The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 10: The Cellist

But it never jammed. Somehow, it never overheated. When the 49-round drum was empty, Karen had learned to reload it in less than five seconds.

And Anton didn't miss. This big, overly-dramatic man who loved Chekhov and Brecht and the theater and sang show tunes and operettas about unrequited love and tragic romance, it turned out he was a killer. He may have sympathized with the Germans, but he showed them no mercy.

It wasn't just the machinegun. It was also Petr. Petr always knew exactly where the Germans were and exactly when they were coming. He'd mapped out their surroundings, and he taught that map to Anton and Karen.

The Alps, the Church, the Winter Palace and the Orchard, these were Petr's landmarks and now they were Karen's and Anton's landmarks, too. Whenever the Germans tried to mount an assault from one of those landmarks Petr would know it. "The Church!" he'd yell and Karen would wake from her slumber or daydream and Anton would fire and the magazine drum would spin until it clicked empty and Karen would replace it and the machinegun would keep firing and firing and firing and Karen would keep replacing drums until Petr yelled "clear!"

Then Karen would look up to see a line of dead bodies stretching all the way back to the scorched cross. The assault would have failed, the few surviving Germans crawling back, wounded, and Karen would return to her troubled daydreams.

"The Alps!" Petr would yell and once again the spitting machinegun would jolt Karen to action and once again more Germans would die and another assault would falter.

The Germans started fighting fire with fire after that. They used their own machineguns to keep Karen and Petr and Anton pinned down. But Petr knew to wait until the MG-42's barrel overheated and then he'd leap forward and cut down the Germans running toward them, firing shot after shot with his rifle. "Boom, click, click," Karen heard as Petr fired and worked the bolt, "boom, click, click." And every boom signaled another dead German.

One time the Germans had almost killed Petr, instead. They'd gotten clever. The MG-42 stopped firing and Petr thought the barrel had over-heated so he leapt up to shoot but the Germans were faking. The MG-42 immediately started firing and thank goodness it missed because Petr crashed back to the ground alive and wiser.

Eventually the Germans gave up. There was no good piece of cover that they could take and flank Petr, Anton and Karen. They realized that their position was the strongest of the three, and that they'd be better off assaulting third squad, instead.

But it took an entire day for the Germans to reach that conclusion; an entire day during which the German assault was delayed. If Petr had stayed with his own squad that day would have been lost. How many lives had been saved because Petr had bought the Red Army and the defenders of Stalingrad twenty-four hours? Karen would never know, because soon she'd be dead.

On the second day the Germans were more careful. That's when they laid the smokescreen and moved the machineguns and eventually over-ran and killed third squad.

On the third day second squad, too, was over-run. That was Karen's and Anton's squad. They'd fought hard and valiantly but it was only a matter of time. They were outflanked and exposed. There wasn't much cover to their right, to their north, and they couldn't bring enough rifles to bear. As soon as the Germans had occupied third squad's trench, second squad's fate was sealed.

And now Karen's fate was sealed. There wasn't much cover to her north, either. As soon as the Germans mustered the courage for a new assault she, too, would be dead.

Karen stopped weeping. Not because she'd stopped being sad, but because she'd run out of tears. It had taken the last of her body's precious moisture. Already she'd been thirsty; now she was parched. And she had nothing left to drink; she'd finished her canteen last night.