Chelyabinsk: Where the Salamanders Glow Crawdads Do Not Sing: Black Russian, #1

By John Pansini

The Secret city of Chelyabinsk is the most radioactive city on earth. Here the Soviet Union manufactures its nuclear weapons. Here salamanders glow.

After graduating first in his class from GRU's Military-Diplomatic Academy, GRU officer Mikhail Khalatsyn is sent to Chelyabinsk to investigate a charge of treason against a Russian scientist. Mikhail finds this first assignment both distasteful and humiliating. Both he and the scientist are Afro-Russians. Mikhail's father left America's Jim Crow South in 1933 and immigrated to the Soviet Union.

Is the scientist truly a traitor or just another black man being set up to take the fall?

It's up to Mikhail find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Pansini
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201033446

John Pansini

                <ul>                     <li>John compares himself to Mark Twain & Ernest Hemingway. Some people call him <b>delusional</b>. He calls himself <b>confident</b>.</li>                     <li>John says he’s "a model railroad hobbyist." In other words, he likes to play with toy trains.</li>                     <li>John keeps a 20 gallon commune of tropical fish. The fish are happy; they co-exist peacefully; they’re healthy & well-fed. John & the fish prefer live plants.                     Unlike the ocean, <b>no plastic</b> is allowed in their water!</li>                     <li>John <b>likes</b> to cook. It’s a means to an end. He really, really, really <b>loves</b> to eat!</li>                     <li>Despite a B.S. from City College of New York & a Master’s Degree in Library & Information Science from St. John’s University,                     to feed himself & his cats, John bangs nails for a living. Like the great John Henry, another steel driving man, John Pansini will be buried with his hammer in his hands.</li>                     <li>John loves all animals, great or small; especially cats; especially his cats: Spooky (female 17), Cloud (male 12) and Alvin (a little orange terror, 6).</li>                     <li>John is still single. No woman he ever wanted ever wanted him.</li>                 </ul>    

Book preview

Forward

Little known facts about African-American immigration to the Soviet Union:

In the 1920s and 1930s, hundreds of African-Americans left the Jim Crow South and immigrated to the U.S.S.R.

There descendants are still there today.

This story is based on their story.

This book is dedicated to, Joan Fanuele, my ninety-seven-year-old mother. And to my late-father, Jack Pansini, who would have been one hundred today, on October 28, 2021.

Love ya both, JP!  

Part One

Kill Her Or Leave Her

Afghanistan

April 1980 to April 1981

Chapter 1

Death From Above

Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan

April, 1980

A boot trail, single file in the snow, pointed downhill. Odd, though, the sounds of heavy feet crunching surface and nylon fabric swishing against nylon fabric was coming from uphill. This was a valley; an acoustic trick played by surrounding mountains?

Not hardly.

In a pre-dawn darkness of gray shadow and killer cold, eight soldiers in white camouflage with weapons ready and ammo slung across their shoulders trekked almost effortlessly up a steep hill. But the trail they left behind led downhill.

Tough and hard, and as physically fit as Olympic athletes, their steamy breaths were more wisps than the heavy chugs of men moving under severe strain. These men were Spetsnaz, the most special of the Soviet Union’s Special Forces. Their leader was Lieutenant Mikhail Khalatsyn, the Black Russian.

And they’d come here to kill.

The tools for carnage Mikhail’s squad carried with them were impressive. In addition to special boots with heels on the toes and toes on the heels their main battery was the AK-74 rifle. It had a folding stock and fired a lighter round than the traditional AK-47 carried by regular army troops: 5.45 x 39mm for the ‘74 and 7.62 x 39mm for the ’47. Although the AK-47 had a huge advantage in power and caliber, the AK-74 compensated with greater accuracy and reliability. In winter, Spetsnaz wrapped their weapons in white masking tape.

Over their Gorka combat uniforms Mikhail’s men wore two-piece Klyaksa white camouflage jackets and pants made of nylon. The Klyaksas were mottled with brown/green, ink blot-like splotches. The splotches were meant to resemble patches of dirt and vegetation sticking up through the snow.

A blood red sun sat crouched just behind the jagged, dark peaks of the majestic Hindu Kush Mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Before it passed over the top of the hill and dropped its glorious light into Panjshir Valley, the Spetsnaz would have their ambush set up. Squinting at the fiery orb, Mikhail took that sun as an omen; hopefully, much enemy blood would be shed today.

