A Darker Place (20 page)

Bounine came up behind him. “Christ, a girl. I hate that. Are you going to finish her off?”

Kurbsky took her hand and spoke to her gently. She smiled, then her eyes closed and her head lolled to one side.

“What did you say to her?”

“I said ‘Go in peace’ in case she was a Muslim.” He turned to the others. “Thirteen of us now. So just follow me.”

He went straight out into a large restaurant, walked through the tables into the foyer of the hotel leading to the main doors. All was still, and on one side was the entrance to what had once been one of the most luxurious bars in Grozny.

Someone said, “My God, look at all that booze.”

There was a surge, and Kurbsky fired a short burst into the ceiling. Everyone turned. He said, “Not yet. You bastards stink, and I stink, because we’ve been in the shit for weeks. So follow me right now.”

He led the way through the kitchens to the staff quarters, stepped in the first walk-in shower exactly as he was, in combat uniform and clutching an AK-47. He switched it on full. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

They stared at him in astonishment, and Bounine was next. “A bloody marvelous idea.” He stepped under the next one.

The rest of the men followed boisterously, like schoolboys after football, and the filth and the stench of the sewers washed away in dark brown rivulets.

 

 

LATER IN THE bar lounge they rested, eating a whole range of canned foods from the kitchens, discovering that the electricity worked in parts of the hotel and that there were lights in the bar. “Not that we could use those,” Bounine said. “It would attract everyone in the city.”

Kurbsky had informed Command of their whereabouts and had been promised fresh orders, which hadn’t come. He and Bounine had been working their way through a bottle of champagne, and he was just refilling the glass when there was a sound of vehicles outside.

Kirov, who’d been left on guard duty at the door, ran in. “They’re ours, Lieutenant, somebody important, I think.”

Which it was. About a dozen men appeared, flooding into the foyer, excited at the riches the bar disclosed, started forward, and came to a halt, reacting at once to shouted commands. A moment later, General Chelek, the area commander, walked through the crowd. There was little to distinguish him from his men; he was just as unshaven, his uniform just as filthy.

Kurbsky and his men stood up. He came forward and took the bottle of champagne from Kurbsky’s hand and looked at the label. “Very nice, you lads are doing all right. Who are you?” He took the glass from Kurbsky’s hand and it was filled.

“Fifth Paratroop Assault Platoon.”

“The Black Tigers, isn’t that what they call you? I thought there were fifty in your unit.”

“What you see is what you get, General, thirteen.”

“Unlucky for some, they say.”

“Which means you need us for something rotten?”

Chelek went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of vodka. He glanced at his men, who stood waiting. “Okay, pitch in.” Which they did. He sat at the end of the bar with Kurbsky. “Who are you?”

“Alexander Kurbsky, Comrade. I’m the only officer left.”

“Your name is not unknown to me. Yes, I’ve got something pretty heavy for you. One of our most implacable foes in the Grozny area has been General Shadid Basayev. You’ve heard of him?”

“Of course.”

Bounine, who had been standing close, said, “He went to Rome to university, General, studied law. He’s a Muslim who married an Italian woman and became a Catholic.”

Chelek shrugged. “Men will do strange things where a woman is concerned, even a man like Shadid Basayev. You seem well-informed, Sergeant.”

“He was once a lawyer,” Kurbsky explained. “At Rome University.”

Bounine said, “The KGB put a bomb in Basayev’s car before the war here in Grozny. His wife was using the car, not him, and he has never forgiven us. That’s why he kills Russians with such venom.”

“I’m aware of that. Basayev has withdrawn into the mountains for a while. My intelligence sources say he is at the monastery of Kuba. That’s about sixty miles from here. It’s at the head of a valley—there’s a plateau perhaps five miles away. Our informant is a Father Ramsan, a priest. He contacts us by radio, says Basayev only has twenty men with him.”

“So what are you suggesting, Comrade?” Kurbsky asked. “That we put together a hunting party and go after him? We wouldn’t last an hour out there. Every peasant, every shepherd on a crag, are his eyes and ears.”

