Читать книгу Enemy Combatant - David Winner - Страница 7

Peter gaped at the wounded face only feet away. The prisoner looked coolly back at him. His scratched-up face made Peter’s body itch, but his cuts and bruises could not be contagious.

The low muttering sound could just be Peter’s addled brain except his addled brain wouldn’t sound like static. The worry on Leonard’s face told him that he’d heard it too, a voice on a radio, the other soldiers in the smelter calling for back up.

Distant, not so threatening. The soldiers had guns, but they did too. Anyone descending the stepladder would get blasted, thought Peter, pretending he had the stomach for a bloodbath.

But they couldn’t hole up in there. Reinforcements could be on their way, more black vans with American military.

Forgetting completely about taking pictures, Leonard dashed towards the stepladder, but Peter stopped him and tried to grab at the phone in his pants pocket.

Okay, thought Peter, this might just work out. The pics from outside the smelter were worthless, but now they could photograph the prisoner and his American guardian.

After grasping the soldier’s arm and bringing him over to the cage, Peter glimpsed the face of the man inside. His soulful expression sucked at Peter’s spirit: watery eyes full of anger and confusion. They weren’t hurting nor helping, some uncomfortable place in between.

And underlying the strange accents, the prisoner may have recognized the flat American English he’d been stuck with since Afghanistan or wherever else they’d caught him.

The soldier stood nervously by the cage, waiting to see what they had in mind.

No, not some sadistic Abu Ghraib-type photo shoot, but Peter didn’t have time to explain.

Leonard took the Nokia from his pocket. Moving a little way back from the cage, he aimed it at the soldier and the prisoner. Several flashes went off before he stuffed it into his pocket and charged back over to the stepladder. The documentation complete, they had to get out. Maybe they could pull this off. They just had to get back to their car and drive to the hotel. They could be in Tbilisi by tomorrow and break free from this godforsaken corner of the earth the day after that.

But once Leonard’s feet touched the ladder, and Peter began to swivel towards it, a great howl echoed through the hollow crevice inside the smelter. The prisoner sobbed.

Tears mixed with blood on the mess of his face.

Peter gazed at him. For weeks, months maybe, a daily horror show. People demanded answers for questions that made no sense. He’d heard of Bin Laden, but not Zawahiri, knew of no attacks planned on America. But when he didn’t have answers for them, they’d bashed in his face, kept him awake for days, drowned him in water.

Then these two different Americans in polyester pants had come to take his picture and abandon him to the same shattering cycle.

Before Peter could turn away again, a sweaty hand grabbed his wrist.

“Don’t fucking leave me here!” Peter tried to yank free, but his filthy grip only tightened, pulling him against the thick bars of his cage. Back in New York, when homeless people reached for his help, he picked up the pace and took off across the street. But he’d burst into this prisoner’s world and couldn’t just burst out again. The prisoner clung on for life with grimy, skeletal fingers.

Peter looked around for Leonard and saw him again stepping away from the ladder. Their lives had taken a dark turn. Forsaking the prisoner, leaving him to die, would haunt them forever. A terrible death, life slowly sucked out of him. When Leonard raised the rifle, Peter finally broke free. But he knew that they couldn’t just show up, take pictures and leave like they were making some sadistic art project.

The door to the cage was bolted with a rusty contraption, so Leonard butted the soldier with the assault weapon and demanded that he open it. Peter could tell from the kid’s expression that he didn’t have a key. The interrogators were the only ones with access.

Leonard grumbled. Gesturing for everyone to get out of the way, he aimed the assault rifle at the lock.

Which was insane, but the riotous racket had already begun. The rifle vibrated in his hands like an animal trying to break free. Piercing staccato explosions filled the air with smoke, dirt and dust. Each shot made a short sound, followed by a longer one: ca-shing, ca-shing.

The air was thick with smoke, and coughing could be heard all around. When smoke clustered in Peter’s lungs, he knelt to breathe the cleaner air near the ground.

Bits of dirt from the ceiling and maybe splinters from the beams were falling on them, and he girded himself for an overwhelming impact that would resolve the problem of what to do with the prisoner. The whole ceiling might crash from above or the ground give way from below. The chamber vibrated fiercely then slowly calmed. It took several moments of silence, of stillness, to begin to believe that the crevice that contained the cage remained intact.

Wheezing, wet and guttural, came from the prisoner, who might’ve choked to death in the explosion intended to liberate him.

When the air finally began to clear, Peter saw that the lock had crumbled away along with half the cage. The prisoner was on his knees, fighting for breath. He didn’t look wounded. Leonard had managed not to kill him.

Leonard, on the other hand, lay strewn across the ground from the kick.

After Leonard struggled back to his feet, Peter pulled the prisoner out from what remained of the cage. Then he grabbed the burly soldier – who under normal circumstances could have busted his face in – and shoved him inside. He could have fired a warning shot from his Beretta over his head but just cautioned him instead in something closer to his normal voice. His action hero aspirations had been destroyed along with the cage.

