Nooria gives him the weapon. “Our Tribe is going into battle. Be brave and strong, warrior… and return to me with victory.”
Ghorband, 11:34:26 AFT
Hidden behind a BTR wreck, Tarasov studies the Stalkers guarding the roadblock at Ghorband through his binoculars. They seem nervous, keeping their rifles ready to shoot and barely moving out from the cover of the sand bags.
“Don’t shoot! Friendly coming through!” Concerned that he might be shot on sight, the major slowly steps out of cover and starts walking towards the Stalkers with his hands held high. “Don’t shoot, brothers!”
“Lower your weapons,” he hears the Shrink shouting, “it’s the boyevoychik! Hey, come quickly! I hope you’re here to help us!”
“Indeed, Borys. We’re going to Bagram to kick ass!”
The Shrink looks at him with utter disbelief. “No way. We’ll be lucky if we stay alive here. We heard vehicles approaching… We are really screwed. Bagram is under siege and soon the Tribe will be at our throats too… This will be our last stand. Here, brother! Come, have some vodka while you still can!”
“No vodka today, thanks, nor will there be a last stand. I brought men with me… a few good men.”
“This is no time for jokes. Where are they?”
“Behind me. You better holster your weapons.” The major presses the button on his intercom. “Bockman, the road is clear. Proceed. Have a truck take a few hitchhikers aboard.”
The Stalkers become startled as they hear the noise of heavy engines approaching.
“This can’t be real,” Borys murmurs. “But if it isn’t real, it does sound real… and then it’s me who needs a shrink because I’m hallucinating.”
“No, you aren’t, and you won’t have to walk today. Look!”
From beyond the next bend in the road, a Humvee appears. Then a dozen more follow and after them a long column of a hundred heavily armored vehicles, decorated with decomposing Taliban and mutant skulls, the Tribe’s red banner proudly blazing on the antennae.
Bagram area, 13:07:51 AFT
The Humvee, driven by the Lance Corporal and now carrying the Colonel and Tarasov, turns up a trail leading to a high hill overlooking Bagram. The main convoy halts, still covered by the forest between the road and the sandy, open plain to the east. Two trucks leave the convoy and follow the Colonel to the hilltop where they stop, covering the flanks of their leader’s vehicle.
“You won’t need your gear,” the Colonel says upon observing that Tarasov is about to take his new M4 carbine with him. “Take the scope from the Gepard only. It’s longer than your toy binocs.”
A dozen Lieutenants jump down from the trucks and assume a protective position around the Colonel. They are led by a warrior wearing an exoskeleton that is entirely different to the others, since it has been painted entirely black — even his helmet, held under his arm, on which the red SEMPER FI inscription blazes out even brighter. Out of all the warriors around, except the Colonel, he is the only one without his helmet on. Blue eyes stare out from a sun-baked, wrinkled face topped by gray hair cut to stubble, radiating the composure of a senior fighter who has already seen many battles like the one unfolding in front of them. Although taller and leaner, there is something confidence-inspiring in his presence that reminds Tarasov of praporshchik Zotkin.
More trucks and Humvees arrive on the hill, carrying mortars and heavy machine guns. Their crews quickly start preparing them, but obviously not quickly enough for the senior warrior.
“Don’t be scared of breaking your fingernails, ladies! You are not just a fire support team, you are my fire support team! Anderson, do you want the big man to think that my fire support team is made up of pussies? Do you want to let me fucking down, gunny?”
“No, Sergeant Major Hartman, sir!”
“Then speed up! That also includes you, Corporal Hendricks! You’re not in the Belgian army anymore! Haul those ammo boxes!”
“Oorah, sir!”
“That’s the spirit! Move, move, move, warriors! Maybe the gunny told you that we’re here for a lazy pussies convention. That’s damn wrong! What are we here for today?”
“For the kill!” the warriors’ chorus replies.
“And what am I here for?”
“For the thrill!”
“I want that kill! I want that thrill!” the Sergeant Major roars. “Move, you lame pussies!”
Standing in front of his command vehicle and studying the besieged base through his binoculars, the Colonel orders a command into his radio.
