Wildlife Security Solutions, LLC – Part #0: Trades Forged in Fire

Grozny, Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, 1999

Tick, tick, tick, tick…

Timur Varayev found solace in the constant rhythm of the cheap wristwatch at his fingertips. How each gear had to mesh with its kin, despite being so fragile he could snap them in half, was a curious sensation of unity he couldn’t find anywhere else. It certainly didn’t exist in Grozny during his short eleven years of life, and he doubted it ever had. It’s hard to know tranquility when we must steal our bread and bones…

Carefully, following the synchronization of each tooth, strong fingers wove thin wires through the artistic spaces, before the light touch of a soldering iron fused the timepiece to the fusing wire of the homemade bomb sitting before him. A simple, savage tool of explosive and time management. It was the first one Timur had been allowed to make on his own, and that weight had made his hands shake more than he’d expected.

“Careful, grandson, don’t let the soldering iron touch the detonator cord.” Ulman chided gently, resting a soft hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Sorry, grandfather! I’m being careful, I promise!” Timur responded with more nervousness than he wanted to let escape. 

A reply that earned the young bomb-maker a squeeze of reassurance. “Calm, my young nosorog, you’re doing well. Steady hands and sure movements, just like the watch.”

Timur nodded, and squeezed the tools in his hands to steady them. Gently, he laid the timing wire against the watch battery and soldered it to the connection. No longer did he have a watch and a brick of high-grade explosive. Now he had a tool of revenge and liberty, set to detonate at midnight in what Ulman and his followers had identified as a supply depot in the neighboring village of Alkhan-Yurt.

Ulman looked over Timur’s work carefully, and nodded his approval with a gentle smile. “You have your mother’s eyes for the clockwork. She looks down on you with a smile.”

Timur nodded, looking down at his creation, “I miss her…”. There had been a brief flash of impulse to refer to ‘them’, but Timur had buried his father in disgust and damnation long ago, and he knew Ulman would drive his palm against Timur’s cheek for even uttering the man’s name. Whatever Kulier had been once had become a traitor and glutton, willing to sell anyone anything if it meant the man could afford one more bottle each day. Some said that Kulier now wore the uniform of a Russian infantryman, but Timur hoped the bastard was crushed under a mass of shit and stone in any of the settlements that had declared itself free Chechnya in the last war.

“I do, too.” Ulman began, letting his hand fall to his side. His other hand went to the necklace at the old craftsman’s neck, and he stroked it gently. Under the collar of his shirt, Timur knee his grandfather kept his old bronze amulet of Alkhan-Yurt, home to the Varayev bloodline until it had been erased in a week of fire and steel. 

After a beat, Ulman shook his head and looked at Timur with steeled resolve. “With this, you’re saving another mother from being ripped from her son’s arms. Never doubt that, my little rhino. You do God’s work…”

Before Timir could respond with his own confidence, a shriek resonated from the second floor of their occupied workhouse. A shriek that was answered by the bone-chilling thoom-thoom-thoom of heavy cannon fire. Instantly, a corner of the building evaporated into a shower of brick chunks and broken support beams. Within the flying chunks of stone tumbled the body of a boy not much older than Timur, still holding his binoculars with the frozen grip of death.

Ulman and Timur sprinted across the workshop’s cluttered floor to a barred window, the elder man picking up a rocket-propelled grenade launcher gently leaned against the wall. “SPETZNAZ!!”

Around them, a dozen men and women took to arms, poking rifle barrels out of half-cracked doorways and broken windows. Immediately, the clacking of rifle fire erupted from multiple sides of the workshop, and the voices of rage shouted commands to each other in several shades of Russian. 

Timur drew up his hands, thinking the small pistol at his belt was in their grasp. Instead, to his horror, he held the ticking bomb. On instinct, the boy screamed and tossed the explosive down.

“NO!” Ulman shouted at the sight, grabbing Timur by the collar and throwing him to the ground. The older man followed Timur down, landing on top of him and shielding the boy with his arms. Around them, all sound disappeared for a moment and people ran past as blurs of color and panic. Timur’s bronze eyes found the time-bomb laying next to them, staring at them with its inevitable fury. 

Yet it did not detonate, despite being tossed aside. In the chaos of gunfire and screams, Timur had been granted a moment’s serenity. As Ulman realized the same, he yanked the boy from the ground to his feet and pushed him toward the center of the workshop. “Run!”

It would be the last advice Timur’s grandfather would give him, and the response did not come from the boy’s mouth. Instead, the 30mm auto-cannon mounted on the invading BMP-2 fighting vehicle opened fire once more, ripping through the window that Ulman had intended to use to attack it. Where once stood a man, a patriarch, and a sage, a collapsing collection of bloodied meat fell to the stone floor with a sickening sound. 

Timur’s panicked sprint was matched only by his soul shrieking in loss. Explosive in hand, the young rhino rushed through the only unlocked door on the ground level of the workshop and into a narrow alleyway. Timur’s mind didn’t process the yells echoing off the building walls in blood-soaked tongues, and he drove his shoulder into the first door he saw. Thankfully, the wooden barrier was old, and caved in with his terrified strength. Now in a half-destroyed bakery, Timur dove under a display shelf and pulled his legs to his chest.

