The girl held tight to anything could look like a handle inside the UAZ, and tried to answer in the shortest and harsher possible way to the attempt of conversation (if not of "advances") that the Tajik soldier who drove the car was addressed to her. He had nothing against the Tajiks or the Asian guys in general, but a Tajik philanderer is still a philanderer...
The Tajik guy adored the Russian girls. Blondes, blue eyes, tall and healthy, usually showing their legs and their cleavages... so different from the tadìjik girls, so small, always jet-black hair, always small, always so clad... And words passed that they were quite easy to get to have sex... especially with nice, passionate Asian guys... As he was sure to be...
"You are very brave, if you have accepted a job here... " he insisted. "As brave as nice!"
"And you are really fool, if you keep looking at me and not on the road in front... What if the "Dushmani" come?"
"Oh, they will not come... And if they come... "
A barrage of bullets prevented him from explaining to the girl what he would have done. The Tajik had swerved to avoid a too deep pit on the road, so the bullets didn't hit him and the girl, but the hood of the UAZ started pulling smoke. The Tajik got pale in a second, jumped out of the car, knelt down with his hands up looking at the slope at the side of the road and cried something in a language that was Russian no more, but the girl just heard "Allah u akbar!" before another burst shook and pierced the body of the Tajik from side to side. He collapsed, silent, face down on the dirt road. The girl was still in the car, panicking. He saw the gun the Tadjik did not even think to get, at least to die like a man. She took the gun and get out of the car, aiming the gun at the men who were coming down by the slope, They aimed their rifle at her, but without shooting: they have seen she was a woman.
It was not mercy, it was lust. The girl knew that, she was sure of that. They wanted to have a good time with a "kafir" girl like her, before to kill her. They were too many to be killed with a gun The girl felt her hands trembling, while she tried to aim the gun to a warrior, then to another. They were smiling. Some of them could die, "Insh Allah", but the other will have possessed a Russian female... One by one, in all her holes... A nice prey for Fighters of the Holy War as they were...
The girl decided what to do. The one thing to do, to die without surrendering to them all. She walked to the brink of the road and looked in the escarpment, into the abyss... A real abyss, she thought: it was too deep... And she could not die at once, if she jumped down from there. She could survive for hours, with broken bones, bleeding and feeling pain everywhere in her body... No, not that way. She aimed the gun at her head, closed her eyes, and heard the "mujahedin" laugh: they did not think she had the guts to pull the trigger...
Then she heard a shot, but she had NOT pulled the trigger yet. Then a man's cry, then a volley of automatic rifle, then another, then another, and other men crying and cursing in foreign languages. They were dying! Dying! All of them! And she remained alive, healthy and intact!
She opened her eyes, but she did not see Russian soldiers or Speznaz. There were three more "Dushmani". They had killed all the other, but maybe, surely, they wanted from her the same thing. So she closed her eyes again and aimed the gun back at her head...
"Hey hey hey! "Niet strak"! How the heck you say? "Niè striliàite"! Stop!" a man's voice said. And besides the few Russian words, that man was NOT speaking an Afghan language! He was NOT a "mujahideen"!"
"Kto vy!" the girl asked, her eyes still closed, the gun against her head yet. Who you are?
""Niè bòysya, my vsyè svaì!" a woman's voice said. A pure Russian voice, no foreign accent, no mistake! No worry, we are all on the same side!
The girls opened her eyes again. One of the "Dushmany" raised his "Chitrali" beret, smiling, and showing blonde hair with a typical Russian military haircut. The other "Dushami" did the same, without smiling, and she saw "he" was a young, stern, Tatar-faced woman. Though the third "mujahideen" had no beret, he really LOOKED like a "Dushmani". But clearly he was not. He shrugged and smiled to her, as to say "You see? No danger!"
The girl looked at her three saviors, at the abyss behind her, at the gun she held in hand, and to the three newcomers, again.
And then she started to laugh, hysterically...
Katya questioned the girl, while the medic and the soldier perform the usual operations, what had become a routine after an ambush: collect the food and the ammunition, sabotage the weapon you cannot take away. The girls looked at them working, calm and precise, as professionals, and she thought they were Speznaz. But the story Katya told she was even more incredible. Regarding herself, she had to get to a place that was not on that road. Or at least, neither Katya, nor the medic, nor the soldier had seen. Maybe the soldier had taken the wrong way, anywhere: he was too busy flirting with her... However, she insisted for him to be buried as it took. Only him.
Yuri tried to restart the engine of the UAZ, but it was a wasted effort. Too many blows in too much vital parts: the battery, the radiator... All gone. There was nothing nobody could do, they had to walk away. And when the girl protested that she could not go back walking all the way, Katya shouted that she would have done EXACTLY that. "Kak vsyè", as everyone. Then she entrusted the girl to the soldier boy. And he did not wait anything else: he started to talk with her, with a low voice, reassuring her that she could make it, that Katya was not such a bad girl, just a bit nervous... And when he got the glance of the medic, he blinked at him, smiling,
Nothing else so exciting happened, until the evening.
The medic was on watch for some time when he heard a rumor and a breath behind him. He did not turn his head to look at it.
"Drusyà ili vraghì?" she said, calmly.
"Tovàrishi!" Katya said. The man snorted. Katya came closer to him and sit at his side.
"I am not a "tovàrish," he specified.
"What? Do you find that offensive?"
"No!" the medic snorted. "It's just that... When someone call you that way, in my country... either he wants to compliment you... Or he wants to tease you, provoke you... or fool you... "
"I don't want to fool you." she said ,firmly.
"I know it."
"Then, you don't like the compliments."
"I prefer if people have not too big expectations about me. The less the people expect from you, the less you betray these expectations... And disillusion those people... "
"I had to call that way many people very worse than you... "Tovarish" director, "tovarish" professor... " she shrugged. He snorted again. Then he nodded with his chin at where the soldier and the other girl were.
"We are becoming a gang... "
"There is not two without three... "
