Zrada

by Lance Charnes

  He takes in a long, deliberate breath, then holsters his pistol. “Hold the officers in the washroom for now. Have the men fall in. I need to tell them what just happened. And arrest the Russian company and platoon commanders. Be polite about it if you can, but get control of them. We don’t know how far this goes.”

  Vasilenko’s eyes pop wide. “We don’t have enough local officers to replace them all.”

  “I’m aware of that.” He hears himself bark and pulls back. “Sorry. I know. Find Colonel Shatilov. Tell him it’s time to change leadership of the units with Russian officers. We’ll be using lieutenants and senior sergeants until we can get it sorted. At least they’ll be loyal.” What am I forgetting? “Where’s Yartsev?” Rogozhkin’s pet sergeant.

  “In the Ops Center, where he’s been since yesterday.”

  “Arrest him, too. He’s probably how Rogozhkin found the patrol. Careful around him—he’s one of those spetsnaz thugs, too.”

  Vasilenko gets his men to work cleaning up the mess. When they leave the office, he returns to the front edge of Mashkov’s desk. “If I may, sir?”

  Mashkov’s desperately trying to work out what he’ll say to the men in the next few minutes. “Go ahead.”

  “I know this isn’t what we’d planned. Now that it’s happened, we can’t go back. We have to take it all the way. If we don’t, the Kacápskyi will finish us off the way you did Proskurin. We have to be as hard as they are.”

  “Thank you, Lenya.” Mashkov works hard to keep the doom out of his voice. “I know.”

  Mashkov stands before the assembled brigade in “the plaza,” the semi-ironic name they use for the gravel former parking lot in the middle of the former grain mill that’s now their base.

  Over a thousand troops are packed into tight formation by battalion and company with their officers—now all local Ukrainians—standing in front of them. All are watching Mashkov.

  All these troops, waiting for him to tell them what to do. Ready to kill or die for him. It’s the most impressive thing he’s ever seen—and it’s scaring the living hell out of him. Nothing in his business career prepared him for this. He was never supposed to be out here.

  Yevgeny Brusilov, who founded what had at first been the Makiivka Battalion, was supposed to lead. He’d had military experience; he was the one who could make grand speeches and get the men charged up for battle. Mashkov had been content to be the logistics officer, trying to keep the men fed and armed. He was good at that. But then Brusilov got himself and the chief of staff killed in a completely unnecessary frontal assault on that damned airport outside Donetsk. Mashkov was the only officer who knew the brigade well enough to take over.

  He read books to learn how to be a military officer. He read books to learn how to make speeches. But reading books about leadership can’t make anyone a leader.

  And now he’s here…about to lead his people into a war on Russia.

  He sucks in one more lungful of air, then raises the bullhorn. Use your command voice. Be strong. “Battalion commanders, put your battalions at parade rest.”

  The battalion and company commanders echo his order. Over a thousand troops step into parade rest, their feet shoulder-width apart, their hands clasped behind their backs. The rumble of that many people moving the same way at the same time makes him shiver.

  Mashkov scans the faces of the troops in the front ranks. Their plainness and honesty give him the strength to force out his first words. “Men and women of the Makiivka Brigade! It is my responsibility to tell you about two important events that occurred in the past three hours. As you may be aware, a patrol from Second Battalion has been pursuing the bandits who killed our men in Amvrosiivka. They are now near Starobesheve. Lieutenant Colonel Rogozhkin, our Russian advisor, took it on himself to stop the patrol. He and several Russian special forces personnel attacked the patrol, destroyed its vehicles, and killed two of our men.”

  Even though the troops are supposed to stay silent in parade rest, a rumble of anger rolls through the ranks.

  Good. I need them mad. “About forty minutes ago, Lieutenant Colonel Proskurin, the ranking Russian officer in the brigade, and a group of other senior Russian officers tried to seize command of this brigade from me.” More rumbling. “Fast work on the part of loyal troops stopped this mutiny. Two rebels are dead, and the rest are in custody.”

