The Confederate battle flag, he thinks. Who the hell are these people? Rebels? Renegades? They are certainly too well-equipped, and too well organized to be a bunch of deserters.
Several warriors are standing around, weapons held casually. They are wearing lighter body armor than the First Lieutenant and their faces are open under the Kevlar helmets, but the sand-colored camouflage pattern is the same. Their rifles look well-maintained and their uniform armored suits are spotlessly clean.
Whoever these warriors are, and whatever they have in mind for me, I give them that they do have discipline.
One of the warriors, his face evidently blackened by dust, approaches. It is only as the warrior gets closer that Tarasov realizes it’s not just dust darkening the soldier’s face: it actually is a black man, the first one he has seen in real life.
I wonder how Ilchenko would feel now if he were in my shoes.
“Reporting back from patrol, Gunnery Sergeant Anderson,” one of the boys reports. “First Lieutenant Driscoll ordered the prisoner to be taken to the Brig until the big man decides his fate, sir!”
To Tarasov, the black non-com seems to be a more easy-going superior than First Lieutenant Driscoll, because he greets the scouts with a friendly smile.
“Welcome home, devil pups! That was a squared away patrol. Keep it up, and you will not be devil pups for much longer.”
“Is that so, Gunny?” The two boys sound happy like normal children upon receiving a special reward.
“It’s the big man who decides, but you are making good progress. Soon you should be real warriors. Now, take off this man’s handcuffs. Dress him down to skivvies and put all his gear into his ditty bag.”
With any resistance being foolish, Tarasov lets the young fighters take all his belongings. They make him remove his exoskeleton, boots and all, until he stands in front of them barefoot, wearing only his shirt and light cotton leggings. No matter how humiliating the process is, what hurts the major most is that even his watch is taken by one of the boys, who then straps it onto his own wrist with a happy smile.
“Wow,” he exclaims, “a tough watch!”
“And this pistol’s cool, too,” the other scout replies studying Tarasov’s Glock. “Boxkicker will pay me well for this.”
The gunnery sergeant, who in the meantime had been giving Tarasov’s kit a thorough search, now commands a stern and disapproving glance towards the boys.
“Give me that watch, devil pup! And you, that pistol. You are not supposed to behave like scavengers!”
“Sir!”
The boys bow their heads in shame as they hand over the loot to their superior, who puts them into the exoskeleton’s rucksack with the rest of Tarasov’s gear.
“Where in the hell did he lay his hands on this?” He says examining the major’s exoskeleton. “A Russkie spy in one of our armors. Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough.”
“I am no spy,” Tarasov angrily snaps, “I am…”
“Shut the fuck up, Russkie!”
One of the boys hits Tarasov in the chest with his rifle butt. Moaning with pain, he staggers but manages to remain standing. Spitting saliva that tastes like blood, he looks defiantly at his captors. This time, the gunny remains indifferent to the boy’s action, neither does he care about Tarasov’s angry look.
“Put his handcuffs back on,” he orders the scouts. “The brothers will take care of the rest. Now go, stir up some trouble.”
He waves two soldiers over to him. “Sergeant Polak, Sergeant Hillbilly! Blindfold the prisoner and take him to the Brig!”
The sergeants are young but adult men, one with red hair and full beard and the other with a pale, Slavic face and blue eyes. Their faces are the last thing he sees before he is blindfolded and, guided in the right direction by the blows of rifle butts on his back, led through the massive gate to the inner stronghold.
The gate closes behind him, and Tarasov hears something he would have never expected in this frightful place: female chatter and laughter. Even though they are speaking a language he can’t understand, he feels the mockery directed at him. He can’t see the women due to the blindfold, but the voices are young and cheerful.
His guards stop again and he hears a heavy door opening. One of his guards takes off his blindfold and handcuffs, and shoves him into a dark, tight cavern before Tarasov has a chance to look around.
“You’ll have a rag-head for company,” the bearded guard says as he chains Tarasov by the neck to a ring in the wall.
“Driscoll was in a merciful mood and didn’t cut off his tongue,” the other adds. “If the Talib talks too much, feel free complaining to Amnesty International about psychological torture. I forgot where I’ve kept their telephone number… ask me later, will you?”
The door slams closed.
It is completely dark save for two beams of light falling through holes above. The chain leaves him barely enough room to move. Tarasov leans his back against the stone wall, emitting a long, defeated sigh.
I’m screwed. No way to escape from here.
His eyes slowly adapt to the darkness. Shapes begin to emerge in the dim light: first, the walls, made from rudely hewn stones, then a shape near the base of one of them. He makes out a pair of legs, then a man dressed in something now little more than dirty rags.
He remembers the first time he wanted to kill dushmans, way back in his childhood when he was big enough for his mother to tell him how his father had died. The fight for the Outpost had been personal enough. But now he is locked up together with the first dushman he has met outside of battle, by an ironic twist of fate bound together as they wait for death. Shuffling over, the major kicks the man’s legs.
“Hey! You still alive?”
The other prisoner looks up at him. Tarasov has seen the faces of his enemies many times distorted by pain, effort, hate, even a sort of bitter resignation — very much like how he must have looked while killing them. Now, in this man’s eyes, he is surprised to see nothing of that enmity. Even in the gloom, Tarasov can see that the dushman has been brutally beaten, but still the eyes in the round face appear calm, devoid of fear.
“I am talking to you. Do you speak English?”
The prisoner slowly shakes his head.
“Damned dushman…” Tarasov murmurs to himself.
“I am no dushman,” the prisoner replies in almost impeccable Russian.
“You speak Russian?” Tarasov asks, startled. “Where are you from?”
“Dagestan.”
“That still makes you a dushman.”
“I am no dushman.”
“Then what the hell are you, apart from being a mindless, brain-scorched, child-murdering son of a bitch?”
“I am a student of God.”
“And where is your God now?”
The prisoner lifts his hands in a gesture that could equally mean ‘here’ and ‘I don’t know’.
“Son of a bitch… anyway… who are these people?”
“Devils.”
“And what are they going to do? Kill us?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Only you will be killed. I will be martyred.”
“Good riddance, you bastard. Are we at least going to die a soldier’s death? If I can call you a soldier at all…”