STALKER Southern Comfort

  City of Screams

  Northern approach to the City of Screams, 10 October 2014, 06:20:41 AFT

  “I had hoped to find more here than a pile of rubble.”

  Tarasov hands the binoculars to Zlenko, who is lying on his belly next to him as they take cover from behind a bush on a hill overlooking the wide valley below. The ancient site rises up on a barren hill, surrounded by dense forest and a spider’s web of roads leading to it that are littered with all kinds of wrecked Soviet tanks, civilian cars and trucks. Far beyond the forest, where the valley meets the steep wall of the hills, the rocks are riddled with caves, all dwarfed by a huge, high cavern. The night still keeps its hold over the western horizon, but to their left, in the east, the first touches of light are already feeling their way through the darkness, painting the hills a soft pink. Soon, the valley will be filled with shades of red and orange, casting a deceitful beauty over the ruin that crawls with enemy fighters.

  “How I wish that our gunship could be here now… it turns out it would have been a good plan after all,” the sergeant replies. The electric zoom of the binoculars whizz as Zlenko adjusts the distance. “Only the logistics went wrong, right from the beginning.”

  Oh boy, you have no idea how bad everything went, Tarasov thinks, but says, “A frontal attack is out of question. Do you have any ideas how to deal with this mess, Viktor?”

  “It’s all screwed up, komandir… I can’t even see an entrance to the underground where we could concentrate our attack.”

  “Probably on the southern side… you see that road to the south-west? The map on my PDA shows a track branching off and up to the hill, towards the ruins. The entrance must be somewhere there. Can’t see it clearly on this low-resolution image, though… I wish we could properly recon the place before moving in.”

  “If the entrance is to the south, it means we’d have landed at the wrong end of our target anyway.”

  “As far as the infiltration team is concerned, you’re right… so, Viktor, if there’s a well-defended enemy position between you and your objective, and you have no artillery or air support, how would you proceed?”

  “The plain around the hill is covered with a dense forest and probably full of mines and anomalies… but there are trails leaving the main road right beneath our position. If there’s any logic left in this place, they’ll skirt the hill and join the other road coming from the south-west. A small unit should be able to get through there without stirring up too much trouble. That is, if the defenders have something else to do than watch their back – like bracing for an attack from the north or something.”

  “What do you think? Could it work?”

  Zlenko studies the area carefully. “Good luck is all we need, sir.”

  “I agree. Let’s move back to the Stalkers.”

  Positioned behind the hill from where they reconnoitered the site, a bunch of tough-looking Stalkers wait for Tarasov’s orders. He had gathered far fewer Stalkers than he had hoped for, but at least the men now huddling around him are the elite of their sort: veterans, well armed and disciplined. He feels reassured when looking at their faces.

  But where in the hell are Bone and his guards? And where is that damned sniper and his buddies?

  “Listen up,” he tells them in a low voice, “we can no longer wait for Captain Bone. We’ll lose the advantage of the low sun in half an hour. If we approach them now from the east, they will have the sun in their eyes. No state-of-the-art equipment can compensate for that. We have to move in and have to move in quickly. We expect to find an entrance to the caverns to the south. The distance is about two kilometers. I’ll move in with a small infiltration team. The rest of you will unleash hell to divert attention from us moving in. Borys, come over here… check the intercom. You, Stalker with that PKM, give me that flare gun. You don’t want to shoot dushmans with that, do you? All right… you are Stalkers, so you will stalk down to that stream between our position and the ruins. You will assume firing positions there but hold your fire. Once we get close enough to the entrance, I’ll fire a flare and you start the party. Meanwhile, we move in. Remember: all you’ll you have to do is to keep the enemy occupied and attract as much attention as possible to your diversionary attack. Should they move up, there’s a large free space between the stream and the forest. They will be sitting ducks there. Use the terrain to your advantage.”

  “And once you’re out?” the Shrink asks.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  Zlenko looks at Tarasov in a concerned manner. “Komandir… I’m with the Stalker on this. What about exfiltration?”

  Sorry, son, Tarasov thinks. All we have to plan for is reaching the lower levels. Getting out would be like planning for a miracle to happen.

  But he also knows that his two faithful soldiers, and any Stalkers brave enough to join them, deserve some sort of proper explanation.

