by SR Jones
He’s not here. Thank God.
I creep upstairs and brush my teeth, and then I go to my room. I’m laid on my bed thinking about the woman and what she said. She said she was basically a spoil of war. The man owned her, she said. It’s the first time I’ve realized that money means you can own more than things. You can own people.
Soft sobs drift to me through the wall from the room next door, and my stomach dips. Oh, no, Mama is crying, which means she’s been beaten.
I get up and go to her door, knocking before I go in.
Mama is curled up on the bed, her legs tucked as far in as she can get them with her belly in the way, and she’s crying into the pillow.
“Did Father hit you?” I ask, not bothering to pretend I don’t know what he does sometimes. She’s heavily pregnant, and it could be dangerous for the baby if he did.
Mama lifts her face to me, and it’s red and blotchy with a bruise on her cheekbone that can only have come from that bastard. “Your father is gone,” she says.
Her words don’t make sense. Gone? Where? Why?
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“He’s gone,” she screams at me. “Gone, and left his useless, senile mother here. Now I have three mouths to feed once the baby comes and no money to do so. We’re all going to starve.”
She begins to cry loudly, and I think I’m going to be sick.
My father has gone? Left us. Not only his wife, but his child, his unborn child, and his mother. What sort of man does that? What sort of man walks out on his family knowing they can’t provide for themselves without him?
A pathetic, weak man that’s who. I stare at my mother, and a hatred so deep it’s corrosive wells up inside me. I’ll never be like him; he sickens me. No matter what I do in my life, I’ll never be so weak I leave my children to fend for themselves.
Mama lifts her face to me again. “Come here, Konstantin. Come here.”
I go to her, and she looks deep into my eyes, her own red and puffy. “You have to look after us. You’re the man of the house now.”
My childhood ended at thirteen-years-old. It ended in that room as I held my mother and swore to myself I wouldn’t let her down.
Chapter Two
The Soldier
Chechnya
During the second Chechnyan campaign.
This stinking trench has been my home for two days. Fucking damp, cold, and full of piss and shit at one end. We have no choice but to stay; we move, we’re dead.
I look to Semyon to my right, and he’s half asleep, head lolling, before he jerks awake, only to nod back to sleep again.
To my left is Andrius. He’s fast asleep. Fucker can get shut-eye in the most extreme situations.
You don’t get much more extreme than this.
Mortar, rockets, and ordnance re-exploding all over the place. We’ve been trapped here for so long, I can’t feel my legs.
The last we heard before we had to kill the radio for fear of being discovered, a small group of special forces were headed our way. We aren’t meant to be here, officially. This isn’t a full-scale war anymore, and most of the fighting for our side is done by local pro-Russian troops. There are still plenty of special forces sent from Russia to infiltrate the worst terrorist cells and carry out assassinations.
This one went wrong, and now the three of us are bunkered down in a stinking trench, waiting for help that might never come.
“Konstantin,” Semyon whispers. “How much water do you have left?”
I check my flask and grimace. “Not enough.”
“They don’t get here soon, we’ll have to make a decision. Either we run for it, or we fight, but we can’t stay in this fucking hole for much longer.”
“They’ll be here,” Andrius says with a sleepy yawn.
“And if not?” I’m not going to die in this trench like an animal, surrounded by my own piss, dehydrated and frozen.
“They will, but if not, we have two options, as Semyon says.” Andrius yawns again.
Andrius is cold. On the surface. He’s not underneath, though. Fucker has a moral code. It’s why we work well together. I’ve seen my fellow soldiers kill unarmed women and children, and I’ve seen the other side do the same. War is a dirty business. Somehow, despite being able to put a bullet right between the enemy’s eyes and not flinch, Andrius has maintained a certain moral rigidity. There are lines he will never cross. Me either; although, my lines are a little more blurred than those rigid moral codes of Andrius’.
Semyon, I’m not sure about.
He's not been with us all that long, and he’s a bit of a hothead. I’m surprised he’s managed to stay hidden and quiet so far.
If we run, we risk being shot to pieces in the open field beyond this mud-drenched channel we’re hiding in. Even at night, there’s a high risk due to the floodlights sweeping over the field regularly and the snipers on the buildings. In the day, we’d have less chance.
Then there’s the mines to think about. IEDs, and even bear and fox traps.
If we fight, we go over the top, into the town in front of us, and will probably be blown to pieces before we get more than thirty steps from this hole we’re quite literally in.
“I say we fight if they don’t come,” Semyon says. “Take some of those fuckers out with us.”
“Normally, I’d agree,” Andrius answers. “But the place is crawling with women and children, and they will likely be collateral damage if we take that option.”
“We are Spetsnaz,” Semyon spits. “We do not run away.”
“We do what it takes to stay alive and keep civilian casualties as low as possible.” Andrius sighs and shakes his head. “It’s always the new ones who are so blood thirsty,” he says to me.
Semyon grunts and ignores us for a few minutes.
I close my eyes and then jerk them awake, when I recall it’s my turn to watch. The gun in my hands is heavy, but suddenly it lightens.
I turn to see Andrius taking it from me.
“Rest,” he says. “I am good to keep watch for a few hours.”
