Blood of Vipers by Michael Wallace Page A

girls your
     lover? Did she
     promise you something if you would keep her safe?”
    “Damn you, Osimov. Are you some kind of
     monster?”
    “I have something to show you, Lieutenant, as
     soon as my
     sergeants arrive, and I’m no longer afraid of losing control of
     these men. Once
     I show you, you’ll be happy to feed these pretty Germans to my
     dogs.”

12.
    When Osimov’s sergeants arrived and the
     initial terror faded,
     Cal began to struggle with exhaustion and hunger. Osimov
     gathered the prisoners
     and more than a dozen guards and set them off on a cross-country
     march that ate
     up most of the afternoon. By the time they walked the two hours
     to the village
     where the Russian had set up his headquarters, Cal could barely
     stay on his
     feet.
    The entire company of German prisoners
     completed the march
     behind him, and many of them showed fatigue from the beginning.
     One elderly
     woman collapsed, and no amount of shouting would get her to her
     feet. Cal
     feared they would shoot her in the head and be done with it, but
     the Russians
     threw her in the back of a cart pulled by a shaggy pony.
    The village was filled with these pony-pulled
     carts when
     they arrived, interspersed among men on horses, squatting T-34
     tanks, and
     American-built Jeeps, painted with red Soviet stars. Troops with
     mobile
     artillery, Katyusha rocket launchers on trucks, and everywhere
     the ponies and
     carts, carrying rations, clothing, canisters of ammunition.
    No German civilians on the street, but faces
     appeared in
     windows, peering through glass filthy with ash and mud, and once
     Cal heard a
     woman’s high-pitched scream that carried on for several minutes
     before it came
     to an abrupt halt. Two Russian soldiers staggered out of the
     house that was the
     origin of the screaming. One carried a clear bottle of liquor,
     and the other
     was buttoning up his pants. They spotted the marching prisoners,
     and poked and
     pinched Greta and the other women as they passed, and then said
     something to
     the soldiers guarding them, who laughed.
    Osimov ordered the prisoners into a house and
     set guards at
     the door. He kept Cal standing in the street, while he consulted
     with a pair of
     officers, who directed them to a second house, across the
     street. Osimov moved
     Cal into the house, down the hallway to the kitchen, and then
     kept him standing
     while two soldiers swept up smashed crockery, broken furniture,
     and torn and
     soiled clothing. Two men emerged from a bathroom with their
     shirts untucked and
     held in front of them like aprons and full of potatoes. Osimov
     yelled at them
     and they scurried from the house.
    “Damn peasants. They shit in the streets and
     wash potatoes
     in the toilet.” He walked over to the kitchen sink. “Yet this
     German house
     still has running water. Imagine.”
    He took a seat at the table and gestured for
     Cal to sit
     across from him.
    “You marched us east,” Cal said as he
     reluctantly obeyed.
     “Away from American lines. I demand that you make contact with
     the U.S. Army
     liaison so I can turn over my prisoners and rejoin my unit.”
    “You don’t want to march west. Heavy fighting
     that way, even
     though the bastard is finally dead. Still, they fight on.”
    “Who is dead? You mean Hitler?”
    “Didn’t you hear? Shot himself in his bunker
     yesterday.
     Berlin is in Soviet hands.”
    Cal didn’t know if this was true or not, but
     he didn’t see
     how that mattered at this point. “Where is the American liaison?
     I know your
     army has one to deal with situations like this.”
    “And anyway, I am not a combat officer,”
     Osimov continued,
     as if he hadn’t heard Cal’s question. “I am a political officer,
     in spite of
     where you found me. It’s my job to bring order to this mess, and
     to organize
     committees for the de-Nazification of Germany.”
    “So you can turn the Germans into good little
     communists.
     Yes, I