The other guys fan out in the bush and start digging blinds.
“I don’t like this place,” mutters Xamid.
Ali, lazy, merely laughs and lets Ussam dig for two. Shirvani smokes. Sultan is nowhere to be seen.
Field lunch. Soviet Army spam and onions. Some Muslim fundamentalists, my pals, chowing down on cold pork like that.
“You know what kind of rock this is?” Shirvani asks me, picking up a blue-gray stone.
I turn it over in my hand once or twice and confess I have no idea.
“We call it Leaverite,” says Shirvani, taking back the stone and putting it back on the ground from where he had picked it up. “Leaverite here.”
Everyone chuckles with the exception of me, and then it sinks in.
Junk stone. Leave ’er right here.
Another round of pork spam and raw onions. More hunter jokes that could have come from any camp I ever sat at in Montana, haha. I relate the concept of “bear bells,” meaning that rather than be afraid of the sound of guns during elk season, some grizzly bears have come to associate a distant blast with dead deer and elk, and actually run toward the sound of shooting because they know it means a free meal that they did not have to work for. Seylah thinks about that one for a while, while Xamid hits me up with a non-sequitur question about my income level and marital status and makes me feel strangely and suddenly nervous in his presence again. Shirvani asks for a smoke and we chat about farming, ranching, sheep and the theoretical problem of brucellosis-infected buffalo escaping from Yellowstone Park and contaminating Montana cattle herds. Ali smiles and Ussam sulks. Sultan finally shows up with a shit-eating grin on his face, as though his absence has to do with that neighbor gal planting spring onions next door.
Boys will be boys.
More field work. More gun pits. Slit trenches and tank traps covered by a couple of guys planting spring potatoes on the front line. Sun shines. Beautiful day. See for miles, it seems. Couple of pretty horses wander by, legs tethered. Couple of shepherd kids gather firewood. If they notice us, they don’t let on. Maybe they are part of the ambush cover, sort of a screen of innocence, in case Russian spotters are scanning the forest line from the tracks or the facing hills. The Russians would be criminally negligent not to have spotters up there, thinks Johnny-come-lately military expert, me.
Couple of cars on the distant road, moving toward Samashki. They are just small specks, but still useful to calculate distance. I figure the road is less than a mile away. Maybe eight hundred yards. That is still a very long shot, especially with a gun with no telescopic sight, and Hussein has only got those funny-looking, oversized glasses. Greenhorn hunters in Montana like to brag about killing deer and elk from a mile away, but those stories are nothing but lies. Best shot I ever killed at was maybe four hundred yards and more likely only three hundred that felt like four, and that was with a scope on top of Tim Cahill’s 30.06 he let me use that day. Best shot I had with my trusty 30-30 saddle gun without a scope was maybe 250 yards that was more likely half that and that was just sheer luck. Nice buck, though.
Daydreaming done.
There is a truck on the road. No, two trucks. Now three. Military green.
I don’t know what is on them, but there is little doubt in my mind that we are outgunned three-to-one, and the mission was to ambush a train track repair crew and not take on half an army. The convoy is moving up the hill on a dirt road in back of the tracks, and Hussein is going to let them pass. Let them pass, Hussein, let them—
KirBAAMMM!!!
The percussion of Hussein’s mini-Howitzer shatters the morning air, and the red flare of barrel blast is so big that I pick it up on film. If I can see it, they can see it, and if they can see it, then they can see us.
KirBAAMMM!!!
Hussein seems intent on sealing our fate by launching a second potshot at the distant armor. Jesus Christ. The guys are hunkered down in their foxholes. Christ they look small and pathetic. The foxholes, that is. Ali isn’t laughing anymore, and I am not laughing at all because while Xamid’s pit is the deepest and Ali’s the shallowest, I do not have a foxhole at all. Just twigs and sticks, like a badly made bird blind. And the camera. The tripod legs reflect like a steel beacon, and the microphone sticks out like a sore thumb. No. It sticks out like the muzzle of a heavy machine gun. I muddied up everything before this little romp in the woods but now my equipment seems to scream here he is, so get him! and it is too late to do anything about it now. Afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. If anybody on the other side is scouring the tree line with binoculars of any power, they are going to find me looking like the sniper, and not Hussein.
KirBAAMMM!!!
Hussein again. Big barrel flash. Big kirbam!
Are those gun flashes from the other side of the distant road? Is that a woosh over my head? I try to sniggle backward into the thorn-bush forest, but it is just too thick and I am going nowhere and losing my pathetic cover at the same time.
KirBAAMMM!!!
Only one thing to do. Only one way to go. Only one safe place. Do it, now. Suck it up and just go! Heart in my mouth, balls shriveled into my gut, I snatch the camera gear and run. Forward, straight across the open ground between the tree line and Hussein’s ambush pit. Run like the wind you fool. Fly! It may look like you crave action but the only thing you really want is a hole in the ground as deep as a grave to hide in.
One two three. One—two—THREE!
And I am in the gun pit, lungs bursting and heart pounding after the fastest fifty-yard dash of my life, trying, trying, trying to hide my utter terror.
“What are you doing here?” Hussein shouts. “This is MY war, not YOURS!!!!”
I say something useless and so incomprehensible I cannot understand it myself. It doesn’t matter a wit. Hussein isn’t listening. He is yanking on the big gun’s bolt. A dead shell leaps out over his head and hits me in the shoulder, dropping on my boot, still hot. That is not my main concern, however. My main concern is my realization that Hussein is loading the big gun manually. Manually. The bandolier feeder thing doesn’t work. We are taking manual potshots at three armored vehicles that can come back at us with fucking automatic fire.
“Toi matz,” Hussein curses in Russian, jamming another round into his gun.
The hunt has just turned. The hunters have become the hunted.
I had been shot at before. I had taken many risks, some foolish, in combat zones, too. I had ridden in overstuffed rescue helicopters under fire and traveled down quite a few mined or allegedly mined roads (the rumor being good enough to scare the wits out of you) to have earned my stripes in the vain league of combat correspondents. “Bridge Too Far Tommy” is what some of my professional pals called me.
But this was different. All those yams of ducking flying lead here and there, and amazingly managing to live to tell the tale were in the context of coincidence, such as getting caught in the rear guard of someone else’s army on the run. I had never been involved in an ambush before, pitting under-armed guerillas against vastly superior forces. And in broad daylight.