bourne legacy | Page 2

hit by small-arms fire too weak to penetrate their vehicle's sturdy armor plate.
Arsenov, ever vigilant, reached for the radio.
"I'm going to order the guards in the lead and tail vehicles to return fire."
Murat shook his head. "No, Hasan. Think. We're camouflaged in Russian military uniforms, riding in
Russian personnel carriers. Whoever is firing on us is more likely an ally than a foe. We need to make
sure before there's innocent blood on our hands."
He took the radio from Arsenov, ordered the convoy to a halt.
"Lieutenant Gochiyayev," he said into the radio, "organize your men into a recon. I want to find out
who's shooting at us, but I don't want them killed."
In the lead vehicle, Lieutenant Gochiyayev gathered his men and ordered them to fan out behind the
cover of the armored convoy. He followed them onto the rubble-strewn street, hunching his shoulders
against the bitter cold. Using precise hand signals, he directed his men to converge from the left and right
onto the place from which the small-arms fire had come.
His men were well trained; they moved swiftly and silently from rock to wall to pile of twisted metal
beams, scrunched down, presenting as small a target as possible. However, no 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 Gochiyayev 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 piles 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.
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"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 been 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.