let you know when  to
pick  me up, I  think I'll be back in three or four days. See you then! Take
care!"
     "Don't worry comrade  general, Alexei Glebovich, everything will be  in
order. I'll go straight back to HQ  now." Sashka did not look at the general
when he uttered those final words. He had trouble with barefaced lying.
     What if they catch me? Worried Sashka. I'll go to the shop, and what if
there's  a patrol nearby, or  the Afghans report on me? What will I tell the
general?  He trusts me. All right,  he decided finally.  I'll  go  just this
once, never again. Just deliver this stuff. But if they make me take  stolen
goods from HQ again-.No, let them take me off driving duty, let them beat me
up, but I'm not taking anything again. And I don't need any money!
     Sorokin  made  his way towards a  single-storey wooden building next to
landing place.
     "Comrade general, we take off in twenty minutes."
     "Fine."
     While he waited, another  two Il-76s landed, rolled forward to  park on
the concrete apron and disgorged their passengers.
     Two  UAZ  jeeps carrying  senior officers drew up. The officers saluted
the general respectfully and came up to greet him. They stood there smoking.
     "We were coming back from Jalalabad  once," said a colonel, "and had  a
monkey with us for the divisional commander.  A  birthday present. We had it
in  a  bag, but it  managed  to  get  out somehow. Well,  I thought, there's
nowhere  it can go, the doors are shut. We took off, and  that damned monkey
shot  off and got  through  to the pilot's  cabin.  There it  was, over  the
pilots'  heads, grabbing everything in sight  and flipping switches. Can you
imagine it? There you are,  flying  along, and  this blasted  ape  goes  and
switches off  the engines  or something. Mind you, the  first pilot kept his
head, grabbed the monkey and tossed it to hell and gone out of the window.
     Two more choppers were brought up, Sorokin entered the first and took a
soft seat by the window.
     The senior  pilot  greeted  Sorokin,  saluted  smartly  and  introduced
himself as major Mitrofanov.
     Sorokin nodded.
     "Put on your parachute, please, general."
     "I fly without a parachute.  If they  knock us down, it's not likely to
help."
     "Sorry, sir, but otherwise we can't take off."
     "Very well, then," agreed  Sorokin, fumbling  with the straps. "Show me
how to get this thing on!"

     The choppers  passed  over the villages  clinging  to  the outskirts of
Kabul,  swept above the hills. A  couple of Mi-24s flew  in front, providing
cover, greenish-brown-gray  camouflaged "crocodiles."  They  soon  caught up
with the column,  followed  the road. Peering out of the window, the general
watched  the  rails  snaking through the  valley,  interrupted in places  by
groups of cars. Everything reminded him of those first years in Afghanistan,
but at  the same time,  it all  looked different, somehow more  orderly  and
better planned.
     Its a  good army, thought  the general, only you need to get everything
properly organized. We had it a hundred times harder because when we came in
there  was  nothing. Yes,  today's  40th is  completely  different.  Strong,
experienced, with sound rear services. Look at the way they equip operations
now, they know  everything,  reconnaissance  is  reliable, the  Spetsnaz  is
active, there  is cooperation  with Afghan special structures, all is  taken
into account. We've certainly learned  a lot! The only bad thing is that the
political situation  hasn't changed,  it's  getting  worse. The  rebels have
grown in strength in these years, too. If the West wasn't helping them  with
arms, money  and  military advisors,  we  would  have  crushed  this blasted
counter-revolution long ago with our strength! The way it  works out is that
victory seems to be a mere step away, but you still can't see the end of the
war. How long is  it  going to  take?  We've learned to  fight  them in  the
mountains,  too, but can we be certain  of a final victory? So a year,  two,
three will pass. Then  what?  Then the Afghans will  have to learn to defend
their revolution  themselves.  We'll help them  build up a strong  army, and
then let them go at it! It looks as though we'll have to pull out anyway. We
can't stay here forever! This isn't Germany, or Poland or Hungary
     The   general's   thoughts   turned   to   inadequacies.   Specifically
inadequacies.  There  were and  could be  no  problems  in  the Soviet Army.
Sorokin realized this as soon as  he was promoted to colonel. If  you've got
problems,  you're  no good  as a political officer.  There were  problems in
companies,  battalions, regiments.  It was  permissible  now to discuss only
matters that still needed perfecting.
     Why do we worry most  about the men's outward  appearance, the neatness
of the paths  in the  compound, bright  tents  with portraits of  Lenin  and
quotes from party congresses instead of the essence of  the matter, wondered
the general.
     However, despite knowing  the  deficiencies of  the army,  occasionally
criticizing  them in his own mind or in a  circle of very close friends, the
general had no intention - and he did  not conceal this - of trying to right
any wrongs, stupidities and window-dressing. He hadn't  worked his way up to
general only to wreck his career by an open display of dissatisfaction.
     He criticized  mentally, noted numerous lapses, and was proud that  he,
unlike  the aging generals back  home, understood  and was concerned by  the
fact that not everything was ideal  in the Soviet army. He comforted himself
with the hope that  the time would come when he would climb  a bit higher up
the hierarchical ladder, and then get down to the business of putting things
to rights.
     In fact, though, the general contradicted his own thoughts on the spot,
has there ever been a  time when EVERYTHING we had was ideal? Is it possible
to  correct  EVERYTHING?  That  takes a great deal of  time and effort. If I
were, say,  head  of the  Chief Political Directorate, maybe I could  try to
improve EVERYTHING, or at least a great deal. And  anyway, not EVERYTHING is
all that bad even now.

     The  officers  at  the  command  post  looked  like  fantastic  spotted
creatures flecked by  rings of sunlight under the  canopy of the  camouflage
netting. Sorokin was told  that the column from  Kabul was making good time,
more  than twenty vehicles had broken down  on the way, two soldiers died in
an  accident  - their APC fell into a  precipice  -  and a major was  almost
crushed by two APCs when he stood smoking between them: he had been taken to
hospital in a  critical  condition. It was also reported that the main force
was expected to arrive by evening.
     There were still a few days to go before the operation:  all the forces
committed to  it had to be brought  up, concentrated  in the necessary areas
according to the approved plans, regrouped if need be,  reconnaissance  data
had to be studied and analyzed, the  area had to be  worked over politically
and when the critical mass was  ready, when all was set out like pieces on a
chess-board, then the game could begin.




        Chapter Nine. The Operation


     The  "crocodiles" rose  above the  hillocks,  slicing the  grayish-blue
morning  air  with  their blades, dropped altitude closer to the  road along
which army vehicles wove like a steel streamlet; then, some three kilometers
further, the  choppers  veered  to the  left,  and  flying  almost  at  zero
altitude,  examined a ruined village by  the road, sniffing it  out as if it
were a rotting carcass in the heat, then slid like predators into the depths
of the valley.
     Senior  lieutenant Sharagin noticed them from afar, when he  turned  to
get some matches from the men; and while he tried to strike one, cupping his
hands around  it  against  the  wind, he noticed the choppers as he made the
first few drags.  They  were  pretty  sure of themselves, he thought,  as he
watched them fly under the cover of the  "blocks" on the sides of the road -
BMPs with  guns aimed towards the  mountains  and soldiers who  had dug  in,
lying belly  up, on their sides, on their stomachs. The choppers circled the
dead village and swooped away. Sharagin, who had automatically been watching
the walls and a stand of trees relaxed after the survey by the choppers  and
looked  ahead,  over  the column  where  it  disappeared  from sight  in the
foothills.

     <i>... hostile soil, the territory of war...</i>

     He  knew  the  spooks wouldn't  dare  attack the army on  the  march; a
solitary column - yes, a string of "fillers" -  petrol tankers carrying fuel
to  distant  garrisons or a company hemmed  in by mountains - that they'd go
for, but an army was more  than they could  handle. However, writing off the
possibility  of  danger would be  wrong and criminal, and  in any  case, the
dangers were all very different  in this war. If something happened  to just
one of the men, it would be a mote of dust for the army, a mark in the daily
tally of losses, but for Oleg it would be a real person.
     Lots of men died or got  hurt on  any  march, not  necessarily  through
being shot or ambushed, but through their own carelessness or stupidity.
     Larger-bodied choppers with windows - Mi-8s - followed the "crocodiles"
as though  trying  to  catch up with  them,  looking  for all the world like
tadpoles.
     "Probably delivering  the brass, hey comrade  senior lieutenant?" asked
private Sychev for the sake of saying something, following the choppers with
his eyes. Actually,  he did not  so  much say as  shout  in order  that  the
commander could hear him through the noise  of engines and the earphones. He
crouched  on the tower  of the  BMP with the  cannon  protruding between his
legs, which  gave him  the appearance of a sexual  giant. "Maybe they've got
the commander of the division on board?"
     "In  that  case, snap  to attention and  salute  him,  Sychev," replied
Sharagin ironically. "And stay  that way until we arrive. You just might get
a medal."
     "Yeah, the Order of saint  Fucker with  a twirl on the back,"  guffawed
junior sergeant Myshkovsky.

     <i>... jokers! A  year  ago  they were  all  milksops - was a  time when I
called their whole contingent that, yet now they're grandpas: Myshak,  Sych,
Chiri-they've grown, straightened their backs, matured, the sons of bitches,
they've become the  backbone of my army  - a  soldier remains blinkered only
until  his  first  taste  of combat,  then he starts  to  think about how to
survive, starts  using  his head and  making the  little gray cells do their
job....</i>

