War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] Read Free Page B

in his hand almost to the ground. He stretched his neck like a tortoise and lifted his head. In this position, which was torturous but made a man as small a target as he could be when running, Nikki moved clear of cover and into the open street.
     
    He ran in bursts, shadowing the contours of the buildings and rubble. His nine charges mimicked his every step. They ducked and waited one at a time behind the debris he chose. They lay panting for breath in the craters and ditches where he had lain. Nikki picked each position with care, knowing that every step he took had to be taken nine more times. He never allowed himself to be without cover for more than ten meters. In that space, a sniper would have to be extraordinarily good or lucky to line him up and hit. If he ran into the sights of a Red machine gun, he might still have time to dive for the ground and scramble behind something, anything. His biggest concern was his nerves; he knew that if he made a mistake, it might kill not him but perhaps the fifth or last soldier behind him.
     
    Twice, rifle shots rang out. Nikki froze. The shots did not find his men and were not followed by more action. They were just the random convulsions of combat in Stalingrad, as if too much silence broke some unwritten rule. He caught his breath, then pressed on.
     
    Nikki had the objective in sight for a long time. The three gargantuan factories stood in a line, their backs against the river—the Tractor Works, the Barricades, and the Red October. Around them for a kilometer in all directions lay open battleground plowed by bombs, the broken machinery of war scattered over it like coal shoveled across a floor. At fifteen hundred meters from the middle factory, the Barricades, Nikki sprinted across the remains of a wide boulevard and tumbled into an abandoned trench. He waved to his men to gather beside him and wait for the rest of the company.
     
    After the grueling three-hour, six-kilometer traverse through the city, Nikki’s reward was nine sweaty faces, their eyes rolling as if to say, Corporal, don’t make us do that ever again.
     
    The Barricades, like the other two factories, had been gutted and dismantled by battle to where it had fallen in on itself. A row of broken smokestacks rose above the giant heaps of steel. From this distance, the factory looked deserted. Nikki knew it was not.
     
    To his left were the ghostly shambles of several stone buildings. The corner structure was the largest. Its top was missing, crumpled at its feet like a skirt that had been dropped. That building will make an excellent strong point, Nikki thought. We can occupy several floors and control the approaches from all sides.
     
    The squad waited in the trench for the rest of the company to arrive. Nikki wondered about Lieutenant Hofstetter’s body.
     
    Where is it now, six hours after being alive for its last moments? Is it being readied to fly home, boxed in pine for a military funeral with flags and honors like we’ve all been promised? Or has it been dumped into an unmarked grave in the Russian sod with a hundred other corpses? Did his arms and legs fly akimbo when he landed atop the other dead, to stay that way into eternity, sliding down the pile, going to Judgment upside down?
     
    I don’t want to die like Hofstetter, a bullet in the brain fired from half a kilometer away blasting out the back of my head. He was just drinking from a canteen, he wasn’t even fighting; he didn’t get the chance to die thrashing or screaming to give his life some sort of send-off, a final moment of note. Drinking out of a canteen: he didn’t know he was marked with the crosshairs of a sniper, a damned killer who crawled away with no blood on his hands.
     
    I don’t want to die like that, branded with an invisible black cross like one of war’s ten million cattle. It isn’t a proper death for a soldier; it’s just an ending. It’s even a bit stupid, a silly, facedown, ripped-open, awful