I crawl to the farthest corner of our putrid home for the last few days and curl in on myself, trying to preserve some bodily warmth. My eyes close, and to the background noise of war and chaos, I drift away.
My mind goes back to the day when I was thirteen-years-old and I found out my father had left. I think about it a lot recently. It was the day that set me on this path.
I’d had to step up yet had no idea how. At first, I’d simply turned to stealing. I stole food mostly, but sometimes clothes, for the baby, from other people’s washing lines. Then I learned how to make vodka from an old man who I ran errands for. It was dangerous work. Get it wrong and you could blow yourself sky high, or blind yourself if you drank the fore shot. Still, I learned, and soon I became the go-to kid for miles around if you wanted homemade, cheap-ass vodka. It kept the family from starving, but things were hard. Every day my hatred for my father grew and grew. And it never went away.
These days, I daydream about him having gone east, so that I can come up against him in this God forsaken war and blow his fucking brains out.
Mother never recovered from him leaving, and I’m sure her sorrow contributed to the cancer that ate away at her, unknown and unseen until the day she collapsed, only to die three weeks later. My sister was weak from the start, a sickly child who never thrived.
I blame my father for that too.
God, I hate that fucking bastard. I wonder if he’s dead and hope not. I want to be the one to kill him.
My eyes droop to comforting thoughts of blowing my old man’s brains out, and the sounds all around me drift away.
“Konstantin.”
I jerk awake, and for a moment I panic. There’s a hand over my mouth, but then I realize it’s Andrius, and my breathing calms. “They’re here. Tanks are entering the town from the west now. Local pro-Russian battalion, but we have to assume the plan is still the same—that our unit is going to come for us
from the east, while the battalion take fire for us and at least give some cover. You ready?”
I nod, waking up in an instant, as is the way when you’re in the middle of war.
“I might get to go home and see my wife and baby.” Semyon grins, his teeth flashing in the dark afternoon light. “You two sad fuckers will have to make do with the tender arms of the whore you pay.”
I laugh because I’ve never paid in my life. I’m fucking catnip to the ladies, and I know it. Add in what I do for a living, and women are lining up for me. Semyon is distinctly average. Medium build, average height, and pale, with ears that stick out too far. No wonder he got married and knocked her up; men like him, they need a wife. Men like me? Like Andrius? We can drown ourselves in pussy; no need to tie ourselves to it too.
Andrius, he’s handsome. I’ve seen women throw themselves at him. He seems to get the adrenaline junkies and the war ghouls who want to hear all about the action he’s seen, which is ironic because he hates all that shit. It’s his eyes. Freaky as fuck. They’re pale and almost ghostly, unless you piss him off, and then they turn the color of storm clouds. His eyes get him a lot of attention.
Me? When I scrub up, I don’t look bad, but it’s my body that gets me the ladies. Six-foot-four, and two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle. I get a lot of looks from simply walking down the street in a fitted shirt, or a t-shirt.
That’s not why I hone my body. I do so because I’ll never allow myself to be weak or a victim again. Not after what my father did to me and my mother. I started to lift when I was a teenager, and I’ve kept it up ever since.
I think some of it always goes back to that moment in the woods and what that woman said. She talked about being a winner because in this life there are only winners and losers. To the victor go the spoils.
I’m determined to be the victor, always.
I trained for the special forces because Russian special forces training is the toughest in the world. No matter what those stupid Brits claim about their SAS, we Spetsnaz are the best. I wanted to be the elite, best of the best. Next for me is making my way financially. Why I care so much I don’t know; there’s only me now, no one left to impress, but I’m hungry for it.
It’s another thing Andrius and I both have in common. We have no family. His were taken from him by strangers, and mine were taken from me by the one person supposed to protect us.
My sister died aged eleven. Pneumonia, the doctor said. Claimed that the damp and squalor we lived in wouldn’t have helped. There was only me then, in the shitty, dilapidated cabin we’d called home.
I took my belongings after she’d died and burned the place to the ground. Now, I have only photographs to remind me of the people killed by my father’s weakness.
The only family I have remaining are the brothers in arms I’ve made in the Spetsnaz. People like Andrius.
No matter what happens after this fucking war ends, Andrius and I will always be brothers under the skin, in a way Semyon will never understand. We’ve a bond forged in fire, but it is cemented in the detritus of our similar backgrounds and experiences.
He’s Ukrainian but with Russian family and citizenship. I’m Russian, but my mother’s family are Ukrainian, and I hold dual citizenship. We speak both languages, and both speak English. We will kill you if you threaten our lives, the lives of those we love, or the country we serve. We don’t kill for fun.
Neither of us has to swagger, or shout about our place in this world; we’ve earned it with blood. Ours, and our families and loved ones.
Yes, whatever happens after we get out of this hellhole, I will always have a special place for Andrius in my heart.
The sound of gunfire to our left has Semyon popping his head over the edge of the trench.
Fucking idiot! What is he doing? I reach to pull him back, but as I grab his collar, his head explodes like a watermelon dropped on the floor.
Skull, hair, and blood splatter my face.
