The Captain knows. Tarasov takes his helmet off, rubs his weary eyes and lies down on the ground, crossing his fingers behind his head. His eyelids feel like lead. But before he falls into an uneasy sleep, he turns to the Captain one more time.
“And Captain… if you want me to do that favor you’ll have in mind, do not let the kid sneak away… if he has to crap, pee, do his prayers or jerk off, whatever, he will do it in front of you. That’s an order.”
“But—” the young Stalker tries to cut in.
“Shut up, Mac. Go to sleep… Kids like you need at least eight hours of sleep, but four and a half is all you’re going to get.”
Court-martial
The long years spent in the army have made Tarasov’s mind develop a strange sense of time. No matter how tired he’d been, when he wakes up and looks at his watch, it shows five minutes to five — just in time. Anxiously, he looks around but relaxes when he sees the seemingly tireless Captain standing at the door, the unnatural light of his artifact still glowing and Tarasov’s AK-M in his hands. Seeing that he is awake, the old man smiles at him.
This man really deserves a medal, Tarasov thinks as he gets up and gives the snoring machine-gunner’s boots a soft kick. Or who knows… maybe he’d be better off staying at Bagram. There’s so much he could teach the Stalkers.
“Moving out already?” Ilchenko grumbles, still half asleep.
“Get your gear and check your weapon.”
Yawning, Ilchenko gets to his feet and steps over to Mac. Ignoring the jackal pup’s growl, he kicks the still sleeping Stalker’s leg.
“Hey, dwarf. Get up.”
“Jesus, Ilchenko… I’ve had a nightmare about a bloodsucker chasing me, but waking up in the same space as you makes it appear like the sweetest dream I’ve ever had.”
“Damn it, man. I hate getting up early,” Squirrel yawns, awakened by the noise.
“Dobro utro, Captain,” Tarasov greets the old man. “Any events?”
“Nothing to report, Major,” the Captain replies, still smiling. He removes the glowing artifact from his staff and puts it into his shoulder bag.
“Mac, give me light over here… You want a little water, Captain Ivanov? Here you go… Why so happy?
“Today you will do something for me,” the old man says, giving back the field flask. “I have been waiting for it for a long time.”
Tarasov pours water from his canteen into his hands and rubs it onto his face, then puts on his helmet. He switches on his headlight, but hopes that they will see daylight soon.
“Everyone ready?”
“Last time I take soldiers on a trip,” Squirrel grumbles. “No breakfast, no relaxing, no guitar playing, no jokes, only get ready and let’s move and hurry up. It’s like joining Duty. It sucks, man.”
“You’re lucky we don’t have time for a little healthy morning exercise. Now fall in line, Squirrel. Ilchenko, you…”
“I’ll watch our six. I know, sir.”
“… and you, Mac, take point. Captain, you stick with me.”
Mac opens the door and cautiously looks around with his rifle ready to shoot. “Clear.”
Stepping out of the dark and dilapidated room after many hours in almost complete darkness and confinement, Tarasov feels relief when he finds himself in a spacious hall. Through holes in the roof that looms high above them, he can see the overcast sky. Wherever he looks in the hall, rows of heavy machines stand, although most of them look like little more than heaps of rusty scrap metal. On some of the concrete columns supporting the roof, metal ladders lead to a gangway that runs around the factory hall, apparently to grant access to the pipes and wires above. Here and there, they hang loose, torn or fallen from the fittings that had held them once upon a time.
The relatively open space might be a relief for his senses dulled by the narrow caves, but the intensifying noise of the Geiger counter is anything but relaxing.
No wonder… everything here is metal. This place is one huge radiation trap.
“I detect high radiation readings. Masks on, switch to breathing systems,” the major orders.
Seeing that the Captain has only his age-old gas mask to protect himself makes Tarasov wonder how he had survived after the nukes went off, even if the radiation in this area is not as high as it must be in the areas south of the Outpost, closer to the epicenter of the detonations.
How did he manage that?
Although there are no signs of mutants or any other hostile elements nearby, they keep their weapons at the ready as they follow Mac to a huge gate that stands wide open to a courtyard containing several wrecked trucks and other disabled vehicles. Beyond the wrecks and a wall of concrete slabs, earthy brown hills come into view with the towering peaks of the Salang Range beyond them on the far horizon.
Only a dozen meters separate them from the gate when Tarasov hears the noise of metal falling on metal. For a few seconds, he wonders if one more of the decaying fittings has yielded to the weight of pipes and wires above, letting a loose screw fall and hit one of the machines below.
Then he hears a burst from an assault rifle. He ducks, barely avoiding the bullets that hit one of the machines instead. A ricochet hits the back of his body armor and falls to the ground, rendered harmless by the thick layers of Kevlar inside the Berill suit.
“Dushmans!” Mac screams. “Dushmans at two o’clock!”
“Take cover! There’s one firing from that ramp above us!”
Ilchenko’s PKM sprays the ramp with bullets and a dushman fighter falls headlong from above, his cry of agony ended when his body smashes into one of the machines.
“Where did they come from?” Squirrel shouts, peering out from under the cover of a machine. A bullet barely misses his head. The Stalker ducks and fires a burst, holding the weapon out over his cover position.
“Everywhere!”
Seeing that they are trapped between two rows of machines, offering an easy target to the enemy fighters shooting at them from above, Tarasov realizes that the only way is forward, into the courtyard, shooting their way through any enemies who might be waiting outside. But he knows that if he were leading the attacking party, he would have laid an ambush outside instead of attacking them in the hall where the machines and concrete columns offer more than enough cover. Presuming that the commander of the opposing fighters is no fool, he is sure that the dushmans themselves had not been prepared to find them here, and their lack of tactical preparation could mean the advantage lies with him and his men.
“Ilchenko, take out those dushmans on the ramp!”
“Yes, komandir!”
“There’s one! At eleven!”
Crouching, Ilchenko swings the machine gun in the direction instructed by the major and fires. “That’s one less!”
“Squirrel! Move forward! Cover the Captain!”
Squirrel does as commanded, reloading his rifle as he proceeds with the Captain in tow. He has almost reached the last machine in the row, from where the gate is only a few meters away, when a huge dushman fighter appears behind them and turns toward them to fire his AK. With Ilchenko and the Captain directly in his line of sight, Tarasov has no clear shot on him.
“Behind you!” he screams. “Get down!”
The dushman fires, but he has barely pulled the trigger when the Captain’s staff smashes into his head. Squirrel’s rifle completes the kill.
“Wow, man! Never seen anyone fight like that!”