“A nine-meter fall?” He looked me over, searching for damage, and I found myself looking him over, too. Tall, broad-shouldered, laugh lines around the eyes . . . “You’re lucky that hip’s not broken.”
I shrugged. “Injuries happen.” It’s only new recruits who look at the wounded and think, That can’t happen to me. A soldier who’s been under fire thinks, That could happen to me, so I need to be more careful. And a soldier who has seen comrades die regardless of how careful they were thinks, This will someday happen to me—but not today, if only I can get out of here.
Lena came out of the banya still toweling her hair, and she gave the fair-haired man a loud smack of a kiss. “That’s for cutting your bath short, zaichik.”
He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Well worth it if I get one from the lady sniper, too.”
I laughed, stood on tiptoe, and slung an arm around his neck. “Why not?” I didn’t ever respond to the flirtations of fellow soldiers, but civilians were something different. It had been a long time since I felt admired, felt complimented, felt female, so I planted a kiss on his cheek. He turned his head, diving after my lips unashamedly, and I pulled back with a grin before his mouth could land on mine. He smelled like pine.
Lena wolf-whistled, scooping up the little pile of gifts by the door. “Come on now, or we’ll miss the chow line!” I let her drag me off and winced again as the pain in my hip flared.
“Lover boy wasn’t wrong when he said you could have broken that. You need a partner, Mila. Someone to cover your back, lend a helping hand when you have to dive out of sniper nests.”
“I haven’t found one yet.” I’d gone looking in my battalion, following Sergienko’s orders to find recruits who could be trained as snipers, but I hadn’t found anyone I wanted at my back longer than one night’s sortie. A boy from Kiev shot well but moved like an ox; a lanky Leningrader had the keenest eyes I’d ever come across, but couldn’t stop flinching when he pulled the trigger.
“Forty-six kills . . .” Lena pulled the golden pear from my pile of presents and inhaled its fragrance. “You’re living on borrowed time. Get a partner, or next time you fall on a gravestone, it might end up being your own. So, can I eat this pear?”
FOURTEEN MEN, ALL sizes, all ages: my new recruits stood in a rough cluster, laughing, looking about for their officer. I let them wait, resting my still-sore hip against a crate of shells, flipping through the signed instruction booklet from my old instructor. The word was we’d be transferring soon, retreating through Odessa, but not yet—and I’d received another set of orders about training up new marksmen, this time handed down from General Petrov himself. He wanted more snipers, and he wanted them soon. You can’t train a sniper in just three or four days, I’d protested, only to hear from a sour-faced major standing behind Sergienko: You have a week.
I eyed the men before me over the top of my manual, dubiously. A few were riflemen orphaned from slaughtered platoons and folded into new companies, but two-thirds were volunteer sailors from Sevastopol. I had my doubts that any man in wide-legged pants who was more used to a pitching deck than the smooth, brutal heft of a Mosin-Nagant was going to have a marksman’s eye.
The biggest of the sailors finally called to me. “You’re serving here too, kukulka?”
“Yes,” I said, still perusing the manual.
“Smashing medic they’ve given us, eh, boys?” I couldn’t see him winking at his friends, but I could just about feel it. “Let’s get acquainted, beauty—I’m Fyodor Sedykh, and your name is?”
I made a mark with my pencil. “Lyudmila Mikhailovna.”
“Well, Lyuda, don’t frown. Be nice! It won’t do you any harm.”
I had a sudden flash of Alexei saying Give me a smile! I shoved the memory out of my head, but my voice came out with an icier edge as I said, “I’ll be nice when you all stand at attention and announce your presence to the commander as you are supposed to do in accordance with the military code.”