Red Sniper

Inna was already stripping down. Cole held up a blanket to give her some privacy.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, draping the blanket around herself. Cole bundled up her clothes to keep them out of the snow, and handed them to Inna. He happened to notice the tiny pistol in her boot and pulled it out. The gun barely filled the palm of his hand.

“Why, Miss Inna, what’s this for?” he asked, amused. “You could maybe shoot a rat with this little thing.”

“What would you Americans say? It is insurance.”

Then she and Whitlock crawled into the deadfall shelter. “You need to get right against him and then wrap the blankets around yourselves.”

“I know,” she said, sounding slightly annoyed. “Hillbilly, do not forget that I am the one who worked in the infirmary.”

“Roger that.”

Although Ramsey had not gotten wet, he was also shivering—when he wasn’t wracked by bouts of coughing. “Too bad we don’t have an extra nurse to wrap herself around me,” he said with a smirk. “Some guys have all the luck.”

“Go on in there and huddle up against them as best you can,” Cole advised. “It’s the best we can do without a fire.”

Ramsey did just that, and Cole cut more boughs to close off the front face of the deadfall shelter. The falling snow would add another layer of insulation.

“Now what?” Vaccaro asked, tilting his head into the falling snow. In the growing darkness under the trees, Cole could barely see him.

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” Cole said. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere until daylight. The snow ought to cover our tracks soon enough, so I’m not worried about Barkov. Let’s get some sleep.”

“All right, but don’t go spooning up against me now,” Vaccaro said.

Cole cackled. “When it gets right cold in the middle of the night, City Boy, ain’t gonna be no strangers.”

• • •

Huddled inside the shelter, Inna felt like some forest creature. The rough-cut fir boughs smelled pleasant, and in the silence she could hear the soft patter of snow accumulating around them. It reminded her of how she had built forts out of blankets and chairs as a child. She had felt safe then. Cozy.

There was something reassuring, too, about sharing simple body heat with Harry. Although it was wrong, she had to admit that she had dreamed of such a moment, when she could be flesh on flesh, skin to skin, with this man. He still shivered, and she wrapped her legs and arms around him as if she could soak right into him, her belly pressed into his back.

“Inna, I—”

“Shhh,” she whispered. What was there to say? She was simply glad that he was alive.

A few spasms still worked their way through his body. Inna maneuvered so that she lay on top of him, like a blanket. She could feel every contour of his body, every rib and muscle. She could feel that he was a man, stirred by her warm body. She took his cold hands and guided them to the warmth between her thighs. He flinched. To his icy fingers, the heat felt like a furnace.

Their lips brushed, and then Harry was kissing her, deeply and longingly. His lips still trembled with the cold. It was a kiss that had been delayed for weeks and months by the ever-watchful eyes surrounding them in the Gulag. Indeed, it had proven easier to escape than to steal a few moments of such intimacy.

They held their breath, not wanting to be overheard. Ramsey lay nearby, wrapped in a blanket, already passed out from exhaustion, judging by his measured breathing. Perhaps he was just pretending, hoping to give them some measure of privacy.

She spread her legs and took him into her, which only seemed natural and beautiful. They lay that way for several minutes, simply coupled together, sharing warmth. She clenched him tight inside her. His hips shifted and lifted her, up, up, again and again, both of them moving together, struggling to be as quiet as possible. Inna smothered her cries in his shoulder. Finally, they both seemed to melt into the other. She lay there listening to his heart thudding in his chest, thinking that, just perhaps, it was not such a bad thing to be here in this snow-covered shelter forever.

Together, they drifted off to sleep.

• • •

Cole crawled into his own shelter, glad of the slight warmth it offered. Vaccaro was already sound asleep. Cole had thought he might stay awake for a while, standing guard, but exhaustion seeped through his limbs and he found himself falling asleep. Before he did so, he looked up at the sky through the gaps in the branches that made up the roof of the shelter. Snow had a way of reflecting the light, so that the sky was more gray than black when framed against the treetops.

Many times as a boy he had slept rough in the woods rather than return home to face his drunken pa. He would wedge himself under some rocky outcropping and look up at the shimmering stars, picking out the shape of the constellations that his pa had taught him when sober. When you knew the names of the stars in the sky, you were never alone. Orion the Hunter, with his bright belt of three stars in the southern sky, and Cassiopeia the vain queen, kept him company.