“Do you know where to find Crow?”
“No. He’s a strange character, coming and going without telling anyone where he goes and what he is up to. I even heard rumors that he was with the Monolith once.”
“What? He told me he had never been to the Zone!”
The Shrink fills his own vodka glass. “A Stalker with something to hide about his past? Never heard of such a thing,” he says with an ironic smile and gulps down the drink. “But they don’t call me Shrink for nothing. See, he hates Bone’s guts but is too level-headed to be a Freedomer. He is too good a shot to be an ordinary Stalker, but can’t be Spetsnaz or SBU because if he were you wouldn’t be looking so dumbfounded now. So, tell me: what can he be, if he doesn‘t fit into any of the clans here or back in the old Zone?”
“I don’t want to believe what you are hinting at,” Tarasov replies, narrowing his eyes.
“You talk like a Stalker I once treated. He didn’t want to believe that his primordial hate of bloodsuckers was just a reflection of his feelings towards his ex-wife who had bled him dry when they divorced. But after the second bottle of vodka… bingo! Vodka is the ultimate truth serum, did you know?”
Tarasov turns to Squirrel. “Would you believe that? Former Monolithians walking around in the New Zone?”
The guide shakes his head. “Nope, man. But frankly — I would sooner prefer the Monolith than the Tribe.”
Tarasov shrugs. “Anyway… at least Crow, or whatever his real name might be, seems to be on our side. But now, tell me — do you know of a way around the Tribe’s territory?”
“No way, man. I agreed to guide you here, not beyond. Sorry.”
“And you, Shrink?”
“The only safe way to avoid the Tribe is to go back to Bagram and forget about the western approaches.”
“Then I do have a serious problem,” Tarasov sighs.
“I’m listening…”
“Never mind, Shrink. Is there a place where we can spend the night?”
“Suit yourself and help yourself. We have enough empty cells… but the rubber room will cost you extra. That’s the only one with its roof intact!”
“I don’t mind missing the view, seeing as this fog keeps us hidden from any enemies… but I wouldn’t mind a little break either, man.”
Tarasov agrees with Squirrel. The road is shrouded in a fog so dense that a pack of jackals could be just a few meters away and they would never see them. The ghosts of occasional bushes and stunted trees emerge from the surrounding gloom wherever they had grown close to the road, but apart from that there’s nothing to see.
“Should be coming into a built-up area soon, according to the PDA,” the Stalker reports.
Tarasov nods, not relying on his eyes so much as his ears to detect problems. But the world is almost silent thanks to the deadening effects of the fog bank.
Soon the gray walls of a lonely building appear along the road. It might have been a traffic check-point long ago.
“This place is as good as any,” the guide says, sitting down under a bullet-riddled metal sign that says ‘DANGER! MINES! KEEP TO MARKED ROAD’. “I wish we could make a campfire.”
“Later. Let’s move during daylight as much as we can.”
“We better find them soon, man… I have a serious case of itching in my index finger and it can only be relieved by pulling the trigger. Do you have a plan for how we do this?”
“It depends, Squirrel. We have to recon that stronghold first.”
“I only ask because I have a plan already.”
“Please, do share it then.”
“We move in, kill everyone, loot the place and get out of there. That’s step one. Then we sell all the loot in Bagram and become dirty filthy rich. That’s step two. Then I fuck all the whores in Kiev and die a happy man from physical exhaustion. That would be step three. What do you think, man?”
“That’s a very good plan,” Tarasov smirks, “like those taught at the military academy. You ever considered becoming an army officer?”
“With all due respect, man, I might be crazy but I’m not an idiot… Do you have some bread? If I had gear like yours, I’d carry a full kitchen with me!”
“You’d be better off if you didn’t carry that RPG launcher with two warheads.”
“Come on, man. They make me look cool!”
“Why don’t you at least disassemble them?” Tarasov asks, shaking his head over the guide’s inexperience with heavy weaponry. “It would be safer for you to carry that shit with the warheads dismounted.”
“What? You can remove the warheads?”
“Yeah… I’ll show you later. Now, it’s havchik time.”
Tarasov offers a loaf of bread to Squirrel. They have enough resources now.
He’d set out to find Crow’s stash at dawn, following the road west until the APC’s wreck emerged from the fog like a sleeping monster. The huge stone slab serving as a memorial was smashed, an only faintly readable English inscription still bearing a clue to the battle — itself just one of many — that had ravaged the place a few years ago.
When Tarasov had cautiously peered inside the wreck, he’d expected to find the usual stash: ammunition, food or bandages, perhaps some common artifact. He was therefore surprised to find a huge crate with a hand-written note on top of it: This suit rocks! Now I only need to find out who’s killing your soldiers to get these exoskeletons and who’s paying him. He won’t see my bullet coming. Or if he does, I don’t care. I hope you don’t mind that I took one of the two suits I found with the mercs. I’ll consider it your thank-you to me for saving your ass at Salang. We’re quits — for now! C.
When he donned the brand new exoskeleton and the armor’s built-in instruments — radiation meter, anomaly detector, kinetic motors, life-support system — quietly started to hum in the silence of the mountain dawn, with his heavy kit becoming almost weightless once fitted to the titanium-alloy body frame, Tarasov felt as if he had boarded a gunship after many days on a perilous foot patroclass="underline" safe at last. With the exoskeleton’s silicon carbide ceramic armor — capable of stopping dozens of armor-piercing bullets — protecting him, he feels as if he has become a walking juggernaut.
Once back at Ghorband he tried to talk Squirrel into joining forces with him. Since he had nothing else to offer but a fight, the major had eventually had to offer his own, serviceable Berill armor, rendered a dead weight now that he had the exoskeleton. Albeit feigning reluctance, the Stalker had accepted it gladly in exchange for joining him on the raid.
However, his period of confidence had made way for concern soon enough when it came to his mind that this wonderful suit had actually been taken from him and his men. There was nothing in Crow’s messages that would give him a hint to the players in the shady dealings going on behind his back. As he walked behind Squirrel to the north, he tried to put together the pieces of the puzzle he already knew — Bone’s men ambushing the squad sent in before them, the mercenaries hunting him, Crow’s hints at danger in Bagram… Crow might be his ally in this game, but the sniper certainly knew how to keep his findings to himself — that is, if he actually knew any more than Tarasov.
“Hey, man, don’t look so down,” Squirrel says, interrupting the major’s thoughts. “Let me cheer you up with my harmonica. Do you have a favorite song?”