Who could it be? And this far to the north? At first he thought one of the many snipers who prowled the country on each of the many sides of this conflict, but then why the order to run? Why not simply a bullet through the brain and be done with it? Why this game?
Fadeyushka had been on his way home, the war over for him. He was tired of the killing and the fighting. The IFOR sat and did nothing as men, women and children were killed in front of them. Their UN safe havens had in many cases turned into holding pens where Serbs attacked and scooped up large numbers of prisoners, the IFOR unwilling or unable — Fadeyushka knew not which — to put their own lives on the line to actually protect those they had promised to protect.
Old hatreds were boiling to the surface once more and exploding in orgies of killing, raping and maiming. But it wasn't just the Serbs. Everyone was descending into madness and Fadeyushka could not be part of it anymore.
After watching his militia unit kill twenty unarmed Serb prisoners in retaliation for the death of two of their own men to Serb snipers the day before, Fadeyushka had had enough. Several of the Serbs had been children, not even in their teens. Large enough to carry a rifle but not old enough to have a clue why they carried the gun or to understand why they were being gunned down. This was not the way war should be fought. But whoever was trailing him apparently hadn't had enough.
A small stream cut across his path. He splashed into it. Higher, dry ground beckoned on the far side and he scrambled up the slope, pushing through a line of bushes on the bank, then he froze in horror.
Six men were tied to wooden crosses in the clearing in front of him. Their feet were on the ground and their arms had been tied at the wrists to the crossbeams. A piece of chain went around each man's chest.
At least the arms had once been tied, Fadeyushka amended as he stared. Someone had ripped each man's hands off. Fadeyushka staggered to his feet and slowly walked over to examine the closest body. The wrist had been torn apart by some terrible force. Looking at the wood behind the limb, Fadeyushka knew what had done it. Someone had fired a large-caliber bullet and hit the wrist. He looked down and saw the severed hands lying on the pine-needle-covered forest floor like withered white spiders. Fadeyushka was surprised to see that the dirty camouflage fatigues the man in front of him wore were Polish army issue. One of the IFOR peacekeepers. Even the Serbs did not kill IFOR.
The man's eyes snapped open and Fadeyushka staggered back in shock.
"Please," the man begged in bad Russian, "kill me."
Fadeyushka spun as another voice spoke up behind him.
"Go ahead, kill him. I will give you five extra minutes if you do it with your bare hands."
A man was standing on the bank Fadeyushka had just crawled up, a large-caliber sniper rifle resting in his powerful hands. The man had sand-colored hair and he spoke fluent Russian, with that same strange accent that had told Fadeyushka to begin running. He was over six feet tall and very solidly built. Fadeyushka had no doubt the rifle in his hands was the one the man had used to keep him coming in this direction and to rip off these poor unfortunates' hands. The man wore unmarked green fatigues and a large revolver in a leather shoulder holster. There was no telling who he was or what country he was from. Of course, that meant little here, where each soldier outfitted himself with whatever he could scrape together and uniforms were few and far between.
Fadeyushka had fought for the past year and a half and faced death many ways. From artillery fire, to IFOR jets screaming overhead, to snipers picking off members of his unit one by one. He felt fear, but he could manage it now that he saw his pursuer. He stood straight, "Five more minutes for what?"
The man gestured with the barrel of the rifle past the clearing, to the other side where the terrain sloped down and Fadeyushka could see stagnant water and dank vegetation as far his eyes could penetrate.
"As of now you get a two-minute head start into the swamp. For two miles due west there is nothing but swamp along the river. Then you will strike the railroad embankment. If you reach the embankment, you have won and you will live. If I catch you before the embankment…" the man pointed at the men tied to the crosses. "Those are the ones I wound and bring back. There are twice that number out there in the swamp who I killed outright. But some have managed to make it and escape." The man smiled. "Do you want the extra five minutes?"
"Who are you?"
"You have five seconds to decide."
Fadeyushka turned and looked at the dying man, blood slowly oozing from the stumps of his wrists. Fadeyushka wrapped his hands around the man's throat and squeezed, feeling the very slight pulse of the man's dying heart under his fingers.
"Very good," the man with the rifle said.
Forty minutes later, Fadeyushka was still running hard. He had been on the track team in secondary school, a distance runner. The man couldn't have known that, Fadeyushka exulted as he saw the railroad embankment ahead. He splashed through the water, ignoring the searing pain from blisters inside his boots and the scream of air out of his lungs. The bleeding in his shoulder had stopped awhile back. Whether the wound had sealed or he was simply so low on blood by now, he didn't know.
Fadeyushka scrambled up the side of the embankment, tearing fingers on the gravel until he was on top. He'd made it! Fadeyushka looked back. The man had never even gotten close enough to fire a shot this time. The extra five minutes, that was what had done it, Fadeyushka thought as he began walking. He knew that the rail bridge to the south over the Sava, was most likely destroyed, which explained the rust on the rail lines. But there would be a town somewhere ahead to the north. Of that he was sure. He felt exultant and light-headed as the railroad ties and gravel crunched under his wet boots.
He raised his hand to wipe his brow and it was as if a giant beast had suddenly snatched hold of the wrist and jerked him backward. He spun and fell, pain exploding up his arm in torrents. He gasped when he looked down. There was no hand, just a stump, pulsing his blood out onto the gravel. He stared at the flow, realizing that the leakage from the severed appendage was so slow because he had little blood left in his system. He scrambled about in the gravel, searching, the fingers of his remaining hand closing on the severed appendage.
Fadeyushka knew he had to do something. He blinked, trying to remember what it was. His vision blurred and he had to blink several times. He slumped back, closing his eyes. Then he saw his wife and their baby. He forced himself back up with his good hand, dropping the dead flesh.
Using his remaining hand, Fadeyushka quickly pulled his belt off and tied a tourniquet onto his right forearm. He looked up when he was done. A long way down the tracks, a figure, rifle in hand, was walking toward him. The line was perfectly straight as far as he could see in either direction and the man had to be at least a half mile away. Fadeyushka could not believe such a shot. He didn't bother to waste any more time marveling over it, though, as he got to his feet and stumbled away along the tracks in the opposite direction. Even with the pain he knew he couldn't go into the swamp again. His only chance was to outrun this man and get to a doctor.
Fadeyushka began to run, churning his legs, aware even as he did it that the blood, forced by his straining heart, was seeping out past the tourniquet. He felt as if he were moving in slow motion. One leg, then the other, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Fadeyushka's left leg flew out from under him. He wasn't surprised to rise up on his left elbow and see the torn muscle where the bullet had ripped through his thigh from back to front. Fadeyushka allowed his head to slump back on a railroad tie.
He thought of his wife and child, a hundred miles away, working the farm in his absence. They had not known he was coming home. His unit had not known he had left. No one would ever know that here, in the middle of this godforsaken swamp, it had all ended. He wondered how his wife would feel when he never came back. He wondered if his unit would wreak vengeance on his family for his desertion.