  “Once we’re inside, we have to locate whatever’s left of Needle… the expedition. Expect heavy resistance – Chinese spec-ops and worse. Let’s hope we kill enough of them on our way in to make our way out a little easier. The Shrink will be in command of the Stalkers waiting for us outside. Once we’re out, we haul ass back to Bagram. Any questions?”

  “What if there’s no entrance on the southern side after all?” Zlenko asks.

  “There must be one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s our only chance.”

  The Stalkers remain silent. Tarasov quickly orders them to take positions which fits their equipment best: machine guns to the flanks, riflemen to the center, the few Stalkers with Dragunovs and scoped assault rifles to the rear.

  “All right… paratroopers, weapon check. Ilchenko, I hope you got acquainted with that M27.”

  “Took her virginity last night. Tends to bear a little to the right and above, but should be all right, sir. I have eight magazines, and I’m locked and loaded.”

  “Zlenko?”

  “Ready for close quarters,” the sergeant replies, pumping the first round into the breech of his Benelli shotgun.

  “Check night vision. You’ll need it.”

  While the soldiers do as ordered, Tarasov picks two Stalkers. His first choice is Skinner, now armed with a Remington shotgun, who proved himself a capable fighter at the Outpost. Then he picks a Stalker wearing an old exoskeleton and a heavy shotgun with a drum magazine.

  “Hey, you with the Striker shotgun! You come with us too. What have you got loaded?”

  “Slugs. Still have plenty.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Zef.”

  “Where do you come from with such a name?”

  “South Africa.”

  The Stalker’s exoskeleton is patched and has repair marks all over, bearing witness to many gunfights and mutants’ claws. He opens the helmet of his armor and bows his head to Tarasov with respect.

  “What the hell?” Ilchenko gasps. “We have a fucking negro here!”

  “Shut up,” Tarasov says angrily, almost at the same time as Zlenko and Skinner.

  “And you, Skinner?”

  “Nagorny Karabagh.”

  “You’re Ashot’s countryman, then?”

  “No way. He’s from Yerevan,” Skinner replies in a disdainful tone. “People there take a cucumber, paint it yellow and sell it as a banana. But we from Karabagh – we are fighters!”

  Tarasov shrugs and turns to the Shrink.

  “Borys, are your men set to go or do they also discuss home-made differences?”

  The old Stalker responds with a grim smirk. “My patients are cool. They’ve been promoted to research assistants. If the enemy comes, we’ll have a closer look at what’s going on in their heads!”

  “We’re set fair then… Keep your position and give them hell when the time comes. Infiltration squad – all ready?”

  “Ready,” the soldiers and Stalkers reply one by one.

  “Zlenko, take point. Davay, uhodim! ”

  12
October 2014, 08:23:58 AFT

  Using the low walls along the dirt road to their advantage, they sneak into the forest. Tarasov wishes he could properly scout the area but gambles everything on the one chance they have: surprise. They cautiously walk down the path weaving through the forest. It is still dark under the dense foliage, with the ubiquitous tank wrecks giving them the chance to gather in cover when the distance between their ranks becomes too large.

  Zlenko suddenly stops, raising his fist. “I see hostiles at twelve o’ clock.”

  Tarasov moves to his pointman and looks in the direction shown. Ahead of them, a half dozen hostiles sit around a campfire, one of them assigned to keep lookout on top of a wreck that once was a civilian all-terrain vehicle.

  “The bad guys also seem to have made a brotherhood,” Zlenko whispers. Four enemies wear the tight body armor of the Chinese commandos, the rest are Taliban, their gas masks comfortably hanging from their shoulders with their long black headscarves.

  “Shit… still, I suppose we’ve been lucky so far.”

  Tarasov pulls the safety off on his M4 and switches to single shot mode. On the narrow road between the mud walls, there’s no way of finding a good firing position or flanking the enemy.

  “Sergeant, you and Ilchenko take the guys to the left. Skinner, you and Zef go for the others to the right. I’ll drop a grenade. When it goes up – hit them hard and don’t miss – if one of them gets to use their radio, we’re screwed! Clear?”

  His men nod. Tarasov takes a grenade from his webbing and removes the safety pin. He lets the fuse burn for two seconds and tosses the grenade into the group of the unsuspecting enemy. When the grenade explodes, his companions jump from their cover and spray the enemies with a hail of bullets and shotgun shells. In just a few seconds the one-sided firefight is over.

  “So far, so good,” Tarasov affirms, pleased at seeing the fallen hostiles. “Let’s hope we didn’t make too much noise. Ilchenko, now you take point. Move on, men.”