As the young lieutenant knew, those who held the high ground lived and those who did not would not.

Chapter 2

Paradise Lost

Five Mujahedeen fighters were crouched in a line behind their leader, Ramin. Ramin’s band was hunkered down just inside the tree line. They had finally reached the most dangerous part on their long trek home. Stretched out before them was a snow covered, steep hill with no trees, no bushes, and no rocks, nothing that offered cover. Adding to the danger that faced them, the late morning sun hovered in the east above the hill’s summit. That meant the Afghans were heading into an open expanse of blinding white. As Ramin and everyone else who fought in Afghanistan knew death struck from above.

Those who held the high ground killed; those below died.

Ramin had spent nearly half of his twenty-nine years at war: first with other tribes, and now with the mighty Soviet Union. If there were Russians hiding atop the hill, then he would be leading his people to slaughter. But his case-hardened and battle-tested men were anxious to get back to their home village of Godri. They willingly risked an early entry into Paradise to be with their families. Although willing to die, Ramin was not ready to die. Not when there were so many Russians and their go khors (shit-eaters) to send to Hell.

The Mujahedeen had to reach Godri before nightfall. That meant they had eight hours left to complete a journey that these tough fighters could ordinarily finish in less than three. But Ramin’s men had a drag line attached: a pregnant woman, her three-year-old son, and her elderly father-in-law. Bad enough the final stage of their trek would be stop and go; but Ramin’s latest sortie into the Panjshir Valley had been a complete failure. They had left Godri five weeks ago with full magazines rammed into their AK-47s. And now they would return home still fully loaded. Not a shot had been fired because not a single Russian or go khor had been spotted. Ramin’s sense of failure had drained him emotionally, so that he did not listen to a little voice inside his head that warned: There are Russians up there. Watching. Waiting.

Ramin’s insides churned, but his guts were not the only ones that roiled. A long, loud, wet fart escaped from someone behind him.

The Russians are trying to gas us, brothers, one of the men joked.

They want to kill us with an awful stink, added another, laughing.

Black humor helped ease the tension.

Ramin felt a tap on his shoulder. Ebrahim was crouched directly behind him. Ten years older and far more experienced than even Ramin, Allah had blessed him with the eyes of a hawk, and then cursed him ugly with a nose like a hawk’s beak. He pointed to an almost invisible boot trail in the snow. If the trail led uphill, then Russians waited to greet his people with a hellfire of lead; if it pointed downhill, then the Russians were gone and it was safe to proceed.

Earlier, on this frigid morning the sun had begun its ascent above and across the eastern Hindu Kush. It had cast the snow capped, granite peaks in an orange hue before it dropped its light into the Panjshir Valley; also called the Valley of the Five Lions. Dawn had rolled across Ramin’s eyelids in shades of pink and yellow. The sun’s soothing warmth kissed his red-brown, weather-beaten face. Ramin not only looked, but felt older, than his years. His thick black beard was flecked with gray. He’d arisen with stiffened joints after enduring another night of shivering cold. He woke the others to break fast.

Ramin loved the Hindu Kush. The range ran for 800 km (500 miles) along the Afghan-Pakistan border. With elevations between 6,200 and 7,700 meters (20,000 to 25,000 feet), the Kush was one of the mightiest mountain ranges in the world. Pride and love for its green valleys and soaring snow-capped peaks, Ramin fought fiercely to kick the infidels out of his paradise on earth. Let the Russian maggots keep to the mounds of dung that had spawned them back in the Soviet Union.

After eating, his band began a forced march home to Godri. The village was nestled in foothills along the Valley’s eastern slope. Although an Afghan warrior whose duty was to protect the young, the old, and women, resentment festered in Ramin — especially towards the pregnant woman who had been holding them back. She’d put his whole band at risk. Once they left the cover of the trees, not only would the climb grow steeper, but the landscape would be wide open and desolate. And although early spring, when night fell frigid winds howled up from the Valley below. If they did not reach home by sunset all three stragglers would surely die of exposure.

And cold is such a cruel death.

Stupid Hamdast, Ramin growled to himself.

