Patriots & Tyrants (16 page)

His escape into the horde of onlookers that had gathered outside of the school in search of their loved ones would have been perfect if not for the wounded child whose stretcher he'd helped carry to cover his escape recognizing him. Now, wounded himself from a bystander's lucky shot, he was relieved to be alive and not torn to pieces by the bitter mob. Gingerly pulling away the torn pieces of his blood stained undershirt, he scoffed at the thought of their faces. They deserved this, their willingness to occupy land that was not their own and their acceptance of a god besides Allah had determined their fate.

"It is ready, General," a high voice said with a quiver of fear. The voice belonged to a man Baktayev knew only as Omar, a member of the Mujahedeen who had joined his clan at their home in the mountains above Grozny two weeks prior to their planned assault. He didn't know exactly where Omar had come from but he suspected he was one of the Turkish Muslims that so often cropped up in support of their cause. Most of them were useful as cannon fodder if nothing else but Baktayev suspected Omar was a coward. Unlike the Mujahedeen who had gallantly fought the invading soldiers and honorably accepted their deaths, Omar had survived, which meant he had run.

"Give it to me," Baktayev said. Slowly, trying hard to steady his quavering hand, Omar handed over the hypodermic needle. The general gripped it greedily. Already he was beginning to feel the effects of the withdrawal his body would soon enter. Fatigue, depression and hunger were not things he could deal with now. In order to complete his escape across the smuggling routes east of Beslan, he would need a strength and alertness only the new amphetamine he and his men had created could supply. Holding it between his teeth, he secured a shoelace around his left arm, pulling it tight until the veins in his arm were exposed. He injected the needle all the way to the syringe and depressed it, pushing the drug into his blood stream with a ravenous look in his eyes.

"That is too much," Omar cried. "You are using it all. It is the only one we have!"

Baktayev hissed at him as the last of the bluish white liquid left the syringe.

"Now what will I have," the Turk asked indignantly.

Closing his eyes and tilting his head back, Baktayev groaned audibly as ne felt the amphetamine begin its work like the bite of a venomous snake. He closed his fists and rested them in his lap increasing his grip tighter and tighter, his knuckles turning white as he began to pound his fists against his own legs. "Arghnhhh," he yelled, pounding his chest violently as he stood and looked about, his eyes wildly ablaze.

Omar retreated to the opposite side of the barn.

"Ahh," Baktayev breathed as the rush began to slow. A satisfied smile stretched across his skinny face as he cracked the bones in his neck with a purposeful twist of his head, the varicose veins across his bald head swelling as his eyes rested on Omar. "Give me your knife."

"Why?" the Turk protested.

"Give me your knife!" Baktayev exploded, pounding his chest with one fist and advancing towards the terrified Turk. Withdrawing the commando style blade hidden within his forest green tracksuit, Omar held it in front of him, his back against the wall as he pointed the end of the blade at the crazed Chechen. "Stay away, stay back!"

Striking fast with a renewed strength, Baktayev launched his hand in a wide circle and struck the Turk's inner wrist, causing his grip to loosen and the knife to fall away into the straw covered floor. Pushing his right fist through the air, he connected first with the Turk's stomach and then with the side of his face, the severity of the blow causing the weathered boards of the barn to vibrate as the Turk's body was thrown against them. Omar fell to the floor in a heap where he lay sobbing.

Leaning over, Baktayev picked up the knife and flipped it over in his hand, scoffing at the fallen Turk. "You were barely worth the effort," he spat. Looking about, his eyes rested on an acetylene torch in the far corner of the barn, its once yellow painted tank now covered in rust. He strode towards it, picking it up and checking the attached hose to see if it was intact. After seeing that it was, he shook the tank to find it still had fuel. A distinct hiss filled the air as Baktayev opened the valve and the gas began to flow from the tip. Striking the self-lighting mechanism on the torch, a flame burst forth, changing the hiss of air to the roar of flame.

