КНИГИ КИРИЛЛА ПОТЁМКИНА

20. BLOOD DEBT

(Location: Central Africa. Border with Congo. Twenty-three years ago.)

The heat wasn’t just exhausting — it had physical weight, a cast-iron press pushing all living things into the red, dusty, cracked earth. The air froze in a thick haze in which, it seemed, one could drown.

Lieutenant Igor Gromov hung by his twisted arms, tied to a rusty steel beam in a half-ruined hangar. His consciousness registered the second day of this nightmare, although time had long turned into a sticky jelly. Only in rare moments of true grace did he fall into the deep pool of near-death oblivion, where all feelings disappeared. There was no all-pervading pain there, which in reality wove intricate, agonizing patterns from his exposed nerves.

It seemed the pain had its own, sophisticated mind. It created over his tormented body some artistic canvas known only to itself, saturated with thick colors of torment and absolute suffering.

Gromov no longer felt his hands. His legs had turned into alien, numb pillars down which warm blood flowed continuously. The local militants, stoned on cheap junk, entertained themselves by methodically slicing the captive’s skin with machetes — they liked attracting the fat, voracious flies.

Insects filled the entire space. They crawled into his swollen eyes, clogged his nostrils, swarmed in his parched, cracked mouth. Gromov realized with surprising clarity the proximity of the end. The proximity of death.

He called for her…

The group he was in, and of which he was now, briefly, the sole survivor, had fallen into a perfect ambush. They were surrounded and put down by crossfire, everyone except him. Was he lucky? Or had the ruthless God of War decided to play with the doomed victim before the end?..

There was no communication. Evacuation had turned into a pipe dream. «Cannibals» — as the field commanders were called here — were simply waiting for the captive to get tired of screaming before starting the main bloody dish.

He closed his eyes again, sinking into the viscous oblivion.

«Mom… forgive me…»

A roar shattered the dense silence of the midday heat. It wasn’t the dry crack of an assault rifle. A large caliber struck. The hangar wall, built of chipped cinder blocks, simply ceased to exist, crumbling in a cloud of acrid dust.

A swift, predatory shadow burst into the breach. The militants, passing the time in the corner playing dice, didn’t even have time to touch their weapons. The shadow moved faster than a human had the right to move in such suffocating heat.

Two short, precise shots. Two fresh corpses. The third militant — a huge hulking guy, striated with scars — threw himself at the stranger with wild fury, swinging a long NATO knife. The newcomer reacted instantly: intercepted the enemy’s wrist, and the dry crunch of a breaking joint — a sound Gromov would remember until his last breath — filled the room. In the next second, the stranger drove the militant’s own blade under his ribs, right up to the hilt.

A short groan and the sound of a limp body falling rang out.

Then the shadow swiftly approached Gromov. The lieutenant barely pried his eyelids open; through the crust of dried blood, he could see. Before him stood a captain. Young, sinewy, with eyes blazing with an inhuman, icy fire of fury. He recognized him. He had heard of him, of this strange, reckless captain. It was him — Andrey Voronov. The legendary commander of the «Cedar» recon group.

And he, apparently, had come alone. Well, that was in his character. According to the stories of comrades, this captain never vainly risked the lives of his men. Especially if the mission went beyond a direct order.

— «Alive?» — Voronov threw out shortly, cutting the bonds with a sharp movement of his knife.

Gromov collapsed like a sack onto the dirty floor. Tried to get up, but his mutilated legs failed.

— «Leave me, Comrade Captain…» — he wheezed through smashed lips, swallowing dust. — «I won’t make it. Legs… are done… Finished… paralyzed.»

Andrey Voronov crouched down. He didn’t waste time examining the numerous wounds. He simply looked into Igor Gromov’s soul, it seemed.

— «I didn’t ask your opinion on whether you’ll walk or not, Lieutenant,» — he cut off harshly. — «I gave an order: get up.»

— «I can’t…»

— «You can. Because I came specifically for you. I didn’t push through forty kilometers of this damned jungle to leave you here as fly food.»

Voronov offered a powerful shoulder, taking on the weight of his comrade.

— «Get up, brother. We are leaving. Either together, or not at all.»

And Gromov got up. Pushing past «I can’t». Through unthinkable pain. On nothing but the furious willpower that this mad captain poured into him.

And then there was a long journey.

Voronov dragged him on himself through the green meat grinder of the jungle for two more endless, anxious days. They talked when they had the strength. The iron will of the captain with the callsign «Felix» acted on the wounded lieutenant more effectively than any medications. In one of such conversations, a new callsign was born for the future fighter of Captain Felix’s recon group.

— «Igor, Igor…» — Voronov clicked his tongue thoughtfully, looking at his heavily breathing partner. — «You sure roared famously when I was dragging you across that ravine. Pure Gorynych, that dragon.» — Andrey Voronov smiled sparingly. — «Well, I dub thee, soldier, Gorynych. Agree to the callsign?»

Igor remembered how he laughed then — sincerely, at the top of his lungs, and then broke into a coughing fit from another bout of pain, which had already begun to seem almost like family. He would later recall that moment of genuine male brotherhood in the godforsaken wilds more than once with warm, poignant, sincere joy.

They fought their way to their own lines. Felix fired back for the two of them, furiously shredded pursuers with his knife, and shared the last canteen of water with his comrade, giving the majority to the half-dead Gromov.

Back then, during a rare moment of clarity, in the seemingly endless delirium of malaria fever and gut-wrenching pain, Gromov swore to himself: «If I survive — I’ll give my life for him. He is my commander now — my God of War. He never leaves his own behind.»