by John Mason
Returning her glance, Tarasov feels sadness and regret over the lies he has to tell her. But for once, he can tell the truth.
“I have some unfinished business down there… in the south.”
Then he switches on the TV so as to direct his mother’s attention to a Brazilian soap opera with Russian voice-over, before she can ask more questions that could only lead to him telling more lies. He joins her on the sofa and stares at the screen, sipping the hot coffee and trying to switch off his exhausted mind.
Alejandro, eu não quero mais viver assim!
Alekhandro, ja bolshe ne mogu tak zhit.
Too many melodramatic exclamations sound from the TV. They are made even worse by the male speaker emotionlessly dubbing the actress’ theatrical sighs. Frustrated, Tarasov gets up, takes his suitcase and walks into his room, closing the door.
He steps to the shelves, moving his fingers along the rows of books with a movement that is almost a caress. It occurs to him to take a book for the long flight but a half-empty bottle of vodka draws his attention. It still stands on the table, just as he left it when he was here almost half a year ago. He opens it and takes a swig. Tarasov looks around in the cramped room holding the memories of a life he has almost forgotten by now. In the corner a guitar stands, which he never learned how to play. He moves his fingers across the transparent plastic boxes holding his compact discs. To his surprise, they are not dusty – his mother must keep the room neat and clean, maybe waiting for the day when he comes back for good. Aside the big pile of old, yellowed issues of Guns Magazine, an outdated desktop computer stands on the table. Next to it, another plastic box holds more compact disks.
Dammit, he thinks, I wouldn’t mind playing Doom for old times’ sake, if I wasn’t so tired. Or Baldur’s Gate…Degtyarev doesn’t know but that’s how I learned English – translating all those endless conversations with a dictionary. And Guns Magazine.
A cartridge casing lies besides the keyboard. Tarasov takes and studies it with a sad smile. It is all that remains of the first live cartridge he ever fired.
It’s been a long way, old friend.
Holding the olive-green shell in his hand, the boy’s words come to his mind. What he said about the army was exactly what he had felt when arriving at the Zone, three years ago, as a lieutenant. When he reported for duty, he had been hoping for an exciting and dangerous assignment. Khaletskiy, then still a major, ordered him to gather twenty bottles of vodka instead. When he’d set out to follow this order, bitching and grumbling under his breath, he still hadn’t known that it would take him a week and a trip all the way to the abandoned industrial site of Rostok, fighting off mutants and hostile Stalkers all the way, before eventually sneaking into the Stalker base disguised as a Stalker himself, wearing the light suit taken from a rookie’s corpse after the idiot was crazy enough to open fire on him. He had developed a liking for clandestine missions – there were enough corpses bearing a faction’s characteristic armor, from hand-made Stalker suits to Freedom’s more sophisticated body armor and the old OMON tactical suits worn by mercenaries. It was not the thrill of sneaking he liked but the relief of moving around freely, without unnecessary kills. He realized soon enough that the worst enemy was not the humans who tried to survive in the Zone, but the creatures who had once been human but hadn’t survived as such: zombified civilians, Stalkers and soldiers turned into mindless killing machines by the Brain Scorcher; controllers, like the one who made the weakest-minded member of his squad kill the lieutenant; burers - ugly, fat dwarves, creating anti-gravity fields that repelled bullets; snorks - jumping at their prey like predatory frogs and tearing them to pieces. Animal-like mutants, even if dreadful at first sight, were at least predictable.
Luckily for him, he was away on another intelligence-gathering mission when die-hard Stalkers captured Major Khaletskiy and the Spetsnaz raid to free him turned into a disaster. Khaletskiy eventually escaped and Tarasov’s next mission was to eliminate the Stalker leader responsible for the military’s bloody nose. The assassination brought him a promotion – and the first doubts about who his real enemy was. What he already knew by then about Major Khaletskiy’s shady dealings, achieved through the blood of soldiers and Stalkers alike, caused the first cracks to appear in his hitherto unshakeable sense of duty.
