Winter Sniper 08 Loytavaara Hill, page 26
part #8 of Winter Sniper Series
The guard shouldered his rifle and descended. Since he stood upon the hill’s top and the twenty meters below the crest was nearly vertical, he used the frozen creek bed to climb down. The footing was treacherous, and the Soviet descended by placing his feet parallel with the hilltop with each step, to create more traction, instead of walking with his toes pointed down the hill.
On his third step, the guard stumbled and nearly lost his footing. He regained his balance after sliding down the icy creek bed half a meter. To prevent another slip, he unslung his rifle and used it as a cane to stabilize his footing. With each step he took, he would push the rifle’s stock into the snow next to the creek bed.
When he drew within three meters of Mäkinen, Hale, who was lying on the ground next to the creek bed, tried to stand and attack the Soviet. Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, the guard planted his feet and swung his rifle at Hale. The wooden stock of the guard’s SVT-38 hit Hale in the side, knocking him off his feet and sending him tumbling down the hill.
“What treachery is this?” the guard shouted.
The guard’s shout drew the attention of the other three men who were guarding this side of the hill. Mäkinen, gunned the nearby guard down with the Suomi slung around his neck. Another guard appeared at the top of the ridge and Mäkinen turned toward him and fired a short burst at the enemy soldier.
Three bullets slammed into the guard’s chest. The man’s knees buckled, and he fell forward. Losing consciousness, he tumbled down the hill into the darkness. The next guard that appeared, upon seeing Mäkinen cut down his comrade, stopped and nervously raised his rifle.
Mäkinen turned toward him while the Soviet was raising his rifle. The two men fired at each other simultaneously. Desperate to stop the enemy, Mäkinen held down the trigger and hit the Russian a dozen times. The enemy soldier only fired one round from his semi-automatic SVT-38.
The bullet fired by the Soviet slammed into Mäkinen's upper left arm. He let out a cry of pain and surprise. The bullets from Mäkinen’s Suomi hit the Soviet in the chest.
The impact of the bullet caused him to drop his rifle as he was knocked off his feet by multiple bullet impacts to his torso. Simultaneously, the fourth guard appeared at the edge of the ridgeline and hastily took aim at Mäkinen. The Finnish lieutenant was too slow to recover from his gunshot wound. The Soviet smiled and snarled, “Die pig.”
The Soviet put tension on the trigger of his rifle, but before his gun could fire, a bullet slammed into his chest. Surprised, his shot went wide, and he dropped his weapon to clutch the wound with his hands. This gave Mäkinen the time he needed to recover, and he fired a short burst into the guard, sending him tumbling down the hill.
Hale appeared out of the darkness and asked, “How bad are you hit?”
“Not bad,” Mäkinen replied.
“Can you still fight?” asked Hale.
Mäkinen nodded. “It hurts like hell, but I can still use the arm.”
“Then let’s get to the hilltop before anyone else gets the drop on us,” urged Hale.
Mäkinen quickly changed the magazine on his Suomi and the two men hastily finished their ascent to the top of the hill. Hale heard shouting to their right as several enemy soldiers ran toward the sound of the recent gunfire. Hale pivoted on his right foot, quickly took aim at the nearest man, and fired his rifle. His target clutched his gut and sank to his knees.
The rest of the enemy squad, responding to the gunfire, flowed around their sergeant, who had been leading the charge. Mäkinen grasped the Suomi dangling from his neck. When the enemy soldiers, who were sprinting toward the two Finns with their rifles in their hands spotted the Finn going for his weapon, they dropped to the ground.
“Don’t shoot,” Hale urged Mäkinen as he pulled a grenade from his belt. “You’ll just miss.”
Hale armed the grenade and hurled it at the Soviets laying on the ground thirty meters away. The grenade turned end over end as it flew and landed upright, with its handle buried in the snow up to the pan at the top of the wooden shaft. Upon seeing the grenade, two of the enemy soldiers sprang to their feet and tried to run. Mäkinen promptly cut them down.
A moment later, the grenade exploded, wounding the rest of the enemy squad. Mäkinen took a step toward them and Hale stuck out his left arm to stop him. “Leave them and follow me.”
