“Ah, but you’re smiling . . .”
Chapter 14
My memoir, the official version: At ten past six in the morning of December 17, 1941, ten days after the Americans entered the war, the Hitlerites unleashed a fury of artillery and shellfire on Sevastopol’s defense positions. The intent was to split our defensive front and come out at Sevastopol in four days exactly—on December 21, the sixth-month anniversary of war between Germany and the Soviet Union.
My memoir, the unofficial version: My luck ran out.
FLICKERS, LIGHT AND dark. Pain, dark red and midnight black. Confusion, a muffling blanket.
I couldn’t move.
—armored transport approaching, followed by two battalions of riflemen and submachine gunners—The crackle of the report comes in from the military outposts. The men of my company flow into position. Orders—from Dromin? From Kitsenko? Soldiers in the sniper platoon to stand with the machine gunners. Pavlichenko—that’s Kitsenko speaking, his hand on my shoulder, eyes blue sparks in a gunsmoke-grimed face—you take the concealed trench covering the flank, aim for machine-gun nests and mortar crews . . .
I blinked blood out of my lashes. I still couldn’t see, couldn’t move. I lay on my stomach, pinned flat.
—The machine-gun nest, take it out—The order, screaming out in a voice that cracks hysterically over the din. More screams as the armored transport vehicle slinks into the clearing on its caterpillar tracks, the machine gun chittering like some malevolent insect behind the armored shield on the cab roof, crawling toward the broken trunk of a young elm and raking 1st Battalion’s trenches with bullets. I hear a roar of crashing timber from a trench giving way, a man shrieking in pain . . .
I blinked blood again. Something trickled across my side, something weighted me down across the back. Kostia. Where was Kostia? My platoon? Kostia.
—let me come with you, Kostia shouting directly into my ear to be heard over the din, catching my arm as I head for the concealed trench, but I point him back toward the platoon. You have the platoon, take them—Vartanov open-mouthed, trying not to tremble in the din and smoke of his first pitched battle; some of the others looking on the verge of bolting unless they have a steadying hand. Kostia, TAKE THEM—and I dive into the shallow trench half covered by the fallen leaves of an acacia tree. The armored transport droning forward, spitting death; I rack a round into place and line up my shot, and I have less than sixty seconds . . .
Blink, blink. I lay pinned in the dark like a butterfly to a board, tasting blood and iron on my lips, but my mind helpfully produced the calculations I’d run in a matter of frenzied seconds just a few minutes—hours? days?—before. Heads of the machine gunners over two meters above ground level; rifle propped on a twenty-centimeter parapet; between aiming line and weapon horizon, a 35-degree angle . . . distance of two hundred meters to moving target; bullet traveling two hundred meters in .25 seconds; in that time target would have traveled four meters . . . adjust windage drum on sights . . . Calculations had coiled and crossed as my internal clock wound the shot-count down to midnight.
—Fire. My bullets spanging through the eye slots of the armored shield; one body falling—two. A German lieutenant actually climbing out of the cab to see what has hit his gunners. What does he have to fear, after all, when he is covered by the shield and all the Soviet fire is coming from the trenches in front? My bullet comes from the side, takes him in the temple . . .
Blink. I still couldn’t see, but I tried to get my hands under me, push myself up. A wave of pain roared up my spine, flattening me into the earth. Dirt, was I still on the ground, in my trench, or—？
—Scharfschütze, Scharfschütze—is that the German word for sniper; is that the cry going up from the command post of the German reconnaissance battalion? Gunfire suddenly thrashing the trees over my head, German bullets plucking the ground, trying to find my hiding place. I grab my rifle and roll up out of my trench to the left, once, twice—there’s another, deeper sniper’s nest dug just a few paces over; one more roll and I’ll drop into it—