|
Post by E-Stalin [Orthrus] on Feb 17, 2012 17:29:54 GMT -5
Note that this was a collaborated effort between me and a buddy, featuring characters we previously used, and thus this will likely make no sense to anyone unfamiliar with them. Either way, maybe it'll be enjoyable to anyone that likes random military action. Note that Sergei Garinich posts are my own, and Rex Lunedo ones are my buddies. Also note that this was written in '10, and thus two year old writing quality may suffer.
This is historical fiction, taking place in actual locations and involved with the real events and operations that took place in Chechnya during July, 2006. -----------
The wind alone was loud enough to almost drown out the noise of the rotors. It struck the heavy frame of the Mi-8 chopper like a whiplash, sending heavy tremors through that made typical turbulence seem mild.
Neither pilot could see much of anything out there. Smack in between the frozen peaks of the Greater Caucasus mountains, down low enough to be more or less boxed in. The weather here wasn't anywhere near ideal in terms of flying conditions, but then again, this particular fog-out was precisely what the pilots had been looking for.
On any typical flight path, this would have appeared to be either the work of extremely stupid Russian pilots, or a search and rescue mission. The chopper was flying at extremely low altitude; it was going at only a few hundred meters, and flying right next to Mount Kazbek, which alone exceeded the Mi-8s Service Ceiling by almost a kilometer. There was no way of flying over these mountains if the chopper got caught in a full-on blizzard here.
The Mi-8 could hold up to twenty-four passengers, typically used for troop and medic transport in military use. At the moment it only held one. Sergei Garinich sat with a leg hooked around one of the seat pylons to keep him at least somewhat steady, although the sheer bulk of his clothing and equipment held him more or less inert. He'd been sitting in this chopper for the past three days, having climbed in during the middle of a full thunder-storm complete with rain and absolute cloud-cover, at night time on top of it. He hadn't climbed in alone either; two engineers had come over to check up on the chopper with him. When they left, he stayed behind.
Only now that the flight had actually been cleared could he leave the metal box. The issue was that they had to do it in low visibility. He'd had to climb in during a period where no U2, spy satellite, or other recon plane which just happened to be flying somewhere in low orbit could possibly spot it. Granted, any such plane would have been easily detected over Russian airspace, but the sheer amount of paranoia that went into keeping K2 a secret resulted in the stupidest mission planning possible. Which was precisely why Sergei was now being dumped out of a chopper in the middle of a freezing white-out, and then being sent to walk and climb the rest of the way to a bloody climbing expedition's base camp, and from there go with civilian transport as a news journalist to Chechnya.
Apparently the MVD was so fearful of American espionage that simply putting Sergei in a military Zil and driving him in would have been too obvious, and so instead decided to throw him out in the middle of nowhere in an operation that literally only two men outside the Kremlin knew about, who both just happened to be MVD operatives. The men in question were the pilots.
As it was, the helicopter briefly hovered at one hundred meters above ground level in the Southern incline between Mt. Kazbek and a smaller, unnamed peak. Base camp was at 3,000 meters, Sergei was being dropped at five hundred. Going any higher would leave him lying on the ground immobile, gasping as if he'd run a marathon. As physically fit as he was, the human body simply couldn't acclimatize that rapidly, even with Oxygen. You had to start low and then work your way up. The chopper only hovered for only half a dozen seconds. Sergei stood up, lurched toward the door, and simply stepped out.
In order to remain undetected for airborne insertion, Americans preferred HALO and HAHO jumps. The Russians preferred the polar opposite, jumping out at about as low as they could possibly get, typically under a hundred meters. Without a chute, Sergei would have hit the ground in somewhere under five seconds. As it was, the helicopter instantly vanished into the wind, his stomach disappeared into the void, and there was just a second of utter chaos. Wind ripping and snow hailing at his face. Then the static line attached to his pack jerked taut and ripped out the chute, and he hit the ground a few seconds later, immediately vanishing up to chest-height in a snow-drift. His pure white chute covered him then, leaving him all alone in negative 20C weather, visibility maybe a hundred meters. Invisible to every electronic eye on the planet, for no reason whatsoever other than the paranoid delusions of some Kremlin politician that bought into cold war hype.
-----------------
Rex Lunedo drummed his fingers on his lap while he glared at the gun catalog in front of him. He was more of a knife man, but this was about the only entertainment he had- trying to listen to an iPod over the noise of the UH-60 Blackhawk's rotors was simply unreasonable and unwise. Not only would it be utterly pointless, but it also meant he'd be less able to hear the pilot's commands. He'd already spent the last hour picking a subtle pattern- a hidden beat in the the drumming of the rotors that, of course, changed with the throttle of the engines and twin jet turbines overhead. The PMC he was executing this contract for had decided that insertion by foot or ground vehicle was too dangerous. Granted, it was slow and vulnerable compared to the Blackhawk, which zipped along at a hasty 180 mph only 300 feet above the ground, but it wasn't even close to the blatant obviousness of a twin jet-engine helicopter hovering over everyone's heads. That's why the plan was to touch-and-go off of a roof in town- significantly less risky than sitting in place 30 seconds while he fast-roped.
The hurry to get in and out before anyone could even think to grab an RPG was also the reason the Blackhawk was moving so low and fast- by the time anyone realized there was a helicopter overhead, it was already too late to fire on it. Rex licked his thumb and then used it to turn the page in the gun catalog. The PMC job was half search and recovery, half hired hit, and half cover-up. Normally, Rex wasn't the kind of guy to take up Warzone work- Hell, this was the first time he'd worked with a PMC- but it got him closer to his other motives in life. After all, Chechnya was a next door neighbor to Russia. To be honest, though, he didn't give half a damn about the terrorist organization he was sent to target- they were bastards, granted, but he wasn't getting paid to pass judgment.
Rex's eyes settled on a picture of a shiny new HK45. Supposedly, it was the next generation of USP, and everyone he talked to about it gave the gun high praise for its recoil buffering and accuracy, but the gun was also widely hated for an unacceptable trigger mechanism that HK hadn't quite worked out. That was a pity, he'd always favored HK's designs. Folding the magazine shut, Rex sat it on the bench next to him and then leaned backward until his jet black hair touched the wall of the cargo hold. For a minute, he sat quietly, gazing with empty eyes at the other side of the helicopter while the vibrations from the rotors rattled through his body. Then, he let his eyes slide shut.
"Operator." Rex's eyes slid open, but only just. Instead of risking disorientation from awakening too quickly, he simply held still and observed his surroundings. Not moving, almost appearing to not move his lips, Rex responded into the flat black headset he'd been wearing. "Go ahead." "ETA 30 seconds." "Copy."
Standing up off the bench and grabbing a black frame pack off of the bench seat across from him, Rex threw it on over one shoulder while grabbing onto an overhead loop of fabric designed for giving passengers a handhold. Then, switching hands on the fabric loop, Rex finished securing his pack. The last thing he needed to do was have it slip off his shoulder while leaving the helicopter- he didn't have a radio to beg the pilot to come back with. As he felt the helicopter swing around and heard the noise of the rotors and engines suddenly intensify, Rex drew his USP45 CT- sometimes called the 'Counter-Terrorist', appropriately enough- and stepped up to the open right-side cargo door. For a few seconds, he could see the entire city in all of its war-torn poverty-ravaged nakedness. He could see bullet scars marring every wall, burned out and bombed buildings dotting the landscape, bricks, debris, and trash littering the dirt streets below. He couldn't smell the poverty yet- a gritty, simultaneously light and deep smell that ran along the top surfaces of each nostril all the way back- but he figured it was only because the rotor wash was still between him and it. It'd been a long time since he'd been this close to Hell.
Rex felt a bump travel up through his knees and into his hips as the wheels of the helicopter touched the roof of the building. As soon as he felt he had his balance, Rex quickly stepped out of the helicopter in a hunched over knee-bent walk with his USP raised- something known in SWAT circles as the duck walk. It provided a constantly stable shooting stance when done properly, it allowed one to move both quietly and quickly, and in this case, it kept his head well clear of the rotor blades. As soon as he cleared the cargo bay, he snapped to the right, clearing the tail end of the helicopter, then ahead as he swept left, and finally behind him as the rotor wash bore down on him and the UH-60 lifted off. As soon as he saw the roof was all clear, Rex picked another nearby rooftop, about one story lower than him, dropped his USP back in its holster, and, with a running start, jumped over the edge.
