Red Sniper

They listened; when no one replied, he hollered out again. Cole had a high, ringing shout that could carry across a mountain valley back home, but the vastness of the dark plain around them seemed to swallow up the noise like padded velvet. He decided against firing his rifle.

“Maybe I’m not the only one who got cold feet and there was nobody to push him,” Vaccaro said. “He was last.”

“Nah, he got blowed off course is all. Vaska, are there any woods ‘round here?”

“To the west, about three kilometers away, there is a forest.”

Cole nodded. “If he come down in them trees, he might have got hisself hung up. Vaska, how big is that there forest?”

“It would take many days to cross it.”

They stood around, thinking about that. Honaker could be hung up in a tree, either tangled up or injured. There were stories about that happening behind enemy lines to paratroopers who managed to reach their jump knives and then cut their own wrists so that they could bleed out quietly rather than become prisoners, tortured for their secrets. Not to mention the fact that there were wild animals. A badly injured man was just another meal to some varmint.

The fingers were most vulnerable. Then the face. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

“Goddamnit,” Cole said. “We ain’t off to what you’d call a real good start.”

“Listen, we can’t wait around,” Vaccaro said. “You heard Vaska. It’s gonna be daylight soon. We can’t be seen out here, but maybe Vaska can come back and look for him. He won’t attract attention like we would.”

“Da, da, I will come back,” Vaska said. “For now, we must hide you.”

First, they collected the parachutes. Vaska had already thought ahead and knew of a sink hole that they stuffed the parachutes into. Then they started off across the vast plain. It was still too dark to see much of anything, but Vaska led them confidently, keeping a brisk pace.

“He moves fast for an old man,” Vaccaro muttered, panting.

After an hour, they came to the edge of a village. A dog came out and barked at them, but lost interest when Vaska fished around in his pocket and tossed him a scrap of dried meat. Vaccaro opened his mouth to make some comment, but Vaska cut him off by putting a finger to his own lips. They followed him to a small house—more of a shack, really. It reminded Cole of a Russian version of his own family’s mountain shack, hammered together out of rough-cut lumber, scrap wood, and discarded metal sheeting.

But inside it was warm enough. There was an old-fashioned ceramic oven rather than a fireplace, over which an older Russian woman tended something good-smelling in a pot. She watched them without emotion, except for her eyes. They drifted over Vaccaro, narrowed at the sight of Cole, but grew large when Samson entered the house. He seemed to fill the tiny space.

“Vaska’s house,” their guide announced. “Now, you eat, and then you hide.”

The woman, whom Vaska did not introduce, served them bowls of fish stew. It was a bland, almost tasteless fish. Lumps of potatoes and onions mingled with the fish. The stew needed salt, but they ate hungrily enough. Samson held out his bowl eagerly for a second helping, which seemed to improve the old woman’s mood.

“Burbot,” Vaska explained. “I catch them in the river here, from the riverbank in the summer and right through the ice in the winter. When I catch a little extra, I sell the fish to the camp. If not for burbot, we would starve. It is a blessing and a curse, you know. It is a blessing because it feeds us and a curse because it is all we have to eat.”

“I thought you were a guide,” Vaccaro said. “I thought that meant you were a hunter, too.”

“Hunting is hard,” Vaska pointed out. “In the winter, you must travel far from the village. Game is scarce. There are wolves. You don’t always have something to shoot, but there is always a fish to catch. One burbot feeds us for two days, maybe three.”

Cole saw the wisdom in that.

“Wolves?” Vaccaro wondered.

“Wolves,” Vaska said with another shrug, although it may have been a shudder. He glanced at their empty bowls. The old lady didn’t offer seconds. “You have eaten. Now you must hide.”

He took them to a pantry door in the tiny kitchen. They helped him shift bags of potatoes and a few canned goods marked with unidentifiable Cyrillic characters until the back of the pantry was accessible. Vaska pulled aside the boards to reveal an opening. They stepped through it into a tiny, windowless space just big enough for the three of them to lie down in. Vaska had already provided some blankets and a bucket.

Vaccaro looked dubiously at the bucket. “Is that for when the roof leaks? Wait, tell me that’s not for—”

Vaska replaced the boards, sealing them in darkness.

CHAPTER 17

Hours later, Vaska returned to let them out. When they emerged from the secret room, they were surprised to find Honaker in the kitchen.

“You made it!” Vaccaro said. “What the hell happened to you?”