Read Someone Else's War: A Novel of Russia and America Page 36
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Three days later, on a long road trip to visit the detachments outside of Gudermes, they took fire from an ambush. Their Uazik, the tough and reliable Russian idea of a jeep, took some rounds, which infuriated Simonov, who cursed and kept driving. Olivia caught a glimpse of motion at an intersection before them. Time slowed and accelerated as it did when she boxed. Calmly, she put several rounds from her assault rifle into a Chechen man’s chest. He dropped his weapon and fell. They didn’t stop. Olivia fired randomly in front of them. Suppressive fire forward, eyes on the flanks. What went on behind them, went on.
They got out of the killing zone unharmed. The ambush had been sloppy, inept, or perhaps they were just a passing target of opportunity that had yielded nothing except at least one dead attacker. Simonov slowed the vehicle as, a half kilometer later, their men approached. He told them what had happened. They went into tactical formation and began their slow advance to the ambush site. Simonov then turned to Olivia. He was curious. She was in the midst of realizing what she’d done for the first time: killed another human being who had intended her death. Wait until you learn how much you can really like it, Doctor, he found himself thinking. But that would take a different kind of contact, harder, longer, far more violent. That was an experience it was his job to make sure she didn’t have. “Very good shooting, Doctor,” he said softly.
“Thank you,” she murmured from deep within herself, and he saw within her eyes more than the usual array of emotions. He saw a certainty. I have killed. I am still…me. He understood.
Later that evening, he found her leaning up against a remnant wall next to the building that housed the brigade’s latest forward headquarters, an abandoned honey factory. It was cool for summer. She watched the sun go down, holding a cup of tea in her hands with those odd fingerless gloves. He took in the elegant profile of her face and the strong line of her neck, the way she leaned back against the wall, one leg tucked up under her, her rifle slung in front of her body, the scent of her arousal liquid and intense.
This was a new experience for her. Olivia had never reacted that way to simple danger, or to hunting animals. This was a reaction to killing her own kind. She’d heard about men needing to change their shorts after successful contact, but never about women needing to do so. She needed to do so.
With a downward rush of blood, Simonov realized that he wanted to rape her about a dozen times. No, not like that at all, that was no joke, just lay her down somewhere clean and soft and warm and quiet and fuck her hard until she was thoroughly satiated. If a woman trusted you enough to let you do that for her, it was extremely satisfying to watch her floating on the sensation. Do it once and you’d wonder why you’d ever wanted to get off fast. Or at all.
He was aware that she was watching him out of one glacial eye, and as if she knew his thoughts, he found himself turning scarlet. “I apolo…”
She raised her hand and lowered it, a small gesture of just a few centimeters that effectively silenced him. She sipped her tea and Simonov took refuge in his own mug. After a while, she spoke, her voice dry, bemused, gentle. “So. Have you given any more thought to your needs?”
Simonov exhaled a great deal of tea all over the sprouting orange tufts of beard that he kept hoping would turn into something terrifying or at least impressive or at least decent or at least inoffensive to the Kombrig, none of which would ever happen. “Doctor?”
“Your technological needs. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he laughed. “There is something I must relay to you. This afternoon, our boys went back into where we were…driving. They brought in two prisoners. One seems to be some sort of bomb maker. They call such persons ‘engineers.’”
“I did not know that.”
“It does seem wrong. It may have been the man who made that trap we found ourselves in.”
“What is being done with him?”
“He has been given to Major Kristinich.”
Olivia shrugged. “It’s getting late. I may as well go to my quarters.”
“Very well, Doctor. But I must warn you. It may be that soon enough you’ll be hearing noises.”
“Noises?”
“Screams. That will be Major Kristinich at work. It can be hard to listen to, the first time.”
But Olivia seemed too deep into her own thoughts to answer or to care. The first scream came. Olivia started, then straightened herself.
“I’ll walk you back to your quarters,” Simonov offered.
The second scream came. Olivia realized that Kristinich did his work near the private room Suslov had assigned her in deference to her sex and her need to think at odd hours. She grimaced a little.