The Sniper's Kiss

Chapter Nineteen

June 1944

As the weeks rolled by, marked by small and costly victories, Mia realized she liked being a sniper, if for no other reason than that they were privileged. They were too valuable to be used as cannon fodder, and the colonel kept them in reserve until after the initial attack. When the enemy dug in and set their own best marksmen on their pursuers, they were called up. Then it was a contest between experts, countering skill with skill, guile with guile. So far, she’d come out each time on top and now had her own collection of spent shells.

This evening, she slouched on her pack in the hovel they’d been bivouacked in outside of Pskov, and before she fell asleep she glanced around at the comrades who, through skill or just plain luck, still remained.

Curiously, they didn’t swagger or try to outdo each other in prowess, other than the implicit competition of scorekeeping. And there was nothing masculine in their demeanor. When they were off duty, sitting among themselves, most talked of girlish things: parents; fiancés or flirtations; the dresses, makeup, hair styles they would wear again when the war was over.

And since the mortar elimination at the bridge, when she’d gained her sniper stripes, something had changed in her. Or changed again, since the dull-witted accountant who had accepted a job at the White House had fallen away in stages. She had been a victim multiple times—of her father’s abuse, of Grushenka’s deception, of a false accusation of murder, of blackmail, of Molotov’s attempted murder. The injustices had piled up and could have crushed her. But now she had recovered her vision and a rifle, and it seemed nothing could hurt her.

And then there was Alexia.

The original attraction had been her striking Slavic beauty, an idealized symbol of a past Mia could scarcely remember. But unlike Grushenka, who had merely aroused her in the most vulgar manner, Alexia had an elegance and a restraint. Over the weeks of shared hardship, something wonderful had evolved that she couldn’t quite define. She watched Alexia, sleeping a few feet away. She desired her, of that she was certain, but more than that, she felt profound allegiance to her. She understood now that soldiers did not die for the homeland, but for each other.

The door to the hovel flew open, and at least four of the women reached for their rifles.

“Hey, hey! Take it easy, girls. It’s me. Doesn’t anyone recognize me, or have I gotten too fat on my mother’s cooking?”

“Kalya, you vixen! How are you?”

Mia leapt to her feet, along with most of the other women, and hugged her. “Why did they let you come back so soon?”

“What a question. They brought me back because I’m a damned fine shot, and the rest of you are just not up to snuff.”

Klavdia pounded her back. “But your score is way behind now, old girl.” She laughed. “Come on, sit down. Tell us about home and we’ll tell you about the war.”

Even in the darkness of the hovel, lit only by a few shell-case lamps, Mia could see that Kalya was flushed with happiness. They sat down in a circle leaning on their packs and began to talk like sisters. Focused on the new arrival, Mia was surprised to feel the pressure of another shoulder against hers.

“Alexia,” she said, pleased at the touch. “It’s good to have her back, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. I wonder if they’ll pair us up again.”

Only then did Mia remember that Kalya was Alexia’s spotter, and her joy faded to resentment.

At three in the morning, Col. Borodin ordered his officers, and the half dozen snipers who remained, to his headquarters. He was somber.

“Comrades. As most of you know, Pskov is at least a thousand years old and has been in Russian hands since Alexander Nevsky took it back from the German knights in the thirteenth century. Today we face the Germans again, but the blood of Alexander Nevsky runs in our veins. The enemy has blockaded himself behind the walls of the old Kremlin of Pskov, and we do not have the luxury of being able to lure him out onto a frozen lake.” Soft laughter rippled through the room from those who had seen the Eisenstein film of Nevsky’s icy victory set to Prokofiev’s music.

The colonel unfolded a map on his table that held a rough outline of the city and tapped the relevant part. “The citadel where they have their own marksmen posted has six towers, and I’m assigning a sniper team under each one, to knock them out. Mazarova, you’re on the big tower and Zhurova will be your spotter. Petrova and Yefremovna are on tower two.” He continued down the list of assignments.

It took Mia a moment to realize she’d been paired with Alexia, while Kalya, for reasons known only to the colonel, was working—with a new rifle—with Klavdia.

The colonel’s voice drew her back. “It’s important for all of you to take up position before daylight, so you should start out now.”

“Understood, Comrade Colonel.” All of the snipers saluted and made an about-face.

As they marched from the headquarters, they passed Commissar Semenova. She eyed them, as if to make sure they understood their duty. Mia stared back at her with puzzlement. Semenova had never acknowledged being saved from suffocation and harped obsessively on the “not one step back” policy. Perhaps because it was in the rear of the charge that she had been buried alive.

The snipers lined up first at the quartermaster’s, who issued them rag capes. Drawing them over their heads, they looked like marching mounds of detritus.

Separating from the other teams, Mia and Alexia made their way to the designated spot below the first tower. The moonless sky concealed them but also made it necessary for them to grope their way along the ground.

The towers themselves loomed up, black against the pale, predawn sky, remainders of an age when only a handful of precision archers, the medieval version of snipers, could repel ground forces by shooting through a single long slit high on the wall.