“Stay in there and don’t move.”

Now the prisoner’s own odors permeated the atmosphere: smoke, dirt, and that pervasive essence of Alaverdi, but also shit, vomit and blood. Bent over like a hunchback, the prisoner limped slowly over to the stepladder. He grabbed it and pulled himself up a rung before slipping back down again, losing his balance and landing on the floor.

Shaking his head and biting his lips, he looked fretfully around him before pulling himself up to his feet again and approaching the ladder. He got his hands around it again but was already gasping for breath, barely able to stand.

He looked longingly towards the freedom he imagined outside. Then closed his eyes like he was trying to rest but opened them back up again because he couldn’t waste this fleeting opportunity. There were tears in his rheumy eyes, frustrated tears. Freedom seemed so close, but he couldn’t get to it. The ladder could get him out, but the poor motherfucker just wasn’t strong enough.

Something sputtered from his mouth, garbled and indistinct, then he looked back towards Peter and Leonard, who had gotten him out of the cage but nearly killed him in the process.

He glared in their direction. He needed their help, but a great fury had built up inside him. It would take some impossible surgery to remove it.

Leonard pulled him away from the ladder as gently as he could. Then clawed his way to the surface himself. They had to get out as fast as they could. There were soldiers outside who’d have no problem tossing a grenade down at them.

Peter looked up the ladder then down at their damaged creature in tow. Grabbing hold of the prisoner’s ass and the backs of his thighs, Peter tried to push him upwards, the dirty damp of him getting all over his arms and shoulders.

Malnourished as he was, he was still pretty heavy, so taking a deep breath and gritting his teeth, Peter hoisted him far enough up, so that Leonard could reach down and grab his hands.

When he started to crash down again, Peter pushed back with his shoulder, and Leonard yanked harder from above. Several excruciating moments later, the prisoner was tasting fresh air for the first time in what could have been months.

He staggered towards the edge of the smelter, trying to get a sense of where he was. Voices could be heard now not so far away, what sounded like radio static, an alert barked over a receiver.

Peter grabbed the assault rifle (Leonard could never have it again) and let loose several rounds in the direction of the voices, trying to scare them off. Then he shone the flashlight in a wide circle.

The two figures on the level right above them ducked to the ground and slipped inside the columns for cover. Meanwhile, Peter heard someone moving below them. The stepladder they’d just climbed was quivering. The soldier wasn’t staying in the cage like was supposed to. Peter reached for the Beretta but ruled it out; the kid had done nothing to him. He grabbed the top of the stepladder instead and shook it back and forth to slow him down.

The Virginian was below, the other soldiers above. They didn’t have enough time to drag the prisoner to the other side and down the ladder to the ground.

They had to jump instead, a distance a little taller than themselves.

And they had to push the prisoner over. He might not survive it, but they’d all be shot dead if they didn’t.

Taking the prisoner by the shoulders, they led him towards the edge. He tried to break free and Peter thought about explaining, but Leonard was already pushing him off of the ledge.

After he was over, they leapt themselves, pointing their guns away from their bodies.

The drop was shorter than they’d thought, and they blunted the impact by rolling the moment they hit the ground.

The moment after Peter landed, his mind slipped away from him. He was back in Virginia, rolling down that hill in Charlottesville, in McIntyre Park like he and Don used to do until they’d get dizzy and almost puke on themselves. He’d once convinced Sarah to roll with him there too. They were visiting his dad soon after his parent’s divorce, a sultry late summer afternoon. And he’d tried to enlist her in a delicious scheme, pulling off their pants and fucking each other in the grass.

“I’m really sorry,” Sarah had said when she refused. A nearby gunshot disappeared the past. From McIntyre Park to college to Brooklyn, Peter’s life had had a sensical trajectory. But that had slipped away, leaving him miscast in some terrible movie.

Peter picked himself up, shook the dizziness from his head, and helped Leonard drag the prisoner to his feet. No breaks or contusions could slow them. And Peter was numbed by adrenaline anyway, barely able to feel his body.

Then he picked up the assault rifle, shot off a few more rounds towards the smelter, hopeful that he wasn’t actually hitting anybody, just giving themselves more time to get away.

In the light from the gunfire, they saw smoke pouring from the smelter, bits of ceiling collapsing. The soldiers might get stuck inside if it fell apart, buried alive, which made Peter worry for the scaredy-cat Virginian and his family back home. The kid looked tough but was really in the wrong line of work. He shouldn’t die so the prisoner could live. Something was off about that calculus.

But the Soviet engineering was better than it seemed. The structure was wobbly, but its bones held strong. It shook but did not fall.

The prisoner, on the other hand, had toppled. As Peter tried to pull him up to his feet, he heard firecrackers, which were not firecrackers, but soldiers returning fire. Their bullets were far off the mark. They were firing blindly into the darkness.

