Collaboration with @silmarilz1701
Svetlana knew how to play the game. She'd been caught in the political drama of Stalin's inner circle since birth. The only child of one of Stalin's closest friends, she grew up in the limelight, scrutinized by frie...
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The sun had risen, basking their positions in watery light. The fighting hadn't stopped with the call for reinforcements. They lost Dukeman in the pandemonium that followed their initial assault, in the moments before the crashing heartbeat of the battle had died down to a nonexistent beat. Winters had ordered the men to stay low, waiting for the rest of First Platoon and the additional machine gunners to arrive at their positions. The sun had made it's weak attempt to break through the heavy bank of clouds but had admitted defeat, the previous night's light drizzle leaving Zhanna's many layers uncomfortably damp. She shivered, though it was more from residual adrenaline than actual fear.
She had followed Winters beyond the line, to peer through scope and binoculars, trying to pinpoint the location of the German forces. In the end, their eyes could give little aid and they had to rely on the small square of printed map that Winters produced from his pocket.
"I never asked," Zhanna murmured, breaching the battle plan with a more innocent question. "How are things with your penpal? Etta, her name was?"
"Estelle. I took your suggestion and responded," Winters breathed. "As of our last letter, we're still on good terms."
"That's encouraging," Zhanna said, rubbing a smudge of dirt off her rifle barrel.
"Lieutenant," Winters said. "I think we should focus on the task at hand,"
"Of course," She said, though she caught the briefest pause in his words, as if he had started to call her "Zhanna" but thought better of it. She would have continued down this path, emboldened by the battle and the rifle in her hands but Talbert's shuffling movements behind them cast any thought of continued conversation out of her mind.
"The balance of First Platoon is here," Talbert said, his breathing heavy. "Gordon and More brough another .30 cal."
"Sir?" Zhanna pressed, when Winters didn't show any signs of hearing Tab, just increased focus on the hidden line of Germans.
"They are behind a solid roadway embankment," He whispered. "And we are in a ditch. They can outflank us on the dike and catch us out here as soon as they figure that out."
"So how many krauts are we talking about?" Talbert asked, as if the number could be easily tallied.
Zhanna winced at the derogatory nickname that the soldiers assigned the Germans. She knew that they were the enemy but she had been given too many names to count. It reminded her that Easy had come to accept her but they could just as easily turn from her again, without Buck's charisma to keep them in line.
"Well there's a ferry crossing," Winters said, jabbing a finger at the map, which Zhanna plucked from his hands to inspect closer. These men would be running through mud and irrigation but Zhanna needed to find a place to perch, to watch and to shoot. "So it could be a whole battalion, as far as I know."
"Okay," Tab said, taking in all he had said and the landscape before him. "What are your orders?"
Orders. That's what had gotten Zhanna into this mess. Winters knew how she felt about orders. She folded up the map, and returned it to him, watching as it was tucked into his front pocket, stashed away with a glitter of silver against the dark cloth. His dog tags, Zhanna suspected, kept close for identification. Buck had said they would make sure you got back to your family in one piece. Zhanna's family didn't know where she was. If she died out here, she would be better off just buried in the battlefield.
