by Rick Acker
He spoke of his concerns to a fellow officer one night over a tin cup of “vodka,” the generic term for the wide variety of home-brewed—and occasionally poisonous—alcoholic beverages the soldiers concocted in illicit stills. The man nodded knowingly. He was a veteran, nearly forty-five years old—an ancient age for an active-duty special-forces soldier in the field. He assured Elbek that every soldier who saw sustained combat confronted the same question. Those who made it found an answer that worked for them.
“What’s it all about?” the old vet ruminated. “When you’re fighting, it’s about the man next to you. He’s your brother and you fight for him. When you’re not fighting, it’s about good friends, good times, good women, and bad vodka.” He raised his cup to this impromptu toast and drained it.
“That’s it?” Elbek asked as his companion poured another drink. “That’s enough?”
“It better be,” the man replied, “because that’s all there is.”
But it wasn’t enough for Elbek. He’d gone back to his bunk later that night and had lain awake until dawn.
His mission the next day was routine, but he remembered it afterward as one of the crucial turning points in his life. Bands of dukhs had been harassing convoys traveling through a mountain pass ten kilometers away. The Soviets sent two armed Mi-8 Hip helicopters and a top-of-the-line Mi-24 Hind to blast the rebel positions, but a small group of rebels at the top of a nearby peak had fired down on the helicopters with Arrow missiles provided by the Americans. These were not as accurate as the Stingers that would come later in the war, and all had missed their targets. But in trying to evade the missiles, one of the Mi-8s had collided with the Mi-24 and both had crashed, killing twelve men and destroying valuable military hardware.
The air was too thin for a helicopter attack on the peak, which would have been dangerous in any event because the fighters presumably had more missiles. It was Elbek’s job to take a small group up the mountain and destroy the enemy position.
The climb had been difficult but straightforward. There was only one approach up the mountain, and it was exposed to Soviet artillery fire and therefore unguarded by the dukhs. They had set booby traps, of course, but Elbek and his men had enough field experience to spot and avoid these.
They stopped about fifty meters from the summit and sent two scouts ahead to pinpoint the location of the enemy position. The scouts returned twenty minutes later and reported that the Afghans were camping in a small cave just below the summit. They had set a guard, but he was poorly positioned and could be killed without alerting the others.
Elbek had handled similar situations before. He had the sniper in his squad shoot the guard from a great-enough distance to avoid the sound of the gunshot carrying to the camp. Then the Soviets crept to within twenty meters of the cave. They’d seen no one, but a tiny wisp of smoke curling up from the top of the cave mouth betrayed the presence of the fighters within. They set up two light machine-gun positions covering the entrance to the cave while the scouts searched for the emergency exit from the cave—if a cave didn’t naturally have two openings, the dukhs would virtually always dig a second one. When the scouts signaled that they had found it, Elbek had given the order for the attack to begin.
His men clustered around the cave mouth on either side and threw grenades into it. Five seconds later, a second group dropped grenades into the bolt hole the scouts had found. The machine guns then fired a burst into the cave mouth. The instant they fell silent, the men went in, checking for any booby traps that the grenades and gunfire hadn’t triggered.
Inside, they found five dead rebels and one who was wounded. They also found a cache of six Arrow missiles and launchers, which they destroyed with rifle butts and grenades. They brought the injured man to Elbek, who questioned him in a mix of Pashto and Russian. The man had sat in grim silence, staring at his interrogator with hard, fearless eyes.
Elbek could see that it would take considerable time and effort to pry information out of this man, and his youth and tattered clothes made it unlikely that he knew anything that would make it worth the trouble. He took out his pistol and pointed it at the man’s head, but still the dukh’s face showed no trace of fear.
Elbek paused. “I’m about to kill you. Why aren’t you afraid?”
“You Russians call us ‘spirits.’ This is truth, but you do not understand,” the young man said defiantly in broken Russian. “In my heart I have spirit of a true Muslim. Death is nothing. It is only the door into Paradise. You have no spirit. You are just an animal with a gun.”
The dukh spat at Elbek, who promptly put a bullet through his brain.
The sun had been quickly sliding down to the horizon, so they’d done a cursory search for anything of value and then scrambled down through the thin, cold mountain air.
They returned to a celebratory welcome at their base. There had been much backslapping and congratulating, but when it was over, Elbek was haunted by the young Afghan’s indomitable resolve, condescending eyes, and piercing words.
The memory of the incident on the mountaintop grew stronger rather than weaker as the weeks went by, and Elbek found himself subconsciously almost envying the dead dukh. Though nominally a Muslim by virtue of his birth as a Chechen, he had never taken his faith nor his nationality seriously. Now he did. He began to spend all his free time studying books on Chechen history and a dog-eared Russian translation of the Koran that he bought on the black market.
His worried commanding officer took him aside and warned him that reports of his off-duty activities were bound to make their way into his personnel file. He knew that Elbek meant no harm, but others would almost certainly view his choice of interests and reading material as subversive. That would damage his career and could even lead to a court martial and prison. Elbek had to make a choice, the commander had said, between his bright future in the Red Army and the little stack of books he kept in his footlocker. Elbek had thanked his CO for his concern and said he would make the right decision. The next day, he had taken his books and vanished into the Afghan countryside.
