Ralph Peters - Red Army

As the firing calmed, moving on to other killing grounds, Seryosha suggested to Leonid that they hide in the basement. Occasional local shots, like strings of firecrackers, underscored the magnitude of any decision to move at all. Leonid felt miserable, lying in his wet tunic with splinters of plastic from the cassettes he had stuffed in his trouser pockets jabbing him in the thighs and groin.

"What if they're still downstairs?" he said. "What if they're just being quiet and waiting?"

Seryosha considered the possibility. "I can't hear anything," he answered nervously. "Can you?"

"I don't think so."

"If they come back, they're bound to find us up here. Anyway, there's more protection from the artillery and everything down in the basement."

"You know how to get there?"

"I think so."

Leonid did not much like the idea of being shut up in a dark, foreign basement. But he realized that Seryosha was right. The fighting had so shaken the floor beneath them that he had expected the house to fall apart under the strain.

Simultaneously, the two boys began to rise.

"You're clacking," Seryosha said. "What have you got in your pockets?"

Leonid pushed at his comrade. "Just go."

Seryosha led the way, stepping cautiously down the littered stairs.

There was so much plaster and glass scattered about that it was 180

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impossible to be really quiet. Seryosha took one step at a time, and Leonid imitated him, pausing at each new level to await a violent response.

A scab of plaster crunched under Leonid's boot. But the rest of the house remained still. It felt distinctly empty now. As they finished with the ordeal of the stairs they could see each other's features clearly in the pinkish-orange glow of fires lowering beyond the broken-out windows.

"There was a door back in the kitchen," Seryosha said. "That had to be it."

But as they turned into the downstairs hallway, the lumpish outline of a corpse blocked their path. The dark outline of the helmet identified the body as Soviet.

Leonid and Seryosha edged past the dead soldier, careful to avoid any contact, as though the body bore a special contagion in the darkness.

They found their way to the kitchen. A fluttering glow lit the room where they had happily stuffed themselves just a few hours earlier. Now the room lay in a jagged shambles.

"The door was over there," Seryosha said, gesturing with the long barrel of the light machine gun. He stopped, and Leonid understood that now it was his turn to go first.

All right, Leonid thought, trying to steel himself. He knew now that he was not a brave man. He felt terribly, unmistakably afraid. He forced his legs to carry him across the room. The door to the basement creaked as he opened it, and the sound seemed so loud that he was sure every enemy soldier in the area must have heard it. He stood indecisively at the top of a black chasm.

"I can't see anything. It's pitch black."

"Here. Take this." Seryosha poked a small cylinder into Leonid's hand. It took him a moment before he realized that it was a cigarette lighter, looted from somewhere.

"It's all right," Seryosha went on. "I have another one."

Leonid flicked on the little flame with his left hand, holding his assault rifle at the ready with his right.

"Get the light down out of sight," Seryosha insisted.

Leonid advanced downward into the darkness, testing the steps. He heard the reassuring noises of Seryosha close behind him. The stairs were narrow and there was no handrail. Leonid shifted his weight, tapping down to find the next level. The small ring of light from the lighter's flame failed to reach into the depths of the cellar.

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Leonid felt his fingers burn, and he let the lighter go out. He halted abruptly.

"What's the matter?"

"It got too hot," Leonid whispered. "Just wait a minute."

The two boys stood in the middle of the stairs, balancing in the darkness. The sound of his own breath seemed like the winter wind to Leonid. As soon as he judged it possible, he ignited the lighter again.

Something moved.

Leonid fired his weapon in the direction of the movement, stumbling down the last few stairs, tripping, falling face down. He scrambled and rolled out of the way, firing haphazardly, until he found a wall against which he could huddle. The noise of the shots fired in the enclosed space echoed and rang in his ears. He felt as though he had been slapped hard on both sides of the head.

Seryosha brought the machine gun to bear. It sounded like a cannon firing. Leonid fired again, emptying his magazine in what he hoped was the right direction.

Someone screamed. Another voice shouted foreign words. Seryosha swept the machine gun through the darkness. But no one fired back.

Streaks of light zigzagged crazily in the darkness, pinging and sparking off the walls.

"Stop it, "Leonid shouted, "stop firing." He had suddenly realized that the ricochets were as likely to kill them as were any enemy actions.

Seryosha ceased firing.

"Surrender," Leonid screamed at their phantom opponents.

A female voice shrieked in response, rising over the low notes of male groans.

"Surrender," Leonid shouted, confused, his voice cracking. "Surrender."

A female voice soared hideously in a strange language, babbling.

"What the hell is going on?" Seryosha said. His voice sounded near panic.

Leonid lifted himself from the floor, all bruised knees and elbows and the burning feel of scraped skin. He lunged toward the-foreign voice.

"Surrender," he ordered, his mind wild with fragments of thoughts that would not connect. He clicked on the lighter.

A heavyset girl stood with her back pressed against the wall, hands clutched to her face. She screamed in an animal fear that Leonid could not understand. It had never occurred to him that anyone might be afraid of him.

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A few feet away from the girl, two bodies lay—a crumpled man and the thick form of a woman. The moans had stopped now, and the bodies lay remarkably still, with the man hunched over the woman as though he were shielding her.

It struck Leonid that the broken tapes in his pockets probably belonged to this girl, and he suddenly felt ashamed, as though he had been discovered as a thief.

The girl's screams wheezed down into sobs. Leonid let the lighter go out, shaking his singed fingers to soothe them. Seryosha clicked on his own lighter. And the girl howled again. She rubbed herself from side to side against the cinderblock wall, as though she wanted to grind herself into it.

"Oh, no," Leonid said suddenly, as the situation began to come clear to him. "No . . . I didn't mean i t . . ."He wished he could make the girl understand. He looked at her, gesturing thoughtlessly with his reeking weapon. "I didn't mean it," he repeated. "It was all an accident."

The girl's voice welled up again.

Seryosha stepped forward, slapping the girl with the hand that held the lighter. When it went out, Leonid took his turn again, working the flint with his sore fingers.

"Shut up," Seryosha ordered. "You just shut up." He slapped the girl again. There was a totally unfamiliar tone in Seryosha's voice now.

The girl hushed slightly, as though she understood. But Leonid knew she didn't understand at all.

"I'm sorry," he told her again, anyway.

"You bet you're sorry," Seryosha told him angrily. Then he punched the girl. "Shut up."

"Stop it," Leonid told him.

"What do you mean, stop it?" Seryosha asked. "Who are you? You just killed them. Do you realize what's going to happen to us if somebody hears her and comes down here? They'll kill us."