The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

he had found, and it had snapped and burned through the meat, leaving much of it inedible and full of splinters.

He knelt, swung his rifle down and placed it on the ground before shrugging off his rucksack. He opened it to pull out his poncho to keep him warm from the chill that was getting into his bones. As he did, he thought he heard a sound that didn’t belong to any of the creatures native to the area. He froze, his ears pricked for the slightest follow-up sound. Weighing it up between rifle and pistol, he eased the Makarov from his holster and held it low in front of him, remaining in a squat.

Had he imagined it? Not a sound could be heard other than the distant rumblings of the volcano which he had felt in his feet for the last fifty miles, and the chirruping of birds.

After two minutes he released a breath. He must have imagined it, but remained on high alert. He closed his bag, deciding against the poncho in case he needed the easier movement, and slung his rifle over his shoulder, ensuring it was easy to swing forward and fire should he need to.

As he stood, he saw a flash and heard the bang, and felt himself thrown backwards onto the track.

Momentarily stunned and unaware of what had happened, he leapt to his feet before his leg immediately gave way beneath him and he saw the blood flowing freely from his thigh. Then the pain caught up with him. Somewhere between furnace hot and ice cold, he tried to push it from his mind and be alert for his attacker.

He reached for his Makarov PM which he had dropped in the attack and lay on his back with the gun raised and pointed at the place in the trees some twenty yards away from where the flash had come. His eyes were screwed up and watering furiously from the pain, and he wiped the tears away with a grubby hand to see clearer but there was no sign of anyone. Were it not for the pool of blood forming around his leg, he could have nearly convinced himself he had imagined it.

After several minutes and no sign of his attacker, he cautiously turned his attentions to his wound. Using his hunting knife, he tore open his trousers around the hole that the bullet had created, all the while throwing frequent glances around him. It was hard to see anything with so much blood. He reached into his bag again and tore off a strip of cloth from the poncho, and poured some water on it from his canteen. He wiped gently at the wound and could not help but let out a yell of agony as he touched upon the sensitive bullet wound. Biting his lip he looked up again at the trees but again saw nothing.

Despite the wiping at his leg, the blood continued to flow and he remained unclear as to the severity of his injuries. He tore off another strip of poncho, this one much longer, and tied it around his upper thigh to act as a tourniquet and stem the bleeding. Then he pulled from his pack the military issue small bottle of Russian vodka, unopened. He stuffed some of his poncho into his mouth and unscrewed the bottle. Taking a deep breath, he poured the spirit onto the wound and bit down hard on the mouthful of poncho, screaming soundlessly as the searing liquid burned into the wound and cleared it of any bacteria. Much of the blood cleared and he saw that it was a deep graze rather than a full bullet entry and he breathed a small sigh of relief.

The pain was no less, but he knew now that no arteries were in danger. Now he had to focus on making it to the pick-up point on the other side of the valley. He dragged himself to the side of the path and searched around with his eyes for a hefty stick to use as a staff. The only one he could find that would support him was slightly too small. It would have to do. Using the stick and the bare trunk of an evergreen he pulled himself upright and grimaced at the pain. He made his way slowly over to the area where the shooter had been, keeping one hand on his staff and one on his Makarov. He saw a glint on the ground and cautiously made his way over to it, and saw that it was a gun lying discarded on the forest floor. He picked it up and inspected it. A Colt 1911, an all-American weapon that had no place being in the forests of the Kamchatka Peninsula. But then, neither did an illegal Nigerian immigrant, thought a mocking voice in his head.

His teeth began to chatter from the shock racing through his body as he hopped back to his pack. To lighten his load for the next few miles he quickly discarded anything he would not need to carry and began the journey that would feel like a marathon.

Along the way he stayed alert and thought intensely about his attacker. Either someone thought they hit him with a fatal shot or they had only intended to injure him, not kill. It had to be KGB, but who? And how did they get an American weapon out here? If it was an officer they would surely never have missed, but a fellow trainee might have been trying to kill him and got spooked. Whoever it was, they were still out there.

Dark thoughts began to consume him as his head got lighter and began to spin. He looked down at his leg, bare below the tourniquet at his groin with blood dripping down. The sun was beginning to go down and he knew that the wolves that roamed this part of