  They have covered almost half the way when the Shrink’s agitated voice crackles in Tarasov’s intercom. “Major! Can you hear me?”

  “What’s up, Shrink?”

  “They are mounting their trucks and are driving away to the south!”

  “Do you see civilians among them? Any equipment?”

  “It’s hard to tell from this distance. All I can see is that since a few minutes ago the whole place is stirred up like an ant’s nest. Wait… what the hell is that? Many are trying to get into the truck, but they’re just driving away. Looks like they are fleeing!”

  “You say they are abandoning the ruins?”

  “Not exactly… they just want to… I see them climbing on the trucks as they leave, and the others already inside just kick them off the trucks… the freaks are panicking!”

  “All the better. Wait for the flare.” Tarasov turns to his comrades. “Something is going on up there. The Chinese are fleeing the place… and I don’t like this.”

  “But it makes everything easier for us,” Zlenko says.

  “Depends on why they are spooked. Let’s move, quickly!”

  If there had been other sentry posts on the road they must have been abandoned in a hurry, because Tarasov’s team does not encounter any other hostiles along their way. The path soon turns to the west. Now Tarasov can see it for himself: a dozen trucks making a hasty departure from the ruins, all loaded until their axles groan. Mercenaries are running after them in the dust whipped up by the heavy vehicles.

  No one wants to be left behind… I wonder what’s going on in that damned place.

  They wait until the last truck has passed then, on Tarasov’s signal, the small squad moves on and at last reaches the main road.

  “Hostiles!” Ilchenko whispers. “One hundred fifty meters, one o’clock!”

  Tarasov waves at his men to halt and hold their fire. He sees mercenaries coming in their direction. They don’t seem to be prepared to fight and look as if they are thinking only of getting away from the ruins as quickly as possible.

  The major fires the flare gun. The projectile climbs into the sky and in a few seconds bursts out into a fireball over the hill. Immediately, heavy gunfire breaks loose as the Stalkers get into action beyond the hill.

  “Open fire! Open fire!”

  He realizes that he has given Ilchenko a bad weapon, seeing as the machine gunner empties the first magazine within seconds. “We don’t need a hail of bullets,” he shouts. “Concentrate your fire, Ilchenko! Don’t waste your damned ammo!”

  Picking off the unprepared enemies, they move forward, covering the last two hundred meters to the dust road that leads up to the hill. He sees Skinner running forward.

  “Don’t scatter! Keep together,” Tarasov shouts, but his warning comes too late. A heavy machine gun opens fire and the Stalker falls. Zef grabs his body and pulls it into the safety of a low stone wall. Dust and stone particles fly around them as the machine gunner keeps firing.

  Before crouching down beside the wounded Stalker, Tarasov sees where the bullets are coming from: a massive bunker guards the road intersection, its crew either too slow or too stubborn to escape with the rest.

  “Show me the wound, brother,” Zef says, taking a medikit from his backpack. His voice is surprisingly calm despite the machine gun bullets darting above their heads. “You’ll survive. I’ll patch you up.”

  A look at the Stalker’s wound assures Tarasov that Skinner can probably continue provided the wound on his hip is properly bandaged, and Zef’s skillful first-aid looks reassuring enough to him. Then his thoughts return to more immediate dangers. He takes a stone and tosses it over the wall. Immediately, a long burst of machine gun fire rips into the stone wall.

  “Shit,” Ilchenko swears angrily. “They don’t seem to be low on ammo…”

  “Anyone got a smoke grenade?”

  “I do, komandir.”

  “Give it to me, Viktor. Stay put. I’ll try to cover our approach. Then we make a dash for it and finish that bunker with frags.”

  Tarasov knows it’s a bad and desperate plan. Even if the smoke pops, there will still be about fifty meters between their position and the pillbox where they could be mown down. But with only four men, there’s not much room for textbook-style suppressing and flanking maneuvers.

  He crawls to the end of the wall and throws the grenade as fast as he can towards the pillbox. In a few seconds thick smoke covers the path. Dashing forward, he has covered only a few meters when the machine gun opens up again and hits him in the chest. The bullets don’t penetrate his armor, but their impact is strong enough to knock him off his feet. Desperately, he crawls to a huge rock and takes cover behind it.

  No way out of here. That bastard doesn’t need to aim to hit me with that damned machine gun.

