The Death Trust

THIRTY-FIVE

My senses came back online slowly. “Euphoric” was the word that best described how I felt, a warm glow concentrated way down in my groin, spreading its fingers up through my chest and down into my legs. I felt like I had just had the best sex of my life. I was conscious that wherever I was, or whatever I was in, it was on the move. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. Fingers ripped the surgical tape off my lids, giving my remaining eyebrow a Brazilian. The feelings of love pretty much evaporated at that point.

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakes,” said Alu Radakov, seated opposite, an AK-47 across his lap. “You have been out for hours, Vin. If I didn’t know better, I’d have put your exhaustion down to Katarinya’s athleticism.”

It took a few moments for my brain to catch up with the information it was receiving. The sensation of movement was because I was in the back of a truck, and it was moving. Of course. Radakov sat opposite with three of his men. One of them, I was pleased to see, had a bandage across his nose and two black eyes. He smiled at me. I smiled back — no hard feelings, pal. Like Radakov, they were armed with Kalashnikovs. The guy with the beak and the sallow complexion was seated beside me and I decided he had a face like an angry weasel.

Ropes around my chest and legs held me on the seat, my shoulders and chest tied back so that I wouldn’t pitch forward. My wrists were cuff-locked together, and a cannula had been inserted in the back of one of my hands.

“Midazolam,” said Radakov. “Commonly used in anesthesia. It induces amnesia, and makes the patient compliant — in your case, for hours. Did you have any erotic dreams, Vin? It’s a side effect of the Midazolam.”

That explained a number of things: the hardware in the back of my hand, why the heavens had suddenly shifted from night to daylight, how I came to be in my present predicament, and why, until now, I was so relaxed about it all.

I noted that I was wearing an older style U.S. Army — issue battle dress uniform with European camouflage pattern. The air stank of manure, rotting hay, and something light and sweet I couldn’t quite identify.

“Where are we?” I said, the words croaking in my throat.

“Within an hour’s drive of Grozny,” said Radakov.

Grozny. Grozny? Where was that? It rang a bell.

Maybe Radakov could see the gears turning. He said, “Grozny, capital of Chechnya.”

Chechnya? “What?” I said, the single word encapsulating my complete bewilderment. Chechnya was over a thousand miles from Riga.

The truck bounced and came to an abrupt stop so that we all lurched sideways in our seats. Radakov and his men made their way to the back of the vehicle, skating on the ooze. The weasel guy slipped the knots on the rope tying me to the chassis and sliced away the cuff-locks with a pair of scissors. He smiled at me — not a pleasant sight. I decided the drug’s aftereffect had nothing to do with his likeness to the animal.

The canvas flap at the back of the truck was flung open by a heavyset guy, his face covered in red blotches — some kind of birthmark. He looked fifty but was probably closer to thirty. My copassengers jumped down, and Radakov turned and beckoned me to follow.

“Come,” he said.

I stood uncertainly, my legs still rickety from the drug.

We were on the outskirts of a village sitting at the base of a set of sparsely wooded hills. The village itself was poor, the buildings low and mean. Thin blue smoke coughed from chimneys. Women dressed in loose-fitting print dresses and gum boots, with scarves tying up their hair, wandered about on their daily business. There were a few mangy dogs sniffing around and children hung out in twos and threes or sat listless by the road. We were in the countryside, only the place stank of rotten-egg gas and burnt grease. I spotted a rusted, blackened LAV–Light Armored Vehicle — with Russian markings still visible. Weeds sprang up inside it. I estimated the wreck to be no more than a month old.

Our truck had pulled up beside a paddock housing two tan cows whose ribs and hips showed clearly through their hides. They tottered on their hooves as if they were about to topple over. In the center of the field lay a tangle of old pipes, rusting oil drums, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, drilling gear. And then it clicked — the stench of the place. They were drilling for crude here, “they” being the villagers. The earth squelched under my feet and I looked down. Black crude was breaking through the crust. This place was an environmental nightmare. No wonder everyone, everything, looked so sick.

