Red Sniper, page 5
By now, the rest of the squad had crowded into the bedroom. Six men. All in various states of intoxication. Staring at the girl on the bed. Barkov unbuckled his trousers, his intent all too obvious, and the girl started to wail.
They were all so intent on the scene on the bed that the younger brother slipped in unnoticed and leaped onto Barkov's back like he was climbing a mountain, shouting and pounding his fists. Cursing, Barkov shrugged him off, dumping the boy to the floor in a heap. Murushko kicked him, and the Mink raised his pistol to shoot him. The girl wailed even louder, sounding like an air raid siren to Barkov's ears.
This was not going as he had planned, not at all. He slapped the girl and shouted at the Mink, "Nyet!"
Drunk as he was, Barkov quickly explained his plan. The Mink hauled the boy to his feet, wrapped an arm around his throat, and put a revolver to his head. Barkov pointed at the boy and then at the girl. Unless she was a complete Oyabuk, she ought to understand the situation, and what Barkov wanted.
Horribly, the crime that was taking place in that bedroom was being perpetrated all across Berlin. Rape was being used by the invading Russians as both a form of punishment against the German people and as a grotesque spoil of war. It was as if the medieval era had returned to the 20th century.
• • •
When Barkov finished with the girl, he took another big swig from some bottle they had found, and then Murushko took his turn. The brother was sobbing, unable to take his eyes off the nightmare scene in front of him because the Mink was holding him so that he was forced to watch. Still, the boy strained against the Mink’s grip. Barkov absently punched him in the belly.
It turned out that the girl's initial screaming had not been for nothing. Murushko was busy humping away, his pale ass bobbling up and down, when a commissar appeared in the doorway. He was young and looked startled by the scene he had walked into. These hardened soldiers all resembled drunken thugs, and he looked from one to the other uncertainly, despite his commissar's uniform.
"What is going on here?" he demanded.
“What do you think?” Barkov said. “Go away.”
The young commissar did not seem sure what to do about the rape, but he did know one thing: “You cannot speak to me that way.” His hand fumbled at his holster.
Barkov gave him a shove that sent the officer crashing against the wall. Then the sniper reached down with a hand the size of a bear paw and took away the officer’s gun. It was a Tokarev TT-33 Service Pistol in 7.62 mm, ugly but reliable as a hammer. “This does not concern you, Comrade Commissar. That is, unless you want a turn."
Barkov gestured at the bed. The young officer blushed, and averted his eyes. He darted from the room, chased down the narrow hall by the laughter of the soldiers.
Only the Mink wasn't laughing. "Yegor, what have you done?"
"That little runt won't be back, not if he knows what's good for him," Barkov said. "You worry too much."
They all had a go at the girl. Murushko went twice. To take his turn, the Mink released the brother, who sank to his knees, blubbering. Barkov considered killing him anyhow, but that seemed too kind. The boy would be having nightmares about this day for years to come—it would serve the little Nazi bastard right. The boy would always be reminded of the day when he had been too weak to defend his sister.
Finished, Barkov and his men stumped loudly down the stairs of the neat German house and out the front door—where he saw the young commissar approaching again. This time, he was not alone.
An older political officer flanked him, and if the young commissar had the look of a puppy, this one had the appearance of a watchdog who enjoyed biting. Barkov recognized him vaguely as having been one the senior commissars to give speeches before the attack on Seelow Heights. He had then gone to the rear to shoot those for whom the speech had not been sufficient motivation for advancing toward the German lines. As if the appearance of the commissar wasn’t bad enough, a couple of NKVD guards marched along, submachine guns casually aimed in Barkov’s direction.
"You," the older commissar said to Barkov. "I know you. You are the sniper. Your name is Barkov.”
"Yes, Comrade Commissar."
"Why do you think I am here, Barkov?"
"The girl—"
"Girl? Do you think I give a shit if you screw some German girl? No, I might give you a medal for that. No, Barkov, you stupid Oyabuk, your crime is that you dared to put a hand on this officer here, who hesitated in shooting you because he still believes in the milk of human kindness. I have no such frailties.”
