Lost Patrol

by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

After several days of digging, the trench was finally ready. Then it was time to drill the men, so Kirilov had them line up before him. Kirilov spoke to the men: “Now that we have set up our defenses,” he said, looking at the shallow trench surrounding the base and the few scruffy-looking wooden obstacles, “the time has come for you to get your rifles.”

The men perked up their ears.

“We have rifles?” said Nikita surprised. He had not seen one yet on his tour.

Kirilov had heard, and was now staring at Nikita. “Of course we have rifles," said Kirilov. "We are the army. Did you not get a gun when you were in Stalingrad?”

“No, comrade, I got a clip of bullets,” said Nikita. “I still have them if you are interested.”

“I also got a clip of bullets,” said Aleksei.

Kirilov looked over the group. “Who else here got a clip of bullets?” he asked.

Everybody raised a hand.

“We have rifles,” said Kirilov. “You carried them here in boxes.”

“I thought that was food,” said Timofei.

“I think I lost one when we crossed the river,” said Yakov.

“We don’t have food?” said Nikita.

“We have pine cones,” said Yakov.

“pine cones are actually poisonous,” said Bobo.

“No, they are not,” said Yakov.

“It has been scientifically proven that they are,” said Bobo. “They contain megastrobilus, which is a potent neural agent.”

“What’s a neural agent?” asked Arkadiy.

“Shut up!” yelled Kirilov.

The men fell silent. Kirilov looked over the group again, his hand on his revolver. When he was sure he would not be interrupted, he spoke. “Evgeny, Timofei, go and get the long boxes marked “Izhevsk Arsenal” and bring them here.”

The two men went and got a box from under a huge tarpaulin. They placed it beside the Lieutenant and went to get another one, and continued until they had got all three boxes.

“Open them!” said Kirilov, and the men busied themselves with opening the boxes. The first one contained potatoes. Each had a smiley face carved on it. But Kirilov kept cool as he inspected one of the potatoes. He then turned toward the men, looking them over. Then he suddenly threw the potato at Gosha, hitting him straight in the forehead.

“You fool!” yelled Kirilov.

“Agh! He bit me!” yelled Gosha and covered his face with his hands.

“Where did you put the rifles? Tell me, you fool, or you will dig trenches forever!” yelled Kirilov.

But Gosha refused to answer, even when Kirilov walked to him and hit him with his gun until he fell, and then proceeded to kick him. The rest of the men stayed in line, but turned to look at the spectacle. The violence stopped when Kirilov became tired, and returned to his former position. He dusted himself a little before he ordered the other boxes opened. The other two boxes contained rifles, four in each box.

“Take the rifles and distribute them among the others,” Kirilov ordered. Evgeniy and Timofei picked up a rifle in each hand and handed them out: one for Aleksei, one for Arkadiy, one for Bobo, one for the cook, one for Gosha, one for Yakov. And they each kept one for themselves. Nikita felt left out, with no rifle.

Kirilov noticed this. “Why does this man not have a rifle?” he asked.

“We ran out of rifles before we could give him one,” said Evgeniy.

“Well, get him something he can use instead of a rifle then,” said Kirilov.

Evgeniy walked into the woods. After a while he came back carrying a stick, about four feet in length, and showed it to Kirilov. Kirilov nodded, and Evgeniy gave the stick to Nikita.

“What am I to do with this?” asked Nikita when he received the stick.

“You point it at the enemy of course,” said Kirilov.

“What?”

“Yes. This stick looks very similar to a gun from a distance, so it will strike fear into the enemy when they see it,” said Kirilov.

“I see,” said Nikita and looked at the stick. Then he sighed, and carried it across his shoulder like a rifle.

“Now you already have your bullets,” said Kirilov.

“I haven’t,” said Aleksei.

Kirilov stared at him.

“But you said you had bullets just a while ago,” said Kirilov.

“I meant to say that I got bullets when I was in Stalingrad,” said Aleksei.

“Did you lose your bullets, is that what you are trying to say?” asked Kirilov, getting annoyed.

