Hail Warning

Termez, Uzbekistan

There was a knock at the door. The old Russian doctor took his sweet time getting out of his recliner. He placed the book he had been reading on the end table next to his chair, and he did his best to stand without breaking a bone. Like most people, he had once been young, and he still felt young in his mind. But each time he climbed out of bed or got up from his chair, a new pain or stiffness had materialized not been there the year, night, or hell, the day before.

Nikita Sokolov’s home was nothing more than a thick brick box with a door and a few dirty windows. It wasn’t that Nikita didn’t have money to afford a better home. The years he spent as a medic in the USSR military had led him into the surgical profession. After leaving the military, he went through formal medical school. He had become a surgeon at the Tsentralnaya Klinicheskaya Bolnitsa Upravleniya Delami Prezidenta hospital in Moskva, Russia. So, the doctor had money; he simply chose not to spend it.

During the entire stint as a practicing doctor, no one had ever asked him if he enjoyed being a surgeon. And if they had, the answer would have been no. It was just something that he was naturally good at. He was not good at public speaking, crowds, and relationships.

The atrocities he had seen as he stitched his way through the Russian/Afghanistan conflict, in addition to the traumas he had tended to as an overworked surgeon in the rundown hospital in Moskva, caused him to view humans as nothing more than a collection of organs, bones and blood. These living meat bags meant nothing more to him than did the dead fruit hanging from the thirsty trees behind his home. The difference was he liked fruit more than people. At least fruit brought some enjoyment to his life. It tasted good, which is more than he could say about people. However, he had to admit he had never tasted a person. It wasn’t even on his short bucket list.

Not surprisingly, Sokolov lived alone. The only person he cared about was his one and only friend, Victor Kornev. Kornev was a loner as well. Both men had been in the same unit in the military, and Nikita had dived into more foxholes with Victor than he cared to remember. After Nikita had left the military and had become a doctor in Moskva, he and Victor had kept in touch. Dr. Sokolov knew that his old friend made money selling weapons, but that made little difference to him. People really didn’t matter much to Nikita. The sale of weapons that killed people didn’t flame any type of indignation in the aging doctor. Around the time that Sokolov became tired of piecing back together fragmented wetware, Kornev

suggested he should move to Termez. The town was slow and quiet with not much going on. It was the perfect place to retire and let the rest of his days wind down, until no more days existed. And that’s how Nikita came to live in the unobtrusive Uzbekistan city next to the desert.

Having successfully achieved a standing position, Sokolov shuffled his stocking feet to the front door and put his eye up to the peephole. He smiled, fiddled around with the lock and opened the door. “Victor,” the old man said, holding his hands up in the air, like the Pope himself was standing outside his door.

“Nikita, my friend!” Kornev said in Russian, holding up his right hand that was wrapped in a bloody towel.

“Oh, no,” Sokolov commiserated in Russian. “Tell me, you did not get shot again, and in the same hand?”

“It’s even better than that. I got shot in the exact same spot, in the same hand. What are the chances of that?”

There was someone standing behind Kornev that Sokolov could not see due to the bulk of his friend. But the old man could tell it was a female by the beautiful green eye peeking out from behind Kornev’s back.

“And who do we have here?” Sokolov asked, throwing his hands into the air, again. “I don’t believe I have ever had the honor of you bringing a guest with you to visit me.”

“This is Tonya Merkalov, my friend,” Kornev said, standing to one side of the narrow doorway so Sokolov could see her.”

“привет,” Tonya said, waving at the doctor. (Hello).

The doctor’s crinkly eyes opened wider when he saw the beautiful woman.

“красивая,” the doctor said in Russian. (Beautiful).

There was a somewhat uncomfortable moment of silence, as the doctor’s weathered eyes remained transfixed on her.

Then as if he had emerged from the shortest coma on record, the doctor told the couple, “Come in. Come in, my friends.” Sokolov stood aside. “Unless you are dying, Victor, I think we should have a drink.”

Kornev shrugged, “It couldn’t hurt. Do you have any opium to accompany that drink — I mean, to assist with the pain management?”

“I do,” the old man said as he walked over to a corner of the room that served as a small kitchenette. “I still have contacts in Afghanistan, and they keep my supply replenished.”

