..... Picking his way across the floor, Nicolai stooped down to go through Demenko's sack of gear. He turned over a few objects, found a pack of cigarettes and relieved the bag of a small flask of what looked like thin liquid tar. Koknar, liquid opium, brewed from poppy heads and tea. Definitely not standard rations.
..... Nic left the bottle where it was, pocketed the smokes, and on his second fossicking, he tugged a battered diary out from underneath the dead man's spare uniform. The book had the year - 1988 - stamped onto the front of the red leather, along with a gold star.
..... Sandy and well-used, it had a cloth tied around a bulge in the middle to hold the diary closed. Nicolai drew his mouth to one side and turned a page, glancing over the man's dull penciled handwriting, then opened the book down the middle, where the lump was.
..... Inside were three dried poppy heads, pressed between two weathered squares of yellow khaki. They were flat, still a little green, and the indentations of the the seeds were visible under the thin papery skin. There were four Cyrillic letters, some sort of personal code, written on the paper they had been pressed to. Probably the name or names of the sellers.
..... Outside, two men staggered past the half-open drop in the doorway. One of them was shaking, retching, half dragged along by his friend. The strong smell of glue and sick-sweet antifreeze followed them. Someone had been on an experimental bender.
..... Nic's mouth drew taut. He tucked the diary into his jacket, then eased down onto one of the filthy beds, pulling out a cigarette from the new pack. Sniffing it, running it under his nose, he grunted and set it between his lips to taste the paper. Not bad. He cupped it and flicked his lighter, settling in to wait.
..... It was much later in the evening when the senior private returned, clutching his gun in one hand, scratching at his neck with the other. He froze as he stumbled inside, into the thin streak of dull shadow on the floor...and then looked up. Behind it, Nicolai sat, lean and stooped with his hands laced between his knees. He was on his fifth smoke. The other butts lay scattered around his boots, where he had dropped them to the ground.
..... "Oh... Grandpa Scarecrow." Demenko, hesitating in the doorway, looking to the side with dark, dilated eyes. He had begun to draw sores on his own throat with his nails. "You scared the shit out of me. C... can I help you with anything?"
..... "No." Nicolai rarely smiled. Instead, he arched an eyebrow, watching him. Demenko was an efrieter, a grunt in his second year of service, but he didn't have a scratch on Nic. He was one of the real old-timers, and the kid knew it. "What's the matter?"
..... "Matter?" The younger man was handsome and dirt-worn, his cheeks dark with grime. He was shaking from the lack of poppy, dry mouthed and stammering as he clawed strips from himself. "U... uh, nothing, yeah. Just tired out from the march... we did fourteen hours today, umm... "
..... "Urenkov's dead."
..... Demenko's face turned ashen.
..... "Yep." The older soldier sighed, and stood. He drew on the cig without touching it, hands in his pockets, and exhaled through his nose. The right pocket had a false bottom, and while the guy talked, he slipped his fingers down through it. "What d'you know about that?"
..... "I don't-"
..... "That glass of koknar in your bag got anything to do with it?"
..... "What? I wouldn't, I-" Demenko's mouth worked for a moment, before his face hardened and he leveled the business end of his rifle, drawing an unsteady bead on Nic's chest. "I... I'll fucking kill you... you..."
..... Nic was already gone when he fired.
..... The shot rang out, striking the wall behind with loud enough report that Nic's ears rung. Past the smoke and muzzle flash, Nicolai hit the floor in a roll, and as the haze lifted and spread, the blade of a curved hunting knife hit the private in the inside of the thigh and tore out the artery in a wet red spray of blood.
..... Peering up at the piercing scream overhead, Nicolai saw him raise the butt of the rifle, a dark and deadly block against the hissing lamp light. He was halfway through his legs already and out behind him by the time it came down. One kick, and Demenko went to the floor on his face, writhing and rolling, still screaming, his hands clutching his thigh as his heart pumped his life out onto the dirt.
..... Nic stood and dusted off. His jacket was smeared in blood, roughed up from the ground. A few men had gathered around the door after hearing the rifle discharge, and he faced them expressionlessly as the efrieter began to gurgle helplessly on the floor behind him.
