“I have no intention of gathering further data. No interest at all in seeing Kostia or old Vartanov in a skirt. Are you really going to kill one more apiece for all those women?”
“They’ll hunt me down if I fail.” I pulled up my trousers, buckling the belt around my hips. “They nearly asked me to bring them ears as proof.”
“Women are bloodthirsty creatures. The English and Americans are utter fools if they think females are too delicate to send to the front.” Lyonya handed me my boots. “So, your first public speaking engagement—that’s a milestone.”
“First?” I snorted, pulling out my heavy socks. “After my performance today, no one’s ever going to put me in front of a crowd again.”
Fate must really have had itself a laugh, there.
Chapter 19
My memoir, the official version: March 4, 1942. The day that . . .
My memoir, the unofficial version: . . .
SPRING! I DON’T remember ever greeting a season’s shift with more joy. A week ago had brought us storms of low clouds, flurrying snow, frost crunching underfoot. Today the snow had melted, the sun shone down, the temperature bloomed well north of zero. In the Crimean heights you could glimpse yellowed grass, new shoots of juniper, cypresses and cedars putting out bright green growth—I’d be able to start taking leaf and flower samples for Slavka again. I scanned the valley through my binoculars, nearly beaming.
“Spring means another assault soon,” Vartanov growled at my elbow. “They’ve been quiet too long.”
“Then let’s shake them up.” I had seven of my platoon with me today, because an entire group of Nazi snipers had nested themselves on a hilltop our maps had simply labeled No-Name Height. They’d targeted traffic on the dirt road passing below; half the personnel of a 45mm antitank gun had been downed yesterday, and answering with artillery fire just made the German sharpshooters change position and resume picking us off. “Take your boys, Lyudmila Mikhailovna,” I was ordered—so here we were with almost the whole platoon.
“Eyes on our bushes,” I ordered. Last night in Lyonya’s dugout, Vartanov and Kostia and I had crammed in to make six decoy bushes, wiring long juniper branches together in bunches. We look like brides making garlands, Lyonya remarked, pitching in to help, but with more khaki. Kostia fired back with You’re the ugliest bride I ever saw, Kitsenko, and I’d plunked myself down between them before they could start trying to arm-wrestle among the bushes, scolding You two! as Lyonya kissed my neck and Kostia lobbed a juniper frond at me. Lyonya had hugged me goodbye on the dugout steps at three in the morning when I set out, then more formally returned my salute when we stepped into the open. It was always like that: the minute we put a toe over the dugout threshold we were no longer lovers. We were regimental comrades who gave each other a formal farewell and a call of “Good hunting.”
And now the long night of setting the trap was done, and I watched through my binoculars for the German snipers to take the bait: our decoy bushes, which would stick out like obvious decoys to the enemy who knew every centimeter of this hill by now, and who could be counted on to notice when six new bushes appeared on the slope overnight. And I couldn’t stop myself from beaming when daylight broke, as the Hitlerites saw the conspicuous new brush we’d placed in the dead of night and began to thunder fire down on our wired juniper branches, which they assumed we’d brought to hide behind.
“There—” Kostia pointed out one of the hidden German sniper nests, tracking it from the downward angle of fire. “And there—and there—” And when the German fire ceased and the Nazi snipers put their heads up to survey the damage, a hail of Russian bullets greeted them.
“Up!” I shouted when everything went still. “Forward!” and we flowed up the last hundred meters of No-Name Height, over the top and down into the enemy trenches at the crown. Not just a complex of sniper parapets up here, but an entrenched net of communication passages and machine-gun nests, three MG 34 machine guns with loaded ammunition belts trained on the road below . . . Vartanov fired off a red flare, which meant We’ve captured it; a green flare bloomed in response on the Soviet side of no-man’s-land, meaning Well done! The road below would soon be swarming with our troops, but my platoon looked at me, poised and hungry.