Then the day came when Strelok, the Marked One, opened up the path to the CNPP’s secrets. Friend and foe had rushed to the nuclear power plant to see if the legend of the Wish Granter were true, mercilessly killing each other en route. Freedom ambushing Duty in the Red Forest; Duty storming Freedom’s base at the abandoned military warehouses. And all factions and Loners bogged down in a fight against the Monolith, the mysterious and fanatic protectors of the Wish Granter.
The military wanted to have its share, too. Khaletskiy had bought himself a step up in ranks and was replaced by Major Kuznetsov, but neither of them was in the cramped compartments of the helicopters and BTR personnel carriers that stormed the CNPP. As always, it was the grunts that had to remove the obstacles between the generals and anything that would make them rich – artifacts, information, whatever. And just like always, most of them died. By then, Tarasov had become a squad leader. His men survived the onslaught brought down upon them by the fanatic, but heavily armed and well-organized Monolithians. In the aftermath of the operation, Kuznetsov became rich – soldiers were obliged to hand over any artifacts they found, and there were many artifacts around the CNPP. Tarasov was made captain; an empty pat on the back for services rendered.
For the army, obtaining control over the CNPP was like candle light to a moth. The Holy Grail of the generals. Again, an operation was launched and again it failed. Holed up in Pripyat and prepared to make a last stand against Monolith forces and mercenaries, help came from where the beset Spetsnaz had least expected: Degtyarev had turned up with a rag-tag band of Stalkers, whom he almost opened fire upon when they emerged from a secret tunnel leading to Pripyat. Later Strelok himself showed up, alone, but carrying a treasure trove of information about the best-kept secrets of the Zone. When he was rewarded and promoted to major after Operation Fairway, Tarasov couldn’t care less if that was for bravery under enemy fire or for catching a bullet for Strelok, the keeper of all secrets. All that counted was that he got a week’s leave.
And then it happened that I met her, he thinks looking at a photograph pinned to the wall. He puts the shell back into its place.
The photograph, not of very good quality and obviously taken with a mobile phone in a mirror, shows a pretty, blonde woman with blue eyes and full lips.
“You sent me one single photograph and even on that, you were making that stupid duck face,” Tarasov grumbles to the photograph. He tears it from the wall, then crumples and tosses it under the neatly made bed. “Slag… I prefer brunettes anyway.”
Everything looks to him as if he would be trespassing in a stranger’s room – he might have survived everything that the Zone threw at him, but the young man who once dreamed and loved here did not.
Tarasov opens his suitcase and takes out the PDA. Waiting for it to start up, he takes his old school map from the shelf. It opens up almost on its own at the two-page map of the USSR. One line, drawn by a faded pen stroke, connects Kiev with a place in Afghanistan, still marked on the outdated map as ‘Democratic Republic of Afghanistan”. In the margin, distances and names of places in childish handwriting remind him of a childish plan to go there.
I wanted to hitch-hike but didn’t get past the first militiaman.
When he turns the pages to find a closer map of the area, a black and white photograph falls out.
Picking it up from the floor and looking at it, Tarasov’s sight becomes hazy. It shows three young soldiers in ragged fatigue leggings, wearing stone-age flak vests over their striped tee-shirts. With a broad smile that flashes bad teeth, they lean against an armored vehicle. The soldier in the middle, wearing a tank driver’s black headwear, looks like a younger version of himself: a lea
n face with sunken cheeks, dark eyes and a smirk. Only his moustache and long hair tells how long ago the picture was taken.
He turns the photograph over to read the few words on the back, the handwriting looking oddly old-fashioned: With love from Kunduz, October 1987. Yuriy and the gang.
“That damned operator has the mind of a controller,” he murmurs to himself, putting the photograph in his pocket. “He mentioned my father to motivate me into this insane mission.”
With a muted beep, his PDA signals its readiness. Tarasov opens the map, switches to 3D mode and scrolls all the way from Rusanovka to Afghanistan. A smile comes to his face when he compares the capabilities of his PDA to the yellowed school map. The state of the art combat gear waiting for him in Termez comes to Tarasov’s mind, and his smile hardens.
Things will be different now. And I swear by God - I’ll make the dushmans suffer.
He hears his mother knocking on the door.
