“Request permission to leave and speak to them, Comrade Captain.”

The commissar screwed up her face, as if searching for a reason to refuse and finding none. “All right, but report back before dawn when the new orders come. If you’re not here, you’ll be charged with desertion.”

* * *

She spotted them in a corner, by the light of an artillery shell hammered together at the top and with a wick protruding from a pool of kerosene. They nodded greeting as she sat down quietly next to them.

“So, how was your first day on the job?” Kalya asked, play-punching her shoulder.

“It went pretty well. I ran and shot, and didn’t fall down or die. Considering my level of expertise, I think that counts as damned near miraculous.”

“How are your eyes?” Sasha asked her in a more serious tone. “Can you actually shoot at anything yet?”

“Yes, in fact. As long as it’s big and standing right in front of me.”

“What about the headache?” Sasha asked again, with the same sincerity.

“Gosh. I hadn’t thought about that. With bullets and shrapnel flying all around killing people, you never think about a headache. But much better, thanks.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Alexia said softly. “I was worried about you.”

Mia looked, perhaps a moment too long, at Alexia’s red-rimmed eyes. “Were you? That’s nice to know.”

They fell silent then, and Mia knew they were as exhausted as she was. For her it had been a baptism of fire, but for them, it was just another grueling day, and she was grateful to be among them. She leaned back on her elbow and studied them.

The corner where the five snipers squatted around the flame of their field lantern was a study in oranges and browns. Their uniforms, the wooden stocks of their rifles leaning against the grimy wall behind them, ranged from mahogany to russet to the color of dirty potato skins. Fatima, the black-eyed Kazakh, who sat directly across from her, seemed the most foreign, probably because she spoke so little. Mia knew little about her other than that she’d lived through the Leningrad siege.

Klavdia Kalugina, the youngest, had a round, sad face and a high voice, like an adolescent, and it was hard to imagine her killing even a chicken. Sasha Yekimova, one of her saviors from the German torturers, was boyishly pretty. Her brunette hair feathered around her slightly Asiatic eyes and offset the androgyny of her male uniform with femininity. With just a slight bit of makeup and slightly longer hair, she would be doll-like and adorable. She seemed a bit spoiled and would certainly lead any future husband around by the nose.

Next to her, Kalya Petrova rolled a cigarette out of the harsh mahorka tobacco provided to the troops. Her wide shoulders, haircut, and gruff manner made her seem masculine, but her expression was often soft, even as she blinked away the harsh cigarette smoke. With a plain square face and wide nose, she reminded Mia a bit of Lorena Hickok and, like Lorena, inspired trust.

The palest, even in the orange light of the flickering flame, was Alexia. She had the ice-blond hair and slightly hooded steel-gray eyes Mia had only ever seen in Russians and was almost archetypally Slavic. Even disheveled from the day’s fighting, she was stunning, or would be after a hot bath and shampoo. The only thing that diminished her power over Mia was her resemblance to Grushenka.

Alexia caught her glance and smiled. Embarrassed, Mia smiled in return, then lay back and stared at the ceiling, trying to get her mind around the events of the last few days.

It was all but unimaginable. She was an American bookkeeper, whom fate had plucked out of a banal existence and sent on a bizarre misadventure. That same capricious fate had saved her from a death sentence, but now she was in a war zone in the company of Soviet snipers.

Kalya’s lighter clicked, and a moment later she coughed.

“That stuff is going to kill you, even if a German bullet doesn’t,” Mia said amiably.

Kalya chuckled. “Na. Neither. Lungs tough as an ox and eyes like an eagle. You’ll see. One day I’ll be running a kolkhoz with ten children all just as tough as me.”

Close by, one of the infantrymen who’d overheard called out, “Not a chance, Kalya. No man’s going to have the guts to marry any of you. You’ve all been trained to kill, and the first time you have a marriage quarrel and throw a plate at him, it’ll be lethal.”

“Oh, go to sleep, old fool,” she called back at him. “No one’s going to marry you either, with that face of yours.” They both laughed, and Mia could see the easy camaraderie that existed between the men and women.

“Why did you join up, anyhow?” Mia asked her. “If that’s not too personal.”

