12
THE SHARPSHOOTER
Her weapon was a 7.62mm Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle with a PU optical sight. She carried a Nagant M1895 revolver on her hip, and a NR-40 combat knife strapped to her thigh, but it was the Mosin-Nagant that turned her from girl to predator.
Or maybe she’d been a predator all along, she just needed the weight of the rifle to point her in the right direction.
“Ladies,” Madame Vishnyak called. She paced down the line, hands clasped behind her back, scanning their faces with a critical eye. Searching for weaknesses. “Take your posts,” she instructed, and everyone scrambled.
Katya had been scouting all morning, and she knew just which tree would suit her needs. She set off across the training yard at a jog, following her classmates as they hit the head of the game trail and went through the snow-dusted underbrush into the tangled labyrinth of pines and birches. They were all dressed in winter whites, only their tidy braids distinguishing them from behind – and those would be covered with white hoods once they had taken up their positions.
One by one, they branched off onto smaller trails, gone with a rustle, a flash of polished steel, and then nothing, silent as whispers through the underbrush.
When Katya spied the pine with the forked trunk, she stepped over the snow-covered fallen log to her right and took an exact thirty-two strides before she reached the perch she’d selected earlier. Above her stretched a massive spruce with wide-spaced branches, its needles sharp and itchy against her face as she tipped her head back to search its trunk for hand- and toeholds. The palms of her leather gloves were rough from activity like this, and they gripped tight as she climbed, up and up, until she reached the gap that offered an impressive view of the rolling forested hills below.
Winded in an exhilarated way from climbing, she swung up into the hollow where branch met trunk and snuggled down, feet and back braced, cradled by the wood. She was small, and for that she was thankful, always able to perch in tight places. It took a moment to get settled, to pull her hood up and situate her legs in a way that would ensure she could stay comfortable for hours – if need be. She brought the Mosin-Nagant’s stock up to her shoulder and leveled her sights on the road at the base of the hill, toyed with her grip until it felt right.
Then came the calculations.
The spruce needles swayed in the breeze: gentle, west-to-east. She would need to account for that. The hill sloped down at a thirty degree angle. She would need to account for that too.
Then came the waiting.
In some ways, waiting was her favorite part. It was the truest peace she’d ever known.
Peace had been scarce at home – and that was before the Germans razed it to the ground. She thought about that day, sometimes, when she was wedged between the branches of a tree; let the pain wash over her, let the exhaustion of loss lull her into that twilight space between grief and fantasy when the truth felt like a nightmare she could shake off when she finally chose to. She drifted there, as often and for as long as she could.
But then she’d hear the snap of a twig, and the training exercise would snatch her back to the present. The truth of being a girl without a family, doing the best she could with the hand she’d been dealt.
She didn’t pray anymore. Or sleep. Or feel anything besides determined. Fear was a luxury for those with something left to lose.
Movement on the road drew her attention, and she shoved all extraneous thoughts to the side. A Jeep drove slowly into view, a real American one, part of the shipment sent over after the victory at Moscow, the US sending munitions and rations over to help “Uncle Joe” in the war effort against the Axis. The ground, melted and frozen and melted and frozen again, was a jagged, frosted, slippery mess, and the Jeep struggled to gain purchase, lurching and bucking in the deep ruts of the track. It didn’t help that the driver had no idea what he was doing – there was a good chance he’d never driven anything besides a pony cart before.
No matter.
Several boards had been set up in the back of the Jeep, sticking up through the open roof, paper targets wrapped around the end of each. Katya’s had her name written above it.
She found the bullseye through the sights, took a small breath, and held it. Went perfectly still. She thought of the breeze, and the slope, and the speed of the Jeep. Tabulated the trajectory in her head. And pulled the trigger in one smooth caress.
The board jumped, the target hit dead-center.
Katya smiled to herself.
Her entire family had been killed as they tried to flee the Germans. She’d fallen in with a band of refugees headed for Moscow, pursued the entire way until they’d finally run up on the Red Army. She’d had two choices: take up factory work producing munitions for the Soviet Union’s war efforts, or find a way to serve said war efforts more directly.
She’d joined Madame Vishnyak’s sniper school, and she was the top of her class.
She ejected the casing with a quick, practiced movement of the bolt and pulled the rifle into her lap, content to wait until it was time to come down.