     It was expected that their division commander would arrive to watch how
the paratroops battalions would move out of Kabul. That was why that morning
the paratroopers went out as if  on  parade, cleaning, tidying and enhancing
themselves until the last minute. They traveled the first kilometers feeling
tense - expecting the division commander,  although as soon as the main army
column  spread out  on  the road behind the large,  dusty  field  after  the
infectious diseases hospital, all tidiness  vanished in  the fumes  and dust
that  swirled around the vehicles and settled on freshly-laundered uniforms,
columns and undershirts.
     The  Soviet  warriors  saddled their  armored  steeds, and  moved  out;
motorized infantry and paratroops, artillery and communications, sappers and
medics;  all  were  clad  differently: faded  camouflage fatigues,  mountain
outfits, "sands", tattered camouflage  cloaks. Regulation  footwear  mingled
with brown  "trophy" spook boots, and a  scattering of "Kimry," the best  of
the  worst sneakers  created towards  the end  of the  century  by  domestic
industry.
     Engines  roared into life, the column moved forward,  the wind  whipped
the men's faces. A long journey faced the men on the armor and in the trucks
with  bulletproof vests draped over their windows. All  that day, they would
be swallowing  greasy diesel fumes and dust whipped up by the passage of the
first vehicles, covering them from head to foot and getting into clothes and
eyes.
     Earlier  on,  recalled  Sharagin,  the  regimental  leadership   fussed
unnecessarily,  afraid  that  the  division commander would descend  with  a
lightning inspection on the  eve  of the pullout. Because  of this,  all the
preparations  for the  operation were nervous,  tense, and  all  directives,
orders  and  comments were  accompanied  by  shouts  and fists,  which would
supposedly teach sloppy youngsters, toughen up and discipline lazy soldiers.
The  fist of the grandpas  was  pitiless, felling  and numbing, that of  the
commanders - hard, sharp and usually timely and fair.
     Preparations for the operation began well in advance. The orders came a
week earlier, but even  so  it had been  clear that  fighting would  soon be
inevitable, that an operation against the spooks was being planned. Everyone
in the  regiment, from  the  commander to the  waitresses  in  the mess hall
talked about  it.  Even the  shopkeepers in Kabul,  warming  food on  primus
stoves, would ask shopping  officers for how long  they would be going  into
the mountains, and  wished them well, expressing  sympathy.  The  transports
stood ready, patched  up as much as possible,  weapons  had  been cleaned at
least sixteen times, ammunition was loaded and political instruction carried
out. The officers,  who  traditionally "wet the head" of forthcoming  combat
operations had  recovered from  their hangovers; the men had  stocked up  on
cookies, juices and jam from the regimental commissary and  stolen bread and
sandwich spread  from the kitchen or  the commissary,  depending on who  had
friends where; they had already secreted  sacks of potatoes, written off and
stolen spare parts and anything else that wasn't nailed down for exchange or
sale to the Afghans - a small but appreciated bit of extra cash.
     It  would be nice to  get a  bit of sleep and  rest before going out on
combat mission, but no: instead  of that, you have the officers  making  you
run  around. Darkness  outside,  the stars are still bright,  then the alarm
sounds  and the regiment  has  to leap to its feet. The men rush out in full
kit, scramble  into the vehicles, then sit there  like idiots for  one hour,
two:  during  the  day  the  sun melts the asphalt -  the company  commander
decided that it was necessary to hold a drill session:  "Le-- -- e-f'  face!
Left! Left! Left, right, left! Start singing!"
     Those  new to the war - privates or fresh lieutenants - find it hard to
understand  why this stupid  square-bashing  is required.  You'd  think they
weren't in Afghanistan but  some showcase garrison in the  Union, as  though
they weren't going  into combat in a  day or two,  but  simply  had to drive
"boxes" through Red Square.
     It is  no secret that the commander determines what one's service shall
be like.  If  the commander's a  fool, then his foolishness will  affect the
entire  regiment,  until  he's  replaced, or killed  (not  very likely),  or
promoted; if he's fussy, nobody  will have a moment's peace; if they send an
idiot - it's curtains; if they send a great  guy -  that's marvelous, praise
and glory be to  all,  the smart "Cap", and those who sent him, and the fate
that brought you to this regiment.
     The  regimental commander  is like a  father, or  a stepfather - if  he
decides to  have the regiment line up in the middle of the night, it will be
done in minutes; if he can't sleep, then why should anybody else, he's got a
bee  in his bonnet that the commander of the division will stage a lightning
inspection. So he'll  drive  the men to exhaustion, sound the alarm once  an
hour and make them drill twenty-four hours a day, just in case the big brass
turns up. So  it's no easy  task to  earn praise in the  Paratroops, you can
slip  up  at  any  moment and,  if  you do, don't expect mercy, it's a small
world, a narrow one, closed in on itself, everyone knows everyone-.
     The long-servers stopped asking  "why?" and "what for?" ages  ago. They
adapted to the flow  of the  local  version of meaningful army stupidity and
learned  to act  on  reflex  level. They  know it's no use bashing your head
against a brick  wall, so nothing  can dampen  their spirits, their thoughts
are of tomorrow: there's combat ahead, but at the moment it's like  being on
holiday,  a lethally  dangerous  one, to be  sure,  but  still a break  from
endless  drills, boring  political  studies  and in any case,  they had been
sitting around idle for too long, it was time to  get some  action, do  some
shooting, they  had barely poked their noses outside the base gates for more
than a month as there  had  been nothing serious  to deal with. Orders would
come soon,  it  would be  time to start  getting your demobilization uniform
together,  but only a few could boast of a bit of tin to pin to their chest:
those  who  had  been  wounded  and  sent  to  hospital  had  probably  been
recommended for medals, but the others still had to try,  had to catch their
moment, fight a bit more and then - who knows? - you might even get a medal,
they're not always posthumous;  moreover, when you're out on combat mission,
there's always a chance to get  your hands on something  by shaking down the
spooks.
     The further the column got from Kabul, the more chaotic it became. Like
an over-stretched spring,  the  vehicles tried to  get themselves  back into
some semblance of order.
     Sharagin's platoon  encountered more and  more breakdowns: the radiator
of an  "Ural" went on the boil like a kettle, clouds of  steam  pouring from
under  its  bonnet,  like a smokescreen,  infantrymen  struggled to get  the
tracks back on a  BMP, further ahead one armored car was towing another with
great difficulty.

     "Go  on, Degtyarenko, pass them!" Sharagin ordered his driver-mechanic.
Degtyarenko had veered to the  left a few times, but decided against  trying
to pass. Come on! Come on!
     "Pissing  his pants," commented junior sergeant  Myshkovsky, displeased
by Degtyarev's shilly-shallying. "Scared of that heap of junk!"
     They caught  up with  the BMP on  a tow cable,  then  the  one  towing,
driving alongside and forcing oncoming brightly painted Afghan trucks to the
sides

     <i>... they look like Palekh boxes, Afghan-style...</i>

     One  Afghan truck keeled over  on  the  side  of  the  road, while  the
paratroopers proceeded onwards like  kings along the wrong side of the road,
passing the "Kamazes" with their torn  canvas covers fluttering in the wind,
with headlamps like bulging eyes.
     They caught up with the first platoon and fell in behind.
     The sun became kinder, warmed the armor and the men clinging to it like
bees in a hive. The day was  just  beginning, but the men,  who had been  on
their feet since the crack of dawn tended to doze off. Those who had managed
to  get a comfortable spot lay on mattresses, others on  trench  coats, eyes
drooping.

     <i>... it's always  been  like this in  the army: reveille at  two  in the
morning,  breakfast at four, final preparations at six,  pull  out at eight,
and there's nothing you can do about it...</i>

     The  mountain pass slowed  down the pace of the advance. The road began
to wind steeply.  The vehicles  slowed to  a crawl, engines whining,  as  if
complaining about the load they were carrying, but not giving up.
     At  a bend in  the road,  beside  a  steep precipice,  two  machine-gun
carrying   dark-haired   soldiers  stood  beside  a  trailer,  arms  hanging
helplessly. They looked like  Central Asians,  Tadjiks most likely. From his
perch  on the armor Sharagin saw what the problem was without having to ask:
a mobile "Acacia" installation had come off its mounting and fallen into the
chasm.
     The men  cheered  up at the sight  of someone else's  misfortune, their
comments  even  rousing the  old-timers who  had dozed  off to  the familiar
rumble of the engines.
     "Greasers!" uttered Myshkovsky contemptuously.
     "Shit soldiers!" agreed Sychev, who had been napping nearby.
     As they wound through the pass, Sharagin's platoon tried to outwit  the
sun, traveling when possible in the  shade of the cliffs. The vehicles dived
into the stone galleries occasionally, re-emerging into  the bright sunlight
on the road.
     It took a while, but the  platoon  finally reached the top of the pass.
Oleg looked back  down the winding road and saw,  where  the  cliffs did not
obscure  the  view,  the  endless  column  of  trucks, APCs, BTRs all moving
upwards and  seemingly  without  end, heading towards the  war, and who knew
where the end was, maybe only just leaving Kabul?
     Closer to midday, when the road worsened perceptibly,  pitted with ruts
and holes,  forcing the  vehicles  to  drive around  fallen rocks,  Sharagin
noticed that his driver was nodding off.
     The  BMP veered to the  right, toward a steep slope,  its nose swung up
and the vehicle began to tip.

     <i>... he's fallen asleep - we're going to overturn!...</i>

     Just a bit more, and they would have rolled over like a tortoise on its
back, a  fifteen-ton  juggernaut  that would have  crushed  the  life out of
everyone riding on its armor. Sharagin, who keeled over backwards and to the
side managed to right himself with difficulty, and rammed  his boot into the
head of the driver, as if stamping on the brakes. The driver bashed his face
against the  edge of the hatch, the taste  of  blood  in his mouth and  pain
snapping him back to reality. Shaken and  disoriented  he seemed not to know
who he was  and where  he was,  he veered sharply to the left, blocking  the
road and jamming on the brakes. Sharagin bit his tongue painfully.

     <i>...  damn  you, idiot! Now my tongue's going to  hurt  the rest  of the
day...</i>

     Sharagin leapt to  the nose of the  BMP and punched  the soldier's dust
covered face twice:
     "I'll juggle your brains!"
     The clouded eyes of  the  driver cleared.  He found  no  reply or, more
likely, realized it was better to keep his mouth shut

     "Keep moving! Go!"
     The  soldier  tried  to wipe  his face with filthy,  oil-smeared  hands
covered in scabies, with cracked skin and hangnails, but all he succeeded in
doing was to make himself even dirtier.

     <i>...some luck! How do you fight with morons like that to back you?-every
third man in the platoon  is  a milksop who's  never  been under fire!-Never
mind, this one won't fall asleep again...</i>

     But  for form's sake,  he landed  another blow on the driver's earphone
helmet:
     "Just you try falling asleep again, Degtyarenko!"
     Struggling  to  regain  his calm,  Sharagin  chewed on a  cigarette and
studied the surrounding countryside.
     The  stone  monolith  that had once  cracked and given passage  to  the
aquamarine torrent  and serpentine pass, was replaced by a valley. After the
oppressive  feeling of  the  pass, the new vista  gladdened a Russian's eye,
accustomed as it was to flat plains stretching into the distance  as  far as
one  could see. He  saw reeds,  water-plains,  something that  for a  moment
seemed almost familiar.

     <i>... if only one could see a habitual horizon, edged with trees...</i>

     He  stared at the  river  which flowed more  gently  now, having broken
through the  grip of the mountains, tried  to find a familiar line of trees,
but his eye  came up against  a cluster of  adobe dwellings and the illusion
vanished - Russia was a long way off.

     <i>... the village  at the foot of the mountain belongs to the spooks-last
year our  reconnaissance people got a  nasty  surprise there-.everything was
mined to  the  hilt-and  over there is  where we  combed through  the  hills
ourselves,  I   think   -mountains,  just   mountains-we're  surrounded   by
mountains...</i>

     The  towering, virginal peaks  of  the  mountains  seemed to gaze  down
disparagingly  at the  fuss  and  insignificance  of human  problems,  while
between them lay  streams  and fields, scattered villages, and alien hordes,
speeding towards victory and death.
     Huge cloud masses seemed  jammed between the mountain peaks, no smaller
in  size  but floating  like feathers. It was as if the ancient mountaintops
envied the lightness  of  the clouds,  their ability to fly further  without
thoughts or  regrets. The snowy peaks  reached up  towards infinity,  as  if
wishing for freedom,  wishing for  the chance to break away from this  world
and  hide somewhere  up  above, as though tired  of the world's foolishness,
cruelty,  as if choking on air  saturated  with hatred, injustice, blood and
suffering.