“Misha! Come, dinner is ready!”
“I’m coming,” he reluctantly replies. “Just a minute!”
“I hope you didn’t start playing video games again… you will never change, sinok!”
Flash in the Sky
Termez Air Base, Uzbekistan, 20 September 2014 06:00:00 UZT
Termez… Shit. I’m still only in Termez... Every time I think I’ll wake up back in the Zone.
Local time in Termez is just three hours ahead of Kiev but Tarasov’s inner clock hasn’t adjusted itself yet. Switching off the alarm on his PDA, he glumly reckons that he has to go on a mission today.
Covered in sweat, he rises from his bunk bed. Colonel Kuznetsov assigned him one of the dozen or so metal containers where officers unfortunate enough to miss out on a place in the cooler quarters could sleep. The air conditioning had gone off in the middle of the night. Now, yawning and naked, Tarasov feels like he is sitting in a steam bath. To awake his muscles, Tarasov performs a few Systema movements – kicking, punching, throwing imagined enemies, crushing imagined skulls, grasping imagined hands and suffocating imagined throats. By the time he finishes the close-combat exercise, a healthy amount of adrenaline is rushing through his veins.
Colonel Kuznetsov had been waiting for him by the landing strip when Tarasov arrived on the previous afternoon. Kuznetsov even tried to be decent, concealing his disdain, except during the mission briefing when he presented Tarasov as a plain paratrooper officer “with some experience in Pripyat”. Reminding Tarasov of his worst mission ever was obviously intended as a punch below the belt. The soldiers seemed self-confident enough, bolstered by their previous peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and Africa, but most of them had no idea of what they were up against now.
If he was concerned about his troopers, the new exoskeleton proved perfect. His backpack carrying medikits, bandages, personal hygiene kit, socks, tee-shirts, underwear, combat meal packs, anti-radiation drugs, his ammunition web holding spare magazines, fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades and the combat belt with the army-issue PDA, first aid kit, combat knife and side arm seemed almost weightless once supported by the titanium-alloy bodyframe. Even his new Val assault rifle, strapped over the armor plate covering his shoulder, felt as light as a plastic toy.
But now, after cleaning himself up in a shared shower facility nearby and finishing a ration of oat meals for breakfast, he is less eager to get into the suit. He knows it will feel hotter than a Burner anomaly in there.
War is hell, Tarasov thinks with a sigh and grins over his own sarcasm whilst preparing the exoskeleton.
Ten minutes later he reports for duty in the operation room. Colonel Kuznetsov doesn’t care to return his salute. Instead he looks down at Tarasov’s exoskeleton, his eyes wide as if he finds something funny.
“Do you think Termez is about to be overrun by mutants?” Kuznetsov says by way of greeting. “Remove that suit at once. There’s nothing but mosquitoes and butterflies around here. What the hell are you afraid of?”
“I thought I was going on a mission,” Tarasov replies, unsuccessfully trying to suppress his resentment with a tone of formality. “And with your permission, Colonel, I would like to inspect the men now.”
“No need for that, Major. I inspected them already and made all arrangements while you were still sleeping. Let’s go.”
Kuznetsov’s voice is full of mockery, as if Tarasov had not shown up punctually to the second. He also talks loud enough for everyone in the operation room to detect the disdain in his words and tone. The only thing going for Tarasov is that there is no alcohol on Kuznetsov’s breath.
Could it be that he takes his duty seriously after all, and his remarks about my exo were just because he’s got too used to the safety here?
“What are you, deaf?” Kuznetsov snaps impatiently. A few computer operators look up from their screens, but quickly drop their heads again. “Move!”
“Yes, sir.” Baffled, Tarasov walks down to the runway with Kuznetsov.
“Doesn’t that shrieking noise from your gear drive you mad?”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t hear my exo making any noise.”
“Maybe you still have Zone dirt in your ears. The metal joints shriek like a dentist’s drill. You better remove it and have it fixed before you go into battle.”
Tarasov cannot understand. The exoskeleton does not make any noise apart from the buzz of its kinetic motors, and that is so faint that only its wearer could hear it.
