“You hear what he’s saying?” Sluggish nodded towards Vitka, when the Sergeant came over.
The Sergeant shook his head.
“He heard shooting at night. In the area of the village.”
The Sergeant shifted his eyes towards Vitka.
“Not for long, just two minutes or so,” Vitka answered quickly. “Even just a minute, probably.”
“Who were you on duty with?” the Sergeant asked. “With Samara? Why didn’t he hear anything? Was he asleep?”
Samara had already appeared behind him with a guilty look.
“Sergeant, I swear to you: I wasn’t asleep. I just dozed off for a minute. Vitka shook me when the shooting started.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“It stopped immediately.”
The Sergeant stood for a while, looking into the gun slit, with the wind blowing into his face… and he went outside, beyond the post.
He thought for a while, trampling a rock under his foot.
What should we do? Leave the post, go to the base?… No.
Send one person to the base on their own, or two people, to find out what’s going on? Who? Sluggish and… Vitka. Yes.
Or should we all go at once? And leave the post? Who needs it… No, that’s not right…
He turned around to enter the post, and suddenly in the distance there was a distinct rumble, as if an enormous sheet of canvas had been torn, and a land slide had begun. There was a dull thud and a resounding echo from the ground.
Samara and Vitya darted out of the post together, as though running from a fire.
They stopped still, because there was nowhere to run.
Everyone looked in the direction of the base: the racket was coming from there.
“We’re being stormed, guys,” the Sergeant said, not really recognizing his own voice, which sounded unusual.
“They’re being stormed,” Ridge said. He had also come outside, with the grenade launcher over his shoulder. “We’re not, not yet.”
“And we’re not going to be,” the Sergeant replied, and immediately raised his voice. “Right then, fuck it all, back into the post, quick.”
For several minutes they clearly heard the sound of battle.
“Get ready,” the Sergeant ordered. “Take the cartridge containers. Grenades, as many as you can. We’re going to the base.”
Everyone but Ginger started fastening combat vests, tightening bootlaces and collecting grenades — they were kept in two green crates at the post.
“What about the post?” Ginger asked.
“Get ready, private,” the Sergeant said. “We’re leaving the post. That’s my decision.”
The Sergeant took a pair of binoculars, and for a minute he surveyed the area around the post, first from one gun slit, then from another.
“Right, let’s go.”
At a quick trot, they made the run to a sparse grove which stood one hundred meters away from the post.
“Stop,” the Sergeant commanded.
They all squatted on the withered grass.
“A car… Cars are coming,” Sluggish said, looking at the road. “From the direction of the base…”
The Sergeant heard the noise of motors himself even earlier. He also looked at the road, seeing out of the corner of his eye that Ginger was smiling.
He’s probably happy that I’m going to get a dressing down for leaving the post, the Sergeant thought lazily.
“It’s ours! It’s our jeep,” Sluggish stretched his pigmented cheek into a smile. “Let’s go, what are we…”
“Stay there,” the Sergeant said quietly.
The jeep drove almost right up to the post, with the front facing the entrance, and beeped: two, three signals in a row.
Sluggish stood up straight, looking in surprise at the Sergeant, and immediately squatted down again: out of the jeep jumped two bearded men, in a strange, bright uniform, and hid by the entrance to the post. Then another one jumped out, and crouching down, he jumped over to the gun slit, and seemed to take out a grenade of a sling, which looked expensive, and not Russian.
“Fuck me,” Sluggish sighed. “Who are they?… They’re Chechens. In our jeep. Shall we waste them?
Samara snapped his jaw.
Ginger clutched his automatic weapon, alternately grasping the grip and opening his palm: on the black metal a wet trace remained.
The grenade exploded inside the post: the bearded man had thrown it in. He threw another. And a third: it seemed to roll into the gun slit from the other side.
Following the car, another two jumped out, and they all crawled into the post.
They were absent for one and a half minutes.
“Let’s go,” the Sergeant said.
“Let’s shoot them,” Sluggish suggested, almost quivering with desire.
“We won’t do it, you got that, Sluggish? We won’t!” the Sergeant replied, almost growling.
“Why not?” Sluggish asked, and his nostrils quivered.
“Because shooting at a post is a waste of time. You can shoot for days on end. Or do you want to take it by storm? All six of us?”
“What about the car?” Sluggish asked scornfully.
“And what if our guys are there? Even one? Tied up? Do you want to shoot him?”
Sluggish moved his jaws, as if he wanted to bite something that prevented him from breathing, thrown on like a bridle.
Everyone looked, transfixed, at the post.
The bearded men came out, sullen and swift: they climbed into the car and sped off, back towards the base.
After a short distance, by the sharp turn-off behind the hill, which took them out of the line of fire, they fired a long volley at the grove.
Samara cursed so much that he almost fell on his stomach, Sluggish sank to one knee, and the Sergeant didn’t move a muscle. The bullets went high: at the treetops.
They’ve guessed that we’re here somewhere… the Sergeant thought. And they’re afraid themselves.
“We should have met them at the post,” Sluggish said. “I would have met them.”
“You’d be lying there now with a hole in your head,” the Sergeant replied, and went on ahead, into the thick of the trees.
Thirty seconds later he turned around: everyone was following him. He increased his pace, running. He heard breathing and the stomping of heavy men’s legs.
If they took the short cut, they could reach the base at the same time as the jeep. The road for the jeep was much longer.
Shooting continued from the base, breaking off occasionally, and at these moments they stopped and caught their breath.
Ginger was breathing heaviest of alclass="underline" he was carrying the case with the shells.
Never mind, let him… the Sergeant thought, but at the next stop Samara took the case.
Samara can take it then, the Sergeant agreed.
Two kilometers from the base, they walked more slowly, unhurriedly.
Soon our own tripwires will start, the Sergeant thought. After all, I haven’t seen them from this side… And they were put here by another platoon. Now we’ll disturb our own grenade, that will be great…
“Let’s bear right, toward the road,” he said after ten minutes.
Sluggish almost ran into his head: he was walking as stubbornly as if he had picked up a trail and didn’t intend to leave his prey.
“What for?” Sluggish asked.
“Because,” the Sergeant replied.
Shots were ringing out extremely close nearby, and this was quite terrifying.
Now, right now, they were about to run into people who wanted to kill them, and they would have to kill these people.
The soldiers looked around constantly.
They were mainly shooting from the base, in fact, the Sergeant thought, sitting down when the shooting got particularly persistent. And they were shooting high into the air.