The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [29]
“Cleansing,” Major Márai called it. On the last day before we were to march down to a reserve billet, we were called into the company captain’s tent and told that our rest had been canceled. Since we had discovered and reported the desertions, Major Márai had ordered that we perform a cleansing in case any other soldiers were tempted to desert, as well.
“Why didn’t you kill the men when you saw them?” that captain asked us.
Zlee remarked that we had only been spotting, and by the time we were in a position to fire, the targets had made it to safe cover.
“You have one of the best kill records of any sharpshooter team at the front,” the captain replied. “It’s surprising to think that a target might escape you,” he added, as though taunting us. “Pes. That’s a Slavic name, isn’t it? Are you a Czech?”
Zlee said he was an orphan, and the captain asked if he was mocking him. I begged pardon to explain and said that Zlee had been raised by my father since the two of us were boys. We spoke Slovak and Hungarian equally well, and the emperor had our full allegiance. Zlee just stood at attention, silent.
The captain outlined our orders. We were to set up a hide near the suspected company and wait to see if any other men attempted to cross over. A platoon sergeant, two privates, and a sapper were to accompany us, in order to send up flares and verify any kills, if necessary. I heard Zlee draw breath and waited for him to object to our being sent out with a raiding party in tow, which the captain seemed to expect as well, but Zlee said nothing.
The next night we set our trap, removing guards from that sector under the pretense of a night raid in another. The sergeant who came with us talked too much and kept saying that he could shoot as well as any sharpshooter, and he stomped along behind us over the rocks and fallen trees like an oafish boy in clodhoppers. Then he stopped and lit a cigarette, and Zlee turned and grabbed it from his mouth and crushed it on the ground. The sergeant became furious and shouted at Zlee in the strange stillness of that night, “You are under my command, Corporal Pes!”
“You are under my protection, Herr Stern,” Zlee said. “And I can make a bullet in your head look like it came from the enemy, although I might not have to.”
The sergeant turned to his infantrymen for support, but they were blank. He spat, cursed his disapproval, and the six of us set off again.
Word must have gotten out, because no one or thing showed itself that night, or the next. In the half-light of the early morning of the third day, a scrawny buck leapt over the ground in front of us and the sergeant ordered, “Flare!”
Zlee was the shooter that hour, but he never lifted the rifle from where it rested on his thigh. The sapper fired on command and the flare riffed in a wavering arc into the faint sky and exploded over the ground before us, bathing that entire section of forested battlefield in green light. The deer stood frozen, dived forward, tripped over its front hooves, regained its balance, and sprinted down the mountain toward the Italians as the flare sputtered and dropped. We got our week’s rest after four nights, and when we returned to the line, we hiked through that sector as though it were a worn path or a place forgotten.
WHEN WE WERE WELL OUT OF EARSHOT OF THE SENTRIES, though, we doubled back and took position on an outcropping of rock no more than one hundred yards above where we had sat in a trench with that loudmouthed sergeant and his skittish men two weeks prior. The weather was better, but the moon had waned to new since then, which meant anyone else going out was as blind as we were, until first light, and there we waited.
Sometime just before dawn broke, we heard sentries rustling and whispering, convinced, I suppose, that everyone at war was asleep but them. Then we watched two soldiers, rifleless and shorn of all uniform decorations,