more shots were heard. They made their final run at once, a pincer move, designed to trap the enemy and crush them in a blistering cross-fire.
In the center vehicle, Hasan Arsenov kept his eye on the place where Gochiyayev had converged the troops and waited for the sounds of gunfire that never came. Instead, the head and shoulders of Lieutenant Gochiyaye appeared in the distance. Facing the center vehicle, he waved his arm back and forth in an arc, signaling that the area had been secured. At this sign, Khalid Murat moved past Arsenov, stepped out of the personnel carrier and without hesitation walked through the frozen rubble toward his men.
"Khalid Murat!" Arsenov called in alarm, running after his leader.
Clearly unperturbed, Murat walked toward a low crumbling stone wall, the place where the gunfire had emanated. He caught a glimpse of the pile of garbage; on one was a waxy white-skinned corpse that had some time ago been stripped of its clothes. Even at a distance the stench of putrefaction was like being hit with a poleax. Arsenov caught up with him and drew his sidearm.
When Murat reached the wall, his men were on either side, their arms at the ready. The wind gusted fitfully, howling and whining through the ruins. The dull metallic sky had darkened further and it began to snow. A light dusting quickly coated Murat's boots, created a web in the wiry jumble of his beard.
"Lieutenant Gochiyayev, you've found the attackers?"
"I have, sir."
"Allah has guided me in all things; he guides me in this. Let me see them "There's only one,"
Gochiyayev replied.
"One?" Arsenov cried. "Who? Did he know we're Chechen?"
"You're Chechen?" a small voice said. A pallid face emerged from behind the wall, a boy not more than ten years old. He wore a filthy wool hat, threadbare sweater over a few thin plaid shirts, patched trousers and a pair of cracked rubber boots far too big for his feet, which had probably bee taken off a dead man. Though only a child, he had the eyes of an adult; they watched everything with a combination of wariness and mistrust. He stood protecting the skeleton of an unexploded Russian rocket he had scavenged for bread money, likely all that stood between his family and starvation. He held a gun in his left hand; his right arm ended at the wrist. Murat immediately looked away but Arsenov continued to stare.
"A land mine," the boy said with a heartbreaking matter-of-factness. "Laid by the Russian scum"
"Allah be praised! What a little soldier!" Murat exclaimed, directing his dazzling, disarming smile at the boy. It was this smile that had drawn his people to him like filings to a magnet.
"Come, come" He beckoned, then held his empty palms up. "As you can see, we're Chechen, like you"
"If you're like me," the boy said, "why do you ride in Russian armored cars?"
"What better way to hide from the Russian wolf, eh?" Murat squinted, laughed to see that the boy held a Gyurza. "You carry a Russian Special Forces gun. Such bravery must be rewarded, yes?"
Murat knelt next to the boy and asked his name. When the boy told him, he said, "Aznor, do you know who I am? I am Khalid Murat and I, too, wish to be free of the Russian yoke. Together we can do this, yes?"
"I never meant to shoot at fellow Chechens," Aznor said. With his mutilated arm, he pointed to the convoy. "I thought this was a zachistka." He meant the monstrous clean-up operations perpetrated by Russian soldiers who searched for suspected rebels. More than twelve thousand Chechens had been killed during the zachistkas; two thousand had simply disappeared, countless others injured, tortured, maimed and raped. "The Russians murdered my father, my uncles. If you were Russians I would've killed you all." A spasm of rage and frustration played across his face.
"I believe you would've," Murat said solemnly. He dug in his pocket for some bills. The boy had to tuck the gun into his waistband in order to take them in his remaining hand. Leaning toward the boy, Murat said in a collusive whisper, "Now listen to me - I'll tell you where to buy more ammunition for your Gyurza so you'll be prepared when the next zachistka comes."
"Thank you." Aznor's face cracked open in a smile Khalid Murat whispered a few words, then stepped back and ruffled the boy's hair. "Allah be with you, little soldier, in everything you do."