Heart of Darkness
Wilderness, 4 October 2014, 07:20:23 AFT
It was not the Stalker’s words that made Tarasov’s blood freeze, nor even the horror and pain in his voice; it was the sight of children armed to the teeth, kids who now chat among themselves in a strange, but not unpleasant-sounding language with the occasional English word thrown into the mix. The third one remains quiet, and Tarasov doesn’t need to look up to know that he is holding his rifle ready.
“Khosh haal hastam az inke in gasht tamaam shod. Mesle sag khasteh hastam,” the driver says.
“Are, man ham hamintor,” the other boy laughs. “Chandin rooz ast ke inja sabr kardim ta in suckers saro kaleyeshan peida shaved!”
“Fekr nemikoni bayad be Lance Corporal Bockman begim ke biaad va be motor negahi bendaazad?”The driver’s voice sounds concerned. “Zaaheran dandeh moshkel darad.”
“Dar har haal,” the boy in the passenger seat replies with an air of authority. “Man patrol leader hastam, to raanandegiat ra bekon!”
“Aslaheye khodkaare jadide Benelli shotgun ra didehyee? Boxkicker yek mahmooleh.”
Tarasov hears the senior boy yawn.
“Dar haale haazer hich selaahi barayam mohem nist. Bogzaar bekhaabam!”
He can only guess what they are talking about. It could be about women, but about the most effective way to torture their prisoners too. But even though the boys now talk in their own language, they had used English as their command language when capturing them – and judging from the way they talked and the vehicle they are riding in, Tarasov is sure that they have some connection to American forces. Recalling the gruesome spectacle they have seen and what he had heard from Crow about the Tribe, the prospect of being a prisoner of these renegades – American or not – does not look good to him. Moreover, in his present condition, laying in the rear of a Humvee with his hands shackled, being driven to an unknown destination, the prospects for escaping and getting back to Bagram are definitely limited – and if he thinks too long about Squirrel’s fretful words and the scared Stalkers at Ghorband, they look downright frightening.
Tribe perimeter, 09:48:29 AFT
Tarasov blinks into the pale morning light as the Humvee finally stops and their captors drag them outside. Rude kicks to their limbs remind them to stay on their knees.
“Scouts reporting back, sir.” The adolescent boy speaks like a well-trained soldier, but his English has a strange, hard accent. “We secured two scavengers.”
“Let me see them, devil pups.”
The deep, hoarse voice does not promise anything good, even though it clearly came from someone who speaks American English as their first language.
Looking up, Tarasov sees the tallest soldier he has ever seen standing before him. An exoskeleton, similar to his own but looking even heavier, hides the soldier’s massive body. The man’s face remains hidden behind the dark eye protectors and gas mask. Without apparent effort, he holds a M249 machine gun in one hand. In faded red letters, the words SEMPER FI are painted on his helmet. A long ammunition belt hangs around his neck.
This soldier looks like a killing machine made flesh, Tarasov thinks, struck with awe and fear.
“Yes sir, First Lieutenant Driscoll, sir!” the young scout replies.
The major is hauled to his feet. Although he is a tall man himself, the exoskeleton-clad warrior still towers over him as he frisks Tarasov carefully. Finding his wallet, he opens it and takes the old photograph along with his army ID card.
“What the hell?” he says, slowly. “The Russian army is here.”
“I am not Russian,” Tarasov protests in English. “I am an officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces!”
“The prisoners speak when they are ordered to,” the warrior addressed by the scouts as First Lieutenant Driscoll barks, and delivers Tarasov a lightning-quick punch to the pit of his stomach with his free hand.
Gasping for breath and with his sight darkening at the edges, the major falls to the ground.
“Devil pup, take this to the Colonel most riki-tik. Tell him we have an English-speaking Russian here. Probably a Spetsnaz officer.”
The apparent senior boy performs a perfect salute and hurries off with Tarasov’s wallet.
“Is he a spy, sir?” the other boy asks. Bloodlust lingers in his voice.
“Not even the Russians are stupid enough to send a spy with ID on him. And look at the other one. He is wearing a military suit but has the face of a scavenger. They were together?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I no soldier! No spy!” Squirrel desperately screams in broken English, still on his knees. “Just suit! Please…”
“He speaks the truth,” Tarasov interjects, still panting from the blow he received. “He is just a Stalker!”
“The officer might be a good catch, but we have no use for a mere scavenger,” the First Lieutenant continues. “Plus, his leg is rotten.”
