After setting his charges, Alex was knocked in the back of the head by a Russian soldier. He was then beat up to a pulp by an array of kicks and rifle-butts by around three men until a man yelled to stop. Weak, he was picked up by the armpits by two Russians, with another one – an officer wearing a parachute smock and a beret – walked in front of his eyes. He mocked him along the way, calling him in Russian swearwords. Alex could not understand Russian, and so he was there, silent, being dragged to God-knows-where. The Russian officer, by custom, had a pistol in his hand, in which he pointed to Alex’s head as he was dragged.
Not a minute after he was knocked off his feet, he found himself in a dimly-lit wooden shack. The Russians tied him to a chair, and the Russian officer, stone-faced and determined, began talking to him. He spoke in English, however, not Romanian or Russian. “My men saw you putting a bomb on one of my SAM sites… Who are you?” His accent was thick in his speech.
“My name is Corporal Bucur Alexandru. My serial number is –”
“STOP THE BULLSHIT!” The officer slammed a fist on the table next to him. Then, he went close to him, nearly hurling himself, and pointed the pistol onto the space between his neck and chin. “What is your unit?”
Alex looked up to the Russian officer defiantly. “I’m afraid… I cannot tell you that.”
“I am playing nice here, Corporal Alexandru…” The Russian officer said, intensely. Their faces were right in front of each other. The Russian officer gritted his teeth, and like a flash, he suddenly withdrew his pistol from Alex’s neck and pointed it at the kneecap of the man. “What is your unit?! Why are you here?!”
Alex only gave a tired chuckle.
“Oh so you want to fuck with me, is that what you want, huh?!” The Russian pressed the pistol onto his knee.
“OK, OK… I’ll tell you. I’m from the 2nd Biggot Liberal Fascist Brigade and I’m here to fuck your mom!”
The Russian, without hesitation, pulled the trigger. Bang! The pistol went, causing the Romanian Hunter to release a long cry of pain. “Aaaaaarrrggh!”
The officer backed away from him and thought for a couple of seconds. After that, he turned around and put his face terrorizingly close to Alex: “Listen, Corporal, I am going to get back, and once I do, you will have to answer my questions with the truth or you’ll not only lose your knee, but your fucking legs as well! Haha! Then, if you still don’t wanna tell me, It’s this,” the officer put a hand to Alex’s nutsack and squeezed it hard, causing Alex to grunt, still looking defiantly to the officer. “That you’re going to lose… Guards!” he yelled to the men waiting outside. In a split second later, the two Russian soldiers came.
“Keep an eye on this Romanian scum. If he fucks around, beat him.” He said in Russian.
The two nodded. Without another word, the Russian officer went out of the wooden door of the establishment. Seeing this as an opportunity to release their frustration, the Russian soldiers went on to him. One slung his weapon to his back, while the other kept the weapon raised and pointed towards him. The first Russian man, the one leaning towards him, began to speak to him Russian. He had a balaclava about his face so his speech was muffled.
Alex kept his head face-down. Blood was dripping from the wounds on his face, and blood was running fast from the hole in his knees. These were Russians, he thought, and these people didn’t fucking care about conventions. Although most were still human, some, like the officer before, were hardcore, cold-blooded, psychopathic killers.
“Hey.” The Russian who spoke to him put a hand on his chin to lift his bloodied face up. He then spoke a couple of words in Russian, which was then followed by a laugh from both soldiers.
In the midst of their one way conversation, the door knocked. The first set of knocks were ignored, but the second one was difficult to. The Russian soldier who mocked him gave a sigh and went for the door. However once he opened it, it was not a face that met him; but the cold suppressor of a 9mm pistol. With minimum sound the pistol released two shots, penetrating his helmet with a crack. The assailant, dressed in Woodland DPM and a beanie, stepped in with an urgency and put four holes on the other Russian soldier – three to the chest, one to the head. The man fell to the ground with a thump.
His vision still blurry from the beating, Alex saw two men in less conventional uniforms entering the room. One had a pistol in his hands and the other a Kalashnikov, stock folded. “Alright, Alex, let’s get out of here.” Slowly the man realized the blood coming from his knees. “Shit, he’s bleeding! Julie! Get over here!”
“K-Kiwi?”
The other man who entered the room, his face blurry, joined in the conversation. “No talking now, comrade. We only got ten minutes before this place goes boom.”
Quickly, Iulia Stanescu dashed into the room and went next to Kiwi. She quickly identified the wound and used a quick and tight bandage on the wounded leg. “He may need an operation later, there is no exit wound.” She said to Andi, who was standing.
“Shit” He swore. “Kiwi, pick him up, we’re getting out of here!”
Not caring of anything else, the three ran with the fourth being carried by Kiwi. Dashing through the woods through memory alone, Corporal Andrei’s team were glad as hell to hear helicopter sounds coming from the southwest, which was the direction they came from. When they broke through of the forest, a couple of double-engine CH-47 Chinooks were visible from afar, escorted by an array of low-flying Apaches.
“There they are!”
The team ran for it, and at the end of their run, they saw the lieutenant standing at the rear ramp. Upon seeing them, the black-faced lieutenant looked pleased. “Here you are. We thought about leaving you behind.” He then saw Alex unconscious on Kiwi's back. “What happened to him?”
“Got beaten up by some Ruskies, sir.” Said Kiwi, rather loudly as he was trying to beat the sound of the double-rotors of the helicopter. His pale faced was enlightened by the moonlight.
“I see.” He said, stoically. “Now get in. We only have 3 minutes before the American flyboys come. Let’s go!”
The three ran into the back of the Chinook, each man getting a pat in the back by the lieutenant after entering. As the ram closed, the American medics on the helicopter tended to Alex, whose face was now visible due to the cabin lights. “Jesus.” Kiwi said. His face was bruised so badly he looked like he’d lost an eye… and all that in less than five minutes of Russian beating. His lips were shattered, his eyelids broken, and blood came from his mouth and forehead. Kiwi remembered himself being in a similar situation. It was a classic debate over conservatism and ultra-liberalism, which, ironically, ended in a fistfight. It wasn’t the fight that made Kiwi bruised the hell out, but it was the beating he got from his abusive father afterwards. Kiwi clenched his fists tight in relief that he was now free from that goddamn monster, that he was his own man with his own will and doing what he was best at doing: shooting people and making people hurt.
The chinook lifted not minutes later, and with the rest of the flying convoy, flew back southwest towards the NATO lines, now already at the River Pruth, slowly pulling back to a natural frontline. The next question on Kiwi’s mind was: Where are we going next? Suddenly his hometown of Targu Mures appeared on his mind. That hilltop city, surrounded the mountains in the heart of Romania. If it was properly defended, it would be one of the bastions of NATO resistance in Eastern Europe.
It was then, when a section of F/A-18 Super Hornets flew over the group of helicopters, ringing the sky with their supersonic engines and lining the sky with their white exhausts. Going at high speed, the Hornets dropped the smart bombs on their targets in the middle of the forest. It happened so quickly that, he just realized that there was a large fireball in front of him, all caused by the US-made precision bombs. Kiwi saw the whole explosion from the round window behind him, and for some reason he was glad the fuel depot was blown into pieces.
He put his back on the somehow comfy nylon benches and gave a sigh of relief. Glad and proud, he fell asleep moments later.
Targu Mures
* * *
YOU ARE READING
Lost Sight - NATO-Russia Conflict 2018
Action2018. Russia begins a major offensive in Europe. Lost Sight follows a group of US Marines and Romanian soldiers as they fight against the unstoppable Russian onslaught in the hilltop city of Targu Mures... A Classic NATO vs Russia story set in our...
