Watch now. The Germans gather at the same time, the same place, the same numbers. For the love of Lenin, their iron adherence to schedules and rules may have conquered empires but it makes them prey to a lynx pack like us. The sun climbs, the mobile kitchen comes out at 11:37 on the dot, the men cluster . . . at least sixty officers and specialists.
A sniper platoon’s commander always fires first, signaling the rest. My rifle sings, sending her first hot gift through the eye of an officer berating a private in a loud voice, and he’s barely begun to crumple before shots begin to thunder to my right and left.
Watch now as the Nazis fall like scythed rye. They’re pinned under three points of fire: my side-line shooters all work from the outside in; I target anyone coming out of the middle, and Vartanov aims for anyone crossing left or right toward my zone. They came to the mess line without their weapons, too tightly packed to run, and I feel not a drop of pity. It was this crew that murdered Vartanov’s family, and if my tiny band of seven lets up for even a moment, we’ll be charged, overrun, and outnumbered eight or nine to one. If that happens, my men will all be executed. As for me, I’ll be gang-raped and then executed, if I don’t manage to shoot myself first . . . but that’s not our fate today, because we’re winning this, numbers be damned.
The artillery major charges out of the house, still in his singlet from his daily calisthenics, and a bullet drops him between the eyes. I think it’s Vartanov’s. The old ranger is firing slow but steady beside me, teeth bared in his harsh old face. Kostia across the way is snapping shots with cool precision like the block of ice he is. My platoon trainees and the borrowed reconnaissance soldiers are aiming and reloading without hesitation, and I am so proud of them all. Not one of them hesitates. They’re my men, my pack of deadly, silent, soft-prowling lynxes.
Watch now, and don’t blink—it’s all over in moments. Close to fifty dead on the ground, another dozen fled into the nearest truck and careening away. We do a fast raid of the headquarters, stripping whatever we can find in the way of staff papers for our officers to analyze, supplies to supplement our meager rations, an MP 40 submachine gun we can turn back on its makers. Then we’re fleeing into the trees. Fyodor lumbers along with soft whoops as though he has just won a football game, the great ox, and Kostia glides like a shadow at my elbow again, and Vartanov is weeping as he runs, but he never stops smiling.
And neither do I.
WE WOULDN’T BE able to cross no-man’s-land and return to our barracks until nightfall, so we made camp at a place Vartanov had marked for me on our reconnaissance run: a plank shack half dug into the earth, protected by a stand of conifers and prickly juniper. We were nearly there, blowing from a kilometer and a half’s worth of sprinting, when a buck crashed through the underbrush ahead. “No time to go after it,” I said as it disappeared, before any of the men could start dreaming of fresh game.
“Never mind venison, I’d take it just to put on the wall.” Fyodor watched the crown of antlers disappear into the trees, wistful.
“A sniper doesn’t have to kill everything in sight,” I retorted as we moved back into a jog.
“Hunt to fill your soup kettle and put a pelt on your bed, not just to put a trophy on your wall,” Vartanov grunted unexpectedly. “The forest is like a temple: observe the old customs, be respectful, don’t kill for amusement, and the woods will reward you for it.”
“I don’t believe in forest spirits, but I don’t enjoy hunting animals. They’re defenseless against these.” I patted my rifle as I ducked under a low-hanging sycamore branch. “It’s not like the days when the boyars went out with spears. At least with that kind of duel, the animal had a fighting chance.”
“We just slaughtered fifty men from the cover of shadows.” Kostia spoke for the first time all morning. “We certainly didn’t give them a fighting chance.”
“But we’re at war, and wars are mankind against mankind. Not innocent beasts.”