I sketched the homestead on a rough firing map, jotted the distances, began calculating the wind. Speed medium, four to six kilometers per hour. “What’s all this?” Vartanov said, looking at my figures when we were retreating safely back toward no-man’s-land. “This is about wind?”
“The rifle fires the bullet, but the wind carries it.” I quoted the old proverb. “We choose that position, we have a breeze from the side blowing at a ninety-degree angle. At 100 meters from the target, the horizontal lateral correction for a sniper is several milliradians. Now, in locations high above sea level”—I brightened, unable to resist the technical tangent—“the atmospheric pressure changes and the distance of the bullet’s trajectory and flight increases. But in hills under 500 meters in height, and here we’re at 310, one can ignore a longitudinal wind as long as one takes the lateral into consideration, since it can cause significant—”
Vartanov had that wary, hunted look the Odessa librarians used to get when I started talking about Bogdan Khmelnitsky.
I sighed. “You calculate the wind so you can make allowances in your aim and not see your shot blow off target.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” He sounded offended. “I can take down a buck at two hundred meters; I know how to compensate for wind!”
“I’m sure you can, but there’s still value in understanding the science behind it.”
He waved that off. “This time of year, expect strong blows from the north and northeast. You’ll attack tomorrow?”
No sense waiting, I thought. We could bag the entire nest here with a little luck and some cool heads . . . not a job for my whole platoon, though. Some of them had barely mastered their ballistics tables, much less cross-wind calculations, and this would be tense, precise work.
“Take the dark one,” Vartanov said, reading my mind. “Your partner. He’s the only one among you who moves quietly.”
“Him, and Fyodor Sedykh, and Burov.” The best of my sailor recruits. “I’ll borrow a couple of hand-to-hand types from my reconnaissance officer as well, in case we get rushed.”
“And me,” said Vartanov.
I stopped beside a tangle of garland thorn. “You aren’t a soldier of the Red Army, dedushka,” I said gently. “I can’t take civilians hunting.”
“That homestead the Germans turned into their headquarters was mine.” The ranger’s eyes over the thicket of beard were like knives glinting from underbrush. “I lived there with my son and his wife, my own wife and my younger children. We had a banya, a barn, greenhouses, we all worked dawn to dusk; I couldn’t tell you where the war even was, or what it was about. I was off to the municipal authority offices ten days ago, to register some supplementary expenses—and that was the day a party of Hitlerite scouts came along, lined my family up alongside my house, and shot them all.” There were tears in his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall. “I will be there to watch those beasts die, with your permission or without.”
Slowly I reached for the rifle slung across his bent shoulder. He let it fall into my hands. An old Berdan II, almost an antique. I looked the ranger in the eye. “You can borrow a Mosin-Nagant from one of my platoon. I can spare you twenty rounds to get comfortable with her before tomorrow.”
He bared his teeth. “I’ll only need ten.”
WATCH NOW, AS a party of seven shooters approaches the village at first light the following morning.
Kostia isn’t at my side for once, and he’s not happy about it. He doesn’t argue with my orders to stay with the less-experienced platoon members, but there’s a line sharp as a whip cut between his dark brows. “I’m staying with the old man,” I say, nodding at Vartanov. “If after all this he ends up playing us false, I’ll put him down. If he’s everything he says he is, he’s still the newest to a firefight and I want to be there to steady him. You steady the others. Shoot true—” and Kostia nods, slipping away through the shadows. It’s strange having him leave my side. He’s become like another limb since we found each other after Odessa; I’d be less uneasy if I settled in for duty without my shadow than without Kostia. He and the rest of the platoon take position fifteen paces to my left; I take my place in the middle with Vartanov, and the two extra soldiers I borrowed from the reconnaissance officer plant themselves fifteen paces to my right: a triangle of fire we’ll pour down on the Nazis. Wind at right angles to my position; I correct the dial of the lateral on the tube of my telescopic sight and quietly pass instructions down the line. Vartanov follows my every movement, eyes glittering.