Battlefield 3: The Russian

Alborz Mountains, North of Tehran

Blackburn made it to the apex of the ridge which separated the valley to the north and the Tehran basin to the south. All the way up they had watched him go. He looked back for the last time at the now almost invisible Russians and hesitated.

There are points in your life, he thought, where one decision changes the whole course of it. Enlisting had been one. He could have stayed home, gone to grad school, got a job and settled down, maybe even married Charlene. But that decision now seemed insignificant compared to the one he had made an hour ago. He had shot and killed his own CO, an unimaginable act. How had he come to that? Had he let his emotions get the better of him, going against all his training, or was he standing up for what was right? He had prevented Cole from killing Dima after all, and in cold blood. He had killed his superior officer to save the life of a man he had known for less than two hours. An enemy combatant who had saved him only moments before.

And what really counted now was what Dima Mayakovsky had told him about Solomon. What it added up to — the consequences for the world — were too terrifying to contemplate.

Could Dima and his rough band of brothers stop a nuclear apocalypse? Would anyone believe Blackburn if he told them New York was a target? His own authorities seemed determined to mistrust him, to ascribe the worst possible motives to whatever he did. If he looked honestly deep into himself, he was glad there’d been a reason to kill Cole.

Standing on the ridge, he took one last look into the northern valley. By now Dima and his men were just specks. Were they still watching him? He couldn’t tell. Then he turned to the south where Tehran, the ruined city, stretched out in the distance. And much nearer, the chalet and his comrades — what was left of them.

He was fantastically tired, hungry and thirsty, the afternoon sun sucking up all his moisture and energy. He kept moving, one foot in front of the other, until he eventually dropped down off the mountain and what was visible of the front of the chalet. Which wasn’t much at all. As he approached, he felt as though he was going back to the beginning of the day, to when he was a different man. Would they be able to tell?

‘Well, will you look at that!’ Montes ran forward.

Blackburn looked at him as an alien might look on his first human. He embraced his old buddy, but it was as if their entire shared past had been erased by what had happened in the bunker. All their reminiscing about home, the banter and the horseplay, their sharing of their plans for the future when they got out, all gone — vanished under the rubble and the secret buried beneath. He could tell no one about Cole.

Looking at Montes, Blackburn knew then that he would never be the same. He had enlisted in a bid to get closer to understanding his father and the great weight he carried around with him after Vietnam. But Blackburn had got something else he never bargained for: his own terrible burden.

Matkovic came towards them.

‘Man, we so thought you were gone.’

‘So did I,’ said Blackburn.

‘You know what happened to Cole?’

Just like that. This would be the question that would haunt him from now onwards. He knew it would be put to him a hundred times more to come. Eyes watching him as he gave his response. He knew then that the idea that they would take him at his word and that somehow it would never be investigated, was hopeless.

The site around the chalet was being cleared. The casualties from the crash-landed Osprey had all been Medevac’d. The place was crawling with recovery crew. A requisitioned excavator was clawing at the rubble.

‘Over here, Blackburn! We need your help.’

Over the hood of a Humvee, Major Johnson, Cole’s CO, spread out a copy of the chalet plans Blackburn had seen at Firefly. ‘Got to figure out where Lieutenant Cole could be.’

Blackburn hadn’t expected this.

‘Sir, he’s dead.’

The Major looked up and frowned.

‘How do you know that Sergeant? He could be in an air pocket for all we know.’

Johnson smoothed out the plans. Blackburn knew exactly where Cole was, in the area between the pool and the room with the screens.

‘Sir, the collapse was comprehensive.’

He drew a circle with his finger all round the area of the pool.

The Major stared at the plans.

‘How come you got out then, soldier?’

He pointed at the two narrow lines that ran from the back of the bunker.

‘Seeing that my entry point had collapsed, Sir, I had already made my way to the rear, to this escape tunnel.’

‘And where was Lieutenant Cole?’

This is it, thought Blackburn. The answer that decides the rest of my life. Before, he had thought of himself as an honourable man. What, now, did that mean?

‘I don’t know, Sir. The whole thing was coming down, so I just got out.’

The Major rubbed his chin.

‘Well, I’m not gonna be writing his mother saying we left him there.’

He stared at the plans for a few more moments then looked back up at Blackburn.

‘I’m shipping you back to Spartacus. You’re pretty banged up, kid. They’ll take your report there.’

It was a long time since anyone had called him kid. It certainly hadn’t been in Cole’s vocabulary. He wanted to say out loud right then. Know what, Sir? Cole was a bastard and a bully and he was going to die one way or another. He was glad he didn’t. It wouldn’t have come out right.

He saw Campo coming towards them. Blackburn detached himself from the group forming around the Major. Campo just stared. No greeting, no brotherly thump on the back: just standing, looking at Blackburn like he’d seen a ghost.

‘Oh, man. This is too weird.’ Campo nodded at the remains of the chalet. ‘It was a real mess in there. And you walk right out.’

Blackburn felt he deserved an explanation, or part of one.

‘The tunnel out the back of the bunker. We saw it on the plan, remember?’

Campo shook his head.

‘Man you’re something else. Your radio goes dead. We hear some big rock fall. Cole goes in. You come out. .’

‘I was lucky. Guess you were too.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Campo, doubtfully.

They walked further away from the Major. Campo pulled out a flattened pack of cigarettes, shook one out, lit it, drew heavily and blew out a long plume of smoke.

‘And you didn’t see him at all?’

‘In the bunker? No, why?’

Campo shrugged.

‘Just askin’.’

Blackburn shook his head.

‘What?’

‘Because after Cole went in, I called for a sitrep and couldn’t raise him on the radio. .’

‘And? It was all coming down in there, you know, like a landslide.’

‘Well there was this thud, like a muffled shot, not like some shit falling or anything.’

‘I didn’t hear anything like that,’ said Blackburn.

Campo said nothing, but just kicked at the dirt with his boot.

So this is how it’s going to be, thought Blackburn. He had never felt so alone.

57

Tehran — Tabriz Highway, Northern Iran

‘We have a problem.’

‘Wow. What could that be like?’ Kroll’s cynicism was working overtime.