..... One of the soldiers eyed the bloodstained knife that Nicolai held. Glaring at them, silent and tense, Nic withdrew an oily rag from his jacket and wiped it efficiently over the blade, back and front. Without a word, the ragtag collection of men scattered. None of their business.
..... The ranger's report to the Sergeant Major was brief and pointed. He bequeathed to him the remaining cigarettes and the diary, along with a pat on the shoulder. The incidents were to stay away from the officers, the jackals, something that the NCO was more than happy to concede to. The koknar would make a good bribe.
..... Case closed.

..... The morning after, before the sun got too hot, Nic picked his way through scorpion-haunted abandoned tents on the outskirts of the camp. The men that had occupied them were either dead or had returned to whatever country they had been conscripted from. The ghosts of their presence lingered. The army was leaving tanks, trucks, even some munitions behind. A damn waste of good equipment.
..... He had skipped mess. Nic had eaten his own private rations, and fueled on those and nicotine, he headed for a steep dirt track, a shortcut to the road below where the withdrawal camp was stationed. Half hidden in the gully offside was a truck - by the driver's side, a dark, fiercely expressionless man waited. He had no jacket on, only his striped vest, his liftchik, bare arms covered in crude tattoos.
..... Nic said nothing as he approached, but kicked a pebble into a larger rock to make some noise as he sloped towards him. The other man looked up, his free hand resting on his gun, smoking a sweet-smelling joint with the other. He eased slightly when he saw Nicolai. "Hey, boss. Heard that Demenko got fragged last night."
..... Nic grunted and pulled his cap off to bare his head to the light. He squinted and breathed in. Olive scrub and dust. He hoped no landmines had been laid down in the gully. It'd be a bad end to a good couple of days.
..... "That's that, then. Both snitches dead." Juriy chuckled, and extended the joint to his companion. Nicolai accepted, but only took a single drag. He was not convinced that marijuana was non-addictive, despite the assertions of many of the other men.
..... "You did good on Urenkov." Nic turned cold eyes on him, almost expressionless. "Nice technique. "
..... Juriy smirked, flashing a row of pitted teeth. "I'm a hard man, boss."
..... "Huh." Nicolai went around to the back of the truck and looked inside. Crates and crates of goods. "Going ahead to meet the road guard in a soft-top. More stuff for the caravan... then we get out of this hell hole."
..... It took a moment for the other soldier to process what he had said. "Right, the other truck. How many are coming along with me?"
..... "Four."
..... Juriy gaped for a moment, before he snorted and grinned, shaking his head. "No way. Shit. You're shitting me. How did you get four fucking trucks?"
..... "People are leaving shit everywhere." Nic shrugged, a sharp lift and drop of the shoulders. "Running like rabbits. Rather get it to America than leave it for the dushmen."
..... "Only you'd be able to organize six fucking trucks of guns and a company to take them out. Nicolai Fyodorovich, you are a king." Juriy exhaled a cloud of hashish smoke into the air. "And speaking of that. America? That's gonna be a headfuck."
..... "Five trucks for guns, one for supplies. Sergei's captains will pick us up at the border." Nic's mouth twisted at the corners, not quite a smile. He felt intensity welling behind his eyes as he spoke, cool and hard. "Decent shipment. I'll get a promotion out of this."
..... "Heh. You're the biggest son-of-a-bitch here. You should take his job when we get there." Juriy blew out a breath, stoned and mellow, then clapped his hands on his thighs and stood away from the door of the truck. "Well, you know what they say. Vorovsky Mir."
..... Thieves' World.
..... The man's Ukrainian pronunciation showed. Nicolai nodded, and rubbed his still-gloved hands together, as if the air was brisk instead of hot and dry. From the streets, to the army, to a ship to America with what he had begun to jokingly think of as his dowry.
..... The likelihood of failure was high - any number of things could go wrong. They almost had, but the rat Urenkov was dead, his likely co-conspirator dead, and there wasn't enough of a trail for anyone to follow. Not that anyone cared anymore. But Nicolai Chiernenko... he had mountains and then an ocean to cross, and then... then he had a country to take over.