Red Sniper, page 21
They searched the pockets of the dead men. One soldier took the big man's wristwatch. He had a wallet with a few American dollars in it. What did he plan to buy out here on the taiga? There was some identification that one of them could read. The Mink kept the wallet and let the paper money flutter away on the wind.
Ramsey's limp hand had opened in death. It turned out that he did have one more bullet, but this one was for a rifle. Something was etched into the brass casing. The Mink picked it up and squinted at it, then shook his head and held it up for Barkov to see.
The etching read: "Barkov."
“The dead one here was not the sniper,” the Mink said.
“How do you know?”
“What would a sniper be doing with a shotgun? No, this isn’t him. If I did not know better, I would say that the American sniper is sending you a message.”
“It’s just nonsense," Barkov said. He tossed the bullet away. Then he looked across the expanse of taiga ahead and all the open places they would have to cross. He felt a chill, imagining the American sniper’s crosshairs on him.
“What are other Americans doing out here?” the Mink wondered.
Barkov coiled the whip and tucked it into his belt. “We need to get moving," he said. “Let’s catch up to them and find out. Then we will kill them just like we killed these two.”
CHAPTER 28
It wasn't long after they had been ambushed by the two Americans that Barkov found the signs in the snow of where the others had started out that morning. He counted six sets of tracks. He knew that two of those sets of tracks belonged to Inna Mikhaylovna and the escaped American pilot. But who else? He felt a twinge of apprehension, not knowing exactly whom he was chasing.
"Not so far ahead of us now," he said.
Even so, they might have missed the campsite if Dmitri had not stopped to relieve himself, and being shy, had moved into the woods away from the others.
"Over here!" the boy called, frantically buttoning himself up. "There is blood all over the snow!"
Barkov could see that Dmitri had found where the Americans had set up a rough camp and built shelters. Barkov was more astonished to discover that the camp had been the scene of a battle—or so it seemed. It was just as bloody as any skirmish site he had seen during the war, but he quickly saw that this had been a battle between man and beast. The snow was trampled. Blood flecked the drifts. He saw a dead wolf, and a dead dog. He was sure that not all the blood belonged to the animals.
The Mink walked up next to dead wolf. It looked nearly as big as him. The beast’s eyes stared sightlessly, and its jaws gaped open, revealing sharp white teeth.
"When we return, we need to organize a wolf hunt," the Mink said. "These wolves need to be taught fear."
Barkov grunted in agreement. He did not like wolves.
It was disturbing that the wolves had attacked, and yet it was not terribly unusual. The war had all but eliminated hunting because there simply had not been any hunters in Russia—they had all been off fighting in Finland or on the Eastern Front. Sure, there were a few old men around like that village hunter, Vaska, armed with ancient rifles, but someone like Vaska did not actively hunt wolves. You could not eat a wolf, and the pelts had little value.
Stalin had seen to it that few people had weapons of any kind. An unarmed people were more easily controlled by a dictator. He had left his own people defenseless. As a consequence, the wolf packs had grown larger and bolder. It wasn't unusual to hear of a child being snatched from the edges of a village. Some of the bigger, and hungrier, wolves even attacked adults.
Which was just what had happened here.
“May the devil take them,” he said, and spat.
The men spread out to explore the campsite. There was not much to see. He did have to allow some grudging admiration for the work the Americans had done. Their shelters looked snug.
Except for one. He could see the damage where a wolf had dug into a shelter, then forced its way between the branches of the roof. Someone had been sleeping in there, and the wolf had gone after him. Or her.
In spite of himself, Barkov shivered.
One of the men gave a shout, and Barkov saw that he was waving. He had found something. A cigarette pack was speared on a stick.
The soldier reached out to pull the pack free, perhaps hoping that a cigarette had somehow been overlooked inside.
Barkov’s warning came too late.
There was a snap, a swish, the sound of something heavy shifting overhead. Instantly, a log above the solder's head gave way. The man's scream was cut short as the log struck him.
Dmitri hurried over and struggled to get the log off the other man, who was quite still beneath it. Barkov shoved Dmitri away, then reached down with two big hands and tossed the log aside as though it were a matchstick.
But it was too late for the soldier. The falling log had struck with enough force to break his neck.
It wasn’t even noon, and he had already lost two men today—one in the trap just now, and the other in an ambush.
“Come on,” he said gruffly. “Let’s see if we can finish this business before the day is out.”
• • •
They needed food. Meat. It had been two days since they had eaten any real food. They wouldn’t make it another two days. Cole decided to take a chance and double back to check the snares that he and Vaska had set that morning. He left Vaccaro as the rear guard.
He didn’t backtrack, but moved in a circle to give the Russians a wide berth. Vaska had offered his snowshoes, but the snow was only about six inches deep—not really enough snow to slow him down, and definitely not deep enough to make strapping on the cumbersome snowshoes worthwhile. He would be able to catch up with the others, if he double timed it on the way back. With luck, he would be gone for an hour at most, maybe two.
Earlier, he and the others had heard the gunshots that would have been Samson’s and Ramsey’s last stand. An ominous quiet followed.