  He lets the growling in the ranks rise and fall like a wave. “The Kacápskyi have promised much and delivered much less in the past two years. They’ve stopped us from fighting for our freedom, the cause many of us have been dedicated to from the beginning. Moscovia thinks it can use us as pawns in its political games with the West. It thinks it can kill our leadership when we no longer dance to the Kremlin’s tune.” He hesitates. This is his throw of the fatal die. “For us, this ends today.”

  This time, the rustle of sound is more disbelief than anger.

  Mashkov waves to Vasilenko, who escorts the two surviving officers from Proskurin’s retinue—each guided by two troopers—from the command building to the middle of the plaza. When they stop, the soldiers knock the captives onto their knees, facing the formation.

  Mashkov steps behind the two Russian majors, takes another deep breath, then raises the bullhorn. “We’ve relieved all the Russian nationals from command. We’ve taken back the brigade from the Kacápskyi. We’re finished with the sneers and insults and distrust they show us in their arrogance. From today, the Makiivka Brigade answers only to our leaders in Donetsk, not to the foreign generals in Rostov-on-Don or the new tsar in Moscow.”

  Mashkov stabs his arm toward the two Russians. “The penalty for mutiny is death in any army, anywhere. These men led a mutiny against the rightful leadership of this brigade. They wanted to put that leadership in the hands of foreigners. They failed. We have to show anyone else with the same idea what will happen to them.” Before he can think about what he’s doing, he draws his pistol and shoots each man in the back of his head.

  The troops fall silent. A few look away.

  He holsters his weapon as calmly as he can make his shaking hand do it. “If you can’t fight for the interests of the Donbass and its peoples instead of those of Moscovia…if you can’t serve under officers who were born here, grew up here, have lives and families here, and fought here for our independence, then please turn in your equipment and leave now.”

  The troops start shouting, a few at first, then more and more as they urge each other on. “DNR!” “Down with Kyiv!” “Freedom for Donbass!”

  Yes! That’s what I need to hear. Now bring them home. “We are the Makiivka Brigade! We are strong! And you and I together will lead our people to freedom!”

  Chapter 30

  Stepaniak hunkers in the twilight of the abandoned building, waiting for sunset and for the pain to fade. If he drives after taking the painkillers the doctor gave him, he’ll crash into a tree within ten minutes. If he doesn’t take them, the grinding, throbbing torture radiating from his shoulder and chest and invading the rest of his body will blind him to everything else.

  He’s amazed he’s made it to this little dusthole. Byryuky was to be simply a place he drove through on his way into Donetsk. It’s another hick town like Komsomolske, just fields and crumbling Soviet-era farms. The pain changed that plan. Now he’s stuck here. Donetsk is so close but out of reach.

  The tracker shows that the icon’s stopped on the highway about four kilometers south of here. He’s been trying to call Stas, but the idiot doesn’t answer. Stas’s little reptile brain is no doubt trying to work out how to end up with all the money, though God alone knows what he’d do with it. Well, let him dream. His usefulness to Stepaniak is over once he brings in the icon and the money. I hope Carson didn’t suffer too much…

  By the time Carson tells Galina to stop, the pulsing red dot on the tracker has almost merged with the crosshairs that show her location. They’re surrounded by plowed fields. A low-slung farm complex is
about three hundred meters to their four o’clock; the southern fringe of what the GPS calls Byryuky hunkers about half a click to their ten o’clock. The only structure close to where they’re stopped is a shot-to-shit concrete building with a corrugated iron roof forty meters to their one o’clock, surrounded by wildflowers and waist-high weeds.

  Carson squeezes her eyes shut to fix her focus, but the world’s still a little blurred when she opens them. She points to the two-story-tall target. “I think that’s it. What is that thing?”

  “A grain dryer.” Galina cocks an eyebrow at her. “You know what that is?”

  “We had them in Alberta. They look a lot different. I’m used to storage bins and towers.”

  “This one is small, for the local farmers.” She waves toward it. “It got in the way of the war.”

  “Do a slow drive-by. I want to see if Stepaniak’s Patriot is here.”

