War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] (9 page)

Yuri’s blue eyes popped wide. “New York, America?”

Fedya leaned over the cheese and bread. “New York City?”

“Yes,” she said in English.

Another bomb blasted ten meters from the port rail. Cold water cascaded. The bread and cheese in front of Tania were washed overboard. Near the bow, a soldier slumped and moaned.

Yuri and Fedya were distracted from their amazement at Tania. All the men on the deck fell silent save for the groaning soldier. His comrades slid aside to lay him down and cover him.

Fedya clutched the vodka bottle. He stood. Tania saw how large he was, with great shoulders and a midriff to match.

A kneeling Green Hat shouted, “Sit down, you!”

Fedya handed the guard the bottle.

“Here, give him this. Come on, man! Take it!”

The guard grabbed the bottle and threaded his way to the wounded soldier. Then Tania’s heart sank: she caught the whistle of an incoming artillery shell, the first one she’d heard in flight. She knew why.

“Down!” she screamed at Yuri and Fedya.

The three huddled together on the deck. The mortar shell struck directly amidships. The deck cracked open into great splinters and blew apart in a ball of flame and debris. The explosion deafened Tania. She flew backward, up and out into the flashing waters of the Volga.

* * * *

SIX

NIKKI TRAINED HIS HEAVY MACHINE GUN ON THE door
way. He made sure the gun’s ammo belt was taut. He slid his hand along the broad, round barrel. It was colder than the Russian autumn.

He stared down the machine gun sight. It’s stupid to wait for the Russians to retreat, he thought. They won’t retreat. The Reds die in their holes. They’re not leaving this building. Neither are we.

He imagined himself pulling the trigger—saw Russians burst through the doorway, then twist and fall in front of his machine gun. They came, they leaped at him, he caught them with bullets, and they came, the bodies jamming the hall. The machine gun spit and spit, firing and roaring, mowing them down. And they kept pushing the bodies of their comrades out of the way to get to him. He let the trigger go and the gun kept firing on and on. He ran across the room, ran through the ruins. His unit ran after him, streaming out the windows, while here in this empty room the Reds kept running at the machine gun, falling in front of it, building the mound of dead, falling in front of it, falling . . .

“Mond. Corporal Mond.”

The voice pulled Nikki abruptly from his vision. Captain Mercker knelt beside him. He put his hand on Nikki’s right fist, clenching the grip. Nikki’s knuckles showed the white of bone.

“Easy, Corporal,” the captain said. “We’re all a little tense. Back it off a little.”

Nikki relaxed his hold and wiggled his fingers. The captain offered him a cigarette and a light.

“Mond, you were in the first group. Did you check that room on the other side of the hall?”

“Yes, sir. There was nobody in there.”

“How big is the room?”

“A little smaller than this one. Three windows like these.”

Mercker dragged on his cigarette. His cheeks hollowed. “They must’ve had the same plan we did to grab this building. We rushed in the front door while they were climbing in the windows.”

Nikki looked in the young officer’s eyes. He saw calm there.

“You’re new, sir?”

Mercker smiled. “Depends on what you call new. I was at Leningrad last year. Moscow this spring.”

Nikki ground out his cigarette to keep his hands on the machine gun grips.

“Stalingrad is new, sir. Never been anything like this. The front line can be a thousand meters or it can be a ceiling.” He looked at the door in front of his barrel. “Or a hall.”

Mercker said nothing. Nikki felt the invitation to go on.

“Russians are good at house-to-house fighting, better than we are. If they’d been here first, we’d never have gotten in. We’d have to blow the building up with them in it.” Nikki shook his head. “They’re not leaving, Captain.”

Mercker lit another cigarette. “What did you say about blowing them up in it?”

Three weeks ago, Nikki’s unit had occupied a house in the workers’ settlement west of the Tractor Factory. They’d found five Reds holed up in the basement. The men would not surrender. They did not retreat. After three days of stalemate, with the Russians fighting like crazy Ivans, they’d had to rip up floorboards and drop satchel charges into the basement. For five Reds, his unit had blown up an entire house.

Nikki told his captain this story. The moment he was done, muffled voices issued from across the hall. A song. The Russians were singing! Within seconds, a strong chorus formed. The song was loud and lusty. A dirty ballad, Nikki thought, from the laughter accompanying it. The

Reds are sending a message to the German company across the hall. There are plenty of Ivans in here, they’re singing to us, and they’re not going anywhere.

An idea gleamed in Mercker’s eyes. “You blew up a house for five Russians,” he said over the racket from across the hall. “We’ll blow one up for fifty.”

Mercker called for a messenger.

* * * *

AFTER TWO HOURS OF NONSTOP SINGING, THE REDS
quieted.

Twenty minutes later, Mercker’s courier returned through the window. He brought with him three sappers and their equipment: twenty kilos of dynamite, six shovels and pickaxes.

In the center of the room, one of the sappers raised a pickax. He struck a ringing blow on the concrete. Debris scurried from the strike like mice across the floor.

Mercker raised his hand. “Just a second.” He turned to the men. “Those Reds have shitty voices, don’t you think, boys? We should show them how a German sings a song. Loud. In fact, so loud that it’s all they can hear.”