“Please, no! I love America!” Squirrel whines, almost with tears in his eyes. “Johnny Cash! Star Wars! Semper Fi!”
Lifting Squirrel with his left hand, who already shakes with fear and pain, the warrior now raises his machine gun to the Stalker’s head.
“What did you just say, scavenger?”
When he sees the warrior is raising his weapon to shoot him despite his desperate pleas, Squirrel spits on the Lieutenant’s armor, cursing him and proudly shouting out the battle cry of the clan he had once belonged to.
“Fuck you! Freedom!”
Eyes wide with dread, Tarasov watches the warrior shoot Squirrel in the head with one single shot and lets his lifeless body fall to the ground. Driven by the collapsing Stalker’s last heartbeats, blood fountains from the wound into the sand.
Without giving Squirrel’s body even the slightest attention, the Lieutenant wipes the spit from his armor. The reserved movement of his gloved hand tells of disgust.
“No worthless scavenging scumbag is worthy to utter Semper Fi,” he grumbles.
“I could have slit his throat while he was still on the ground to save your bullet, sir,” the driver boy says.
The warrior takes a handful of sand from the ground and rubs his glove clean, unhurried. “Now listen to me. No man dies on his knees with his throat cut from behind. Not even scavengers. Only rag-heads. Rag-heads you are free to kill any way you can,” he tells the boy in a lecturing tone. “And rag-heads you must kill any way you can. Is that clear, pup?”
“Oorah, sir,” the boy replies, his voice revealing a tone of shame.
“Take this Russkie piece of shit to the Gunny. Tell him that he is to be taken to the Brig until the big man decides his fate. Now get out of my sight!”
Tarasov’s stomach is still aching when the two young warriors lead him away. Now that daylight had arrived, he can better see the vehicle that brought him here: it is a sand-colored Humvee with a row of high-beam lights across its top. To his horror, a human skull adorns the vehicle’s bull guard with chunks of rotting flesh still clinging to it. In hand-painted red letters, HAJI HUNTER stands on the hood.
Looking around, he sees that they are in a fortified perimeter at the narrow entrance of a valley. Ahead, on the top of the almost vertical, jagged mountainside that towers over the valley, an ancient citadel nestles. Bastions and battlements guard the path leading up to it and are reinforced with concrete at intervals where the pale red walls of mud brick have started to collapse. They pass pillboxes that have been camouflaged so well that Tarasov only notices them at the last minute, giving the impression that no effort or time was spared when the ruins were turned into a massive, impregnable stronghold once more. Short poles stand along the path with small, round objects attached to them and Tarasov first believes them to be lamps. Only when he approaches does he realize that the round objects are human heads – some mere skulls, some with the rotting face still visible, and all of them still wearing Taliban headdress. The sight relaxes him, because what he sees are his own enemies too, but his reli
ef lasts only for a minute: among the dushman heads, he discovers that of a Stalker with a gas mask still covering the face.
They halt outside an arched gateway that is protected by two more pillboxes. FIRE BASE ALAMO stands emblazoned on one of the walls. High atop the walls, a flag flies in the morning wind. Based on the rumors he had heard about the Tribe, Tarasov had expected to see the flag of the United States appear here sooner or later. But this flag, though being American, is different: he recognizes the symbol of the Marine Corps in the middle, but it stands on a red field crossed by two blue stripes with white stars.
The Confederate battle flag, he thinks. Who the hell are these people? Rebels? Renegades? They are certainly too well-equipped, and too well organized to be a bunch of deserters.
Several warriors are standing around, weapons held casually. They are wearing lighter body armor than the First Lieutenant and their faces are open under the Kevlar helmets, but the sand-colored camouflage pattern is the same. Their rifles look well-maintained and their uniform armored suits are spotlessly clean.
Whoever these warriors are, and whatever they have in mind for me, I give them that they do have discipline.
One of the warriors, his face evidently blackened by dust, approaches. It is only as the warrior gets closer that Tarasov realizes it’s not just dust darkening the soldier’s face: it actually is a black man, the first one he has seen in real life.
I wonder how Ilchenko would feel now if he were in my shoes.
“Reporting back from patrol, Gunnery Sergeant Anderson,” one of the boys reports. “First Lieutenant Driscoll ordered the prisoner to be taken to the Brig until the big man decides his fate, sir!”
To Tarasov, the black non-com seems to be a more easy-going superior than First Lieutenant Driscoll, because he greets the scouts with a friendly smile.
“Welcome home, devil pups! That was a squared away patrol. Keep it up, and you will not be devil pups for much longer.”
