Another night. The medic woke up and looked around. All was quiet, and he lay down again, but he realized that the sleep had gone. So he stood up, taking care not to wake up anybody. Since he was awake, he might as well guard the place until dawn.
He started thinking about what he had told the girl, about 24 hours before. it was the talk that he had thought to do with the Russians, in case they got him and interrogated him. No tricks, just why and how he was there. It was just a logical question to ask, for an officer. And no ideology inside, no hymns to the "free world", to the CIA and let alone to the "Freedom Fighters". Just what he thought the Russians did wrong there. Going head first into a war that was not worthwhile, with all the possible consequences, even for the civilians...
No, he did not believe in the "brotherly help". And this, surely, not out of Russophobia. Maybe, it was because of the Choir of the Adelchi he still recalled from his high school studies. "And the hoped prize, promised to those braves, should be, you poor beggars, to change someone's fate? Just putting an end to a lost people's toils?"
No, it worked not that way, back then, in the age of Charlemagne, and it worked not that way then and there, where he was.
It never works that way.
Yes, he had seen the Russians bombing that "aul" and he had asked himself "why". Why right then, why right there. He was there for a routine visit, and then, out of the blue: alert, planes incoming. There were some people with some Stingers, but they used those weapons as if they were spoiled babies playing with toys: too carelessly. They shoot the missiles too early, being sure to hit the planes all the same, as if they were shooting for ducks in a pond. But those guys in the planes were not ducks. They were professionals.
At a certain point, they started flaring and chafing all together, banking with their planes to avoid the missiles, when the missiles were too close to make a turn. All these evasive maneuvers fooled the Stingers, one by one. And before the guys in the "aul" could reloaded their rocket launchers, the planes had dived, dropped and gone already. And he had had the answer to his question. A big, huge, terrific explosion. Not the explosion of a house, or a cave, hit by a rocket: the explosion of an ammunition dump! That was what those helluva guys were looking for. They knew that all that stuff, bullets, grenades, even fuel, maybe, was there, in that "aul", on that day. All that booming stuff.
And they let it all make "Boom".
Yes, he too had got a whiff of some big operation of the "freedom fighters" against some big Russian base in the surroundings. Evidently, even the Russians had got that whiff. They knew the trade, no doubt. So that was not a war crime committed for the sake of it: not that time. It was a military operation: fair target, intelligence and everything. But the result of that "military operation" was terrible. An onslaught that would have been much too much for a hospital to care of, let alone for a single medic.
And thank God, where the Stingers stroke out and the planes came in, he had understood just in time what was the only sensible thing to do: hit the dirt, keep your head a bit off the ground, and pray your "Gawd". Yeah, that's right: there are no Atheists in foxholes. And his "Gawd" had been very more efficient than that of many, many others...
Or maybe it was not the point. It was not his time to die. Yes, that was that. If he had survived all that jazz, and so many others did not, it was just because of it. He had not to die that day, and he had not died. When his time had come, he would have been a dead man. Period.
So, why bother, he had thought.
And since then, he had just kept thinking that way. Why bother?
-
Ahmad Dekhtah had seen many dead men in eight years of war. But not so many in a row.
Since they day they managed to refuel in the "aul" and started again, they did not do anything else: just seeing dead men. First, the two men along the road, with just one AK47 close to them and no food or water nor anything else of any value. Then what remained of a convoy, with lots of corps of men and mules. And now, that tank. That dead tank. With other dead men inside. More men to bury. Burying again...
With that dead tank stuck in the middle of the narrow dirt road, it was impossible for them to pass with their pickup. They had to go back and look for another road, Or any other way to get to Kabul.
Two men had done all that. Two men, alone, tired of walking, maybe starved, had done all that.
"That" is called "fighting", Ahmad thought.
-
The soldier boy saw the base first. It was an old fort, partially in ruin, built by one of the many civilization who had roamed Afghanistan and India throughout the centuries, maybe a Mogul fort, maybe a British one. But now it was a Russian base. Or so the boy said. And he had no reason to lie.
"Well... You are arrived", the medic said.
"Why? Where do you want to go?" the soldier wonder.
"To Kabul. Don't you remember? I don't want to end up in Puli Charki... "
"And do you think you can make it, on your own?"
"I speak the languages, and I am a medic... There are not so many around here... "
"It's not enough to be left alone, here, you have seen it," the soldier said. "Do you remember those two "dushmany",some days ago? They wanted you dead, medic or not."
"You have no choice," the girl said. He asked himself, whether he had had a choice, since he had decided to help the guy. "Hindsight is twenty-twenty". Only the future is foggy...
"All right. But let's keep our hands behind our napes, while we go there... "
"Why?" the girl wondered. "We are Russian... "
"Did you forget how we are dressed? You have shot that guy because he wore a Chitrali beret. But we all are dressed more or less that way. What would you do, if you saw three figures dressed like us, from there?"
"I would zero us in!" nodded the guy, snorting.
And he put his hands between his nape, and started walking.
They walked slowly, always with their hands on their heads, straight to the base. And every now and then, the soldier and the girl shouted "Rùsskye!" or "Niè strelyàete!". The medic thought about a movie, "Cross of Iron", by Sam Peckimpah. There was a scene just like that. It was better off not to think too much how ended up that scene...
But they arrived at the base without any incident. And they saw there was nobody at the base anymore.
"Well... they have left and gone away!" the medic said, wandering in the base's yard.
"Maybe the withdraw had really started, at the end!" the soldier said. He did not seem so sad about it. When it takes, it takes.