“Assault team, proceed towards Phase Line Akron.”
“Affirmative. Assault team is Oscar Mike,” comes the reply.
“Keep it steady, Ramirez.”
“Fire support team is prepared, sir,” the Sergeant Major reports to the Colonel, who glances at his watch.
“It took them three seconds longer than I expect, Top.”
“Apologies, sir. I’ll talk to Anderson about it once the show is over.”
At that moment, a volley of RPG projectiles hit the gates of the Stalker base, blasting a machine gun post and sending half a dozen defenders to their deaths.
“Looks pretty hairy down there,” the Colonel calmly remarks.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle, sir.”
“Top, have the fire team stand by.” The Colonel raises his radio set. “Driscoll, proceed with the security team to grid Zulu Bravo Seven Niner.”
Through his binoculars, Tarasov watches a few lighter armored vehicles leaving the main column, and cannot shake off a steady flow of bad memories when he hears the cruel First Lieutenant’s voice reply through the radio.
“Affirmative. Security team moving out.”
The vehicles speed up, driving around the hill the Colonel has chosen for his command post so as to stay out of the sight of the enemy, and quickly move towards the road leading to the south.
“Driscoll is closing the kill zone,” the Sergeant Major tells Tarasov with a grin. “No rag-head will get out of here alive, not even if they’re disguised as Minnie the Mouse!”
Two small, light trucks arrive on the hill.
What are they doing here? Tarasov asks himself. No armor, no nothing…unless that thing under the cover is some piece of artillery.
“Looks bad for the scavengers,” the Sergeant Major tells him, pointing towards the besieged Stalker base. “They’re in deep shit. A real clusterfuck.”
Tarasov raises his binoculars. The container wall around the Antonov is shattered, while here and there tracer bullets still fizz towards the waves of enemies who swarm around the Stalker base like a sea of ants.
“Major,” he hears the Colonel calling, “you will not take part in this battle. You will only have the pleasure of watching it. But before it begins, I give you a mission.”
Tarasov turns to him with a bad feeling festering in his guts.
“You were right, Major, we have no friends here. But I don’t think that Stalkers and the Tribe will ever be friends. I ordered my men into this battle because I want you to be in my debt.”
This doesn’t sound good, the major thinks.
“I want you to be in my debt because I will task you to do something that is almost impossible,” the Colonel says. “I give you the task of staying alive until you have done what you came here for. Afterwards, I want you to find my son and give him what you have found in that village. Tell him what you have seen here — everything. Are you willing to do this for me, in exchange for the miserable lives of a few scavengers?”
“What if I die, no matter how hard I try to stay alive?”
Another huge explosion rocks the Stalkers’ defenses.
“Would you dare to disappoint me?” A grim smile appears on the Colonel’s face. “You better make up your mind now, because your friends seem to have only minutes left to live.”
“Yes, I will do that for you. If I can stay alive.”
“Consider that a direct order from me. Take this damned pen drive and gu
ard it with your life. I have saved everything on it that you’ll need to know to find my son. When you find him, you will understand what I said about heroin, and why we littered the poppy fields with corpses. And now… now you will see me unleashing the greatest warriors the earth has ever seen.”
“Assault team has reached Phase Line Akron. Sierra Bravo,” Tarasov hears a voice crackling in the radio.
“Security team is in position,” comes another report.
The Colonel looks up to the endless grey sky and takes a deep breath. His trembling nostrils tell of excitement barely withheld. “I love battles at dawn… let the sky crumble. Top — send the assault team in!”
“Assault team, proceed through Phase Line Boston to Phase Line Charleston,” the Sergeant Major commands through his radio. “When you reach Charleston, wait for the big man’s command before you strike.”
“Assault team. Affirmative.”
Tarasov raises his binoculars to his eyes. The column starts moving, turning eastwards on a narrow road through the forest.
The vehicles keep precisely the same distance from each other, as if they were railway carriages pulled by the same locomotive, even upon reaching the plain where they accelerate and swirl up a huge plume of dust and sand.
“Assault team crossing Phase Line Boston.”