Alexia and Mia crawled to a spot some two hundred meters from the tower, which afforded a good shooting angle.

Under one of the clusters of low bushes below the tower, they dug a T-shaped trench and covered it with brush. Alexia took position along the mid-line of the T, while Mia leaned against the ridge at the rear of the trench.

By the time they finished, the sky was peach-colored and stained at the horizon by reds and oranges. The first bird sounded, and some small dark thing zipped past them on the wing. Mia smiled. Stupid bird doesn’t know there’s a war on.

Confident of their invisibility, she leaned her head back and savored the quiet June morning. As the sun rose, it illuminated the top of the tower, changing its black to a warm earth tone.

In the increasing light, they both studied the archer’s slot. Alexia drew back one side of the hood of her camouflage cape. “He’s well-protected,” she observed in a low voice. “But he has very little range unless he stands at the center of the opening, and then we can get him.”

“Theoretically yes, the distance is manageable. But we’ll have only a split second to hit him, and he knows it.”

They settled in, trying to rest and stay alert at the same time. The damp earth was cold but would warm under the June sun. Mia peered up at the sniper’s slot through her binoculars, Alexia through her rifle scope, and though they both focused elsewhere, Mia sensed the intimacy of their first time alone together. “I love the quiet, don’t you?” she murmured, keeping her eyes fixed on the tower.

Alexia remained immobile, her eye two centimeters from her scope. “I do, too. No gunfire yet. A perfect spring morning. A shame we can’t all have a picnic. We could invite our friend up there.”

“Except he’s under the same orders we are.” Mia let a minute pass in silence. Then, “Do you sometimes resent having to choose the lesser of two evils and follow someone you don’t respect? I don’t mean the colonel. I mean the top leaders.”

“It’s treason to talk that way, you know.” More silence. “But, yes. I thought I knew what to respect. All the things a priest once taught me. But now I don’t anymore. I sometimes don’t care about anyone. What about you?”

“I care about you.”

Alexia did not respond, and Mia realized she’d taken a step too far. “Look. I’ve been meaning to tell you. That time in Moscow, when you helped me back to the embassy and I grabbed you. I’m sorry I forced myself on you. It was pretty crude, and I’m embarrassed by it now. It was the alcohol.”

Alexia glanced sideways. “Don’t apologize. It gave me a lot to think about.”

“Really? You weren’t shocked?”

“Of course I was shocked. I always wondered how it would have been if I wasn’t surprised.”

Mia stifled a snicker. The solution was obvious. She took a breath and ignored her pounding heart. “I can kiss you again like that, and then you’ll know.”

A faint sound of steel on stone interrupted their banter, and Alexia instantly set her eye against her scope. “Our mark. He’s up there.”

Mia peered through her binoculars up at the archer’s vent. All she could see was the tip of a rifle, pointed downward and moving slowly from side to side, scanning the land.

“He’s looking for us, but the vent is too narrow for him to get a real sweep unless he leans right up against it.” Mia kept her voice low, though it was nearly impossible for them to be heard high in the tower.

“Frustrating,” Alexia muttered against her rifle stock. “I keep catching glimpses of his hand, but that’s all. If he would only lean forward a bit, just for a second.”

Mia still sat against the rear of the pit, knees supporting her forearms that held the binoculars. She was more exposed and depended completely on her camouflage. If he spotted her, he’d have a clear shot to her chest.

“Damn. He’s pulled back,” Alexia grumbled. “He can’t be leaving his position.”

“No, look. There’s his hand again. He’s holding a mirror to the side of the vent so he can get a good look without exposing himself. Very clever.”

“You’re right. When he turns it a certain way, I can see his reflection.”

Peering through her binoculars until he turned the mirror to just the right angle, Mia studied his face. He was a beauty. “He’s clean shaven,” she said quietly. “And young. His skin must be soft. And look at those lips,” she murmured, resuming the game. “He must kiss beautifully.”

“Not as good as you,” Alexia said without moving her head. The remark hung deliciously in the air.

“So, you did like my kiss, in spite of the surprise.” Mia kept her eye glued to the target. Under the magnification, it almost seemed the German marksman could look back at her and hear her talking.

“Yes,” Alexia murmured. “Quite a lot.”

Mia let another moment pass, examining the implications. “I have better kisses than that.” Up in the tower window, the German marksman licked his lips, as if he’d heard the remark, then lifted his cap to wipe his forehead with his cuff. “Look at him. He’s blond, too, like you. A real Übermensch.”

“I see him.” Alexia’s voice was muffled by the stock of her own rifle pressed close to her cheek. “Are there better and worse kisses?”

The German kept repositioning himself, and Mia had to keep bringing him into focus again. It was making her eyes water. “Of course. Sweet or passionate, rough or tender. But you know that, surely.”

“I do. I just want to hear you say it. Looking at our handsome major up there, I’d say he likes the rough ones.”

“You don’t?”

“No, not usually.” Alexia drew back from the scope and wiped the tearing from her eyes. “Not at the beginning.”