  Suddenly he hears a rifle firing a dozen rounds in a slow sequence. Concrete splinters as heavy bullets blast the pillbox. The machine gun falls silent. Peeking out from his cover, Tarasov doesn’t need to think twice before running up to the pillbox to toss a fragmentation grenade through the loophole.

  The concrete shakes from the explosion inside and, his ears still ringing, he can barely hear the familiar voice in his intercom.

  “You wasted your grenade, Condor. The bastards needed stronger walls to stop the bullets from my Gepard!”

  Tarasov sighs with relief. At last that elusive bastard is here.

  “We are not quits yet, Crow! I could have handled this on my own!”

  “Like always, eh? But it ain’t time to relax yet! Hostiles at your ten!”

  By now his men have run up to the rock. Tarasov rises from behind the cover to aim his weapon, but Crow is quicker and the effects of his rifle leaves Tarasov amazed for a second. Where a mercenary had appeared in his reticule a moment ago, he now sees a human torso that has been torn apart by the impact of a heavy bullet. Ilchenko is already firing, not bothering to wait for orders, while Zlenko and the two Stalkers who wait for the enemy to g
et into range of their close-quarter shotguns.

  Cautiously peering out from his cover, Tarasov looks over to the hill on the other side of the road, the only position where he would hide if he were a sniper, and frowns. For a second, it seems to him as if there are several fighters in black armor at the top of the hill. However, he has no time to think over what Crow would be doing with Bone’s men – if his eyes didn’t fail him, that was – and Bone’s squad was supposed to back them up, not hide. Turning back to the road and sensing that the momentum has shifted, he orders his men to charge.

  “Zlenko, Ilchenko, you’re fire team one. Lay down suppressive fire. Skinner, Zef – fire team two. Run like hell up to that gate and take position there. Once you get there, Zlenko’s fire team will move up. Clear? Vperyod!”

  His plan seems to have paid off. With the gunfight on the other side of the hill and the still-unexplained retreat, there are not enough defenders to counter Tarasov’s squad with effective fire and they soon reach a larger ruin, which offers high ground from where they could fall into the rear of the hostiles exchanging intense fire with the Stalkers below.

  “Borys, can you hear me? Hey, Shrink!” Tarasov shouts into the radio.

  “Calm down, Major. Where are you?”

  “I am calm,” he screams. “Reached high ground. I can see your position. Time for the Stalkers to move forward!”

  “It was about time.”

  Rock by rock, Tarasov’s squad purges the slope of the hill of enemies. Now the fight is all about close quarters; the time has come for Zlenko and the two Stalkers with shotguns. Tarasov switches to his Glock and rushes forward to meet their enemies, who may be surprised and desperate but still act agile and sharp.

  Zef, his head in the purple haze of pitched battle, leaps at a commando who is firing his pistol at him, throwing the adversary to the ground and finishing him off with his shotgun, only to be the perfect target for a rifle burst from another Chinese fighter leaning around the corner. Tarasov sees red stains broadening on the South African’s sand-colored armor. Reckless fool, flashes through his mind as the Stalker steps back, re-charging his shotgun with disregard to his wound.

  “Frag out!” Tarasov shouts, tossing a grenade around the wall where the shooter hides. The explosion covers the ruin with dust and sand. Skinner arrives from nowhere and blindly fires his shotgun into the dust cloud. Ilchenko’s machine gun barks from somewhere above them.

  “To the right! Hostiles to your three, Major!” Zlenko’s scream is subdued by the sound of machine gun fire.

  Shit, not another pillbox!

  But it’s a Stalker with a machine gun, followed by another one, firing his AK from his hip at an enemy that Tarasov is unable to see.

  “Into the trenches! Let’s clean them!”

  Zlenko and the machine gunner run through a dilapidated arch that may have been a palace gate once but now only hides more enemies. The sergeant tosses a grenade into a cavity among the rocks, the thunderous explosion throwing out dust and body parts as if the earth itself was spitting them out. Tarasov is about to follow them when an enemy appears before him. He pulls the trigger on his weapon but it doesn’t fire. A knife flashes towards him through the dust. He skillfully evades the thrust, grabbing his weapon’s barrel to use it as a club to defend himself, not having had time to change the magazine, but before he can strike the enemy who is about to jump at him again, knife ready to thrust into Tarasov’s neck, Skinner intervenes and fires two shots from his Remington.

  “Close shave,” he shouts, jumping over the body of the collapsed enemy fighter and rushing on towards the receding gunfire on the east side of the hill.