------------------
Five Days Earlier: 20060630 13.12 Mt. Kazbek, Northern Caucasus Mountains - North Ossetia/Georgian Border Elevation: 500m -22C, Wind 30km/h - Whiteout
Sergei leaned backward, chunky bits of snow collapsing around his torso, and unclasped the straps of the D1-54 parachute. The Russian design operated on a drogue principal, and although it was extremely bulky, it was one of the most reliable systems known to skydivers. Sergei pulled the drogue now flapping over his head down into the hole he'd punched in the snow, crumpling it up and pushing it down past his body and underneath his feet.
He climbed out a moment later, his own movements burying the parachute, leaving only a shallow depression which was rapidly filling in. Snow was falling, alternating between lazy drifts and stinging surges of wind. Sergei stood in the empty plain, his ice boots sinking only slightly into the powder as he glanced around. The white-out only allowed him to see fifty meters or so ahead, which out here wasn't much. It was like standing in a desert at night; he couldn't see which direction anything was. Just white fields.
Sergei was a large man as it was. Not particularly taller than most, but broad-shouldered and strongly built. His natural bulk was exemplified by the amount of gear he had on him now. Russians, along with most militaries of the day, wore their individual equipment over their front when parachuting. Sergei dropped the twenty kilo rucksack from his chest and switched it over to his back. He wore bright red and orange wind-break clothing, along with all the warming layers underneath that were required of such climbing. His hands were well protected in thick gloves, and he wore a simple tight watch cap over his head, with the hood of his three-layered parka over that. He dropped polarized goggles over his eyes, which enabled him to finally stop squinting. Even though the sun was almost blotted out in this whether, and even though it was so early in the morning that it light would have been dim, the snow still seemed to somehow strain the eyes. Although there was a woolen balaclava sew into his collar, he covered his face with the respirator of supplementary oxygen instead. He was on a strict schedule, and oxygen would make it easier. Even though any skilled climber would have laughed at the thought of using O2 at five-hundred meters, and though Sergei had previously climbed two +8,000 peaks before, he would breath it periodically during the ascent to base-camp altitude, to ensure he didn't fall to pieces from a failure to acclimatize. He'd already been taking 350mg pills of Acetazolamide ever since he climbed into the chopper a few days ago, which was why his breathing rate was slightly higher than normal even now.
Still breathing Oxygen from the secured bottle in his rucksack, Sergei checked the altimeter and compass strapped to his wrist, turning around to face North, toward the face of the mountain. He checked over his carabiners, the belay device on his harness, shouldered the coil of rope from the pack, and began to walk.
-------
Sergei reached the base camp a little over twenty-six hours later. He observed it through binoculars from a hidden snow-drift a good ways off. Lying back, he went ahead and began breathing his second and final Oxygen bottle. Six hours later the climbing expedition arrived, led on two fixed lines by a guide. Nobody really saw exactly when the man in red and orange really walked into the camp. Everyone at the camp thought he came with the expedition. Everyone on the expedition thought he'd already been there. Anyone who spoke with him ended up meeting him as Anton Tarkov, who had been checking over the fixed lines of the Kazbek East slope in preparation for the climb to Camp 1 and then the summit.
As of July, Sergei was riding North to Avtury city, located in Southern Chechnya. He was in a Russian Zil-131, officially a Georgian Journalist coming there to report the evils of the Russian occupation of the poor Chechyan freedom fighters. That was to the Russian soldiers driving the truck of course. To the Chechyans, he did not exist. He was one of them if he needed to be, a Russian if he needed to be, and whatever else he masqueraded as. For now the city was called Avtury. Later he would call it Oitur.
More than anything though, he looked Chechen. He spoke Arabic and Chechen, although his noteable accent was easily excused as a dialect issue, and he had grown out his beard a good deal, though it still wasn't anywhere near the grabbing length most Chechens carried it at. His hair was almost always cut very short or even shaved, but a special barber had cut it to make the flatter, more circular cut look like natural growth. The only thing that was wrong with him was the color of his skin. Sergei was a pale man by nature, which suited the minority of Chechyans, although a good many of them were also pale like him. ----------------------------- 3rd of July, 2006 - Avtury, Shalinksy District, Chechnya 6.00 - 2 Celsius - Wind 3m/s - Overcast
|
|
|
Post by E-Stalin [Orthrus] on Feb 20, 2012 16:52:47 GMT -5
Thank you, you know that I really do appreciate any input. Cam-whoring is one thing, but story whoring is a lot more fun. Since this was pre-written 2 years ago, I don't have to work now, and can just post the original posts. Easy for me ey? ---------- Sergei did not know what street he was on. No one else really did either. There was no maps of Avtury, not really anyway. One could look at high-altitude photographs, which was exactly what Sergei's map was anyway, but no one knew what the streets were called, or even what streets were streets. Avtury was a relatively small city. Its population was somewhere in the eighteen thousands range, and it was only a little over a kilometer wide, and a few kilometers in length. One could walk from one end of the city to the other in under a day. Assuming they didn't get shot that was. The fact that the city was war-torn was obvious. It was very green, with vast fields of tall grass and wet trees surrounding roads, but it managed to look like a mix between Africa and Pripiat. Buildings were looted and stripped, leaving concrete shells without windows. Ruins were scattered throughout, some crumbling. Many roads were made of dirt, rubble and burned out shells of tracked vehicles were on the roads. People did not walk openly very much, and were cautious. Occasionally you would come across Russian patrols, mainly heavily-armed convoys, but not much anything else. After thirty minutes in the city, Sergei had found the building he'd been looking for. Nothing much had happened during his time there, although more than one firefight had broken out some ways off in the distance. The gunshots had been brief, and always stopped in less than a minute. People walked around in the green and white KLMK camouflage, which seemed to be more common clothing amongst the people there than anything else. It was as if everyone had suddenly geared up and become a militant. Sergei himself had entered the city wearing nothing but a woolen sweatshirt, trousers, and a faded, drab hunting vest with nothing in it. It was difficult to tell exactly who he was with. He obviously wasn't a Russian soldier, yet he didn't look entirely Chechen. He wore a watch cap on his head, not anything signifying the Muslim faith. All in all, it could go any way, depending on how a conversation ended up. Even so, he was pretty vulnerable during that half-hour. There was absolutely nothing stopping a pissed off Chechen or a trigger-happy patrol from ripping him up. For his part, he did his best to keep to the side-alleys and backyards along buildings, often leaving a street whenever he saw more than a few people on it. Now he stood before a shelled three-story building, which was now more or less only two stories. The building had been skeletonized, leaving nothing but the cement walls. It was impossible to tell what it had once been. Sergei walked inside after a barely perceptible glance down both sides of the dirt road. The building no longer had a roof, just stairs really, and the early morning light illuminated it just fine. Where once had been floor was now growing grass, already knee-height, though riddled with rubble. Sergei stopped dead in the center of the first floor of the ruin and waited. He stood very still, as if he were a hunter sitting by a river when duck came on by. Then he turned and walked up the stairs. The second floor was just as derelict as the first one, absolutely empty. Powdered cement and shattered pieces of ceiling lay here and there. After casually looking around, Sergei walked over to a spider-web circle of cracks in the wall. It was by a corner, and Sergei looked around a final time to make sure he wasn't visible from outside. Then he placed his palm against the cracks and pushed. The pieces instantly collapsed inward, and Sergei pushed them aside to get at the black, compact package inside. The pack was roughly the size of a school backpack, and Sergei crouched down in the corner with it. He threw off his vest and pulled the sweatshirt off, exposing him to the bitter morning cold for a few moments. His breathing sharply deepened and he started to shiver quite quickly, but he gave no other outward sign that the cold was affecting him. It had been quite impossible to enter the city while armed without getting screwed, either by Russian patrols, PMC groups, or the locals. Once actually inside the city however, being armed was another matter. Like Africa, everyone was armed, in one way or another. Clothing and intelligence was left in the dead-drop. He lifted up the flap of the pack and pulled out a thin black shirt with long sleeves, which