Sergei had every confidence that Elena would do a fine job of hunting for his attacker—just as he was certain she would do good work on all the other case files piled on her desk. But she might only be able to spend four or five hours on his case over the course of a week. That wasn’t enough for Sergei’s peace of mind. Besides, he had his own ideas on how to handle the investigation.
He started by making a tour of his contacts on the edges of the Russian underworld. None of them admitted knowing anything about ex-Spetsnaz assassins in the Chicago area. Sergei questioned them closely and found their denials believable—which surprised him. Even if this guy was working for non-Russians, his presence wouldn’t go entirely unnoticed in the Russian community. Maybe Sergei’s quarry wasn’t Spetsnaz after all, but then, who was he? He had no US criminal record, which would suggest he was a recent immigrant. But the Spetsnaz-style knife probably at least meant that he was Russian, though Sergei had few other clues.
He decided to spend the evening at the shooting range at the Shooter’s Palace, a large gun distributor and retailer on Chicago’s southwest side. The facilities weren’t particularly good or close, but Sergei thought it would be worth the trip. When he arrived, the big parking lot was nearly full, and he had to park fifty yards from the store’s entrance.
It was hard to believe that fifteen years ago this had been a struggling little family machine shop and lumber warehouse. The machine-shop owner, a man named George Hanson, had discovered that he could make a lot more money selling guns than he could turning out hubcaps and rebuilt Camaro engines. Within five years, the front half of the warehouse had become a vast showroom doing a brisk business in handguns and assault rifles. The Palace was popular in part because Hanson and his sons sold guns from a wide variety of manufacturers—from cheap, zinc-alloy Saturday-night specials priced under a hundred dollars to t
op-of-the-line sniper rifles selling for twenty times that amount. Other gun stores boasted at least as wide an assortment, but what made the Palace so popular was the Hansons’ willingness to operate on the very edge of the law—and sometimes beyond it. It was a testament to their luck and savvy that none of them had ever been indicted.
Sergei walked around the crowded showroom, jotting things down in a notebook while smiling and greeting other patrons, few of whom met his eye or smiled back. The customers were a mixed bag of people who shouldn’t be buying guns: half a dozen obvious gangbangers, lots of teenagers, a low-level Russian gangster, a couple of convicted felons whom Sergei recognized from his days at the Bureau, and a number of unsavory types who looked like they should be arrested on general principles.
The crowd of buyers thinned out noticeably after fifteen minutes, so Sergei headed back to the shooting range. He paid his fee and set up in the only free spot. After a few minutes, he noticed a couple of other shooters talking and glancing his way. He put down his gun long enough to make a couple of notes, but otherwise ignored the men. They left, and, as they walked out, they stopped to talk to another marksman, who also walked out. Ten minutes later, the range was nearly empty.
“Can I help you?” a loud voice addressed Sergei from behind. He took off his ear protectors and turned around. George Hanson was glaring at him, his thick arms folded across his broad chest above an equally broad paunch. His thick, iron-gray flattop was so similar to Sergei’s that the detective wondered if they used the same barber.
“What was that?”
“I said, can I help you?” Hanson repeated with just a hint of impatience.
“I think you can,” Sergei said with a smile. “You sold a Glock 23 to a man named Eddie Thompson. You recently got an ATF trace request on it.”
Hanson shrugged. “I sell a lot of guns. I get a lot of trace requests. I don’t remember all of them.”
“You might remember Eddie, though. He bought forty-six of your guns over an eight-day period.”
“A lot of our customers are collectors.”
“Collectors?” Sergei scoffed. “This guy bought twelve identical Glock pistols, fourteen Uzis and AK-47s, and twenty assorted Saturday-night specials. You really think he’s a collector? Did it occur to you that he might possibly be a straw purchaser?” Sergei had seen it all too often—lowlifes with clean criminal records who would buy guns on behalf of others (generally felons and minors) who could not legally own firearms.
“Hey, if the government doesn’t want people buying more than one gun, they can pass a law, all right? It’s not my job to go sticking my nose into my customers’ business.”
“But it is my job,” responded Sergei. “That Glock wound up in the hands of someone who broke into my apartment three nights ago and tried to kill me. He got away, and I need you to help me find him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I don’t see how I can help. You’ve already got the name of the guy who bought the gun from my store. There’s not much else I can do for you.”
“The police and the FBI haven’t been able to find him. Maybe you could help. And maybe you could talk to some people who might know who he sold the gun to.”
Hanson shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t stick my nose into my customers’ business. I respect their privacy.”
“Okay, no problem.” Sergei had expected this. The Hansons’ no-questions-asked policy was a big part of their success. “I’ll just be in here every night looking for Eddie Thompson and practicing my shooting.”
The gun-shop owner clearly didn’t like that idea. “No offense, but some of my customers get a little nervous around FBI agents, even if they’re retired. You’re bad for business.”
“I don’t know,” replied Sergei. “When I walked in, business seemed pretty good for a school night.”
Hanson’s face reddened. “If you’re so scared of this guy, why don’t you hire some protection?”