Barkov started to speak, but thought better of it.
The commissar went on, “The only reason I am not going to shoot you right now is because of your service. I know who you are, Barkov. In your drunkenness, you have made a serious error in judgment that will require some reeducation.” He made an expression that he must have thought was a smile, but the sight of his perfectly square teeth gave even Barkov a shiver. “I have new duties for you now that the fighting is over."
"Yes, Comrade Commissar." Barkov felt a sinking feeling. Whatever a commissar had in mind couldn't be good. "What about my men?"
The commissar nodded at Murushko and the Mink. “You can bring those two along. They look dependable. Now, give the commissar his pistol back.”
Barkov did as he was told, handing back the Tokarev TT-33.
Then the commissar turned to the younger officer. "Make yourself useful, Comrade. Shoot these others."
CHAPTER 6
Whitlock’s first impression of the POW camp was not what he had expected. In his mind's eye, he had pictured something with tall barbed wire fences and guard towers, a muddy yard, snarling Rottweilers on short leashes, and starving prisoners—like those old Civil War photos you sometimes saw of a hell on earth like Andersonville.
Instead of horrors, he found bored prisoners and equally bored guards. The sewage plant back home had a taller chain link fence, with more barbed wire on top. Instead of drab buildings, the prison barracks were neatly whitewashed. Concrete walkways crisscrossed the grassy yard. It wasn't exactly cheerful, but it could have been a lot worse.
"Is this a prison camp?" Whitlock wondered out loud. "There's not a guard tower was in sight."
The older guard riding with him in the back of the truck gave him what might have been a look of pity. Whitlock had almost forgotten that he spoke English.
"Where would you go?" the guard asked. "You are in the middle of Germany!"
So many Allied airmen had been taken prisoner by this late hour of the war that no one even bothered to interrogate him beyond a few rudimentary questions. The processing of a new prisoner was brief and Whitlock found that he was treated diffidently enough by the prison guards, most of whom were either young enough to be in junior high school or old enough to be the same age as Whitlock's father, or possibly his grandfather. The fittest soldiers were likely off at the front, rather than guarding POWs.
Whitlock was submitted to a brief questioning by an officer who was going through the motions. The officer concluded by giving him some advice: “Don’t do anything stupid, and you’ll be home again soon.”
If the camp had been south of the Elbe River, the officer would have been right. As it turned out, he couldn’t have been more wrong.
After that initial interrogation, an officious sergeant took his name and compared it to the list presented to him by the guard from the truck. Once the sergeant was satisfied that all prisoners were accounted for, they were each given a bowl, a spoon, and a blanket—which, judging from the moth-eaten holes and the smell, was used.
There were no prison uniforms anymore, so Whitlock kept his grungy uniform. He didn’t mind the lack of prison uniforms, but there were also no coats, despite the fact that the air was chilly. He had lost his leather bomber to the young soldiers. To stay warm, Whitlock draped his thin blanket across his shoulders.
The sergeant had the new POWs line up and all the prisoners received a cursory search. They submitted silently to being patted down. The sergeant even made Whitlock take off his boots, and he worried for a moment that he would be left barefoot. The German was only interested in seeing if Whitlock was smuggling anything. Satisfied, the sergeant nodded and moved on.
He was led to one of the barracks by a guard who was clearly not yet old enough to shave or even to get a pimple, and pointed to the door. The boy carried an old rifle slung on his bony shoulder and Whitlock realized it would be a simple matter to overpower him and take away the weapon. But then what? As the guard on the truck had pointed out, Whitlock was in the middle of Germany.
Whitlock slipped the blanket off his shoulders in an attempt to look more presentable. Carrying his newly issued bowl and spoon bundled up in the blanket, he crossed the threshold into the dark interior of the barracks.
