The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 39: The Cellist

Karen was having a serious case of déjà vu, and it wasn't the good kind. Once again she was hungry, like she had been in Leningrad, and once again she was lying face down in a field of snow, like she had been in Leningrad. This time, though, she wasn't hunting potatoes.

This time she was hunting Germans.

The supply parachutes had landed in no-man's land, right in the middle of 9th January Square. Sgt. Pavlov wanted those supplies.

So did the Germans.

The trouble was, the park was open ground. That's what had made Pavlov's House into a fortress: It was surrounded by a killing field.

And now Karen, Petr, and a few other volunteers had to venture into that killing field.

They were armed with Ppsh submachineguns, but Pavlov warned them not to use them. Their only cover was darkness, and the muzzle flash from their firearms would give them away.

"If you have to shoot, roll away as quickly and as far as possible," Petr coached her as they checked their weapons. "Because the snipers across the park will see you and shoot you."

Petr had also given Karen a knife. She'd never used a knife before. She'd killed a man with a shovel, once, Petr's shovel, the kind of shovel the Russians liked to use in hand to hand combat. But the man she'd killed, an NKVD officer who was going to shoot her for espionage, hadn't expected it. And Petr feared Karen was too small and too weak to fight off a prepared German soldier with a shovel.

"Hold it like this," he'd told her, and he wrapped her fist around the knife handle so she grasped it underhand, like she would if she were about to lob a softball. "And if someone grabs you, just stab them as often and as quickly as you can. Don't waste time aiming, just stab, over and over again."

Petr hadn't wanted her to come along, she'd volunteered, he'd argued against it. But Petr wasn't in charge of the platoon, Pavlov was. And Pavlov wanted a medic to be with the foraging party.

Karen wasn't wearing her red cross badge. It made her feel helpless. She wanted to be armed, she wanted to be able to fight back. Besides, she reasoned, the Germans wouldn't be able to see the badge in the dark, anyway. Even if they respected her role as a "non-combatant" under the rules of war, the badge wouldn't protect her. So she left the red cross armband behind and brought a gun and knife, instead.

The Russian winter uniforms included snow suits. But Pavlov's platoon hadn't yet received their winter uniforms, and they wouldn't until the Volga froze and the supplies resumed. However, when they'd first occupied the apartment building that would become their home for the next two months, they'd found cans of white wash that had somehow survived the firebombing. Karen, Petr, and the other volunteers had used it to paint their coats and helmets white. There hadn't been enough time for the paint to dry. It was still wet and sticky, and its toxic smell was overwhelming. But against the snow it turned out to be perfect camouflage.

They'd waited until the moon set and then headed out, first into the trench and then up over its lip and under the barbed wire. From there they'd crawled, slow and careful, toward the supply crates.

Karen was sopping wet. The weather wasn't as cold as it had been in Leningrad when Karen hunted potatoes, but that just meant the snow melted beneath her. It soaked through the front of her coat, tunic and skirt. She'd lamented not having trousers like the men, but now she realized wet trousers wouldn't have kept her any warmer.

She was shivering uncontrollably and had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. She was exhausted. She'd already crawled almost a hundred yards, and the cold and the hunger sapped her strength. Lenin's statue loomed before her, his outstretched hand pointing toward the German lines, as if in warning. She wanted to close her eyes and rest. But she was afraid that if she did she'd never open them again.