War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (17 page)

Viktor grabbed a handful of dirt and threw it at Zaitsev’s back. The Hare ran full tilt through the trench all the way back to their bunker, with the Bear growling at his heels.

* * * *

NINE

MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT, ZAITSEV ENTERED THE
HARES’ QUARTERS.

“How are my rabbits?” His lantern threw amber shades against their blinking faces.

The recruits sat up on their bedrolls. Good, Zaitsev thought. They can sleep. An important skill for a sniper. Rest when and where you can.

He crouched. “I have a mission.” Dark tendrils of shadow played on their faces when he lowered the lamp to the floor. “After school was out today, division headquarters sent me orders. It seems some Nazi prisoners have pinpointed a German forward HQ. Command asked if I could take some snipers, set up positions on no-man’s-land, and see if we couldn’t get lucky with a few shots in the morning. I told them yes, we could do that, but I had a better idea. Why drill holes in just a few Nazi officers? Why not take care of them all at once?”

Little Chekov spoke up. “Dynamite ‘em.”

Zaitsev pointed at the private. “Trainee Chekov gets a star. Exactly. I’ll take four of you with me. We leave immediately. I have the satchel charges assembled, and I’ve got a map of the location. Volunteers?”

All hands went up. Some recruits got to their knees to raise their hands higher. Zaitsev tapped on the heads of the soldiers he wanted on the mission: Chekov, the poacher, a superb shot and intelligent; Kostikev, the silent Siberian killer; Kulikov, the most quiet and vigilant crawler in the class, who could literally blend with the rubble; and the resistance fighter, Chernova.

Each stood and walked to the doorway. Zaitsev turned to those remaining. “Get some sleep. You’ll all have your chances. We’ll be back before sunup.”

The four followed Zaitsev out into the dark October hush. The nervous crackle of a far-off rifle or a machine gun’s burst were the only noises to upset the chilly stillness. Zaitsev walked beside the high wall, holding his lantern low, The shadows of his squad lagged on the wall behind them.

Zaitsev put the lamp down. Waiting in a heap beside the wall were six backpacks and five regular-issue rifles. From his pocket, Zaitsev produced a greasepaint pot.

“Grease up,” he told them. Chekov dug out a gob with two fingers and passed the pot around.

They darkened their hands and faces while Zaitsev spread his map beside the hissing light. He stabbed his finger onto the paper.

“This is the Lazur. Here are the outbuildings of the Red October plant. There,” he said, and pointed again, “is the Stalingrad Flying School. And here between the two is a row of ice warehouses. In this one, on the top floor, is the German HQ.”

He ran his finger along the map across the northern portion of the rail yard, which engulfed the Lazur on three sides. “We’ll crawl north across no-man’s-land. Our outposts are here and here. They’ve been alerted so that we don’t get shot in the backsides. We’ll enter the building from the south, climb to the third floor, plant our charges, light them, and get out.”

He looked up from the map at the shiny black faces and white eyes of the recruits. All were looking down to study the layout—all except Chernova, who stared at him. He smiled at her.

“Clean as you please, partisan. Right?”

“Right.”

“Let’s do it.” Zaitsev folded the map. “Each of you take a rifle and a satchel. You’re carrying the dynamite. I’m carrying the fuses.” He hoisted two of the packs over his shoulder. “If anything happens to me, make sure you take my packs.”

He put out the lamp and left it beside the wall. He pulled Chekov beside him. “You know the way?”

The private nodded. “In the last two months I’ve spent a few years of my life in the Red October. I know all the ways there, Chief Master Sergeant. I know the icehouses, too.”

Zaitsev patted Chekov on the back. The soldier was shorter than him by half a head, and he had delicate features and black hair. Chekov possessed the confident manner of an athlete; he’ll make a good sniper, Zaitsev thought. He’s quirky, cool. He’ll be hard to predict.

“Good. You lead, Chekov.” Zaitsev touched Kostikev on the arm. “You next. If we meet trouble, you take care of it.”

The Siberian fingered the knives hanging from his belt, one near each hand. He said nothing but slung the rifle and satchel over his shoulder. He stepped close at Chekov’s back.

“Nikolay,” Zaitsev called to Kulikov. “If something happens to me, you’re in charge. I want you in the middle. Go.”

He turned to Chernova, her hair golden even in the night.

“You go in front of me, partisan. You’ll check the work to make sure the charges are set right. When we’re ready, you’ll light the fuse. Danilov will love that.”

The girl’s brows arched while she hefted her rifle. “Is that why I’m along? To be in one of Danilov’s articles about you?”

Zaitsev tugged on her arm. “Do your job well and it could be an article about you.”

The five soldiers walked in single file for a hundred meters to the north. At a signal from Zaitsev, they dropped into a trench leading to the edge of the rail yard. At the end of the trench, they were met by six guards posted behind heavy machine guns trained across no-man’s-land. With a nod to Chekov, Zaitsev sent the lithe point man over the breastwork and onto the three-hundred-meter-wide plain of cratered earth and twisting rails.

At ten-second intervals, Zaitsev motioned for the next in line to crawl out of the trench. “Stay in Chekov’s tracks.”

Once all four hares were in the rail yard, Zaitsev slung his satchels over his back and greased up his own face and hands. He cradled his rifle and climbed out of the trench, lifting an oiled, dark thumb to the guards.

Once on his belly, he could barely make out Chernova’s legs wriggling ten meters ahead. Neither she nor any of the other trainees made a sound.

