Instead, he had embraced the strange companionship that men often have with machines, most particularly the ZiS-5 truck, with its wooden slatted sides and headlights which goggled from their wheel cowlings, giving the vehicle a haughty, academic look. The twenty-five side vents on its hood, which resembled a line of dominoes forever falling backwards but never collapsing completely, were so familiar to him now that they seemed to have been scored into his flesh.
No sooner had the men taken up their assigned position on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo than they heard the whine of a small aircraft engine.
‘There it is!’ shouted a voice. A moment later, Barkat came loping across the ground and skidded to a stop in front of Stefanov. He pointed to the sky above the Catherine Palace. ‘It’s some kind of reconnaissance plane. Just a little thing buzzing about.’
Now Stefanov caught sight of the machine. It was a Stork. He had only seen pictures of them before. The plane banked sharply, and seemed to be lining up to fly directly over the palace and across the grounds of the Alexander Park. If Stefanov’s guess was right, the Stork would pass directly over their gun position. He turned to Barkat. ‘Ready the weapon!’ he shouted.
Barkat ran to the 25-mm, whipped off the oil-stained canvas tarp which had been laid over it for camouflage, and flipped up the large circular gunsight.
While Barkat checked the ranging mechanism, Stefanov sprinted to the foxhole of Sergeant Ragozin, who was sleeping under his rain cape. ‘Sergeant‚ you must get up!’
‘Is it supper time?’ asked Ragozin, as he pulled aside the cape and rose blearily to his feet. The ground had left a crackled imprint on his skin, like the glaze on an earthenware pot.
‘We’ve spotted a German reconnaissance plane‚’ Stefanov told him.
‘My God! At last a target we can hit!’ Ragozin staggered over to the gun and took his place beside the spare ammunition, ready to reload the 25-mm the second it ran out of ammunition. Still half asleep, he opened a waterproof storage can and lifted up a belt of ammunition. The heavy brass cartridges hung across his forearms like the carcass of a snake.
‘Where is Commissar Sirko?’ asked Ragozin.
‘He went to find something to drink!’ Barkat shouted in reply.
Although Stefanov had fired the weapon many times, he had never managed to actually shoot down a plane. The months he had spent training on that gun, which travelled on a small four-wheeled platform, had proved to be useless. His private fantasy of painting one white band after another down the barrel, each one indicating a downed enemy plane, had begun to seem ludicrously far-fetched. There was only one thing at which he had become an expert and that was digging foxholes.
But now, as he watched the Stork begin its run over the palace grounds, Stefanov realised that this might be his chance to alter that record of failure. In a matter of seconds, just as he had predicted, the plane would pass directly overhead. With his heart thundering in his chest, he chambered a round into the breech and squinted through the spider web of the gunsight.
‘Range six hundred metres,’ said Barkat, down on one knee beside him and adjusting the elevation of the gun. ‘Six hundred and closing.’
Sweat slicked Stefanov’s forehead. He wiped his torn and dirty sleeve across his face. ‘Set at two hundred.’
‘That’s too close!’ replied Barkat.
The plane had cleared the roof of the Catherine Palace and was now flying across the Alexander Park. Gracefully, it dipped its wings from side to side as its occupants gazed down upon the grounds.
‘Set it anyway!’
‘Setting at two hundred,’ confirmed Barkat.
Behind him, Stefanov heard the soft, metallic rustle of Ragozin adjusting his grip on the belt of spare ammunition.
The plane dipped into the loop of the gunsight. For a second, Stefanov was struck by how much it looked like one of those gangly, long-legged insects which used to stray into the webs of spiders in the woodshed by his house. He pulled the trigger.
Stefanov’s body shook at the first clanking bang of the 25-mm. Tracer bullets, one for every five live rounds, arced into the sky. Out of the corner of his eye, Stefanov saw the long‚ spent cartridges spitting in flickers of brass from the ejection port. On the other side of the barrel, the belt of ammunition slithered into the gun.
‘Hit!’ shouted Barkat. ‘Hit! Hit!’
‘Shut up!’ bellowed Stefanov, although he could barely hear himself over the roaring of the gun.
At that moment, the plane appeared overhead, as if out of nowhere. The shadow of its wings raced past them. Stefanov leaned back until he almost tipped over, catching a glimpse of the black crosses on the undersides of its wings before the machine continued on towards the north.
Only now did Stefanov let go of the trigger.
Ragozin was busy reloading the gun, trying not to burn his fingers on the hot metal of the breech.
Stefanov turned to Barkat. ‘Did I really hit it?’
‘Yes!’ Barkat replied excitedly. ‘Right in the engine. The wing, too, I think.’
As the two men spoke, a strange odour filtered down from above. To Stefanov, it smelled like burnt sugar.
Ragozin stopped what he was doing. ‘That’s glycol,’ he said. ‘Engine coolant. He won’t get far now.’
‘I said you hit it in the engine!’ Barkat slapped Stefanov on the arm.
Stefanov stood up from the crouch of his firing position. His hands were trembling. Then, without another word, he turned and started running through the woods, heading in the direction of the plane.
Barkat and Ragozin were too startled even to speak. They just watched him go, his stocky legs pumping, until he had vanished among the trees.
‘What was that about?’ asked Ragozin.
‘I think,’ replied Barkat, ‘he has gone to finish the job.’
Ragozin did not reply to this. Something had caught his attention. He stepped out into the open expanse of the Alexander Park and stood with his hands on his hips, gazing into the distance.
‘What is it?’ asked Barkat.
Ragozin turned around, a look of astonishment on his face. ‘I knew he hit the plane a couple of times, but I wondered where the rest of those bullets were going.’
‘What are you saying?’ demanded Barkat.
‘Stefanov just shot the windows out of the Catherine Palace!’
Barkat walked out and stood by Ragozin. At the far end of the park, he could see the gaps of shattered windows. Jagged shards remaining in the frames winked at him as they caught the sun. ‘Well,’ said Barkat, ‘he didn’t break all of them‚ anyway.’
At a flat-out run, Stefanov cleared the grounds of the estate. A few soldiers from the battery, concealed in their leafy, camouflaged hideouts‚ had seen the plane take fire as it flew over the park, but had been unable to join in the attack due to the positioning of their guns. Now, as they watched him sprinting by, the soldiers made no move to stop him‚ knowing that a man moving at that pace must be bound upon some vital task.
But Rifleman Stefanov did not even know where he was going. The only clear thought in the shambles of his brain was to find the plane he’d just shot down. He wasn’t even certain that he had shot it down. Perhaps it had only been damaged and would still be able to return to the German lines. Could a plane continue flying without engine coolant? Stefanov had no idea.
After leaving the grounds of the estate, Stefanov continued down the long road leading north. He was no longer sprinting now, but still moving as quickly as he could, searching the fields which stretched out on either side of the road for any sign of a forced landing. At the same time, he scanned the horizon for any telltale signs of smoke, in the event that the plane had crashed and burned.