Beautiful Assassin (14 page)

“Plans?” I said. “What have you heard, Captain?”

He smiled at me. Instead of answering my question, he said, “There will be other chances to fight them. And other means.”

I nodded, though I didn’t really believe it. You fought those bastards by putting a bullet into their flesh, by killing them before they killed you. Still, I couldn’t blame Petrenko. I knew it wasn’t his fault. He had been a good unit commander.

“It was an honor serving with you, Captain,” I said.

“The same goes for you, Sergeant.”

He offered me his hand. “Good luck, Sergeant,” he said.

“Thank you, Captain. You too.”

“By the way,” he said, reaching into his jacket and bringing out a letter. “If you get out, could you see that this gets posted. It’s to my wife.”

“I will.”

The submarine I was to depart on didn’t arrive the next day or the day after that either. Few ships were getting past the Luftwaffe. On the third morning, at daybreak, the Germans launched what was to prove their final assault. They pounded us with mortars and artillery as well as with tanks they’d maneuvered up onto the high ground overlooking the harbor. Our company was pinned down beneath heavy automatic weapons fire, and a German sniper had taken up a position on our right flank, somewhere up above us in the rubble of buildings. From that vantage point he had already killed three soldiers. The second had been a runner Captain Petrenko had sent to the Fourth Company on our right flank asking if they had any ammo they could spare. He hadn’t made it ten meters before the sniper cut him down. And when another soldier had crawled out to help him, the sniper had killed him as well.

“We must do something,” Zoya said.

“We don’t even know where he is,” I replied. For hours we’d been scoping the bombed-out shells of the buildings above us, trying to locate him but without success.

Then I felt Zoya tugging on my sleeve.

“Look,” she said. She was pointing at a shallow ditch that ran along to our right. Draining into it some fifty meters away was a narrow sewer pipe that angled sharply up toward the high ground above. “I wonder where that leads?”

I looked at the pipe, then glassed the area above it, all the way up the hill past the German lines. The landscape was mostly covered with debris from buildings destroyed in the bombing.

“If we could crawl through that pipe,” Zoya said, “maybe we could flank him.”

I considered it for a moment. We had to try something.

“Come on. Let’s talk with the captain,” I said.

We crawled over to Petrenko, who was talking with two of his unit leaders.

“Excuse me, Captain,” I said. “But if we don’t stop that sniper he’ll cut us to pieces.”

“So what do you suggest, Sergeant?” he said.

I told him of Zoya’s plan.

“You don’t know where that sewer goes,” he said. “Besides, they might have mined it already.”

“We have to do something. We can’t just sit here.”

His dark, broad face took on a brooding expression. Finally, he turned to Zoya. “Corporal,” he said, “go find Cheburko and the two of you investigate it.”

“No,” I said.

Petrenko glared at me. “What?”

“Sorry, sir. But I should be the one to go.”

“I’ll say who goes.”

“But I’m your best marksman.”

He rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “You’re supposed to be on that ship out of here.”

“Captain, we don’t know when it’s coming. Or even
if
it’s coming.”

Petrenko mulled this over for a moment. Then he said, “All right. But be careful, you hear me?”

Under covering fire, we crawled down into the drainage ditch, with Zoya as always in the lead. Keeping low, we dragged ourselves through the slimy muck, our weapons draped over our shoulders. The ditch smelled rankly of sewage and raw earth. The foul smell sickened me, but I was able to push the sensation away and focus on the job at hand.

When we reached the pipe, which was two feet above the ditch, we cautiously pulled ourselves up into it. The sides were slick, and given the pipe’s upward angle, we found the going hard. We kept slipping and had to wedge our boots or fingers in any crack or crevice we could manage to pull ourselves forward. The pipe was hardly wide enough to squeeze our shoulders through, and we had to crawl on our bellies. It was dark, and it grew progressively darker as we went along. After a while, Zoya
had to take out her electric torch in order to light the way. Soon the sewer opened up a little so we could now move on all fours. We came to a Y where the tunnel divided to the right and left, and we had to decide which way to go. Zoya mumbled something, a kind of prayer. Finally she said, “This way,” and took the route to our left.

We’d been crawling through the tunnel for a while when Zoya suddenly stopped. Up ahead, in the glare of the electric torch, we saw a sudden movement. With one hand, Zoya swung her machine gun around, but before she could fire, I cried, “Wait.”