     <i>... the mountains are always beside you in Afghanistan-sometimes behind
your back, like a person who stands there and  stands there, you go to sleep
-  and he stands  there, you wake  up - and he's still  there-standing there
immobile  and  not  going  away-or the mountains  rise  before  you  like an
unimaginably high wall,  so that nobody  will ever be able  to flee  -Nature
didn't  dream  them  up for  nothing -if there were no  mountains, who would
separate  peoples who hate  one another, who would  shield  them from death,
pursuit,  vengeance-they would  all  slaughter  their fellow beings  on open
plains, would all come together in a mighty clash and perish in short order,
for  people have  not yet  learned  to  live  in accord,  without  envy  and
violence-that's what mountains  are for, and mighty forests, and deserts and
seas-these mountains protected Afghanistan  for many years -It would  appear
that we, Russians, as a people significant in history, have  been endowed by
someone  with  extraordinary  powers-history has  scattered  us over immense
territories, and maybe that's why we decided that we can influence the fates
of other peoples, not numerous by  comparison with us, and therefore, not as
strong-.People  whose bad  luck it  is  to live next door to Russia-we never
took their  plans into account, we  decreed, we  were intoxicated by our own
might-we colluded with evil, the devil, took part in his nefarious plans-the
devil's   proving  ground  is  here,  in  Afghanistan-sounds  too  mystical,
somehow-we got used to it  gradually,  the lust for  power  entered into our
blood - we  must have some gene, just like the Americans,  which is infected
by  an illusory sense  of  being omnipotent-as if  the fate of  the  rest of
humanity depends on us-.actually, that's  partially right-if we want, we can
destroy the rest of the  world  in the fight against capitalism -however, my
friend, that's ideology-ideology is a temporary thing

     -  as  for  the Russian  soul,  that's eternal-who gifted us  with this
mysterious soul, and why? -we will never have peace because of it-but enough
of that, it's not the time and place for such thoughts....</i>

     The ability to sense danger had never yet let Sharagin down. And if the
thought of spooks filled  his head, it was not for nothing. That  meant that
the  spooks  were really  there, hidden, watching. Yet despite the  sense of
spooks nearby, other thoughts flitted through his mind.

     <i>... they're right  when they  say: if you've got no erection, leave the
woman be!- we can't and don't know how to fight,  we can't bring a dump like
Afghanistan to  its knees all  these  years-so we should admit outright:  we
failed, broke our back and spilled our guts-we keep imagining that we're the
strongest army  in the world-yes,  the paras did their job, so what else can
you ask  of them? We're supposed to jump with parachutes, we're creatures of
the air,  but they've  driven  us  down  into the  dirt, we're  ordered into
columns and driven like greasers to the ends of the earth, they've scattered
us  over checkpoints and  roadblocks,  this isn't what we're  supposed to be
doing, let the greasers from the infantry handle it!...</i>

     Sharagin  turned and cast a look at  his soldiers.  Their  dust-covered
faces expressed nothing.

     <i>...stupid blockheads-but the best soldier in  the world is our soldier,
the Soviet  soldier!...he isn't overly  literate, he's not pampered, he will
bear  anything,  he'll die,  he'll  perish,  but  he'll  never give  up! Our
soldiers aren't spoiled American boys in Vietnam, who had special deliveries
of beer!...

     Our soldier is the  best! He'll  break his back, but get to where  he's
been ordered... and our officers - especially the lower ranks, say up to the
rank of major, or  maybe inclusive, are  all in top form, they can withstand
anything,  they're not just  ordinary  people, they're supermen ... and then
what? What next? We're staying afloat on heroism of this kind, but it  can't
last  forever-so wouldn't it be better for us all to  put our heads together
and work out where we went wrong?...

     ... he-e-ey!  Mountains all around,  it's just beautiful! If  it wasn't
for the war, for those Afghans, it would be so great here!..</i>

     The Afghan landscape held numerous  beauties for a northern man, and at
the same time frightened those who had not had time  to become accustomed to
its alien contours.
     At times  it was hard  to enjoy breathtaking panoramas objectively. Not
always  and not  everyone  could  separate  the vision of  snowy  peaks  and
copper-velvet slopes, plains  covered with the lush green  of vineyards, the
profusion  of blood-red poppies  spreading like  a carpet  woven by  skilled
masters, from the image of  a  treacherous mujahideen, an evil character out
of some Eastern tale, a bandit clutching a knife.
     The image  of the mujahideen produced a feeling of danger: this feeling
of danger  grew into fear, and  fear generated  hatred and distrust  of  the
mountains: one could enjoy the alien landscape only after conquering fear.
     It took years to accept, to fit into and understand this place, come to
love it and learn to stop fearing it.

     <i>...the  mistiness of  Andromeda, the Milky Way, Solaris...we have  come
from  another galaxy, bloody  cosmonauts... how did we  get here? ..piled up
armored vehicles... disturbed the Afghan anthill...</i>

     And even  if  the  surrounding  landscape  opened  its secrets,  became
understandable, no matter how slowly and reluctantly, the Afghans themselves
remained an enigma.

     <i>...why are we here? What can we have in common with this wild, backward
country? What fraternization can there be? Damn it, how can they possibly be
our friends?! This place should be declared a reservation...the Stone Age...</i>

     The Afghans had to be kept at a safe distance, any fool could see that.
Wrapped  in an alien prayer, the life of  the Afghans ran its course, in the
distant  14th  century  by  the  Muslim  calendar,  behind  blind  walls  in
accordance with laws passed down from fathers and grandfathers. In any case,
the distance between the Afghans and the shuravi was measured  in centuries.
Sometimes the distance would narrow to the counter of a shop. But even then,
there  could  be  no  full understanding. Devoured by  suspicion,  excessive
caution, the Soviets would  retreat quickly, buying a few things on the run.
More often than not, the distance  between  the Afghans  and the Soviets was
measured by a burst of machine gun fire.
     And because they did not  understand and did not wish to understand the
Afghans, because they guessed subconsciously that the war  would not be long
and was totally useless, nobody tried to like the land and its people.  That
was  probably why  every Afghan,  be he one of the mujahideen, or  a  farmer
tending his field, a smiling driver waving from a bus, an  unwashed barefoot
urchin, a newly-drafted recruit into  the Afghan army, clad in the sack-like
uniform  of an  army propped up by the tanks of the "limited  contingent"  -
they were all perceived as spooks, bandits, enemies, so you could trust only
yourself and  depend  on  yourself,  or  on  those  like you,  shuravi  like
yourself, Soviets; and a man felt safe  and secure only inside the garrison,
surrounded by  barbed  wire, tanks and machine guns; fate  had strewn Soviet
military divisions all over Afghanistan, they were like islands in an ocean,
lonely, far from the mainland.

     <i>... "mountains, dust and hepatitis- free additions to the international
duty," grumbled captain  Morgultsev... those bald mountains up ahead seem to
be crouching  silently, waiting for  their prey...us...and we  still have to
crawl and crawl before we reach the foot of those mountains-we move and they
stand  still,  we will  fight, we'll all die here, while  the mountains will
continue to stand there indestructible  and immobile, totally indifferent to
our sufferings, our joys, we're alien to them, our troubles,

     bent turret,  like an  impotent's penis ...dozens of machine gun  holes
and larger ones from grenades,  remnants of fuel carriers, an empty  "Kamaz"
cabin with  smashed front and side  windows...a huge garbage dump, the waste
products of unequal  battles...here they  got  the better  of us...the truck
found its mine, and it destroyed its front end, so now it looks like a drunk
with smashed lips, a broken nose and a dislocated jaw..."</i>

     A  burned out BTR reminded Sharagin of a gigantic turtle. He had  never
actually seen a giant turtle,  only small ones, but in his imagination these
huge denizens  of  the  ocean  kingdom left the water  as immense  creatures
securely  protected by  an  impenetrable  shell, which hid  a wise, wrinkled
head.
     As if  driven by  some irresistible instinct, infantry  combat  vehicle
turtles  and  BMP turtles, whole armies  of deep-water inhabitants had  left
their domain and come to war.

     Once in childhood  Oleg had stopped a boy who was running and waving an
ax, like a Red Indian. In his hand he held a tortoise.
     "Where  are you off to?"  asked  Oleg,  stopping the  boy who was about
three years younger than he was.
     "I'm going to smash the shell and pull that creature out!"
     "Give it here!"
     "No, I won't," the youngster replied sullenly.
     "I told you - give it here!"
     He took away the tortoise, took it  to the river and let it go. Finding
itself free, the  tortoise stuck out  its  head and  began to move  over the
grass. The next day Oleg encountered the younger boy again.
     "What are you grinning for?" asked Oleg suspiciously. The lad stuck out
his tongue, pulled a face and ran off.

     <i>... he  must  have  followed me and found that tortoise... And finished
it...</i>

     The  burned  BTR  looked  like  a tortoise that had  been  subjected to
lengthy assault with an ax, blows  inflicted with fury and shouts, until  it
split.
     Closer  to the village lay a  tank turret, flung far by a mine and bent
like  a  paralyzed figure. Two Afghan  boys sat on it, watching the  passing
column of Soviet military might with black, beady eyes.
     A deeply tanned and wrinkled Afghan with a mangy beard walked along the
roadside, leading a heavily laden donkey. He looked askance  at the  passing
column and caught the eyes of a fair-haired, bewhiskered Soviet officer; the
Afghan  muttered something to himself, barely moving his lips  which exposed
greenish teeth; the old man's face expressed  neither pleasure nor  dislike.
In that moment or just afterwards, Sharagin experienced a sense of deja-vu.

     <i>... this has all happened before, but where? When?..</i>

     The answer surfaced fairly soon.

     <i>...a  movie about  the Great Patriotic War  ...from childhood....one of
our  men is driving along in a hay cart,  and German  tanks rumble past him.
Tanned young men,  sleeves rolled up  to the  elbow,  smoking  and  shouting
something  in  their own  German tongue...the man  turns  his  head, and the
camera captures the hidden, unwilling fear in thy  eyes of those fascists, a
fear of  the Russian who  is presently unarmed, in principle poses no threat
at the given  moment,  who hasn't said a word,  but who silently watches the
German  army  vehicles  heading  across the  field  in the direction  of the
village...every Soviet  viewer would have felt,  after  that shot,  that  no
matter  how  gay  and carefree the fascists seemed, in their heart of hearts
they feared our people, especially the partisans-and fear had probably found
a place deep  in the hearts of the  fascists, because the more death,  grief
and destruction they wreak  on our Motherland, the more fear they experience
because they cannot know that the day of reckoning will come...</i>

     Such  thoughts and  associations  were  fleeting, lasting  only  a  few
seconds, and in order  not  to let them grow into something bigger, press on
his psyche, he pushed them away quickly, to the back of his mind, for later.

