No one could run anywhere. Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!!!
The tank crew cut down both trade-school boys with automatic-rifle bursts. The rest of the passengers dropped wherever they stood and went still.
I pressed myself into the sand too. My head pounded with one word: «can’tbe! can’tbe! can’tbe!» The same image kept flashing before my eyes. The boys flailing their arms and toppling into the sand like marionettes, boneless puppets.
This is death.
For the first time in my life I was witnessing a murder. A mix of horror and denial wrapped around my mind. My insides twisted and lurched upward in a knot. I choked back a wave — no, a tsunami — of nausea. The first swell was followed by a second, weaker one. Then a third, moderate. A fourth barely registered, just a burp.
Words from my uncle’s favorite song crept into my head: «They’ll cut the puppets from their long strings, and, dusted with mothballs, fold them like rags into trunks.»
I raised my head, forced my eyes to focus.
The tank crew stood by their machine. Across from them, four naked women shifted their weight from foot to foot. A little further off, three men huddled, still dressed.
The commander got down to business. Working himself with one hand, he walked up to one of the women, nodded — go on, get down. The woman lay on a rag, bent her knees, and spread them wide. The tank driver, still stroking himself, stood over her. About a minute later he stopped. He held himself out to the side, half-erect, more or less ready for entry into someone else’s flesh. He dropped into a push-up position, settled against her, and, shifting like a dog, began thrusting.
He worked briskly, even powerfully. The woman slid back and forth across the rag with a striking amplitude, moaning. After a minute she put her arms around her rapist, which set off a storm of reaction among the tank crew standing nearby. Gesturing and laughing, they shouted encouragement at their comrade, even lobbed a cartridge at his backside.
The captives watched the whole obscenity without moving.
About two minutes later, the pair finished, their moans setting off a wave of enthusiasm in the soldiers and a stunned silence among the prisoners. The moment the rapist stood up and took his rifle back in hand, his friends stripped off their clothes and in an instant had the women, who submitted without a word, without resistance. I slid down off the dune, my eyes catching on a grenade lying nearby. What to do? Pick it up, pull the pin like in basic military training class, and throw it at the enemy? Would it help?
I picked up the grenade, weighed it in my hand… and set it down. It wouldn’t help. No one. Let it run its course without my interference. Maybe it’d be worse for someone, but I had no need of posthumous heroics. All I wanted was to live, without getting in anyone’s way… and, it seemed, without helping anyone either…