A pair of eyes nearly hidden behind a tangled mass of hair stared back at us. It was a little girl, perhaps six years old. Yet she was so filthy and bedraggled she hardly resembled a child at all. As we started toward her, she suddenly turned and began to scurry away from us.

“Hold on,” I called to her. “We’re Soviet soldiers.”

The girl stopped and looked uncertainly over her shoulder at us. “It’s all right. We’re not Germans,” said Zoya. The child still appeared ready to bolt.

“Come, little one,” I pleaded. “You have nothing to fear from us.”

Slowly, she turned and started crawling toward us. When she’d gotten to within a few feet, she stopped, her small, dirty hand trying to block the light of Zoya’s torch. I saw that she had long hair whose color could not be deciphered because of its filth, hair that fell across her emaciated face in straggly lines. Her pipe-thin arms were befouled, her dress torn and soiled. Her shoes, far too big for her feet, were obviously some pair she’d scrounged up somewhere or other. And yet, beneath the filth, I could see that she was a pretty child, with large, dark eyes and white teeth, which glistened in the light. She huddled with her scrawny arms wrapped around knees scraped raw from crawling about the sewers. She was older than she’d first appeared, perhaps eight or nine, and yet she had the weary eyes of an old person.

Zoya asked, “What’s your name, little one?”

The girl hesitated, then said, “Raisa.”

“How long have you been down here, Raisa?” I asked.

In reply, she lifted her thin shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Where are your parents?”

She brought her dirty hand to her face and pulled a strand of hair behind her ear. “Mama was killed early in the war. Tato went off one morning to look for food. But he didn’t return. Then I went down here. There used to be others but they died.”

I reached out and stroked her hair. “Are you hungry?”

The girl nodded. From my tunic I took out a piece of hard bread wrapped in brown paper and gave it to her. She tore into it.

Zoya turned to me. “What are we going to do with her, Sergeant?”

I thought for a moment. Finally, I said, “You bring her back to camp.”

“What about you?”

“I have to try to get the sniper.” Then to the girl, I said, “Go with her, Raisa.” I turned back to Zoya. “Give me your grenade and your torch.”

Zoya handed them over, then hugged me. “Don’t be a hero,” she told me.

“I’ll see you back in camp.”

Then to the girl, Zoya said, “Follow me, little one.” She turned and started back the way we’d come.

The girl hesitated, though, staring at me.

“It will be all right, I promise,” I said. I reached out and stroked the girl’s cheek. At this, she literally leapt into my arms. I could feel the sharp bones beneath her clothing, her small, trembling body. She clung to me with such desperation, such need. And I, who hadn’t held a child in so long, clung to her with equal desperation. I kissed the top of her head, remembering how I used to do that with my own daughter. And for a moment it was as if I
had
Masha back in my arms again. “It’s all right, Raisa,” I said as I rocked her.

“Perhaps you should return with us, Sergeant?” Zoya asked.

“No, you take her back. And don’t let anything happen to her,” I said, recalling what Kolya had told me that day at the train station.

“I won’t. Good luck, Tat’yana.”

Then to the little girl, I said, “Go now. You’ll be safe with Zoya.” Only then did she relax her grip on me and follow Zoya down the tunnel.

With that I turned and continued on my way. The sewer grew gradually lighter, so that soon I could turn off the torch. Rounding a bend, I
saw up ahead a broad bar of sunlight streaming down into the sewer. As I neared the spot, I removed my pistol. Cautiously, I peered up. Overhead a dozen feet or so, I saw a piece of blue sky, bisected by a splintered wooden beam that lay across the opening. I climbed metal rungs built into the side of the wall. Near the top I waited for my eyes to adjust to the harsh brightness. Not far away, I could hear the incessant
tat-tat-tat
of machine-gun fire, the
thwonk
of mortars, the deafening blasts from their Panzers. More distantly I could make out a German voice, someone barking orders. Cautiously, I shoved the beam aside and inched my shoulders through and peeked over the top of the manhole. It was sheltered by debris, fallen timbers, bricks and plaster from a wall that had collapsed around it. I pushed some of the wreckage aside and climbed up farther. To the west, I saw the sea glistening under the midday sun, while to the northeast, well up on the hill, I made out the muzzle of a German tank poking out from beneath camouflage netting. Directly ahead of me, though, were the remains of a brick wall, which blocked my view of the German lines below. I carefully lifted myself out of the hole and crawled over the debris to it. Slowly, I peered over the jagged top of the wall.