“You’re absolutely right, but I’m not suggesting you go out by road. By chance, at the Grozny military supply airstrip, there is a Dakota transport plane. Very old, but very reliable, or so I’m informed. It could have you over the Kuba Plateau in no more than an hour one way or the other.”

There was a heavy silence. Bounine said, “You mean the Dakota would land on the plateau?”

“Of course not. I mean you would jump, you idiot. You are paratroopers, are you not? You have jumped into action?”

“Yes, I have, Comrade,” Bounine told him. “And five of my comrades.”

“But I haven’t,” Kurbsky said. “And neither have six of my men. The demands for the war in the last year in Afghanistan meant that a lot of paratroopers didn’t get jump training.”

“Well, that’s just too bad,” Chelek said calmly. “My experts on staff say a pass over that plateau at four hundred feet will have you on the ground in a matter of seconds. The chutes are available, they rig an anchor line in the plane, you clip your static line on it, and you jump out. It’s all automatic. You are the Black Tigers, are you not, and an elite unit?”

“Of course, Comrade,” Kurbsky said. “When would we go?”

“Tomorrow sometime. I’ll arrange for a truck to pick you up from here during the next couple of hours or so. I’ll see you at the airfield tomorrow.”

He called to his men and walked out, and they followed. The Tigers were muttering among themselves, and young Kirov came forward.

“Is it true, this business, Comrade, something about parachuting out of a plane? We couldn’t hear it all. I’ve never had parachute training, and neither have others here.”

“And neither have I,” Kurbsky told him. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, this is the Russian Army, so if General Chelek tells you to jump out of a plane, you do it, even if you don’t have a parachute. Sergeant Bounine’s the expert. You take over, Yuri?”

He sat in the corner, thinking about it, fiddled in his right paratrooper’s boot and found his favorite knife in a secret pocket. It was very old, carved like a Madonna in some kind of bone, and at the press of a button, a blade jumped out, razor sharp. A gutting knife, used by some Caspian fishermen way back in the past. He checked that it was working to perfection, aware of the talk among the men, the anger, then closed the knife and sheathed it again in its secret place.

Bounine came, went behind the bar, got a bottle of vodka, and came back with two glasses. “You might as well get drunk while we’re waiting for the truck,” he announced. “It’ll help when you have to think that tomorrow at some time or other, you’re going to be jumping from that Dakota.”

He gave Kurbsky a glass. “Vodka, Lieutenant?”

“What would I do without you?” Kurbsky said.

 

 

THE AIRSTRIP WAS on a section of highway just outside the city, normal road traffic diverted elsewhere. A tented town had sprung up, mixed in with prefabricated buildings on what had originally been farmland. Planes were coming in and out all the time, mainly transport. Everything was makeshift, even what passed as air traffic control.

The pilot was an old hand named Bashir, a contract man brought in for the war. He’d flown in Afghanistan, old Dakotas bought from various Asian sources, workhorses that could fly anywhere. He’d dropped paratroopers during his time in Afghanistan, before helicopters became such an important part of that ill-fated campaign. However, he knew his stuff and had an anchor line rigged before Kurbsky and his men arrived.

He was squat and aging and badly in need of a shave. “There’s nothing to it. You strap on the parachute, clip your static line to the anchor cable, and jump one after the other. You’re on the ground before you know it.”

“Have you ever jumped?” Kirov demanded.

“That isn’t the point.”

Bounine intervened. “This is a waste of time. You wear a helmet and your usual uniform, and help each other to strap on the parachutes. You’ll pack a canvas bag containing weapons and explosives, with a hanging strap clipped to your belt. It lands below you and thumps the ground, letting you know you’re about to land. Very useful in the dark.”

“Only you won’t be going in the dark—there will be some light, just a little,” Kirov said.

“And when does this happen?” Kurbsky asked.

“Well, according to my orders, about four-thirty in the morning. You’ll certainly be there by five-thirty.”

“Tomorrow morning?” Bounine asked.

“Those are my orders. Now, I suggest we rig one of the men in all his gear, equipment bag, the lot, and have a demonstration.” He turned to Kurbsky. “Is that okay, Lieutenant?”

