Sniper's Honor(96)

“They?”

“Sure. She had friends. I don’t know who, I don’t know how. But someone had to know these rifles were here, someone had to guide her to them. Maybe another survivor of the ambush. We’ll never know, but someone got her up here, someone dug that groove. And I’m guessing someone went back down and called her shots for her as she zeroed. She’d shoot and someone would mark the spot. She’d adjust, shoot again, and he’d mark that spot. Until she was on. It was a team effort.”

“Someone who—”

“Someone who knew what he was doing, I’m beginning to feel. Come on, let’s see what we done dug up.”

He lifted himself, went to the spot where the groove was located, turned to the scrub vegetation clustered behind it, pulled out a scraggly bush, and started to kick at seventy years’ worth of dirt and sediment. Dust flew, both coughed, and it did their lungs no favors, but in a little while he had opened a man-sized hole.

“You’re a genius,” she said.

“Hardly,” he said. “I just show up and pay attention.”





CHAPTER 46


The Carpathians


Above Yaremche


JULY 1944


Mili and the Teacher moved in by night, their faces darkened, festooned with pine boughs threaded through their clothes. They were dressed as assassins. They were assassins. It was a slow crawl, three forward, one back, pause, listen, three forward again. The British compass guiding them took them over rocks, through brush, around trees on a steady course toward an overlook on Yaremche, if one existed. The Peasant wasn’t there to set an ideal of indifference to pain. He was back at the cave, guarding—well, guarding nothing—with his Sten gun. The idea was that if he heard close-by gunfire, he would rush to the spot and intercede with machine carbide and Mills bombs to perhaps rescue the fleeing assassins, if it came to that. It probably wouldn’t, as these things never work out so neatly. Meanwhile, the ground was unrelenting in its urge to hurt Mili and the Teacher. It tore knees and scraped elbows. At least twice in the night, they thought they heard Germans close by and froze, but nothing came of it. Finally they were there, halfway down the slope, a thousand yards to the southwest of the bridge.

They appeared to have found a kind of promontory, a rock outcrop a thousand yards above the village, which was partially visible. Through a V-notch between two hills, she could see the river, the waterfall, and the bridge from this position; they were also a thousand yards from the burned slope where the Germans expected her.

“Does it work?” whispered the Teacher.

“Perhaps. In darkness I cannot tell if smaller branches interfere. Even a leaf can knock a bullet off its course, as too many snipers have found out the hard way. In the light, I’ll get a better view.”

“I hate to move when it’s light.”

“If we have to make adjustments, we make them in the morning.”

“All right, then. Try to get some sleep.”

Sleep! Yes, certainly, inside German lines, crouched with rifle, torn and bleeding from a long crawl, heart thumping. Exactly—get some sleep!

But she did. And when the light struck her eyes, she had a moment’s confusion, was all mixed up in now and then, who was alive, who wasn’t, what lay ahead. She blinked, and the forest registered, as did the flare of sun to the east. A bug hummed at her ear and she came to a fuller clarity. She blinked, feeling her eyes and limbs return to her control.

“You’re awake?” asked the Teacher.

“Yes.”

“Is this place okay?”

Not quite. Prone was out of the question, as too much undergrowth interfered. Sliding up the tree, she found a good hole in the pine boughs that yielded a tunnel that in turn allowed a good clear view of the bridge, but at that point the trunk was barren and she’d have no support for the rifle. It was too far by far to take the shot without support.

She needed to set herself against a tree, with a branch upon which to rest the rifle. If she was too far into the depth of the tree, she’d have to peel away the boughs and needles that interfered with the course of the bullet.

“Rest here, I will find a spot.” He slithered off. In time, he returned. “All right, it’s about thirty meters lower, and if I’m not mistaken, there seems to be an old track that should get us back to our path more quickly. Are you ready?”

“Yes. Let’s feed this bastard a breakfast of nine grams and get the hell out of here.”



* * *



Salid checked his watch for the third time in three minutes.

0855. Five minutes until Senior Group Leader Groedl arrived. Well, no, it couldn’t be five minutes. They weren’t traveling along Berlin streets but driving by Horch field car over backcountry roads, accompanied by panzerwagens full of 12th SS Panzergrenadiers. They could be hours late.