     <i>... we're not  invaders-we're carrying out orders-.we came to  help the
Afghans, even though some of them don't want our help...</i>

     All that was asked of Sharagin was  that he obey orders, make sure that
the unit entrusted to his care  - a tiny part of the machine called the Army
- functioned smoothly. And that he, as a man  genuinely devoted to the Army,
try to carry out  his duty  as platoon leader  to the best of  his  ability,
thrusting aside any heart-burning  doubts which, especially  towards the end
of the term of service, tried to surface and demand answers and conclusions.
     Sometimes he envied his friends who  lacked the ability to reason,  and
were thus calm and carefree.

     <i>... their faces  have never been  disfigured by thought...and they have
no trouble going to sleep...

     ...as  captain  Morgultsev  says:  "An  officer shouldn't think  why he
receives   a  certain  order  from   the  Motherland,  the  more   so   some
Ivan-the-platoon-leader!"-we are  paid not for  our rank or  duties, but for
devotion  to  the  Motherland, which has  the right, when she so wishes,  to
demand the life of an officer who has sworn allegiance to her...</i>


     On  the way to the  operation Sharagin repeatedly  recalled  the  first
months of service in Afghanistan, his first sharp impressions of the war and
the people involved in it. Some of those people served in the platoon today,
riding neighboring  BMPs, part  had gone home, others  had not  lived  to be
replaced but found their final resting place in the mountains, the sands and
the greeneries of Afghanistan.

     <i>...somewhere in the dust storms are the souls of our men, borne away by
the  'afghan'  wind, people  who  were close,  and then  perished. ..all our
people are somewhere close ...one foot here, the other one back home...</i>

     This was what the senior lieutenant  usually  told  himself whenever he
sighted yet another cairn - out of stones, shell-cases, tires -  with a name
and surname,  and  dates of birth and death -  short stretches of time, from
twenty to twenty five years.

     The  leading  vehicles  stopped, so there  was something like  a  short
break:  those who had lagged needed a  chance to catch up. And the men could
grab a quick bite of something, relieve themselves and stretch their legs.
     The drivers took advantage of the  unscheduled  break  and  with  tacit
consent delved in the motors of their vehicles; the army didn't dismount for
long, and  only  the  front ranks,  the  rest had long ago lost the  general
rhythm of the march, like the tail  of an immense lizard had become delayed,
broken down, lost miles far behind.
     Sharagin's  platoon, occupying its place in the general "thread" of the
company, came to a halt some two hundred meters from an Afghan checkpoint, a
squat clay fortification to the side of the road, surrounded  by some sparse
trees and a proudly waving flag.
     Children  from  the nearest  village  were  already  swarming  over the
military vehicles.
     "Nobody move away from the vehicles!" ordered Sharagin. "I'm off to see
captain Zebrev."
     "What if we  need a crap, comrade senior  lieutenant?" cried Myshkovsky
with exaggerated pathos, theatrically clamping his arms around his stomach.
     "Worry not, Myshkovsky, crap into your partner's hand!"

     <i>... never would have thought that weed would turn into a real para...</i>

     "Hey, commander, how's things?" panted a barefooted Afghan kid, running
towards Sharagin.
     He was carrying mandarins,  chewing gum  and postcards  of Indian  film
stars in a torn paper bag.
     "Buru,  bacha! Buru!"  snapped Sharagin  at  the  youth  weaving around
underfoot.
     "Hey, friend! How are things?" said the lad  to  the soldier sitting on
the nose of the BMP,  who had just  been kidding  about a bellyache and  was
about to jump down to the ground. "Got goods? What you sell?"
     Junior  sergeant  Myshkovsky   stretched  himself,  sighed  deeply  and
squinted in the sunlight.
     "Nothing, bacha. We've earned nothing yet."
     "Yet!" repeated Sychev in minatory tones, raising his index finger.
     The  young  Afghan,  sensing  an interest,  did  not  retreat but  kept
offering mandarins, fanned out the postcards.
     "Give us a look at those," said Sychev. "Shuravi control, bacha!"
     The lad extended the photos.
     "Here, take them back! Now, if only they were wearing swimsuits-"
     The Afghan remained where he was.
     "Got no  money, understand? No  paysa.  Nist paysa! Want to  exchange?"
Myshkovsky  offered  a  pack of  "Donskiye", the  worst  possible cigarettes
without  filters  that  were  issued  to the  soldiers.  "You  give  me some
mandarins." The bacha understood  and agreed.  "Only remember,  bacha, don't
die from cigarettes! One costs three years of life!"
     The other soldiers laughed.
     Myshkovsky climbed down and began  to peel the mandarins and would have
finished them quietly and driven on, only  it was his bad luck that a chubby
lieutenant colonel appeared on the scene. Cheeks like a chipmunk, eyebrows -
a spitting image of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.
     The  lieutenant  colonel  looked  ludicrous in a helmet, because nobody
ever wore a helmet on the march, especially during a rest  break.  A machine
gun with paired magazines was slung across his chest, a cartridge case stuck
out from his side like an enlarged liver,  grenade  pins protruded from  the
breast pocket of his bullet-proof vest  - indeed, it  appeared  as though he
was ready to take on an entire band of spooks single-handed.
     The  lieutenant  colonel  fastened on to Myshkovsky, yelling  as though
he'd been just let loose off a chain.
     The officer was infuriated by the fact that a soldier had entered  into
an exchange with an Afghan, cigarettes for mandarins.
     "So what's wrong with that?" asked Myshkovsky, unperturbed.
     He was no newcomer to Afghanistan, he kept his cool. But the lieutenant
colonel,  judging by his extravagant  equipment, was a new  arrival, and was
probably a political officer who'd never  been under  fire  to boot, decided
Myshkovsky, even though he wore a striped undershirt.
     "They were my cigarettes, we swapped-"
     "By  what right?"  yelled the officer.  "What's your name? Where's your
commanding officer? What company?-"
     Not waiting to hear the answer, the lieutenant colonel became even more
angry when he saw the soldier was  not dressed in regulation kit: Myshkovsky
was wearing "Kimry" sneakers instead of boots.
     Political officer  for  sure,  decided Myshkovsky. Bloody  headquarters
rat!
     The well-fed lieutenant colonel, who had gone on this battle assignment
like a walk in order to earn another merit mark which would count later when
it  came  time to  receive  a  medal, had no  understanding  of  an ordinary
soldier's cunning:  in the mountains, the regulation  boots were  heavy  and
awkward, little better than  the domestic "shit-squashers." And in any case,
it did  not matter what you wear in combat and  what your have on your  feet
when you get killed.
     And so they stood there face to face.
     The lieutenant  colonel saw an insolent, rotten  creature of a soldier,
who  eats mandarins on  the march,  who  has  acquired freedom, who has been
over-indulged by his commanding officer, and who must be punished because he
stands  there in  the middle of the road without a  machine  gun, without  a
bullet-proof vest and wears sneakers.
     The soldier, in his turn, thought that all officers  are, by and large,
animals, blood-suckers, and this  particular lieutenant colonel is a pig who
doesn't really care about anything except his own hide and career-
     The  soldiers and junior officers drawn  by  the  lieutenant  colonel's
shouts stood around in silence  and, as  is  customary in the army,  did not
interfere.
     Accustomed  to  frequently  unwise displays of emotion, high-handedness
and  sheer  rudeness  from  senior  officers, they  watched this  unexpected
nonsense in  silence;  none  of them  had the right  to contradict a  senior
officer. Everyone understood that the  lieutenant colonel was an idiot, that
he had been born that way and would never change, and also realized, because
that  is  always  obvious,  that  the  lieutenant  colonel  had  no  genuine
commander's anger in him, only  a  passing outburst, a stupidity far removed
from  matters of principle or  discipline,  the stupidity of  a man who  had
never assumed  command and therefore had nobody to vent his spleen on  for a
long time.
     In the army - you yell, and get it off  your chest. As  for the one you
yelled at, he'll  yell at or insult somebody else, you can't bottle emotions
up indefinitely, after all, or you'll go mad.
     So  that's  how it comes to  pass that  the armed forces of  the Soviet
Union are daily shaken by yelling, the chain of slights extends from the top
to the very  bottom of the  scale, to the soldiers, and they  have their own
conflicts-
     Undeserved  offensive  words poured from the lieutenant colonel's lips,
like  amoebic diarrhea. Myshkovsky had vivid recollections of that  illness:
he'd  done his  share of running back and  forth  to the  latrine. The plump
officer had grown  hoarse,  drops of sweat  trickled from beneath the cap he
wore under the helmet,  but he continued to rant at the soldier, calling him
a thief, a looter, a  robber, that bastards like him are a blot on the honor
of the Soviet internationalist soldier.
     A bloody political officer for sure, decided Myshkovsky.
     The lieutenant colonel spluttered on:
     "-here  in  Afghanistan people serve with a clear  conscience! They die
for  the revolution..!" he proclaimed as if he  were reading  a lecture to a
group  of  dumb  collective farm workers. He kept  trying to pin  Myshkovsky
against the armor, even though the soldier was quite hefty.
     The officer kept his eyes just above Myshkovsky's head, almost treading
on his toes.
     Sharagin and Zebrev were drinking tea from a thermos. They opened a tin
and poked fun at Pashkov. Pashkov had finished his cigarette  and  stuck his
hands into his pockets.
     "What are you doing with your hands?" queried Zebrev. "Playing billiard
balls?"
     "Hey, sarge, are you planning to retire in Afghan?"
     "Give me a break-" Pashkov cleaned  his sunglasses with the  hem of his
shirt, blew on them and wiped them again.
     "Say, sarge, is "Zubrovka" vodka Montana?"
     "Zubrovka? You bet!"
     "What about "Pertsovka"?"
     "That's Montana, too!"
     "And pork belly?"
     Engineering marking and mine-clearing vehicles began to crawl past  the
ones that had stopped for a break, with their long arms and unwieldy scoops,
bullet-proof  cabins;  they  were  followed by a  tank without a cannon with
rotating huge "eggs" on top - mine crushers; then came sappers, riding a BTR
with  a  canopy rigged on top, accompanied by two  German shepard dogs,  dry
tongues hanging out.
     "What would be the first thing you'd do back home?"
     "Enough of that, comrade captain! I'm off for a piss!"
     "Remember Oleg, how they went to the latrine hand in hand"

     ... The love affair with the fat waitress was the talk of the regiment.
After  the appearance  of  this woman of  enormous  sizes, something  struck
Pashkov, he went around in a daze for a week.
     None of the officers would have dreamed that Pashkov would fall for the
waitress. When Sharagin and Zebrev first saw them going for a walk together,
they could not believe their eyes.
     At  first  they  thought  that  Pashkov  simply  wanted  a  woman,  but
afterwards the warrant officer declared that it was serious.
     "Real Montana!"
     Amid the  laughter  of the  officers, Morgultsev  recounted an anecdote
about  a  goat, which was kept  on  a ship instead of a  woman. The  captain
ordered the men to put a ruble in a moneybox every time they "used" the poor
animal in order to collect the sum that the goat had cost. After a while the
captain noticed that someone was not paying the set sum. It emerged that the
boatswain was the guilty party.
     "When pressed, the boatswain said exactly what you're saying, sarge. He
said: "I can't pay, comrade captain, we've got a serious relationship-!"
     Pashkov cast dark looks at Morgultsev for a week after  that,  but that
didn't stop  him from  shaving thoroughly every  morning and dousing himself
with eau-de-cologne, saying: "Eau-de-cologne - that's cultured. And yogurt's
healthy."
     They made such an odd couple - wiry Pashkov and the fat waitress on her
short legs  - that the entire regiment watched the romance unfold with bated
breath.  It  was especially funny to see the lovebirds walking hand in  hand
and then  splitting up to go to the latrine - a low building,  separated  in
half. The waitress would  break off and head left, Pashkov - right, and then
a  few minutes later they would  reunite and  continue their stroll or go to
the barracks which housed female personnel.
     The romance lasted more than a month. Then clouds appeared in Paradise,
and Pashkov resorted to a three-litre jar for solace-