  By the time Tarasov catches up with him, the noise of full-on battle has ceased, with only an occasional gunshot heard as the Stalkers’ finish off the remaining enemies.

  “Cease fire!” Tarasov shouts. His voice is hoarse and he can feel sand between his teeth. “Infil squad, on me! Everyone, cease your fire!”

  One by one, dusty and exhausted, his fighters emerge. They all look unscathed except Zef, who has a big bloodstain on his side.

  “You’re wounded, brother,” Tarasov says. “Next time don’t try playing Rambo, okay?”

  “Sorry, boss. But they got you too,” the Stalker replies, pointing at Tarasov’s arm. Looking down, he sees a cut on his left arm at the point where his exoskeleton’s armor is weakest. Even now that he knows about his wound, he doesn’t feel pain, just dumbness in his muscles.

  I need to buy Degtyarev a crate of vodka for this suit.

  Yet he feels weak and he has to sit down to relieve his trembling knees. An unknown feeling overwhelms him. The relief of having survived the pitched battle vanishes, making way for the desire that he could be far away from this place, where dozens of men have died fighting over a low hill covered with meaningless ruins.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Viktor… I’m fine.” He takes a deep breath, trying to forget the memory of deep green eyes. “Looks like we made it.”

  “Yep… even the negro did. Although he got more than one bullet in his ugly hide.”

  The Stalkers look at Ilchenko.

  “Actually, there were moments when I was thinking I should help the dushmans in finishing off this monkey.”

  “Shut the fuck up, soldier,” Zlenko says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Never mind, Sarge. We are all still running on adrenaline,” Zef says, opening his exoskeleton and applying a bandage over his wound. “Once I had a girlfriend…”

  Tarasov cannot concentrate on the Stalker’s anecdote. There is something in Ilchenko’s manner that worries him, and it’s not his offensiveness.

  “Machine gunner,” he says coldly. “Take Skinner with you and give the Stalkers a hand in mopping up the place. Move. Now!” As the former Dutier rises from the ground where he was resting, Tarasov stops him. “Keep an eye on Ilchenko. Something’s wrong with him.”

  “Will do,” Skinner replies, reloading his shotgun and following Ilchenko.

  “Anyway, Zef,” he turns back to the Stalker, “what about that girlfriend?”

  “Nothing important, boss… she once told me, a woman can’t take anything that men say after having sex seriously. I say, a man can’t take what another man says after a battle like this seriously.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Are you all right, Major?” Zlenko’s voice sounds anxious. “You look… distracted.”

  “Do I?” Tarasov is not sure what to reply. “I told you, I’m fine. It’s just… Suddenly I felt a desire to crush Ilchenko’s head.”

  “There you are!” exclaims a cheerful voice. “We routed the bastards, didn’t we, Major?”

  Borys the Shrink climbs over a pile of mud bricks and sits down at Tarasov’s side. As the Shrink looks at his face, an impending sense of dread moves over the Stalker’s, so quickly that Tarasov is not sure if what he saw was real or just a reflection of his own, adrenaline-soaked mind.

  “Take some medicine,” the Shrink says, offering him a bottle of vodka with more seriousness in his voice than usual. The major gladly accepts. The bottle goes around among them. From around the ruins, they hear the conversations of the Stalkers, some of them crying out excitedly when they find some valuable loot on the fallen enemies’ bodies.

  “I could use some food.” Zlenko opens a can of processed meat, but Tarasov shakes his head when the sergeant offers him a chunk of meat on the tip of his bayonet.

  “Thanks… I’m not hungry.”

  Zef shares a loaf of bread with the sergeant.

  I should have accepted, Tarasov thinks. What is this strange feeling in my stomach?

  To distract his attention from the weird feeling in his guts, he turns again to the South African Stalker.

  “So brother, what’s your story? You’ve come very far.”

  “My last stop was England, actually. Been to many places. Wherever there was money to earn.”

&nb
sp; “You have been a mercenary?”

  “I tried to make a living from what I do best.”

  “What’s that, giving first aid?”

  “No. Using a shotgun.” The black Stalker scowls. “Shot a man in Cape Town. They made me leave my home country.”

  “Nothing gives amnesty more openhandedly than the Zone.”

  “I did not need amnesty, boss. I was with a police SWAT team. One evening we moved into a township to round up a gang of robbers. I had to shoot one. He was one of my people.”