Everybody had heard. Bounine turned to Kurbsky and said, “To those of you who have never jumped before, I would say this: In the last war, all fliers in the air force carried a parachute in case their plane was shot down, but they didn’t practice beforehand, they were just thankful it was there.”

“Why doesn’t that comfort me in the slightest?” Kurbsky asked.

 

 

BUT THEY WENT through everything several times to make sure everyone got the idea. Each grab bag contained a Stechkin pistol, an AK-47 with folding stock, fragmentation grenades, plastic explosive and pencil timers, and a field service medical kit including morphine ampules. They rested nervously in one of the tents and it rained and the tent leaked, but outside the war went on, planes of various types landing and taking off, and way in the distance there was the thump of artillery and fires in the city.

“It’s biblical.” Bounine had brought a bottle of vodka from the hotel in his knapsack and sat drinking from the bottle occasionally, gazing out through the darkness to the flames of the city. “Death on a Pale Horse, destruction everywhere.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Kurbsky demanded.

“Oh, humankind,” Bounine said glumly. “Thousands of years of civilization and we only succeed in butchering each other.”

“Yes, well, that’s the way it is, nothing changes, so I’m going to go and get my orders from Chelek and you’d better come with me, so put the bottle back in your knapsack.”

They found him in one of the prefabricated buildings that housed the command post, which seemed full of radio equipment and staff. A request to see him produced a suggestion that they take a seat. They were still there an hour later. Kurbsky approached the desk again. The young aide looked up inquiringly, but at that moment General Chelek emerged from his office and dropped a file on the desk.

“So there you are,” he said to Kurbsky. “I’ve been waiting. I want to get this show on the road.”

“I’ve brought my sergeant, Comrade General.”

“I’ve no objection.” They went in, and he sat behind his desk. “You’ve sorted the parachuting out?”

“Yes, Comrade.”

“Excellent. This is a very simple operation, and that’s the way I like things. The monastery at Kuba has been taken over by Basayev, the monks all kicked out. He’s there now with twenty men. I want you to wipe them out.”

“You’re absolutely sure they are there?” Kurbsky asked.

“Father Ramsan has always proved reliable in the past. He was allowed to move into a farm about a mile from the monastery when Basayev took over. He tells me of an old tunnel, long disused, which gives access to the monastery. He will act as your guide.” He put a knapsack on his desk. “There’s a radio in there, and all the instructions you need to contact Ramsan.”

Kurbsky glanced at Bounine. “Sergeant.”

Bounine took the radio. Chelek said, “I’ve had a look at your record, Kurbsky—it’s remarkable for one so young. Decorated twice in Afghanistan.” He smiled. “I envy you your inevitable success.”

“We’ll try not to disappoint you, Comrade.”

They went, pausing only at the entrance as the rain increased heavily. “I’ve often thought about this war and asked myself why any sane person would want this place,” Bounine said.

“It’s a game, my friend,” Kurbsky told him. “People like Chelek move the pieces to suit themselves—it’s their particular vanity.”

“And the pieces are the people like us who do their bidding,” Bounine said. “I told you—it’s biblical.”

“Idiot,” Kurbsky said. “But let’s get on with it. Maybe there could be a medal in it for you.”

“But I’ve got a medal,” Bounine said plaintively, and followed him, as Kurbsky ran out through the rain and back toward the tent and the others.

 

 

SO, IN THE darkness at four-thirty, they sat in a line on a bench seat in the Dakota, the anchor cable above them, each man fully kitted out, Bounine, as the most experienced, seated close to the door. Kurbsky, at the other end of the line, had his radio at the ready and the engines were already throbbing.

Bashir said, “Right, Lieutenant, here we go.”

The Dakota started to move, the roaring of the engines filled the plane, and then they were lifting and speeding away at low level to get away from Grozny as quickly as possible.

 

 

THE RAIN CONTINUED, hammering the aircraft, the wind howled, but Bashir held her steady, flying at four thousand feet, the mountains shrouded in cloud below. When he finally started his descent, they went into a kind of mist and then burst out of it and there was visibility, a gray predawn light infused with a kind of luminosity that covered the mountains. He was very low now, drifting through a wide canyon at a thousand feet, and spoke to Bounine over the radio.