Even in this frigid winter night, a trace of viscous residual heat lingered within the donkey's abdominal cavity.
To Walter, however, this warmth was a torment. It carried a stench of blood so concentrated and suffocating that it threatened to render him unconscious. He managed to wedge his upper body and torso into the narrow space braced by the ribcage, but the donkey's frame had its limits. Walter's calves, clad in heavy combat boots, remained starkly exposed, protruding onto the snow.
"No, it's too obvious," Juha whispered, his eyes wide with alarm. "If they spot those, you're a sitting duck!"
Simo moved faster than anyone. In this moment of life and death, the veteran displayed a terrifying level of composure. He bounded to the carcass and seized Walter by the ankles.
"Take off the boots!" Simo hissed.
Enduring the crushing pressure within the cavity, Walter cooperated, kicking off the heavy footwear. Simo grabbed the boots and hurled them into the deep snow far away. Then, he turned his attention to the pile of entrails Walter had just ripped out.
By now, the plummeting temperature had glazed the bloody mess with a thin layer of ice, making the organs hard and slick. Gritting his teeth, Simo scooped up the clusters of intestines and lungs, still emitting faint wisps of steam, and stacked them like blankets over the massive rent in the donkey's belly.
"Hang in there, Walter," Simo muttered.
He jammed the largest piece of the liver into a gap to weigh down Walter's bare ankles, then grabbed handfuls of blood-slushed snow, smearing them haphazardly over the jagged edges of the hide.
Under the moonlight, the carcass now looked as though it had taken a direct hit from a grenade. The internal organs appeared to have been blown outward by a shockwave, hanging in a grisly, tangled mess. It was a sight of utter carnage; revolting, yet perfectly logical in the context of this "meat grinder" battlefield.
Inside the depths of the flesh, Walter was battling his own physiological limits.
The warm, humid reek inside the cavity fermented rapidly in the sealed space. As Simo pressed the last cold organ over his feet, Walter's chest buckled with a violent spasm. It was a spontaneous protest from a stomach recoiling in absolute disgust.
A surge of bitter bile shot up his esophagus. A tiny, stifled gasp escaped his throat. He wanted to retch. The churning nausea caused his abdominal muscles to quiver uncontrollably.
In that instant, his will fought a desperate duel with his instincts. He clamped his jaws shut, pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and dug his fingernails into the grip of the Browning. He knew that even the slightest sound of vomiting, or the smallest tremor of the body, would turn this hide from a sanctuary into a coffin.
One second... two seconds... he forced the rising bile back down. His throat burned like fire, but his breathing finally leveled out.
Walter curled into a distorted, agonizing arc. His back was pressed against the cold, rough spine of the donkey. His right hand gripped the Browning M1903, index finger resting on the trigger guard, while his left hand held the bloodied hunting knife in a reverse grip.
Darkness. Absolute darkness.
His breathing slowed to a glacial pace. Every inhalation required a feat of strength to endure the sickening odor in his nasal passages. The donkey's hide blocked the piercing wind, but it also shut out nearly all light.
"Follow me!"
Simo cast one final glance at the seemingly lifeless carcass before leading Old Juhani, Aalto, and Juha into the shadows.
…
Wolf's heavy boots hit the snow with a pace that was fast yet remarkably steady, producing only a faint "shsh" as the rubber rubbed against the crushed ice.
He was genuinely exhilarated. It was the feeling of a patient fisherman who had been hauling his line through a storm for hours, finally feeling the heavy struggle on the hook. Those two Finns were no longer just enemies in his eyes; they were formidable prey that he had to crush personally.
He showed no signs of hysterical madness. Years of professional training in the NKVD ensured that even as his adrenaline spiked, his command remained cold and clinical. He gave a few concise hand signals to the twenty-odd soldiers behind him. The squad fanned out into a crescent, muzzles fixed on the dark depths of the forest ahead.
The sporadic bloodstains on the ground had converged into a large, dark-red patch, standing out starkly against the greyish night.
"Stop here," Wolf ordered in a low voice.
He crouched, observing the path ahead. There, a donkey's carcass lay sprawled on the frozen ground. Due to Simo and Walter's "handiwork," the belly appeared to have been blasted open. The multicolored entrails looked as though they had been ripped out by some massive force, piled haphazardly on the snow, emitting the final, almost imperceptible wisps of steam.
Wolf wrinkled his nose in disgust. Born and raised in the city, he had an instinctive aversion to such primal, savage remains, stinking of blood and offal. He didn't even step closer to inspect it, offering it only a cursory glance.
The fact that the donkey was dead here meant the Finns were close. His gaze swept across the surrounding rocks and trees. The forest was unnervingly quiet, save for the occasional sound of snow falling from branches. Wolf knew the "rats" were hiding in some crevice nearby, watching them like cornered beasts.
"Prepare the mortar. Let's probe them first—"
Before Wolf could finish his sentence, or even point out the coordinates…
Bang!
The heavy, authoritative crack of a Mosin-Nagant shattered the silence. The bullet arrived at a punishing angle, precisely liquefying the head of a machine gunner standing next to Wolf.
"Ambush! Three o'clock!" Wolf roared.
His reaction was instantaneous. As the shot rang out, he used his momentum to side-roll behind a pine tree two men thick.
Almost simultaneously, the Suomi submachine gun and several Mosin-Nagants opened up from Simo's hollow.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
A hail of lead swept toward the Soviet troops. Despite their injuries, Juha and Aalto poured out fire with everything they had, attempting to mislead the Soviets' judgment with a wall of lead and provide cover for Walter's concealment.
Five down. Six.
The Soviet vanguard was cut by a quarter in an instant. Screams and curses intermingled as the scene descended into chaos.
"Hold your ground! There aren't many of them!" Wolf bellowed from behind the tree. He wasn't deterred by the raid; instead, he quickly deduced that the enemy's points of fire were extremely limited. "Mortar! Three rounds! Grenades ready! Blast them out!"
Following Wolf's roar, several Soviet soldiers scrambled to set up a small mortar.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The dull thuds of the launches were followed by violent eruptions. Fireballs bloomed in front of the hollow where Simo and the others were hidden, sending frozen earth and shrapnel flying. Immediately after, several stick grenades arched through the air into the shadows.
Explosions thundered one after another, and the smell of cordite and dust instantly blanketed the hollow. The Soviet soldiers went prone or hugged the trees, every muzzle locked onto the flame-engulfed pit. In their view, that was the source of the lethal threat. That was where the "Finnish rats" were cowering.
Just as the hollow was filled with smoke and fire, the blood-slicked donkey carcass behind the Soviet line gave a sudden, unprompted twitch.
Then, the pile of frozen organs pressed against the opening began to slide slowly downward.
No one noticed that inside this "wreckage," a blood-covered hand gripping a Browning was slowly pushing aside the layers of meat from within the donkey's ruptured womb.
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