Holding the torch in one hand and the knife in the other, he ran the flame over the blade in a smooth motion until its surface was glowing hot. Turning off the torch, he pushed the tank away and pulled back the torn pieces of his undershirt to reveal a jagged wound on his side. Moving the knife to his other hand, he steeled himself and reached across, pressing the heated blade against his flesh. "Arghhhhh!"

The air filled with the sickly smell of burning dermis, the sound of scalding rising as he held the blade to the wound as long as he could before releasing his grip and allowing it to fall to the floor where smoke began to rise from the straw. He pounded his chest triumphantly as the pain began to reside and become bearable. He was lucky the bullet hadn't entered his body, but only grazed him as he ran from the carnivorous mob of Ossetians.

"Fools," he breathed, spit flying from his mouth.

Omar struggled to his feet. "We have to get out of here," he said. "Someone will have heard all of this noise. The soldiers will come looking."

Baktayev nodded. Bending down again, he picked up the knife. "When they get here you can tell them General Ruslan Baktayev sends his greetings."

Omar wrinkled his face in confusion. The drugs were making the Chechen general mad, his words no longer made sense. Omar waved him off and walked towards the small backpack he'd managed to hold onto as he fled the school. As he arrived and bent down to pick it up, Baktayev glided to his side. As the Turk stood, Baktayev placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, holding him in place with a vice like grip on his collar bone.

"Wh… what are you doing? We have to leave."

"We aren't going anywhere," Baktayev said as he slowly brought the tip of the knife to the Turk's throat and pushed, inserting the hot blade into the man's neck with a searing sound.

Omar sniffed and gasped as he felt the blade enter, his eyes growing wide with terror. The gasp turned quickly to a gurgle as the Chechen pressed the knife further in. Omar's limbs began to shake violently as he struggled to breathe, his hands reaching out to struggle against his killer. Baktayev moved the knife forcefully back and forth opening a chasm, blood running over his hand. «Mmmm» he growled as he watched the Turk's eyes roll back into his head. Pulling down sharply on the knife, he tore it loose and released his grip on the body, allowing it to fall to the floor with a thud.
"We
aren't going anywhere," he repeated.

"Papa, papa!"

The sound of the cries rising in the distance caused Pavel Tumanov to turn suddenly from the cattle he was tending in the field behind his farm. He looked to his son, Grigory, with a question on his face. Had Grigory heard it as well or was his imagination playing tricks on him? The last three days had been stressful. Perhaps fear from the nightmare his family had narrowly avoided as they had walked towards his daughter's first day of school was still prodding him from within.

"Papa, papa!"

There it was again, and this time Pavel was sure it was the voice of his youngest daughter, Nika. He tossed down the cattle prod he'd been holding and moved quickly towards the cries, Grigory following behind him. They broke from a jog into a run as they saw six year old Nika running towards them with a frightened look, a velveteen teddy bear in hand bouncing along by its arm and struggling to keep up.

"What is it girl, what is it?" Pavel asked, coming to a stop on one knee and talking the curly haired girl by the shoulders. "What are you doing out of the house?"

"I heard voices in the barn, men's voices."

"What were you doing at the barn?" he scalded. "I told you to stay in the house. You know there are soldiers around!"

The girl began to cry. Pavel looked from her to his son, who looked into the distance towards the tattered barn that stood on the edge of their farm, its rough wood turned black with age.

"It's okay girl, what happened?" Pavel asked.

"I'm sorry I left the house papa."

"Don't worry about that. What happened?"

"I heard men shouting inside and I ran away."

"Alright, come with me to the house," he said standing up and turning to his son. "Grigory go to the town and find the soldiers. Tell them to come quickly."

"Yes papa," the fifteen year old said as he turned and ran through the tall grass towards the town of Beslan that sat barely a half mile east of their home. Peter scooped up his daughter and moved hurriedly towards the one story stone farmhouse on the other side of the field. His family had lived there for three generations, a century of nearby warfare failing to separate them from the land. Carrying his daughter in his arms, he held her tight, glad to have her safe with him. Had province not shined on them three days earlier and made them late to the Day of Knowledge festivities, she'd have been locked in a building with the evil men whose war had too often spilled over into their serene home at the base of the Caucasus Mountains.