A cluster of people appeared from around one of the buildings in the village, coming up the road toward us. We met them on a wooden bridge across a stream. Radakov had chosen not to keep me restrained and I knew why. Where was I going to go? Still dazed by the anesthetic, I glanced over the side of the bridge and saw a couple of children sitting by the creek. A large globule of oil broke from the bank and swung slowly out into the center of the flow before being carried away downstream.

I looked back at the approaching villagers: a couple of young men, an old woman, and two teenage girls. Radakov said something to them in the local language — Chechen, I supposed. The teenage women were pushed forward and Radakov conducted an inspection of them as if they were horses. He checked their teeth, their ears, lifted their hems and groped them, and then put his hand inside their dresses and fondled their breasts. Apparently satisfied with what he found, he motioned at the weasel guy, who produced some paperwork, which one of the young men — perhaps the only literate one among them — perused. The young man seemed satisfied and there was suddenly much laughter shared by everyone except the two young women, who stood with their sullen heads bent, staring at the ground. A pen was produced and the older man scratched his autograph onto the document, followed by the old woman. Radakov then produced two rolls of what looked like U.S. dollars and handed them to the signatories.

The group walked off back to the village, herding the girls in front of them. One of the young men was left behind, and he went into a huddle with Radakov. Radakov’s cronies joined in and an intense, animated discussion ensued. There was a fair bit of pointing over the hills. Eventually some agreement was reached and the young man hurried off down the road toward the village, hands buried deep in his pockets. Something, as they say, was up.

“What gives?” I asked Radakov as he turned to walk back to the truck.

“We walk,” was all he said.

A few words were exchanged with the driver, who rubbed the red splotch on his forehead, and then Radakov led the way to the oil-polluted stream. We went down into the gully and followed it back up toward the hills. I didn’t need to be told that we were taking this route to avoid Russian patrols. What I didn’t know was where we were going, or why.

The crude oil clogging the stream made the going tough, possibly more because of the gagging, solid stench of it than the fact that keeping a secure footing was nearly impossible and we all slipped numerous times.

Eventually, we reached the hills and the smell of sulphur receded. We climbed through the trees for at least an hour. The sun was setting when Radakov called a halt. Two of his men lifted some stones and began to dig beneath them. A couple of feet into the loam, they struck a metal box. Five minutes later, Radakov cracked open the box and handed around the contents: black ski masks, packs of C4, timers, RPGs, and armor-piercing rounds to go with them. There was also a set of U.S.-made night-vision goggles — NVGs — the latest and greatest.

“You going to tell me what this is all about, aside from people-smuggling and prostitution?” I asked as we set off along the ridgeline.

“Not yet — first I want you to see what’s going on here with your own eyes before you judge The Establishment.”

“Okay,” I agreed cheerfully, “The Establishment. That’s a good place to start.”

“No. First you must see.”

Radakov took the lead of our little column, scouting with the NVGs. We walked for maybe another hour, down into the next valley, where there was a village pretty similar to the one we’d visited earlier, except for one reasonably crucial detail: It was swarming with Russians. Russians, Chechens, high explosives, and AP rounds. I’m no clairvoyant but I could see that noise, death, and trouble were just around the corner. Confirming as much, Radakov handed me a ski mask.

We took the long route, skirting the village, avoiding contact with Radakov’s enemy. Eventually, we arrived at a farmhouse, outside of which were a couple of Russian vehicles — LAVs. It was a moonless night, ideal for NVGs. Two Russian soldiers stood outside, on sentry duty. They were smoking. Two of Radakov’s men snuck up behind them and silently slit their throats, holding their hands over the wounds to muffle the sound of the sucking, bubbling noise. Another Russian sitting in one of the vehicles met the same fate. A short while later, two Russians walking out of the farmhouse were clubbed to death soundlessly with fence posts conveniently lying about. Radakov walked into the small building and I heard two muffled shots. He exited seconds later and motioned for me to join him. When I hesitated, the weasel tapped me on the shoulder with his rifle, indicating that I should get a hustle on.

