The air was thick with the acrid stench of diesel and the nauseating smell of charred meat.
The surviving Finnish soldiers slumped in the muddy craters, gasping for breath. Walter did not relax. He adjusted his breathing, lay back behind a pine tree that had been blasted down to a stump, and pressed his right eye against the Zeiss four-power scope.
The forest edge in the distance, its canopy shorn away by artillery, became preternaturally clear. Within the circular frame of the lens, a strange commotion suddenly erupted among the Soviet ranks that were supposedly reorganizing.
"Simo, look over there," Walter whispered.
Seven hundred meters away at the edge of the woods, the snow was a churned-out mess of trampling. A dozen blood-stained Soviet soldiers, who had abandoned their rifles, were being brutally shoved out of the shadows by a group of men wearing deep blue peaked caps and carrying the newly improved PPD-40 submachine guns.
Walter's finger tightened instinctively. He recognized those blue hats. They were the NKVD blocking detachments.
Among the huddle of pushed soldiers was even an officer with lieutenant's insignia on his collar. Some were pleading; others knelt in the snow, as numb as blocks of wood. A Soviet commissar wearing spectacles stepped forward, the Order of the Red Star on his chest glinting piercingly in the sunlight. His lips moved rapidly, clearly reading out some form of sentence.
"What are they doing?" Warrant Officer Niemi leaned in, squinting to see the distance.
"Cleaning up their own," Walter replied.
In the scope, the commissar's hand chopped down violently.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!
A synchronized, dense volley of submachine gun fire erupted from the forest edge. The dozen men who had just escaped with their lives from Hill L were turned into sieves by a hail of lead before they could offer a final goodbye to the world. Their bodies slumped forward, plowing grisly, dark-red furrows into the pristine white snow.
Two minutes ago, they were warriors attempting to present a tribute to their Motherland; two minutes later, they were flesh-and-blood sacrifices used to warn their comrades.
The commissar holstered his sidearm and actually turned his head, staring coldly across the seven-hundred-meter expanse toward Hill L.
"They're that ruthless to their own..." The cook had seen it all. His stomach churned, and the adrenaline of the previous kill was instantly replaced by a crushing sense of oppression.
"That is Soviet logic," Walter said, averting his eyes and micro-adjusting the scope's elevation dial. "If they charge forward, they have a fifty-percent chance of dying by our guns. But if they retreat, that commissar is guaranteed to put a bullet in their heads."
This wasn't just a warning to the Red Army soldiers; it was a psychological demonstration aimed at the Finnish defenders on the hill. They were facing a horde of madmen with no path of retreat, a steel harvester that didn't care about attrition as long as it achieved the result.
"Everyone, check your ammo."
"The Russians are playing for keeps now. Next, they won't care about casualties. They'll climb over the bodies of the men they just shot, they'll even climb over that commissar's corpse if they have to, to crush us."
He turned to look at the remnants who had just survived a gamble with death.
"Clerk, go count how many grenades we have left. Cook, distribute the remaining Molotov cocktails."
…
As the smoke drifted away in the freezing wind, Hill L fell back into that ear-ringing silence.
The group had held off the second Soviet wave for nearly two hours. The situation could no longer be described as merely tragic; it was pure insanity. To secure a presentable victory on Red Army Day, the Soviet commanders had completely abandoned all reason.
Even as soldiers from both sides were locked in a bayonet-and-blade melee within the shallow trenches, the heavy artillery in the rear had not ceased firing. Walter had seen two Finnish soldiers and three Soviets shattered instantly in a bloom of red and black fire. This tactic of "covering the position even if it means killing your own" had utterly pierced the final psychological defense of the survivors.
"Count the casualties..." Walter pushed aside a partial carcass pinning him down, his throat bitter with the taste of cordite.
Warrant Officer Niemi stumbled over. His right arm had been sliced open by a large piece of shrapnel; blood dripped from his sleeve onto the snow, quickly freezing into purple-red crystals.
"Including the twenty you brought... there are only forty left breathing," Niemi said, leaning against a half-collapsed mud wall with a self-deprecating smirk.
Walter looked around. A defensive force that had started with over sixty was now scattered thinly across fragmented craters. The clerk was huddled in a corner, mechanically loading mud-caked magazines; one lens of his glasses was shattered, the frame held to his face by a strip of cloth. The cook had somehow survived the melee, though the stock of his old rifle was snapped; he now clutched a jagged entrenching shovel.
The sun had sunk below the horizon, leaving the sky a bruised, iron-blue. Seven hundred meters away at the forest edge, dozens of campfires flickered to life. Against the deep blue of the snowy plain, those dancing flames were an eyesore, seemingly mocking the plight of the hill's defenders.
Walter raised his scope.
In the vision of the Eye of Death, he saw the Soviet troops gulping down steaming red borscht. It was the Last Supper. The Russians were preparing a final, night-time general offensive to end the battle once and for all. Once they took Hill L, they could plant the red flag in the scorched earth.
"They're filling their bellies before they come to take our heads," Simo said, having slid to Walter's side at some point, his entire body covered in a layer of frost.
"We won't hold against a third wave," Walter said, lowering his rifle.
Forty exhausted soldiers facing a reinforced battalion and tank support without solid cover… total annihilation was only a matter of time.
"Rather than waiting here to die, we should go and give them something to worry about."
Warrant Officer Niemi looked up, his blood-smeared face written with pure disbelief. "Lieutenant, are you insane? We only have these few men left, and you want to attack? There are Russians everywhere out there."
Walter ignored Niemi and looked at Simo. Simo was looking down, topping off his M39 rifle with practiced, unhurried movements.
"Simo, what do you think?"
Simo pointed toward the flickering campfires. "They'll get sleepy once they're full. Vodka makes them sluggish, too. At night, we know the darkness better than they do."
Walter withdrew his gaze and looked at the forty survivors. He needed a few men, hard cases whose nerves hadn't been shattered by the shelling.
"Listen up! Anyone who wants to live, get over here!" Walter growled.
The soldiers crawled over in twos and threes. Walter scanned them. "I need five men. Take all the Molotov cocktails and grenades and follow me down the hill."
"We're going to blow their temporary ammo dump and command tent. If those go up, their third wave won't happen."
"I'm in!" The cook was the first to stand, spitting out a mouthful of bloody phlegm. "My pot got blown to hell anyway; I've got nothing else to do."
"Me too," the clerk's voice was small but firm.
Soon, five of the gutsiest soldiers had volunteered.
"Warrant Officer Niemi," Walter said, switching to his Suomi submachine gun and slinging his Mosin-Nagant M39. "You stay here and hold the hill with the rest."
"If you hear shots from our side, have the machine gunners fire blindly into the forest. Make a lot of noise. Make the Russians think we're launching a full-scale counterattack."
Niemi racked his bolt heavily. "Don't worry. As long as I'm breathing, that machine gun won't stop."
Night had fallen completely.
Walter activated the Eye of Death. In his vision, the pitch-black slope became transparent. He could see the jagged rocks hidden beneath the snow and the steaming, thermal silhouettes of life at the forest edge.
"Move."
Without any grand words, Walter and Simo led the way. The seven men slipped out of the trenches and began their stealthy approach toward the woods.
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