he pulled over his shoulders and smoothed out. Next out of the bag came a full-set of Bekas BDU. He pulled the jacket on but didn't fasten it, hopping on one foot while he changed pants. The pants were the original dulled black of the standard uniform, but the jacket had been recolored to a dull tan, and the external chest pockets had been internalized, leaving only a zipper on the outside. Chechens weren't stupid, and recognized the typical garb quite easily. With this set up he still just looked like a city dweller with black pants, or maybe a foreign journalist. They'd had quite an influx of British reporters lately. From the pockets of his previous clothing he pulled out an assortment of odd items and stashed them in his new jacket. A partially crushed box of matches, a quarter empty box of Arktika cigarettes, a cheap leather wallet with about a hundred rubles, and hidden between the layers several hundred U.S Dollars. The wallet held a Georgian driver's license, along with his identification as a reporter. Hidden amongst the US Currency were separate Russian military cards identifying him as an OMON grunt. None of them had his actual name, jumping from Anton Tarkov to Otar Taktakishvili. Then from the pack he pulled an MP-443 PYa Grach pistol. With the pistol a box of ammunition and magazines. There was no holster. Sergei would instead holster the pistol in the integrated, hidden holster literally built into his Bekas jacket. The holster was internal, orientated in a cross-draw fashion, and concealed within the lining. The only thing keeping Sergei's hand from reaching the pistol was a loose flap of fabric, but the weapon was entirely hidden. The Grach was a fascinating sidearm, one of very many unique and effective weapons in use with the Russian military. Officially adopted for standard service in the Russian army two years ago, the pistol was of conventional design, simply and conservatively built off the century old Browning short recoil. It held seventeen rounds of 9x19mm ammo per magazine, but what made it particularly dangerous was the ammunition it used. Back in the 80s, the Russians had revolutionized ammunition types, producing everything from silent ammo to armor-piercing pistol rounds. The result of that project was the Grach pistol, so named because the project itself had been code named Grach. The outcome of the ammo was the 7N21 and 7N31 9mm round. The rounds were nearly identical in design, and summed up short, both could punch a hole through 8mms of steel plate. It was the only pistol in the world that held such firepower, capable of penetrating Class III body armor, which was meant to stop 7.62 rifle ammo. A second pistol, the GSh-18, also fired such ammo and was in many ways preferable to the Grach, at least in Sergei's opinion. But for this work he was stuck with the much larger and heavier PYa for one simply reason: it could be suppressed. The GSh-18, as ingenious of a design as it was, used a rotary barrel system, making threading and attaching a suppressor impossible. The conservative Grach design was fully capable of taking one however, which was why this particular PYa had been modified. It had tritium night-sights and a threaded barrel with an O-ring meant to quickly swap out suppressors. The sights were slightly raised to allow easier aiming over the long cylinder of a suppressor, and the result was the standard combat weapon of the K2 project. The pistol allowed Sergei full offensive power, easily punching through the body-armor so commonly used among militants, and even Russian plate carriers if it came to killing his own men. At the same time it allowed him to go silent for his main objectives, which could not risk a gunshot. It was an absolute movie myth that someone could just drop a suppressor on a weapon and then go with little 'pew' sounds whenever he felt like it. In reality only very specific ammo types allowed that, mainly subsonic ammo. The thing that made gunshots so loud was actually a sonic boom, caused by the bullet breaking the sound barrier as it blew out the barrel. No suppressor could stop that from happening. If you put a suppressor on a typical 9mm or a rifle you'd still get an extremely loud crack audible for hundred of meters. To actually silence a weapon, you needed slower ammo, bullets too slow to create a boom. The armor piercing ammo of the Grach project was much too fast for that, which was why Sergei was now working with two kinds of ammo. From the pack he got two magazines, both loaded with what looked in every aspect to be traditional 9mm FMJ rounds. They were 140 grain lead cored rounds, absolutely normal, only they had a muzzle velocity of around three hundred meters a second. This was his silent ammo. The next two magazines he pulled were loaded with rounds that had black plastic over the bullets, which had distinctive pointed tips. These were the 7N21 rounds, 82 grain. Light-weight monsters that could punch through almost every armor vest in service. Sergei got a box of ammo from the pack, dumping about nineteen subsonic rounds into one pocket, and nineteen 7N21 rounds into another. He slid the AP magazines into hidden pouches integrated beneath the pistol holster in his jacket, as well as a third subsonic mag next to them. He slid the other magazine into the grip of the Grach and racked back the slide from a sideways position, contrary to the more common over the top method, and let it slam forward on its own. Immediately after chambering the first round, he pulled the slide right back again, but only a little bit, just far enough to see the copper-colored shell-casing of a round, and then let the slide forward again. The press check aside, he dropped the magazine from the weapon again, pulled a spare round from his pocket, topped off the magazine again, and loaded it back into the Grach, gently slapping the base of the magazine twice to absolutely ensure no fuck ups. Then he holstered the pistol inside his jacket. There was no strap system to hold it into place, the holster design prevented the pistol from falling straight out. It could only be deliberately withdrawn with sideways pressure. Finally he pulled out a GP-9 suppressor from the pack and slid it into yet another hidden pouch alongside the left side of his jacket. The suppressor was eight inches long by itself, actually longer than the Grach itself. Sergei couldn't carry the pistol suppressed, but the upside was that the suppressor could be attached and removed from the pistol in half a second, simply pushed on and screwed half a turn to secure it. The last weapon from the pack was a miniature NR-2 scoutsknife. Eight inches long in its entirety, it was easily concealed in the knife pocket of the Bekas, and contained a single pistol round concealed in the handle. The round was another offspring of Grach, the SP-4. The round itself was silent, literally quieter than snapping your fingers. It could be fired from the knife if a situation required it, and Sergei had five more of the rounds in the knife pocket. This wasn't the only weapons cache in the city. There were quite a few, and some of them really heavy, including body armor and assault rifles. But those were for emergencies only. This was his primary set up, and would hopefully stay that way. If caught in combat, he'd be picking weapons up on the draw. If he got shot, then he was fucked. Simple as that. The entire gear-up had taken five minutes. Sergei tossed the pack back in the hole from where he'd gotten it, after giving it a good shake down to make sure he hadn't left anything in it. Standing up he stretched, shook himself down, and walked down the stairs and out of the building. ---------------------------- Sitting on a pile of rubble in an abandoned room, Rex glared at the satellite map he'd been provided. After he'd landed on the roof of this building, he'd equipped his USP with a suppressor and quickly found a way inside to the top floor. After he'd done a quick sweep of this floor, and noted that there were no signs of life coming from further downstairs, Rex had set up a simple booby trap- a length of fishing line running at shin height across the top of the stairs that connected to a tin can that sat on the very interior edge of a nearby windowsill. It wasn't much in the way of lethality, but it gave him early enough warning to be able to safely make the call to shoot the intruder or not. He'd already gone over everything before they'd even left the base, but it never hurt to be double sure- and that's what setting up camp here allowed him to do. Besides, he had a week to get everything done- that was more than enough time to take it easy with. The very top of the map read 'Avtury', and as far as he could tell the whole city was a generalized wreck. The streets appeared to be only just organized, and seemed to be overflowing with trash and rubble, even on the satellite view. Just as he'd seen from the helicopter, burned and shelled-out buildings dotted the landscape- sometimes even appearing as nothing but piles of pulverized concrete heaped onto the ground after years of abuse. Rex glanced up for a moment as the sound of a gunshot poured in from just outside through the empty concrete window frame and filled every corner of the room. Then, after all was quiet for several seconds, Rex looked back down at the map and ran a hand through his hair. The PMC contract was a mix of capture and kill; If he couldn't capture the target- the leader of the local terrorist cell and definitely the same man the Russians were certainly after- then he had orders to kill him. Capture, of course, meant that the PMC could possibly gain ransom from the Russians for their man and get their name known for taking down