“You’re not going alone,” Lyonya protested.
“No.” I looked at my partner. “Kostia, would you rather I asked Fyodor or Vartanov?”
It was a careful question, and I needed a blunt answer. If he felt awkward with me now, if he couldn’t be my other half as soon as we went hunting, it would be no good out there. If that was the case, I needed to hear a no, and I needed to hear it now before it got either of us killed.
Kostia took the third place at the table with Lyonya and me, looking at the map. “We stake it out tomorrow. Get him the old Russian way—”
“Cunning, persistence, patience,” I finished with my partner in unison. I couldn’t stop the smile that broke over my face. Lyonya pushed a glass of vodka across the table with a tilted grin. Kostia drank it in a neat swallow and bent back over the map, drawing my attention to a spot on the bridge’s northern end. The two of us put our elbows on the table and our heads together and made our plan, while Lyonya sat back and watched us work, contributing the occasional observation. And when the hour before dawn arrived and the car rolled around that would carry Kostia and me to the command post of the 79th Naval Rifle Brigade, Lyonya loaded it with our kit bags and rifles, buttoned my overcoat for me, scolded Kostia for not taking down his earflaps until Kostia swatted at him and the two men started shadowboxing in the dugout. “Quit it,” I scolded, swatting them both, and Lyonya stopped, merriment fading as he caught Kostia’s shoulder.
“Watch her out there,” my lover said. “Watch her for me.”
“Always,” my partner said, and there was a moment of silence I interrupted with a cough.
“No long goodbyes,” I said briskly, “it makes the heart sad in wartime!” and we piled out outside. But when the car bore us away, I had the strangest sensation in my life—the sensation, new to me, of leaving someone behind to worry through the night. Heading off to fight as a man who loved me stood with his hands balled in his pockets and fear for my life flickering in his eyes as he watched me go.
And then I forgot all about Lyonya, because that was what I had to do.
KOSTIA AND I stared at the bridge for three straight hours before either of us said a word. “Tricky,” he said at last.
“Just when I got used to shooting among trees,” I answered, thinking of the Crimean forest tracks Vartanov had taught me to walk like a shadow, but this was something new: crumbling arches of bridge topped by charred timbers, splintered sleepers, twisted railroad tracks rising to spear the whitened sky. My partner and I lay our stomachs on the snowy earth on the other side of the ravine, camouflage smocks pulled over our heads, eyes hawk-slitted through our binoculars.
“He’s there,” Kostia said.
“Not now.”
“No, he’s got his shot and he’s gone till nightfall. But he’s been firing from a nest up there.”
“Lazy.” I let my binoculars trace a tangle of corkscrewed metal beams. “He’s fired from that position two days running. I’d have found a new nest by day two.” A good sniper didn’t form habits. Habits got you dead.
“Germans like patterns.” Kostia’s binoculars traced the bridge. “It’s worked for him twice. He’ll think he can get one more.”
“I’m thinking his nest is there—” I pointed.
“—or there.” Kostia pointed to another spot.
“Agreed. One of those.”
We wriggled back on our elbows, carefully, till we were back behind our own lines. I sat up, rolled my neck, arched my back to stretch out the aches of a long stakeout. Kostia pulled out our night rations: a heel of rye bread each, with two strips of rosy fatback sprinkled with salt and ground black pepper. We chewed, both still looking in the direction of the bridge.