  The Octavia rolls past at a slow jogging rate, revealing two rusty, slightly out-of-focus hoppers on the first floor, a stubby smokestack for the dryer, and a concrete control shack. No green SUV. Did Stas lie to me? There’s no Range Rover or any other kind of car, either.

  The tracker shows the fuzzy red dot very slightly behind the crosshairs. The painting’s in the grain dryer. “Go back and pull into the driveway. That looks like the place.”

  They exit the car fully armed. Carson points from Galina to the front of the ruin, then to herself and the back of it. Galina nods.

  Carson recalls how Yurik taught her to clear large spaces. Stay near walls; use cover; look for tripwires and snares; move quietly; listen for sharp sounds; watch for shadows that aren’t straight lines. On top of this, she has to search for the painting.

  The grain dryer’s back end is an open bay with a dusting of rotting wheat and the broken remains of a screw conveyor the operators must’ve used to load trucks with dried grain. There’s not much cover, but there’s not much light anymore, either. Carson moves through the area as fast as she can without tripping over debris, trying to be as poor a target as possible. Getting shot and having a grenade thrown at her have made her jumpy.

  Nothing. No Stepaniak, no painting.

  Galina appears in a doorway so suddenly, Carson almost shoots her. Both women startle. Carson has to let her heart slow down before she can speak. “Jesus, say something next time. Find anything?”

  “I don’t know. Come.”

  Carson follows her to the control shack. The door’s missing and its windows coat the floor as crunchy glitter. A rusted and stained steel counter runs the room’s three-meter width. Gutted control panels dot the wall above the counter. “No wonder they didn’t reopen. What did you find?”

  Galina points to a spot on the counter near the far left-hand wall. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t belong.”

  It’s a microchip the size of a dime, a watch battery, and some fresh sawdust. It looks like the tracker she dug out of the icon and tossed out the window a few klicks ago.

  Carson braces her hands on the counter and blows out a long plume of air. Her shoulders sag. “Stepaniak took this out of the picture. We’ve lost him.”

  Rogozhkin watches through his binoculars as the Tarasenko woman and her friend trudge to their sedan. So different from a few minutes ago: they went in like warriors, their weapons ready, their movements brisk and efficient. Tarasenko moves well. He likes that in a woman.

  Neither carries anything that looks like a painting or like Stepaniak’s head. He’d see something that size even at a hundred meters’ range. When they slump against the car’s nose, he lowers his binoculars and calls Tarasenko’s mobile.

  She answers, “Shto?” It’s a growl, not a greeting.

  “What did you find?”

  “Stepaniak dumped the tracker chip.”

  Not a huge surprise. “How long ago?”

  “Not long. He left blood on the chip. It’s not quite dry. If he’s bleeding that much, he won’t go far.”

  “Agreed.” Bad luck, but not yet fatally bad. Rogozhkin surveys Syrov’s troops, stretched along the treeline between two fields south of the derelict grain oven. As he watches, the two men they’d left behind in Starobesheve pull Rogozhkin’s Hunter into the grove behind him. It gives him an idea. “I’ll send men into Byryuky to look for the bandit’s vehicle. Our friends in the Starobesheve police told us a green UAZ Patriot was reported stolen two hours ago. We have a registration plate number.”

  “Wonderful.” Tarasenko’s voice says, not wonderful.

  He can always tell when a soldier needs a bit of encouragement. “You found an important clue. Well done. Please join us while the search is underway. We’re in the trees about a hundred twenty meters south of your position. I believe we have some food and water to share.”

  No answer for a moment. “Is that an invite or an order?”

  “It’s an invitation now. If you say ‘no,’ it’ll be an order.”

  Another pause. “Be there in a few minutes.”

  Rogozhkin hopes he can get Tarasenko to talk about herself when she arrives. He’s curious about how she came to be the way she is. He’d heard about what she did to Stepaniak’s accomplice at Amvrosiivka and watched her end that other bandit without a qualm. Impressive.

  A voicemail waits on his mobile. It’s from Yartsev.

  It’s a disaster.

  That idiot Proskurin jumped the gun and moved against Mashkov before the lower-level commands were secured. Proskurin’s dead. Kuzmin’s dead. Mashkov—Mashkov!—executed Arsenkin and Sidorov in front of the whole fucking brigade. When did he grow the balls to do that? Rogozhkin grows angrier and more incredulous as the bad news piles up.