Part of him burned with a desire for revenge. It was just how he was wired: eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Anyone who grew up in the mountains lived by that code. Vengeance ran through the mountain people like a vein of ore. The fact that he had known Samson and Ramsey for just a few days didn’t matter.
The bullet he had sent back with Barkov’s name on it was more than an idle gesture. He would face Barkov when the time was right. Right now, he and the others needed fresh meat more than they needed a fight with Russians. Samson and Ramsey had bought them time with their lives. Time to get that much closer to the border. Cole and the others would take it.
From the tracks in the snow, he could see that the Russians had found the makeshift camp and searched it, kicking the shelters apart. They either hadn’t bothered with the snares, or hadn’t seen them. Their tracks went on, following the trail that Cole and the others had left that morning.
One of the snares had caught a rabbit. Cole collected it and took down the wire for the snares, in case it might prove useful again.
With a smile of satisfaction, he noted that the deadfall also had done its work. A Russian soldier lay crushed by the fallen log, the cigarette pack still gripped in his hand. One less Russian to fight later. The Russians had left the body where it lay.
• • •
Carrying the one paltry rabbit, he followed the tracks out of the old camp, wondering how long it would take to get to the spot where Samson and Ramsey had made their last stand.
They were damn fools to have done what they did, but he could understand why they had volunteered to go out fighting. If it looked like they weren’t going to make it to Finland, this was just what Cole planned to do.
Ramsey had been done for—hardly more than a dead man walking, and barely walking at that. Samson seemed to like the idea of a showdown, like he was Doc Holliday at the OK Corral or some such place.
The killing ground that Cole found was not the OK Corral, but only a rocky clearing in the snowy taiga. He found Samson's body surrounded by bloody snow. Judging by the trampled ground, it looked as if he had put up one hell of a fight.
Then Cole found Ramsey.
Dead, he was just a bag of skin and bones. He had been shot in the head, but his face was slashed with tiny cuts. Not from a knife. Inna had told him that Barkov liked to carry some sort of sawed-off horse whip. It looked as if Barkov had used it on Ramsey.
Cole felt hollow and sad. He had hardly known Ramsey, but he did know that he deserved better.
He reached down and closed Ramsey's eyes. The last thing he had seen was that goddamn Russian and the snowy taiga. He sure as hell wouldn't ever be seeing home again.
Then the anger came flooding in like a rip tide, along with a current of guilt for allowing the poor bastard to make some kind of half-assed last stand. The anger swept Cole up and carried him away. He started to shake and tremble, not from the cold, but from pure rage. His vision flickered and for a moment he was blinded. He went down to one knee and stayed there until the fit passed.
When he stood back up, the cold taiga wind cleared his mind. He felt like a bar of red-hot iron that had just been dipped in cold water, newly forged.
"Barkov," he vowed to the Russian wind that moaned across the empty land. "I will put a bullet in you if it's the last thing I do."
• • •
Staring down at Ramsey’s body, Cole couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet. He thought about what Ramsey had said. That he hated the idea of never getting home again. Cole thought that after everything Ramsey had been through, that it just didn't seem right that his body would be left here on the taiga—maybe to serve as supper for whatever critters happened by. The thought made his belly churn, but there was no way to dig down through the cold ground to give Ramsey a decent burial. He didn’t have a shovel, and his knife wasn’t up to the task.
"Goddamn," he said, thinking it over.
Cole had brought a blanket with him, just in case he became separated from the others and had to spend the night. Ramsey looked so small laying there, just an empty shell like a corn husk. The hard work and poor food of the Gulag camp had worn him down to hardly more than a scarecrow.
Cole decided that it had been Ramsey's spirit and personality that had been outsized. He spread the blanket on the snowy ground and dragged Ramsey's body onto it, then rolled him up in the blanket.
Maybe he could carry Ramsey, but there was no way he could carry Samson. The man outweighed him by a hundred pounds. He refused to leave Samson to be scavenged by varmints. The Russians abandoned their dead, but not him.
The ground nearby was scattered with stones and boulders, some of them the size of a softball, others the size of a watermelon. Slowly, laboriously, Cole dug through the snow for these stones and piled them around and over Samson's body. The effort took him the better part of an hour. He bashed his fingers between a couple of the larger stones, and ended up leaving bloody fingerprints across the rocks.
When he was finished, Cole hoisted Ramsey's body over one shoulder and set off along the path he had made getting there. He would be a liar if he didn't admit that every step was a struggle. Following his old steps made it a little easier.
In the back of his mind, a plan began to develop. It was so goddamn crazy that it might just work. But he would have to push himself hard to get ahead of the Russians.
He plowed ahead. After a few minutes of laboring through the snow with Ramsey on his back, he realized there was no way that he could circle around Barkov and get ahead of the Russians. That was just wishful thinking. He decided that he didn’t need to get ahead of them; he just needed to make sure that they found him when the time came.
He located a copse of trees on hilly ground. The trees would give him some cover, so that the Russians would have to come in close. It was perfect ground for what Cole had in mind.
He tried to put Ramsey down gently, but the weight of the body was more than he could manage and the body ended up slamming to the ground in a way that reminded Cole of the judo throws they had practiced back in basic training. He shook his head. Judo. A lot of goddamn good that did anybody.
