Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (37 page)

With his knife he cut a short piece from the end of the firing cord, then stripped away the waxy sheath to expose bare wires at both ends. He twisted the wires to connect one cap, then the other, they were now hooked in sequence. Katya guessed the second cap was a backup in case the first one didn’t blow. She watched him strip the end of the hundred-meter cord and wire it to one of the caps, astonished at the speed with which the partisan could do this minute work. His long fingers were precise as a musician’s, playing over the little wires on this dark and dangerous ground. Daniel connected the caps in under a minute, working on his stomach with precious little light. Katya kept her ears open, and heard nothing but the pitter of Daniel’s knife and his elbows in the dirt. The last thing Daniel did was remove the crimps from the blasting-cap wires. The caps were now live.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he whispered when he was done. He lifted the circles of cord over his shoulder again and got to his feet, still backing away from the rails, unraveling the first loop onto the ground. Katya had no work to do, her hands were free. She wanted to run for the shelter of the bushes and her comrades, but she stayed beside Daniel while he laid loop after loop on the ground.

Katya watched for the guards to turn and come back their way. She listened for any unwelcome sound, her skin prickled with every crunch of her boots and the complaints of the unspooling wire. Daniel, a lean young man, began to huff with the effort of carrying the wire. Katya was hyper-alert and scared. She looked everywhere into the night, except where she was walking. She tripped over the wire under her feet.

She did not catch herself, that would make more noise, but folded into a ball and rolled to her side on the earth. Daniel made an angry grunt. They were halfway between the rails and cover. Daniel froze in place. Katya lay still, petrified that her stumble had betrayed them to the strolling guards. Daniel looked up and down the tracks and saw no reaction from the sweeping flashlights. He shook his head at Katya, then resumed his careful backward gait. She rose from the ground, humiliated at her clumsiness, knowing she would hear it from Daniel if they survived that she was an even bigger oaf than Ivan. What if she had done that while carrying the blasting caps? A cold tingle bristled over her shoulders.

The load across Daniel’s back lightened with every unleashed coil. He quickened his pace and Katya stayed to the side, letting him play out the last lengths of wire. When they reached the bushes, he had only a few loops left. Big Ivan slipped out of the shadows to take the remaining cord.

‘What was that?’ he growled at Daniel.

‘Our ballerina here.’

Katya slid into the bushes behind exhausted Daniel. Josef and Filip were gone into position to do their part of the mission and nab a prisoner. Relieved not to have to bear an angry stare from Josef or a bemused grin from old Filip over her tumble, she hunkered behind a thick bush and peered out to the tracks.

Ivan bared his wrist and raised his watch to a sliver of moonlight so he could read the time. He lifted the small, boxy blasting machine into his lap. With a knife he stripped the sheathing from the end of the blasting cord and fastened the bare wires to the terminals of the box, then screwed in the T handle. Earlier, Ivan had explained to Katya how the detonation machine worked; the box was nothing more than a magneto. When the handle was spun fast, a pulse of current - forty-five volts - shot down the blasting cord to the caps and set off the explosion. Ivan completed the detonator assembly, set it between his knees, and fixed his gaze on the dim hands of his watch.

The German guards were far down the track now. They would amble forward another minute, then turn and follow their beams back this way. Katya wondered where Josef and Filip were. Would they act now, while the night was tense and quiet, or wait for the C-3 to go off and make their grab in the echoes and running confusion?

Ivan whispered to himself. Katya turned her attention to the big man curled behind her. The detonation box lay tucked in his abdomen, the wire led away from his gut. He counted, looking at his watch, ‘… four… three… two… one…’

Ivan twisted the handle. Katya whirled her head around, eager to see the blast.

Nothing.

She heard Ivan twirl the handle again, and again, but the curtain of the night stayed down. Then, from far off to their left, a boom gushed up the rails. The other squad. They’d blown their track.

Daniel spun an angry face at Katya.

‘It’s you. You tripped on the wire.’

Ivan cursed behind them. He turned the handle one last time, then set the detonator hard on the ground. He scrambled up to Daniel and Katya. ‘Now what?’

Daniel glowered at Katya. ‘Yes. Now what, Witch?’

Katya fought to stay calm. It was her fault, but it was an innocent mistake. Just a stumble, anyone might have done it, it was dark, the wire was black, she’d stayed by Daniel to be helpful… she wanted to plead this to the two furious faces so close to hers. She was humiliated and frightened all at once; their anger crackled in the air while the explosion farther down the track died. They had failed because of her.

She looked out to the tracks. The German guards held their spots down the rails, unsure what to do; should they rush in the direction of the sound, should they keep walking, or hold still? They cut off their flashlights and melted into the dark. They knew there were partisans around. Katya sensed they were as scared as she was.

Daniel’s breath soured in her nostrils. Seconds had passed since the other squad’s explosion.

‘Well?’ Daniel tilted his head. Ivan swallowed so loudly, Katya heard his throat work.

Daniel hissed, ‘We have to blow the tracks.’

Katya was crowded, by the blaming hot eyes of the two partisans, by dread leaping in her chest. By the thought of facing Colonel Plokhoi without wrecking these tracks, and being the one to blame. I’m not brave, she said to herself, I’m not this brave.

A horse pawed the ground. She must quiet the horses before they made the situation worse. This gave her a reason to get to her knees and crawl away from Ivan and Daniel. The two men said nothing when she pushed past them. Do they think I have a plan? she wondered, hurrying to the animals. I don’t.