  “And…V Company…Second Battalion.” Yartsev’s running, out of breath. What the…? “They’re…” Loud gunshots. A distant, muffled scream. “They’re in your area. They’re—” Distant automatic fire. A sharp cry from Yartsev. A thud. Something scrapes at the phone. Shouts, running feet. A jumble of voices.

  The recording ends.

  Goddamn it!

  Chapter 31

  Carson paces across the heavy layer of mulch between the trees to where Rogozhkin and the spetsnaz lieutenant are talking by a Tigr. Here and there, she passes a spetsnaz troop cooking a can from his Individual Ration Pack on the tiny, folding tin stove that comes in the IRP’s shiny green blister pack. It’s twilight beyond the grove. The flickering blue lights from the burning hexamine tablets look like grounded stars.

  Rogozhkin nods at something the lieutenant tells him, then steps to meet Carson a couple meters from the Tigr. He gives her a smile that’s more worried than pleasant. “Tarasenko. I know better than to ask if you liked your supper. Are you at least fed?”

  He’s being awfully nice to her this time around. He hasn’t once tried to twist her arms backward. Whatever that’s about, Carson’s okay with it. “At least. It reminded me of dog food.”

  “You’ve eaten dog food?”

  “Yeah.” It’s what happens when you’re eight years old, your mother’s too drunk to shop, your father’s working on the other side of the province, and it’s twenty miles to the nearest grocery store.

  “Better or worse than the IRP?”

  “Depends on the brand.”

  He chuckles. “And your friend? Is she satisfied with her meal?”

  Galina’s hunkered down in the car with her shotgun across her lap. “She won’t touch it. Your people killed her people around here in 2014. Don’t turn your back on her.”

  “There’s a lot of that here. We thought we were helping, but…” Rogozhkin shrugs.

  Bullshit. Okay, maybe you guys did. But the assholes who sent you? No way. Carson pushes that thought away from her brain’s speech center. “We should be looking for Stepaniak.”

  “No need.” He smiles. He has surprisingly good teeth. “We think we found his vehicle. We have a man checking the registration plates now.”

  “Sir?” They both look
toward the lieutenant. He gives Rogozhkin the thumbs-up sign, then disappears behind the Tigr again.

  Rogozhkin turns to Carson. “We found him. He’s not so far away.” He pulls his phone from a thigh pocket and brings up Yandex Maps, the Russian version of Google Maps. The glowing screen lights his chest and face in pale blue. He shifts so he’s more than just Russian close to Carson’s side. “We’re here. That’s the grain dryer you searched. And this…” he switches to satellite view “…is where we find Stepaniak.”

  Two long, narrow buildings run northwest-southeast in parallel in an overgrown compound next to a field about a klick south-southeast of the grain dryer. When Rogozhkin zooms in, Carson can just make out a third building, squarish with a brown roof, between the others. “Which one?”

  “We don’t know. There are no lights. The Patriot’s parked between these two, here.” He points to a spot on the square building’s east side.

  Stepaniak must’ve watched her and Galina waste their time on the grain dryer. “Have fun flushing him out.”

  “Oh, no.” Rogozhkin steps back. “That’s for you to do. Find him, lure him outside. We’ll have snipers covering all three buildings. When he’s in the clear, we’ll eliminate him. That won’t distress you, will it?”

  “Asshole tried to kill me last night. What do you think?” What will distress her is when the sniper takes his next shot at her. She needs to figure out how to make that not happen. “I don’t get why you want me in your way out there.”

  “Very simple. Yes, we could find him and eliminate him. He’d resist. It would cause a firefight and probably scare the poor people living nearby. Some of my men might be wounded. If you bring him into the open, we’ll need only one shot. Much cleaner and safer for everyone.”

  Except me. Does his explanation sound reasonable? Yes. Does she trust it? Not a bit. What they talk about here and what she does over there don’t have to be the same things. “Okay. I’ll take Galina to back me up. I also need the money.”