For a moment, I can’t move or even breathe. It’s like the cold shock of water when you dive into a freshwater lake. Then I come back online and gasp in air.
“Fucking fuck,” Andrius shouts.
No choice now. Our cover is blown, so we must fight. A group of soldiers firing at the snipers on the buildings are heading our way, and I think they’re on our side. They’re certainly coming from the right direction, as per Andrius’ instructions.
The high-pitched whistle of bullets whizzing past, and the crack of the mini sonic-boom they make has me crouching low and checking my weapon.
Andrius has already grabbed Semyon’s AK. I look at the young man briefly. Hell, I call him young, but myself and Andrius aren’t much older; we’ve simply lived a lot more. Semyon was wet behind the ears and itching for a fight. Well, he got it.
I wipe his brains and blood from my face with a grimace and stare at Andrius, who is checking his ammo.
“On three?” I say as something hits the dirt right by my head. Motherfuck, this is getting too close.
“Yeah, on three. Fire at the buildings and run.”
“In a straight line?” I quip.
Andrius looks at me, his pale eyes ghostly in this dim light, and grins. “Of course, straight line all the way.”
We both put our head gear on and pat ourselves down, making sure we have everything. We’re wearing body armor, head protection, and we’re armed. There is fire coming at the fuckers trying to kill us from the east, and cover from the tanks rumbling into town from the west. Yes, we’ve got to run across an open field, but the light is on our side. It’s not dark yet, but it’s gloomy.
“The gloaming is upon us, and it is our friend,” Andrius, the poetic bastard, says.
He bangs my helmet once with his fist, and I nod and look at him. He holds his hand up and counts off three, and we’re moving.
We sling our bodies over the top, keeping low as we crouch-run toward the open field. Both of us turn as one when we reach the broken fence to the field and aim our weapons at the buildings lining this patch of what was once a grazing field for livestock, but is now more like a wasteland. We fire, and the bullets light up as they zip away from us, hopefully finding some targets.
We’re firing blind, but it gives us some cover. The men behind us cover up their firing, and we both stop shooting, turn, and run like hell.
We don’t go in a straight line, but we don’t waste time zigzagging all over the place. We make the odd sharp turn to throw off our shooters, but mostly we simply go hell for leather to cover the ground in front of us.
The joking about the zigzag versus straight line debate is an old one between us. Andrius maintains that unless you’ve got an expert sniper aimed at you, you’re better running in a straight line as fast as you can; particularly if you’re wearing body armor. I maintain it’s better to zigzag. We developed the half and half approach one day when yet again fleeing for our lives. Andrius jokes if he gets hit doing this, he wants, “He zigged when he should have zagged” on his gravestone.
We reach the cover of the tree line, and I throw myself into the dense foliage.
My heart is pounding, my lungs are burning, but I’m happy as fuck to be out of the damn shitty little hole.
“Took you long enough,” Andrius deadpans to the men.
One of the men steps forward, and it’s a senior commander. “Where’s the other one? We were told there were three of you.”
“Head shot,” Andrius says.
The commander winces. “Shit. Let’s get you two home at least.”
Home. Moscow. The best city in the world. A city of beautiful women, cold vodka, and buildings to make your soul sing. I clap Andrius on the back.
“When we get home, friend, what do you say we find ourselves a bottle of vodka, a hot meal, and an even hotter woman.”
“Fuck yes,” one of the other soldiers says, interrupting our conversation. “I can’t wait to be balls deep in pussy.”
“You want to be balls deep in anything, yo
u’ll have to pay for it; ugly mug like yours,” one of the other men shoots back.
And so it begins. Banter. Relieved laughter. I join in, but I’m acutely aware that the brains of my dead comrade are still matted in my hair, and that tonight a woman will find out her husband will never return home.
War, it makes fools of us all in the end.
Chapter Three
The businessman
Moscow-Five years ago
“It’s worth way more than that.” The man is staring at me, outrage etched on his ruddy face.
I’ve offered to buy his shitty company, and he doesn’t like the deal on the table. Well, screw him. I’m not a damn charity.
I sip at my iced water and stare him out.
I’m in a foul mood because my sperm donor has been in contact again.
The first time Moscow Today did a segment on me, he crawled out of the woodwork pretending he cared about me. I told Annika, my assistant, to bar his calls, and so now he’s sending me letters. Shitty, pathetic letters.
I want to kill him, but these days, alongside the Bratva shit, I run a lot of legit business, and murdering my own father might bring a little too much attention, even for me. Plus, I quite like the control it takes for me not to kill him. It’s like a perverse game I play with myself. There’s an animal inside of me, the soldier never really having gone away, and every day I put on a suit and play dress up as a civilized human being. It’s a test, a game, a way to pass the time. And anyway, I’m just a soldier of a different sort now. Instead of shooting my enemies, I take them apart financially and keep the spoils.
Still, when it comes to my father, I can’t let him get away with no punishment at all. That just won’t do.
I’ve sent one of my henchmen, Vasily, to give him a warning. He’s to leave me and mine alone. Right about now, Vasily will be giving my old man a slapping he won’t forget. I told him not to break any bones—after all, the old bastard is still blood—but to hurt him badly.