War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (16 page)

“They’ll create problems among the men. They always do.”

“Well, Vasily, let’s see if you can’t teach them to cause more problems for the Germans than for us.” Danilov laid his notes aside. “You understand why it must be done this way. In the Red Army, there are tens of thousands of women serving alongside the men, on radios in the bunkers, stanching the men’s blood as nurses, and working the artillery. This first sniper unit gives us the opportunity to tell the world that the Nazis are being defeated on the battlefield not just by Russian men but by the Russian people, all of them, men and women. We can say we have risen to fight as one. The Communist order is truly united, without distinction by class or sex. Think of the impact at home among the civilians to see pictures in
Red Star
of their sisters, armed and dangerous. Not even the Americans can claim that their women are shooting down their enemies with rifles.”

Zaitsev ground his cigarette beneath his heel.

“I have less objection to your decision than the fact that I was not consulted,” he said. “Please do Viktor and me the courtesy of asking our opinions in the future. For now, we’ll make your women into killers.” If they’re not already, Zaitsev thought, walking away from the commissar. The Armenian one, Slepkinian, though heavy, moved well and claimed she was an experienced hunter. Viktor had told him about the blonde, Chernova. The Bear had shared a bottle with the guards who’d brought her and the big boy, Michailov, in from the trenches on the edge of no-man’s-land. She said she’d been a partisan from Byelorussia. When she’d heard the Lazur plant was to be the site of the new sniper school, she insisted on being among the first trainees.

What has she seen? There’s so little news from the occupied areas. I’ve heard it’s hard there, terrible. Is she a solid fighter, the guerrilla’s reputation, or just able to mount a good stare on that pretty face? We’ll find out.

Zaitsev looked at Chernova, sitting with the men. Her spoon was tucked into her boot like a regular foot soldier. She took a gulp of vodka and finished by inhaling through her sleeve. The men enjoyed her. They ignored the other, thicker woman.

He stopped his walk among the men and watched only her. Even clapping his hands to break up lunch and move on with the lessons, she tugged at his attention. Her voice rose above the others. She was behind him, standing, her hands on her hips. Ignore her, he thought.

Trouble.

* * * *

ZAITSEV WALKED TO THE BASE OF THE CINDER-BLOCK
WALL. He turned his back to the recruits, most of whom sat cross-legged in a semicircle on the shop floor. Late afternoon light flowed through the high, broken windows. Overhead, swirling dust glittered like mica.

“Out there”—Zaitsev pointed to the window above him—”it’s sometimes very quiet. That silence can be deceiving. It can lull you into carelessness.”

He walked to the middle of the group.

“Remember, you’re not just infantry anymore. You’re snipers. You need new habits, new ways of thinking. A foot soldier’s battles are fought with noise and explosions, screaming and shouting and rushing around. You will fight in silence. Just because it’s quiet around your trench or your shooting cell, don’t think you’re alone. There are arms, legs, and eyes everywhere in the ruins. Every building, every destroyed house, every pile of rubble is under watch. Supply units are running through trenches carrying ammo, mines, and food. From the tops of buildings, artillery observers are training their binoculars in all directions. Sappers crawl through the debris to find enemy bunkers and tunnels. Runners from headquarters are carrying messages to units trapped without radios. Never forget: the battlefield is alive with activity, even when you can’t hear it or see it. And you, the sniper, will lie in the middle of it all, unseen, unheard, watching everything, letting it pass you by until it’s time to strike.”

He paused. Every eye was on him. The soldiers craned for his next words.

Zaitsev looked at Danilov. The commissar’s pencil wiggled madly, recording these first sessions of the new Red Army sniper school.
Vasily Zaitsev, head sniper,
Danilov must be writing.
Hero.

“As a Russian sniper, you’ll have the following duties when you return to your units. You will hunt the most important targets you can find in this order: officers, artillery observers, scouts, mortar crews and machine gunners, antitank riflemen, and motorcycle messengers. Never give up your position for a shot on a lesser target if you think an officer will come your way with a little more patience.

“Your company commanders will assign your platoon leader the day’s objective. You will advance to the front line and spearhead the attack by taking out the targets I just named in that order. After the attack has begun, you’ll move to the flanks to protect against machine guns and mortars.”

Zaitsev paused to let what he’d said sink in, though he knew he would have to repeat it several times before the day was out.

He rubbed his hands together. “Like the wolf in the taiga, the Red sniper has only one natural enemy.” He said this as if sharing a secret with fellow conspirators. “Your counterpart is the German sniper. He is your nemesis and you are his. Despite the list of targets I gave you, an enemy sniper is always a priority.”

He smiled at the Bear, who stood behind the men, smoking and looking into the distance as if across a great open span.

“Nothing,” Zaitsev said, reaching for the Moisin-Nagant to bring the sight up to his eye, “absolutely nothing will excite you and endanger you like a duel to the death with another sniper.”

Zaitsev squeezed the trigger. It clicked in the quiet chamber. “He is your worthiest opponent.”

Viktor spat on the concrete floor and rubbed it in with his foot. He stepped to the middle of the group and stood next to Zaitsev. The two linked arms.

“And we’re going to show you how to kill him,” Viktor said.

Zaitsev patted his large friend on the back. “One bullet,” he said, “one kill.”

* * * *

THAT AFTERNOON, THE RECRUITS STUDIED WHAT ZAIT
SEV AND VIKTOR had learned about enemy sniper tactics and abilities. It had become clear that the Nazi sharpshooters were not trained for the urban devastation of Stalingrad but rather for operations as part of their blitzkrieg tactics. They were accustomed to moving fast and furiously across open fields and around deserted, bombed-out cities. Where do you learn patience, Viktor wondered aloud, when you’re simply running behind tanks, conquering whole nations at once, like Poland in a month or the useless, gutless French in a week?