     "Something's going on with your guys," said Zebrev suddenly.
     "That's right," affirmed Pashkov. "Something's up. Not Montana!"
     "Can't  leave them alone for a moment!" grumbled Sharagin, turning  and
seeing the strange huddle of soldiers.
     The  corner of Myshkovsky's lip  jerked with a nervous tic. He bore the
abuse, held on to his composure and kept his mouth  shut. Mentally, however,
he put a few bullets into the lieutenant colonel's head.
     Finally running out of expletives,  the lieutenant colonel saw that the
soldier  was  wearing a  magnetic  bracelet on his  wrist: this  set him off
again, even more than  before, with  new force, as  though he had discovered
stolen property:
     "Aha! He's got  a bracelet! I'm an officer, and I can't afford anything
like that! "
     "Jackal," thought Myshkovsky. "can't  afford it, you sonofabitch.!  You
earn thirty times more than I do! All I'll be taking back home will  be this
bracelet, a briefcase and a shawl for my mother on my wages. As for you, you
rotten bastard,  you'll ship back  a whole container, fill your apartment to
bursting with Japanese gadgets!-And never expose your ass to gunfire-"
     "You're a thief!" shouted the  lieutenant colonel. "In sneakers, with a
bracelet! Sold  your rifle  already, hey?  Where's  your rifle? Where's your
bullet-proof vest?"
     That was too much, and the lieutenant colonel knew he had gone too far.
However, raised  as he was on  slogans and agitation jargon, he lost control
of himself when he had an audience, pushed his line and attacked the "enemy"
or the miscreant with due Party ferocity, seeing the "truth" only as he knew
it,  how it  appeared in his own head, giving out his own version of what he
had  heard from  people with more stars on  their shoulder-boards.  You  can
drive anyone up the wall with quotes and slogans.
     Myshkovsky  pulled  the bracelet  off, threw it  on the ground  at  the
lieutenant colonel's feet, turned around and stalked off.
     "Live, you sonofabitch," he muttered through clenched teeth.
     The lieutenant colonel was  clearly nonplussed  by such  insolence  and
made a move as if to seize Myshkovsky's shoulder, casting a regretful glance
at the bracelet (too many witnesses to pick it up) but at that moment he was
hailed from the BTR he'd jumped from five minutes ago:
     "Let's go, Borya! The column's moving!"
     The lieutenant colonel swore as though at all the surrounding  soldiery
and  hurried  off, clumsy  under his own weight and an excess of unnecessary
weapons  and  bullet-proof  vest, grabbed  someone's  extended hand, hung in
mid-air for a moment, helmet askew, then scrambled up on the armor.
     "What happened, Myshkovsky?" asked Sharagin.
     "Nothing much, comrade senior lieutenant. He didn't like my sneakers."
     "Mount up!"
     The army  moved on,  leaving evidence of  its rest in  the form of  oil
stains, tin cans, dry rations packs, puddles of urine and cigarette butts.
     Sharagin's platoon moved off in its turn, keeping a  sensible distance,
allowing the preceding vehicle  a fifty-meter clearance, so that the dust it
raised would settle a little.
     Myshkovsky turned away  from the others and smoked, hiding the tears of
frustration in his eyes. The lieutenant  colonel  had made it quite clear to
him that he was a louse, that he had no rights whatsoever,  just like a year
ago when he had been a newcomer to the platoon and junior sergeant Titov had
hazed  him mercilessly  day  and night. Myshkovsky had taken it all,  hadn't
given in, had not succumbed to self-pity,  had not complained, had not cried
from pain and  humiliation. Yet now he had let it  get at him;  just as well
nobody could see  these  tears of  someone with  no defense  in the  face of
stupidity, inhumanity, and base behavior of an officer to a soldier.
     Myshkovsky's unmoving,  stooped back  gave no clue to what had happened
and  whether  he was  upset by  it. He, a soldier,  would never  admit  that
someone had been  able to hurt  him. It's not done in the army for a soldier
to pour out his troubles to an officer.

     <i>...that's  our apprentice's lot in the army, you  have to grin and bear
it...the one with the most stars on his uniform is always right...</i>

     As if breaching  a dam, the armored vehicles  poured out into a valley,
spreading out over a  wide field that  opened before  them, leaving no room,
filling  all  the available space like  a camouflage blanket; the army units
wound across the field like a thick snake coiling in upon itself; the battle
group was settling down as comfortably as it could for the night.
     The immense army scattered like wandering tribes over the field: tents,
armored vehicles, trucks, communication lines; more and more units arrived.
     Every branch of the army  contributed  men to this operation, a platoon
here, a battalion  there, a regiment -  all were gathered into the huge army
cauldron:  artillery,  paratroops,  reconnaissance,  airmen,  communications
staff,  medics.  This was  all to be directed at the  enemy,  to  crush  and
destroy him.
     A smell of diesel, fires, urine and feces hung in  the air,  permeating
tasteless combat rations,  and  only the Kabul-baked bread, which had become
stale during  the march, did  not absorb the odors  of the gigantic military
force.
     The contours  of  upraised gun barrels, like masts at a ship graveyard,
rose against  the reddish copper  disc of the setting sun; trucks  displayed
their humps; helicopters,  blades drooping, settled  on the outskirts of the
force; darkness fell quickly, the tired army prepared for sleep.

     At  different spots  of this  maelstrom of men  and  machines,  general
Sorokin and senior lieutenant Sharagin sat  and smoked. The  silhouettes  of
armored vehicles were all around.

     <i>...everything  repeats  itself-that time  there  was  also  a  military
operation, the same mountains, spooks...</i>

     Scattered memories beckoned into the past, varied, prickly, painful and
untimely recollections washed over him as he sat smoking.

     -The  fuel  truck had just moved away  from the last chopper,  rumbling
over the  airport metal. On command, the paras who  had been resting  beside
the airstrip, moved in single file, bulky with equipment, machine guns slung
across their  chests. They entered the chopper  one by one, settling  in and
staring out of the windows.
     The Mi-8 moved out on to the strip, bobbing  around a  bit, feeling the
air, like a boxer warming up before a  fight. They rolled forward, gathering
speed as if not  intending to leave the ground, then  rose and veered to the
left.

     ... fields slipped by like  the squares on a chessboard which had  been
moved out of line for  some reason, upsetting  the  proper  order,  spots of
greenery flashed  by,  the  chopper's shadow  sped along underneath, growing
larger  or smaller, a village, a vineyard, a small river, the  chopper rose,
gaining altitude as it neared the foothills...

     <i>...  and the Mi-8 chopper, like a  big,  green  tadpole...which just  a
moment ago had been flying  on a parallel course, grim and ready for battle,
suddenly plummeted to earth...

     ...they took it out in full flight, like a duck shot at dawn...

     ...flare! There was an explosion and a burst of flame!..</i>

     Blackened  corpses,  scattered  throughout the  smoking remains of  the
chopper.

     <i>...the sweet smell of human flesh...</i>

     They burned alive. Nobody survived.

     <i>...there'll  be  many  who  won't  come  back from  this  operation-and
somebody will draw  up  figures: so many killed, so many wounded-and nothing
will change in the world...and some stupid  lieutenant will come  up  to the
fire and ask about the number of losses...</i>

     He had  come up to the fire then,  that  lieutenant  from the motorized
infantry,  started chattering about the heroic feats of the Bagram division,
then asked:
     "What are your losses?"
     "Five from the regiment today."
     "That's nothing!" responded the lieutenant proudly. "We've already  got
seventeen dead! Six went up on a mine only yesterday!"
     It was unclear, what he  had  been expecting.  Possibly he thought that
everyone  would think that his unit really knew  how to fight,  so  had been
sent into the very thick of the combat.
     Nobody said anything.

     After that mission  Sharagin bought  a bottle of  vodka in Kabul,  they
steamed themselves for  about  three hours, sweating out  tiredness  and bad
thoughts.
     "Sell your  last pants, but  have a drink after washing,"  said Zebrev,
slashing  Sharagin's already red back with a bunch of twigs. "Ulyu-ulyu! Who
was it said that? Peter the Great, that's who!"
     When  they raised  the traditional third toast, Sharagin caught himself
thinking that the "portrait gallery" of the dead had increased. The first in
the "gallery" was sergeant  Panasyuk, on whose bed an enlarged and therefore
murky  photograph had been  kept put up  a long time-the  last-The  last had
been-

     <i>...Nikolai- how did that happen? -why him?..</i>

     And Sharagin answered himself:

     <i>...his number came up...</i>

     The faces of the dead rose in his mind's eye - soldiers who had not had
time to become men, faces  of lieutenants, still  partly boys, faces of grim
captains - faces which formed the foundation, the backbone of the army.
     The  army lived at  the cost of soldiers, lieutenants and captains, and
sometimes even won. It was they who  bore the  weight of  the  army on their
shoulders.
     If  not  for  these  lieutenants, captains  and  simple  village  lads,
battered by the anxiety and unstable army life, by vodka, by the war itself,

     <i>-unpolished ignoramuses,  nothing in their heads, simple as the whistle
of a train-

     if not for them- the Soviet Army would have ceased to exist long ago-</i>

     Sharagin  stepped  on his cigarette butt, went  off  to  sleep. It  was
already totally dark.

     <i>...all that's in the past-shouldn't have come to mind-</i>

     He crawled  into his  sleeping  bag and  dropped  off to sleep quickly,
despite the  stirrings  of  the men all around, the far and close by noises,
the  swearing and  shouts,  which  seemed  to breathe  life  into  the camp,
creating  the  illusion  of  a  big  city, far  from the  war and  therefore
comforting.
     The general  was  not at all  tired and was  afraid that  he would have
trouble  getting to  sleep  and probably  for this  reason  drew  out  time,
questioned the soldier who acted as his driver in a kind and fatherly manner
about where he  was from, as though the general really cared, how  much time
he had left to serve, did he go on missions often? The soldier kept his eyes
lowered and pretended that he was touched  by the general's interest, though
experience showed that generals  often  have these moods, maybe because they
feel  guilty before  soldiers, maybe because they want to  seem better  than
they really are.
     The  soldier  knew that generals never  remember the  men's faces, that
there was  nothing to be expected from this passing general, that it did not
necessarily bode  well if someone suddenly started treating you like a human
being, especially generals or  other officers.  It is  better to answer them
clearly and concisely, stay on your guard because today a general or colonel
may be chatty and friendly, and the next morning let you have it in the neck
so you won't know what hit you.




