“No one says that,” Kostia observed, and he was right. A few weeks in the chaos and cruelty of the front lines was enough to turn even the most ardent lover of fair play into a soldier who would do anything to beat back the swastika. The whole notion of what constituted a fair fight wasn’t a question to be entertained during a brutal invasion; it was an academic argument for peacetime. But I was an academic at heart, and in long empty nights like this, theoretical questions still sometimes floated through my mind.
“A sniper against a sniper . . .” I paused, thinking for another silent half hour. Kostia waited, chewing tea. “This is about as close to a truly fair fight—whatever that’s worth—as we’re going to see in this ugly war,” I finished at last.
“It’s two against one,” Kostia pointed out.
“Fine, spoil my theory. It’s not much of one anyway.” And I was all right with that. I just yearned, looking at the bridge where I hoped to trap my enemy, to win this duel.
The moon climbed. The tea ran out; the bread ran out. Hunger raked at my stomach with steel claws, but I dozed despite myself, chin drooping as I squatted with my shoulder hard against the trench wall—and that was when Kostia touched my shoulder. I came awake with a snap as he pointed at the bridge.
Watch now. The duel begins.
The first frozen light of an approaching January dawn is just creeping over the bridge, barely enough to see the shadowed figure of a man picking his way through the iron tangle of beams. He’s late, rushing but still keeping low—he vanishes almost as fast as he appeared in the first place, too fast for me to fire.
Kostia and I trade looks. He gestures with one thumb; I nod. My partner begins slithering on his stomach back along the trench toward the front line as I watch the bridge through my sights. Across the gully, the German sniper will be settling into his nest out of sight, setting up his own rifle, finding familiar markers to gauge today’s kill shots. Only there won’t be any. Mine should take him from below.
Half an hour ticks past as day brightens in utter silence. No chatter of mortar fire this morning as the guns on either side clear their throats; no fighters or bombers rising into the sky. The war has withdrawn from view, like a swan folding her wings. There is only a gully, and a sniper on either side of it. I put two fingers to my lips and let out a low, crooning birdcall Vartanov taught me. A moment later I hear Kostia answer with a whistle of his own.
I never take my eyes off the bridge, but my mind sees every move my partner makes, clear as day. He’s pushing Ivan into position: a mannequin we fashioned with a stuffed torso on a stick, dressed in winter overcoat and a captain’s helmet. From across the bridge, it should look like a Soviet officer has abandoned his post for a moment and gone to the edge of the ravine for a morning stretch.
Old trick, Kostia had said as we wrestled Ivan into a spare uniform.
Good trick, I’d responded.
The shot from the far side of the bridge sounds muted, a gong from a cracked bell. I see a brief glitter of light in the tangle of shattered iron beams, and my sights hone in. There you are, I think even as Kostia lets Ivan’s stuffed body fall. There you are, you Nazi bastard. The German sniper sitting on the heel of his right leg, rifle propped in the crook of a bent branch, almost completely hidden by a metal beam. Through my sights I see him pull the bolt of his rifle, pocket the spent cartridge . . . and raise his head to look out of his nest.
Midnight, I think.
And fire.
“SO WAS HE a big name?”
“Very. Helmut Bommel, Iron Cross, 121st Infantry Regiment, 50th Brandenburg Infantry Division, Oberfeldwebel—” I let out a groan as Lyonya’s hands worked at my aching feet. The minute he’d put me down after pulling me out of the staff car and hugging the breath out of me, he bore me off to his dugout, peeled me down to my undershirt, wrapped me in a blanket, and parked me beside the glowing stove, hunkering down on a stool to pull my feet into his lap.