4. Dimitri
4
DIMITRI
29-YEARS-OLD
The air is quiet and still. It’s that tense, heavy silence before a storm, except the storm coming our way is man-made, not meteorological. We’ve been following the battalion for more than three days, always circling around them, and staying far back enough to avoid being spotted.
So far this mission is reconnaissance only, but that could change at any moment.
The heaviness in the air, mirrored in my gut, tells me something big is coming, but I don’t know what. This is my second enlistment, and I’m getting close to the point where I must decide whether to reenlist again or look for civilian work.
When we arrived in America, I got into a lot of trouble. It turns out, once a beast comes alive inside you, it is hard to take it. I tried, but every now and then he’d roar to life, and I’d get into shit. Mamma was shredded to her very last nerve , she’d say.
Then she met Jacob, and I hated him. Another man to betray us. Let us down. But something happened. Jacob didn’t betray us. He was sad and quiet because he’d lost his wife. Slowly, he started to look at Mamma like she was the sun and moon together. They fell in love, and I got yet another father figure. Except this one truly cared.
Over time, Jacob taught me things. Things Anton should have taught me but never could, even if he’d lived. Jacob taught me about honor. About strength. About how men aren’t all pieces of shit. They can be protectors too.
I told him about my beast, and he showed me how to channel it. The beast could be a force for good as well as destruction. Jacob showed me how being active helped. I became a star on the sports field. Then I found my true calling. Being in the Marines is the best form of control I could find. The discipline has continued to shape my beast into a force for good not evil.
I’m due some downtime at the end of this mission, and I need to use it to think. I’ll miss the camaraderie I’ve built up with the men here if I decide to leave next year, but it feels like it’s time for a change.
In the Marines, I’ve felt as if I have a band of brothers around me. Yet, I also have a family back home, and I increasingly miss them. My stepfather, Jacob, is a good man who treats me like his son. He isn’t getting any younger. My stepsister is a cute ball of fun, and my mother is finally happy and settled. It would be good to spend time with them, but returning home and working a desk job, well, the idea bores me rigid.
Jacob would put me to work, but I don’t want to go into the family business. Let’s just say the Rudenko family business is not entirely legal. I’ve spent my adult life working to uphold the values of law, justice, and democracy, and to work with Jacob, as much as I admire him on a personal level, would betray that.
We’re approaching the deserted village that the ragtag battalion we are trailing passed through long hours back.
The fuckers keep carrying out incursions and raids, as if the poor people living on this war-torn border haven’t had enough. This battalion we are tracking is from enemy territory, but they find it easy to cross the border and mount attacks as the friendlies have such a depleted fighting force.
We will try to help with that as much as we can as we embed deeper. Training friendlies and equipping them is one of the ways of modern warfare.
“Sweep as we go,” Mickles orders.
I nod and fall back, weapon raised as two of the engineers working with us start their sweep for IEDs and landmines. It’s doubtful this place is mined, but we don’t leave it to chance.
The drones hover, the operators getting ready, messing about with their screens.
The uneasy feeling is crawling up my spine now. I can’t shake it. Physically, I try to. I roll my shoulders and crack my neck, side to side.
“You feel it too, huh?” Mickles says the words low. For my ears only.
We’re not alone. We have a small unit of engineers with us. They’ll be hanging behind and working in the village to try to make it habitable again. They’ll have the backup of an army unit once we’ve secured the place. We’ll move on, still dodging those fuckers we’ve been following for weeks now.
Sooner or later the order will come. Attack . My blood fizzes with the thought.
It isn’t that I relish hurting people, or the risk to myself, but the waiting is worse than the action. This wait, in particular, is beyond fucking awful.
“Yes.” I nod at Mickles.
“Stay frosty, Babel.” He uses my nickname. They call me that because as well as the Arabic and French I learned as part of my training, I speak fluent English, Italian, Russian, and a smattering of Chinese. Languages are simply something I find easy to pick up. I believe because I was bilingual from a young age, it has become an ingrained skill for me.
Our isolation and vulnerability gnaws at me. We’re a small group, right on the border between a friendly country and an enemy nation. The vicious little battalion we are following have been using this porous border to create increasingly audacious attacks.
Like special forces operators, we are trained to work as small, specialized units. We work closely with host armies, training them.
It makes us a flexible weapon.
The engineers keep up their sweep, and we hoist our weapons as we follow them. I’m on alert, that feeling not dissipating.
“They left, right?” Mickles mutters. “We saw those fuckers leave.”
“They left.” Nuts nods as he joins us, fanning out so that between the three of us we cover the entire dusty track winding its way between the deserted buildings.
He’s called Nuts because he’s always eating pistachio nuts, spitting out the shells on the floor and making a fucking mess.
Still, he’s a good guy to have at your back. Messy or not.
Movement catches my eye, like the flutter of a wing near the flat roof of the building to my right. Heart speeding, I raise my weapon, but it’s a dark rag of cloth caught on a metal pole. It flaps in the tiny wafts of arid breeze. I swallow, my heart rate slowing down, and glance at the opposite buildings. Nothing.
The village doesn’t feel deserted. Something lives here. Could I be so on edge that I’m picking up the presence of a stray dog and letting it get to me? Maybe it’s the ghosts of the past. I almost laugh at myself, but the feeling is too strong to find humor.
I’m a big believer in intuition, and mine is screaming at me right now.
“How long ago was this place abandoned?” I ask Mickles.
“Two months.”
“Something’s off,” I say, and at that moment he appears.
A small kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen. Skinny. Undernourished. He walks right out of the house in front of us to our left and stands there, staring.
My eyes sweep down his body.
Oh, hell no .
He’s strapped. Explosives bulging, a detonator in hand.
I aim, but his hand presses the detonator.
Wind brushes my forearms and face first. A harbinger of what is about to hit.
Everything slows as if the events are happening click after click in a slideshow.
Click.
My finger tenses on the trigger.
Click.
The wind turns hot.
Click.
I squeeze and discharge my weapon.
Click.
The wave of heat and pressure hits me.
Click.
I fall backward.
Click.
The boom hits; the noise like anti matter sucking air from my ears.
Click.
Silence.