Hamdast, a nineteen-year-old idiot with wisps of fuzz on his chin, had the audacity to insist his wife and child accompany them on the trek home. And she seven months pregnant! Ramin had warned Hamdast to leave his wife in her family’s village of Barkah until June, after she delivered their second child. Barkah was twenty-two kilometers (fourteen miles) northwest of Godri, and Godri was two-hundred thirty-seven kilometers (one-hundred forty seven miles) east of the Soviet airbase at Bagram — short flights for Hind helicopters.

Death from above.

If you bring your family with you, Ramin had warned Hamdast, your wife, young son and unborn child will not survive; some of our brothers might not either.

Did the young fighter listen? Of course not; Hamdast may have the heart of a lion, but inside his skull grazed the brain of a mule.

Hamdast’s grizzled father, Hamza, though brave, was well past his prime. He was armed with an ancient Afghan shotgun. The quiet joke among the other Mujahedeen was that the rat-ta-tat-tats of a Kalashnikov automatic would cause what few teeth the old man had left to pop out of his mouth. But Hamza was a brave Afghan; he stayed by the woman’s side to protect and encourage his daughter-in-law. If it wasn’t for the old man, Ramin was convinced the woman would surely have given up less than a kilometer from her mother’s village. Women were weak-willed by nature and needed a strong man’s guidance, even one as old as Hamza.

Three hours later, the Mujahedeen had finally reached the tree line when Ebrahim spotted the boot trail.

Emotions and a sense of failure were like a blizzard in Ramin’s mind, overwhelming logic and sound judgment. If he could only close his eyes for twenty minutes, then perhaps the storm in his head might blow itself out. He had already made a mistake by allowing a woman and her child to accompany them, although none of his fighters complained. Instead the men doted on Hamdast’s family like kindly uncles. After all, it was the Afghan women and children who were the future of the Islamic state they all wanted to build.

A tired, Go see what gifts those brave Russians have left us, Ramin ordered.

Ebrahim grinned. Probably loads of shit dropped out of their pants.

After checking the boot trail, Ebrahim came back and told Ramin it was safe to proceed. The Russians were headed in the opposite direction, down the hill and back into the forest. Ramin’s mind sighed — Praise be to God! His relief was shared by the fighters behind him; except for Hamdast. The young fighter anxiously looked to the rear. That meant the stragglers had not caught up yet. The youngster’s eyes pleaded with Ramin to wait for his family.

Ramin nodded to Hamdast. To the men: We’ll rest here and eat.

No one argued. The men welcomed a break.

ANEESA DID NOT SEE the tree root buried in the snow that arched across the trail. She stumbled forward, fell to her knees, and nearly dropped her three-year-old son, Hamayoon. Jarred awake, he began to fuss. She screamed at him to shut up. Her ankles swelled tight in her boots; her shoulders ached from fatigue; her arms and feet felt leaden; her thighs burned with each exhausting step; her body sweated beneath layers of clothing, both chilling and then overheating her in intervals; her face grew beet red from the exertion of trudging uphill; and finally her back ached from the child she carried nestled against her left shoulder and the one she carried in her belly. Today was the third day of an awful journey from Barkah, the village where she was born, to Godri, her husband’s village.

Aneesa remembered a holiday she had taken with her family to Kabul when she was a little girl. They had watched a game of Buzkashi, (which means goat-grabbing). Two horse-mounted teams tried to carry, drop, or throw a headless goat’s carcass across a goal line. Three days ago, in Barkah, another contest had played out: Aneesa, her mother and her father-in-law, Hamza, on one side and Hamdast and her own father on the other. She felt like a headless carcass being tossed back and forth; she had no say in the matter. And according to which faction threw her across the goal line, she would either stay in her mother’s village until June, or make the trek to Godri. In the end, being an obedient Afghan wife, she bowed to her husband’s wishes. He wanted his son to be born in his village; so she joined his Mujahedeen band on their journey back to Godri.

A smile meant to reassure, Don’t worry, Mama, I will be well protected, she’d told her weeping mother before the band left.

And Hamza promised he would sacrifice his life to protect Aneesa and her born and unborn children.

