Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(203)

"Where, Tania?" he yelled out, machine gun rest still propped against his shoulder.

She kept looking through her binoculars. Her eyes were playing tricks on her. The men now seemed to be crawling in their dark uniforms, crawling along the ground, moving closer. Were they crawling or writhing?

A few got up. "There are two at one o'clock, three at eleven," she called out. Alexander opened fire again. But then he stopped suddenly and threw the machine gun off him. What happened? When Tatiana saw him picking up the Shpagin, she knew he must have run out of ammunition. But the Shpagin had only half a drum in it--maybe thirty-five rounds. They were gone in seconds. He picked up the Colt pistols, fired eight times, paused for two seconds, fired eight times, paused for two seconds. The rhythm of war, Tatiana thought, wanting to close her eyes. The three men at eleven o'clock suddenly became five at two o'clock, and four more at one. Alexander, crouching down, never stopped firing except for the two seconds it took him to reload.

There was rapid fire from below. It was haphazard fire, but it was coming their way. She looked again. The men firing were giving off a flame charge every time their machine guns went off. It made them much easier to spot. Alexander spotted them. It occurred to Tatiana that his pistols were giving off a flame charge that made him also easier to see, and she yelled for him to get down. He was back on his stomach in the trench.

One man was coming up the hill, only about a hundred meters below them, right in front of Tatiana's tree.

She saw him throw something, and it whistled through the air, landed very close to Alexander and exploded. The bushes and the grass in front of him burst into flames. Alexander popped the pins out of two grenades and threw them, but he threw them blindly, he couldn't see where the men were.

Tatiana could. She cocked her P-38, aimed it at the shape in front of her, and before she had a moment to reconsider, fired. The recoil was violent, it threw her shoulder back, but the deafening sound was worse, because now she could not hear. The bushes and the grass in front of Alexander's trench were Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

burning.

Alexander? she thought she whispered, but could hear no sound coming out of her mouth. She looked through the binoculars. It was getting lighter, and the shapes on the ground were still. She fired again and again. There were no more mortar shells, but suddenly there was sporadic machine-gun fire from below, all aimed at Alexander's small trench. Tatiana found them, lying behind the bushes, halfway up the hill. Because she couldn't speak to Alexander, and could not hear his response to her, she aimed her weapon again, not sure if the bullets would carry two hundred meters, but fired anyway. She wished she could hear sounds from below, but she couldn't. She reloaded six times.

Alexander continued to fire. The bushes may have gone up in flames from the explosives out of his own weapons. Tatiana couldn't be sure of anything anymore. She pointed her gun down the hill, closed her eyes and fired and reloaded and fired until all the bullets were gone.

Then all was quiet. Maybe all wasn't quiet.

She opened her eyes.

"Watch your back!" she screamed, and Alexander rolled out of the trench just as a soldier, coming up behind him, shot into the pit. Alexander kicked the rifle out of the man's hands, kicked him again in the legs, pulled him down and they grappled with one another on the ground. The man grabbed a knife out of his boot. Tatiana, losing all sense of self, nearly fell out of the tree. She ripped off the rope around her, scrambled down and ran across the clearing to the two fighting men. Stop, stop, she shouted, raising her pistol, cocking it, knowing it didn't have any bullets left. Stop, but she couldn't hear herself so how could they hear her? The man was forcing his knife toward Alexander, who was barely stopping him.

Tatiana ran up close and, raising her empty-chambered pistol, brought it down hard on the soldier's neck. He jumped from the blow but did not release Alexander--his fingers remained around the knife handle, Alexander's remained around the man's wrist, just stopping him from sinking that knife into his abdomen. Crying out, Tatiana hit the man again, but she couldn't hit him hard enough. Alexander grabbed the man around the neck, twisted him fast and hard, and he went slack. Throwing the man off him, he sprang to his feet, all bloodied and wired. He said something, she didn't hear. He motioned her back. Tatiana dropped her gun and backed away. Picking up her pistol, Alexander aimed at the soldier and pulled the trigger, but there was no sound.

The gun is empty, Tatiana wanted to say, but Alexander knew that. He picked up the Commando which still had bullets in the cylinder, aimed at the soldier, but didn't fire. The man's neck was broken. Dropping the gun, he came to her then and held her to him for a few moments to calm her down.

They were both panting hard. Alexander was covered with black as hand bleeding from his arm, his head, the top of his chest, his shoulder.

He said something and she said, what?

He bent to her ear. "Well done, Tania. But I thought I was clear: don't move until I tell you to move."

She looked up at him to see if he was joking. She couldn't tell.

Squeezing her, he said, "We have to go. We have only revolver rounds left."

Did you get them all? she mouthed. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Stop shouting. I'm sure I didn't, and in any case, they'll be sending a hundred men next, with bigger bombs. Let's run."