So far, all the call signs, orders and destination codes sounded to Tarasov like a normal military operation, but now the Colonel barks an unexpected command.
“Top! Sound the bell.”
“Oorah, sir!” The Sergeant Major waves his hand to the light trucks. Their crews remove the canvas from the tops but, to Tarasov’s surprise, it is not a weapon that they are carrying but a massive set of loudspeakers.
Suddenly, Tarasov hears the toll of a huge bell, its sound so deep and menacing as if it heralds the Apocalypse itself, and so loud that it feels as if it is crushing his eardrums. The dreadful toll rolls through the plains and echoes back from the hills far away.
“Our way of letting them know that doom is coming,” the Sergeant Major shouts over with a wide smile, putting his helmet on.
“Assault team has reached Phase Line Charleston,” comes through the radio.
“Assume assault formation, Ramirez,” the Colonel commands. “Fire support team, the kill zone is yours.”
“Fire for effect! Give’m hell!”
On the Sergeant Major’s orders, the mortars fire a salvo and the heavy machine guns on the Humvees start barking.
The column has reached the plain and deploys into a semi-circle, outflanking the enemy like a gigantic snake raising its head to strike its prey. The Humvees slow down for a minute and turn towards the enemy who are already being hammered by the Tribe’s mortars and heavy machine guns.
“Assault team in position.”
“Assault team — go!” the Colonel commands. “Fire support, shift your fire!”
The sound of guitars now screams from the loudspeakers at skull-crushing volume, playing a symphony of pure rage. A desire for destruction overwhelms him and Tarasov feels the urge to run down from the hill with all guns blazing, unleashing a scream to join the singer’s brutal cry. He feels like a puppet moved by the toll of the bell, blending with the merciless rhythm coming from the loudspeakers.
A glance from the Colonel stops him dead. In the gray glow of dawn, the massive roar of battle blends with the music rolling over the plain below.
Tarasov believed that the Tribe had earned its notoriety by pure cruelty. But what he sees now unfolding is the most impressive deployment of mobile firepower he has ever witnessed.
The line of vehicles accelerates, the mounted machine guns and grenade launchers spitting bullets and explosives into the enemy ranks. They don’t slow down as they smash into the dushmans, throwing bodies and shattered limbs into the sky. Now the warriors jump off and charge forward while the machine guns on the vehicles cover the area ahead of them with a deadly rain of fire. Tarasov sees a warrior blasting the heads of two enemies with his machine gun while devil pups charge forward, their fixed bayonets red from the glowing alloy and blood.
A Humvee gets separated from the line and is soon surrounded by the enemy, only to unleash a massive streak of fire from a mounted flamethrower and clear a circle filled with burning corpses around it. He sees a devil pup dying, then another one who had tried to protect his fallen comrade. For a moment the line falters, but a few senior warriors fill their loosened ranks and mow the enemy down with rifle fire. The Tribe’s iron gauntlet closes around the enemy, mercilessly and irresistibly pushing them forward to the container wall, where the defenders’ bullets rain down into their massed ranks.
Tarasov swings the binoculars towards the Stalkers who are fighting a pitched battle against the dushmans, several of whom are climbing up the wall. A Stalker in a heavy suit kicks one in the head, only to be shot in the back by a dark-clad figure crawling up the wall. Two rounds from a defender’s shotgun blow the dushman’s head off. Tarasov sees the enemy starting to falter, but at the gate, blasted and half ruined by RPG hits and hand grenades, a group of heavily armored Chinese commandos hold their ground among the terrified, routing dushmans and pushes on towards the gate.
“They do have guts,” he hears the Sergeant Major commenting. “Not bad — keeping their cohesion under fire like that. The scavengers throw everything at them but the kitchen sink.”
Something must happen or it was all for nothing, Tarasov reflects, barely able to keep himself from charging into battle. He switches to his sniper rifle’s scope to have a closer look and sees a group of Stalkers pouring out of the gate led by two figures in military armor, one of them raking the enemy ranks with his machine gun and the other relentlessly firing an assault rifle. To his incredible relief, he recognizes Ilchenko and Zlenko.
