by John Mason
Tarasov frowns. Veteran Duty fighters. We wouldn’t stand a chance against them… not in this condition.
“No fooling around, men,” he tells his soldiers and raises his arms to signal his peaceful intentions.
“Now look at this miserable bunch of boyevoychiks,” the Stalker leader says with a mocking laugh. Then he turns to Tarasov. “What the hell are you here for, assface?”
Assface?
Tarasov is sure he has heard this insult before, spoken in the same disdainful tone. However, the exoskeleton’s visor hides the leader’s face and the voice, distorted by the gas mask, is not recognizable.
“Captain Bone,” he replies, “even if we’re on strictly neutral terms, I was hoping to receive a slightly warmer welcome from a Duty officer. I am Major Tarasov from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and these are my men. We have no hostile intentions and need your help.”
“I would sooner put my dick into a snork’s mouth than help you.” Bone looks at his gunmen. “This is not the Old Zone and we are not bound to Duty or their alliance to the military. We are our own masters here and don’t want any interference in our affairs.”
“We are not here to bother your business. We have many wounded who need medical assistance. Let us rest for one day, then we’ll leave you in peace and never come back.”
“Even if you paid for it, and you don’t look like someone who could, we haven’t enough resources to patch you up. You are not welcome here. Go back to the desert and get eaten by jackals, I don’t care a damn.”
“Stalkers! Enjoy…”
Tarasov considers his less than favorable options and is about to order his men to charge down the arrogant captain and his troopers, choosing to die a soldier’s death when the looped message in the loudspeaker is interrupted by a cheerful voice.
“Yo, Captain! Why dontcha let’em in? They must be thirsty like a bloodsucker with no necks around. It would be good for me business!”
“Ashot, you bozo,” Bone snorts into his intercom, “stay out of this. It’s adults talking here.”
A trooper with telecommunications gear on his back comes up running to Bone and holds a speaker to his commander. “It’s the Outpost, captain.”
Bone listens to the message and orders his men to lower their weapons.
“A solution has just come up. We have a few men stationed to the south. They are about to be attacked by dushmans. You take your men and help them defend their position. Survivors will be permitted to enter our base.”
The Major gives Bone a scornful grin and darts a freezing glance at Zlenko, who is about to shout something back, his face burning with anger.
“I understand that Duty needs assistance from us professionals, but with half of my men barely able to walk we wouldn’t be of much use now. I heard you have a doctor in the base. Have him patch up our wounded and maybe we’ll give you a leg up.”
“You overestimate your bargaining position, Major.” Arrogance still lingers in Bone’s voice but he seems less sure of his ground. “All right, here’s the deal. Your wounded can stay. Those who are still able to lift a rifle go to the Outpost at Hill 1865.” Tarasov wants to interrupt but Bone has not finished yet. “Of course, you’ll leave those exoskeletons here, together with half your remaining ammo. Don’t look so angry, Major: you’re making a valuable contribution to the future defense of Bagram!”
Tarasov bites his lips. What he just heard is equal to a death sentence. If I ever get back to the Zone, I’ll lead a strike force against Duty’s headquarters and burn it to the ground. I swear it.
“You bastard. Why don’t you shoot us right here, right now? A damned big victory for you, with half of my men wounded!”
“Ah yes, that’s the cocky major speaking now. To answer you properly: first, we save our ammo for mutants and dushmans and don’t waste it on cockroaches like you. Second, I am actually being generous. You can survive at the Outpost after all… your chances are a hundred to one. Go for it!”
“Even a brainless Dutier should see that we won’t get there in time!”
“You won’t have to walk on your stinkers,” Bone replies and turns to one of his troopers. “Corporal Glazunov, go and prepare the truck.”
Barely able to swallow his anger, Tarasov turns to the sergeant. “Collect half the ammo from the men. Line up those still capable to fight.”
“But…”
“Do as you were ordered.” Tarasov’s eyes flash like a lightning as he glares at the young sergeant. Then he adds in a more forgiving voice: “We don’t have much of a choice here, son… I’ve been concerned that one way or the other, we’d have to win over the Stalkers’ hearts and minds. Don’t worry.”
