My eyes flew open, showing a widescreen picture: I was lounging in an oasis. Two cheerful Bedouins were flirting with stewardesses in blue paranjas with «Aeroflot» badges pinned on. Aha! There must be an airport nearby. Right. I heard the roar of turbines. Clear, loud.
A plane!
Saved! Hooray!
Deliverance from the delirium washed over me. I choked on it.
Literally choked. Someone was pouring water on me.
I coughed, thrashed, bugged my eyes out, and saw a bucket in the hands of a bearded man. The fellow was dousing me with water. Off to the side a jeep rattled with a driver in a helmet.
Helmets again. Soldiers again.
Noticing me stir, the driver jumped out, ran up to me, kicked me under the ribs. I gasped, and in an instant was flipped onto my stomach, my face jammed into the sand.
They tied my hands behind my back, dragged me to the jeep, threw me into the trunk. I hit my head on impact and, I think, blacked out.
…My eyes opened and blinked into focus. My ears picked up the engine’s rattle and scraps of phrases, spoken, it seemed, in French.
Who were these people?
I found no answer. I stared at the dented side panel, shifted my gaze to the clouds, and… shot out of there like a champagne cork. I flew for a short while. A second. Maybe less. Even so, I managed to register a pillar of fire under the flipping jeep… soldiers thrown clear alongside me… a pile of gravel I landed on… I think I blacked out again…
— How you doing? — came a voice from the side.
I shook my head.
Who was I? Where was I?
I turned toward the voice and saw a ragged fellow with an automatic rifle in hand and binoculars on his belly. The man sat on an enormous boulder, about fifteen meters from the jeep.
— So where’s the girl? — the fellow pressed on.
— Which one?
— The one that was with you.
— Don’t know.
— What do you mean, you don’t know? The two of you were walking together.
I didn’t bother answering. I couldn’t remember my own name, so what girl had been with me made no difference at all.
— Untie me, yeah? — I asked the man pitifully. My bound hands were of far greater interest to me.
The man jumped down off the boulder and came over. He felt the rope on my wrists, judging the quality of the knot, then rolled me from my stomach onto my back.
— Goo-oood, — the man concluded, gave my shoulder a pat with his palm. — Lie here for now.
Slowly, in a wide arc, he walked over to the soldiers lying by the jeep and gave each one a kick. He rifled through their pockets, examining whatever he found. He looked like a curious magpie. Any trinket — a lighter, a pen — caught his attention. He’d frown, work his lips, click his tongue, turn the find over in his hands, and stow it in the pockets of his baggy trousers. Cigarettes and papirosy — a magpie, exactly! — he gutted and scattered. Finished with the loot, the man came back to me.
He sighed heavily: «Yep, just a kid,» and kicked me with his boot. Everything went dark before my eyes. I groaned out the filthiest curse I could think of, rolled onto one side, onto my stomach, back onto my side. A click sounded in my head. The picture went dark again.
Warning! What follows contains explicit language
The version with the language cleaned up continues here
