Sniper's Honor

CHAPTER 52

It was another soggy morning at Ginger’s Womb. It looked like rain, with low clouds sealing in humidity, sweat rising quickly to the skin and just as quickly dampening the combat smocks of the parachutists. Fortunately there wasn’t much to do. Karl had his sentry rotation running efficiently; all the guns were cleaned, Blu-Oiled, locked, and loaded; Wili had gone over the Flammenwerfer-41 and made sure that a trigger pull sent a lick of hungry flame dancing forty meters through the air; all the Teller mines were laid, all the wire strung and camouflaged in greenery; both the machine guns were locked into their tripods for defensive fire in the heavy mode, but all the pins lubricated, so when the time came, they could be yanked free and turned into something more flexible in a second; all the ammo belts were rolled and stored, all the ammo to reload the FG-42 mags if necessary torn from boxes and collected in crates; all the grenades were out, all the pins examined so they wouldn’t hang up on some burr of metal when needed; all the canteens were filled; and all the latrine duties were taken care of.

“All right,” Karl yelled, “bayonet practice.”

The announcement was greeted with laughter, not only because the FG-42s had a spike bayonet that was stored under and pivoted outward from beneath the barrel and was largely considered useless by everyone, but also because nobody had practiced bayonet skills since 1939. No one in living memory had killed an Ivan with a bayonet, though if he thought about it, Karl could recall an episode in Italy when the spear of the blade was used to prong open a can of American tomatoes. “I’ll teach this tomato the meaning of German steel!” he remembered Wili Bober saying sternly as he pierced the thing.

At 0930, when Karl had his first pipeful going well and had settled in for the tonic of more melancholy over the death of Ziemssen in Mann’s great novel, a shadow interrupted what dim light fell from the cloudy sky, and he looked up to see his signalman.

“Zeppelin Leader on the radio. Wants you and you alone. Sounds all fucked up, even for an Arab.”

“He waited until I got my pipe going nicely, I know it,” Karl said, raising, stretching, willing his way through all the scrapes, abrasions, pulled muscles, strained muscles, tired muscles that always visited after a combat engagement, and went to the Commo Tent, where he took up earphones and spoke into the microphone. “Hello, hello, Oskar Leader here, go ahead.”

Over the earphone, he heard disturbance — chaos, screams, noises, hard to say exactly what. At the same time, just by chance, he saw a column of smoke rising from behind the foothills in a valley approximately where the village of Yaremche should be.

“Are your people in position, Herr Major?” Salid, the junior officer, hadn’t even bothered to go through the officer-officer-brotherhood bullshit of radio protocol.

“Yes, Captain, though I wasn’t aware I reported to you.”

“Von Drehle, she did it. She got him. The damned bitch made the shot.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“The White Witch shot Senior Group Leader Groedl through the throat ten minutes ago.”

“Is he dead?”

“She practically blew his head off. Half his neck is gone.”

“Good Christ. Is that why the town is burning? I can see the smoke.”

“These fucking Russians must be taught. Never mind that, I have my dog teams out—”

“I thought you had burned out all the cover so that she couldn’t hit—”

“I don’t know how. She must have shot from a thousand yards. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, we have the dog teams out, and I have the rest of my men in panzerwagens, and we will now travel to the road up to your position. Please put all your men on interception duty. This woman must be caught.”

“Wasn’t your explicit responsibility to protect—”

“I don’t report to you, either, Von Drehle. Now, I know the SS lieutenant general has had a chat with you, so if you value your men and dream of a postwar future, you will give this assignment your total commitment. I would put all my men out there in the net; this woman is obviously a tricky bitch, and I hope you are up to handling her.”

“I will do my duty, yes, as I am a soldier until peace is declared, Captain.”

“You radio me this channel the second you learn something or there has been a development.”

“Is that an order?”

“Goddammit, Von Drehle, don’t play games with me. I speak for the lieutenant general, the entire SS, the SA, so when I tell you to do something, that is the authority I bring to the conversation, and if you doubt that, you radio Muntz yourself for a clarification. End transmit.”

“End transmit, Ali Baba,” said Karl to a dead microphone.

He rose. By now a few men had gathered outside.

