Free Beautiful Assassin by Michael C. White Page A

revolution, we were all supposed to be equal. But the war only proved what we all knew already—that a select few got plenty while the rest got the scraps. It was just like before the revolution, only now we called it communism.
    Though my stomach growled from hunger, I wasn’t about to accept food from the Wild Boar. I didn’t like him, found him repulsive. The Wild Boar was old school, a battle-hardened career soldier who’d been in the czar’s army and didn’t think they should let women fight. He thought we “ shlyukhi ”—cunts—as I’d heard him refer to us, just got in the way and were bad for morale. To him, a woman belonged in the kitchen or the bedroom, not the battlefield.
    Early in the war, there had been many such men, men who didn’t accept the notion of having women on the front lines. They felt defending the Motherland, killing Germans, was a man’s job. I could still recall my experience at the recruiting station where I’d gone to enlist, in a small village west of Kharkov. My face haggard and hair a mess, my dress still covered in blood. I stopped by a farmer’s water trough and asked if I could clean up. The woman there kindly gave me a bar of soap and some rags. I cleaned up, washed my face, tried to look presentable. From a wild cherry tree beside the road, I picked a couple of cherries, crushed them between my fingers, and rubbed their juice into my cheeks. I didn’t want to give the appearance of being pale and weak. I wanted to show them I was healthy, that I was strong and capable of fighting.
    The country was in utter chaos, with thousands fleeing eastward before the fascists and their “lightning war” machine. There were longlines at the recruiting office, which was set up in an abandoned factory. I noticed one or two other women, not many. They’d just begun the call-up for women to fight, the very fact suggesting just how desperate the situation had become. A couple of men whistled at me, and they spoke in those leering undertones that men do in the presence of a woman they find desirable. I hardly felt desirable. I hardly felt like a woman even. More simply a vessel filled with anger, with hatred and the compulsion to do violence, so filled with it I thought I would burst. When I finally reached the front of the line, there were two officers seated behind a table. They looked me up and down, traded smiles.
    “Yes?” one of them said. He was a skinny man with a red face scarred by smallpox. He used a matchbook to pick at his teeth.
    “I wish to sign up to fight,” I explained.
    “To fight?” he said with a laugh.
    “Yes. For a combat unit.”
    “What do you think war is, pretty girl? A dance?” He and the other officer chuckled at this.
    “I want to fight,” I repeated.
    “We have openings for nurses. If you want to be a nurse, I can get you in.”
    “I am trained as a marksman.”
    “Marksman!” he said in a mocking tone.
    From my pocket I took out the certificate I’d received from the Osoviakhim, the paramilitary shooting club that my father had had me join back in Kiev when I was a girl. I had qualified as a marksman with a Mosin-Nagant rifle. At one hundred yards without a scope, I could put five shots within a five-centimeter pattern. I had won competitions throughout the Ukraine. I was a quite a good marksman.
    “See,” I said, presenting the certificate to him.
    He gave it a cursory inspection and tossed it back across the table at me. “I told you, we need nurses.”
    “But you see there, I am good with a rifle.”
    “Do you think shooting Germans is like shooting targets, pretty girl?” he huffed at me. “Come here,” he instructed, waving me to approach him. I hesitated, then leaned down toward him. “Closer,” hesaid. “I won’t bite.” I leaned still closer. When I was close enough that I could smell the leeks on his breath, he aimed his finger at my face and went bang loudly enough that it startled me. I jumped backward, almost into