“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.
“Ackov?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Check again, please.”
“Sir, you just checked a minute ago.”
“You are right.”
The check had revealed exactly what he knew it would reveal. Everyone in place, men hidden in the foliage, a little farther out, the dog teams. The Vizslas would pick up the scent, and in minutes they’d take the shooter down. Moreover, a good corporal with a telephone to report in and communicate with these deployed troops by whistle. His own Scimitar troopers in panzerwagens hidden in the lee of the church, ready in seconds to grind out to a spot where they could access the action, if it came to that. Finally the damn parachutists at Natasha’s Womb, a few kilometers down the Yaremche road, fully alerted and expecting the fleeing fugitives to be driven to them.
At that moment, 0900 precisely, the first 12th SS Panzerwagen pulled into view. In seconds the open Horch car, top down, an immense vehicle that was configured like an automobile but built like a truck, emerged, and then behind it, the second panzerwagen.
Without even being asked, Ackov spun the knob on the field phone to send rings to the men on the line, then handed it to him.
“Hello, hello,” said Salid, “all Zeppelin units, this is Zeppelin Leader. On your toes now, the senior group leader is here, you must react quickly and close at high speed on targets when they reveal themselves.”
The small convoy closed the range to the command hut and halted. First SS men disembarked from their vehicles, formed a defensive perimeter. The machine gunner in each panzerwagen turned his MG-42 to the mountainside above the scorched-out zone.
A sergeant got out, saluted sharply to Salid, exchanged protocol greetings and salutations. Salid responded, then went with Ackov to the car, where Senior Group Leader Groedl sat smoking a cigar. As usual, he chose to dress in civilian clothes, more professor than general, and in gray suit, spats (spats! the quiet audacity of the man!), his wire-rimmed glasses, a muted tie, and a gray homburg, he waited patiently.
“Good morning, Herr Senior Group Leader, welcome to Yaremche.”
“Good morning, Captain. I understand you have a beautiful waterfall here.”
“It’ll be my pleasure to show it to you.”
“I know I don’t have to ask you. I know all your men are positioned properly, briefed properly, controlled properly. I know the instant of the shot, they will respond.”
“That is all taken care of, sir.”
“All right, shall we begin our little tour?”
“Yes sir. May I ask, do you have some sort of body armor beneath your coat, as I recommended? A shop platoon mechanic could hammer such a thing out easily and—”
“Not necessary, as I have told you. The data again. The data informs us that with any weapon she could have, she could not make the shot from over five hundred yards. Physically impossible.”
“Yes sir, I know. But perhaps a safeguard.”
“I will not have it be said that fat little Groedl was not as brave as any infantryman who goes naked into battle. Now, shall we proceed?” He got out of the car.
Then, accompanied by Salid, he began his bogus tour of Yaremche, full of pigs and farmers who were ordered to be exactly where they were, and who had been searched a hundred times over by SS during the night. Even the pigs obeyed. Who was not terrified by the prospect of incurring SS wrath? Everybody nodded and smiled and took hats off, all in their Sunday best. A little girl in the bright doll-like clothes of Ukraine gave him a bouquet of a dozen roses—for some reason she had plucked out and thrown away a thirteenth rose just before he arrived—and he bent and gave her a kiss and her mother as well. Then the ladies were shoved aside as the procession continued its tour downhill toward the bridge over the River Prut.
It was all security theater, designed to bring the economics professor and mass murderer to the bridge, where he would be most exposed. There he would stand until—well, until she fired or his feet fell asleep and he had to be carried back. But all believed she would shoot. She had to shoot. If she didn’t shoot, she would be executed by her own kind. Stalin, after all, had executed mor
e than two hundred of his own generals for failures, some of them actual. He certainly would not hesitate at eliminating a failed sniper and those of her family who could be found.
The grubby buildings held no interest to any German, least of all Groedl. But he pretended politely to be fascinated as Salid pointed out various highlights, or rather, as Salid pretended anything in the dismal place could be considered a highlight by a German intellectual.
