“Day mne vintovku.” The officer snapped.
From somewhere behind him, a soldier passed Hale’s rifle to the officer. The man turned to Hale, held up his rifle and said, “Judging by this rifle I’d said you are a cuckoo. I imagine many sons of Mother Russia have perished from this instrument of cowardice.”
“Bird’s don’t use rifles.” Hale replied.
“There is another word for it.” The man closed his eyes and his face crinkled as he slipped deep into thought. Finally, he opened his eyes, met Hale’s gaze, and said, “I believe the word in your language is sniper.”
Hale met the Russian’s gaze impassively and tried to look disinterested. He failed. The officer smiled, thrust Hale’s rifle into his face and asked, “How many soldiers of the Revolution did you slay with this to gain possession of this truck?” The lieutenant asked.
“Sadly, not all of them.” Hale replied with a smile.
Turning to the Sergeant the Soviet officer gestured at Hale and said, “Komik. Zastaqvit’ yego krovotochit’ nae tot raz.”
The Sergeant nodded curtly and said, “Da”
Turning to Hale, the Sergeant smiled malevolently, cocked his arm back and punched him in the face with all of his strength. Hale’s nose exploded in a gout of crimson as it crumpled under the mighty blow. His mind swam, and spots appeared in his eyes as the intense pain radiated from his nose. He tried to fight back the light headedness he was feeling. Failing, the edges of his vision grew dark and then faded altogether. Giving in to his overwhelming sense of fatigue, he lost consciousness.
The Lieutenant sighed in disgust, turned to the sergeant, and said in Russian, “Idiot, you hit him too hard.” He paused a moment to register the darkness and the blocked roadway, before adding, “The sun has set let’s set up camp here we can unblock the road in the morning. Ensure that he is tied up and placed in a dark tent. I want him to be disorientated when he wakes.”
The Sergeant stiffened to attention, saluted, and said, “Yes comrade commissar!”
An indeterminant amount of time later Hale awoke. Keeping his eyes closed he listened. His ears picked up the faint sound of the wind rustling through the stiff tree branches of the Karelian forest above. He focused on that sound for several minutes thinking back to the moment it was last this quiet, The hours before the Russians came. Hale thought.
His reverie was destroyed by the sound of a man starting to snore. Even in slumber they assail my ears with their endless racket. As Hale became fully aware, he felt the harsh sting of the rope against his bound wrists as he began to struggle against them, They have tied me up!
Trying to choke off the panicked thoughts flooding his mind, he tried to move his legs. Like his hands, they were bound up. How did I get here? Hale’s mind raced as his desperate thoughts overwhelmed him. Must escape!
Adrenaline exploded into Hale’s veins as he grew frantic. The sound of his heartbeat thundered in his ears as the adrenaline released into his bloodstream gave him strength and clarity. For the first time since he was captured, the fuzziness in his mind melted away. With strength born of desperation, he tugged at the ropes that bound him. I can’t get out!
After several minutes of fruitless struggle, Hale was no better off than when he had started. In fact, he was lucky that they Russians had tied the rope over his white overcoat. Otherwise his wrist and legs would be bleeding from his fruitless efforts to escape.
He sat there for several more minutes. His breath, fueled by his panic, whistled and rasped shallowly from his lungs. After what seemed like an eternity to him, lying there alone in the darkness, his mind quieted and a wave of fatigue washed over him.
He awoke sometime later in the darkness. The sound of men snoring and occasionally making wind filled his ears. Hale listened for a time, and picked out the individual voices within the chorus of slumber. There were four different men that he could discern snoring. What must have been a large man nearby, probably that brute of a Sergeant, sounded as if he was drawing all of the air in the forest in. When he finished, it burst out with such volume, it’s a wonder they didn’t hear him all the way in Helsinki.
A bit further away, the other three men, seemingly clustered together, pierced the night with their own, lesser versions of this racket. As Hale listened to the disharmony piercing the forest outside of his tent, his mind slipped into the past.
Hale awoke in the middle of the night. He had thrown his blanket off at some point, probably during a bad dream, as he was covered in sweat. The chill air of the unheated cabin, that he lay in, along with forty other men had caused him to start shivering, which woke him. He pulled the coarse wool blanket over himself up to his neck, and curled up into a ball, trying to warm up. As he slowly stopped shivering and warmth crept back into his limbs, he was struck by how loud a room full of forty men were, when they were asleep.
The silence of the night was pierced by a cacophony of sounds erupting from the denizens of this cabin. Snores, coughs, and often other noises that would result in smells that made one’s eyes water would erupt from the slumbering men. In between these noises, the steps of the guard could be heard as he slowly made his way back and forth across the room, watching over the sleeping men.
As Hale warmed up, his thoughts turned to the day ahead. Sergeant Kivi. The Sergeant had singled Hale out and humiliated him in front of the other men of the unit. Why does he have it in for me? Hale thought.
Before Hale could explore the memory further, he was brought back to awareness. He registered the faint sound of fabric tearing nearby. Curious, he focused his senses on the sound. It’s coming from behind me.
He quietly shifted his position to turn his head in the direction of the sound. As a result of his movement, the sound paused for several moments, before it resumed again. The impenetrable darkness of Hale’s prison shifted slightly as a sliver of faint light appeared. Hale studied the growing shard as the tearing sound continued. Over the course of several minutes the hole slowly grew larger.
From time to time, he noticed the edge of a blade as it slowly sawed away at the fabric. Who’s on the other side? Are they here to rescue me? Hale’s thoughts began to race as he considered the possibilities. For the first time since he awoke, despair gave way to hope.
The sound abruptly stopped. From somewhere outside Hale heard the telltale crunch of boots on frozen snow as someone approached the tent from the opposite side of the growing hole. A few feet away from the tent the man came to a stop and listened. Please God, don’t let him notice the hole, and whoever is making it.
The seconds slowly ticked by. For Hale each one seemed like an anxiety filled eternity in which his benefactor might be noticed. The Soviet guard, took another step forward toward Hale’s tent. This time the impact of the man’s booted foot upon the snow was much quieter than it had been, He must have heard something and become suspicious. Hale thought.
Suddenly the darkness was broken, as the guard threw back the tent flap and peered into Hale’s prison. The light of the full moon shone into the tent. Hale squinted and blinked in reaction, as his eyes adjusted to the unexpected glare. Over several seconds Hale’s eyes adjusted and he met the gaze of the guard glaring at him.
Like all Soviet soldiers, the man was dressed in a dark green overcoat. Upon his head was a matching green cap with a large red star emblazoned upon it. The star was faintly visible as the man’s shape was silhouetted by the light of the moon. Seeing Hale’s eyes upon his own, the man smiled to reveal several missing teeth. Those that were still present were a mixture yellow and often speckled with black marks.