Heard about you. War hero, right? Sniper?”
He steps close enough for her to smell expensive cologne and brandy. “No one to shoot at here, Melnik. Here, you cut timber with a two-man saw.”
“We’ll see how those sniper hands handle a real work quota.” He pauses, clearly enjoying himself. “Assign her to the logging crew. Farthest section. Pair her with Lute.”
The criminal women in line laugh out loud. Lute bares her broken smile. It’s a death sentence, plain and simple.
The far section is deep woods, where there’s little supervision and plenty of room for “accidents.” A falling tree. A missed swing of an ax.
Ivashin has just given the criminals official permission to kill Katya and write it off as bad luck. Katya says nothing. Arguing would be pointless. She looks at the wall of trees surrounding the camp.
The woods are her element. They think they’re sending her to die. What they don’t understand is simple: in the woods, a sniper is not prey. In the woods, a sniper is the one in charge.
The column of women marches under guard to the logging site. Snow squeaks under hundreds of feet. Lute walks behind Katya, casually swinging the ax she was issued from the tool shed.
She’s already enjoying the thought of what’s coming. Katya walks ahead, feeling that stare between her shoulder blades. Her mind is already mapping the terrain, checking wind direction, marking cover.
The war didn’t end for her when peace was declared. It just changed location. And in this new war, she has no intention of losing.
Logging Section Nine. A miserable place. The pines stand so close together that even at noon the ground stays dim.
The snow comes up to your waist. The cold is so severe that every breath freezes on your eyelashes. All you hear is the rasp of two-man saws, the dull thud of axes, and guards cursing through numb lips.
Katya is paired with an older woman everyone calls Aunt Marfa. Marfa is political, from a once-prosperous farm family. She’s weak, coughs blood, and can barely pull the saw.
Katya has to do the work of two people. Her movements are economical and exact. Forward-back. Forward-back.
The muscles in her back and arms burn, but she doesn’t stop. She knows the rule: stop moving, you freeze. Freeze, you die. Lute and her crew, naturally, do almost no work.
They’re camp “favorites,” the kind who land the easy angles. They fake labor and spend their time intimidating everyone else. Lute stands by the fire the guards built.
The guards are cold too, and they look the other way when the criminal women bend the rules. Lute gnaws on a frozen crust of bread. Her eyes never leave Katya.
She’s waiting for the right moment. It comes when the sun starts dropping. Shadows stretch long, and the woods turn black and mean.
One guard, a young conscript named Petrov, steps behind some brush. He leaves his rifle leaning against a tree for just a second. The second guard is half asleep by the fire.
Lute gives her women a quick signal. The same two helpers who got handled in the barracks start circling the pine from the other side. The plan is simple enough to be stupid.
Cut the tree so it falls “by accident” in the wrong direction. Right onto the stubborn new sniper. Another workplace fatality.
Katya hears the crunch of snow behind her. A sniper’s ear can pull that sound out of a hundred others. She understands immediately: they’re boxing her in.
She keeps sawing, but her whole body is tight as a spring. She calculates fast. If she drops the saw and jumps left, she’ll sink into a drift and get stuck.
If she goes right, she’ll move straight into an ax swing. “Hey, soldier girl,” Lute calls loudly, stepping closer. In her hand is a thick branch.
“Come here. We need to talk.” Katya slowly straightens, wiping sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. “Talk from there,” she says calmly.
Lute smirks and spits. “You’ve got nerve. Think because you dropped an officer, the rest of us can’t handle you?”
“This is rough country, honey. Out here, the prosecutor is a bear.” She swings the branch hard and steps forward.
The two helpers tighten the circle. Marfa, Katya’s partner, scrambles away in terror, covering her head. And then the woods wake up.
First comes a crack. Not the sound of a normal falling tree. Louder. Worse. Like frozen earth itself snapping in half.
Out of the brush, smashing through saplings like matchsticks, comes a huge brown mass. A winter-starved bear. About the worst thing you can meet in deep woods this time of year.
The animal never settled into hibernation—too hungry, too sick, too mean. It’s not sleeping. It’s roaming. Angry, starving, and out of its mind. Three hundred pounds of killing machine.
Its fur hangs in clumps. Its eyes are bloodshot. Foam drips from its jaws. It comes up directly behind the frozen Lute. The woman doesn’t even have time to understand what she’s seeing.
She hears a low roar that turns her blood to ice. She turns and sees a huge open mouth. Her scream turns high and sharp.
The bear swings. The blow glances, but the force is terrible. Lute flies backward, slams into a pine, and drops limp into the snow.
Her coat is shredded. A red stain spreads fast across her shoulder. The bear rises up, towering over the women like something out of a nightmare.
The two helpers scatter screaming. One scrambles up a tree. The other drops flat in the snow and covers her head. Petrov, the young guard, comes stumbling out from behind the brush.
He sees the charging animal. His hands shake. He jerks up his service rifle and fumbles the bolt.
The shot goes off and misses. The bullet only snaps a branch high over the bear’s head. Enraged by the noise, the bear wheels toward the guard.
The second guard by the fire is trying desperately to draw his pistol, but his hands in thick mittens won’t cooperate. The situation goes bad fast.
In another second the bear will tear the young soldier apart, then move on to everyone else. Lute is still unconscious. The women are screaming. The clearing is pure chaos.
Katya moves.
There’s no room in her head for panic. Only target, distance, wind, timing.
The world narrows to one point. In three quick strides she reaches the frozen Petrov. He’s staring at the bear with his eyes wide open.
The rifle has jammed. A cartridge is stuck crooked in the action. Katya yanks the weapon out of his hands. “Give me that,” she snaps in a command voice that cuts through even the bear’s roar.
One hard strike to the bolt and the stuck casing flies free. Fresh round chambered. Stock into shoulder. Hold the breath.
The bear is already in its final charge. Ten yards away. A wall of muscle, stink, claws, and bad intent.
Time slows. Katya sees the steam coming from its mouth. Sees the yellow eye.
She fixes on the only place that will do. A bear’s skull is thick. A bad shot can glance off. You hit the eye or the ear—or you don’t stop it.
But the animal is moving. The rifle cracks. Sharp and dry in the frozen air.
The bear stumbles in mid-lunge. Its head jerks back as if it hit an invisible wall. The body carries forward another yard and crashes into the snow.
A cloud of powder rises at Katya’s feet. The animal’s paw twitches once. Then again. Then nothing.
A dark stain spreads under its shattered head. Silence drops over the clearing. The only sound is Petrov’s teeth chattering.
Katya lowers the rifle slowly. The barrel smokes in the cold. She takes one deep breath and steadies her pulse.
Then she turns to the soldier and hands the rifle back, butt first. “Here. Clean it later. Bolt’s sticking bad.”
Petrov takes the weapon with shaking hands. He looks at the thin woman in prison clothes as if she just stepped out of a ghost story. She saved his life.
And in doing it, she broke one of the camp’s biggest rules. A prisoner put hands on a guard’s firearm. Under the law, that can mean immediate execution.
The second guard runs up, breathing hard and wiping sweat from his forehead despite the cold. He saw all of it too. Saw this inmate work cleaner than any trained marksman he’s ever known.
He looks from the dead bear to Katya, then to the pale Petrov. “How in the world…” he says hoarsely.
