ОБЛАВА СМЕРШ НА ЗАБРОШЕННУЮ ГРУППУ АГЕНТОВ ИЗ АБВЕРКОМАНДЫ-103 В ВИТЕБСКИХ ЛЕСАХ

It was such a hot afternoon that the resin in the pine trees was boiling, and the midges were a solid mess. Captain Panteleyev didn't brush it off—he was counting. Three hundred paces to the riverbed, twenty minutes until the ring closed, seven Abwehr agents somewhere inside this green cauldron. The line of riflemen walked silently, combing every uprooted tree. He would be told that two saboteurs had been killed. He would believe it. And that would be his only mistake all day. So far, the count was clear. Rostislav Panteleyev, captain, forty-one years old, commander of the operational ring, was third from the right of the clearing. He didn't bend. To bend in such a forest meant catching your shoulder on every branch, and the branches rustled. He walked straight, slowly shifting his weight from heel to toe, and with his left hand he held a branch of a young pine tree to keep it from lashing the face of the man following him. The heat pressed on the back of his neck like a palm. The resin on the barrels dripped, each drop hanging like a golden bead, unwavering. The air was still. In such air, sound travels far, and a loud breather can be heard thirty paces away. Panteleev breathed evenly through his nose, silently counting his breaths as he counted his steps. The midges swarmed over the line like a gray cloud. They settled on sweaty necks, on wrists, and crawled under caps. The riflemen endured—they had been warned. The midges also circled over the captain himself, but he looked not at them, but at where they were landing. Over each living, warm, sweat-drenched man, there was a small cloud. Over Feklistov. Over the last soldier near the swamp. The midges found warmth unerringly. The captain noted this. He put it aside. Not yet knowing why. Sergeant Feklistov, twenty-four years old, a tracker from near Polotsk, a hunter of three generations, moved alongside him, slightly ahead. He didn't walk, but flowed. He placed his foot as if testing ice. He stopped, crouched, and touched the upturned moss with his fingers. "They passed here," he said quietly. "Two of them. At night." "Our secrets?" "Not ours. Ours put on hobnailed boots. Here—wrapped in rags. A German is sneaking." Panteleyev nodded. A German is sneaking. The seven had been sneaking through this forest for three days now, ever since the night they were dropped from the transport over the swamps. Abwehrkommando 103 had worked cleanly. They were trained to move behind enemy lines, leaving no fire, no trace, no scent. But the forest doesn't hide the scent. "What's that smell?" the captain asked. Feklistov sniffed briefly, like an animal. "Pine needles. Sweat." He paused. "The old smoke wafts in from the sunrise. The smoke is there, behind the young. That's where we're chasing them." The captain didn't answer. He was wondering why he needed these seven alive. Not dead—alive. The department was waiting for the Abwehrkommando's radio operator with a radio and codes, so they could put their man in charge and play a game of four-handedness with the German. A dead saboteur is a minus mark in the report. A living one is a channel into the very heart of German intelligence. That's why they didn't let us simply set up machine guns at the edges of the forest and mow down everyone in the greenery. That's why there's a ring. That's why he's here, in this boiling cauldron, counting steps instead of shooting. Taking someone alive is harder than killing them. Always. The chain stopped. A signal was sent down the riverbed from the left: clear. Panteleev raised two fingers, indicating the direction, and the chain began to move forward again, narrowing. The ring tightened toward the center of the massif, like a noose around a throat—meters at a time, two at a time, without haste, without shouting.