a big baddie, and it also meant a large cash bonus upon execution of the contract. He'd still get paid for getting the kill- just not as much. Rex had been inserted under a situation of almost complete blindness, intelligence-wise. The PMC didn't have the slightest clue where to start looking for this guy, other than that he was supposedly in Avtury, and the Russians weren't sharing what they knew. This presented a second problem because Rex was also here on two other jobs- another paid job, and an unpaid mission of his own to try and learn something about... Rex drew a sharp inhalation as a shiver ran down his spine and a bead of sweat formed on his forehead. Then, smiling sheepishly like a child that had been caught with his hands in the cookie jar and chuckling a little, Rex wiped the sweat off of his forehead and pulled his frame pack a little closer to start inspecting it. Inside the top pouch, Rex had a small trauma kit, including sutures, shears, several lengths of roller gauze, several lengths of Kling-wrap and Ace bandages, 15 4x4 squares of re-activated cellulose gauze, 20 surgical dressings, several packages of Qwik-Klot powder (not that he used it, Rex despised the powder form of that product), a small IV and IO kit, some fluids, and a large (as large he could fit) somewhat collapsible foam drug case. In the pack's main compartment, he had two boxes of .45 Supers, one of full metal jackets, the other of jacketed hollow points. He also had six thin, flat boxes of 3" slugs and four of the same type of box of 000 3" magnum buckshot for the pump-action shotgun he'd brought along with him. He also had a single box of rubber slugs for somewhat less-than-lethal takedowns if he ever needed it. The shotgun itself was a relatively short, urban model with a full-length magazine tube that was often used in close-quarters combat situations that were so common in SWAT deployments and with the US armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The shotgun's stock was a proper hard stock- Rex hated pistol grips on a shotgun, it just didn't feel right- with an optional recoil reduction system installed inside of it and an 6-round ammo sleeve installed over the outside of it. The gun's finish, like his USP, was a flat black all over. He kept the shotgun on a two-point sling with the gun across his back so that he only needed to shed his pack for a second if he wanted to get it ready. The sights were tritium, and he'd left only the front sight on it- as long as you were staring down the top rail of the gun when you aimed, whatever was behind the front sight was going to stop bothering you in short order, after all. Also inside the pack was a thick, long metal case, inside of which were four flashbang distraction devices, and four rubber-ball grenades. The rubber-ball grenade was another less-than-lethal device. When it detonated, the grenade expels dozens of large rubber spheres at a very high velocity, stunning, disorienting, and momentarily disabling anyone who was unfortunate enough to get pelted. As far as he was aware, it was only really used by law enforcement agencies in the United States, but all reports and past experience indicated that they were extremely effective, reliable devices. The rest of the pack was mostly comprised of other supplies- one MRE, a flat plastic-wrapped package of bottled water, batteries, a cutting-edge PDA with only software and no personal data onboard, glowsticks, rope, a tarp, a very high-efficiency gas mask, a change of clothes, and so on. On the outside of the pack, he had a beating stick with optional flashlight attachment- more commonly called a mag light-, and a small, open side-pouch that already contained one flashbang and one rubber-ball grenade. The pack itself had a variety of compartments here and there, none of which were wasted. It also had Kevlar inserts all along the back that allowed the pack to function normally while also offering some protection. On his belt and almost to his rear left, Rex carried a magazine pouch for his USP magazines, which held three already-filled magazines top-down. On his rear-right belt, Rex carried a handcuff pouch, which held a single pair of handcuffs in them. The holster for the USP was affixed to his right thigh in such a position so that at standing rest, his right hand hovered just over the grip of the gun. Then, on his left thigh, Rex had a flat-black Ka-Bar in its sheath in a similar setup to the USP holster, so that his left hand hovered over the grip of the knife when at rest and so that the knife would naturally be drawn up and out in a hammer grip. Then, under his black, nylon aviator's jacket, just under his left arm, Rex had an unbranded, unmarked .38 special revolver loaded with the only 6 rounds he'd brought for it- +P+ jacketed hollow points- as a back up. If worst came to worst, he always had a small glass vial in a custom-sewn compartment just above and next to his right breast pocket. He knew that he looked like he was ready to fight a small war, and that he looked like an American, which was why he planned to stay as far out of the way as possible during his stay here until it was time to take care of business. As he put everything back into place, Rex stared at the map. The first order of business was to find out where he could pick up the PMCs big baddie- and since he barely spoke Russian and didn't at all look the part of a Chechen, he wasn't going to be able to get what he wanted to know by asking nicely. That was fine, though- a little bit of torture went a long way.
|
|
|
Post by E-Stalin [Orthrus] on Feb 21, 2012 2:03:25 GMT -5
Streets of Avtury, Day 2, 0047 (midnight)
Ajzo Pamov leaned against a support column to help hold himself up as his club-like fingers clumsily fidgeted with the severely beaten pack of cigarettes in his uniform breast pocket, trying to dig out one of the last few cigarettes remaining. Tonight had been a good night- he had eaten and drank his fill, and had even bought rounds of Vodka for all his men on the money he'd collected today. He'd found a vendor guilty of price gouging when he'd refused to come off his prices for him and his men, so Ajzo made him into an example and took his cash. The old man should've been thanking him for only kicking the shit out of him, Ajzo generally wasn't a conservative man with his bullets. Suddenly, Ajzo's empty hand fell lazily away from his cigarette pack as he grinned as the wolf to sheep at the newly re-discovered glass of Vodka in his other hand. It was a wonder he was even hanging on to it, as the entire outside of the glass was lined with spilled vodka.
Chuckling as he stared at the glass with heavy eyes, Ajzo raised the glass to his lips and raised his head with the glass as the warm vodka slid over his bottom lip and- as Ajzo looked up, he saw the outline of a man, 10 meters away. Immediately, he pulled the glass away, and spilled Vodka all down the front of his face, neck, and shirt, causing him to look down and cuss while he batted at the vodka-laced swath of dress shirt. "Hey, fucking asshole!" Ajzo hissed, as he glared back up at the figure he'd seen, only to find an empty street. Frowning as he glanced to his right and then back to his left, scanning the road for the man he'd just seen, Ajzo watched silently, save for the occasional hiccup. It was just possible that it was just this shitty Russian Vod- Ajzo yelped, dropped his Vodka, and staggered hard to one side as a hand slapped down on his shoulder.
Before he could finish fighting with his hip holster and draw his Makarov, a hand trapped his gun hand to his side, and a voice said "Settle down, dumbass." When Ajzo looked up, mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide open, he saw Grozney's bear-like chuckling form. He was a local cop that often worked with Ajzo in rooting out enemies of the brotherhood. Grinning and still sweating, Ajzo leaned forward. "Grozney, my friend," He said, putting his arm around the grinning policeman, "You're an asshole, making me spill my Vodka like that."
Grozney shook his head and stepped away from Ajzo to lean against the same column Ajzo had just been using to balance himself. "I can live with that- it seems you've already had plenty of it, you lightweight bitch," Grozney said, folding his arms.
Ajzo's face contorted, and he tried to push off the wall to reach Grozney and punch him, but failed, and ended up collapsing onto his knees in the packed dirt that had once been a sidewalk. "Ach, fuck, fuck, fuck you, my friend," Ajzo growled, although chuckling intermittently. Then, turning to face Grozney and crossing his legs as he sat his butt on the ground, Ajzo extended his hand upward to his friend. "Help a friend up," Ajzo commanded, with a faint smile.
Grozney smiled back at him wryly, and then, snapped his head away, as if pretending to suddenly ignore him. When he did, a loud popping sound rang out, and Ajzo took to laughing again. "You're one stiff bastard, Grozney! You should stretch your neck out more often, keep it from popping so loud- you might wake up Putin if you're not careful!" Ajzo declared as he sat his hand back in his lap. "Now, come on, stop being a dog and help me up!" Ajzo commanded, more seriously this time as he once more extended his hand. Grozney, however, didn't react, still ignoring his friend. Annoyed, Ajzo took a deep breath, getting ready to yell and call him everything but a nice guy, but stopped short as something off to the side caught his attention. Swinging his head completely around to his left, Ajzo just managed to witness a tall man dressed fully in black, his face obscured by a gas mask, step into the light, approaching him rapidly in a hunched over, knee-bent walk.
