He stood up, let his cramped legs relax, then moved off to his right through the thin belt of trees until he was overlooking, from a slight rise, a stack of logs behind the most outlying of the poor wooden houses. This one appeared deserted, he could see a cracked window and there was no smoke from the thin chimney. Cautiously, he moved out of the trees and half-slid down the slope, resting only when he was concealed by the logs.
A few moments, then he raised his head cautiously. Here, he could not see the APC nor the soldiers. He fished out the map, and studied it carefully. The nearest village was three., perhaps four miles away, and in the wrong direction. He looked at his watch and made a swift calculation. He would not have enough time, unless he took a vehicle of some kind from Nikoleyev.
He considered, uselessly, the APC. He could not overpower twelve men, an NCO, a driver and an officer, not even with surprise and an AK-47. The store had to have some kind of van.
He looked at the roads on the map, fully marked even to farm tracks. He thought he could see a way of keeping away from any road that might be carrying troops, or have a roadblock in operation. He would be safe from everything, perhaps, except aerial patrols. Which might, or might not, investigate a civilian vehicle.
But the APC..
He wished he had taken the dead soldier's grenades.
How could he leave, without being followed, and captured? It was an impossibility, so impossible that his body became weak, his mind irresolute. He sat with his back against the wood, its rough bark pressing into him, the rifle upright between his legs like a prop — he gripped it tightly.
Stupid, stupid.
The soldier who had come to relieve himself behind the pile of logs was as surprised to see Vorontsyev as the KGB man was to be stumbled upon.
It was a ridiculous moment. The soldier's hand was in his flies, and his rifle was over his shoulder. He was helpless, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish. He appeared at every instant to be about to cry out, but no sound would come. Vorontsyev himself, moving as if through a great pressure of water, or clinging nets, moved the gun to his hip, turned his body so slowly, levelled the gun, and squeezed the trigger. The soldier jumped back, his hand and his penis appearing from his trousers, and then he lay still on his back.
A single, loud shot.
This time Vorontsyev scrabbled in the combat dress, and unfastened the two RGD-5 fragmentation grenades the man carried. He could hear, at a distance, shouted orders, and perhaps the soldier's name being called. He ducked behind the togs again, then leaned forward, caught hold of the dead man's boot, and pulled the body awkwardly towards him, out of sight.
Twelve men.
Ridiculous.
They came at the run, disorganised and unprepared, because they might have been mistaken and the officer was evidently panicking and they had had to throw away cigarettes Vorontsyev raised his arm, swung back and then forward, and lobbed the grenade into them. Then the second one. Five of them, not bunched, but the grenades, more like fat tins than pineapples, carried heavy charges and an effective fragmentation radius of twenty-five metres. The first one exploded, and he heard something thud into the logs on the other side. The second explosion. A thin scream, then he was on his feet, all but head and shoulders masked by the logs, and firing at the two men still moving, staggering though they were. He did not miss.
He could hear one of the wounded men behind him, screaming something incoherent and terrible about his guts, and then he pressed against the wall of a house twenty yards away, his head bobbing round the corner of the house, cheek rubbing against the rough board — and the APC, a background to the stunned officer and the NCO, who looked white, was fifty yards from him.
Then the officer screamed rather than shouted some confused orders. It was as if he did not realise that his force had been cut to half, and he no longer had sufficient men to perform the demanded tasks.
Vorontsyev grinned. Death, violent death, and winning, even temporarily, charged him with new energy. It was one he would despise later, if he lived. But not now.
One soldier came at a reckless run, because his officer was screaming behind him, down the earthen alleyway between two of the larger houses in the hamlet. His boots pounded on the packed, dark earth, cracked by frost. Vorontsyev waited until he was level, then fired. There was no thought of silent disposal — noise was a part of it, part of the electricity that now galvanised him. It was as if the man had been shoved in the back — arms thrown out, legs going, then face down in a chicken run. Vorontsyev wanted to laugh, because that, too, was a source of energy, of destructive confidence — ways of dying.
He ran up the alleyway, seeing the officer confronting him, the NCO already moving away towards the place where the grenade had exploded. He could see no one else now — a face at a little window, barely glanced as he raced past it, then the stutter of the AK-47 on semi-automatic, forty rounds a minute, quicker than single, aimed shots. Vulgar, untrained destruction.
The officer was sliding down the side of the APC even as the NCO dived into the hard dirt of the street. Both of them were dead. He trained the gun, trigger pressed against the back of the guard, until he was sure they had been hit repeatedly. He was ten yards from them, still in the narrow alleyway. Eight dead, and the driver, who had been climbing back into the seat of the APC, perhaps to move it forward, clutching his leg, still bent as if to mount the side of the carrier, knuckles of the hand gripping the rung above him turning white with the pain, and the effort of hanging on. He was afraid to drop on the wounded leg.
Vorontsyev felt the dangerous energy flag. He had known the mood only once before, in a brief KGB firefight with a hijack team surprised in their warehouse headquarters. He had killed two of them, and received a commendation. It had helped to obtain his transfer to SID. He felt exhausted now, as if slipping into sleep or coma. There was little time left, as if the effects of some drug were wearing off.
He dashed to the APC, and bundled the driver out of the way. The man screamed as he fell on his wounded leg, and Vorontsyev saw the hand red with gouted blood. He hauled himself up and tumbled into the body of the carrier, bruising his ribs against the hard edge of a seat.
Bullets puckered and whined against the side of the APC. But he was safe now, the armour of the vehicle protecting him. As he lifted his head cautiously, he saw a soldier's head peer from behind a wooden wall, and he pumped four rounds, heard the scream as the high-velocity bullets passed through the two walls of the building that met at the corner concealing the soldier and hit their target; then the rifle clicked twice.
He tore the magazine off, and struggled with the one in his pocket, which threatened to snag awkwardly. Then it was dipped in, and he raised his head again.
The street was empty.
He felt desperately tired.
With his back against the armoured side of the APC, he raised his head and shouted into the silence of the street:
'Everyone else is dead! How many more of you are there — four, five? You won't get close enough to throw a grenade in! Give it up. Let some other bastard take me on!'
He listened. Nothing, for a long time.
'You bastard!' he heard someone shout, away to the left of the APC, 'You killed all our mates, you bloody terrorist!'
He wanted to laugh. They were dying, and prepared to die, for the same fiction that had killed the KGB team in Khabarovsk — the Separatists. And then he hated Ossipov. Not the men out there, but Ossipov.
He tried to think coolly, because the mention of grenades had been deliberate. There would be only a few moments more of cold logic, before thought became muddy, indefinite.
He shouted: 'Give up, you stupid bastards! I'll kill the lot of you unless you do!' Then he raised his head. The right arm, half the frame, of a soldier had appeared, hand raised with a grenade. The soldier moved to get a freer throw, and Vorontsyev fired. The arm disappeared, and the grenade bounced twice, then exploded. He heard a scream.
They would have used grenades anyway. He had made them try on his terms, in the moment of his choosing. He did not know how many he had killed or disabled. Probably two.
'Come out, you stupid bastards!' he repeated. 'Give yourselves up!'
It had to be now, in the next few seconds, while their minds clogged still with the number of the dead, with