The two helicopters are already prepared for take-off. The two squads stand in front of them, neatly lined up in formation. Tarasov doesn’t believe his eyes: the soldiers are not wearing their exoskeletons, bullet-proof suits, or helmets, only their summer fatigue and berets. He feels embarrassed in his exoskeleton as if overdressed for a party.
“Summer fatigues?” he asks gripping the Kuznetsov’s arm. “Do you think they are going to the Victory Day parade?”
“Calm down, Major,” Kuznetsov coldly replies, freeing his arm from Tarasov’s grasp. “First: the mission will be a piece of cake. Second: it’s goddamn hot. They will have enough time to slip into their gear later.”
“I can’t believe this. You must order them into their battle gear!”
“The hell I will. And now I’m going to hold a nice speech.” Kuznetsov glances at his Rolex. “You are already three minutes behind schedule. Now shut up or I’ll report your insubordination.”
“Don’t forget that I will also file a report,” hisses Tarasov but Kuznetsov ignores him and starts addressing the men.
“At ease, at ease… Soldiers, you are about to set out on a dangerous mission. Many of you might have looked forward to this day but I assure you, it won’t be anything like you have experienced before. Remember your training. Keep your weapons clean. Follow your orders. You set out to save the lives of fellow Ukrainian citizens who have been performing important scientific tasks!”
The colonel’s speech would impress Tarasov if he didn’t already know it by heart. It is one of the standard motivational speeches taught at the military academy. One only needs to exchange the place and mission objectives. He finds it pathetic to use this randomized text for soldiers embarking on a mission like this.
“…by successfully completing this mission, you will bring great honor to your unit and our Ukrainian motherland. And now, your new commander also has something to say. I suppose it will be about how hot he feels in that boiler.”
Tarasov sees the grins on a few soldiers’ faces. Quickly, he prays for an opportunity to lead Kuznetsov deep into the Zone and throw him into an anomaly.
He thinks for a second. Then he shouts out.
“Desantniki! Smirno!”
Their heavy boots thud on the ground as the paratroopers stand at attention. Instead of improvising a speech, the major walks up to the soldiers and inspects their ranks with slow steps, looking each man into the eyes. He is an impressive sight in full combat gear, but it is not his martial appearance that impresses the paratroopers. Tarasov is unaware
of how much the Zone has marked him. He only sees that as he passes them by, the soldiers’ faces harden with respect - even fear. No one dares to return his gaze except Sparrow One’s praporshchik, a warrant officer, who will be his second in command. The soldier with a thick grey moustache is the last in the row. When their eyes meet, Tarasov bows his head in a barely noticeable nod. Already standing at full attention, the soldier squares his broad shoulders even more, a relaxed, jovial smile still lurking in his steel-blue eyes.
“Well,” Tarasov asks quietly, glancing down at the nametag on the uniform, “are you ready, praporshchik Zotkin?”
“Ready to go, komandir.”
Zotkin’s reply is quiet but Tarasov immediately knows that if treated with respect, or at least asked politely, this man will follow him into hell. The other squad leader, a young and nervous-looking master sergeant, doesn’t impress him much.
Walking back to Kuznetsov, he cannot refrain from darting a murderous glance in the colonel’s direction. Kuznetsov avoids his eyes. Tarasov turns back towards the ranks and shouts out again.
“Desantniki! Are you ready?”
“Ready to go, komandir!” reply the soldiers in a steely choir of confidence.
“Let’s go then!”
While the squads hurry to the helicopters, Tarasov turns to the colonel.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Kuznetsov.”
“Much better than you would believe. Now you better go before you miss your flight, Major,” the colonel says contemptuously, pronouncing ‘major’ like a swear-word. “Impressive speech you gave, by the way.”
“It comes from doing an officer’s job. One day you should try it, Colonel.”
Without salutation, Tarasov turns around and hurries to the gunship. It’s hot inside, with the helicopter having baked in the sun the whole morning.
“Switch on that ventilator, praporshchik,” he barks taking his place on the grey bench. “I can’t believe Kuznetsov let you embark like this. You don’t even have your bloody helmets with you!”