The stench of vomit and feces reached me before I stepped inside. But nothing could have forewarned me of the scene I was confronted with. Two Russian soldiers were sprawled against a wall, each with a gunshot wound to the eye, their brains sliding down the rough walls. One of Radakov’s men hawked up some mucus from the back of his throat and spat it on the nearest of the dead Russians.

The reason for the Russian presence in this farmhouse, and now ours, was a man in his early twenties duct-taped into a chair, sitting unconscious in his own filth. His face was battered raw, and fresh purple bruises and welts stood out on his body. But that was not the worst of it, not by a long shot. His mouth was smeared with blood, which I assumed was the result of the numerous beatings he’d sustained. Then I realized it was caused by something else. Radakov lifted the man’s right hand, revealing the bloody stumps of his index and middle fingers. Mounted on a small table nearby was a meat grinder of the type used to turn bovine muscle and bone into sausage. The realization of what had been happening here hit me: They had ground off the man’s fingers and forced them into his own mouth. Suddenly I found myself kneeling on the floor, the contents of my stomach burning the back of my throat as they passed through on their way out. One of Radakov’s men was beside me on the floor doing the same.

The weasel, who by now I assumed was the band’s medic, was checking over the man strapped to the chair. When my stomach finally stopped convulsing, I stood. One of the Chechens pulled the jacket off a Russian while another untied the dead victim. Then they wrapped him in the jacket and the two of them carried the corpse out of the farmhouse.

A night breeze was creeping down off the hills, bringing with it a chill mixed with damp moss and decay, the smell of the grave. A shiver like scuttling beetles ran under my skin. Radakov said something quietly. The group separated. The weasel and one other man made their way to the Russian vehicles. The rest of us, including the body wrapped in the jacket, went off in the other direction. Soon after, a deafening explosion split the air. I looked back. The LAVs were burning brightly, lighting up the night sky.

“We don’t have much time. There is only one way in,” Radakov explained as he motioned at the road. We double-timed across the steepening fields and out of the immediate vicinity. When he muttered something to the men carrying the body, we stopped. The bigger of the two Chechens hoisted the corpse over his shoulder and then continued toward the hills. Radakov and the rest — me included — doubled back and took a course that paralleled the road, and scouted for cover. Radakov found it behind a weed-choked mound of earth overlooking the road, two hundred yards back from it. He made a hand signal. We dropped behind the mound and waited.

I heard the vehicles before I saw them. They were moving slowly along the road. There was a foot patrol reconnoitering the way ahead. The approaching Russians were cautious. Experience probably gave them a fair idea of what they were dealing with. I counted four vehicles: three LAVs and some kind of truck. It looked like the entire Russian presence in the village had come to investigate.

A prodigious explosion suddenly engulfed the lead vehicle; the mighty percussion wave filled with shrapnel hacked into the foot patrol. We ducked behind the earth as the pressure wave rolled over us. I heard the nearby crash and thump of a large piece of metal hitting the upper branches of a tree and then falling to the ground. As the sound boomed and reverberated through the hills, I heard some of the Russians whimpering. The sound they made reminded me of the U.S. hospital back in Baghdad. Radakov and his men were merciless. They stood up from behind the berm and, using the light provided by the burning LAV, fired off rocket-propelled grenades at the last two vehicles. The RPG rounds found their marks with earsplitting crashes. Halfhearted small-arms shots were fired blind by the pathetic survivors. These were countered by the men Radakov had sent to bury the deadly IED in the roadside. Within minutes, the rifle fire was silenced and everyone in the Russian patrol lay dead. I stood and saw the torn, ripped bodies in the light of the flames roaring among the vehicles. Secondary explosions sent showers of dancing orange sparkles toward the stars.