        Chapter Ten. Ambush


     The valley became crowded. Crammed with people and weapons, it breathed
heavily on the threshold of battle. Maybe not everyone awoke that morning in
a fighting mood. Some were shaken by doubts - would fate be merciful or not,
but there was nothing  to  be done: a decision  had been made up top, orders
were  issued,  passed along  the  web  of command like a flock  of  sparrows
gathering  around  a  handful  of  crumbs,  orders  to brigades,  regiments,
companies, platoons.
     There  was no way back: someone omnipotent had thought up a battle, and
the men of war  went  out towards the unknown, just  as gladiators  had done
thousands of years ago in order to amuse a select public.
     The  air  forces  had roared  by. The aircraft  dropped their loads  of
dozens of bombs and returned to base, making way for the artillery. The guns
gave voice, methodically shelling quadrants as  if preparing a  potato field
for planting, turning, turning the earth over.
     The  officers in  the  command  supervisory  point,  including  general
Sorokin, saw a compelling  picture through  their  binoculars:  nose  dive -
explosion, another round - another explosion; pillars of dirt and smoke shot
skywards. It was frightening to imagine how the enemy must feel under such a
barrage; probably it was like being in hell; everything living or  inanimate
that was ringed on battle maps was being fragmented and destroyed, sentenced
to death by the movement of blue pencils wielded by headquarters staff.
     It was the artillery's  task to work over all the slopes,  villages and
patches of greenery, to hit and kill, so that nobody would survive, to strip
the  valley and beat down the tops  of the chain  of hills, iron them out so
that they  would  finally allow  the alien infantry unresisting passage  and
accept the hand of a new master.
     Sorokin recalled the recent  words of the  commander: "The troops won't
advance until the air  force and the artillery  don't wipe everyone  out  -I
don't need extra losses-"
     Everyone says that, thought Sorokin with a sigh, until there's pressure
from the top. It  is always worse if someone from the Moscow brass turns up.
They invariably demand quick results. So they can return all the  sooner and
give a  good  account. If  the  Minister  of  Defense arrives,  then  losses
increase several  times over.  That happened in  Pandjshir, in Kandaghar. In
this  case,  things weren't  going too  badly, "daddy"  was  conducting  the
operation  well, exerting no pressure on the  commander, everything had been
worked out in advance and the operation  was going to  plan.  Unfortunately,
thought Sorokin looking at the scene of  activity through his binoculars, it
is never possible to kill absolutely everyone. The spooks would go to ground
in caves, irrigation tunnels and sit out the bombardment, even vacuum  bombs
wouldn't affect them. There will be losses, inevitably there will be losses.
War is never without victims-
     The troops moved forward towards the foe. Like spawning trout, choppers
spread out  all over the place, disgorging handfuls of  men here and  there.
The  army  machine  began  to move,  rotate,  crawl in the  direction of the
spooks' fortified area, unit after unit.
     It  was always like  this in war since times immemorial; someone waited
in the train for the outcome of the battle, someone watched from  a distance
and someone fought and died. Senior lieutenant Sharagin figured among  those
who fought - his platoon  was  to be dropped into  the hills under  cover of
darkness, last preparations were being made, among the observers was general
Sorokin and a clutch of headquarters political  staff who were all bored but
managed  to   hide   their   inactivity  by   looking  important,   serious,
indispensable.
     A rotund  lieutenant  colonel was doing an especially good job  of this
subterfuge. He leafed through an exercise book, made notes from time to time
and,  in  order  to  impress  general  Sorokin, occasionally  turned to  his
colleagues and read out bits from some book  or other about the manners  and
mores of  the Pashtun  tribes, against whom  this whole  operation  had been
planned.
     "Brass on  the way!" cried a lean lieutenant colonel bounding up to the
observers, and then blanched slightly. "Sorry, comrade general, but a member
of the Military Council is on his way over here with a camera crew-"

     Many  generals like  to see everything snap into  action and  hear loud
commands the  moment they  appear  on  the horizon, otherwise they feel that
their high position is not  being recognized sufficiently. The member of the
Military  Council   belonged  to  this  type  of  generals.  Sorokin  seemed
relatively unaffected by such fussing.
     While the  television  people  were  recording  an interview  with  the
Military Council ace, Sorokin noted  that the  journalist was breathing very
heavily. In  the  newscasts on "Vremya" this  always seemed very impressive,
introducing a  note of urgency  as  though the  journalist had accompanied a
reconnaissance  patrol  up  the  mountainside  and  remained  alongside  the
outstanding fighters of the Limited Contingent in battle.
     I feel  like  I  want  to  be  in  the  picture, too,  thought  Sorokin
fleetingly.  The other  officers  probably got  in, fussing  around  in  the
background and unfolding maps,  pretending to  draw lines  on them,  holding
their  binoculars to  their eyes  and  turning this way and that.  The whole
country will see them.
     "Finished?" asked the Military Council general, running a hand over his
hair.  The  wind had not affected  his  hairdo during the interview. "Did it
come out well?"
     "You described everything perfectly," nodded the journalist.
     "So, what now?"
     "I'd like to get some footage of a platoon of paratroopers, remember we
talked about it? The last hours before battle, that sort of thing."
     "Hmmm-"  pondered  the member of  the  Military Council. The lieutenant
colonel  with  bushy  eyebrows looked eagerly  at  the  Mililtary Counselor,
trying  to  catch  his  eye,  his  whole  demeanor  expressing  devotion. He
succeeded. "Boris Alexandrovich, contact the paras. Who's in command there?"
     "I've just been speaking with Bogdanov."
     "Is he all set?"
     "Yes."
     "Boris  Alexandrovich will  escort  you. Once you're  through  filming,
we'll have dinner. I hope you'll join us too, Alexei Glebovich."
     "Yes, of course," assured the journalist.
     Sorokin inclined his head gratefully: "Thank you."
     The group of political officers returned to discussing the military and
political situation in the province  with  serious faces, putting on  a good
show for the general, analyzing the circumstances aloud.
     Pashtuns,  Tadjiks,  Khazars,  Uzbeks, Parcham,  Khalk,  Amin,  Taraki,
Babrak  Karmal,  Akhmad  Shah  Masood,  Gulbeddin  - everyone and their aunt
Ermyntrude's  here, thought  Sorokin,  what  a  devil's  brew!  Everything's
hopelessly  mixed up. How many memorandums had  been written, how  much he'd
read both in Moscow and here at the residence, but how on earth could you be
expected to remember it all?
     In any event, it's  a rather futile occupation to sit around discussing
the customs of tribes which have just been bombed.
     On  his way  to wash and have  a rest, the general spotted bare-chested
medics, bellies hanging over  their belts, playing  backgammon between  some
army  vehicles.  Soldiers  incapacitated  by  heat stroke lay  on stretchers
behind  them.  The  general  passed  by  without  stopping at this temporary
medical  point, or he would have seen how one of the medics finished a game,
went over to  the bodies on  the stretchers and dribbled a  thin trickle  of
water  on the  slack faces  of the  unconscious young soldiers, then hurried
back to the game to recoup his losses.

     <i>- Andersen is here, the  great storyteller-if  only you'd say the truth
for  once!  Back  in the Union  people watch  his  reports, believing  every
word-fables,  utter garbage! Hans Christian  Andersen would have envied your
ability to fantasize!-</i>

     The  officer  looked  suitably solemn as  he  shook  the  hand  of  the
journalist who was as fat as himself:
     "Lieutenant colonel Bogdanov."
     "Pleasure." The journalist threw a beady eye over the small parachutes,
which decorated the experimental uniform, as if making sure that the officer
was from  the  paratroops and not a substitute, then clapped  the lieutenant
colonel on  the shoulder. "Let's have a look at your  lot."  The  journalist
addressed generals with the official "you", but he didn't stand any ceremony
with colonels and lieutenant colonels, not considering them his  equals. The
familiar "thou" would do for them. "Where are your eagles, then?"

     <i>-Got to  get out  of  this-all I need  is to be  forced to make  stupid
comments for the whole country to hear-I'll be a laughing-stock-</i>

     "Comrade senior lieutenant!" called Bogdanov.
     Sharagin cursed silently.
     "No, his  face is too Slavic,"  pronounced  the journalist  decisively.
"And he's an officer. I'd like you to gather a group of ordinary soldiers of
various nationalities, to  show friendship of the  peoples, so to speak.  An
Armenian with an Azeri, say, someone from  one of the Baltic States, someone
from Central Asia."
     "Senior lieutenant Sharagin reporting as ordered!"
     "No, you can go," Bogdanov waved dismissal. "Where the hell can we find
so many  different faces? We  do  have  one Armenian.  Is  that right? And a
Lithuanian. Or is he a Latvian?"
     "A Latvian, comrade lieutenant colonel!"
     "What  if we  ask among the  neighboring  units? Or  do  you  need only
paratroopers?"  interrupted the  beetle-browed lieutenant  colonel escorting
the journalist.
     "Fine,  see  to  it!" agreed the journalist. "You'll sit in  the middle
with  your  paras," he instructed Bogdanov, pointing to  the spot  where  he
wanted him. "Make sure  we can see their  striped  undershirts. The "chocks"
can sit over here-.

     <i>- whew!-</i>

     sighed Sharagin.

     <i>- it's bad luck to be  photographed before  battle.  -and more so to be
filmed -even though Lena would have liked to see me on television.. but then
she would worry even more -</i>

     Sorokin enjoyed a  hearty  meal; they finished off a bottle  of  vodka,
exchanged courtesies with the television reporter  and  set off  for  a  few
hours'  rest.  After-dinner laziness  is inexorable. He  recalled fleetingly
that the  camera must have  caught him in  the background several times  and
thought how nice it would be for the family  to  see him on the evening news
even so. On this  thought he drifted off to sleep. When he woke up, he began
a mental comparison of the current operation and those which had taken place
at the start of the  Afghan  epic. For  some reason  this particular tour of
duty  in  Afghanistan, a short visit to the war,  kept turning  his thoughts
back to  the time Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan. He kept wondering
if there would  be anyone  to tell the tale  of the  40th Army, or would its
history remain classified as "top secret" forever? It hurt. Nobody would  be
able to recreate all the  events, all the  battles, he told himself. Because
there are so  many  untruths in the  papers  written and  sent to  Kabul and
Moscow. Just out of interest, he  decided, I'll read  up the reports on this
operation when I get back to Kabul and compare them with what I've seen with
my own eyes. For sure there'll be discrepancies.
     Had the reports sent to command from the division he had served in been
all  that much  different?  The  distortions began at company  and battalion
level. Reports were so often a far cry  from reality!  And the further,  the
worse. An account sent from the  division to army  headquarters it  would be
stated that  so  many rebels had been killed, so many  heavy-caliber machine
guns had been taken, so many rifles, a recoilless, but the physical trophies
presented would  be about  five rusty rifles which  looked suspiciously like
those taken a few months ago. Deception? By the looks of  it,  yes. Why seek
any  further  for  evidence  when  he,  Sorokin,  had  personally  witnessed
straight-out farces of this kind?  Yesterday a sharp lieutenant colonel, one
Bogdanov, had staged an attack and battle, reporting in against the sound of
the voices of his subordinates, laced with swear-words: "They're having a go
at  us!" He was even commended  by the divisional commander and  the overall
commander,  because he immediately ordered  return fire and claimed that his
lads had  taken out all the rebel firing positions, emerged without a single
loss from a  spook ambush and taken the positions they were aiming for right
on  time. But  only this morning,  Sorokin  heard  about  all  this from  an
eyewitness  from  that column.  It  emerged  that  nothing of  the  kind had
happened. No  spooks,  no ambush-So most likely nobody would ever write  the
truth about this  war.  And  if later anyone were  to attempt an analysis of
this operation,  they  would  come  across  an  incident  which  never  even
occurred.

