Total War

Chapter Nine

"My brother," the young soldier said, rubbing his hands to warm them, "has an easy job. He talks with this American girl on the satellite link between Moscow and Washington. That is all Yuri does. He even tells me he has fallen in love with her-though he never met her. He is warm. I am cold. He talks with American girls-I guard empty trucks on a mountain pass in Pakistan. He sits on a chair-I stand in the snow. This is not right."

"You talk too much," his sergeant said. The older man leaned against the fender of the nearest truck. "Ivan, I tell you the truth, the Americans may come and fight us. Some of our officers were speaking of this a few minutes ago."

"Good," Ivan said. "At least it would give me something to do instead of standing here, freezing, holding this damned rifle."

"I was sixteen and holding a rifle-with no bullets-at the siege of Stalingrad. Do not complain, young one," the sergeant said, his voice almost a whisper. "It was cold then, too, and I had holes in my boots. This night, I have bullets in my rifle and no holes in my boots. Things are better."

"Why are we here, Sergeant?" the soldier said, his voice trembling with the cold.

"We are Russians-that is why we are here. Tell me, Ivan Meliscovitch, do you and your brother who leads the easy life have a mother, or a sister?"

"Two sisters, Comrade Sergeant. Our mother is dead."

"Then you fight here for your sisters," the sergeant said. "Do not fight a war because you are trying to protect something you do not understand-politics, speeches. Fight to protect something you do understand and you will be stronger, fight harder. Hold on to life and be a brave man. I have three grandsons-younger than you. I fight for them. Years ago, I fought for my wife. But I cannot do that anymore." The sergeant's voice broke then, and he turned away and coughed.

The young soldier, Ivan, cleared his throat and started to speak. "Comrade Sergeant, I am sorry." The last word caught in his throat as a bright red flower of blood sparkled suddenly across the bridge of his nose and he crumpled back against the truck, the Kalashnikov pattern assault rifle failing from his gloved fingers.

The sergeant dropped flat down into the snow and rolled under the truck, glancing back and reaching out toward the dead boy-confirming that for himself-then slid under the belly of the truck, shouting, "We are under attack"'

There had been no sound of the shot. Was it a sniper with a silencer?

As the sergeant slid from under the truck, his long great coat was white with the snow. He scrambled to his feet. His knees ached with the cold. He ran in a low crouch toward the main body of his fellow soldiers. Already, as he ran, he heard sounds from the camps-shouts, rapidly barked commands, gunfire. "Fools!" the Sergeant thought. "Who are they shooting at?" He turned his head to glance back into the darkness from which the bullet that had killed Ivan Meliscovitch had come. The sergeant could see nothing.

He started to fall. As he went down he thought he had tripped on something in the snow, but when he tried to stand up, there was fire in his left ribcage. He touched his gloved right hand across his body to his coat, and his glove came back dark with blood. The sergeant pushed himself to his feet, lurched forward, two steps, then three, then fell again. A loud cry came from deep in his chest as his face pushed down against the wet snow "Natalia!" The sergeant closed his eyes.

The truck bounced hard on the rutted, snow-packed road. The sergeant looked at some of the men who were more seriously wounded than he was. He was well enough to sit instead of lying flat on his back on one of the stretchers. His side ached, his head swam a little from the morphine which the medic had given him. He leaned back, smoking a papyros. The tobacco tasted bad to him. It was too flat. His mind flashed back to some of the American soldiers he had met in Berlin, toward the end of the long war with the Nazis. He tried to remember the names of their cigarettes-they had tasted good. One had been called "Lucky" he believed. One kind that he remembered-he had liked its taste-had had a picture of a camel on the package. He had taken his grandsons to a zoological park once and shown them a camel, told them how he had smoked cigarettes with the picture of this animal on the packet.

He leaned back and drew the smoke from his papyros into his lungs and tried to imagine that it was an American cigarette instead. He looked out and saw the spot of ground where Comrade Private Ivan Meliscovitch had been shot by the Pakistani sniper-two men from the sergeant's own platoon had got the sniper an hour and three dead Russian soldiers later. As the sergeant closed his eyes, trying to forget the bumping of the truck, he wondered if Ivan Meliscovitch had ever smoked an American cigarette.