“Not personal at all. I enrolled in a course given by my district that taught us to shoot a rifle, and I liked the way that felt. I never thought the war would actually happen. Then, suddenly, the Krauts were rampaging across the Ukraine. It turned out I was a very good shot, so when I enlisted, I was assigned here. It was an easy transition.”

“It wasn’t for me,” Sasha added. “I was a music student with dreams of singing in the opera chorus. I also enlisted when the Germans invaded but had no idea it would make me so different. And that’s even before they discovered my perfect eyesight and put me in sniper school.”

“Fighting is different for all of us, I think. No one plans to kill people.”

“Yes, but most are tougher than I was. I was a little princess. I went into the recruitment office as a girl in a pretty dress and with hair down to my hips, and came out as a boy, in pants and a field jacket. Instead of hair, I had a pilotka cap, and that night, instead of a soft bed, I was on a freight train sleeping on hay.”

“What about you, Alexia?” That was the story Mia wanted to hear most. But Alexia shook her head. “A long story, and I don’t want to tell it tonight. They’re going to wake us tomorrow at five, so I think we should all go to sleep.”

Mia nodded. “You’re right. And I have to go back to my quarters or risk being charged with desertion. Take care of yourselves, my dears. I’ll come looking for you every day.”

Chapter Seventeen

Unusually, STAVKA allowed the newly formed division to remain a day at Ostrov to permit supplies, the medical station, and the field kitchen to catch up. Mia’s relief was tainted by the discovery that her period had started.

It was a problem she should have anticipated and felt stupid that she hadn’t. As soon as she was able, she got permission to cross the square to the snipers’ quarters again.

“How do you deal with this,” she asked Alexia. “Surely every woman in the Red Army has the same problem.”

“Not all,” Sasha interjected. “I stopped months ago, when my weight dropped. It’s probably because of the constant hardship. As long as it’s not permanent, I’m glad about it. Just one thing less to worry about when you’re in the field.”

“That’s nice for you, Sasha, but Mia’s not so lucky,” Alexia chided her. “Come on. I’ll take you to the medics. They’ll have bandages or rags you can use.”

“Bandages or rags. Charming,” Mia said, following her.

“Don’t complain, my friend,” Alexia said. “It used to be worse. Some of the women who’ve been here longer tell stories about marching for hours with blood running down their legs. If they could, they cut off the sleeves of their winter underwear and rolled them up. It seems the Red Army, along with having no small uniforms for women, also never thought of that detail. Ah, here we are.”

The medical station was another slightly less damaged shop front on the square of Ostrov. It had some ten canvas folding cots laid out side by side, all holding wounded, and another dozen men sat on the floor leaning against the wall. Two nurses in regular field uniforms but with white armbands were moving among them tending to their needs. A third woman, in a white smock, dried her hands and marched past them into another room.

One of the medics who was bandaging a stump at the end of a soldier’s hand looked up as they came in.

“Galina, hello,” Alexia said. “We won’t stay long. Can you spare some bandages for my friend Mia? She is having her days and never got a woman’s field kit.”

“You can take some of those. Over there, in the crate next to the alcohol bottles,” Galina said, pointing with her head. “But no more than one package. We’re short ourselves, and even those have been reboiled and used several times.”

Alexia lifted out one of the bundles of grayish-yellow gauze and handed it to Mia. “Thanks, Galina. When do you get off duty? Can you come by later for a smoke? We’re in the building with the wagon in front.”

Galina replied without looking up from her work. “Tonight, maybe. After the ambulances come and cart these guys to the rear.” A scream of pain came from the other room. “Can’t talk now, though. They’re tying down one of the men for an amputation, and I have to help with the surgery.” She pinned the end of the bandage, helped the soldier lie down again, and hurried past them into the back room.

Mia was glad to escape the purgatory of the medical station and deal with her own trivial problem. She glanced down at the bundle in her hand. “So, how do you manage with just this?”

“Cut it in half. Use one until it’s dirty, and then change and rinse out the soiled one.”

“That makes sense, but what do you do when the washed one isn’t dry?”

Alexia shrugged, and her silence was the answer.

The snipers’ quarters had the additional luxury of a sheltered toilet that still flushed, though the pipe that fed in water to the overhead tank had broken. “Easy solution,” Kalya said, and fetched in a bucket of water, which she poured into the tank. “Now you can flush to your heart’s content. But only once.”