The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 7: The Cellist

"Where are they?" Karen asked.

Anton just shrugged. "Maybe they aren't coming."

Karen shook her head. It was what they all hoped, of course, but Karen knew better. The Germans would come. They wouldn't have bombed the city so relentlessly if they weren't going to come.

In Leningrad the Germans had been content to surround the city and starve it to death. But they couldn't surround Stalingrad. The huge Volga River prevented that. So they would have to take it by force.

Karen crawled up beside Anton's machinegun and peered up over the berm of rubble.

She was surrounded by a bizarre landscape. It was a residential suburb, once home to the men and women who worked at the tractor factory.

But now it was a field of ash. Most of the homes had been wooden, and the German fire-bombing had burned them to their foundations. Only the brick chimneys still stood.

There were hundreds of chimneys, jutting straight up into the air like columns, or like trees. That's what it was like, Karen decided, like a petrified forest. But, unlike the trees of a forest, the chimneys stood in perfect straight rows. Between them drifted the smoke of the last smoldering fires, rising like a mist over the forest floor.

There was no place to hide between those rows of chimneys. If the Germans came, they'd be caught out in the open.

That gave Karen hope.

Because the Russians could hide.

To Karen's right was third squad, Petr's squad. They were hidden in a concrete trench much like Karen's. They were so well hidden, in fact, that Karen couldn't see them. That, too, gave Karen comfort. If she couldn't see Petr, maybe the Germans couldn't see him either.

Between Karen and Petr was a tank. It was huddled up against a chimney and draped with a tarp the same color as the rubble and ash.

It was a brand new tank, a state of the art T-34 fresh off the tractor factory's floor. Petr himself had helped bolt it together.

Karen's platoon didn't have a tank crew; none of the infantrymen knew how to drive a tank. So it was courageously being operated by the factory workers who had assembled it; the same factory workers who, until a few short weeks ago, had lived in this neighborhood of chimneys and ash.

The workers had to be courageous to operate that tank. It had a gun, and wheels, and an engine. But it didn't have any of the advanced features required for battle. It didn't have a range finder or optics. The best a gunner could do was point and fire.

Hopefully, that would be good enough.

There were a half dozen similar tanks hidden about, waiting to ambush the Germans.

Karen heard the roar of an airplane and her blood went cold. She had grown to fear the sound of airplanes because the Germans had complete control of the sky.

She looked up and saw a pair of spotter planes. Unarmed, their purpose wasn't to fight. It was simply to observe. They flew over the enemy, radioing any Russian positions they found back to German command.

Anton twisted his machinegun, pointing it at the planes, but Karen signaled him not to fire. He had the good sense to nod and hold his itchy trigger finger.

Unfortunately, someone in first squad lacked that same common sense. A machinegun rattled to Karen's left and tracer bullets arced toward the closer of the two spotter planes.

The planes banked and rolled, chased by bullets back to the German lines.

Karen's squad-mates cheered. But Karen knew better. The spotters had wanted the Russians to fire. They were baiting Karen's compatriots into revealing their positions.