Full of such pointless reflections (and they were-that the Tsar had tried to impose prohibition during the last war was one of the reasons, and perhaps not the least of them, Tsars ruled Russia no longer), Stas slogged through the mud to the tent where flyers ate and drank (and drank, and drank) and listened to Radio Moscow.
To make sure flyers and other Soviet citizens listened only to Radio Moscow, to make sure no unauthorized opinions corrupted them, radio sets manufactured in the USSR received just the frequencies on which Radio Moscow and other Soviet stations broadcast. Somewhere (somewhere unauthorized, as a matter of fact), Stas had heard that Hitler admired the system when he learned about it, and wished Germany had one like it.
A samovar bubbled on a rickety table in one corner of the big tent. To give them their due, Russians always had tea handy. Sweet tea soothed a hangover if anything did. Tobacco smoke was thick enough to make Stas’ eyes water. Hard rolls, pork sausage, a pot of borscht, a pot of shchi if you felt like cabbage soup instead of beet soup … It wasn’t exciting, especially if you were an Armenian who expected more in the way of spices than dill and caraway seeds. But you could fill your belly.
Vodka bottles were making the rounds, too. No surprise there. They always did. No one could even think of complaining, not when the rasputitsa grounded the squadron. Stas passed one along without drinking when it came his way.
“More for me,” said the Russian to whom he handed it. The man’s larynx worked before he sent it along.
Stas cut thin coins of sausage and dropped them into a tin bowl of shchi. No, it wasn’t what he would have eaten back home. But Armenia was a little land. When you went out into the wider Soviet world, you found that Russians were an imperial nation even in such matters as what their non-Russian comrades ate.
A glass of tea in front of him might deflect the peripatetic vodka bottles. Or it might not. But he wanted the tea any which way. The thick soup was salty. So was the sausage. Tea helped dilute things.
He’d almost got to the bottom of the bowl when two more officers strode into the mess tent. Like most of the men already inside, he casually glanced up to see if the newcomers were people he wanted to talk to.
They weren’t. They were strangers. But he didn’t go right back to eating, any more than the other flyers in the squadron did. The strangers’ cap bands and collar tabs were bright blue: the color of the NKVD.
They carried identical PPD machine pistols. They had identical Tokarev pistols on their belts. But their arm-of-service color was much more frightening than their weapons. One of them glanced at a scrap of paper in his free hand. “Pyotr Konstantinovich Filimonov!” he barked.
Had Stas been the luckless Pyotr Konstantinovich, he would have run-or else he would have opened fire. It almost surely wouldn’t have helped-he knew that-but he thought he would have done it anyhow. How could they treat you any worse afterwards than they were going to anyhow?
The genuine Filimonov sprang to his feet and came to attention so stiffly, he might have been embalmed-and if he wasn’t, chances were he would be pretty soon. Well, buried, anyhow; they might not bother to embalm him in the Lubyanka or at a camp. “I serve the Soviet Union!” he said, as if the Chekists were about to pin an Order of Lenin on his chest.
They had other things in mind. He must have known as much, even if he didn’t show it. The NKVD man who’d read his name tossed away the bit of paper and ground it under the heel of his boot. Both Chekists looked relieved he wouldn’t cause any trouble. They gestured with their PPDs. “Come along, then,” one of them said, and Filimonov came.
A vast silence filled the mess tent. Well, it wasn’t me-this time, Stas thought. He would have bet anything he owned that his comrades-in-arms were thinking exactly the same thing. And when another vodka bottle came his way, he grabbed it and drank like a Russian.
Ivan Kuchkov shored up the sides of his foxhole with planks from a wrecked hut a few meters away. That helped, up to a point. The muddy walls probably wouldn’t cave in and squish him now. But he was still hunkered down in a muddy foxhole that got muddier by the minute as the autumn rain went on plashing down.
“Fuck me!” he muttered. “This is pure shit!” That was his opinion of most of Red Army life. Before that, the sergeant had had an even lower opinion of Red Air Force life. Flying personnel in the Red Air Force didn’t get a vodka ration when they went on missions, which accounted for the difference.
He glanced back over his shoulder, wondering whether he’d be more comfortable in what was left of that peasant hut. He didn’t think so, which only proved not much of it was left. And, even in the rain, he was liable to get shot if he came out of the foxhole. The Germans had their lines out in the middle of the unharvested fields, and some of them were much too handy with their Mausers and machine guns.
“Stinking cunts,” Ivan said. Most of the time, he’d made a good thing out of his service to the Soviet state. He’d done better for himself as a soldier than he would have as a laborer on a collective farm or a small-time hooligan-he was sure of that.
Most of the time. But squatting in a boggy foxhole wasn’t his notion of fun. Even a real fight would have been better than dicking around here and waiting to come down with trench foot.
So he thought, anyhow, till Lieutenant Novikov, the latest zit-faced officer to command the company, squelched and slithered over to him and spoke in a low voice: “I have a job for you, Kuchkov.”
“What’s up, Comrade Lieutenant?” Ivan didn’t even add Besides your dick, the way he would have most of the time. Unlike a lot of punk officers, Novikov seemed to try hard. He didn’t get the vapors when the Hitlerites shot at him, either. So why not give the kid the benefit of the doubt?
He found out why not immediately afterwards: “Division HQ wants to interrogate some German prisoners. Take a few men-take a squad if you think you’ll need to-and go get ’em for us.”
“Fuck me!” Kuchkov said again, this time sorrowfully. He could think of a million good reasons why someone else should lead the raid, or why it shouldn’t go on in the first place. He kept his mouth shut. None of those reasons mattered a fart’s worth when weighed against Division HQ wants. What Division HQ wanted, Division HQ got.
Novikov tried to butter him up. “You’re the best man we’ve got for it. Nobody else comes close.”
“Happy cocksucking day.” Ivan knew the rest of the pricks in the company pretty well. The lieutenant was right. That didn’t make him any happier-just the opposite, in fact.
The first guy he snagged for the raiding party was Sasha Davidov. The scrawny Jew let out a sigh the Nazis could probably hear back in Berlin. “What did I do to deserve this, Comrade Sergeant?” he asked resignedly.
“You fucking well stayed alive walking point,” Kuchkov answered. “I ain’t gonna choose one of the dead pussies, y’know? They don’t move any too fuckin’ swift.”
He got the ghost of a chuckle out of Davidov. “Maybe I’ll stay lucky one more time,” he said. “Stranger things must have happened somewhere.” The Zhid didn’t sound as if he believed it.
Speaking of luck, Kuchkov had figured it would quit raining before he went prisoner-hunting. If anything made him more likely to get plugged, that would be it. But the rain came down harder than ever.
He waited till the wee small hours just the same. He gulped tea to stay awake, and gulped vodka to feel brave. He didn’t get toasted to the point where he started falling over his own feet, and he didn’t let his fellow raiders get that drunk, either.