The road dropped down into the village — a straggle of houses, peasant dwellings of wood, single-storeyed and ramshackle. He bit his glove as his hand wiped his face. A car — there. It was like a grainy photograph from some old album; from Gorochenko's pictures of his peasant origins on the steppes. Chickens flicked across the road, and a cow ambled I between two houses. Straggling dead gardens, patches of dark, cultivated earth marking the properties, darker than the packed earth of the village's one street. He looked for a store. Yes.
He breathed deeply, as if he had gained some kind of victory. There had to be some kind of delivery van. Unless they still delivered by cart.
He waited, his body eager, the legs quivering with the need move; but he had to be sure of troops, yet the longer he waited the more surely they would come. As he stood up, caution finally satisfied, an olive-green APC rolled up and over the rise at the other end of the village street, He dropped back into the shadow of a fir with a groan. He had waited too bloody long.
Twelve: The Train
The APC rolled to a halt at what the driver considered the centre of the tiny hamlet. There was almost a contempt about the reluctant way in which the vehicle slowed, then stopped. It was a BTR-152, standard model without roof armour. Vorontsyev could see the heads of the troops it carried, bobbing up and down, two rows of flattish Red Army helmets, like mushrooms or Chinese straw hats painted green.
When it stopped, the gun mounted at the front began to swivel threateningly. There was no one on the street. Only the officer stood up, a Stechkin automatic in his hand. His movements were lazy, confident. Either he hadn't heard about the two dead men, or he had accepted the unchanged, sleepy parameters of the scene before him. Nothing could happen there, in the precise middle of nowhere.
Eventually, he barked an order, and the soldiers began to dismount from the back of the personnel carrier. Vorontsyev clutched the AK-47 tighter, as if it were a talisman.
There were twelve men. Some women, one or two old men, began to emerge from the low wooden houses. The officer spoke to one of the women, who seemed undeterred by his tone of voice. A large woman, great bosom and dragged-back hair, wiping her hands on a check apron. Vorontsyev, relaxed by the slow pace of the scene, the indifference of the troops who fanned out slowly, and the NCO who was already smoking a cigarette, watched the encounter. He could almost see the scowl on the woman's face.
The officer walked away eventually, then questioned another villager, an old man; he shrugged repeatedly, and appeared simple-minded. The officer's step expressed frustration as he rejoined the NCO. He gave his orders with a deal of arm-waving, and it was as if the projector showing a film had slipped into another speed. The whole scene speeded up. Men went now from house to house with a purpose, and much noise. The officer and the NCO stood by the APC, where they were joined by the driver, who also lit a cigarette. The officer, as if the habit was somehow beneath him, walked a little apart, watching the search.
It took little more than ten minutes. Then, at an order from the NCO, the men doubled back to the APC. For one moment, Vorontsyev thought he might be given the unbelievable luck of their leaving the hamlet of Nikoleyev.
Then he saw that they were detailed to fall out, except for individuals posted one at either end of the village, on the road. There seemed, then, nothing more to do, and the officer cast about, his head turning like that on a doll. Vorontsyev thought he must be looking for a drink, or a chair.
He had to move now. Soon, the men would drift towards the store, which might proffer food, or something to drink. The officer would, having absorbed the motionless innocence of the hamlet, allow them to relax as the afternoon wore on. They were obviously detailed to remain in the hamlet, and until they received new orders they were no longer part of the search.
He studied the land immediately round the village. He could, by moving carefully around the southern perimeter, use such things as wood-stacks, outhouses, to shield him. Only if one of the villagers saw him would he be in danger.
He stood up, let his cramped legs relax, then moved off to his right through the thin belt of trees until he was overlooking, from a slight rise, a stack of logs behind the most outlying of the poor wooden houses. This one appeared deserted, he could see a cracked window and there was no smoke from the thin chimney. Cautiously, he moved out of the trees and half-slid down the slope, resting only when he was concealed by the logs.
A few moments, then he raised his head cautiously. Here, he could not see the APC nor the soldiers. He fished out the map, and studied it carefully. The nearest village was three, perhaps four miles away, and in the wrong direction. He looked at his watch and made a swift calculation. He would not have enough time, unless he took a vehicle of some kind from Nikoleyev.
He considered, uselessly, the APC. He could not overpower twelve men, an NCO, a driver and an officer, not even with surprise and an AK-47. The store had to have some kind of van.
He looked at the roads on the map, fully marked even to farm tracks. He thought he could see a way of keeping away from any road that might be carrying troops, or have a roadblock in operation. He would be safe from everything, perhaps, except aerial patrols. Which might, or might not, investigate a civilian vehicle.
But the APC…
He wished he had taken the dead soldier's grenades.
How could he leave, without being followed, and captured? It was an impossibility, so impossible that his body became weak, his mind irresolute. He sat with his back against the wood, its rough bark pressing into him, the rifle upright between his legs like a prop — he gripped it tightly.
Stupid, stupid.
The soldier who had come to relieve himself behind the pile of logs was as surprised to see Vorontsyev as the KGB man was to be stumbled upon.
It was a ridiculous moment. The soldier's hand was in his flies, and his rifle was over his shoulder. He was helpless, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. He appeared at every instant to be about to cry out, but no sound would come. Vorontsyev himself, moving as if through a great pressure of water, or clinging nets, moved the gun to his hip, turned his body so slowly, levelled the gun, and squeezed the trigger. The soldier jumped back, his hand and his penis appearing from his trousers, and then he lay still on his back.
A single, loud shot.
This time Vorontsyev scrabbled in the combat dress, and unfastened the two RGD-5 fragmentation grenades the man carried. He could hear, at a distance, shouted orders, and perhaps the soldier's name being called. He ducked behind the togs again, then leaned forward, caught hold of the dead man's boot, and pulled the body awkwardly towards him, out of sight.
Twelve men.
Ridiculous.
They came at the run, disorganised and unprepared, because they might have been mistaken and the officer was evidently panicking and they had had to throw away cigarettes. Vorontsyev raised his arm, swung back and then forward, and lobbed the grenade into them. Then the second one. Five of them, not bunched, but the grenades, more like fat tins than pineapples, carried heavy charges and an effective fragmentation radius of twenty-five metres. The first one exploded, and he heard something thud into the logs on the other side. The second explosion. A thin scream, then he was on his feet, all but head and shoulders masked by the logs, and firing at the two men still moving, staggering though they were. He did not miss.
He could hear one of the wounded men behind him, screaming something incoherent and terrible about his guts, and then he pressed against the wall of a house twenty yards away, his head bobbing round the corner of the house, cheek rubbing against the rough board — and the APC, a background to the stunned officer and the NCO, who looked white, was fifty yards from him.