Zlenko looks at him with a mixture of anxiety and trust. “It’s their hearts and minds, but our blood and guts… We’ll do as ordered, sir.”
“And what about me and Danya, captain?” The Stalker has been watching over their conversation without a word, but now sounds genuinely scared.
“Squirrel, you and your buddy made a mistake by leading these bastards to our base. Both of you will join your new friends.”
“But we belong here! You can’t do this to us!”
Bone ignores the guide’s desperate pleas. A heavy engine starts up behind the wall and a huge URAL truck appears. Thick armor plates cover the driver’s compartment and manned by two of Bone’s guards, a double-barreled anti-aircraft gun rotates on the vehicle’s back as it slowly rolls out through the gate.
“It will take you to the Outpost… and if you’re lucky, back here tomorrow morning,” Bone laughs. “What happens in between is not my concern. Get onto that truck and leave my base. Move! What are you, a statue?”
“I’ll see you again, Bone.”
“Forget that attitude, Major. Remember, your wounded are now with me!”
Climbing up to the truck, the only thing Tarasov can think about is if he hasn’t made another mistake by calling at Bagram.
My men are worn out, I have no contact with Termez or Degtyarev… I’m completely on my own now. What the hell was I supposed to do?
Still thinking about what a difference one more night of fighting could make, he looks out at the desert and the arid mountains behind. All of his soldiers have exhaustion etched on their faces, with the exception of Ilchenko who is doing his best to clean his machine gun as the rocking truck jostles along the bumpy road.
They could be worse off, Tarasov thinks. They could be spending days in the godforsaken ruins of an underground laboratory at Yantar, or getting marooned on a lookout tower in the Swamp with their ammo wasted and hordes of mutants crawling beneath. Or maybe facing trigger-happy mercenaries while reconnoitering Rostok with an AK that keeps jamming and should have been cast off a decade ago.
Tarasov has never been abroad, nor has he ever served outside of the Zone. Now the wide, open space around him and the clear sky, shining with a deep blue he has never seen before, fills him with exhilaration.
“You seem happy,” Zlenko says, trying to make himself heard over the laboring engine and the wind.
Tarasov frowns, realizing that the sergeant has a point. His strange exhilaration is similar to what he had felt when arriving back in the Zone after a leave, like feeling the familiar smell of one’s home or the perfume of a lover not seen for a long time. He feels sorry for his soldiers who have never experienced the Zone but, looking over the vast plain, Tarasov wonders if this land doesn’t offer much more than the area around the CNPP could. The Zone was so small compared to this vast wilderness. And with this thought, he realizes that his exhilaration comes from just this expectation – the promise of a new Zone, with new secrets awaiting discovery. But all this would need too much explanation, and Tarasov decides to direct Zlenko’s attention elsewhere.
“Tonight, we will teach the dushmans a lesson!” he replies. “It is payback time!”
“Sure! But I hope one day we’ll also get that bastard Captain Bone by his balls!”
“Maybe, if the
mission is complete. We’re a rescue team, not assassins.”
He can’t hear Zlenko’s reply over the truck’s roaring engine noise and squeaking suspension as it speeds down the uneven road, but he sees the expression on the other man’s face. It’s enough to tell him what Zlenko’s thoughts are. The major turns away and, taking his binoculars from their case, studies the hill in front of them.
The rise is slightly lower than the ridge on the other side of the road but still offers a perfect view over the area and the narrow pass where the road enters the plains leading to the ruins of Kabul. His Geiger counter, ticking at survivable values around Bagram, now climbs up to more dangerous levels. The truck rolls on, along a broken road that crosses over undulating sand riddled with vehicle wrecks and shell craters before it starts to climb up the hill, spiraling all the way to the top.
