“If you want to know, back in the Zone — when I was still with Freedom — we did it the other way round. The process was the same, except it was not about saving.”
“Go ahead and make my day, rodent…”
“Peace, man! Don’t point that shooter at me. What are you compensating for with that machine gun, anyway?”
Meanwhile, Tarasov has finished cleaning his boots. “Rebyata… if you’re done teasing each other, let’s move on.”
“Let’s,” Ilchenko says standing to his feet. “Damn, how I miss those choppers… I hate walking.” He kicks the half-empty can, still holding the remains of his breakfast, into a bush.
“Don’t do that,” Squirrel says, looking around nervously. “The woods have ears.”
“And the fields have eyes,” Ilchenko murmurs. “Heard that before.”
“Stop! Squirrel is right. Get down!”
Maybe it is Tarasov’s tired eyes playing tricks on him, but for a moment he was sure he’d spotted a pair of eyes watching them from the bushes. They’d disappeared, but the movement of the branches and a barely audible crackle on the ground tells him that someone, or something, was definitely watching them.
“What was that, komandir?”
Crouching, Ilchenko aims his PKM and slowly scans the ruins.
“Squirrel! Are there any… bloodsuckers here?”
The guide pales. “Oh shit! Did you see one?”
“How could I? They can make themselves invisible!”
“We were not supposed to run into them before Hellgate!”
“Holy Mother of Jesus Christ,” Ilchenko exclaims. “It’s just a few anomalies there, you said!”
“Form an echelon. Ilchenko, take point. Squirrel, stay on my side and keep an eye on our rear. Let’s move!”
The woods become sparse as they slowly approach the steep descent to the plateau. They proceed cautiously, moving from cover to cover. After fifty meters, Tarasov signals a halt.
“Can’t see any contacts,” he murmurs, scanning the area through his binoculars. “Wait… I see a huge pack of jackals.”
“Are they moving in our direction?” Squirrel whispers.
“I don’t think they’ve detected us yet.” Tarasov zooms in the optics to have a closer look at the mutants. “Look at that… they’re fighting over something.”
“That’s good. Let’s move on quietly and avoid them.”
Tarasov glances over the mutants one last time, but just as he’s about to lower the binoculars he spots something sinister.
“What the hell?” he whispers, adjusting the zoom.
“What is it, boss?”
“I’m not sure.”
Something long and thin reaches out from behind a group of dried-out, lifeless trees. Switching to the highest magnification, he realizes that what he took for a long, straight branch of a tree is actually the rotor blade of a helicopter. Behind it, a dozen jackals fight each other. The biggest mutant chases down a smaller one and delivers a vicious bite. The small jackal drops something and scurries away. Tarasov focuses on the pack leader as it grabs the small mutant’s prize from the ground and scowls when he recognizes it as a human arm.
“I’ll be damned… they’re fighting over a body. But that’s not all.”
The major gives the binoculars to Squirrel and points to the rotor blades. Immediately, a greedy smile widens on the Stalker guide’s face.
“Rotor blades! And where there’s rotor blades, there’s a chopper wreck, and where there’s a chopper wreck, there’s loot!”
“Give me that RPG, Squirrel.”
“Let me blast them, man! Please!”
“I said, give me that RPG, Squirrel.”
“Please, please, please let me fire the RPG!”
“All right, all right, but you better remove that protective cap from the warhead before you shoot… Ilchenko, show him how to do that. And now, Rambo — you don’t want to miss the mutants. Wait until they are bunched up. Ilchenko, get your machine gun ready. After the grenade hits them, open fire and try to hit as many of them as you can. If we screw it and they come running at us… that won’t be nice. Are we set?” His companions nod. “Don’t screw this up, Stalker. Wait for my command.”
Now Tarasov sees the jackals gather around a corpse, half dug out from a shallow grave.
“Gospodi,” he mutters when he sees what’s left of the body.
“What is it?”
“I saw a… but no. That cannot be. I refuse to believe it.”
At the moment when the most jackals gather over the grave, Tarasov gives Squirrel a signal. The projectile leaves the launcher with a deafening whoosh. The pack leader tosses its head but by the time it realizes the danger it is too late; the grenade hits the pack and explodes in a sheet of orange flame. In the same second, Ilchenko’s machine gun starts barking as he fires a long salvo into the strewn mass of wounded and half-dead mutants.
The pack leader, still alive, emits a vengeful howl and starts running toward them at speed despite having had one of its legs torn off by the explosion and the huge wound gouged into its side. Even so, the distance is so great that Tarasov can take a steady aim with his Vintorez. He fires a short burst and the mutant falls, its momentum still carrying it a meter closer to the three men, as if its predatory instinct drove it on even after life had departed.
Wish I had this rifle on the Shalang Pass when I needed it most, Tarasov thinks with a bitter smile.
“Good job,” he tells his companions. “Let’s have a look at that wreck. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Getting closer, Tarasov recognizes the wreck by its tail — a Mi-24. With Afghanistan full of war debris, the sight does not surprise him — at least not at first. As they get close enough to see more of the wreck between the sparse bushes, the major gives a short, ghastly cry.
“Damn! This was one of ours!”
Ilchenko and Squirrel turn their heads to look. The Ukraine’s blue and yellow ensign is clearly visible on the bullet-riddled fuselage.
“Where’s that rotten stench coming from?”
The enthusiasm has disappeared from Squirrel’s face. Indeed, the smell is so foul, it forces him to put his gas mask on.
Tarasov follows suit before carefully studying the wreck. It looks to him as if the helicopter was intact when it landed and had been attacked on the ground. Tarasov and Ilchenko step to the hatch.
“Looks like the hatch was blown open, sir.”
“And judging by the mess inside, someone tossed grenades into the compartment.”
Hundreds of cartridge cases lie in blackened pools of dry blood and Tarasov finds a few bloody bandages and empty medikits, but there’s no sign of any bodies. Stepping out, he finds the pilots’ hatches open.
“Maybe the crew made it through?”
Ilchenko looks around as if expecting surviving troopers to appear from the bushes, but Squirrel shatters any optimism.
“Major… Ilch… you better come and have a look at what I found.”
A few steps away from the chopper’s wreck, close to where the mutants were fighting, the grenade has blasted a shallow crater into the ground and unearthed two bodies. By the missing parts and advanced state of decay, Tarasov recognizes the corpse dug up by the jackals. Of the other, only the back and legs are visible — but the sight of the half-decomposed flesh is enough to make Squirrel retch. The bodies are clad in nothing but cotton leggings and the army-issue tee-shirts with blue and white stripes.
“Where is their armor?” Tarasov inquires, combating his nausea. “And who buried them?”
“Maybe surviving comrades.”
“Ilchenko, give me your shovel.”
“Are you sure about this, sir?”
“I’m sure that you want to put your gas mask on, soldier.”