“Yes, I lost them,” said Aleksei, and added, “in a card game.”

“I can give you mine,” said Nikita.

“No! You do not give him yours!” yelled Kirilov. “You need them for your stick! Aleksei! You will help Gosha dig, forever!”

Gosha looked happy to hear that.

Kirilov walked away. After he had entered his cabin, Yakov leaned to Nikita and asked, “What sort of punishment is digging, if all we do anyway is dig?”

* * *

Nikita, Aleksei and Gosha were digging to make a cooler, when the Colonel General decided to wake up and visit them. He was very groggy and unkempt, and thus indistinguishable from the other men as he stood by the hole watching them, wondering what they were up to. Finally he decided to ask: “Why are you digging this hole here? The trenches are supposed to be around the base, not in the middle of it.”

“This is not a trench,” said Nikita. “This is a cooler.”

“A cooler?” asked the Colonel General. “Why do we need a cooler in Siberia?”

“So that I can train my cat before the coming winter,” said Nikita.

The Colonel General raised an eyebrow. Aleksei noticed, and was quick to add: “We can also use it to store food.”

“Ah! Carry on then,” said the Colonel General, and left.

Building the main barracks was going well, even though the process was administrated by Bobo. Most of the walls were up already, and only the roof was left. On the following day, they chopped down more trees to finish the walls and began putting up the roof. On the third day they continued, and now expected to get the roof finished, but in the evening they saw that they still needed several trees.

The men turned to Bobo and asked him why the timbers they brought in had not been enough to finish the building. He leaned forward on his shovel and answered: “The wood you cut down for the roof was thinner than the wood you cut down for the walls, that is why you need more for the roof.”

The men did not believe that, mostly because they could clearly see that the timbers in the roof were on average the same thickness as the timbers in the walls, and they told this to Bobo, who said: “The timbers in the roof only seem as thick as the timbers in the walls, but this is an optical illusion. In reality they are not as thick, but they seem equally thick because they are much farther away.”

The men looked at each other and just shook their heads. What Bobo had said to them had seemed to make sense at first, but there was something fundamentally wrong with it. Yet it was the only explanation for the lack of roof, unless Bobo had eaten the extra wood.

The next day the men continued cutting down trees until the roof was finished. Still, a suspicious amount of wood went into the structure. Soon it became clear where the wood had gone when Nikita appeared, and asked them: “Have you stopped cutting down trees?”

“Yes, we have,” said Yakov, “and now the barrack is finished and we can rest.”

“But we haven’t finished with the cooler,” said Nikita, “and we need more wood to cover it, to hold up the roof and such.”

The men now all looked at Nikita.

“Why are you all looking at me like that?” he asked.

* * *

It took a whole month to finish the cooler, and it was a grand structure: completely underground and covered in turf. It had five rooms accessible by a very roomy hallway, each room as large as the general’s hut, and the floor laid with wood and as cold as hell.

Once the cooler was ready, Nikita placed his cat inside, and closed the hatch. Nobody argued, because there was no food to put into the cooler yet. In the meantime the cat might as well be there.

* * *

One night the men were awakened by Arkadiy. “See the strange lights in the sky?” he said when he had their attention, pointing to the sky.

There was a large light there, moving slowly through the night sky. It did not take long to spot it, just before it disappeared behind the trees, followed shortly by a faint crash.

“A meteor?” said someone.

Colonel General Dumanov stared in the direction of the thing long after it had disappeared out of sight. Lieutenant Kirilov and the rest of the men looked at him, waiting for his take on the apparition, except Gosha and Bobo, who were showing Hermann and Ivan events in the sky and sleeping, respectively.

Finally the Colonel General made a move: he pointed toward the crash site and said: “They have come from the stars, the visitors...” He looked around, as if he just realized he had said something wrong, but he continued unhindered after the brief pause, “Or it is a foreign spy-plane that has crashed.”

The men looked sleepy.

“We have to move out immediately and investigate,” said Dumanov before he turned around and disappeared into his hut. Moments later he reappeared and said: “I have decided that it would be better to have a look at it tomorrow. Go and sleep, we have a long walk ahead of us tomorrow.”