“Is that so, Gunny?” The two boys sound happy like normal children upon receiving a special reward.
“It’s the big man who decides, but you are making good progress. Soon you should be real warriors. Now, take off this man’s handcuffs. Dress him down to skivvies and put all his gear into his ditty bag.”
With any resistance being foolish, Tarasov lets the young fighters take all his belongings. They make him remove his exoskeleton, boots and all, until he stands in front of them barefoot, wearing only his shirt and light cotton leggings. No matter how humiliating the process is, what hurts the major most is that even his watch is taken by one of the boys, who then straps it onto his own wrist with a happy smile.
“Wow,” he exclaims, “a tough watch!”
“And this pistol’s cool, too,” the other scout replies studying Tarasov’s Glock. “Boxkicker will pay me well for this.”
The gunnery sergeant, who in the meantime had been giving Tarasov’s kit a thorough search, now commands a stern and disapproving glance towards the boys.
“Give me that watch, devil pup! And you, that pistol. You are not supposed to behave like scavengers!”
“Sir!”
The boys bow their heads in shame as they hand over the loot to their superior, who puts them into the exoskeleton’s rucksack with the rest of Tarasov’s gear.
“Where in the hell did he lay his hands on this?” He says examining the major’s exoskeleton. “A Russkie spy in one of our armors. Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough.”
“I am no spy,” Tarasov angrily snaps, “I am…”
“Shut the fuck up, Russkie!”
One of the boys hits Tarasov in the chest with his rifle butt. Moaning with pain, he staggers but manages to remain standing. Spitting saliva that tastes like blood, he looks defiantly at his captors. This time, the gunny remains indifferent to the boy’s action, neither does he care about Tarasov’s angry look.
“Put his handcuffs back on,” he orders the scouts. “The brothers will take care of the rest. Now go, stir up some trouble.”
He waves two soldiers over to him. “Sergeant Polak, Sergeant Hillbilly! Blindfold the prisoner and take him to the Brig!”
The sergeants are young but adult men, one with red hair and full beard and the other with a pale, Slavic face and blue eyes. Their faces are the last thing he sees before he is blindfolded and, guided in the right direction by the blows of rifle butts on his back, led through the massive gate to the inner stronghold.
The gate closes behind him, and Tarasov hears something he would have never expected in this frightful place: female chatter and laughter. Even though they are speaking a language he can’t understand, he feels the mockery directed at him. He can’t see the women due to the blindfold, but the voices are young and cheerful.
His guards stop again and he hears a heavy door opening. One of his guards takes off his blindfold and handcuffs, and shoves him into a dark, tight cavern before Tarasov has a chance to look around.
“You’ll have a rag-head for company,” the bearded guard says as he chains Tarasov by the neck to a ring in the wall.
“Driscoll was in a merciful mood and didn’t cut off his tongue,” the other adds. “If the Talib talks too much, feel free complaining to Amnesty International about psychological torture. I forgot where I’ve kept their telephone number… ask me later, will you?”
The door slams closed.
The Brig, 12:10:41 AFT
It is completely dark save for two beams of light falling through holes above. The chain leaves him barely enough room to move. Tarasov leans his back against the stone wall, emitting a long, defeated sigh.
I’m screwed. No way to escape from here.
His eyes slowly adapt to the darkness. Shapes begin to emerge in the dim light: first, the walls, made from rudely hewn stones, then a shape near the base of one of them. He makes out a pair of legs, then a man dressed in something now little more than dirty rags.
He remembers the first time he wanted to kill dushmans, way back in his childhood when he was big enough for his mother to tell him how his father had died. The fight for the Outpost had been personal enough. But now he is locked up together with the first dushman he has met outside of battle, by an ironic twist of fate bound together as they wait for death. Shuffling over, the major kicks the man’s legs.
“Hey! You still alive?”
The other prisoner looks up at him. Tarasov has seen the faces of his enemies many times distorted by pain, effort, hate, even a sort of bitter resignation – very much like how he must have looked while killing them. Now, in this man’s eyes, he is surprised to see nothing of that enmity. Even in the gloom, Tarasov can see that the dushman has been brutally beaten, but still the eyes in the round face appear calm, devoid of fear.
“I am talking to you. Do you speak English?”
The prisoner slowly shakes his head.
“Damned dushman…” Tarasov murmurs to himself.
“I am no dushman,” the prisoner replies in almost impeccable Russian.
“You speak Russian?” Tarasov asks, startled. “Where are you from?”
“Dagestan.”
“That still makes you a dushman.”