"Fuck!" Ajzo yelped as he started to scramble backwards, one hand reaching clumsily for the Makarov in its holster and the other hand clawing at the dirt to try and drag him forward. "Grozney! Help!" He cried just as he looked over to see his friend now seated on the ground with his back against the support beam he'd been leaning on, his knees folded and splayed awkwardly, and his head hung with a single, thin stream of blood running down from his hairline. Just as he found the grip of his Makarov, there was a loud popping sound- not unlike the one Grozney had made when he'd looked away initially- and, after what felt like a slap on his shoulder the width of a fingertip, Ajzo's entire left arm went numb and a violent pain rippled through his body in the opposite direction. The clattering of the Makarov hitting the ground, free of his limp hand, was lost to his inebriate ears as he went to scream and stopped short with only a yelp as he received a steel-toed boot to his teeth, sending his head recoiling backward until it hit the battered concrete wall behind him. Then, before he could think, he'd been rolled onto his front, had the weight of an adult bearing down on his upper back with a knee- thereby restricting his breathing-, and had his hands brought around to his back. There were two series of clicking sounds as cold metal encircled his wrists, followed by a long pause and then something that sounded like a piece of glass being crushed, the whole time with Ajzo only just being able to suck in enough air to keep conscious. Then, as Ajzo strained for breath, looking literally like a fish out of water, his lungs beginning to burn, a miracle happened- the man's knee lifted up. As Ajzo took in a deep breath, a wet piece of cloth that smelled like dirty gym socks came down over his mouth and nose, and then, as suddenly as flipping a light switch, everything went dark- including Ajzo's mind.
Rex tucked the Amyl Nitrite soaked gauze pad into the man's back pocket and then popped the plastic cap off of the needled syringe he'd been carrying inside of a cigar tin in his pocket. Then, jabbing the needle into the man's good shoulder and depressing the plunger to administer the 5 milligram dose of Diazepam, Rex made sure the man would stay down until he could get him secured. On its own, 5 milligrams wasn't much, maybe not enough to fully put down a grown healthy male, but this man had done a fair amount of drinking, and he'd just had his pressure bottomed out with Amyl Nitrite. Administering the Diazepam wouldn't be dangerous in this particular case because he was giving it intramuscular (into the muscle), which had a much slower, steadier delivery than if a drug was given by IV, and the effects of the Amyl Nitrite would wear off before the Diazepam could do much.
Then, turning to the police officer- if one could call them that with a straight face around here- he'd killed, Rex took the man's gun out of its holster, racked the slide once- ejecting a round-, collected the round, and then sat the gun in the man's right hand. Conveniently enough, there was a spilled glass of Vodka laying nearby, which would support the scene he'd set up. This was much quicker- taking only seven seconds and easier than disposing of the body, especially in an area like Chechnya, where they lacked the education and technology that would immediately dispel the illusion of a suicide. In fact, even basic medical education would have dispelled it, since firearms tended to remain clenched in the hands after suicide due to muscular spasms that occurs when one is shot in the head. For this reason, headshots were to be avoided on people who already have a gun aimed and the finger on the trigger. In fact, he'd shot the man later than he would've liked- while the terrorist officer he'd just captured had been staring at him. He would've preferred to have placed the shot when his drunken captive had fallen, but had been too far away at the time to be sure the shot would make good contact. Fortunately, the area had been dark enough, and his new captive had been drunk enough to not realize that his friend had been killed. Thankfully, the snapping sound produced by the USP's slide slapping back and then returning into place- which was the only sound the weapon made when silenced as it was now- hadn't given him away too early. Getting spotted had just been a mix of poor luck and slow movement.
Then, turning back to the man he'd knocked out, Rex reached across him, collected his Makarov, and then dumped it into his pocket. Then, Rex unscrewed the silencer from the end of the threaded barrel of his USP and dropped it into a pocket before then dropping his USP into its holster. Then, Rex slid his arms under the man, hefted him up over his shoulder in a firefighter's carry, and then stood up and disappeared, having been in the light for less than 45 seconds.
--------------------------
The man stepped outside from the rubble of a ruined house and walked down the street, pulling a hood over his head against the light rain. He turned the corner and vanished from sight, after which the house was motionless for several minutes. A Russian military convoy rolled past on the outskirts, BTR-80s and Zil trucks. OMON. They went on by without incident. A few more minutes went by. Then Sergei Garinich holstered his PYa pistol, leaving the silencer attached to it (He could only keep it in his hip holster with the suppressor on), and released the tension in his legs, letting him drop fifteen feet down to the ground where the man had just walked under him. Sergei landed in a crouch of 90 degrees, but let his upper body continue down forward onto all fours, lowered so close to the ground he looked like a Russian version of spiderman. The noise was masked in the thick rain, and he quickly stood up, straightened out his jacket, and walked to the front door of the house.
--------
OMON...his old outfit. Still was officially too. Sergei truly did not know which was more fucked up in this war, the fundamentalist psychopathic Muslims or the OMON troops rerouted here. The Chechens were pigs. Uneducated bastards who had no idea what they were fighting for. But to Sergei, the fact that the Chechens murdered unarmed children and mutilated the bodies did not give his own country an excuse to do the same. OMON seemed to be a lot more fucked up than regular grunts. Apparently they felt excused from morality because of their status, while the deeper SpetsNaz were too experienced to pull that kind of shit. But OMON...somehow felt that ripping off that Chechen's head amounted to stopping the violence. Then again...stopping that violence was Sergei's job. 2002, the Nord-Ost Siege. 2004, the Beslan massacre. Retaliating against the random Chechen peoples wouldn't stop it. Sergei knew that. Alfa, Vympel, and GRU knew that. Killing the motherfucker who started it all would. Humans were stupid animals. In mental prowess, they were evolutionary closest to a school of fish than anything else. All it took was one man shouting into a microphone to create a horde of snarling, screaming, drooling barbarians ready to decapitate children and mutilate corpses for the sake of nothing other than feeling righteous pride. You couldn't stop those animals once they got started. So what could you do? Find the man with the loudspeaker and kill him. According to the K2 operations manual, the standard operational procedure for assassination was a bullet in the head. Preferably a rifle bullet of at least 180 grain, delivered to the the upper lip, behind the ear, or to the base of the skull. Preferably two bullets.
The loudspeaker was paramount. More than saving lives in this city. More than pulling a little child out of a firefight. The man had to be found and executed. Once that happened, peace was one step closer. You could not defeat insurgents. You could not defeat revolutionaries. You could not beat dumb human animal dogs down and hope they stayed down. There were only two options: exterminate every single man, women, and child. Or kill the men with loudspeakers.
The result was K2. Deliberately named after the Karakoram mountains in every aspect, it was Russia's answer to the US Special Collections Service. K2 was every spy thrillers wet dream. Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, Jason Bourne, all of them were the barest hints of reality held in the public's perception. The United States black ops service remained tightly classified. Officially they did not exist. When it came to K2 however, they didn't only officially unexist, they simply didn't exist. It had already cost over a hundred thousand dollars just to insert Sergei into Chechnya to maintain that secrecy.
Whoever held the name Garinich was Russia's triple-tap, a spotter, scope, trigger, and bullet. He was one of them, a combination of them, or all of them if so called on. All 180 grains of it, and then some. Sergei (Seryozha) Antonivich Rikov was the third Sergei Garinich. The operation called for him to act as the spotter and the trigger. He was here for the man holding the loudspeaker.
And some poor bastard was about to die just so he could start tracking him down.
----------------------
Day 2, 0123 Rex stared at the officer from behind his gas mask. Rex wasn't officially with any organization, and was just executing a contract for a PMC. He wasn't bound by any ethics, morals, codes, rules, or conventions. He had no commanding officers, no boards or committees to punish him. For all intents and purposes, he had this man dead to rights. He intended to exploit that here, deep in the abandoned basement of a bombed-out building. It wasn't anything personal- Rex had no vendetta with this man or his organization-, he'd been hired to do a job. To complete the job, he needed information that this man had, and he was fully intent on getting that information by any means necessary.