Thank God they’re still alive. But where are the others?
He watches the Stalkers surge forward, screaming, killing and dying until they run into the steel wall of Tribe warriors with only dead and dying enemies left between them. For a moment, Stalkers and warriors face each other.
“Assault team, regroup. Commence pursuit,” the Colonel commands laconically.
The Tribe’s warriors turn and jump on the Humvees, some of which now carry fewer men than before the battle. Tarasov spots a few daring defenders join the warriors, with the Shrink and his die-hard Stalkers from the Asylum among them. The vehicles speedily pursue the routed enemy, crushing those who get under their massive wheels, the warriors firing their weapons at those too far away to be squashed as they drive the few surviving enemies towards First Lieutenant Driscoll’s position, where they will be trapped in a final crossfire.
“All right, Top,” the Colonel says. “Order them to cease fire before we go blue on blue. We’re done for today.”
“Cease fire, cease fire,” the Sergeant Major orders into his radio. “Show’s over!”
“Let Bauer and Ramirez mop up the area. I want the rest of our warriors to gather at the gate of that pathetic shithole. Let the corpsmen move in, and have a Humvee take our friend to his men.”
At once, the vehicles turn around and, with the warriors finishing off the few enemies still alive, return to the shattered Stalker fortress, where they line up like a cavalry unit — dusty, smoky, flecked with blood, their riders jumping off and joining the Stalkers in celebrating victory. At the sign of the Sergeant Major, the music fades to a less ear-splitting volume, then tapers off.
“Security team. A few rag-heads have surrendered. Awaiting instructions. Over.”
The Colonel calmly lights up a cigarette. “I’m not in the mood to take prisoners today, Driscoll,” he replies through his radio.
“Affirmative.”
After a few seconds, the chilly wind brings the noise of short machine gun bursts from the First Lieutenant’s position.
The old warrior takes off his helmet and slings his carbine over his shoulder. “Damn this shit,” he tells Tarasov as he shows him to the nearest H
umvee. “For men like us, watching such a battle and only smelling the cordite from far away — it’s like torture, ain’t it?”
“I could hardly agree more, Sergeant Major,” Tarasov replies, climbing inside. “But it was hell of a battle either way.”
“Of course it was. It was my Tribe fighting, the best men in the world. Semper Fi!”
“What was that music? Once I heard something like that in a movie, with choppers and all, but didn’t believe that you Americans really played music when going into battle.”
The Sergeant Major gives him a smile. “Wagner is for pussies. We prefer Metallica.”
Body Count
Bagram, 16:34:56 AFT
“Yar! You have a minute?”
“What? I can’t hear you Ashot. My ear drums are blown.”
“That’s nothing, me dear! I have bullets in me ass.”
“Actually, I got stabbed in my neck too.”
“C’mon, man, that’s nothing compared to me amputated toe!”
“Sorry, I can’t admire it. I’m wearing a patch on my better eye.”
“So you have no seen me boots? I can’t find them since Bonesetter patched up me feet!”
“You removed your boots? Now I understand why they ran away!”
“YOU TWO! THE INTERCOM WAS NOT REPAIRED TO FACILITATE YOUR SMALL TALK! AND YOU, MAJOR… COME OVER. WE NEED TO TALK.”
Fuck you, Bone, Tarasov thinks as he gets out of the Humvee and looks around.
The siege has taken a heavy toll on the Stalkers’ base. Incoming RPGs have pounded the walls of Bone’s command center. The old Antonov is in even worse shape than she was before, with one of the wings broken away from the fuselage, probably due to mortar fire, and now lying on the ground riddled with bullets indicating how the Stalkers had converted it into a makeshift firing position to compensate for the steel container that had been blasted away at the gate. Close to a relatively intact part of the container wall, Tarasov sees a dozen freshly dug graves. The watchtower still stands, with one Stalker on top of it behind the sandbags that have been darkened by the smoke of explosions. The only comforting sight is that of his two battle-worn soldiers hurrying up to greet him.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Southern Comfort s-1 Page 34