Sergei picked up his pistol, put in a fresh mag of ammunition, and turned to the row of targets. He swept his gun across them, firing rapidly. When he was finished, he turned back to Hanson. “Take a look at those targets and you’ll see that I’m my own protection. Eddie’s been selling guns to bad people, George, people who might wind up working for your enemies one day. If they scare me, they should terrify you.”
Elbek had not walked an easy road after he deserted in Afghanistan. He’d spent long years studying the Koran in a stern, monastic madrasa, followed by longer years of fighting. He had taken up arms with Muslim militias in the agonizing civil wars that broke out in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. As those conflicts had drawn to a close, war had flared in Chechnya and he’d hurried home to join in the fighting.
He had returned to Chechnya as the perfect warrior. He knew Russian equipment and tactics intimately from his time in the Spetsnaz. He knew how to fight a guerrilla war from his years in Afghanistan. And, perhaps most important, he had developed the spirit that the dukh had spoken of on that mountaintop. Elbek felt in the very depths of his soul that it was Allah’s will that he should free his country from the crushing fist of Russian oppression.
The war had gone well for a time. For two years, the freedom fighters had ambushed convoys, bombed barracks, and launched hit-and-run attacks against vulnerable outposts. They fought no significant battles, but they imposed a high cost in blood and treasure on the Russians occupying their homeland. Diplomatic pressure also increased with each new atrocity the Russian Army perpetrated against civilians or prisoners of war. Gradually, the Russians withdrew, first from the virtually ungovernable mountains in the south, and then finally from all of Chechnya.
There was no true peace, but there was a grudging and watchful cease-fire. Elbek, who had risen to the rank of general, lived a happy and peaceful life for the next three years. He married the daughter of a tribal chieftain and retired to a rambling chateau in the mountainous southern border region. Every morning he woke to a majestic view of the Argun River valley below. There he used his reputation and connections to set up a prosperous smuggling operation.
But the war was not over. It was merely dormant, like a deadly disease that abates temporarily and lets its victim hope for recovery before it suddenly reappears to kill him. Troubles gathered beyond Chechnya’s borders, and rumors of war reached even Elbek’s remote mountain home. Rebels in neighboring Dagestan attacked Russian interests and soldiers. They were inspired by their cousins’ success in Chechnya and discreetly aided by the Chechens, though the government in Grozny denied it. The Russian eyes watching Chechnya had grown daily more baleful as the unrest in Dagestan festered and spread.
After a terrorist bombing in Moscow was blamed on Chechen rebels, Russian armored columns punched back into Chechnya with brutal force. The Chechens fought well, but they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned. And this time the Russians did not seem to care what human or diplomatic price they paid for their victory.
It was over in a matter of months. The first tanks rolled into Chechnya in September 1999, and by February 2000 the Russians had pounded the capital city of Grozny into submission.
By the end of April, Elbek’s house was a smoking pile of rubble that served as a burial cairn for his wife and infant son. He never learned why the Russians had destroyed his home and family. Was it because they knew he lived there? Or was it simply because his chateau was a large building in an area where resistance was strong? Not that the answers mattered greatly.
Throughout the summer of 2000, he and a gradually dwindling band of fighters had kept up the fight in the sparsely settled wilderness of the Argun Valley, hiding from the helicopter gun ships and picking off careless Russians when they could. They spent the long, hot days resting and planning in carefully concealed caves. During the short nights, they harassed the invaders with sniper attacks and small ambushes.
Elbek had not slept well during those m
onths, despite his increasing exhaustion. He laid awake near the mouths of the caves, gathering news on a small shortwave radio and listening for the thup-thup of the ubiquitous Mi-8 helicopters or the occasional scream of an Su-25 Grach ground-attack jet.
“If you don’t sleep,” a voice told him one afternoon, “you won’t be able to fight.”
He had turned to find his Uncle Hamzat sitting in the shadows two meters away, a fatherly smile on his weathered face. He was nearly sixty, but he had the strength and stamina of a man half his age. A shrewd, well-read, and deeply religious man, he had been one of Elbek’s most trusted advisors since the younger man had returned from Afghanistan.
Elbek switched off the radio to talk to his uncle. “It doesn’t matter whether I sleep or not. The end will be the same.”
“The war goes badly then?”
“It’s hardly even a war anymore,” he said in a low voice. “The Russians control the whole country. There are some units like ours that keep fighting, but not many. I haven’t told the men, because it would only hurt morale.”
Hamzat nodded. “They guess more than you know. But even if they didn’t, we all know that the Russians are stronger than we are. We can hurt them, but we can’t beat them.”
“So it always is with Islam and its enemies,” Elbek said bitterly. “We are always weak and divided, while they are strong and united.”
“Of course,” Hamzat had replied. “That’s their plan, and it has worked for centuries. They attack one small part of Islam and crush it while they keep the rest in turmoil. The Americans and Jews are masters of this art. Look at how they split off the Arab nations one by one with peace treaties and bribes. If one of them dares to stand up like Iraq did, they pay off the corrupt leaders of the others to do nothing or even help while they smash down the upstart. They know that we are stronger than them if only we unite.”