She put her hand down, and the instructor continued speaking, eyes raking the double line of students. I had those words stamped on my bones, and there were so many chances to miss in this life-to fail. I was a history student-I preferred it when action and violence were strictly confined to the pages of a book.ĭon’t miss. it all looked reassuringly academic, which soothed me. I glanced down at the schedule requirements I’d been handed when I showed up this morning for my first day: twenty hours of political classes, fourteen hours of parade ground drill, two hundred twenty hours of firearms training, sixty hours of tactics. Prove myself worthy of being my son’s father as well as his mother. I wasn’t here to be a sniper, I was here to take the advanced marksmanship course and get my badge. But a good marksman is still not a sniper.”įor the love of Lenin, I thought, borrowing my father’s frequent exhortation whenever my sister and I plagued him.

“I have heard that you all shoot quite well. He allowed the stillness to stretch until a few flecks of snow came down from the steely sky, until we were shifting uneasily in our boots, then spoke again in a voice like a rifle shot. George Crosses glittering on his chest came striding into the courtyard before the Osoaviakhim marksmanship school, surveying the double line of students arrayed in our new blue tunics. “Silence, please.” A human saber of a man with a scar on his brow and two St.

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