The Germans made good use of darkening agents such as grease or dirt to deflect light and blend with their surroundings. They wrapped their muzzles with light or dark cloth. On one occasion, both Viktor and Zaitsev were fooled by a Nazi sniper who’d set up a false position by linking a wire to a rifle, then pulled his trigger from twenty meters away. Zaitsev had fired at the position, certain he had a kill. His reward was a bullet skipped off his helmet and a hard fall onto the seat of his pants.

The German snipers’ shooting skills were lethal to five hundred meters. Though deadly, the snipers could also be careless and overconfident, often neglecting to move after a shot. They didn’t husband their ammunition, sometimes firing two or three rounds at a single target from the same position, presenting a patient Red sniper with the chance to repay a miss with a hit. The Nazis frequently repeated deceptions, bouncing a helmet on a stick high above the breastwork three or four times an hour as if the Russian sniper were nothing more than a fish that would bite on any worm. At times Viktor had felt insulted by the Germans. They would smoke cigarettes or pipes after dark or throw dirt into the open while digging a shooting cell. They sometimes made unnecessary movements or noises. “Never rely on your adversary to make a mistake,” Zaitsev told the recruits. “But give him plenty of room to do so. Then punish him for it.”

Viktor reminded them: “No mistake is small if it gets your head blown off.”

The German sniper worked in relative safety, usually two to three hundred meters from the front line. His four-hundred-meter shot would therefore penetrate only a hundred or so meters into the Russian rear. This tactic posed little threat to Red Army officers, who stayed mostly far behind the lines. But the new Russian sharpshooter, with his greater fieldcraft skills, would prowl under the enemy’s nose along the front lines to reach an inattentive German colonel or general half a kilometer behind the action. “Because of this bold fact, even our women snipers,” Zaitsev said, “will make better men.”

The Nazi sharpshooters never worked at night, allowing the Russians to operate twelve hours a day without fear of being spotted. “I don’t like hunting after dark,” Zaitsev commented, but added with a laugh, “though Master Sergeant Medvedev is quite the night owl.” Viktor regularly took his toll on enemy machine gunners imprudent enough to fire tracers, or on artillery spotters who fancied the green and red flares they lofted above the Russian flotillas on the Volga.

Zaitsev believed the fiercer conditions under which the Russians worked kept them sharp. By contrast, the German snipers’ concentration was eroded by working exclusively from the rear and only under the sun. As an added benefit, the Red troops on the front line got a morale boost from fighting alongside their marksmen. The German foot soldier never saw his army’s snipers.

“The Nazi snipers think they’re safe just because they’re in trenches far behind the lines,” Zaitsev said. “They are not safe, even there. Why? Because they’re still in Russia.”

That’s enough for today, Zaitsev thought. I don’t know what else to tell them. In fact, I didn’t know I knew so much myself.

Zaitsev glanced across the room at Danilov. Incredibly, the commissar had scribbled all morning and afternoon. Danilov looked up to meet Zaitsev’s eyes. He closed his notebook and gave the OK sign. With both hands, he held up the notebook with satisfaction as if it were a trophy he’d won. Danilov hurried from the shop with his long coattails kicking up like dogs running at his sides.

Zaitsev clapped his hands. “Everyone up. We’ll start tomorrow with marksmanship. For now, the hares will come with me. The bears will go with Sergeant Medvedev. We’ll show you to your quarters. Let’s go.”

Fifteen recruits followed each of the sergeants up to the ground floor of the Lazur to separate corners of the building. Once the decision had been made to divide them, Zaitsev and Viktor wanted distinct identities for the two squads, with military objectives that best fit their physical abilities and personalities, and Danilov had approved of the idea. The bears would work more closely with the frontline troops, softening up resistance before attacks and protecting the 284th’s flanks during operations. Their weapons, in addition to the sniper rifle, would include the submachine gun and grenade. These large men would also be trained in night sniping operations, Viktor’s specialty. On the other hand, the hares were to be the division’s assassins, smaller, more mobile men—and women—with the nerve and fieldcraft, in Viktor’s words, to “crawl into the enemy’s mouth and shoot out his teeth.” The hares would learn Zaitsev’s abilities at dissolving into the front line with iron patience and unerring one-shot killing.

Zaitsev ushered his group into a large, windowless room with a blanket hanging in the doorway. A lantern glowed in a corner. Three buckets of water sat next to a tin washbasin. Beyond these, the room was empty.

“Dinner will be brought in a few hours. Get to know each other, because soon you’ll be teaming up.”

On the way out of the plant, Zaitsev met Viktor.

“What do you think?” the Bear asked when they had ducked into a trench behind the shelter of the huge building. The sun was almost down. The shadows were gone; an edgy chill crept from the ground. Zaitsev knew Viktor’s routine: he’d return to their bunker, eat a hurried snack, read a few articles in today’s
In Our Country’s Defense
or
Red Star,
take a nap, and head into the night.

Zaitsev looked at his friend. “Well,” he said, “before the first shot is fired, it’s hard to tell. But I can tell you I’m glad I’m not a German.”

“That’s good.” Viktor bent low to walk beneath the lip of the trench. Such a big man, Zaitsev thought. Not built well for this sniper business. How does he do it?

Zaitsev laughed. “I’m goddammed glad I’m not a bear, either.”