And the Colonel General went back into his hut.

* * *

At about noon the Colonel General emerged from his hut to find the men boiling potatoes and pine cones. Nikita was researching more artful ways of heating the potatoes, holding one over the fire attached to the end of a twig.

Lieutenant Kirilov hurried to his feet and yelled: “Men! Stand at attention!”

When the men sat still, some waving their hands dismissively toward him, he stomped his foot on the ground and reached for his revolver. The men saw that, reluctantly rose to their feet and got the rifles.

The men lined up before the Colonel General and stood as still as they could. Colonel General Dumanov looked to see if they were all there, and began: “Today we are moving out to look for a foreign spy-plane. We will take our rifles and our potatoes, and some tents, and go see them.”

He looked around at the men. “That is all,” he concluded, and walked drunkenly away.

Kirilov immediately sprang into action and ordered the men to gather all the stuff they needed and move out. Dumanov went into his hut to get enough vodka for the trip. He came back out with a bottle in each of his coat pockets, and flasks in his trouser pockets. Safe in the knowledge he had enough to drink, he led the way.

Kirilov went last, to drive the men forward.

* * *

They walked for hours, stopping only once to eat some potatoes and a squirrel someone had found lying around.

At last they found what they were looking for. They followed a steadily stronger smell of burnt wood to a clearing in the trees made by the falling object. Colonel General Dumanov stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what had landed there. The men lined up at his sides, and none said a word.

The item lay on the forest bed, shiny and glowing, and there were some figures walking around it.

“Ah! Must be the Nazis!” said Dumanov.

“Didn’t we defeat them?” asked Kirilov.

“Must be the Americans!” said Dumanov again, after a brief pause, “And we must defeat them. Let’s flank them! Kirilov! From the left!”

Kirilov spun around and selected Nikita, Alexei and Gosha to go with him to flank on the left. The rest would engage the enemy directly.

The three men followed Lieutenant Kirilov as silently as they could in a vast curve around the object and the figures in the clearing. When he thought they had travelled far enough, Kirilov stopped and crouched down. The others hid behind trees.

The figures did not look like regular people to Nikita, and he voiced his findings to the others.

“Have you ever seen an American?” asked Kirilov.

“No,” admitted Nikita.

“Then how do you know they do not look like that?” he asked.

Nikita did not know how to reply. On one hand, he had never seen an American, on the other hand, he was pretty sure Americans would look rather more similar to the average Russian than the figures in the clearing.

“Ah! They have spotted us!” said Kirilov anxiously, as one of the figures looked at him, reached to another figure and pointed at him. Then the aliens moved toward them, followed by a third, who may or may not have been just curious about where the other two were heading.

“Shoot them! Shoot them!” Kirilov yelled, and reached for his gun. He aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, so he checked it, and saw he had no bullets.

The men stood by, looking sheepish. This enraged Kirilov, and he demanded to know why they were not firing.

“I would be happy to fire a few rounds for you, comrade, but I have no bullets,” said Aleksei.

Gosha grinned maniacally.

“What are you waiting for?” yelled Kirilov, “Fire!”

“I also have no bullets,” said Gosha.

“WHAT?” yelled Kirilov, turning red.

“Ivan and Hermann needed feet,” said Gosha, and fished Ivan from his pocket to show Kirilov.

The potato had a pair of 7.62X54R legs, and some arms to match.

“Hermann has only got one leg,” he added.

Kirilov was speechless. He turned to Nikita, who quickly reacted by aiming his stick at the oncoming figures and yelling: “Bang! Bang!” loudly.

Of course this had no effect on the advancing foe.

“Oh no!” yelled Nikita, “Our weapons have no effect! Run!”

The other group, advancing directly on the crashed craft heard that, and some began running. Others did not.

The vessel shone brighter, and there was a sudden calm over all the rest of the men. They shouldered their rifles and went to greet the strange figures in the clearing. Dumanov even offered vodka to them.

They entered the vessel, and shortly afterwards it could be seen leaving for the stars.

to Challenge 381...