“I am no dushman.”
“Then what the hell are you, apart from being a mindless, brain-scorched, child-murdering son of a bitch?”
“I am a student of God.”
“And where is your God now?”
The prisoner lifts his hands in a gesture that could equally mean ‘here’ and ‘I don’t know’.
“Son of a bitch… anyway… who are these people?”
“Devils.”
“And what are they going to do? Kill us?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Only you will be killed. I will be martyred.”
“Good riddance, you bastard. Are we at least going to die a soldier’s death? If I can call you a soldier at all…”
The Talib stares into the beam of light.
> “Come on, tell me how. A bullet in the head?”
“No.”
“Hanged?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“The women will come.”
“And then what?”
In response, the Talib takes pebbles from the ground and tosses them one by one into the dark corner of the dungeon.
“Curse on you, dagi,” Tarasov snarls. “Whatever death you die, you’ll deserve it for killing all those children in Beslan.”
“Beslan was wrong, but if I deserve to die for that, you deserve to die for what happened in Grozny. That was wrong, too.”
“That was not my fucking war! I am Ukrainian. We had nothing to do with what happened there!”
“Beslan was nothing to do with you, either, since you are Ukrainian, just as it was nothing to do with me, since I was not there and would never have been. In any case, it is not up to you or me to judge. No judgment is fair but God’s. If we die, it will be because we deserve to die. I can trust his judgment. And you? Is there anything left you can trust in?”
“Now listen up, you… ”
Tarasov’s words end in empty curses. The Talib has hit a nerve in his mind. Desperately, he refers to the only supernatural power he had experienced.
“I have bested a place worse than hell. It eats the laws of your god for breakfast. Whatever created it is far more powerful than your so-called god.”
“Really? Will this power come and save you?”
For a moment, Tarasov falls quiet. “It’s you who’s praying to get out of here. Not me.”
“I pray for strength to accept my fate, not for a chance of escape. But you are angry. You are not brave enough to face your fate. I feel pity for you, weak man, and pray to God to have mercy on you. Why are you laughing?”
“Because fate is so absurd. If I believed in God, I would have prayed each day to give me revenge. It was people like you who killed my father. People like you turned this land into a wilderness with stolen warheads…”
“Those were to be used elsewhere. The Americans came on my brothers and left them no choice but to martyr themselves.”
“You fucking bastards!”
Tarasov tries to move closer to the Talib but the chains cut into his neck. He coughs heavily before he can continue. “You deserve to die a thousand deaths. And I would gladly give them to you but I can’t reach you, and instead of smashing your head against the wall all I can do is just sit here listening to your bullshit!”
But no matter how much he shouts and shakes his fists, Tarasov knows that he is losing this war of words, as if fate wanted to prove to him how empty he is inside.
“You are a cruel man,” the Talib murmurs, “and even if you could kill me now, I wouldn’t accept mercy from you. Mercy from an infidel would disgrace me. But you should have mercy on yourself. These devils will not have mercy on any of us. I am prepared to die happily. And I pray to God that he gives you…”
Tarasov spits all his anger into the Talib’s face in four words.
“Shut the fuck up!”
Exhaustion and despair overcome his senses.
I will die anyway… but even if that wasn’t so, I can’t keep myself awake any longer.
16:39:00 AFT
The sound of opening doors awakes Tarasov from his uneasy sleep. Startled, the Talib moves back into the darkness but it is Tarasov the guards are after. Seeing the anger that still presses hard on his face after the argument with the Talib, the blue-eyed guard gives him a grin.
“So, Russkie, do you want to make that call to Amnesty International?” he says, removing the shackle from Tarasov’s neck. “I found their number, but now I’ve misplaced my mobile phone.”
“You are very absent-minded today, Brother Polak,” the bearded guard says, shaking his head. He grabs the major by his arm and hauls him to his feet. “Get up, Russkie. The Colonel wants to see you.”
Whether because Tarasov’s fate is sealed or for a reason only known to them, this time the guards don’t bother blindfolding him. The sun is already low and the clean, cobble-stone streets are empty save for a few fighters sitting here and there on carpets laid around small campfires, smoking hookah pipes and curiously looking at Tarasov as he passes them by.
The guards lead him through a maze of mud houses to a massive tower. Climbing up several stairs, they arrive at a wooden door guarded by two warriors, as big and frightening as the First Lieutenant who killed Squirrel. They too wear heavy exoskeletons and are armed with machine guns.
Good God. There’s more of them.
Without saying a word, they open the door and signal for him to enter.