Arriving at the house, he pushed open the door with his foot and entered to find his wife in their tiny kitchen. Irina Tumanova looked up with a start as they entered. "What's happened?" she demanded. "Men in the barn," Pavel answered, setting Nika on the stone floor at her mother's feet.

"Where is Grigory?" Irina asked, looking towards the door when the boy didn't enter after his father.

"I sent him to the town to get the soldiers."

"Soldiers? Why? Whoever they are they will clear out as they always do."

Pavel knew she was referring to the Vodka smugglers that occasioned by. It was a fact of life in the Caucasus. So many were forced to scrape out a living in the production factories that a good measure of the product went out the back door to smugglers who paid them far more than the facility's management ever would. Many of the men Pavel knew, they had paid him for the use of the barn since it was nearby to a track of dirt road that stretched west past the border of North Ossetia into Ingushetia.

"No. Not this time," he said. "The smugglers would never operate with so many soldiers around. But there are other men around and I'm not going to risk them being so close to my family."

"If you bring the soldiers down on them they will quit using the barn and we need that money!"

"It's not the smugglers, now enough!"

He moved away from his wife, opening one of the cupboards and reaching into the top of it, withdrawing a small pistol.

"What are you going to do?" Irina pleaded.

"I'm going to find out who they are. If it's as you say then I can turn the soldiers away," he said as he exited the house, the door slamming loudly behind him.

Pavel trudged through the tall grass approaching the barn, the trail left by the passing of his daughter still evident in the otherwise untouched field. He snapped the slide back on the Makarov pistol he'd kept hidden inside the house. In truth, he wasn't sure if the gun would even fire. Years of dust clung to the dark metal, he brushed it away with his hand, steeling his grip as the barn drew closer.

Suddenly a distant rumble filled the air and Pavel recognized it immediately as the sound of a troop carrier. His son had found the soldiers and they were coming. He needed to hurry. Picking up his pace, he jogged towards the decrepit double doors that had once held the family's horses, horses that had likely been dead now for a long time. Pavel didn't know exactly what had happened to them; they had disappeared in the night years ago. He was sure they'd been taken by smugglers or by insurgents trying desperately to escape during one of the many wars the region had seen over the last two decades.

Twenty yards from the barn doors, he turned around knowing he was too late. A drab green Volvo troop carrier skidded into view, its rear cargo area covered with a thick green canvas and hiding heavily armed soldiers. The tread of the vehicle's oversized off-road tires tore chunks of grass and dirt loose as it trudged towards him, leaving an imprint in the field like a row plow. In the front between two soldiers, Pavel could see his son Grigory. Stuffing the Makarov into his pocket, he smiled and waved as they approached. Hopefully whoever was in the barn had heard the transport approaching and had fled through the rear doors into the thick forest beyond. The transport turned sharply and came to an abrupt halt ten yards in front of him. Immediately the canvas flaps at the rear of the vehicle flew open and two men wearing forest green jumpsuits speckled with patches of brown and tan jumped out, Kalashnikov rifles held at the ready across their chests. Shadows from thick olive colored helmets obscured their faces, protecting their broad foreheads. They surveyed the land in front of them.

"I… I was wrong," Pavel said smiling. "I have checked and there is no one here any longer. They must have fled when they heard you coming."

The soldiers ignored him. The two men in front exited the vehicle, retrieving assault rifles of their own. "Check the barn and the house," the driver ordered.

"I… I told you I was…" Pavel began nervously but was interrupted by a cracking sound that filled the air. Turning suddenly, he saw the double doors of the barn fly open, the clasp holding them broken by a powerful impact. Pavel's eyes went wide as he saw the towering figure standing in the shadow of the barn's entrance, parts of his face visible by beams of sunlight from between the boarded doors. The man was shirtless, his left side stained with dark blood, a heavy black beard extending from his chin to the middle of his chest, in his hands an AK-47 bucked, brass flying.