War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (56 page)

Wait. What is this? Yes, yes, yes. There is someone home in that tunnel now. A circle of glass sitting on top of a black dot. That’s a scope and a rifle looking this way, into my darkness. So. They’ve finally figured out my hiding place. And they’re getting ready. That shot at the bunker was clearly another fake to confuse me. Well, my friend in the tunnel, hold yourself there. Don’t move from behind your scope. I will clear up all confusion in another few moments.

That scope in the tunnel is watching, waiting for me to fire first. That is the Rabbit looking through the mortar shell, I’m sure of it. Pleased to meet you at last, Russian supersniper. Just in time to say goodbye. Poetic, really, and heroic in a way; it depends on how the story is told later.

Perhaps you’re hoping to spot my muzzle flash when I shoot out the head in the notch, Rabbit. Perhaps. That’s likely to be your plan. But will you see
me
here in my darkness? No. You’ll have to make a blind shot, a perfect shot, guided only by a pop of blue light, lit and gone in a fraction of an instant. I don’t believe you have that brand of skill. You are more the stalking hunter, the visceral, faithful, stupid man of nature than you are a trained and practiced marksman.

This, then, is the finale of our duet, Rabbit. I’ll tell you what: I’ll make it into a race. I’ll even take a handicap. Here are the rules: If by miraculous luck you’re looking in the exact place when I kill your companion with my first shot, I’ll show myself to you with my muzzle flash. You’ll then have about three seconds to find my head in the darkness before I swing low to find yours in the light. The fastest hands, the clearest eye, and the best shot wins. Wins all.

Ready, Zaitsev? I, Heinz von Krupp Thorvald, the German super-sniper, will now display for you what is truly meant by “one man, one bullet” twice over. Pull! The high notch. Mark! The low tunnel.

It’s a contest you cannot win, Rabbit.

Now, little helmets in my sights. It’s time for Nikki and me to board our flight home. Wings and coffee.

First, the high target. The helmet in the notch.

Let the pulse ease.

The crosshairs. Still. Black. Sharp.

There’s a beauty to this.

The target waits. It beckons the bullet, dead center.

Die now, first helmet. The high target.

Pull!

Loud. I pulled the trigger.

The bullet was true.

He’s up. There he is.

A man. His arms are spread. He’s fallen.

Why did he jump up like that? Strange. He should have gone straight down, crumpled. I know it was a hit.

Heinz! Forget him! The second target. The tunnel.

Find it. Move!

Yank back the bolt. Smooth. Fast. Ram it home.

Swing, swing down, right and low.

Now find the Hare. Find his gleaming tunnel.

Where is he? Find him! Fast!

Too much movement. Damn it!

Where is he?

How much time has elapsed? Too much!

Seconds. Only seconds, Heinz.

Stay calm. He can’t see you. Find him.

Stop! There’s the mortar shell.

There’s his scope, with his soft eye behind it.

The low target. Ease the pulse.

The crosshairs. The beauty.

Mark.

I am finished.

* * * *

TWENTY-SEVEN

ZAITSEV LAY ON THE GROUND, STOMACH DOWN, HIS
feet spread behind him for balance.

He slid only the first centimeter of the Moisin-Nagant’s barrel into the brass casing he’d worked into the bottom of the wall the night before. This was today’s trick, a German ploy from the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan. Zaitsev hoped that after dueling for four days, Thorvald would not be vigilant enough to spot this small opening. It had taken him hours of chipping away at the stones to make the shaft for the mortar shell. Kulikov had lent him inspiration, working silently beside him through the cold night. Kulikov’s task was to cut a V-shaped notch into the wall with his trenching tool, twenty meters to Zaitsev’s left. Neither man exchanged a word until both jobs were completed.

It was a simple idea. Draw the Headmaster’s fire with a feint. The gash in the wall was calculated to be so obvious it would be spotted by the Headmaster as soon as the morning light was full enough over the park. This would lock in Thorvald’s attention to keep him from blundering onto the mortar shell at the base of the wall to his right. In that small tunnel, pointed directly into his lair, lay the true sting of this day’s tactic, the Hare’s rifle.

Zaitsev’s hope was that if he was staring straight into the darkness beneath the metal when the Headmaster fired at Kulikov, he might spot the muzzle flash. If so, he would risk a blind shot at the flash point. If he missed, he would scare Thorvald out of his position and the duel would surely start over in a different location in the city. As unpleasant a result as that would be, it couldn’t be helped. One man, one bullet? It sounded good. But Thorvald was not just a man. He was a killer ghost. It was best to seize on the first, and probably only, opportunity when it presented itself, even if the shot was less than certain. The hunt for the Headmaster had taken several days and lives; it might also take several bullets.

The sun was high now and favored Zaitsev’s position, perhaps only for another hour. It’s time to move, he thought. The Headmaster will expect something from us while the light is out of the east. Zaitsev laid his cheek on the cool wooden stock. He crept his eye up to the scope, creating as little motion as possible. He swung the crosshairs to the metal sheet, which lay on a pile of bricks. He raised his cheek a millimeter, lowering the center of the cross to the black depth between the bricks, into the dark den of the Headmaster.

“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.