The prisoner was back on his feet, but his legs couldn’t support his weight. His eyes were open but glazed, unresponsive. He was already so fragile. Being tossed out from the smelter had knocked him out of himself. A bullet whizzed dangerously close to him. A second or so later, he flinched, a delayed reaction.

Peter grabbed his shoulders, and Leonard took his legs. He was as heavy as a corpse in their arms, and they could barely carry him. But the gunshots kept coming, bolstering the muscles in their arms, and somehow, they were dragging him towards the Lada.

About halfway there, they passed the black van, the same model as the one blasting Queen the day before.

Peter freed his right arm, so only his left held the prisoner. And watching his arm bulge, nearly dropping its burden, he reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out his pistol.

He fired two quick shots towards the bottom of the van, before clicking the safety on, stuffing the gun into his pocket and continuing to help carry the prisoner forward.

So many sounds were exploding in Peter’s ears.

He couldn’t if he’d knocked out its tires. Then flashlight beams finally got them in its sights. They’d almost reached the Lada, but bullets were buzzing more closely around them. They propped up the prisoner against the door, and Leonard jumped into the front while the prisoner managed to crawl into the back. But just as Peter was climbing into the passenger side, something exploded right nearby, and a heart-wrenching howl sliced the air.

Tears filled Peter’s eyes as that feeling bounced back into his body. Like that bike accident in seventh grade, roaring down a hill about to crash into a concrete barrier. Or the tone in his aunt’s voice before she broke the news about his mother.

Peter smelled fresh blood from the driver’s seat, distinct from the dried blood in back, and some warm and viscous liquid had landed on his cheek. He wiped it off, looked at his hand, and grasped the obvious. They’d hit Leonard.

Resting his head on the wheel, Leonard whimpered plaintively. He might be dying and definitely couldn’t drive. And Peter would just stall it if he tried himself.

They would be eviscerated by bullets if they got out and surrendered, which might be preferable to being captured and caged. And why the fuck hadn’t he thought to get Leonard to teach him stick? They’d lain in their beds for hours the night before like morons.

All they could do was wait for more bullets to perforate the car.

In his thirty years on the planet, Peter had never really considered what this would be like, the end game, the car careening into the wrong lane of the interstate, in the hospital feeling your kidneys closing down. Within seconds, more bullets would start catching their targets as the kid from Virginia and other soldiers crept towards their car.

Except he heard the gunning of an engine instead, their engine. Leonard had been shot in the neck but had started the car.

This couldn’t be real. People didn’t get hit by bullets and drive away.

“Just grazed my neck,” he grunted.

He gunned the engine again, but of course, it stalled. And stalled again when he tried a third time. Flooded.

A bullet bounced off the roof. Another clipped the side mirror. As the engine idled, Peter’s senses began to function more acutely. He felt his shirt and chest, damp from the prisoner’s sweat, the prisoner’s blood. The prisoner’s stench had sunk into his pores like he was swimming in sewage. Peter retched. His bowels nearly loosened.

But his gut began to relax once the engine finally caught, and the smoking smelter began to disappear behind them. They tore up the windy road towards the main highway. Everything seemed easier again. A cooling breeze slipped in through the windows. Peter’s muscles relaxed, just a bit. He wasn’t going to even think about where they could take the sad motherfucker in the back seat, but at least they’d gotten themselves out of harm’s way.

Peter’s moment of relief soured abruptly when he heard the loud sounds of a vehicle heading down towards them on the tiny road, a black armored van. The Lada had to slow down. Racing out of there would draw too much attention.

The vehicle, which must be coming from wherever the other soldiers were based nearby, seemed to slow as they approached to avoid smashing into them on the narrow road.

But they were not actually stopping. Peter, Leonard and the prisoner must have just seemed like Armenians driving senselessly around in the middle of the night. They must not have connected them with whatever was going on at the smelter.

They’d get a better look when the two vehicles squeezed by each other. Peter and Leonard might pass for Armenian in the darkness, but the prisoner’s orange uniform would give him away.

In only seconds, the van might shine their lights into the Lada. The game could be up.

Diving into the back seat, Peter grabbed the prisoner by his shoulders and pushed him down into the foot-well. The prisoner coughed and growled, but Peter managed to wrap himself around him so that no flash of orange was visible. Or so he hoped.

From the back seat, Peter watched Leonard stare straight ahead. His lips barely moved as he waited for the van to pass by. Its powerful light beams highlighted the individual pores of his sunburned skin, the acne scars just below his sideburns, the blood still trickling down his neck.

The van continued to slow as it approached, and Peter feared they were stopping to check out the Lada, but they continued instead. Racing to catch the bad guys, they weren’t bothering with what they passed along the way.

Once the van was gone, they started to climb again back to the highway. The dirt road had widened enough to let two more vans swing easily by them. Signals had been crossed. A remarkable turn of fortune. Maybe from the candle that Peter had lit a for his mother back in that church in the Republic of Georgia.