…Arnie and Sam would emerge from separate scrapes in the ground and hustle forward. No ceremony, nothing said, slinging in the Bergens, grabbing a heave-up. A message goes out over the radio between the two vehicles, pick-up completed. And they know that a force of 100+ IRGC is two miles down the road, and it was what instructors called ‘the fog of war’. Another of the instructors’ favourites was ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’, and this one, Gaz’s instincts, would not. No one actually saying that Bravo Charlie vehicle had two on board, not three, and no one drawing attention as the engines revved again that Bravo Foxtrot vehicle had not three, not two, had none on board, and both of them – Bravo Charlie and Bravo Foxtrot wanting to be out of a bad place, and both cutting corners and they’d be gone. Somewhere, across a big void of dirt, they’d likely find a deserted concrete box of a building, and pull up and think of a brew, and find they were one short: ‘Where’s that arsehole, that Gaz? Where the fuck is he? Thought you had him… We thought you did… Holy shit.’ Thinking about it and attempting to shut out the sights and sounds from down by the village, and seeing the officer striding right, left, any way, a man who has unfinished business to achieve.
He held the girl’s arm. The agony for Gaz was that he held her to save her life, and had not factored whether it was a life that wanted saving.
The first time she had spoken. “That is my sister.”
Gaz took his hand off the rifle. Her first words.
Said it again, “That is my sister.”
The dogs moaned in unison beside her and the goats were close and some of them nuzzled against her head. She spoke as if the outrage and anger had drained from her. He could remember the mischief of the days when she had come close and brought the goats and her dogs, and pretended that she did not know he was there, except for the fun in her eyes. And all that day, all the hours since the convoy had powered up the road, she had maintained the stoic silence: and he had too.
Said it again and without passion. “That is my sister.”
What to do, Gaz? Nothing to do. Imagined telling the debriefer at the Forward Operating Base – in the event he made it out – there was a nice girl, quite pretty, who used to come and sit near him, and he knew her goats and dogs. No talk until the village was occupied by a company-sized unit of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps militia, and there was a Russian officer there. Tell them that she had finally broken her silence and had said that next in line for martyrdom, after the rape was concluded, would be her sister. First puzzlement, then irritation. ‘What the fuck has that to do with you, Gaz?’ He clung to her. He was uncertain whether, at any moment, she would bolt. Scream to raise the dead and charge at them.
Felt a weight of shame. Could, or should, have looked away.
But he watched and the stillness of the girl in front of him, not struggling to break his hold, fazed him. Down in the village, a half-clothed girl was dragged by her hair across the football pitch and past the broken crossbar and off towards the gully. She could not have walked tall and proud, but had to scramble, because her hair was held. Three more followed her and before they slipped from view, up the gully and behind the big rocks of the water course, Gaz saw that the officer followed. One of the men trailing the girl had already started unbuckling his belt, and stumbled and tripped and needed to be held up, and there was raucous laughter among his group. The officer walked steadily after them, did not touch his waist, ignored the rain on his shoulders. The goons stayed back, like it was not their business to interfere. The girl did not scream, nor her sister as Gaz held her. He waited. Gaz hoped that the girl could not see beyond the football pitch as the light faded. He had the binoculars, he saw. He thought the goats would soon break because they would have been used to returning to their corral when evening came and the dogs gave them no indication of what they should do. When the goats broke ranks then she would be exposed on the hillside. Nothing he could do. He heard two shots.
She did not have to say, ‘That is my sister.’
He tried to sleep, but three more texts arrived.
His mother. Normally, at that hour, she would have been asleep. Had Lavrenti received her text with the photograph of her friend’s daughters? He deleted it. Twenty minutes later, the message was repeated – again deleted. And after fifteen minutes, the suggestion that he was out on the town, in Murmansk, with senior officers from the FSB being feted on his last night there, but when he reached his apartment, could he please respond – deleted.
Sleep avoided him, like he had some plague, shunned him. He was no longer restless but lay still and stared at the ceiling, watching a spider progressing across the surface. He wondered where the bastard hid himself away in winter: he had done two in Murmansk, had survived, had worked with a restless energy, had chased environmentalists out of town and then had moved on and been involved in the risks of foreign agents infiltrating the ranks of the Northern Fleet crews and support staff. The reward was that the bastards had created sufficient drama for the fishing fleet to be temporarily confined to harbour while a cosmetic clean-up was done… Had he been another month in Murmansk the bastard environmental teams would have been in the cells, facing years of detention – no longer his concern. No longer his worry if hostile spies were attracted to the fleet. Also, not his worry, lying on his back on the camp bed, whether his mother entertained a friend who had brought two daughters for inspection. His mother would not have understood. His father might have understood but would not have admitted that such events had ever taken place when he had charge of a unit. No serving officer in FSB, unless they had been posted to Syria, sent to liaise with Iranian savages, would have understood. Not often, now more than six month ago, he had spoken about it to the four walls and the ceiling of his bedroom. Now he hectored the spider.
“If you had not been there you would not know how it was. You had to have been there. The enemy were vermin. As bad as Afghanistan, and the mujahidin, or worse. Not just the terrorists, but any people in any village. Not grateful for what we did. Treacherous. Smile at your face, put a knife into your back. What happened that day should have been done months before. Not just there but any village where they hid enemies of our mission. And less trouble came afterwards because the word spread. Other villages refused to harbour terrorists or the hostile elements of the Americans and the British. The whole fucking place, all of that country, should be given up to our missile forces and used as a range. We owe them nothing. We never received thanks. Nothing was done that day for which I have to feel shame. Yes, we inflicted harsh punishment on them, but that village was a nest of snakes. Not just men, young men, the whole population of the village supported those who came and attacked our bivouac camp. They did not come afterwards. We did only what had to be done. I carry no blame.”
He said it out loud, and while he had spoken – lying on his back, in the darkness and staring at the ceiling – the spider had moved on and was steadily approaching a crack in the plaster where, perhaps, it had made a home… a better fucking home than he, Major Lavrenti Volkov, had. Of course, he carried no blame, need not accept an iota of shame. But he could not sleep.
They were two old military men.