Nikita shuffled around the small kitchen area, retrieving three shot glasses. He took a moment to blow dust out of them. He found a mostly full bottle of Stolichnaya Red Label and brought it back to his guests standing in his living room area.

“Please sit,” Sokolov told them, gesturing toward the dark leather couch that was sitting adjacent to his recliner.

Kara sat next to the end table and began looking around. On the end table, less than a foot away from her, was a framed photo of two men who looked like Kornev and Sokolov. They were dressed in Russian uniforms and looked young. She guessed it was taken at least twenty years ago, based on the lack of facial lines on Sokolov in the picture. Both men were standing in front of a large tank. Each man had his arm draped over the other’s shoulder. Both were smiling. Kornev was holding a weapon, but Sokolov was not.

The doctor finished pouring three shot glasses of vodka and held out one in each hand for Tonya and Victor. They both took the glasses from the doctor’s trembling hands.

“This is to my friend, Victor, and to his friend, Tonya—the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” Nikita said with a sly smile dancing upon his chapped lips.

Kara thought the toast was a little sad like the old man had absolutely nobody else in his life. They feigned clicking glasses together and drank.

There was an uncomfortable silence, as the man first looked at Victor and then to the person who was introduced as Tonya.

She looked back at him and noted was wearing a thick gray sweater, although it was at least 80°F in his home. She looked at the deep lines in his face, carved by time, compounded by the lack of humidity in the region. The doctor’s hair was long, white, and wild, making him look more like a mad scientist than a retired surgeon. In comparison to the bulk of Kornev, the doctor was so thin she thought he might be blow away if confronted by a big gust of wind.

The doctor continued to stare at her. She smiled pleasantly back at him, wondering what he was thinking. Was there ever a time in a man’s life when he didn’t see a pretty woman and didn’t think about sex? Could a man ever outgrow such base urges? she wondered.

Kornev broke the silence. “Well, Nikita, my hand is not going to heal while we sit here drinking your best vodka. How about you break out your needle and thread, some antibiotics, a wad of opium and we get this done? I have to fly out of here in less than an hour.”

That was news to Kara, and she started to say something, but the doctor answered in a shrill tone, “You’re always rushing, rushing, rushing. You need to take time to smell the roses, Victor. That’s what my beloved mother told me before that bastard Stalin sent her off to God only knows where.”

“I know. I know,” Kornev said apologetically. “I plan to change. I really do, but I need to complete a business transaction. It’s important. There are some important people who are depending on me.”

The doctor mumbled something under his breath and, without standing, he pulled out a surgical kit from a drawer from the end table next to him. He opened the black box and took out a suture and some surgical thread that was self-dissolving. He used this absorbable suture so the stitches did not have to be removed. After a few weeks, they would simply be gone.

“I’ve got some news for you, my friend,” Sokolov said. “There are no important people in the world. The sooner you realize that, the happier you will be.”

Kornev said nothing. He arose from the couch, walked around the coffee table and used it as a chair. He held his hand up in front of Sokolov. The doctor slowly removed the towel from around Kornev’s hand.

“Do you need another drink before we get started?” the doctor asked.

“No, my friend. Just sew me up. I promise we will stop for a longer visit when we get back into town.”

The doctor stuck the surgical suture into Kornev’s right hand and began to sew up the same spot he did less than two weeks ago.

A phone with an old-fashioned dial rang in the kitchenette. It rang several times, and the old man ignored it. On the third ring, he told Tonya and Victor, “The machine will get it.”

Kornev’s face twitched as the needle plunged back into the webbing between his index finger and thumb.

Kornev turned toward Tonya and told her, “The doctor hasn’t answered his own phone in — in — How long has it been, Nikita?”

“I don’t know, but if Ms. Merkalov here was to give me a call, I promise I would answer it.” The doctor looked up at her, smiling.

Kara thought his smile looked a little maniacal.

The answering machine’s little tape wheels began to turn and the doctor’s prerecorded voice was short and direct to the point, asking the caller, “What do you want?”

The caller left the message, “I have the package you requested. I will drop it off tomorrow between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m.” A click could be heard, and the phone machine stopped recording.

The message the phone machine recorded was equally as brusque as the doctor’s prerecorded salutation. The doctor gave Tonya and Victor a devious smile, as if he had the world’s biggest secret, and he finished sewing up Kornev’s wound.