To my surprise, I’d come out some fifty meters behind the enemy positions. Below me, I saw two Germans in a foxhole, their backs exposed to me. One was firing a machine gun toward our lines, the other feeding the belt. Beyond them I saw more Germans dug in all along the crest of the hill, what looked like an entire battalion. I made a quick scan of the area, looking for the sniper’s position, then got out my field glasses and carefully glassed the area below me. Nothing. I continued looking. Still nothing. I could keep searching, hoping to find him, or I could take what was given to me. I decided on the latter course. Slowly, I slid the barrel of my rifle through a crack in the wall.

I shot the machine gunner first; then, before his assistant knew what had happened, I shot him too, both in the back. I moved down the line toward the other Germans in the trench. I shot a soldier smoking a cigarette. Then a man loading a mortar. When his companion reached for his rifle, I shot him too. I continued down the line and shot three
more men. It was like shooting targets at the range. I wasn’t thinking, just acting on instinct, a soldier’s instinct. I had no fear. I figured my life was already over and I thought only of killing as many as I could before I died.

The Germans now were in a wild state of panic, scurrying about, trying to find the direction from which the fire was raining down upon them. I’d reloaded and was able to kill four more before the krauts finally realized it was coming from behind them, and then they swung around and began to return fire. I had to duck down behind the wall as rounds zipped overhead and sent fragments of bricks and red dust raining down on me. At least one machine gun had opened up on my position. I took out a grenade and tossed it down the hill, more simply to create a diversion. I used the explosion to crawl east along the wall for twenty-five meters, so as not to present the same target. Besides my remaining grenade, I had only four rounds left. Cautiously I peered through debris covering what had once been a window. With my field glasses, I scanned the area below and to the west. Still nothing. The Germans continued to lay down a murderous fire, and I was about to abandon the mission, turn and make my way back to the sewer, when something caught my eye. About seventy-five meters away, in what was left of a stairwell of a building, two stories off the ground, I saw the tell-tale glint of sunlight off metal. When I looked more closely I recognized it as a rifle barrel, then a scope. As I continued to inspect it, I was able to make out a hand attached to the rifle, next a finger wrapped around a trigger, and finally, behind that, the crest of a field cap projecting just above some bricks.
There he was. My sniper
.

Doubtless he’d heard the commotion and had swung around and was searching behind the German lines. Searching for
me
. In fact, the barrel seemed aimed right at me. Had he spotted me? I wondered. Should I make a run for it? Instead, recalling the time I’d been caught in the tree, I decided to take my chances and remain perfectly still. I waited for the bullet that would slam into me, but after a moment, I saw him move his scope to my right, up the hill, hunting. This gave me all the opportunity I needed. I slowly brought my rifle up and into position. He didn’t present much of a target. Just the top half of his
field cap. That would have to be enough. I flicked the safety off and took aim at a point just below the crest of the hat. I breathed in, blew out, breathed in again and held my breath. Then I fired. I could feel the bullet strike home even before I saw the spray of blood against the wall behind him, saw the rifle barrel drop from the hand that held it and fall to the ground below.

Though I didn’t know it then, it would be my last kill.

The others now knew my position and started to fire on me. I returned fire until I ran out of ammo, then took out my pistol and shot until it was empty too. At that point, I got up and, in a crouch, started running back toward the sewer. That’s when I heard the familiar, high-pitched scream of a mortar descending to earth. I didn’t hear the blast—one never does—but felt myself pitched forward and then slammed headlong into the ground. I lay there momentarily on my side, dazed, my ears ringing, the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. My teeth felt loose from the impact. Turning my head slightly, I saw a jagged piece of blue sky off by itself, as if the sky too had been shattered by the blast. I stared at it with a vague curiosity. My right arm lay beneath me, at an odd angle. Yet I didn’t feel any pain. I didn’t feel much of anything, in fact. There was a burning low in my belly, the sensation of something warm running down along my side, soaking my tunic. Then I heard muffled voices. I couldn’t tell whether they were speaking German or Russian, but I knew they were getting nearer. Get up, I told myself. Get up or you will die. Despite this warning, I didn’t move. I felt so tired, so weary suddenly, as if all the fighting and killing, all the war, had only now caught up with me. I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep for a long while.