     Several days  into  the operation, Sorokin was  summoned back to Kabul.
The  general was already  in the helicopter when an order came through  from
the  Military  Counselor to delay  the  flight. They  took  off  later  than
planned,  which annoyed the general intensely. The hospitable Counselor  had
spent all  this time plying  the  journalist with  food and drink, and  this
caused an hour's delay on departure.
     Two  people  loaded  "Andersen"  into the chopper  with difficulty.  He
reeked of alcohol. He was in no condition to think or even recognize anyone.
     "Greetings  to our  valiant officers! Let's go!" he managed to say, and
promptly began to snore.

     The shuravi moved deeper and deeper into the Afghan meat-grinder;

     <i>- we're hordes and hordes and hordes -</i>

     It  turned them over,  squashed  them, killed  them;  insatiable  death
demanded new victims; people resisted, but not always with success.

     After  debilitating  combat,  seizure  of  the heights  and  pursuit of
scattered spook groups, the battalion was moving  towards the  main camp, to
the armed group. Sharagin's platoon brought up the rear.

     <i>-only our soldiers can go scrambling around these mountains loaded down
with weapons  and rations for some  idea and ten coupons a month, fight like
hell  and  die  with  a  feeling  of  "duty   discharged"   in  this  damned
Afghanistan!- is  this  a platoon?  -a handful!- what's this for a  platoon,
fuck it?!  Twelve men-.the slopes  of  that  mountain look like an  unshaved
chin, scattered with bushes-I need a shave, too-</i>

     Sharagin  took the rifle off his shoulder into his hands. Now his short
shadow was armed, too, just in case.

     <i>- twelve  men  in  the platoon-so what?-it's been  worse-that's  right,
there were times when we'd scale these mountains and laugh with  joy that we
were at least ten-as  for now - a whole twelve!-we'll do a bit more fighting
yet!-an hour more,  and we should be out of here-fucking mountains! Time for
you to go home, Sharagin-</i>

     He wiped his forehead  and eyebrows with filthy hands. His hat had been
saturated  with sweat, but had now dried out and drooped sadly, white traces
of salt all over it.  The hat held back the sweat,  but trickles would still
get through and roll down sunburned face and neck.

     <i>-it's hard going, the  lungs can't handle it, and my troops  are tired,
like  dried fish-mouth dry, throat scratchy-we  can't stop, we've got to get
out of here-I don't like the feel of this ridge -</i>

     He cast a look at his men - they were moving along in file, still game.

     <i>-Savatyev's tired  of  lugging  that machine gun-.he carried a  wounded
comrade exactly  like that  once-Burkov's limping, probably rubbed his  feet
raw-Well, Gerasimov, this is  all a bit different to writing combat  reports
for  the   political  officer,   isn't  it?-Myshkovsky's  keeping   everyone
moving-hmmmm, wonder if it's mined here? Too late  now if it is, should have
thought  of  that sooner-now we'll  just have  to take our  chances-.but no,
nobody's been here-I hope-</i>

     Two walking in  front of him. Rear view of heads and backs. Dried sweat
stains  on the shirts. So what, he doesn't need to see their faces. He knows
all his men even from the back.

     <i>- you can see Sychev's cheeks sticking out even from the back, he'll be
a fatso in ten years' time, for  sure-Chirikov's pants are  flapping around,
he's round-shouldered and  sway-backed-"never  mind  my sunken chest, take a
look at the bend in my back"-

     - a shower, a good shower, that's what I need, a glass  of water  after
the  bath-house-I  don't  like  this  gorge-I'll  spend an  hour  under  the
shower-clean clothes-.there's got to  be  one of our positions somewhere, up
on that  crest, I think-quit  worrying,  there aren't any spooks here! There
can't be.  There shouldn't be,  what would spooks be doing  here?-we've left
them all behind-we killed all the spooks-we'll get down to the riverbed, and
it won't be far after that-I'm dying for a smoke-

     -damned sun's  broiling-hang in there, pal!-everything behind me  is in
order,  in front, too-I'm tired,  everyone's tired-.prickly  nervous  faces,
sour, drooping-.replacement, replacement soon-don't think about that!-a bare
ridge to  the left, I don't like  that ridge-where's  the promised  outpost?
-it's too  quiet-where  are our people?-I'll  buy a double  cassette player,
just  like Zebrev's-just as well  I've bought just about everything  for  my
girls-must  make a  trip into  town after  the  operation-what's he  talking
about, a break!-</i>

     "No stopping! Keep moving! Look lively!"

     <i>-  the sun, this blasted sun,  cold and snow would  be better than this
heat, and when you sleep in the mountains at night you freeze  and  wish  it
was warm, can't wait for the sun to rise-.

     -the  faster  we're out  of  here the better, away from trouble, rotten
place, none of our positions to be seen, we've got to get out of here-clouds
over the sun, the sun's gone- cloud shadow over the whole gorge-</i>

     More than  two kilometers away, company  commander  Zebrev stood in the
shelter  and through his  binoculars  saw small  figures  with matted greasy
beards. At this distance, they looked like toys.  Sure-footed men in turbans
and  Pashtun  hats  swarmed  over  the  crest  and  scattered  in  different
directions, taking  up  positions  behind huge boulders and waiting  for the
tail  platoon  to  appear;  Zebrev saw  Sharagin's platoon  walking into the
ambush, but there was nothing he could do-

     Machine  guns  chattered, the paras  fell like tin soldiers which a boy
playing at war tips over one after another, crying  out: "Bang-bang!  You're
dead! Lie there and don't move! And you're wounded!"
     Sharagin  fell  after the first shot and explosion.  He breathed in the
bitter taste  of the  explosion,  lost  his  hearing,  but  rallied quickly,
swallowed the bitterness and breathed deeply, as if surfacing after a  dive,
"sobered up."
     The flash of the explosion nearby  seemed to spear  through  his  eyes,
penetrate  his  brain,  pierce  his consciousness  more  painfully  than  an
injection, and receded just as quickly.
     He  thought that he had jumped himself, hiding from the streams of fire
raining down the slope, and it was partly true, he struck the sand and  felt
himself soaked in blood.
     However, he could not tell for sure how much time passed since he heard
the shots and  explosion,  when he became wounded,  threw  his backpack  and
sleeping bag off and saw  the  streams of  blood as he tried  to aim at  the
crest.
     The ambush struck him off course, snapped some inner regular mechanism,
time went out of kilter and began  to contract and expand in some mysterious
way.

     -Someone omnipotent  threw the dice and HIS, Sharagin's number came up.
But  that same  omnipotent  being seemed to hesitate at the last  moment, as
though distracted, or maybe the dice  fell  on their ribs and  remained like
that for a while before rolling over on the table, and this gave a few extra
moments of life, nothing compared to infinity-

     He evaluated  the situation at  once:  they'd made their move well, the
spooks, the entire platoon was  exposed. Sharagin tried to estimate how long
they  could hold out, how far  off  was the battalion, would they be able to
establish  contact with them  quickly over the  radio, and wondered bitterly
where the hell the supposed shelter really was.
     Junior sergeant Myshkovsky was the first to spot that the commander was
wounded. He ran, and Sharagin  could  see spurts of dust under the soldier's
feet. He did  not  recognize his own  voice, it was  as if someone else  was
shouting over the noise of the battle:
     "Back! Go back!"
     Myshkovsky stopped suddenly, as though he heard the order, jerked, spun
on the  spot and froze for a moment, unnaturally,  as if he was about to run
back,  away from the ambush, but then  changed his mind  and crashed to  the
ground.
     He fell face-forward on the sharp fangs of stones, one of which pierced
his eye; an outside  observer would have thought that it must be  unbearably
painful to fall face down on stones and lose an eye that way. But Myshkovsky
had felt nothing,  he was already dead on  his feet when a volley of bullets
stitched accurately, like a machine seam, through his heart and lungs.
     The panama fell  off his head and rolled away with its red star, hammer
and sickle.
     The  dead face, turned  towards his commanding officer,  seemed somehow
child-like, naively surprised, and at the same time seemed to be waiting for
a last order,  because his commander  had called something  to  him a moment
ago. Myshkovsky's remaining eye was frozen in the reflection of death.

     <i>- death chose him, I'm next-</i>

     As soon as Sharagin took his hand away from his neck, a thick stream of
blood, broad as a  finger,  spurted out  into  the dust, dyeing  surrounding
small  stones. He  licked his palm  as  if to make sure that  it was  really
blood,  and tasted its warm saltiness in  his mouth. He spat. Overcoming the
pain, which constricted his neck and burned, Sharagin  managed to take cover
from the spooks behind a rock.

     <i>- I need bandaging as quickly as possible -</i>

     He tore open a pack of dressing, but realized that he could not bandage
himself properly. Turning on his other side he called:
     "Sychev! Sychev!"
     Sychev could neither see nor hear the commander.

     <i>- my shoes are wet-why are they wet?-boots full of blood, I can move my
toes, but it's  slurping inside-my shirt's  all wet, sticky-the wound has to
be plugged!-</i>

     "Sychev!"
     The  soldier  was busy  reloading but finally  noticed that the platoon
leader was wounded, crawled up crabwise, keeping a frantic eye on the crest,
saw his friend lying behind Sharagin.
     "Myshara!"
     "He's dead," husked Sharagin in order not to lose time.
     "Sons of  bitches!" yelled  Sychev. He grabbed  his assault  rifle, but
Sharagin restrained him.
     "Right, comrade senior lieutenant, we'll have you bandaged in no time-"
     He tore the  rubber packaging of the dressing with his teeth, and began
bandaging Sharagin's throat. The dressings,  absorbing  blood like a sponge,
stuck together, allowing thin red trickles to pass through.
     'We've had it," said Sychev fearfully as a grenade exploded nearby, but
Sharagin's eyes snapped him back.
     He was about to say something when the sky above them seemed to quiver,
keel over sideways and turn upside-down-

     <i>-  if  the jugular  vein's  ripped,  it's  curtains, I'll be  dead in a
minute-</i>

     The bleeding won't stop!" yelled the soldier, cringing away from flying
bullets. "It's not stopping!" he shouted straight into Sharagin's ear.
     "The wrapping!  Plug it with  the bandage wrapping-"  guessed Sharagin.
The result was a huge bulge on his neck. The bleeding stopped. He turned his
head, and blood began to trickle again.
     Sychev listened to  Sharagin's rasping voice and passed on his  orders.
Did the other soldiers on the slope hear them?
     "Don't  waste ammunition!" cried Sychev at the top of his  voice.  "Hit
the crest  with  the heavy fire! Cover  the left flank!-Single  shots!-Don't
waste ammunition!-"
     Sharagin rolled over on  his stomach.  He  could  clearly  see  a spook
coming down the slope.