The prison barracks smelled like a locker room, or just about any barracks that he had ever been in—the atmosphere was thick with the odor of stale sweat and old farts. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He could begin to see that several heads had turned his way, watching him curiously. Most of the men lay on bunks, but a few huddled around a stove in the corner, sitting on upturned crates.
One of the men approached. "Aren't you a sorry bastard," the man said, and Whitlock's guard went up at the words, although the man’s tone was friendly enough. "It looks like you had the bad luck to be one of the last prisoners taken in this war."
For the first time since those terrifying moments when his plane had begun to disintegrate around him, Whitlock had to smile. "I've been thinking the same thing ever since I found myself staring into the barrel of a Mauser held by some kid."
The man extended a hand, and Whitlock juggled his bundle to take it. "Max Macdonald," the prisoner said. "Captain in the Army Air Corps. I’ve been here, fifteen months and twelve days, which makes me the ranking officer."
"Good to meet you, sir," Whitlock said.
"Oh, none of that." MacDonald said jovially. He had a British air about him, as if he had been spending a lot of time with the Englishmen in the barracks next door. Whitlock half expected the man to click his heels together. “What I mean to say is that it is good to meet you, too, but we don't stand much on formality around here. We leave that to the Krauts."
Another man came up. "Bill Ramsey. Lieutenant, Army Air Corps. Here, let me help you with that," he said, taking the bundle from Whitlock. "You can have Hinson's bunk."
"Won't Hinson be needing it?"
"It's not likely, considering that he went to the Great Beyond last week." Ramsey looked him up and down. "How are you feeling? Any injuries we should tend to?"
"No, I'm fine." Whitlock wanted to add, unlike my crew. He had no idea whether or not they had made it. None of the Germans had been able to tell him. He felt bad about it. A thought occurred to him. "Was Hinson sick?"
MacDonald's face clouded. "Well, in a way he was," MacDonald said. "He tried to climb the fence, and the Germans shot him."
"He was trying to escape?”
"Something like that." MacDonald sighed. "You might say he committed suicide. The poor bastard had had enough."
Ramsey put Whitlock's bundle down on the hard planks of the bunk. "Home sweet home," he said. "Welcome to Stalag Twenty-Two B. That's the Germans for you, giving their prison camps such efficient names. Unofficially, we like to call it the Hotel Hitler. Just don’t let the guards hear you say it.”
“That sounds like a good name for it.” Whitlock smirked. “So, how long have you been in this place?”
“Since last summer,” Ramsey said. “Too long.”
“One day seems too long right now.”
“I wish I could say the time passes quickly, but that would be a lie.” They talked for a while, with the POWs eager for any news from the war. Once Whitlock had filled them in, Ramsey clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, now that we’ve got you settled in, get some rest.”
Whitlock wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but as soon as he stretched out on the bunk with his tattered blanket, he fell fast asleep.
• • •
Ramsey's question about how Whitlock was feeling proved to be prophetic. By the next morning, he was shaking with fever. It had been a long time since Whitlock was sick, and the flu or whatever it was hit him like a windshield hitting a bug. His throat burned. His bones ached. He felt miserable.
Fever made him dizzy. When he got up to relieve himself, he staggered drunkenly. The room spun. He could barely keep any food down. Ramsey nursed him through it. He sat him up in the bunk and fed him spoonfuls of watery cabbage soup. He could barely gag down more than a few sips. Whitlock felt embarrassed to be so helpless, but Ramsey was having none of it.
"You're not the first one," Ramsey explained. "I'm no doctor, but I've got this theory that sometimes the shock of going through being shot down amplifies whatever illness you've got. Your immune system is a ninety-eight pound weakling right now, getting sand kicked in its face.”
“And you’re supposed to be Charles Atlas?”
Ramsey snorted. “It used to be that the Germans would put a guy in the infirmary if he got this sick, but there's not so much as a nurse or an aspirin there anymore. All the medical staff and supplies are at the front. So it's up to me, good ol' Nurse Ramsey."
