Sniper's Honor

CHAPTER 38

A bird tweeted from the trees nearby, except it wasn’t a bird at all, and with a crash and a stumble, a large body broke free in the clearing. It was the Peasant.

“Sergeant Mili,” he called in Ukrainian, “I have returned.”

Mili felt a surge of pure bliss. He wasn’t dead at all. Nobody could kill him. He smiled as he shambled closer. From inside the cave, she heard the Teacher stir, as the mild clamor had awakened him. The Teacher came out.

“He says the Germans are gone,” he translated.

“The Germans are gone?”

The Peasant began unpacking his sack, explaining in Ukrainian what he’d brought, though Mili could see for herself: bread, salted beef, vegetables.

Then he said something about the Germans — Mili understood the word — and the Teacher grabbed him, yelling in Russian, “How do you know the Germans have left?”

The Teacher translated the Peasant’s story: “I have been lying in brush for days. It was horrible. I made it to the outskirts of the village and took my chances with a man, and he’d lost sons to the Nazis. He volunteered to help. But he was bringing me food, and they nabbed him not a hundred meters from where I hid. They beat him and dragged him off, but I was too close to move. I had to wait that long day for them to come for me. They never did. I don’t know why.”

He went on with his story. He had lain there all night, and the next morning the Germans had sent out more patrols but also started their burning operation. They burned for days, and the Peasant watched as the flames came nearer and nearer to his hiding place. He had no idea why this burning was happening, though he knew that at nightfall he’d have to make a run for it. But at midafternoon yesterday, the German officer was called to his communications hut, and several minutes later the Germans commenced an emergency evacuation. They’d waited until two panzerwagens were loaded with troops, which headed out immediately. The stragglers all arrived, and the third panzerwagen left.

“Yes, we noted the same thing. I was almost discovered when the signal to withdraw came. I don’t know what it means,” said Mili. “Were you able to get a weapon, any weapon?”

“This, only this. No rifles about, but I’m told this fell off a German truck two years ago, early in the war, and an old lady recovered it.” He pulled his treasure from his bag.

It was an M24 hand grenade, the famous potato masher, a gray metal can affixed to a wooden shaft with a screwcap at the end, which, removed, allowed access to the twine pull-fuse inside.

“It’s no sniper rifle,” she said. “But it’s a weapon.”

The Teacher said, “Sergeant Petrova, it’s not enough. It’s just—”

“Here’s the plan,” she said. “You have a pistol. It’s small but lethal at close range. With that I’ll get close enough.”

“You have to be very close.”

“I will shoot him or one of their officers. I will shoot Germans until I run out of ammunition, then I will pull the cord on the grenade and join Dimitri and my father and brothers.”

“It seems folly to me,” said the Teacher. “You will not kill Groedl. At best, you kill a few Germans. In a war where millions have died, what’s a few more or less Germans in exchange for someone like you, with all you have to contribute?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

If she waited until the Russian offensive and turned herself in to the army, her failure at her mission might doom her. Her failure at Kursk might catch up with her. Her traitor-antagonist in Moscow might destroy her. There was no going back.

“I have to finish my job,” she said. “Survival is not the concern here.”

“All right, then,” he said, sighing. “Try this for a plan. You kill Groedl. We all escape. We are all glorious heroes. We meet every year on your dacha outside Moscow and eat caviar and drink very fine champagne and laugh ourselves sick because life with a full belly is the best revenge.”

“That’s a fairy tale,” she said.

“No, it’s not,” said the Teacher. “It can happen. It’s only a matter of guns.”

They looked at him.

“I know where there are guns,” said the Teacher. “Lots of them.”