Red Sniper

Whitlock tried to guess the distance. Four hundred feet? Five hundred? The man was increasing that distance every few seconds, running flat out.

The Russian held very still, his bear-like heaviness seeming to shift and settle like a boulder. Then the rifle fired.

Across the distance, the runner seemed to hit an invisible wall. He flung out his arms as he came to a full stop, and then toppled forward.

Whitlock stared in disbelief. How had the Russian shot a running man that far away? He wouldn’t have thought it was possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

Then the Russian slung his rifle again, walked over to Ramsey, and kicked him almost casually. He started toward Whitlock again, Cossack whip in hand. Once more, Whitlock raised his arms to protect his face. But instead of whipping him, the Russian grabbed one of Whitlock’s wrists and held his bloodied, blistered hand aloft, yelling something in Russian. The others laughed.

The small man came over. “Hands like woman,” he said to Whitlock in broken English that was mostly a snarl. “You both go to the infirmary.”

CHAPTER 14

The small man did not mean for them to go to the infirmary immediately. They were allowed to visit the infirmary at the end of the working day, after they were marched back to the Gulag. By then, Whitlock’s hands resembled raw meat. Ramsey was reduced to working on his knees, scrabbling at the soil without actually having to lift the pick.

Whitlock thought the Russians were just being cruel by making them work. But then at mid-afternoon another prisoner, this one Polish, had dropped his shovel, too weak from exhaustion to work anymore. The big Russian dragged the man a few dozen yards into the empty taiga and then beat him senseless with the nagyka. He and Ramsey had been spared that much. Whitlock could only think that it was because they were American. Not only were they prisoners, but they were pawns.

The walk back to the Gulag was several miles long, a distance that to the weary prisoners seemed to stretch endlessly. Ramsey put an arm across Whitlock’s shoulders and just barely managed to make it, forcing himself along by sheer willpower. They had to walk back along the railroad bed that they had dug that day, and Whitlock was surprised by how little distance they had covered, despite all of their efforts. They worked with nothing but hand tools—picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. With even a few pieces of heavy equipment they could have been far more productive, but the Russians didn’t seem interested in anything resembling efficiency. Who needed a tractor when you had slave labor?

They walked past the depressing little village outside the gates of the Gulag, and then into the Gulag itself. From there, the weasel-like man pointed them in the direction of the camp infirmary and let them find it for themselves.

Compared to the other buildings in the Gulag compound, the infirmary was a palace. Whitewashed walls, clean and well-lighted in the dusk, smelling of disinfectant. Beds with actual sheets, so blinding white that Whitlock blinked a few times at the sight of them.

He thought about the crowded and uncomfortable prisoner barracks. How did such a place as this infirmary even exist alongside the rest of the Gulag? There were several empty beds, although these could easily have been filled with the sick and injured. He wondered if those clean beds were mostly for show. Actual sick and injured zeks would sully those boiled sheets.

Most radiant of all was the nurse who came to help them. It was not so surprising that she was a woman—there were a few women working in the camp, but most were old and clad in shapeless clothes on par with burlap sacks. These women were more like potatoes with arms and legs. This nurse was entirely different. A rose in the potato patch.

For one thing, she was young—maybe her early twenties—Whitlock’s own age. Blond hair framed her pretty face and she did not wear the typical babushka head scarf, but a proper nurse’s hat. Whitlock had become so used to the company of men that for the first time in months, he keenly felt the fact that he was filthy, wore little more than rags, and smelled like a goat.

The young nurse stood there, waiting, her face an expressionless mask.

Whitlock knew that trying to explain anything in English was hopeless, but he tried anyway. “My friend, he is very weak,” Whitlock said slowly.

The nurse nodded, and then replied clearly in only slightly accented English. “He looks feverish. Let us get him into a bed.”

Whitlock was astonished. Was this infirmary nothing but one miracle after another?

“You speak English,” he said.

The girl looked around furtively. She knew that the babushkas in this place watched her jealousy. “I speak English only to do my duty,” she said in a loud, deadpan voice.

He helped her get Ramsey undressed and into a hospital gown—again, blindingly white and clean—and then into a hospital bed. By then, Ramsey had drifted off.