“Actually, the whole fucking place should be burned down,” said Groedl mildly. “With all the people in it. These benighted undermen and their monkey-children never should have been permitted to occupy a land so beautiful and rich in natural resources. It is ours by right of evolution. The lesser breeds must fall away into extinction. They are Neanderthal, their time is up. A massive correction is needed. We are the correction. We are here to restore natural order by obeying the data. Data, data, data.”
He went on and on in his civil, slightly amused informational voice, revealing these sacred truths, as they reached the bridge across the water to the second but equally unimpressive half of the village. They separated, feeling the bridge sway slightly under them, and headed across single-file. At the center, Groedl came to a halt.
“Not too close, Salid.” He turned to Sergeant Roffler, the SS NCO in command of the 12th SS Panzer detachment. “Spread your boys out, Sergeant. We want to give the White Witch a nice clear shot at me. It’s no good if we don’t tempt her.”
CHAPTER 47
The Carpathians
THE PRESENT
You talk, I’ll load.”
They were in a glade off the northern trail up to the cave, just north of the scree field. Swagger had before him ten seventy-year-old Sten magazines which he was busy loading with thirty seventy-year-old His Majesty’s 9mm ammunition. Mili’s sniper rifle lay to one side, as did ten No. 36 Mills bombs, pineapples full of TNT.
“How do you know it will work?” she asked.
“It should. It was in waterproof containment in a cave that by all indications was dry. No rust, no corrosion anywhere on the guns or on the container. No corrosion on the ammo. It should be okay.”
“Swagger, I’m scared.”
“To be expected. Get your mind off it. Make phone calls. Check your e-mail. Give me your latest. Do you have any long shots? You only scare yourself into ineffectiveness if your mind goes empty or numb. So just fill it with little shit, and you’ll be all right.”
Threading the cartridges through the lips—rather sharp, actually—so that they nested against the follower or the round against a spring pressure that grew only as the amount of rounds pushing it down grew, too, increasing the compression rate, was not fun. It put a hurt in the fingers and wrists. But it was also easy to fuck up, as in putting a round in backward or at the wrong angle, and he didn’t want to take a chance on that happening, so he pushed on.
“Okay, I’m done here. I’m giving you one Sten gun and three magazines. I want you to stay here. I will run the ambush. I will throw the grenades. I will do the killing. You stay here and shoot anything that doesn’t look like a Swagger, got that?”
“I got it,” she said. “Except I’m not doing it. I will fight and shoot and do what’s necessary.”
“Reilly, this ain’t your kind of work.”
“That premise is no longer operative. You’re fighting for your reasons. You’re in love with Mili, you old coot, don’t say you’re not, and it’s the best fight you ever had. Well, I’m fighting for mine, which is that no asshole comes along and says, ‘Sweetie, do us a favor and don’t write the story.’ I will write the story, if I have to be Mili Petrova to do it. Nobody tells me to go away like a good little girl. I was never a good little girl. Good little girls don’t become reporters. Besides, the story’s already on the budget.”
CHAPTER 48
The Carpathians
Above Yaremche
JULY 1944
She built her position carefully. It’s all about solidity of structure, so that at the instant of firing, bone supports bone, buttressed by the earth, unhampered by the flutter of breath. To shoot like a machine, you must become a machine.
She chose sitting, at a slight cant that rested her body against the trunk of the tree. The rifle was before her, its weight borne not by her muscles but by the thickness of the branch on which it rested. Actually it didn’t rest on the branch, but on a carefully folded wad of glove, so that it nestled in, and the possibility of it slipping as she torqued through the trigger pull was eliminated. The cheek rest was helpful in supporting her face, as it rested in precisely the correct position to place her eye four inches behind and directly centered on what the British designated a No. 32 telescopic sighting device. At this point she breathed easily, naturally.
Beside her crouched the Teacher, a spotter without a scope who was of no use except psychological support. “I see them,” he said. “Do you see them?”
Of course she saw them. The optics were superb, far better than her own PU scope. To her, through the glass, Herr Obergruppenführer Groedl was but 333 yards away. She saw a pudgy man, by looks one of the meek who would never inherit the earth. A faintly comical quality to him, expressed in the vividness of his spats, the formality of his suit, the daintiness of his walk. He had stepped out of an operetta. He seemed in earnest conversation with Salid, the other monster, as they moved in a phalanx of SS troopers down the central street of Yaremche. Salid pointed out interesting sights, as if there could be an interesting sight in such a degraded place where nobody had ever gotten beyond hay as a roofing material, and while Salid was quite animated, the face of her target remained dull and uninterested.
