Clearly, the Germans were having trouble moving their supplies. The second time Karen and Petr didn’t hear engines or yelling. They heard the clip-clop of hooves and the sound of heavy breathing. They dropped to the ground and hid moments before another German convoy neared. The trucks had been hitched to teams of heavy farm horses, and the trucks’ windshields were folded down so the drivers could hold the reins. The big horses’ hooves clattered against the icy road, and the beasts panted with every step, working hard to keep their balance on the slick surface and simultaneously drag the burdens hitched behind them. The trucks were like big sledges, sliding rather than rolling over the road. But the ad hoc arrangement worked. The trucks moved onward, passing Petr, Karen, and Duck. Then a soldier riding in the back noticed something. He banged on the truck’s cab, and the driver pulled the reins, halting the big horses. The soldier jumped down from the truck bed and crouched, absorbing the force of gravity in his knees. He unslung his MP40 submachine gun, a dangerous weapon at close range. The German released the safety and started marching toward them, leaving the ruts.
All Karen and Petr had between them was the NKVD man’s pistol. But any noise would only alert the rest of the Germans. Karen glanced nervously at Petr. Would he reach the same conclusion as Sasha? Would he sacrifice both their lives in a stupid act of pointless courage? She saw Petr reaching into his uniform jacket and had her answer—he was going for his gun. Why did men always do things that were so stupid?
But then Petr surprised her. When he pulled his hand out of his coat, he was holding a chrome whistle. What was he doing? A whistle would give them away immediately. Karen held her breath as she watched Petr blow. The whistle didn’t make a sound. But Duck reacted instantly. He broke from his cover and ran straight for the trucks, passing right between the legs of the shocked German soldier.
The whistle had emitted a high-frequency sound that only dogs could hear. They were distributed to the handlers as a fail-safe mechanism—in case the antitank commander was killed before he could blow his lead signal, individual handlers could command their dogs to attack without giving away their hidden positions.
The Alsatian wolf dog didn’t bark or growl; he just ran straight from the woods into the icy road. The Germans had no idea what Duck was. Nothing made him look like a Russian weapon. He wasn’t wearing his mine jacket; Petr had long since stowed it in his pack. And since he was a German shepherd, the soldiers might even believe that he came from a German unit somewhere.
Instead of trying to shoot the dog, they jumped out of their trucks and tried to grab him. Duck jumped and sprang and sprinted under and between the vehicles. The Germans bounded after him, slipping on the ice and laughing. It must have felt like a wonderful game and a welcome distraction from the drudgery of soldiering. But they didn’t know that Duck wasn’t playing. He was working. He was running under the trucks because that’s what he was trained to do. If he’d been wearing his bomb vest, he would have exploded. They couldn’t catch him. The German with the MP40 managed to grab him around the neck, but the slick ice that coated both of them allowed Duck to wiggle away easily.
As Duck and the soldiers gallivanted in the snow, Petr and Karen fled. After blowing the whistle, Petr climbed back to his feet and waved silently for Karen to follow him. She hesitated. This was, after all, a chance to escape. But where else could she go? The road was swarming with Germans.
They moved through the woods at a careful trot, trying to avoid making more noise than Duck. But once they gained more distance, they broke into a full run, stomping through the snow and crashing through the tree branches. Then they slowed to a fast march, having exhausted themselves, and tried to catch their breath.
Petr blew on his silent whistle.
Unbeknownst to the German soldiers, Duck heard the ultrasonic shriek. He turned a full circle, leaped through a lunging soldier’s arms, bounced like a rabbit through the snow, and disappeared back into the tree line. The laughing Germans pulled themselves up off the ice and gave chase. But Duck, with his four swift legs, easily outran his pursuers, and the Germans quickly gave up, leaning on their wet knees, panting.
Duck dodged under a fallen tree and leaped over underbrush to pass into a clearing dominated by a small hunting shack. It was a simple A-frame cabin constructed from hewn wood and corrugated tin. The dog knew where he was going—he just had to follow his nose. He trotted up to the hunting shack’s plank door, jumped up against it, and scratched with his forepaws. A moment later, the door opened, and Duck tumbled inside. He immediately shook, spraying snow melted by his body heat all over the interior of the shack.
Neither Karen nor Petr cared one bit. They were busy piling tinder in the cabin’s wood-burning stove. Finding the shack had been a miracle—one for which they had the German soldiers to thank. If the Germans hadn’t sent them away from the road and into the forest, they never would’ve found this cozy little refuge. And if they hadn’t had found the cabin, they never would have rifled through its crates. And if they hadn’t rifled through its crates, they never would have found the paper bags of dried macaroni, untouched and unspoiled, just waiting to fill a hunter’s stomach.
Karen began to eat the macaroni raw, savoring its crunch. But Petr ran outside to gather wood and snow. The snow he piled into his steel helmet, which he placed on top of the stove. Karen grasped what he was doing and lent a hand. But they had to wait until nightfall. The Germans were still out there, still close. They needed darkness to mask the smoke from the wood-burning stove. There wasn’t much daylight in the far Russian north, so they didn’t have long to wait, though it felt like an eternity. As soon as the sun sank beneath the horizon, they jumped into action, together coaxing the fire to heat up the helmet, boil the slush, and cook the noodles.
That night they ate like kings. It was just plain macaroni, overcooked to a soupy consistency in the boiled snow. There was no sauce, no butter, no cheese, and no meat. But to Karen it was ambrosia. Her palate had come to expect stale, sawdust-filled bread dipped in a broth made from wallpaper glue. Axle-grease and pine-needle tea had helped her survive through the darkest days of the Leningrad winter. Even her hard-won potatoes, which had cost the lives of two loyal friends, had been freeze-dried and unappetizingly chewy by the time Karen could eat them. These noodles, on the other hand, were warm and soft. She slurped them down her throat and filled the empty space in her stomach that she had never believed would be filled again. Predictably, her eyes were larger than her stomach, as her insides had shrunk with her emaciation. She and Petr cooked three bags of the macaroni at once, but Karen couldn’t even finish a single meager bowl. She didn’t care. She fed what was left in her bowl to Duck. The big dog grinned as he sucked up noodles with his long tongue.
Karen lay on the floor of the cabin next to the warm wood stove, closed her eyes, and savored the feeling in her gut. For the first time in months, it hurt not because she was hungry, but because she was full.
The next morning, Karen was alarmed to find Duck curled up beside her. She could feel his chest and stomach expanding with every breath. She opened her eyes and saw that Petr was asleep, too, his back propped up against the wall on the other side of the cabin, where, she realized, he was positioned to intercept anyone coming through the single door. Petr was no Sasha, Karen decided. He was smart. He was a survivor. He’d proven that over the past few days, which only meant it would be that much harder to escape from him.