For now, the man was still unconscious, but that wouldn't last for much longer. The effects of Diazepam could be reversed at will with a drug known as Flumazenil, which Rex also happened to have. Rex had started an IV for just that purpose in the man's left arm shortly after he'd secured him in a standing, upright position, to one of the building's support columns with some chains he'd collected. Rex had spent the whole daylight period of the day sleeping, observing, and planning. Since he didn't have any disguise or language skills to blend in with the locals by, he had confined himself indoors until nightfall, when he would be less readily spotted or socialized at. He'd spent the late twilight hours and early night hours searching through dilapidated buildings, finally settling on this one after he'd cleared it and found it to be negative for signs of recent life. He'd then placed several trip-wire traps and early detection systems that involved the use of heavy rocks, cans filled with pebbles, and Stinger (rubber-ball) grenades. These were designed both to notify him if anyone had entered between when he'd left and returned, as well as to cover his rear while he interrogated this officer- which he'd spent the rest of his night stalking.
Before he could awaken the man, he'd taken certain pains to make the experience all the more complete and take that much more of a psychological toll. He'd stripped the officer completely naked, which had the psychological impact of both stripping him of his authority as a member of an organization and as an officer, as well as removing any barriers, any defense he might have had between him and his captor and the environment around him. The chains would bite into his skin, the concrete pillar would tear and grind against his back with every little movement, his bare feet would have no exposure against the debris-coated floor, he'd have nothing to protect his flesh from an attack, and there would be nothing but his own body heat to keep him warm. The only light in the entire basement was a small LED lantern that barely put out enough light to be able to see the lantern itself, which was set against the far wall, between Rex and his victim- designed to give Rex a dark silhouette and an imposing figure. For the similar purpose of anonymity and shock or fear, Rex was still wearing the gas mask, so even if Ajzo's- as his papers had identified him- eyes adjusted, he wouldn't be able to see anything humane, familiar, or calming. Rex had no plans, however, to refer to Ajzo by his name- a name gave one an identity, something to cling to in times of struggle and desperation. In fact, he had no plans to say very much at all- avoiding giving his subject any reason to believe he was being interrogated by another human. Just to perfect it, Rex had already laid out everything he'd need on the same table that the LED lantern was on, underneath a cloth so that they couldn't be seen beforehand. A good interrogator always came prepared- nothing made torture fall apart faster than an awkward "hold on just a minute." Granted, in some styles, if you knew how to work it- which Rex also did- it was very effective because one could force their captives to think about what was coming, but in this case, when he couldn't speak the man's language or at all relay such information to him, it didn't work. Now, he was ready to administer the antagonist drug to reverse the effects of the diazepam and awaken the man.
Stepping in close to the officer's naked body and plugging the syringe of Flumazenil into the IV port, Rex took in a deep breath. Then, he depressed the plunger in a slow, gradual push, gently pouring the drug through the port and into the man's veins, where it flowed with the deoxygenated blood in his arm back to his heart, through his lungs, back to his heart again, and then into the rest of his body, where it would start acting on the receptors that the Diazepam was plugged into and cause the Diazepam to be inactive. This meant that he could awaken the man and have him be lucid enough to realize the gravity of the situation. Rex guessed that the time of administration was about 0135, which meant that the officer had been given roughly an hour to metabolize more of the alcohol he'd ingested. There wasn't any doubt the man would wake up- people tended to snap awake when they had a drug in their system antagonized suddenly. Now, all he needed to do was wait a little while to let the drug do its work. Interestingly enough, Flumazenil would also be helping his efforts, as it tended to cause pain at the site of injection, agitation, nausea, and visual disturbances, which would only add to the efforts.
Standing in the middle of the room, directly between Ajzo and the lantern, Rex closed his eyes and counted to sixty.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four times.
Suddenly, there was a sharp inhalation and the stifled shifting of chains. Rex had secured them taut, but there was still only just enough give in the chains to let the man breathe, but not too much at any one time. Of course, the subject's breathing was also limited by the duct tape that not only covered his mouth but wrapped fully around his head. That little bit of slack invariably meant that there would be some play around one or two torso chains, but certainly not enough to escape by, especially considering that he'd anchored and chained the man at each length of limb- upper arm, forearm, wrist, neck, chest, abdomen, upper legs, and lower legs. There was a louder gasp followed by a whimper and the sound of the chains being pulled against the concrete support beam. Rex stood absolutely still and just stared at the man as he struggled, barely visible in the feeble light the LED lantern provided. For another sixty second count, Rex stood stone-still and simply watched his subject as the man grew increasingly alarmed and began to attempt to scream with a great degree of futility- his attempts coming out only as high pitch, low-intensity groaning interspersed with fits of sharp, short, staccato breaths and an expression of pain and distress as the chest chains were already restricting his breathing. Rex couldn't see the panic in his eyes- not from here-, but he could see the increasing reflectivity in the man's eyes, indicating his eyes were tearing up, which was an excellent indicator that the man was already in a great deal of distress. This was already off to a fine start.
Rex broke his motionless pose and moved toward the man at a steady pace, fast enough that he could be in arm's reach before his captive could have time to reason out what was happening. As the man recoiled and attempted to draw in another sharp breath, his face contorting and showing clear pain as the chest chains dug into his ribs, Rex got within several inches of the man, close enough to feel his body heat, and stared him in the eyes through his gas mask. "Shamil Basayev," Rex demanded in a simple, deep tone. For a moment, the man's eyes abruptly widened and looked at the gas mask with a mortified gaze, and then he began quickly shaking his head from side to side. Rex shook his head and stepped back several steps before he turned and walked to the table he'd prepared.
Rex pulled back the cloth just enough to reveal a syringe he had prepared just before he'd awakened his captive. It was filled with a drug called Succinylcholine, which was a fast-acting drug often used to paralyze people in the emergency setting. When this drug's effects took hold- often starting only 15 to 45 seconds after injection- the subject would be totally and completely paralyzed, meaning that they wouldn't be able to move, they wouldn't be able to breathe, blink, talk, or look around. For the next five minutes, they would be trapped, wide-awake and fully aware in a body incapable of saving itself. Rex plugged the syringe into the man's IV port and, without pause, forced the plunger of the syringe down, slamming the drug into the man's veins. Then, unscrewing the emptied syringe, Rex stepped away from the man, turned around, and returned to the table to set the syringe down. When he turned back around to face his captive he could already see the first effects of the Sux (so shortened due to the pronunciation of Succinylcholine) taking hold- immediately visible as the subject spasmed and twitched on every part of his body. They were violent, painful contractions known as fasciculations that occurred only during the onset as the drug set off the body's musculature, one by one, and then paralyzed the muscle by blocking up the chemical receptors that would normally receive the message from the nerve endings to contract the muscle. In this case, however, the message from the nerves would simply bounce off of the blocked receptor, totally unacknowledged. This man was going to be aware of every sensation, the yearning of his body for oxygen, everything audible to his ears, everything visible to his eyes, and be completely unable to act on any of it- a wide awake prisoner in his own body.
Very casually, Rex turned back to the table and grabbed a balloon-like Bag-Valve-Mask device, which would enable him to pump air into the man's lungs by hand. Then, slowly, he walked toward the man. He needed to give this man only enough oxygen to stay conscious, nothing more. It would be difficult to gauge what that was, given that the man was, practically speaking, a corpse now, so he guessed based on the average for an adult. The average adult needed 10-12 ventilations with a BVM a minute to support life, which worked out to a breath every five to six seconds. Rex chose to give eight ventilations a minute. Stepping up to the man, again, only inches from him, Rex placed the mask over his face, pushed down hard and forced his head back and up to form a good seal and open the airway, and then gave the bag one good, full squeeze over two seconds, which made the man's chest rise just enough to tension the chest chains. It was a long, personal, frighteningly quiet process of eternal seconds broken only by the quiet hissing of the bag valve mask- every other time going just a noticeable length of time longer without delivering the breath than he had before. As Rex stared at the man through his mask in the poor light, he could see the a glint of light gleaming off of several tears as they streamed down his face. Again, it was good, as it indicated that he was distressed, and Rex could work with that.
As soon as the man's chest started moving on its own, Rex removed the bag valve mask and stepped clear, allowing the man to struggle for breath on his own as the Succinylcholine wore off. Again, Rex called out a name, this time holding up a map and casting aside the Bag Valve Device in order to use a pen-light to expose the map to the man's eyes. "Shamil Basayev," he demanded in the same deep, cold tone. This time, the man seemed to consider his answer a little longer, his eyes bulging and darting around frantically as he struggled, his frantic breathing coming even faster now as he found the inhuman figure in front of him to be the only visible thing in existence, even blotting out the lantern by standing in front of it. Then, again, slower but plainly more frightened this time, the man shook his head.