  Tarasov wants to reply, ‘One can’t meet anything here but fucked up lives’, but grasps his weapon instead as a short rifle burst comes from not so far away. Borys jumps up, keeping his rifle ready to shoot.

  12 October 2014, 11:50:20 AFT

  “What’s going on there?”

  Tarasov recognizes the sound of a Stalker’s Kalashnikov, followed by the replying thumps of an automatic shotgun. “It’s probably your men mopping up the place,” he tells Borys.

  “I better check that out, Major.”

  “And you better finish your lunch,” Tarasov tells his men, “we still have some work to do… and I have a feeling that the shit was only up to our ankles until now. Once we get into the ruins, it’ll be up to our waist.”

  “Are you sure we have to do this, boss?”

  “Now’s the time to opt out if you’re going to, Zef. If you change your mind later, I’ll shoot you.”

  “Okay, boss… chill out, man. I don’t want to change my mind. I’ll follow you.”

  “Komandir, we could rest a little more,” Zlenko nervously suggests. “You’re wound up like a spring.”

  “I’m fucking fine. How many times do I need to tell you, Sergeant Zlenko? Mind your own business.”

  Zlenko looks hurt and Tarasov is surprised at his own harshness. A headache has crept into his skull and his throat remains parched no matter how much water he drinks, but he has to put such things to the back of his mind when Borys arrives, swearing and looking very concerned. His rifle’s safety catch is off and he poises it ready to fire.

  “Two damned Stalkers shot each other over a stash of worthless garbage. Never seen such a thing before. Not among my assistants!”

  Time to resolve all this, comes to Tarasov’s mind, without him knowing exactly what he has to resolve. Words, conversations, messages, everything he has learned since he arrived in the New Zone is swarming in his head, coalescing to construct a vague but dreadful conclusion.

  “All right then… Shrink, take your men away from the ruins immediately. Form them into two groups and prepare ambush positions to the north-east and south of the hill. Just in case… can you manage that?”

  “Sure. And I agree…” Borys cuts his words short.

  “Spill the beans, Shrink.”

  “I’m not easily scared, Major, but this place… there’s something about it that gives me the creeps. The sooner we leave here, the better.”

  “What I am concerned about is why the mercs left in such a hurry. Zlenko, if you have finished your lunch, round up Ilchenko and that ex-Dutier.”

  “On my way, komandir.”

  Walking up to the hilltop the fate of his two squads weighs on Tarasov’s heart like a heavy stone.

  Twenty-two paratroopers, all dead… how I wish they were here now. All my fault.

  Tarasov has to stop and sit down, his mind full of rage against himself. He covers his face with his hands, regardless of the pain caused by his fingers pressing his skull. He wipes the sweat from his face. The movement makes the Colonel and his self-torturing spring to mind, especially when he had been talking about his son.

  What determination, what willpower does one need to go through all this and still stay at least remotely sane, able to command others even while losing the strength to command oneself?

  “The squad is assembled. We are ready to move in… Major, you are bleeding.”

  He looks up to Zlenko. “My arm is fine.”

  “It’s not your arm… your chest.”

  He looks down at the place where his camouflage shirt juts out from under the exoskeleton’s armored breastplate. Blood has seeped through the fabric, obviously from a wound that no hemostats and collagen can heal.

  “Ilchenko, did you find the entrance?” he says.

  “We did. It’s hard to miss.”

  The die is cast, then. I have my orders… it’s all I have now.

  He gets to his feet and looks into the eyes of his men. “I don’t know what’s lying in wait for us, but I am Major Mikhailo Tarasov of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and I will lead you through whatever stands in our way. Sergeant Zlenko, Private Ilchenko, you have the honor to complete Operation Haystack. Let’s prove that the sacrifice of our comrades was not in vain. Skinner and Zef, you are capable fighters but this is not a Stalker raid for loot and artifacts. If you are getting cold feet, tell me now.”

  He is unable to see Zef’s face under the heavy tactical helmet’s visor, but a bow of the Stalker’s head signals his readiness. Skinner’s features turn into a cruel and cynical grin, full of self-confidence as he readies his shotgun.

  “All right, Stalkers… let’s go stalking. Ilchenko, take point. Lead us to the entrance. Zef, cover our rear. Let’s go.”

  “God be with us,” Skinner mutters behind the major’s back as they march towards the rectangular gate hewn into the rocks and enter the darkness inside.