Still on her knees, Aneesa bowed and touched her forehead onto the cold snow. Then she sat up on her haunches again, raised her fists over her head, and shrieked, Aaa-yaa! in defiance to an uncaring, merciless God. Then she screamed her husband’s name: Hamdast! because he was the true cause of her suffering. Spuck shay! (May you be disrespected!)

Hamayoon, still sitting next to her in the snow, reached up for her with tiny arms, but she was in no mood. She was the one who needed comfort!

Her father-in-law, Hamza (the Lion in Pashto), ran back and kneeled beside her. Aneesa! Aneesa! What’s wrong? Is the baby coming? It’s too soon!

No, not yet, dear father, she sighed, clasping onto his forearm. We must go on. Please help me up.

Although she could no longer endure for her own sake — she wanted to lie down in the snow and die — the lives of Hamayoon and, hopefully, the daughter she carried, all they had was her strength and her will to survive. As she struggled to her feet, she asked Hamza to help her off with her coat. Aneesa’s layers of insulation had left her sopped with sweat.

Aneesa, pleaded the old lion, you’ll catch cold; that will be bad for my new grandchild.

I said help me get this damn rag off! I’m burning up! Damn these men who believed it was their duty to tell her what she could and could not do! Then she remembered that she must not take it out on her poor father-in-law. After all, he had taken her side. She was really angry at herself because she had not resisted Hamdast’s demand that his son be born in Godri. She had asked him what if the baby was a girl. He grumbled that he made boys not girls.

Aneesa had held her tongue. But in the privacy of her mind: Fool! Without women and girls there would be no boys!

After helping her out of her outer garment, the old lion roared: Hamdast! Hamdast! To Aneesa, He should be here with us! Damn the one who has raised such a selfish son!

Aneesa gave him an exhausted grin. That’s you, Hamza, you curse yourself. She tossed the coat into the snow.

He takes after his mother. She spoiled the boy. He picked the coat up and wrapped it around his shoulders.

The trail left by the fighters began to slope downhill, so the stragglers moved quicker. The old lion carried his grandson on his shoulders; Aneesa trudged behind them.

Hamza! she called. She felt chilled again, so they stopped. Give me my coat, please.

When they finally rejoined the five fighters, Aneesa staggered to where her husband sat with his back leaned up against a tree. She let herself drop into his strong, young body. He was still her rock and her protector whom she loved despite his obstinacy.

Oh Hamdast, I’m so tired. It’s been so hard.

He offered her soft encouragement: I know, I know, dear wife. We’ll rest here and eat, but we can’t stay long. We must get home before dark.

Your home not mine! Again she pushed anger back down her throat. Then Aneesa closed her eyes and nodded off. Her son’s whining woke her. Hamayoon squirmed when his grandfather tried to force him to eat something.

He’s exhausted, Hamza, she told her father-in-law. He doesn’t want to eat; let him sleep.

Hamza took his grandson and cradled the boy in his lap. Hamayoon’s eyes fell shut and his breathing deepened. Then she noticed Hamdast direct his father’s attention to the hill that lay in front of them.

Alarmed, What Hamdast, what? Russians?

Hamdast replied, They’re long gone, Aneesa.

Probably crawled back into their rat holes, snickered the old lion.

Despite her husband’s and father-in-law’s attempt to downplay the threat, Aneesa was struck by a dreadful premonition:

None of them would ever see Godri again.

LIKE SPRING’S RUNOFF, swift, fresh, and clear, confidence surged in Ramin. Judging by the sun, he guessed it was still mid-morning. They had enough hours of daylight left to reach Godri. What a joy to be alive! Soon he would be home with his beloved family. He smiled as he watched his Mujahedeen tenderly share their food and comfort Hamdast’s pregnant wife. The woman had transformed these hard men. Because of her, they had kept a small piece of their humanity. For that he praised God.

He finally asked Ebrahim, What is Hamdast’s wife’s name?

Aneesa. It means companion in Arabic.

Aneesa, he repeated softly. She was no longer the woman. She was now a human being with a name.

A half hour later, Ramin gave the signal to move out. The slow climb began. Ramin and three fighters took the lead, followed by Hamdast carrying his son on his strong shoulders, while the old lion and Aneesa brought up the rear. Ramin stopped and was pleased to see that the entire group still hung together in a line.