Then, looking at the horses milling nervously, she did. It would be a
podvig
, the greatest of her life. Likely the last of her life.

Katya flung herself at the first horse in line, scrabbling to unstrap the girth to slide off the saddle. She risked noise to work fast, calling Daniel and Ivan over to help. The two hurried to her side.

‘Get these saddles off. Move, move. And the harnesses. Everything.’

The three stripped the horses of saddles, blankets, reins, and bits, piling them all on the ground with as much quiet as haste allowed. The six horses stood freely in a bunch, laying shoulders to each other, questioning the humans’ dire energy and the removal of their bonds. Katya took the harness last off Anna.

She stroked her horse’s muzzle. ‘We have a job to do, girl,’ she whispered.

Katya swung herself up onto Anna, bareback.

‘What are you doing?’ Daniel asked her.

‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Wait as long as you can.’

Katya kicked Anna with a heel to turn her out of the bushes. Daniel and Ivan stepped away and faded in a second behind her under the sound of the six horses cantering in the open. Katya clung to Anna’s mane, tugging left or right in play with her boots to lead her clever little horse and the following pack across the hundred-yard plain, to the rails.

Her instincts were right. The partisan horses were unaccustomed to being ridden alone, they’d always traveled in the band of men, never less than in a small group. Tonight, even without tack, they collected tight around Katya and Anna. Their run made no human noise, there was nothing of leather or metal about them in the darkness, they were just a tiny herd of spooked and naked horses that had jumped some fence, frightened by the blast a minute ago.

She rode low, hugging Anna’s neck. She’d been the best bareback rider in her village, better than Papa even. Valya had no peer with a saber but she could always outride him. Anna snorted, excited to be in the lead like this, her rider so close as to be part of her.

Katya kept her head inside Anna’s flying mane. She sent her eyes up the tracks, seeking to spot the guards somewhere in the night. Where were they? The tracks were fifty meters away, another twenty seconds.

A flashlight popped on, a white sword swinging at the sound of the hooves. Katya slid to her left, away from the patrol, down Anna’s midsection. She squeezed both arms hard around the horse’s neck. In straining fists she clutched the mane and flattened herself to Anna’s galloping ribs. When she was a girl she could pick a fallen hat off the ground at full gallop. The horse running alongside bumped against Katya and loosened her grip, nearly knocking her off. Katya gritted her teeth. Her arms and knees burned, Anna’s breath and the other horses’ snorting nostrils and whipping legs filled her senses, blending with the pain in her muscles. Between Anna’s pounding hooves the ground flashed, lit by the sweeping flashlight. The light stayed on the running horses for seconds, then moved away. Katya used most of the strength she had left to hoist herself up just enough to glance over Anna’s bounding back, up the tracks. The flashlight remained on, but had returned its gaze down to the tracks. The two-man German patrol was headed back this way

She kept Anna running straight, cuing the horse with pressure on her neck. The other partisan mounts jostled her, her grip waned in her horse’s mane, her calves and hips burned. Every ache from the crash of the U-2 came back to scream under her skin to let go! Katya growled deep in her throat, a savage sound of will and terror and anger.

She could hold on no longer. Her hands were slipping from Anna’s neck, her legs unwrapped and Katya began to slide off. Smart Anna sensed her rider’s release and slowed. Katya’s boots dragged, then her fanny and shoulder hit the dirt, and she was down. She skidded, biting back a grunt in the kicking dust. Anna galloped unleashed in a small circle, then came back, leading the others to where she’d dumped her rider.

Katya lifted her head, muzzy from the fall. The horses stood around her, panting and pleased, snorting and bobbing their heads. She laid a hand to the ground to roust herself, she couldn’t just lie here, no matter how much her body hurt. With a surprise that was too great to be mere relief, almost a shock at her luck, her fingers brushed on the black firing cord, running beside her to the tracks only ten meters away.

She shook her head: She needed to be clear-headed, or she would be dead in minutes. Scrambling to her feet, she crouched behind the horses. She took Anna’s muzzle and walked her and the other five horses the last steps to the rails. Holding Anna by the mane, Katya shooed the others away, smacking one on the rump to make them skitter off and grab the attention of the coming guards, leaving Anna and Katya behind at the C-3.

She pressed flat beside the rail. Fifty meters off, the guards’ flashlights glanced up at the pack running away from them, then lowered to the tracks again. Anna stood still, disguising the dark form of Katya fumbling with the wires.

Katya’s hands felt racked and unruly, her fingers rejected any fine movement. She pulled back from the blasting caps for a moment, to catch her breath and gain control of herself. Her heart beat thunderously in her ears. The guards strolled closer every second; now she could hear their voices, their boots on the gravel beside the rails, their flashlights were the brightest things under the lackluster moon and stars. Now, she thought. Or, really, never.

She leaned into the C-3, close enough to smell Ivan’s vegetable oil. She could not stop the tremble in her fingers so she let them hover above the caps, gingerly touching the wires until she found the place that had come undone. The firing cord had been pulled away from the first cap by her stumble, the stripped copper wire stuck straight up, cooperative and easy to repair if the sun were high and her hands did not quaver like a divining rod and an armed German patrol was not bearing down on her. Katya pulled her hands away again from the task. She commanded them to be still and obey. She filled her lungs with the steppe night and held it. Anna bent down to see what her rider was doing in the dirt. Katya pushed the probing muzzle away. This touch - an old and familiar feel, a horse to her hand - brought her a moment of calm and remembrance. That was all she needed.