For ten minutes, Zaitsev crawled in a crooked line, his eyes locked on Chernova’s heels. He grew irked at the zigs and zags Chekov led them through. But as the route proceeded through craters, beneath rail cars, and behind debris, Zaitsev smiled admiringly at the craft of Anatoly Chekov’s choices. Slow, patient, and silent.

A white flare shot up straight overhead. Zaitsev dug his chin into the dirt. Ahead of him, Chernova, Kulikov, and Kostikev were still as rocks. He was certain they were almost invisible against the dark, rippling dirt.

The flare twinkled and faded, riding a slow fall beneath a tiny parachute. Under the gleam of the drifting light, Zaitsev looked two hundred meters ahead to the huge outline of the Red October plant. Fifty meters to his right, almost astride their position, was the Stalingrad Flight School. Only forty meters more along this course until they would turn left; then the icehouse was just a short distance down that street.

The flare floated behind a row of ghostly ruins and extinguished itself. Zaitsev followed Chernova over the crest of a crater. The hares were there waiting for him.

Zaitsev pointed at a four-story building thirty meters away. The south wall of the building was missing. The stairwell to the upper floors was completely exposed to the outside.

Chekov nodded. The icehouse.

Zaitsev tapped Kostikev’s leg. “You go first. Leave your rifle and satchel here. Light a cigarette from the second-floor landing.”

Kostikev handed his pack to Chekov. Chernova took his rifle.

Kostikev pulled one of his knives from its sheath and gripped it in his mouth like a picture of a Turk pirate. He smiled at Zaitsev, his fellow Siberian, showing a flash of gold in his teeth. The stringy muscles in his neck stood out like buttresses under his jaw.

“See you in a minute,” he uttered around the knife. These were the first words Zaitsev had heard him speak all day.

Zaitsev settled on the rim of the crater to watch the man disappear into the rubble of the fallen wall. Minutes passed. Then, out of the shadows on the second-floor landing, a dark form walked to the ledge. The shape turned and shuffled around a corner without lighting a cigarette.

A minute later a second form appeared on the landing and lit a cigarette. It inhaled deeply, giving off a glowing dot of orange, then flicked the cigarette down onto the debris below to bounce once in a shower of sparks.

Zaitsev whispered, “Stay low to the building. Then up the stairs fast. No noise. Nikolay—move.”

Kulikov hefted his own rifle and Kostikev’s and slid out of the crater. Chekov grabbed Kostikev’s satchel and followed.

“Partisan,” Zaitsev hissed, “go.”

He waited until Chernova slid ahead of him with her rifle and backpack. He followed her over the rim of the crater.

He heard nothing, only the faintest scraping in the rocks from his scurrying hares. At the base of the steps, Kulikov squatted in the shadows, guarding. Zaitsev followed Chernova quickly up the steps, both on tiptoe. He looked out of the stairwell into the open air where a wall should have been. His heart pounded in his hands, which were clutching his rifle. He was unaccustomed to being so exposed in his hunting, as he was now in this stairwell. There was no camouflage, no trench, nothing to cloak him but silence and the gray-black night.

Two steps ahead, Chernova recoiled. She had just reached the top stair and stepped onto the second-floor landing. The girl stumbled back against Zaitsev. She fumbled to raise her gun.

He reached his arm up to the girl’s waist and pulled her down onto his step. He flipped his rifle over, stock first, and lunged forward, the rifle poised to strike.

There in the dark, standing against the wall, was a Nazi guard. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. His helmeted head stared out past the demolished wall. Zaitsev knew what had happened. It was what he’d ordered, but with a flourish. He rubbed his foot against the toe of the German’s boot and felt the slickness of blood on the landing.

Zaitsev reached under the chin and felt the haft of Kostikev’s knife. The Nazi had been tacked to a wooden timber in the wall with his head resting upright on the knife, his chin on the white bone handle.

Chernova stepped up on the landing. Kulikov arrived on the steps below. He’d hurried up from his post on the first floor at the slight sounds of the commotion on the landing.

Zaitsev heard a “psst” from the steps to the next floor. Kostikev’s gold teeth twinkled in the center of a loose grin.

“I had nowhere to put him, Vasha. I didn’t want you to trip over him.” The assassin shrugged, then climbed the steps.

“Guard the rear,” Zaitsev said to Chernova. “Tell Kulikov to bring up his satchel. I’ll come get you when the charges are laid.” He followed Kostikev up the steps.

On the third floor, Chekov led the others into the middle of a large, open room. Thick wooden pillars stood on the outer reaches of an ancient oak floor. This is an old building, Zaitsev observed. It’ll come down nicely.

They laid the four satchels in each corner. Kulikov hooked up the charges and fuses in the center of the room. Zaitsev’s watch read 2:50.

“Ready?” he whispered to Nikolay.

“One minute.”

Zaitsev crept down the steps to the second-floor landing. On his way, he heard not a whisper but a command.

“Hände hoch!”

His stomach tightened. Adrenaline needles welded his fists to his rifle stock. His lips curled in an unspoken curse. Chernova had been surprised by a Nazi on the stairwell, a guard Kostikev had missed. She was certainly at this moment staring down the barrel of a gun. The mission and all their lives were in jeopardy. The next five seconds would save them or lose them.

Zaitsev slipped down the steps quietly as he could. Reaching the turn, he peeked around the corner to the landing.