“He’s back,” Vartanov repeated, scratching his rough white beard. “Wouldn’t say he’s in the best mood. I’ve never seen a boy that hungover, and I’ve seen a few in my day.”
“Tell him to come find me when you see him.” I knew why my partner had taken off, but there wasn’t anything to say about it, so I just called out to the new recruits: “Again—” and began thinking about a foray into no-man’s-land tonight, maybe taking Vartanov for a lookout, when an orderly appeared with a message: I was to report to the regimental command post at once.
I half expected to see Lyonya there, but it was Major Matusyevich and a sturdy red-faced colonel introduced as the commander of the 79th Naval Rifle Brigade. They took my salute, the colonel eyeing me curiously. “They say you’re the best shooter in the division, Comrade Senior Sergeant Pavlichenko. Your picture’s on the divisional board of honor.”
That was news to me. He went on.
“A first-rate German rifleman has appeared in our defense sector. Over the past two days, five of our men have been killed—three soldiers and two officers, one the commander of our 2nd Battalion. All single shots to the head.”
I could feel every nerve in my body prick. “His nest?”
A shrug. “Our best guess, he’s tucked himself somewhere in the wreckage of the bridge over the Kamyshly gully.”
I felt myself smile, the kind of smile Lyonya had never seen. The kind of smile no one saw, except maybe Kostia, because it was the smile I wore only when the count went down to midnight and it was time to fire. “I know that bridge.”
I knew it because I’d marked it as a sniper’s paradise. The gully in the middle of no-man’s-land was covered in reeds and overgrown, splintered apple orchards, two slopes rising up from the stream meandering down the center. The steep, pine-furred southern slope was held by our division; the gentler northern slope was held by units of the Germans’ 50th Brandenburg Infantry Division . . . and the two high sides of the gully were spanned by a bombed-out railway bridge. A span or two survived on either side, giving way to nothing but soaring air in the central section, concrete pilings topped by a spider’s web of tangled, twisted metal overlooking the ravine.
“He’ll have found a place on one of the surviving spans and hidden among the metal wreckage.” There was a map on the table; I tapped the place. “Six hundred, eight hundred meters . . . perfectly possible for a good shot. He’s been able to fire at leisure if he’s up there.”
“Can you put an end to it?”
I looked up, still smiling. “Yes.”
“GERMAN SHARPSHOOTERS.” LYONYA sounded matter-of-fact. “I’m not surprised they’re starting to turn up.”
“Why?” My fight was such a narrowly focused thing, I saw little more than what was in my sights—or at most what was directly embroiling my company, my regiment, my division. Lyonya’s war, seen from the company command post, had a wider angle.
“The first assault on Sevastopol, the Hitlerites expected to bull straight through our defenses.” Lyonya pushed aside the remnants of our supper, which the orderly had fetched from the mess kitchens, and unrolled a map. “Their second assault, they realized how we’ve dug in—they’ve had to reexamine their situation. We’re a first-rate fortress here, so they’ll be bringing in specialists to nibble at morale. In the command post we’re hearing talk of German snipers being sent in from Poland, even France.”
“Who do you think he is?” Kostia’s voice sounded behind me. I turned and saw my partner leaning against the doorjamb like a dark shadow. His black eyes were a little sunken but steady. “This German sniper.”
“I don’t care who he is.” I shrugged. Some icy-eyed Alsatian who grew up hunting boar on his family estate; some fanatical flaxen-haired Reich soldier who had burned through a special training course so he could take his place on that shattered bridge and pick us off—what did it matter? “He’s mine.”