Rex didn't react at all other than clicking off the pen light and tucking it away before casually folding the map up again and tucking it away. Then, he turned and walked back to the table, lifted the cloth, and pulled out three more syringes. One of the syringes was 1 mg Epinephrine 1:10000 dilution (1 gram in 10,000 ml or 1 mg per 10 ml), the full syringe of which was the IV dosage for resuscitation in cardiac arrest- more than enough to send his already high blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen demand through the roof. The other two syringes were 1 mg each of Atropine, a drug derived from the toxin of the deadly nightshade, which essentially prevented the body's fight-or-flight mechanism from disengaging. The epinephrine would drive his pulse and blood pressure up, and the atropine would keep it there, keeping him from being able to calm down at all. With all the ruthless, uncaring efficiency of a machine, Rex delivered all three doses of medication one right after the other, slamming them into the IV port and then carrying the waste back to the table. The effects would be immediate, but not enough unto themselves. He would need something more, something to give teeth to the panic he'd just enhanced.
Rex glared at the man, who was now breathing in ragged gasps through flared nostrils, and waited until he looked back at Rex. Then, when he saw that he had the man's attention, Rex smoothly and swiftly snatched his Ka-Bar out of its sheath on his thigh, allowing the blade to drag against one side of the sheath on its way out and make the classic gritty sound of a knife being drawn. Then, stepping forward slowly, Rex held the Ka-Bar so that his captive could get a good look at the 7 inch blade. Then, as he got back to within inches of the man, Rex slowly brought the knife up, and, using one hand against the man's forehead, restrained his head against the pillar. Then, he placed the tip of the knife just against the skin on the man's head, just at the top of his nose, perfectly between his eyes. Then, slowly, Rex dragged the knife down and to one side, lacking just a little force to produce a cut, until the knife's tip was against the inside corner of the man's left eye. Rex held the knife there for 10 seconds- which must have felt like an eternity- but he didn't apply pressure. Mutilation could have given the man the impression that he had nothing left to lose and wouldn't be getting out of it alive, and therefor had no cause to share information, after all. Then, Rex moved the knife down and to the outside along the bottom of the man's bottom eyelid, diagonally across his cheek, over the angle of his jaw and then onto the side of his neck. Applying just a little more pressure, Rex paused for a few seconds to allow the external jugular vein that the knife now hovered over to swell from the tourniquet effect. Then, he resumed moving the knife in a slow, heavy drag, diagonally across the man's just light enough to not end up slicing through skin- at least until Rex was almost fully past the external Jugular vein, at which point he used the very tip of the knife to make a very small incision in the vein and allow a small river of blood to come pouring down his neck. It looked like a large amount, and probably felt like it too, but for the moment, it was nothing. Rex continued this slow drag all the way down and across the man's neck. While he didn't incise anything else, the man began to try and writhe and scream more now than he had before, his whimpering now beginning to reach offensive levels as his face scrunched up in pain and tears marked his face. Rex wasn't finished sending his message, however.
Rex slid the knife down over one chain with a soft grinding sound, then over the subject's clavicle, and again over another chain, counting the ribs as he went down the right side of the man's bare chest with the knife. Then, Rex stopped abruptly when he found the man's fifth rib, moved past it until he found the top of the sixth rib, rotated the knife 90 degrees, held it straight perpendicular to the man's chest, placed his palm on the pommel of the knife, looked the man in the eyes again, and then began applying pressure to push the knife through the man's skin while staring him in the eyes. Now, the man was shaking all over, his fingers spasming and working back and forth in futility as the pain of the knife piercing his chest wall shot through his being. Rex continued, pushing the knife in further until the slant of the knife was pushed out of sight, followed by another inch of knife, the blade making a grating sounds as it slid over the top of the sixth rib. Then, Rex pulled the knife out in a single smooth motion, causing the man to writhe and try to scream more, but this time, it was different. As the man went to inhale again, a soft, sucking sound came from the cut on in his chest and his eyes clenched shut even harder before they snapped open for a second. The man let out an intense, muffled scream and his entire body shivered with pain, but Rex had no other reaction than to wipe the blade of the knife clean of blood against the man's shoulder while the man took in another breath and a whole new wave of pain rolled over him.
What was happening was that Rex had created a new airway- a wound known as a sucking chest wound. The lungs were able to draw air when the chest expanded only because the chest cavity was sealed and held a vacuum. When that seal was broken and the vacuum was destroyed, the air entered through the shortest available route to fill the newly expanded chest, which was the sucking chest wound and not the man's trachea as it would normally go. As air entered, it tended to stay and slowly collapse the lung on that side, breath by breath- though if the wound was large enough, it would immediately incapacitate the lung. This was an intensely painful and quite deadly injury known as a simple (or open) pneumothorax. Fortunately, it was also quite treatable. Pulling a latex glove out of his pocket, Rex casually placed it against the sucking chest wound just before the man took his next breath, temporarily sealing it and allowing him to breathe much easier, thereby showing the man that he could make this situation improve if he cooperated. Then, Rex half-stuffed the glove into the wound, held up the map, and aimed his pen-light at it. "Shamil Basayev," Rex said for the third time.
This time, his face contorted with pain and fear, as much tears and sweat on him as blood, Rex's captive slowly nodded his head yes. Rex reached out with his pen-light hand, and in two quick motions, undid the chains restraining the man's right forearm and only that. Then, Rex watched as the man's hand, trembling, index finger extended, touched the map. Instantly noting the building, thanks to a pencil-drawn grid system he'd overlaid on his map in his free time, Rex snatched the map away and walked back to the table. He sat the map down, placed his knife on the table, and turned out the pen light. Then, he turned back around, and with the crack of a single, loud popping sound, the former terrorist officer's head jerked a little, and then he went motionless forever, his freed arm dangling limply in front of him.
------------------------------
Sergei Garinich opened his eyes. The home-owner was back. There was a rattling at the front door and the shuffling of clothes. Footsteps. Sergei did not draw his pistol, but simple waited.
Asyat Malkan entered the room with an AK-74 in his hands, briefly glancing around.
The trip-wire in front of his door had still been unbroken. If Sergei had stepped on it when entering the house, a Russian MON-50 landmine would have blown up in his face. Asyat was apparently a very cautious man, who checked over his house even if there hadn't been any obvious explosion and corpse in his doorway.
Satisfied that the room was empty, which coincidentally, was also the only room in the house, he lifted the rifle sling from over his shoulders and set it down on a nearby table. Just as Sergei let himself drop down and hang from the ceiling rafter directly behind Asyat. He let go and landed in a crouch on his bare-feet at the exact same moment as the rifle was placed on the table. Sergei took three steps forward, his unbooted feet silent on the wooden hard floor, and round-hose punched Asyat once in the back of the neck. The man's feet almost left the floor as he fell over, already in dreamland.
"Who did you pass the information to, and where are they?"
Sergei's Chechen was flawless. There wasn't the barest hint of accent about it. Looking at him, it was impossible to discern who the hell his parents had been. Russian, Chechen, Georgian?
Asyat stared at him with bleary eyes. There was a red crust around his lips, where blood had welled up from his bitten tongue. He did not say anything, but it wasn't because he wasn't cooperating. He was simply too brain-dead and scared to make up his mind just yet. Sergei could see the gears turning in Asyat's head as a teacher could tell a kindergardner was lying.
Sergei drew the knife. "Now. Or I start cutting off fingers."
Asyat wasn't able to cope with this. He wasn't high-end terrorist material, nor was he up in recognition. He was at the bottom of the ladder, simple street informant trash that nobody cared about. He didn't have the commitment to fight over this.
"Omar Maleyvich, at viktor prosp-"
Sergei didn't cut off the finger, he tore it off. A single jerk in the wrong direction and the bone audibly snapped away from the knuckle. A strong, drawn out wrench and the muscle tore away.
He shut up the screaming with a punch to the jaw.
Five minutes later, when the man had remotely regained his composure, Sergei held the little finger up before Asyat's face.
"Next one's your big finger, the important one. Who did you pass the information to, and where are they?"