Ramsey arranged for Whitlock to sleep closer to the stove, which struggled to heat the barracks. He brought Whitlock an extra blanket, and that helped with the shivering. At some point he became delirious, shouting warnings that the Germans were about to march down Main Street during the Fourth of July parade.
Two nights later, Whitlock woke up, knowing at once that he was better. The fever was gone. The room no longer spun, but he felt weak as a kitten. Ramsey was sitting almost within reach on a crate pulled up next to the stove. He brought Whitlock a mug of warm water, since there wasn’t anything resembling tea.
“You’re awake," Ramsey said. “Goddamn, but you had it bad. I wasn't sure you were going to pull through."
"I guess I was out of it for a couple of days."
"Yeah, you were.The good news is t hat it looks like you're going to live. The bad news is that you're still a prisoner in the Hotel Hitler, and the war is still going on.” Ramsey grinned. “Feeling better now?”
CHAPTER 7
Even as the war ended in fitful gasps, winter seemed to cling to the land in those early days of spring. Leaden skies overhung the brown landscape. The air still held an icy chill, no matter what the calendar said.
Vaccaro developed a cold that he couldn't seem to shake. He sneezed and coughed so much that if they had still been facing German snipers on a regular basis, it would have been one sneeze too many.
Cole offered to shoot him to put him out of his misery.
"Fortunately, I know you're just kidding, Hillbilly," Vaccaro said, swiping at his nose with a grayish hankie that he had found somewhere in Belgium.
“If you was back home, my ma would dose you with a big spoonful of whiskey and kerosene.”
“Jesus, it’s a wonder you survived.”
“I reckon there is some truth in the remedy being worse than the sickness.” Cole studied Vaccaro with those unsettling eyes of his.
Crazy eyes, Vaccaro thought of them—just not out loud. He sneezed.
"You know what you need, Vaccaro? You need about two weeks in some sunshine with nothin' to do."
"Sounds about right," Vaccaro said wistfully.
"Ain't gonna happen, though," Cole said. He handed Vaccaro a flask of some unidentifiable booze that they had liberated from one of the towns en route to Berlin. "Try some of this. It's the next best thing."
Vaccaro took a drink and grimaced. "What is this? Paint thinner?"
"Could be, for all I know."
Vaccaro took another swig. "Well, if it is paint thinner, at least it will put me out of my misery."
"That's the spirit. Have another drink.”
Vaccaro did.
Cole and Vaccaro, along with the bulk of American forces, had washed up against the southern shore of the Elbe River, roughly thirty miles from Berlin. And there they all sat. Hostilities with the Germans had effectively ended. All that the Germans seemed to want to do was to get away from the Russians. One might have thought that what remained of Germany was being invaded by demons, not the Soviet army. Entire families could be seen fleeing with everything they owned on their backs and a glint of fear in their eyes. The Germans were eager to put as much distance between themselves and the Russians as possible.
Maybe the Germans had good reason to be afraid. Rumors had reached the GIs of atrocities being committed by the Russians. Wholesale looting. Murder. The rape of any female they could find. By comparison, the Americans looked like saints.
Vaccaro gazed across the river. "It's a cryin' shame that we won't be going all the way to Berlin."
"That's the brass for you. Just like Ellie Mae Smith used to do to me out back of the county fair. She got you all worked up, and then she told you to put it back in your pants.”
“This Ellie Mae, did she have two legs or four?” That set Vaccaro to laughing, which fizzled out into a coughing fit.
“Keep it up, Vaccaro. With any luck, you’ll laugh yourself to death.”
The fact that the Americans were not rushing toward Berlin was a source of keen disappointment, not to mention more than a little confusion. Berlin had been the Allies' Holy Grail since the D-Day landing. Now that they were so close, that grail had been snatched away.
Just days ago, Eisenhower had an encounter with one of his generals, making an offhand remark that the troops should push on to Berlin. After months spent fighting their way across Europe, there wasn’t a soldier who didn’t want to get to the German capital. Ike’s words had seemed like encouragement.