Suddenly, as he turned to lead his band forward, cracks of gunfire and white hot lead streaked down upon them. Two thuds smacked into his chest. One lung burned as if pierced by a red hot spear, and then he felt his heart explode. A bullet smashed into Ramin’s face and pushed jagged shards of his lower jaw and teeth down his throat.

Ramin felt his soul begin to detach from its earthly body while his mind’s eye began to free-float away from the scene of the massacre. He saw his own corpse and those of his brothers lying in heaps of red snow. Figures in white camouflage descended the hill, firing weapons that tore his people to pieces.

Higher and higher he soared until the human drama below was reduced to a spec being swallowed by the majesty of the Hindu Kush. Never again would he stand in awe of their beauty, never again would he smell the springtime scents of pine forests or meadows of mountain flowers.

Was he making a final journey to be with God in Paradise? Or was he being damned to Hell for letting his people be butchered?

Allah, forgive me! his spirit pleaded.

And then, like a switch, his consciousness clicked off.

Chapter 3

Tender Mercies

Just before noon, Lieutenant Mikhail Khalatsyn watched them through binoculars. He lay on his belly hidden beneath a white blind at the top of the hill. In single file eight Afghan borzois (dogs) trudged up the slope. The lead five moved cautiously, their squinting warrior eyes on alert while their heads slowly swiveled from side to side. They puffed hot breaths into the cool, damp air. Soon enough their precious wisps would end. Not one would ever reach the top of this hill.

The lieutenant knew the closer the borzois got to the summit, the more relaxed and less vigilant they would be. He’d already observed the Mujahedeen leader’s tight movements begin to loosen. The scruffy Afghan began to pay greater attention to what was going on behind him rather than what might be waiting above. When the borzois were close enough for him to see shock and awe on their ugly, hairy faces, only then would he give the signal to open fire.

Death from above.

When the borzois were less than ten meters from the summit, the leader stopped and turned around. About three meters behind the first five Mujahedeen followed a fighter who carried a young child on his shoulders. Mikhail did not like killing children; he had two of his own. But he reminded himself that when that child became an adult, he or she would be a mortal threat to his children.

Such are the cruel truths of war.

An old man and a woman brought up the rear. There would be no mercy for them either.

The leader halted again to let the column tighten up. He must have been thinking the worst was over. When he turned towards the summit again, he smiled proudly as if his band was about to conquer Everest. Lieutenant Khalatsyn sighted him in the cross hairs and fired off a three round burst. That was the pre-arranged signal. At the sound of the shots, suddenly eight phantoms clad in white camouflage jumped up from beneath white tarps. The Mujahedeen had walked right into a Spetsnaz L ambush. Led by Sergeant Vladislov Karmalov, four Spetsnaz advanced from the right, while Lieutenant Khalatsyn and three others came down upon them from the front. The Russians fired with their AK-47s on semi-automatic. Lieutenant Khalatsyn had trained his men well; they were cool, calm, and deadly accurate. Bullets thudded into bodies while jets of blood, guts and brains erupted like flares from the enemy. In seconds, heaps of Afghans lay sprawled in slowly growing patches of red snow. The enemy had been so taken by surprise that not a single shot had been fired at his men.

Good kills.

Lieutenant Khalatsyn signaled cease fire. He walked downhill towards the bodies, but his tracks pointed uphill because of the special, reverse heel-toe boots Spetsnaz wore in Afghanistan. Acting on a tip from an Afghan traitor in Barkah, his team had moved into position just before dawn this morning. Pulling back his white hood, the lieutenant grimly surveyed the slaughter. Senior sergeant Karmalov joined him. When they spoke to each other privately like this, out of hearing of the other men, it was always as Mishe and Vlad.

Moodaks (assholes) walked right into our trap, said Lieutenant Khalatsyn. I almost feel sorry for them.

Grinning, Almost but not quite; right, Mishe? I imagine these borzois have never seen our special boots.

Lieutenant Khalatsyn replied in English: "Ain’t that the truth."

Mishe and Vlad watched as the men checked Afghan bodies.

Grinning, They’ll be so disappointed when they get to Paradise, Vlad said. Spetsnaz will have all the virgins.

Lieutenant Khalatsyn gave his friend a deadpan look. There are no Spetsnaz in Paradise, Vlad... No virgins either.