“Good point.” Mia rotated her shoulders to keep from stiffening. “Besides, on certain places one would want to be tender. Look. He’s put down the mirror. All I see now is the rifle barrel and occasionally a sliver of yellow just above it. But he keeps moving, never leaves enough time to get a shot off. Damn. This could go on for hours.”

“We’ll just wait until he gets careless. Tell me more about your kisses. Have you kissed many women? In those tender places?”

The German’s rifle nozzle made another sweep, this time lower. Impossible that he could detect them, but he seemed to be aiming at them. Mia kept her binoculars focused on him, waiting.

“A few.” Mia thought of Grushenka and the several women before her. “But none of them was important. Kissing you was important, and it should have been tender.”

The German sniper disappeared again and reappeared, and his rifle nozzle repeated its sweep. Alexia shifted slightly, flexing her fingers. “Yes. I’d have liked that better.”

Mia’s face warmed at the turn the conversation was taking, but she didn’t dare set down the binoculars. Up in the tower window, the German rifle suddenly pointed downward, as if he’d heard the last remark. “Has he spotted us?” Mia whispered.

“No. He’s just trying to draw fire, to watch for a flash.” Alexia’s voice was muffled by the stock of her own rifle pressed close to her cheek.”

“Would you? The next kiss will be tender, I promise.”

“You plan on another one?”

“Fervently. Oh yes. I want so much to get to know you that way. To explore you.”

The sun was higher now and shone directly on the tower so that the tiny, constantly moving fleck of blond hair seemed larger and brighter.

Alexia saw it, too. “It’s like he knows we’re here and he’s teasing us, isn’t it?” She sniffed. “Explore me. With kisses? How would you do that?”

“I’d search all over you with my lips, if you let me. Would you? Look, the rifle stock is visible now. He’s leaning farther out.”

“No. He moved back again. We waited too long.”

Squinting through the field glasses, Mia felt her pulse pound. Blood rushed down her arms to her hands, and the magnified image she held in her sight twitched slightly with each heartbeat. “I’ve waited too long, too. I want to be with you, intimately. I could lose you at any moment in this war and want to know you and give you pleasure before that happens.”

She tensed with arousal, or was it at the sight of the rifle sliding ever farther out of the tower vent? The marksman would be fully visible again any second.

“Feel me, darling. Feel my kiss on you.” Mia whispered into the air.

Two shots rang out, and an iron-hot blow crashed through her shoulder. She gasped, unable to catch her breath.

Swooning, she sensed a wet warmth spreading over her chest, then someone’s hands grasping her under her arms and pulling her farther into the brush. Pain struck in fierce radiations, like fire through her back and chest, and she suddenly could not get enough air. More shots, it seemed from all directions, but her pain-seared and oxygen-starved brain made no sense of it. She fainted, then came to as she was dragged along the ground. Finally, she was lifted onto a stretcher, and she passed out again.

She came to in the medical tent as someone cut up through the center of her tunic. She recognized Galina. “What happened?” she wheezed, glancing down at her blood-soaked undershirt. Alexia stood on the other side of the cot holding her hand, but breathing took up more of Mia’s attention. She could feel her chest rise and fall, but each breath took in only part of the air she needed.

Galina poked around the wound, causing Mia to scream with pain. “Looks like a broken clavicle and maybe a fractured scapula. Your shortness of breath means you’ve also got a collapsed lung. You’re lucky, though. The bullet exited again, so we don’t have to dig for it. Unfortunately, the pneumothorax means we can’t give you any morphine for the ambulance ride tomorrow morning. All I can do in the meantime is immobilize your shoulder.”

“Ambulance ride?” She gasped and took another shallow breath. “Where?”

“The hospital at Novgorod. It’s a long trip, but they have an X-ray machine and can see if they need to intervene surgically. They’ll tube you to help the pneumothorax, too. You just have to hang on.”

Galina cut away the undershirt, washed the area around the wound, and wrapped the shoulder in gauze, though every touch was excruciating. A dozen other wounded men called out to her, so she gently squeezed Mia’s good arm as a brief comfort, then turned away to the next soldier.

Alexia knelt on the ground next to her cot holding her hand. “It’s best if you try to sleep.”

“They’re going… to send… me back to Moscow,” she said, taking a shallow breath after every few words.

“They can’t hurt you, darling.” She held Mia’s hand up to her lips. “You have another identity. And when you get well, tell them who you are so you can contact your embassy.”

“But you… I’ll lose you.” Pain was clouding her mind and reducing her to the most primitive of needs.

“The army’s moving fast, and in a few months the war should be over. I’ll find you through the embassy. I’ll find you no matter what, I promise. And tomorrow, I’ll come back here before they send me out on duty.”

“I love you, Alexia.” Mia tried to lift Alexia’s hand to her chest, but every movement was agony.

“Believe me, I—”

“Senior Corporal Mazarova!” The commissar and two other officers in NKVD uniforms marched toward them. “You are under arrest for deserting your post.”