     <i>- about the same age as me -</i>

     He kept the  spook in his  sights. He had such a good aim that it would
be disappointing if someone else beat him to it and shot his "prey."

     <i>- time -</i>

     The  bullets  hit their  mark.  The spook fell, but  Sharagin  kept his
finger on the trigger because spook heads  were poking up to left and  right
from  behind  rocks. He had  used up  most of  his magazine  when his  rifle
jammed. Almost at the same moment, everything went black.

     <i>- this is it-I won't let them take me  alive, I'll wait until it quiets
down and then I'll blow myself up, when the spooks come closer I'll get them
too-</i>

     He pulled  a grenade out  of his vest,  clutching  it  in his hand like
something  infinitely precious, something that  would  bring instant release
from suffering and the horror of being taken prisoner.
     His  eyesight  returned. At  first everything  looked  foggy, but  then
cleared. He could see Sychev not far from himself. The  only thing he  could
not understand was  why  had  everyone  stopped shooting?  Could  they  have
possibly driven off the spooks?

     <i>-I  must be  deaf! It can't  have finished  just  like this-such things
don't happen-</i>

     In fact,  the  battle  had  not stopped, it was  just that  the  senior
lieutenant couldn't  hear a thing. He  saw  Sychev's  face twisting, saw his
rifle move, cartridge cases falling to the ground, but he could hear neither
voices nor shots.
     The soft whiskers on the grenade straightened  out. Sharagin pressed it
to his heart with his right hand.

     <i>- pain, I didn't notice it immediately -</i>

     Pain. It took possession timidly,

     <i>- like a fellow-passenger in a crowded bus-</i>


     Crept up  carefully, as if wanting  to nestle up: only later, acquiring
strength,  it  changed  into  something brighter,  anxiety-provoking -  into
crimson, the color of blood  issuing from a wound; it deepened, it took full
control, became unbearable and wiped away,

     <i>-the way unnecessary words are wiped off a blackboard-</i>

     wiped  away  the  bright  colors  and  thoughts, feelings,  diving into
infinity, filling every moment with blindingly burning light-.
     "We need contact," husked  Sharagin. "Call up the artillery-Get them to
fire on us!"

     The first shell fell accurately on the crest. Sharagin did not hear the
explosion,  but  felt the  earth shudder. He peered out from  his concealing
rock in  order to check  where  the hit had been made. The fire was precise,
one shell after another neatly, as if someone was adjusting each one.

     <i>-  luck!-we  called them to fire on us, but they messed up as usual-but
how did  they manage  to  establish  contact  and pass on the coordinates so
quickly? I must have blacked out for a while-.did I?</i>

     Sharagin had no way  of knowing that the company commander had followed
the entire  battle  through his field glasses. The position had been put up,
but it was  at least  two kilometers away. Therefore it was  Zebrev who gave
the coordinates  and corrected the trajectories.  He  saw the  spooks coming
down the left slope.  They would have gone around  the  platoon soon and hit
them directly.
     Sharagin heard the last explosions on the crest and volleys of gunfire:
his hearing returned as suddenly as it had disappeared. He felt as though  a
tidal wave had  washed  over  him,  returning him  to  the world of familiar
sounds.
     While the men dealt with the dead and wounded, Sharagin put the grenade
back in  his vest and began  to check out the rifle, which had failed him so
badly. He became immersed in this task, as if there was nothing better to do
than get it in working order, as though he was not wounded, as though  there
were no waves of pain which rose and receded.
     "Comrade senior lieutenant, Myshkovsky and  Chirikov  are dead-five men
wounded, Savateyev and Burkov heavily," reported someone.

     <i>- yes, yes-sonafabitch, why did you let me down like that?-</i>

     "Comrade senior lieutenant-"

     Sharagin jerked the breech of the rifle. With every jerk, the  dressing
on his  neck slipped  and  blood began to run. He grabbed a rock and hit the
breech with all his strength. The breech moved. Blood flowed faster. He felt
warm streams of it running down his body under his shirt.
     "Comrade senior lieutenant-"
     Sharagin choked on a cough, saw sparks in his eyes.
     "Oleg!" called Zebrev. "Can you hear me?"

     <i>- this is really it, I'm going -</i>

     He must have  been lying without movement  for  a long  time. Blood ran
from his  ears  and nose. Soldiers surrounded  him, almost  blocking out the
sky.
     He understood  that he was dead, that they knew it  too and were saying
farewell to their commander.
     The deep sky  seemed to draw him, race to meet him,  persuading  him to
break away from all earthly cares, to  soar into the endless heavenly  space
and dissolve in it forever.
     And the last thing he was to see before he died was a plane high above,
and  he felt  glad that  it  was an Il-76, which was possibly carrying  away
people who had survived the war.

     <i>- somebody was lucky-</i>

     Or perhaps it was returning from Tashkent, filled with new recruits and
men coming back from leave.
     But  at the last moment he  hesitated,  because  looking  at the  plane
intently he saw that it was a "Black Tulip."

     <i>- what a prosaic end!-</i>

     However, something held the spirit of life fast inside him, brought him
back to the moment when Zebrev came up. Or did it just seem to Sharagin that
he was alive?

     <i>- people don't come back from the  next world-it's a delusion-.how much
time has passed?-</i>

     "Hang on, don't move!" said Zebrev. "We'll carry you!"
     "I can mange alone! Help me up!"
     "Move  out!"  ordered  Zebrev,  and  the  soldiers   from  the  platoon
accompanying him began to gather up the dead and wounded.
     Sharagin found his balance, pushed helping hands aside:
     "I can manage!"

     <i>-I  have  to  walk,  but  there's no  strength  left-like  a  half-dead
cockroach-legs shaking-cough-</i>

     Only now did Sharagin feel that the bullet

     <i>- or a fragment -</i>

     was lodged in his throat.

     <i>-like a foreign body inside, a tiny lump of lead-</i>

     "Comrade  senior  lieutenant,  let me  give  you  a shot  of Promedol,"
offered Sychev.
     "Negative!"

     <i>- they give me a shot, I'll start to drift-</i>

     "Give it to the wounded."
     Somehow remaining on his  feet, leaning heavily  on his rifle, Sharagin
descended to the stream. There was a flat area ahead, where a chopper  could
land.
     He walked  more than a kilometer, second  to last in the line. In front
of him,  soldiers  dragged two corpses  in  ground  sheets  and  the moaning
Burkov.
     He stopped several times, asked  for his flask to  be  filled, greedily
drinking the icy water of  the mountain  stream. It was  like  water from  a
sacred spring - it gave strength and froze and numbed the pain in his neck.
     At one  stage he staggered,  but  managed  to regain  his  balance  and
stopped. He wanted to jump into  the water, let it  carry him  away into the
unknown, escape from the tragedy, which had occurred.

     <i>-if only I can hang on, not  black out, not lose consciousness, not  to
succumb to self-pity-I'll walk to the end-I've got to get the platoon out of
here!-</i>

     "If I fall, catch me," he said to a soldier next to  him. He could  not
see the soldier's face through the murk in his eyes.

     Stinging  particles  of dust  whipped up by the  chopper's  blades flew
everywhere, scratching  and biting  Sharagin's face, which  was  already raw
from  a week in the mountains.  Probably his sunburned skin  could be peeled
away from his face like a sock.
     They carried Myshkovsky past, one remaining eye staring.

     <i>-an empty,  dead look on a cold, immobile face-when  a fish lies in the
bottom of a boat and flaps its tail helplessly, its glazing eye sees the sky
above, and it probably thinks that it is seeing the deep blue of the sea-you
spend a day  fishing, looking at your catch  from time  to  time-and feel no
pity,  no  fellow-suffering-what's  happening  to me?-the sun dries out  the
fish's scales, the fish becomes hard, wooden-</i>

     "Take them into the tail section!"
     Chirikov followed Myshkovsky. While  the bodies were being dragged into
the chopper, legs first, the  canvas fell back, exposing the dead  soldier's
fair head and blood-caked face.  Sharagin surged forward,  pulled the canvas
shut.
     "Now the wounded!"
     "That's it!" called Zebrev, helping  Sharagin clamber inside. "Hang on,
Oleg!  Here,  take these." A  string of lapis-lazuli worry  beads lay on his
palm. "One of the spooks dropped these. He won't be needing them any more-"
     Exhausted,  furious,  half-deaf, Sharagin settled  on  the  floor, back
against  the  wall of the fuselage. Pain swelled to the volume  of a roaring
chopper, even more, perhaps, and filled  all  the  available space, seen and
unseen.
     The blades dragged the chopper up into the air.
     A pilot poked his head out from the cockpit:
     "Hey, guys!  Somebody man the  machine gun! This is bad territory! Pray
God we can get out!"

     <i>-Where's my rifle? How will I be able to shoot back?</i>

     "Tighten my tourniquet, comrade senior lieu-" groaned private Burkov.
     Sharagin  shook  himself  and got  on  to  his  knees  to  tighten  the
tourniquet around Burkov's machine  gun smashed leg.  And  immediately  felt
that he was choking. Not enough oxygen at this altitude. The bandages seemed
to constrict his throat. He fell forward on Burkov.
     The darkness that engulfed him immediately was not frightening. He gave
way to it effortlessly, knowing that he could not resist. He had no strength
to fight it.

     <i>-and     then-to     sleep,     perchance     to     dream-who     said
that?-Shakespeare?-can't  remember-it would be a fine thing to go to Heaven,
but my sins won't let me-</i>

     He  wanted  desperately to  understand  what was  going  on,  what  was
happening  with his mind,  but  he  could find nothing to cling to,  nothing
certain to stop him from sliding into the chasm; the past disappeared all at
once, he  did not dare suspect a future,  while the present was  filled with
silence - not a rustle, not a sound, not even a distant hint of life.
     Then after a million years of all-pervading silence, something  came to
life, and he could have sworn that there was now a  presence in the silence,
probably  the presence of  Death,  which  was  feeling around,  seeking  the
bleeding, pain-wracked human being who huddled  in  a  damp corner,  hiding,
unprepared, unwilling to die.

     <i>-that's all-the end-</i>

     A tidal wave  of noise  seemed to  engulf  him, a universe of  terrible
noise; he tumbled into those dark  depths deeper and deeper,  then hung, got
stuck,  unable  to distinguish separate sounds: there  was just a monotonous
roar drilling through his skull.  Sharagin did not  know whether he had gone
blind,  or just had his  eyes  shut, or  whether the spark of  hope that had
still  glimmered  a  second, a minute,  an  hour  ago  that  he would  live,
flickered out and left him  here, in the empty darkness, in the waiting room
of Death.