“Unless he has an interest in medieval Russian agronomy, this is all fraudulent. No doubt they mean to trap us.”
“They think they’re so clever,” said the Teacher.
She broke eye contact with the scope, as she didn’t want to develop any strain; her muscles relaxed, no need to apply them forcefully to the rifle yet, as it would wear her out, and the more fatigued she was, the more the chance of a tremble or a rogue yip arriving perfectly to destroy the shot.
She closed her eyes, gathering strength. She had clicked the trigger a thousand times in the cave after the zeroing, to learn the nuances of its release. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. A slight grit as she pushed straight back, maybe two rough bits of metal grinding against each other inside; but then it stacked up nicely at the penultimate location, and it took just the slightest effort, almost magical in its responsiveness, to slide the sear from its engaging restraint and set the whole thing in motion in micro time as hammer lunged forward, drove firing pin forward with exactly the right energy to detonate the primer, which led to . . .
She knew what it led to.
The issue was, to some degree, the scope. Though clear and robust, it was also quite crude. It had zeroing capabilities out to a thousand yards, though they’d proved difficult to achieve, and the Teacher had to help her with the mechanical manipulations to scope. But it was zeroed now. One last problem: the aiming point was the tip of a blunt, conical projection thrusting up from six o’clock, which at this range covered too much of the tiny target. She would settle the tip of the cone on the man’s head, then slowly press—
“All right, he’s still.”
She went back to the scope. There he was, at the magnified range of 333 yards, standing in the center of the bridge, isolated with no man within three feet of him on either side. His face was dull, his body posture unimposing, and it seemed his companions had drifted off as if to grant him solitude for his contemplations. If he had any. He looked bored.
She took a breath, then willed half of it out, and waited for a space between her heartbeats as her finger brought the trigger back to its staging point and she thought of shooter’s imprecations that, by rote memory and instinct, she always recited at this moment: Press straight back. Do not rush but do not loaf. Master the rifle. Be strong, confident. Follow throug
h, keeping eye to scope, pinning the trigger.
The rifle obeyed her unstated directives and, by itself, surprised her as it broke the shot.
* * *
Data. Data. Data.
The 174-grain spitzer bullet, lead-cored but streamlined behind a thin gilding of copper, exited the muzzle at approximately 2,400 feet per second, in a parabolic arc that was calculated to drop 120 inches at 1,000 yards and had thus been aimed via scope adjustment at a point exactly 120 inches above the target. At 500 yards, the velocity had dropped to 1,578 feet per second, the muzzle energy 962 foot-pounds. It had fallen 31 inches, as determined by both gravity and air resistance, equally stern masters whose mandates could not be ignored, and continued tracing a rainbow across the sky with no deviations left or right because this early (0922 hours Soviet war time) there was no wind, and no tremor or hesitation had marred the trigger pull, thus deflecting the muzzle. If it wandered off course, by the nuance of its design and construction and the harmonics of the barrel that guided it on its track, it came back to exact trajectory beyond 600 yards and continued its descending flight. It struck squarely. When that occurred, after approximately 2.2 seconds time in flight, its velocity had degraded to 955 feet per second, its energy to 412 foot-pounds. And it had dropped the full 120 inches. Still, the combination retained enough surplus efficiency, particularly as Senior Group Leader Groedl had turned his neck slightly to the right, as if something had caught his attention. Perhaps it was the fluttering of death’s wings.
The bullet struck him on a lateral transective angle approximately six inches below his left ear, that is, a bit lower than the root of his neck on the torso, a little in front of the medial line of the shoulder, issuing a sound that reminded those nearby of a crowbar slamming into a side of beef. It entered the corpus at an angle of 80 degrees as it was falling, not approaching on a flat line. The full impact of the energy caused him to shudder violently and his exquisitely cut but nevertheless rather fully draped suit to inflate with disturbed air from the bullet’s wake under the shock, while a puff of atomized blood, skin, and wool fiber rose in a spurt of pink mist.