The captain began the Nazi party song,
“Horst Wessel.”
The men joined in, even those with guns trained on the door and out the windows. Mercker stood in the center, swinging his arms like a conductor, whipping up the spirit and volume. The soldiers’ voices climbed to a roar. Mercker pointed with a flourish to the sapper to smack the concrete. The engineer swung down hard and the floor gave way in a jagged dent. The men smiled and applauded, and all they heard was their voices.

For three hours the soldiers sang. Folk songs,
Bräuhaus
ballads, popular tunes, even pieces of opera ricocheted off the walls to mask the digging. When the captain signaled the men to stop—again, like a conductor, with a wave of his hands—the tunnel had long since disappeared beneath the floor.

Nikki took his turn with a shovel for a thirty-minute shift, tossing broken earth out of the hole. The tunnel grew to five meters long, two meters wide at a depth of one and a half meters below the floor.

Inside there was just enough room for two men to kneel side by side and swing pickaxes. The plan was to burrow to the opposite side of the hall. Once beneath the Russians’ stronghold, two and a half meters below them, the fuse would be lit. “Twenty kilos of dynamite.” One of the sappers grinned and spit on the tunnel floor. “That ought to lift those Bolshi bastards halfway to heaven ... or wherever.”

Weary and dirty, Nikki slumped against a wall. Three more men were in the hole now, shoveling out dirt. This made very little noise, so no singing was required to mask it. Mercker told the men to rest for a few hours, then another strong medley would be needed before dawn. “Think up some new songs,” he said. “And no opera. I hate that shit. I want songs about women.”

Mercker sat beside Nikki, drained and grimy. He offered a cigarette and closed his eyes. Nikki thought the young captain was funny, good for morale. He seemed a good leader with a ready ear and plenty of cigarettes. Nikki hoped the best for him, that he would not die here in Stalingrad and that he would live to hate opera as an old man.

On the other side of the hall the Russian voices struck up another song. “Goddammit.” Mercker’s eyes were still shut. “Can’t there be five minutes without a blasted song?”

The captain’s eyes sprang open. He sat off the wall, his face close to Nikki. “No,” he hissed, “there can’t.”

Mercker jumped to his feet. He grabbed a pickax and handed it to a soldier who was not yet dirty. “Get in there! Dig!” He motioned one of the sappers into the hole. He pointed at another soldier and handed him a pick.

“Let’s go. There’s no resting now,” he said urgently. “We can’t wait.”

Mercker carried the last shovel to the middle of the room. He pointed the tool across the hall at the singing Russians. “Those bastards are trying to blow us up, too!”

Nikki thumped his head against the wall. Of course. Damn. The Reds have a head start on us, maybe two hours.

All the men were awake now, all staring at the floor. Nikki pictured the race beneath the surface, wondering who was in the lead and by what distance, afraid that two meters below him a cask of dynamite sat sizzling.

“If the Reds stop singing,” Mercker called, “have a tune ready. And loud. Understand?” Everyone nodded. Mercker disappeared into the hole.

The race was on. The men dug with a desperate strength. They worked under cover of the Russians’ singing as long as it lasted, an hour or so at a time, then picked up their own chorus whenever the Reds stopped. When their voices flagged, the enemy burst into song.

Through the night, Nikki’s company did most of the singing. They gauged, the race in the tunnels by who flung the most verses across the corridor. We must be catching up, Nikki thought. We’ve even added a harmonica. The Reds don’t have a harmonica.

Flickering lamplight glimmered from the tunnel. Silhouettes descended and the bent, blackened shapes of others staggered out. The round, glowing hole in the middle of the floor looked to Nikki like a threshold to the netherworld with its shadowy demons coming and going.

At dawn, Mercker emerged, his face streaked with muddy sweat. He sat and motioned for Nikki.

The man looked exhausted. He spoke in a rasping voice, his head hung.

“The sappers say we’ve got one more hour of digging. Tell the men to get into their groups of ten.”

Nikki nodded. The captain tugged Nikki’s tunic with a blackened hand. “You’re in the first group. Secure that trench. Hold there until I get the rest of us out.”

Gathering their rifles, Nikki’s patrol moved to the windows. The guard nodded, and Nikki leaned out to search the debris-riddled street. He jumped down and waved for his men to follow. One by one they landed, and he pushed them toward the trench.

The Russians stopped singing. Nikki smiled at the guard in the window. “Give them some opera,” he said. He turned and ran.

Ten meters from the trench, a roaring wave swept over him. The ground rose, then jerked down to trip him. The air reached for him. He was caught in the grip of a powerful, careless force that knocked him down, lifted him, and flung him in a somersault away from the exploding building.

He landed on his back and skidded on his shoulders. The part of the building held by his company leaped out from its foundation, walls bulging hideously. Deafened, his skin reddened by the blast, Nikki scrambled for the trench to tumble into the arms of his men while a massive fireball gathered behind him, orange and blue, and erupted. The side of the building burst with a shattering boom, then fell straight down as if a trap door had opened. It dissolved until the last grinding bits came to rest. Above the devastation, a mushroom of smoke and dust curled and shifted, forming a gray and ghostly marker where the walls had stood seconds before.

My company is dead, Nikki thought. Mercker, all of them. No chance.