“Well,” he said, “the Russian woman sniper they call the White Witch has cast a magic spell on Dr. Groedl. She magically turned him into a corpse. That means I want you in the woods on picket duty, all of you, because I have been informed that she has been flushed by dogs and may be in transit to our picnic area. She has to be taken alive.”

“In the meantime, suppose the Russians attack and we are out there looking for a girl?” Deneker asked.

“I don’t set these priorities, but they have been set. And you can grumble all you want, but you have a stake in the outcome, too. I have been told by Brigadeführer Muntz that if we do capture her, once she is turned over to the SS, we are formally released from the hold-at-all-costs mandate. We can blow Ginger and get out of here. Next stop, Hungary. I’m told he’ll send us off on two weeks’ leave and have us reassigned to the Western Front with the rest of Two Fallschirmjäger. You may still die, but it won’t be by a Russian bullet, just a shiny American one from Hollywood or someplace like that. So do your goddamned duties. And if anyone sees Bober out there, send him in to me. Now do it, quick quick quick.”

An hour or so passed. The men in the woods on picket rotated so they didn’t get too bored. Wili Bober arrived, and Karl briefed him on the situation.

“So, catch this woman and we can get home in time for Christmas, eh?” Wili said. “I guess blowing up the bridge, plus all the other jobs, the seven Russian strong points, the railroad yards, the T-34 refueling yard, and several other things weren’t worth it, but this gal sniper wins us the class prize.”

“Wili, I can’t figure out how their minds work. Why this one is so important to them and they didn’t even notice the bridge is pretty mysterious to me, too. It must be some spy shit or something.”

“I guess for once, the game is working to our advantage.”

“I want to get you out of here before the SS sends you to Dachau. You’ve been daring them to for years. Sending people to Dachau seems to be the order of the day ever since that guy blew up the Austrian.”

At that moment both involuntarily flinched. Screaming came across the sky.

They turned and, from their vantage point four thousand feet up, could see the exhaust flames of seventy-two Katyushas rising from a point of the horizon, a fleet of radiant darts sent howling to the accompaniment of the banshee scream each emitted as it rose, and in the next second the whole horizon seemed to light up as the sound of thousands of the things hurling airborne filled the sky.

“Here they come,” said Karl. “Vacation’s over.”

“They’re still a long way away,” said Wili.

“We’ll be engaged by nightfall, if I don’t miss my guess. Through Yaremche and straight down the Yaremche road to Ginger. And if they get here, this is where we stay.”

“I hope the boys catch the White Witch. She’s our only chance.”

“I better talk to my new boss, the great and wise Captain Salid.”

Karl ducked into the commo tent, interrupted the signalman reading The Brothers Karamazov in the original Russian, and waited as the appropriate connections and protocols were made.

“Zeppelin Leader here, hello, hello.”

“Hello, hello, Zeppelin Leader.”

“Von Drehle?”

“Affirmative. As you have no doubt noticed, the Russians are coming. I have no idea how long they will take, but I wanted to inform you that if I have to, I will recall my men to defend my position. A maximum effort for one girl is militarily unjustifiable.”

“That woman must be caught!” said the voice on the radio.

“Catching her does none of us any good if we can’t get her anyplace because the Russians control this position. Surely you understand something that elementary.”

“Von Drehle, the Reich has set its priorities. The woman contains secrets of utmost importance. Whether a few Red tanks get through a gap in the mountains is largely meaningless. I will call the brigadeführer and he will set you straight.”

“I expect the old boy is rather busy now. He’s got a battle to fight. All of us have a battle to fight except, it seems, you.”

“I am fighting the real battle. Keep your men on picket duty until otherwise informed. I speak for the brigadeführer.”

But something caught Karl’s eye. He looked hard and then spoke into the phone. “Well, Captain, it’s everybody’s lucky day. We just broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”

Five figures had just emerged from the woods across the road. They were two Green Devils and three captives with their hands clasped behind their heads. One was a woman.

“You have them?” said the captain, and Karl could feel his excitement from miles away.

“A woman and two men. From here the woman looks to be something out of a French glamour magazine, except you don’t know what a French glamour magazine is.”

“Keep them alive. All of them. They are everything.”