Asyat gave the right name the second time. Sergei tore the mans index finger off anyway, which reduced Asyat to uncontrollable sobbing and gibberish about how it was the truth and he wasn't lying. Sergei knew that he hadn't been lying when he gave the name, but this more or less confirmed it. He'd now interrogated two people, and both of them had given the same name and same location. He broke Asyat's neck from the front without another word and walked out of the house with the man's AK.
-----------------------------------
Sergei Garinich sat in the midnight heavy rain, his feet hanging over the edge of the concrete. He was sitting on one of the structural columns of what had once been an apartment complex. The walls now lay on the ground fifteen meters below, out of sight in this light and weather. This was perhaps his favorite terrain. Pitch darkness, heavy rain. Nothing to see and nothing to hear. Nothing beneath his feet but air, virtually a desert of nothingness all around him. It was too bad that his brain wouldn't let him forget that there was still some substance down there beneath him, so that he couldn't just drop off and fall for a while...instead he tried to smoke his cigarette.
The rain pelted against his face as his wet fingers discolored the cardboard box of matches. He kept them safely under his lapel and tried striking it without looking. The match snapped in half. He pocketed the half with the striker and dropped the other half. It bounced off the cement pillar and fell out of sight into the abyss below. He drew another match and managed to light it, inverting it into his cupped fist so he could light the cigarette (Arktika Classic) in the rain.
Keeping a hand cupped around the end of the cigarette, he threw the still burning match away, where it was instantly put out by a rain-drop in mid-air, vanishing from sight. Hunched over on the column, Sergei sat in the darkness and rain, just smoking a cigarette. At exactly that moment, directly below Sergei's boots, slept two dozen militants, entirely unaware that he was up there. He continued to breath against the pull of the tobacco, watching the red glow reflected from his cupped fingers. If only he had a flashlight to shine through his blood. When that cigarette burned down, he was going to have to kill them all. It would last about five minutes. The cigarette was a deadline. Before he had even smoked half of the cigarette, Sergei crushed the glowing ash in his hand, feeling the faintest of stings as it burned against his palm. He opened his fist and looked at the black ash floating in the rain water, then threw it away. Sitting atop the column, thick sheets of invisible rain running off him, Sergei reached inside his jacket and closed his hand around the body of a grenade. Pulling it away from his jacket automatically jerked out the pin. He got up off his rear and onto his knees, sliding his feet back off the column so that he was hanging off one side with his left hand alone. Then with a light, short toss, he dropped the grenade over the other side, hung back low, and waited.
-----------------
Sergei Rikov, age twelve, lay quietly in the snow with the rifle butt under his armpit. Sergei Garinich (Grandpa Seroja) sat next to him, looking through a pair of binoculars.
"Four centimeters down, three centimeters right. Keep the same hold cross-wise, it was the wind that drifted it, but you're aiming too high. Aim under the center, not on it.
The old man's voice was naturally quiet and rather voiceless, as if whispering. It was also very blank and monotonous. It was only this way around Sergei, as if he'd become a television robot. Around others, he laughed or grew angry. He was always very boring when alone with Sergei.
Sergei himself was tired, frustrated, and very cold. He wiped his nose with his gloved hand and sniffled. The Siberian wind was strong and biting. The cold from the snow had seeped through his clothing and deep into his stomach, numbing it to a dull ache. He hadn't put on his fur overcoat like grandfather had said, and his granddad hadn't forced him to either. He was also unusual in that respect: he never made Sergei do anything. Which Sergei often liked, but had long ago learned that whenever his grandfather told him to do something it was usually better to do it. He hadn't put on his jacket, and was paying for it. He didn't complain however, not out of stoicism, but because he knew his grandfather wouldn't say a word in response. He wouldn't care that Sergei was cold or in pain. He also knew that if he asked to stop and go home, they'd go immediately without a word of resistance from his grandad. Afterall, Sergei had asked to come out here. He was always the one who asked. His grandfather never offered, never forced, and never requested anything. If he asked to go home, they'd go home. Instead he thought about it and asked something that would actually get a response.
"W-why can't we ad-. Adjust it?"
His jaw was trembling, and his voice came out broken. Lowering the binoculars,, in that same monotonous drill-voice, his grandfather said, "Because in the future you may not have time to calculate the range and adjust, or you may be unable to calculate it at all. This is how a shooter can adjust their aim quickly, and not depend on exact range calculations."
Sergei sniffled again, and looked back at the rifle. It was an old Mosin-Nagant (Though very well maintained), but the scope on it was new and modern, American made.
After a seconds thought, Sergei turned the elevation turret with his numb, shivering fingers to 300 meters, too annoyed with what seemed to him to be a useless and dumb way to shoot. His grandfather saw what Sergei had done, and did not say a word. They continued to shoot three more rounds, when Sergei finally gave out and asked to go home. His grandfather stood up without a word and slung the rifle over his back without unloading it. Three kilometers later, Sergei again gave out and asked for his grandfather's jacket, who gave it to him without a word.
----------
The grenade exploded in a rush of immediate chaos. Screaming and shouting immediately erupted from below, garbled Chechen and Russian alike. Sergei drew his MP-443 pistol, pulled himself up with one arm so that his chest was over the top of the column, and fired two shots at the ground, unable to see what he was shooting at. More shouting erupted, screams about an assault. Sergei heard the metallic racks of rounds being chambered, and several flashlights below him clicked on.
Immediately Sergei put three bullets in the direction of the more distant light, and it dropped down lower. The shouting continued, accompanied by the screams of the wounded, and up in the darkness Sergei continued pouring fuel on the fire. Gunshots erupted somewhere, people blindly shooting where they thought the Russian military assault was coming from. Sergei shot a few more bullets at one of the muzzle flashes and heard the shrill screams of a wounding shot. He fired again, the screaming stopped. He transferred his aim to another flashlight and shot that man, then another, then another. At this point the gunfire and muzzle-flashes below were continual. Poorly trained (if at all) teenagers and young adults panicking in the darkness, shooting blindly at the tree line, a wounded and delirious man shooting his own comrades. Nobody thought to look up, wouldn't have seen anything even if they had, and all the while Sergei continued to drop target after target, putting three rounds on flashlight or muzzle flash. He still hung off the side of the column, using it as cover and support for aim. Once a flashlight beam began to travel halfway up, and he rapidly put a group of five bullets through the man, one of them actually hitting the light and blowing it away.
The magazine ran empty. He reloaded by dropping a second grenade and calmly exchanging magazines as it detonated. The screaming was now intense, a positive and horrific roar of it that overcame the rain and gunfire. Movies never captured the sheer indignity of it. When someone got shot in cinema, they fell over without a sound or perhaps let out a single masculine cry. Below Sergei however, was the most painful sounding screaming one could imagine. It was extremely high-pitched, with all the vocal quality of a pubescent boy trying to sing a rock song. It sounded childish and pathetic, people screaming things like "please god stop", literally begging. Every time somebody screamed as such, Sergei simply fired two more bullets in their direction and the screaming would stop, to be replaced by someone else. Sergei shot at the flashlights sparingly, he didn't want people to come to their senses and start turning them off, nor did he want people dropping them so that they couldn't see the chaos around them. The more somebody saw others getting killed, the crazier they grew, and the easier it was for Sergei to drop them. After a short bit, somebody lost all train of thought unloaded fully-automatic fire in all directions. Sergei let him shoot his own buddies until the magazine ran empty, and then shot him down too.
Three minutes later, there was silence below. Only the pounding of rain sounded. Dropped flashlights struck criss-cross beams across the ground, some of them illuminating bodies lying still. Sergei holstered the pistol, and climbed down the exposed rebar of the column. Keeping away from the flashlight beams, he walked across the muddy-grass, a groan from someone wounded sounding nearby, and headed for the trees. A few feet away, somebody on the ground called out, "Chyuvak, help me up, they got me in the leg."
Sergei walked past him without a word, both men unable to see eachother. He'd undoubtedly let several people survive, if wounded, but that didn't matter. The cell was destroyed, obviously by a random Russian Spetsnaz assault. The survivors wouldn't survive for long. Nobody was willing to stand up and grab a flashlight, thinking the Russian military would open fire again, and nobody was about to provide any medical aid either.
|
|