The Sniper

Chapter One
The rain had begun to taper off but Josef was already soaked through to the bone. He had been slowly, almost imperceptibly working his way through the rubble and ash filled puddles on his belly. What had once been the warehouse for the Isamov tea storage building was now nothing more than a collection of burnt piles of timber and brick, most of which was in the street in front of where the it had once stood.
During the early days of the siege the bombardment of artillery and aerial bombing had laid waste to most of the industrial buildings before it had moved further into the city targeting the residential sections and the public buildings of the people’s government. Those early days seem so long ago he thought to himself, as he paused for a moment to listen and acclimate himself to the sounds of this section of the city. Josef had been working as an apprentice printer before the war, a position his father had secured for him, hoping the move from the country side to the city would give Josef a road out of the poverty in which he was brought up.
At first everything about the city excited him and when he wasn’t working in Vladmir’s shop he would go to the libraries and museums to experience the things he had only heard of when he was a young boy on the farm. It was an awakening in him to see those beautiful works of art and reading the works of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky had filled him a sense of hope for Mother Russia. It had been a mixed blessing because there were times it filled him anger that his father had not tried to bring entire family to the city sooner. He had watched his father and mother toil twelve to eighteen hours a day on the farm seven days a week in order to scrape out just enough of a living to feed him and his sisters. He had seen the toll this lifestyle had taken and on his family, losing his mother to pneumonia when he was just thirteen and his younger sister, Marina to fever when she was eight.  It all only seemed so much sadder now that he knew that there was more to the world than tending the crops, animals and longs hours of hard labor.
His humble beginnings as a farm boy had paid dividends lately and he was faring better a lot of the boys in his platoon. The days of running in the woods near the river back home and hunting squirrels and rabbits had given him a skill set the he could fall back on to hunt bigger prey. Two legged prey. Marksmanship skills only accounted for a small part of what set Josef apart from his comrades. A bigger differentiator was his ability to stealthily move into position, make the shot, and then withdrawal and evade his pursuers until he was safely back into his own lines.
In order to be an effective sniper you not only had to be able to put your bullet into its mark but you had to have the hunters ability to know where your target was most likely to present itself. Once you determined that you had to decide where you could position yourself to make that shot and you had to anticipate how your targets friends would react to the sudden report of his rifle and what the safest fastest route out of the area was. Neglect any one of the three and you don’t make it back to the group for your ration of horse stew, vodka and a few hours of sleep.
On one of Josef’s first outings he had shot what appeared to be a lone German soldier only to find he was only the advance scout for a much larger group. The shot itself had been perfect catching the crouched scout just above the top button of his coat, traveling slightly downward and quartering across his body to exit underneath the man’s left arm. It fell him instantly and once the ringing from the massive report of the Nagant had silenced in his ears; he could already hear the shouts and hurried movement of the man’s squad quickly taking up covered positions trying to determine where the shot had originated.
Backing out of his shooting position he came across a partially collapsed wall of brick and corrugated tin, which had fallen in such a way to create a pocket in the rubble with only one entrance. He quickly worked his way inside and pulled broken concrete and bricks into to opening behind him.  Josef could hear the sounds of hushed whispers and cautious footsteps as they searched for him near his hide. It had seemed forever before the squad had given up continued on to wherever they were heading that day. When Josef finally emerged from the tunnel the air tasted especially sweet and the light seemed especially bright. He knew how close he had come and he did not plan to make that mistake again.
He also knew one sure way to mess up and get himself killed was to be lost in thoughts of the past rather than focusing on what was happening at this very moment so he mental forced the memories from his head and scanned the area for choke points.  He knew the Germans had been sending out daily patrols though this section and that they had been getting sloppy. Thinking that they were in a Nazi controlled area and not under any threat of attack they smoked and joked and made little or no effort to keep their presence hidden. Today they would be made to regret their complacency.
Josef’s unit had received some intelligence from a local woman who had been trading with the German’s for some food that they were running their patrols out of the rail station a mile and a half or so to the south of his current location. It was a small forward outpost of light infantry with some access to air and artillery support. Josef’s knew he could carry out his work and be safely out of the area before the troop could collect their senses enough to call in the Luftwaffe air support or coordinate a barrage from the deadly 88’s. What he did fear was the reliability of the intel itself.
He could only guess at what the woman had been trading with the German’s for food but he had his suspicions. The townspeople had been starving since the Germans had cut them off from supplies. There had been instances this past winter of families eating the flesh of their deceased loved ones in order to survive until the Red army had been able to make some air drops of food. Of course those reports were strongly denied by the propaganda officers and anyone found to be relaying that news was immediately “volunteered” for front line service. Unfortunately, the air drops had been months ago and food again was at a premium. Josef was worried that while this young lady was “trading” with the German’s for food that it may have occurred to her to play both sides. The Germans loved to eliminate these urban snipers and would definitely play ball with a local to get advance knowledge of one’s movements. This would require the young woman to go to his units commander and bait them into sending a sniper into a certain area, say one that sent out frequent patrols from a know point of origin. As a convenient consequence of providing this tidbit of information she would be given extra rations.
If this were the case, Josef didn’t blame her, in fact he applauded her ability to take advantage of what little opportunities that presented themselves these days and use them to her advantage. She wanted nothing more than anyone else could hope for these days, a chance to live through this. One can deal with feelings of remorse and responsibility later, as long as one is alive.