Hale turned away from the screams and moans of the injured men and ran. The flat hilltop was almost completely covered in tents. The young Finn turned into the nearest row between tents. He glanced to make sure Mäkinen was following and hunched over so that he wouldn’t be visible to anyone looking in his direction.
Mäkinen, followed Hale’s lead and did the same. Hale ran for twenty meters before selecting a tent at random. Just prior to pulling the flap aside of the tent he selected, he drew his pukko blade. Seeing two slumbering forms inside the tent, he hurled himself on top of the man on the left and slashed his throat, silencing his snoring forever.
Startled by the sudden chill, the other man reached for his blade upon seeing the uninvited guest. The knife lay in the small space between the top of his head and the back of the tent. His utility belt, which lay on the ground in a heap, held the knife. As his fingers closed around the pommel of his blade, Hale put an arm around his chest and pressed his pukko against the skin of the Soviet’s neck. “Stop,” Hale demanded in Russian.
The enemy soldier released his grip on his knife. “Ask him where Kutusov’s tent is.”
Mäkinen repeated the question in Russian and the man said, “Nyet.”
Hale pressed his blade into the Soviet’s neck until it bled freely. “Ask him again and tell him this time I’ll kill him if he doesn’t answer.”
Mäkinen translated for Hale. The enemy soldier immediately responded. “What did he say?” asked Hale.
“He said that he will not answer, as you will kill him anyway,” replied Mäkinen.
“Tell him I give him my word that if he answers the question, I will merely knock him unconscious,” said Hale.
Mäkinen translated for Hale and the and the man replied in Russian. “I will answer if you show your good faith by removing your blade from my throat.”
Mäkinen translated and Hale threatened, “If you cry out you are dead.”
Hale removed his pukko blade from the man’s neck. He placed his hand on the Russian’s neck and raised the blade so that the enemy soldier could see it. It was covered in blood. “Your wound is not fatal. It will stop bleeding soon,” Mäkinen said in Russian.
“Let me put my blanket against it,” the man asked.
“You’re better off without the blanket, friend. It will just prolong your bleeding. The cold is going to freeze it,” Mäkinen said.
The man nodded. “Now tell me where I can find Kutusov,” Hale hissed.
They could hear many voices outside coming from the direction of the cliff face. Luckily for the two Finns, the snow was covered in hundreds of boot tracks. This prevented the men now looking for an unknown number of Finnish intruders from simply following their tracks.
“There is a group of four large tents at the center of the encampment,” the Soviet said. “The tents form a square. The two nearest to us are the chow tent on the left and the aid station on the right. You will find Kutusov in one of the tents beyond those two. The one on the left is his private sleeping quarters, and the one on the right is his headquarters.”
The enemy soldier made eye contact with Hale and said, “I have given you what you want. Now keep your word.”
Mäkinen, struck the man in the back of the head with the butt of his submachine gun. His eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Hale cocked his head and listened for nearly a minute. He heard men in the nearby tents snoring and several voices coming from the area of the cliff side.
“I don’t hear anyone nearby,” said Hale. “You go first in case I’m wrong.’
Mäkinen nodded and then slipped through the tent flaps. A blast of bitterly cold air hit Hale’s face as the older man crawled through the exit. “It’s clear,” Mäkinen hissed in Finnish.
Hale looked back at the unconscious enemy soldier to confirm he was still out and then crawled through the flaps. He came to his feet and looked around. There was at least a platoon sized group of men milling about the edge of the hill near the ridgeline where they had ascended.
In addition, there were a handful of men walking to or from the latrine trenches at the edge of the camp. Hale turned toward Mäkinen and whispered, “If they determine that infiltrators killed the slain men, they’ll sound a general alarm. Let’s walk down this row to the south side of the hill to put some distance between us. Then we can turn westward toward the center of the camp.”
Mäkinen nodded and said, “Da.”
Hale and Mäkinen walked slowly toward the end of the row on the south side of the hill. They were a few tents shy of the end when a soldier emerged from the last tent on their right. The two Finns paused as the man stood, stretched his arms out, and yawned.