Mikhail’s Spetsnaz were hard, grizzled men in their thirties. They were brave, loyal, and possessed sharp minds; not a single teenage conscript among them. A soldier named Kulikov came back to report that a few of the Mujahedeen were still alive.

Our orders are no prisoners, said Lieutenant Khalatsyn. Finish them.

We should leave them here to die of exposure, Comrade Lieutenant, Kulikov griped. That’s what they would do to us. With our balls stuffed in our mouths.

We are not them, comrade.

The Black Russian truly wanted to believe that Russians were a civilized people while Afghans ate their own young. But after what had just happened, more a slaughter than a battle, yet one more Jenga had been pulled out of the stack upon which his humanity was delicately balanced. But what happened next shoved that piece right back in again.

Kulikov took out his knife and went to join his comrades to carry out the grim business of mercy. Suddenly an ill wind blew down from the hilltop; jeers and shouts of two Afghan scouts attached to their unit. They bounded through the snow waving the only weapons Lieutenant Khalatsyn allowed them, long knives. Now that the fight had ended, they must have felt it safe to emerge from their white tarps. Lieutenant Khalatsyn hated the scouts. They knew it and feared him. The Mujahedeen he begrudgingly respected; like he and his men, they fought and died for a cause greater than themselves. Thugs like these scouts, and the traitor back in Barkah, only cared about being paid and how much booty they could loot from the bodies of fellow Afghans.

The scouts fell upon the first body they saw, the Mujahedeen leader. After rummaging the dead man’s personal affects, they cut his pants away with their knives. Apparently they also intended to loot the corpse of its most private parts.

Fucking Pashtun animals, grumbled Lieutenant Khalatsyn. Comrade Sergeant, tell them if they remove anyone’s package, I shall personally stuff it down their throats.

Vlad winked. You offer our brave Afghan brothers an early lunch, Comrade Lieutenant? Are you growing soft?

Sergeant Karmalov went over and yanked them off the corpse. One protested, but the other spotted something further down the hill. He pointed, and then the two of them scurried off in that direction.

While the Spetsnaz slit the throats of all Afghan bodies, both living and already dead, a woman shrieked. Lieutenant Khalatsyn, Sergeant Karmalov, and the other Russians turned in that direction. The Afghan scouts were tossing a child back and forth between them. The boy was naked from the waist down. Streaks of blood ran down his tiny legs and dripped onto the snow from a wound on his upper body. With such a tiny torso the bullet hole must have been huge; no way was the child still alive.

The woman stumbled from one to the other trying to grab her son back. Then one scout dropped his pants down around his ankles and motioned for the other one to toss him the boy. As Lieutenant Khalatsyn stomped through the snow, he passed two soldiers. He overheard an alarmed younger Spetsnaz named Tamarov asked an older comrade, What is that borzoi going to do?

The Afghans call it bacha bazi, the older one snickered. We call it child rape. Our esteemed commanders back in Moscow call it, ‘A cultural matter that does not concern us.’

But the child is dead! said Tamarov.

The older soldier shrugged and went back to business.

When the scouts saw a raging lieutenant headed their way, they immediately began to curl within themselves as if to hide inside their own skins. Khalatsyn motioned for Sergeant Karmalov to take the child. After examining the small body, Vlad’s sad eyes signaled the boy was dead.

Give him to his mother, Comrade Sergeant, ordered Lieutenant Khalatsyn. Then he slipped his own knife out of a sheath attached to his boot. He turned on the nearest scout, shorter than himself, the one with the dropped pants, and plunged the blade into the top of the man’s forehead. The Afghan’s eyes immediately crossed, and he sank to his knees. Blood gushed from the hole when he pulled the blade out. The scout looked like a wedding fountain that ran blood instead of chocolate. The other scout began to run away, but a smiling Tamarov put two rounds in the man’s back.

He gets no mercy, ordered Lieutenant Khalatsyn. Leave him where he is. If he still lives, let the cold and the wolves take him. Then he turned to the Afghan kneeling in front of him. The man’s blood flow had stopped; he was quite dead. Mikhail looked into the man’s lifeless crossed eyes and snickered at the thought that those eyes would watch each other for all eternity. The lieutenant walked over to the tiny woman; his hulking figure cast her in shadow. He noticed she was pregnant. She clutched her dead child and cooed comforting words to him as if he was still alive. Mikhail got down on one knee and reached out to her. She recoiled. In broken Pashto he told her the child was dead.

