Everyone Dies in the End #16

Anatol

Captain Anatol Vorishnov was dead. His senior sergeant, and leader of the Sagger team, Nikoli Berliavskii, knew that. He also knew his death didn’t change the mission. The mission, which when all was said and done, boiled down to inflicting casualties, damage, and pain on the United States of America.

Berliavskii wasn’t quite sure what had happened during the ambush. An experienced soldier, Berliavskii could tell the attack was going well. His Sagger team alone had taken out two of the American M-113 armored personnel carriers, and Captain Vorishnov’s men had riddled the survivors with the RPD machinegun. But something had happened, happened quickly, and happened decidedly. Vorishnov’s position, as well as the one across the street, had been silenced, and the ambush thwarted.

Now Berliavskii walked. Only five of the Spetsnaz remained, including himself.  Berliavskii knew the forest through which they trod was once choked with vegetation, but much of it had died, the victim of residual radiation. The trees still held leaves, but they were pale, sickly. Vines still snaked up tree trunks, and the thorns were as sharp as ever, but the vines were browning early. And then there was the smell. There was something not quite right about the smell. Not the normal earthiness of a damp woods after rain, although a hint of that richness remained. That fresh, lush smell was almost entirely enveloped by the stench of decay, of things dying and dead. Three months ago he would have never thought of a thick, deep forest as desolate, but that was the appearance, no the feeling, this forest exuded.

The Spetsnaz moved down a narrow animal path twenty meters inside the forest. Far enough in to conceal the men from the road that guided them, but close enough to observe the road. Sasha walked point, his AK-74 short-stocked assault rifle held at the ready. Next came Arkady, the stocky Belarusian Sagger gunner, Mikhail, with the sole remaining RPD, brought up the rear. Berliavskii occupied the center of the small formation and to his front, slumped by the weight of his large backpack, was Viktor. In Berliavskii’s mind, Viktor, the pack he was carrying, and his proficiency with its cargo, was the only reason they trudged on, remained on task, held to their mission, their mission of killing Americans.

Berliavskii knew that five Soviet soldiers, even five highly-trained Spetsnaz such as themselves, could do little against the Americans, but Viktor’s cargo could do much. Inside the green and black Gor-Tex pack, not five meters from Berliavskii’s face, was a GBAM-1 man-portable atomic device. A device capable of leveling a large city, a city the size of Charlotte, North Carolina, and that’s were the five Spetsnaz were heading.