He turned toward the pair of Finns and walked toward them. Hale and Mäkinen stood to either side and allowed the man, who was still blinking away sleep, to pass between them. The Soviet nodded in thanks as he passed.
Hale readied his rifle to shoot, but the man just kept walking toward the latrine unaware his life was in imminent danger. “Seems he didn’t realize who we are.”
“It’s hard to tell one white snow suit from another,” replied Mäkinen. “Especially when you just awoke, and it's dark.”
“Indeed,” agreed Hale. “Let’s get moving.”
A few seconds later, they reached the end of the row and turned westward. They walked along a meter wide space between the last tents of each row and the southern edge of the hillside. Hale glanced down the hill. Unlike the northern side, which was steep and ended in a near vertical cliff, the southern side descended at a gentle angle to the road below. Hale observed several enemy soldiers sprinkled across the hillside. Each man used whatever natural cover was available to him within his assigned area to keep himself hidden from the road’s vantage point.
After a minute of walking, the four tents emerged out of the darkness. Light escaped around the edges of the larger tents, making them more visible than the smaller two-man tents surrounding them. “It seems he was telling the truth about the tents,” said Hale.
“Let’s hope he didn’t lie about which one was which,” Mäkinen said.
As they drew close to the center of the camp, a man entered the lane they were using and started walking toward them. Like the two Finns, he was wearing a white snow suit and had a rifle slung on his back. He trudged toward them. The man’s weary gait betrayed his exhaustion. Again, Hale and Mäkinen stepped aside as the Soviet drew near.
He nodded his thanks, then suddenly paused and asked, “Why are your boots wrong?”
Mäkinen smiled and replied, “What do you mean comrade? Boots are boots.”
“Yes, and we are all issued the same boots. Yours are different,” the Soviet replied.
“You are very observant. We looted these off a pair of dead Finns. These boots are better than the ones we were issued. They’re felt lined and do a much better job of keeping our feet warm,” Mäkinen replied.
Now suspicious, the Soviet asked, “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”
“Because if you are an officer, you’d want to take them from us,” Mäkinen replied.
The man snorted in amusement. “True. We are not all as equal as the revolution would have us believe.”
Satisfied, the Soviet walked past Mäkinen and Hale. As he had done before, Hale turned toward the soldier to ensure he was walking away. Hale’s eyes widened as he saw the man’s rifle in his hands. “Your accent is crap comrade. Who are you?”
“Same as you, comrade, soldiers of the Red Army,” Mäkinen replied nervously.
The man pointed his rifle at Hale and demanded, “Say something.”
Hale drew in a breath and said, “Privet.” the Russian word for hello.
The man tensed and his face twisted in anger as he realized what Hale was. Before he could act on his realization, Mäkinen lunged at him. Startled, the Soviet pulled the trigger. The bullet went wide to Hale’s right as Mäkinen crashed into the man the moment he fired.
“Go!” Mäkinen shouted at Hale as he wrestled with the enemy soldier.
Hale turned on his heels and sprinted for the headquarters tent. He bumped into another man that was walking down the pathway as he ran by him, nearly knocking him over the side of the hill. “Hey!” the man shouted in Russian.
Hale ignored the angry enemy soldier and turned to his right as he reached the four large tents in the center of the camp. If that man lied to me, I’m a dead man.
Hale paused just outside of the headquarters tent. Took a deep breath and exhaled sharply to calm his nerves. He unslung his Suomi from around his neck, pulled the tent’s entry flap aside and strode inside.
Hale blinked as the bright light of the interior blinded him. Several men sat around a small wooden table in foldable campaign chairs. The officers were drinking tea and having a discussion. It took a few seconds for Hale’s eyes to adjust as one of the men asked in an annoyed voice, “Who are you?”
“Major Kutusov?” Hale asked in his best imitation of a Russian accent.
“Da,” Kutusov replied.
Hale raised his submachine gun and fired at Kutusov. The first bullet hit Kutusov just above the waist. Hale held down the trigger of the gun. A line of bullets stitched their way upward across Kutusov’s torso, killing him.