Last Men Standing
Hill 1865, 19:50:47 AFT
The truck eventually arrives at the small fortification perched on the hill and halts, the engine still idling. Tarasov watches his soldiers as they get off. Sergeant Zlenko, Kamensky and Bondarchuk with AKMs; Lobov the medic with an AKSU; Kravchuk with his Dragunov; Ilchenko with his PKM; Vasilyev carries only a Fort pistol, all he can manage since he is loaded down with the heavy AGS-17 grenade launcher… They are quite well equipped. Even so, he can only hope it will be enough. He jumps out of the truck and looks around.
The hilltop position looks well-fortified at first sight, but his heart sinks when he sees the two dozen rag-tag Stalkers, some of them having no better weapons than obsolete shotguns.
This will be a tough battle, he reflects with a sigh.
Tarasov had hoped that at least the truck would stay with them to give support from its massive anti-aircraft gun, but Captain Bone’s driver had barely given his men enough time to dismount before turning the vehicle heading back to towards the Stalker base.
“Looks like this place has seen many battles before,” Zlenko says surveying the hilltop.
Tarasov nods in agreement. The fire base would be easy to defend if he had more men. Surrounded to the north and south with trenches shaped in the form of two semi-circles, a bunker stands in the middle of the perimeter. Tarasov sees no windows or vents on the low concrete walls, but its top is fortified with sandbags, just like the smaller trench running between the bunker and the outer defenses.
He climbs up to its top. Looking around he can well understand how strategic this position is. The view is breathtaking: through his binoculars, Tarasov can still make out the hazy mountains around the Salang Pass to the north and the scattered ruins of Bagram. Just like after reaching the exit of the Salang tunnel where he first saw the dreadful beauty of this wilderness, its vastness fills him with awe. In his exhilaration, Tarasov even ignores the gloomy horizon to the south where flashes of lightning appear, their thunder rolling over the flat landscape like a foreboding echo under a sky turning to violent shades of red and purple. Beyond the far hills that screen the ruins of Kabul, gloomy clouds cover the sky like frozen waves of an eternal storm. The road runs below, between the hill and a higher mountain to the south-west, before it enters the sandy plains and disappears in the haze and swirling clouds of sand.
“All right, let’s get down to business,” he says, clapping his hands and turning to Zlenko. “Let the sniper and the grenade launcher set up here. Tell them to keep their heads low. I’ll be damned if we don’t receive sniper fire from that mountain beyond the road. We’ll need as many soldiers as possible in the trenches. I’ll get a Stalker to give Vasilyev a hand with the AGS.”
“Yest, komandir!” Zlenko gives a sharp whistle and waves his hand to the two soldiers to join him.
Tarasov finds Squirrel sitting on a sandbag. The Stalker guide has his face buried in his hands and looks resigned in despair.
“Hey brother,” Tarasov tells him. “Cheer up. You can whine when you’re dead.”
“I already am… I told you what this place is about. And I curse the fucking moment when I ran into you!”
“So you preferred being mutant food?”
“Whatever, man. I am a Stalker, not a soldier. I know about mutants and anomalies, but don’t have the stuff for making last stands on godforsaken hills like this!”
“Nobody says it will be a last stand,” Tarasov says, comfortingly. “I’m sorry that you’ve been punished for helping us. Listen, bro, all I can do in exchange now is to offer you a relatively safe place. Join that soldier on the bunker and help him handle the grenade launcher. Stay low and you’ll be fine.”
Zlenko appears. “Vasilyev and Kravchuk are in position.”
“Good. I want Ilchenko and the riflemen help the Stalkers in holding the line. Damn it, how I wish I had enough men to deploy into the forward trenches!”
They make their way towards the group of Stalkers who stand around what had once been a field gun, but now is almost falling apart from rust and wear. The Stalkers stop chatting and give the soldiers distrustful looks as they approach. The smell of marijuana lingers in the air around them.
“Stalkers, have any of you been to the Zone?” Tarasov asks.
Almost all of them nod.
