I saluted. “Comrade Private L. M. Pavlichenko reporting.”
“You are out of uniform, Lyudmila Mikhailovna.” I looked down at myself, startled, but he handed me a little gray cardboard box. I opened it and saw two brass triangles. “You’re no longer a private, but a corporal. Congratulations.”
A thrum went through me, a tangled mix of pleasure—how proud my father would be!—and disquiet. You are being promoted over corpses. Quietly I attached the triangles to the raspberry-colored parade tabs on my collar, listening as my captain gave me a list of the dead: the commander of my platoon, thirty other men from my battalion. They couldn’t even be replaced with soldier recruits, but with volunteer sailors from Sevastopol, not a lick of infantry experience among them . . . My stomach sank with every new bit of bad news.
“There’s a new rifle waiting for you,” my captain finished, “given the destruction of your old one. We’ve received directives for snipers from the high command of the Odessa defense district, and that”—his voice shifted into official cadences—“is to occupy the most advantageous positions for observation and firing, to give the enemy no peace, to deprive him of the opportunity to move freely in the lines closest to the front—and to disrupt and degrade all enemy morale, good order, and discipline among the ranks.” Sergienko’s face didn’t look at all lugubrious now. It looked fierce, and I could feel my still-sore spine stretch hungrily in response. That list of the dead had brought rage curling back through me, where it had slept muted under the pain of the concussion, the weariness, the longing for my son. “We don’t have many qualified as snipers,” my captain went on, “so look for new recruits who can be trained. For one, you’ll need to find yourself a partner.” Snipers worked best in pairs, watching each other’s backs.
“Yes, Comrade Captain.” I saluted, already itching to get my hands on the new rifle. I’d known my last weapon so well she’d felt like an extension of my own flesh; I’d have to get to know this one. I’d modified my old Three Line to suit my exact firing style, removing the wood along the whole length of the handguard groove so it no longer touched the barrel; filing down the tip of the gunstock. Once I did the same for the new rifle and got off some practice rounds, we’d be friends . . .
“Lyudmila Mikhailovna?” Sergienko added as I turned to leave.
“Yes, Comrade Captain?”
He looked me hard in the eyes. “Good hunting.”
Two words that helped me put away the mother, the daughter, the student, and let the sniper unfurl her wings.
Chapter 8
My memoir, the official version: Rank conveys privileges.
My memoir, the unofficial version: Being known as someone who can put a bullet through a target’s eye at five hundred meters also conveys privileges.
“OUT,” LENA TOLD the half-naked man in the banya’s steam room. “Or face the wrath of the deadliest shot in Odessa.”
He rose from the pine bench, towel around his waist, ruffling a hand through sweat-damp blond hair. “Can I at least get dressed?”
“I’m not shooting anyone just so I can get a bath,” I protested to Lena, but she was already tossing the tall man his clothes. Civilian clothes, I was glad to see. At least it wasn’t an officer or a fellow soldier she was ruthlessly ejecting.
“I usually like to know a woman’s name before she sees me with my pants off,” he complained good-naturedly as he padded out.
I laughed, and he grinned at me as Lena dragged me into the steam, though not without a cheerful ogle at the fair-haired man’s gleaming shoulders.
“I’m having a bite of that when I’m done,” she decided, bolting the door from the inside. “Now, strip off and soak in this heat till your hip loosens up.”
“No doctor I’ve ever met said a long steam in the banya did anything for a wrenched hip, Lena Paliy.” I eased down my trousers, hissing at the pain in the joint. “You’re just using me to get first crack at the bathing facilities.”