Horrified at the sudden brutal slaying of their commanding officer. The other officers froze in shock for a second. That was all the time Hale needed to hose the rest of them down with his Suomi. As Hale poured bullets into the group of officers, their bodies jerked and arms flailed as each man was hit by several bullets.
The radioman, the only other man in the tent, sat at a table in the back. The radio obscured him from Hale’s sight and shielded him from any stray bullets that missed the officers. As he stood, he drew a pistol and took aim at Hale, who was finishing up with the officers.
When the radioman squeezed the trigger on his pistol, a blizzard of bullets struck him as Mäkinen stormed into the tent with his Suomi blazing. The radio man’s aim was spoiled. The bullet just missed hitting Hale in the chest. Instead, it slammed into his left leg. Hale screamed as he felt the bullet penetrate the meaty part of his left thigh.
“Where are you hit?” Mäkinen asked.
Hale looked down and saw the entry hole in his coat on his left side just below the waist, “Upper leg!”
“Can you walk?” asked Mäkinen. “We need to move!”
Hale took a tentative step forward and grimaced as the pain in his leg increased but held his weight. “I think I can. Let’s go.”
Mäkinen drew his blade and ran toward the back of the tent. Confused, Hale asked, “Where are you going?”
“Trust me, if we go out the front, we are going to die,” Mäkinen replied.
A Soviet soldier entered the tent. Hale turned toward the man, who was raising his rifle to shoot Mäkinen in the back. Hale squeezed the trigger of his Suomi. Instead of filling the tent with thunderous gunfire, it clicked. Ignoring Hale, he raised the rifle in his hands and fired at Mäkinen. Thinking fast, Hale hurled his empty weapon at the Soviet and hit him on the left side.
The move saved Mäkinen from being slain, but not from being hit as the bullet smashed into the back of his left bicep. “Summer of cunts!” exclaimed Mäkinen. “The bastard shot me in the same arm.”
Before he could recover, Hale drew his pistol and pumped two bullets into the Soviet’s head at point blank range. The enemy soldier’s head jerked sideways as the bullets entered his brain. Slain, he collapsed to the ground. As he fell, Hale snatched the dead man’s SVT-38 out of his hands and turned toward the tent’s entry flap.
Another enemy soldier burst into view and Hale immediately shot him in the chest. The bullet exploded out of his back and hit the next man right behind him. Both men toppled, revealing several more Soviets trying to push their way into the tent.
Upon seeing Hale, they raised their rifles to fire. Simultaneously, Hale heard canvas tearing as Mäkinen worked to cut an exit. “Down!” screamed Hale.
Hale hurled himself sideways and away from the entry just as the enemy soldiers opened fire. Bullets filled the air as the group blazed away with their semi-automatic rifles. Hale held on to the SVT-38 he had just snatched as he crashed to the ground on his right shoulder. Though he couldn’t see the enemy from this angel, he immediately raised the rifle and aimed at the crowd outside.
Hale fired his weapon until the rifle’s ten bullet magazine ran dry. As he fired, he shifted his aim to try to hit as many men as possible by firing through the wall of the tent. The bullets smashed through the canvas and hit several of the men outside. Mäkinen turned around and hosed down those that were still standing with his Suomi.
“Let’s go!” shouted Mäkinen as he stood and slipped through the new exit he had just carved into the canvas.
Hale plunged headlong through the opening in the back of the tent, followed by Mäkinen. The two men quickly took stock of their surroundings. “It looks like we are in one of the lanes formed by the rows of tents.”
After Hale got his bearings, he turned to the north and said, “This way.”
As they ran for the cliff, Hale raised his coat and pulled a flare gun that he had secured to the small of his back by sliding it into his gray uniform trousers. “What’s that?” asked Mäkinen.
“A message,” Hale said as he raised the gun skyward and pulled the trigger.
With a flash, the flare within the gun ignited and hurtled skyward. As the flare ascended, it left a trail of white sparks in its wake. When it reached the apex of its climb, it exploded into a white phosphorus globe.
“To whom?” Mäkinen asked.
In between breaths, Hale said, “Just shut up and run.”