Then he set about building a fire. Cole could build a fire just about anywhere, short of it being in the middle of a blizzard or a hurricane. There was almost always some dry wood to be found, if you knew where to look.
He got a nice blaze going—a real fire to keep the cold at bay. He had to admit that the heat was welcome. The smoke trailed up into the sky like a banner, which was exactly what he had in mind. He tossed on some green spruce boughs to thicken the smoke.
Once the fire was going, he skinned the rabbit. He supposed that this was technically a hare, but if it hopped and had long ears, it was enough to call it a rabbit. He skewered the rabbit on a sharp stick, which he propped beside the fire so that the indirect heat would roast the meat. With a fire that size, the cooking wouldn't take long. Goddamn, that smells good, he thought as the meat began to sizzle.
Satisfied with the fire and the rabbit, he knelt beside Ramsey and got to work.
One way or another, Ramsey was going to have his revenge.
CHAPTER 29
Barkov was the first to spot the smoke. He was surprised. So far, the Americans had shown a great deal of discipline in avoiding any sort of fire. Maybe they had finally gotten too cold, or maybe they had something to cook. Any number of possibilities ran through Barkov's mind.
What the Mink said in Russian was the equivalent of, "Can you believe they would be so stupid?"
Barkov told the other three men to stay put, and he and the Mink went out to check on the source of the smoke.
They could see flames flickering through the tree trunks—the fire was no stingy affair. A delicious smell reached them. That explained the fire. The Americans were cooking meat.
They crept forward, using the trees and brush for cover. Barkov made a motion that signaled far enough and quiet all in one. The two Russians studied the scene before them.
Much to their surprise, there was just a lone figure hunched over the fire. An American sniper rifle with a telescopic sight was propped up within the sniper's reach. It was hard to see the sniper's face, because his neck and the lower part of his face were wrapped in a scarf against the cold. A cigarette hung from his lips. They had expected an entire group, but not one man. Looking around through the scope at the sniper’s feet, they could see what was clearly a body wrapped in a blanket. There was no mistaking it. They had seen enough of those over the last few years.
“So that is the American sniper,” the Mink whispered. “He’s not much bigger than I am. What is he up to, do you think?"
“It looks to me like he is cooking his dinner.”
The Mink gave him an annoyed look. “Over a big fire like that?”
"Maybe he does not think we are nearby. Maybe he thinks we gave up. Maybe he just does not give a shit anymore."
The third possibility was plausible. They had seen so many strange things. Soldiers who lost their minds and threw away their weapons and stripped off their clothes in the middle of a battle. A schoolteacher who sat down to read a book as he froze to death. One could only believe what one saw, which was what they were seeing now. One of the Americans sat by this fire, cooking a rabbit, with a dead man rolled in a blanket nearby. Who was the dead man? Nobody—he was dead. It was not an elaborate scenario.
"What are you waiting for?" the Mink asked.
Barkov lined up the sights and shot the sniper through the head. The body sagged.
The Mink stood up. He uncorked his flask of vodka, took a drink, and handed it to Barkov.
"Good shooting."
"I expected more from this one," Barkov said. “In the end he was nichevo. Nothing."
Barkov took a drink, handed back the flask.
"I want his rifle," the Mink said. He grinned. "And there is no point in letting that rabbit go to waste. Are you coming?"
Barkov clapped him on the shoulder. "You go ahead. I will start back toward the others, so that the cowards don't run away. I would not care, but we may still need them yet. Catch up to us when you can, and bring me some of that rabbit."
• • •
Cole waited for what seemed like an eternity, holding himself very still and barely breathing. But he was a patient man. He just hoped that the rabbit didn't burn. He would have had time to turn it, too, because it took an hour for the Russians to find the fire. By then he felt cramped and cold, despite the fact that he was wrapped tightly in a blanket, but he ignored the discomfort.
He was positioned with his arms in front of him. His hands held the Browning 1911 pistol.
He neither heard nor saw the Russians approach. He only knew that they had arrived when a single shot ripped out and hit Ramsey square in the head. The sound made Cole wince. It didn't seem possible to kill a dead man any deader, and yet Barkov had done just that. Ramsey’s body slumped to the snowy ground just at the edge of Cole’s limited field of view.
Now came the tricky part.
He tightened his grip on the pistol.
What happened next depended on what sort of cards he had been dealt. If one or two of the enemy approached, he had a chance. More than that, and this blanket was going to be his shroud.
He waited, his heart barely making a murmur, which was a good thing—it was so quiet in the forest that the flutter of a bird's wings sounded like a hurricane wind.
He had left a gap in the end of the rolled blanket so that he could look out. The problem was that it reduced his world to a narrow field of vision. It was essentially like looking through a tube. Like a rifle scope, as a matter of fact. He felt cramped as the tobacco inside a hand-rolled cigarette.
Cole had positioned himself carefully. A ring of bushes surrounded the camp—nothing too obvious, but there was a gap through which anyone approaching the fire would naturally walk. It was this gap that the open end of the blanket faced, like a rifle barrel.