“Yes, we have,” says a Stalker wearing an oversized trench coat made of black leather, covered with a thick layer of brown dust. His face his half-hidden by a hood. To Tarasov’s surprise, as the Stalker steps forward and his trench coat opens, he recognizes a Duty suit below it. The Stalker takes his battered AK from his shoulder, but seeing Ilchenko’s machine gun he doesn’t dare to assume a threatening stance. “That’s why we prefer that you stay away from us, stinking army pigs.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Zlenko steps forward but Tarasov halts him with a movement of his hand.
He looks at the Stalkers. Now, closer in, he can guess their origins by the half-ruined armor suits they are wearing: rookies in leather jackets reinforced by Kevlar plates; here and there the ravaged light armor with the Bundeswehr-issue Tarnfleck camouflage that is preferred by fighters of the Freedom faction. A few of them wear the more experienced Stalkers’ grey-brown protective suits. Finally, his eyes return to the Stalker wearing the dusty Duty uniform.
“Listen up, brothers,” he starts addressing the Stalkers. “I know you are here as a punishment. So are we – for all the things the army did to Stalkers back in the Zone, even if neither I nor any of my men was part of that. But I say: fighting dushmans is not a punishment. We are here to teach them a lesson they will not forget. We can’t avenge any wrongs from Chernobyl, but we do still have unfinished business with the dushmans.”
Tarasov sees a sparkle flashing up in the eyes of older Stalkers. The younger ones, too, perk up their ears to what he is saying.
“I see Loners, Freedom fighters and even a Duty soldier here. You have fought each other back in the Zone, and we have fought you all. We are all new to this place but face an old enemy. They might have beaten our father’s generation, but now it is us they will be up against. And I tell you, they will be in for a surprise.” Tarasov clears his throat. Mentioning his father turned his throat strangely dry. Looking at the Stalkers who now listen to him closely, he decides to ask them a question.
“You, rookie in that brown Kevlar jacket! Where are you from?”
“Moscow.”
“And you, with that AK-47?”
“Katowice. Poland.”
“You, in that Freedom suit?”
“Irkutsk. I hated the cold there.”
The Stalkers start replying one by one.
“Uruguay. You wouldn’t guess where it is, but I’m here and ready.”
“Glasgow. Scotland the brave!”
“Sankt-Petersburg. No need to tell more.”
“Sarajevo. Bosnia. I hate snipers.”
“Yekaterinburg, and I know what you mean, officer. In all of Russia, we have the most beautiful memorial to those fallen in that war.”
“From Krasnodar, just around the corner.”
“Lviv, but I was
born in Zhitomir.”
“Hajmáskér. Hungary.”
“Is that so, Mente?” The Russian Stalker from Moscow asks with surprise. “My uncle was stationed there in Soviet times, with a tank battalion!”
“You are my friend, Moskvich, but for us it was a relief to get rid of your uncle with his tanks,” the Eastern European Stalker grumbles, staring at his sawn-off shotgun. The Stalker called Moskvich just shrugs the remark off, and gives his comrade a pat on the shoulder.
“We seem to have all kinds of Stalkers here from around the globe,” Tarasov continues. “Our homes might be different but our blood has the same color. Don’t have any illusions: it will be shed today. Let it be the sign of our union, because today we all fight together and will be victorious together. Our chances are not good, there’s no doubt about that. But if the toughest sons of bitches of the Zone will keep together for once – who can stand against us, brothers?”
“We are not your damned brothers, officer,” the tough-looking Dutier replies, making the last word sound like a curse. He was one of the few Stalkers who kept their origin to themselves.
“So you want me to call you sister, or what? Or does Duty’s triumphant march to victory end as soon as they have to face real enemies?”
The Dutier’s face flushes with anger. A few Stalkers wearing Freedom suits start laughing. Feeling his momentum, Tarasov turns towards them.
“You listen up too, you pathetic bunch of no-good dope-smoking miserable anarchists! We’re all together in this bardak. It’s a deep shit situation! There’s not enough of us to use the forward trenches, so we’ll make our stand right here. These riflemen and the machine gunner will be strengthening your line. Ilchenko, you’ll take position here. You, Stalker with the Sunrise suit and you with that AK-47, take up positions to cover his flanks. The rest of you follow me. We better set up our defense now before night falls.”