned his helmet over it, tightening the strap under his chin. The brick lifted the helmet ten centimeters above his crown. Both men hoped this would be enough margin of safety for Kulikov’s scalp. They agreed that a helmet jiggling on a stick would not flush out the Headmaster. The helmet had to move naturally; it had to be on a man’s head. Kulikov consented to the plan without comment. A brave comrade, Zaitsev thought, and a man confident in his ability to move with precision.

With his helmet raised so, the scheme called for Kulikov to lean in and out of the notch to catch the Headmaster’s attention with the movement. Then…

Kulikov fired the shot, the next step in the plan. The bullet was aimed at the empty bunker to their right, a random round to tweak Thorvald’s attention and a message that the Red snipers did not know where his hiding place was. The rifle crack flew past Zaitsev; he tied his thoughts to the sound as if they were a note to a pigeon’s leg, to have them flap across the park into Thorvald’s hole, where he would read We don’t know where you are, Colonel. You are safe. Come out.

The crosshairs were like two swords in Zaitsev’s hands; he was ready to wield them. He snuggled tighter to the scope. His finger caressed the trigger. Come out, Headmaster. You snake. Make a move.

Seconds passed. The crosshairs bounced once. His pulse throbbed in his hands. Ease off, he thought. Don’t go to him; let him come to you. Let him earn the bullet.

It’s not working. The Headmaster isn’t home this morning. He’s already gone. Could he have left without finishing our duel? No, never; he hasn’t bagged his Hare yet. Or has he? Danilov. Did he think he hit me when he hit Danilov?

No, not the Headmaster. He knows I’m here. Don’t be impatient. He’s there. He’s under the metal sheet, down in the blackness I’ve erected this cross over. We’re knotted together, the two of us. He can’t leave. Our eyes and hands are tangled above this park right now and cannot be untied except through death. He’s in there. I feel him there.

Zaitsev recalled Baugderis’s pink, exploded face and the black blood hardened over the head of Morozov. The Headmaster had shot both snipers through their scopes. Through the scopes, he thought, marking the beginnings of alarm; is he staring at me right now? Are his crosshairs boring into this mortar shell, stretching across my scope? Has he spotted me, has the sun betrayed me after all my careful steps? These passing seconds—is he using them to wait for his own pulse to settle, to squeeze his trigger with my soft right eye for his mark? Thorvald can do it. I’ve seen the results. Baugderis, Morozov. I know he can shoot as fast as two men. Danilov. Kulikov. Shaikin. The dummy Pyotr. Was I wrong? Does Thorvald know this mortar shell trick? Did the Headmaster teach this to his boy killers at his Berlin school?

Staring across the crosshairs, Zaitsev winced. Nothing, he thought, nothing but flat blackness. He clenched his teeth.

All right, Thorvald. Come on, damn it! Come on! Let’s be done with it! If you see me, show me! Come on!

A faint blue flash winked almost faster than Zaitsev’s eye could grasp it. But there it was, deep in the Headmaster’s hole.

To Zaitsev’s right, Kulikov’s feet scuffled in the dirt. The little sniper’s rifle clattered on the ground.

Kulikov cried out, “Aaayugh!” He stood, his arms flared out, then fell hard away from the wall. His back thumped the ground; his breath gasped on impact.

Nikolay! The Headmaster shot him! He missed the brick and hit Nikolay!

Zaitsev’s hands tried to release the rifle. His cheek pulled a millimeter off the scope. Nikolay! I’ve got to tend to him. He’s down! The bastard shot him!

No! a voice commanded him. No! Stay in place!

He became rigid around his rifle. Nikolay’s spirit can’t be helped now. The Headmaster. Focus, Vasily.

The flash. It was him.

A second passed. Fear crept up his spine like a wolf, low and powerful. Is another bullet on its way, this one for me, from the Headmaster? Another second ticked on his forehead. I’ve got to shoot. But I can’t. I don’t see him, only my eye’s memory of the muzzle flash. What if I miss? The Headmaster will answer.

A third second. He held his breath; his heart and lungs seemed to be outside him, big as barns, filled with frozen air and coursing blood. His eye winced once.

The fear leaped onto his shoulders. It clawed and barked around his head and eyes. The fear bit into his neck, and another second passed.

Here, Vasha, take the spear, a voice from the taiga cried in his memory. The fear has power. Kill it and take its power! Take the spear! Do it! You are one of us, Vasha, a hunter!

Yes, a hunter.

In that moment, he stabbed as hard as he could.

There was nothing beneath his crosshairs but black. A blind shot, into the evil eclipse of Thorvald’s hole. The fourth second. The last one.

Zaitsev cast a curse into the bullet. The Headmaster thinks his time in the darkness is done. He is wrong.

His darkness is just beginning.

Now.

The rifle snapped into his shoulder, the report cracked in his ears. Beneath the crosshairs, the hole remained clamped shut.

“Did you get him?” Kulikov’s voice!

Zaitsev dropped the rifle and spun away from the mortar shell. Kulikov was on his rump, propped on his elbows. The front of his helmet was punched in. His face and the tops of his ears were coated in brick dust.

Kulikov grinned. Zaitsev was dazed. The fear withdrew into the shadows of the forest inside him. Kulikov stepped out from those shadows. All happened at once.

He exhaled. The wind was in his lungs again. He grabbed up a small stone and bounced it hard off his friend’s chest.

“You son of a bitch! You’re not dead!”

Kulikov played at taking his own pulse. He shook his head.

Zaitsev threw another pebble to make his friend cover his face with his arms.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to jump up like that?” Zaitsev asked. “It scared the shit out of me!”

Nikolay tilted his head. More rust-colored dust trickled onto his shoulder. He took off the helmet and dumped broken bits of brick into his lap.

“I thought,” said Kulikov, “it might buy you another second or two if I made a show of it. Maybe the Headmaster would stop and admire his handiwork. I don’t know, it seemed like the thing to do at the moment.”

“At the moment,” Zaitsev grumbled, pretending to be vexed. But Nikolay might have been right. The Headmaster had not gotten off his second shot in three, even four seconds.

“Well,” Kulikov asked, “did you get him?”

“I don’t know.” Zaitsev shrugged.

Kulikov swept dust from his shoulders.

The Hare laughed. His happiness surfaced at seeing Nikolay unscathed.

“Here.” Kulikov tossed Zaitsev a flattened gray slug he’d sifted out of the shards of brick in his lap. “This was sent for you. I think it came out of my rifle.”

Zaitsev fingered the lump of lead. He felt the Headmaster’s hands on it, just as he’d sensed his presence in the hole beneath the metal. He looked into the sky and tried to understand what had happened, whom he had just faced. The Headmaster. A phenomenal, fearsome man with a rifle. Thorvald has a strong spirit. So do I. That’s what we hunted in each other, how he called me and how I heard him in this massive boneyard of Stalingrad. Thorvald’s spirit is like tar; if you touch it, your hands will be smeared with it. The bullet in Zaitsev’s palm, which might have ended up in his head, felt black as pitch, almost sticky with the death it might have been. He tossed it away.