Then in Russian he added, I’m sorry. Do you understand what I’m saying? The boy is dead.

She may not have understood the words, but she knew exactly who had done what to whom. Her eyes spit fire at him as she shrieked hatred and defiance. Vlad came over and placed a hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder.

A distressed, She is not wounded, sir. What shall we do with her?

Stay here, Comrade Sergeant.

Mikhail moved on to where the radioman, with a radio and long antenna on his back, crouched on one knee. He ordered the man to call in that they were ready for pickup. Tell Comrade Captain that our courageous Afghan brothers ran away at the first shot. Tell him we have room for a woman prisoner.

The radioman reported the scouts’ cowardice, grinned, and held out the receiver so Lieutenant Khalatsyn could hear the captain’s ridicule. When he held the receiver back on his ear, suddenly, all bright lights on his face went out.

Comrade Captain says no prisoners, sir, the radioman said. He says kill her or leave her behind.

Lieutenant Khalatsyn grabbed the receiver from the soldier’s hand. Comrade Captain, sir. The woman is pregnant. Certainly we can’t... He dropped down on one knee, closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

An acquiescent, Yes sir. Lieutenant Khalatsyn thrust the receiver back to the radioman. As he stomped away he grumbled in English, "Asshole."

The Spetsnaz waited on top of the hill for the Mi-4A helicopter to extract them and fly them back to the Soviet airbase at Bagram.

About twenty meters downhill from where the Soviets were gathered, the woman rocked and sobbed, clutching her dead child. Occasionally, she would look wildly at the Russians as if someone might come to steal the precious corpse. Lieutenant Khalatsyn ordered Sergeant Karmalov to leave the woman a bundle of food, but when the big man tried to give it to her she kicked at him and screamed.

Stupid woman, if you die it’s not our fault!

A flash of temper, "Leave her be! Lieutenant Khalatsyn yelled in English. Then, in a subdued tone, he added in Russian: We’ve done all we can for her, Comrade Sergeant."

We’ve killed her son, and — a quick glance at the body who had been carrying the child on his shoulders — her husband.

The dead, cross-eyed scout kneeled in the snow, his body tilted back on its haunches. His arms were extended out at his sides. His head was even more skewed to the rear, practically sitting between his shoulder blades. A bare throat exposed a small bump of an Adam’s apple, and his mouth hung open. The scout looked like he was begging God for forgiveness.

The bodies of seven dead men, all pious believers in Him, lay like offerings on patches of red snow that reminded the lieutenant of Muslim prayer mats. And meters away, the other scout still clung to life. He crawled on his stomach as if he really had somewhere to go. Mikhail Khalatsyn mused that if there really was a God, no doubt He looked down upon His stupid creatures and their pitiful dramas with indifference.

In the far off distance came the faint sounds of beating rotors.

Lieutenant Khalatsyn watched the woman finally struggle to her feet still holding her dead child. When she trudged uphill passed the Russians, she shrieked curses at them.

Where are you going? Tamarov called to her. Drop the child! He’s dead!

So is she, muttered Comrade Kulikov. I doubt she’ll make it more than a kilometer.

Tamarov made the Russian Orthodox Sign of the Cross.

Her God is not your God, Kulikov reminded him.

He is not my God, either, thought Mikhail. Then he glanced over to where the wounded scout was crawling. The man finally stopped moving. Above him, his steaming breath dissipated into a mist that continued upward like a soul leaving its earthly remains.

The helicopter got closer and closer until it finally hovered above them. It descended into the snow. Its rotors whirled round and round while the men looked to the Black Russian for an order to board. But the Lieutenant continued to watch the woman struggle down the hill’s back slope. She stumbled and fell a few times, but she got right back up again. After a short walk on level ground, she began to ascend the next hill, one even steeper but not as high as this one.

Sir? said Sergeant Karmalov.

Mikhail finally gave the order and the men jumped onto the chopper. As it lifted off, the tiny woman, still clutching her dead son, grew smaller and smaller until she was swallowed by a vast expanse of the purest white.

The image of the woman’s futile struggle