The fear wrenched around his chest would not let Timur cry for his grandfather, and for everyone else who had been mauled in the onslaught. It took all his conscious effort to mute his whimpers and shakes, listening to the carnage play out. It was over as quickly as fast as it had begun, with the Silencer evoking its namesake upon anyone else in the workshop. Now, only angry voices remained, shouting to each other to clear the surrounding block and shoot anyone they see move.

When the yells died down into relaxed voices, Timur dared to peek out of his covered spot and look out the destroyed entryway of the bakery. Only broken stonework and glass greeted him. The rumble of the BMP”s engine echoed through the air like a satiated demon, purring in its own revelry. 

Timur’s fear crystalized in his belly with each passing second, sparking a new fire in his chest. What had once been the fight to protect Grozny’s piles of rubble now had a face. He could see the scene even when he closed his eyes, the mist of blood and soul spraying into the air from Ulman’s lifeless form. There had been no sound of pain or plea for mercy, just death, instant and total. And Ulman’s reaper now sat a block away, satisfied in its achievement.

Looking down at the explosive still clutched in his hand, Timur focused on the tick-tick-tick of the wristwatch. The monotony challenged him, begged him to be tossed down upon the Silencer as a divine package of vengeance, but how to deliver it? Gingerly, he pulled the pin from its port and began to spin the hands forward. The bomb in his hands had been meant to travel up to Tolstoi-Yurt, where the enemy had forged their supply routes. Ulman had promised Timur his choice of target when they got there, to let the little rhino choose how he’d extract his first measure of destruction upon those faceless masses that had now taken Ulman to meet Allah in paradise. 

“The only vengeance God knows is swift and divine, for in its righteousness, it cannot be abated.” Timur chanted over and over to hold back the tears of terror as he wound the timer forward. What had been set for days in the future now became minutes, and the detonator knew no such function as reverse. Now it just became a question if its fury would spare Timur, or if it even mattered now. The rumble of the BMP’s engine consumed his pulse, giving Timur focus on how its echo reached his ear. Slowly, he emerged fully from his hiding spot and crept back toward the door he’d busted through before. 

At the end of the alleway between the bakery and the workshop, Timur could see the knife-edge bow of the BMP-2, and more importantly, its main turret. The barrel was looking up and across the intersection adjacent to the non-smoking workshop, waiting for anyone else to try and oppose it. Along its armored side panel, tossed against the tracks like so many pieces of human trash, were four faces Timur knew well. Each one, a friend of his grandfather’s, each one had shared their bread with Timur, told him stories of their lives now lost. Now, they could only look at their tattered boots, or up at their captors in bloody defiance. Whether any of them could see Timur, he couldn’t tell. 

Scanning the destroyed corner of the building casting the shadow he hid in, Timur saw a pile of stones that no Russian eyes could see over without moving. This gave the small soldier an instinctual idea, and he dashed behind the fallen bricks. His timing had to be as perfect as his feet were silent. 

Timur didn’t hear the crunch of gravel under his shoes when he sprinted, but that didn’t matter, as the invading ears did. The victorious rifleman of the Spetsnaz unit grabbed the prisoner closest to the front of the BMP first, helped by the woman’s longer hair. Try as she might, Timur’s ear caught Maali’s enraged howl as she was dragged to her feet so her captor could scream in her face. Another rifleman sprinted toward Timur’s cover to see where the disturbance was.  With nothing left to do before what seemed to be an encroaching end, Timur pulled the pin from the watch and wound it before throwing the whole explosive over his shoulder.

Immediately, the Spetznaz shouted in alarm and moved away from the lobbed bomb, shooting back at Timur. Rounds scraped and bounced off the mass of brick, forcing the young man to curl himself as small as possible. The toss itself had to be divine in guidance, as the bomb came down on the rear armor of the BMP-2, behind its bulbous turret. The detonation was a crushing wave of fire, screams, and metal rending itself in several directions.  More gunfire rang out from a direction Timur couldn’t quite place. Yet none drove its way into his backside, so the young Chechen dared to look up. The invader who had been sent to flush him out now lay sprawled out over the top of the brick heap, his back smoldering and the smell of burnt flesh hanging in the air as a deathly curtain.  

The BMP itself was now ablaze, its rear half bowing upward in an unfixable way. None of the other Russians moved, but neither did any of Timur’s cousins and kin that had been captured. Maali…Alda…Jenda…we’ll meet again in Paradise, and I pray you will forgive me for sending you there.

The shriek of a rocket-propelled grenade send Timur back down to his knee, but the numbness sweeping over his body had stripped away his fear. If it were aimed at him, it was already too late anyway, but at least my death will be instant, and then I will see my God.

“Nosorog!”

The use of his nickname didn’t register to Timur at first. It made no sense for a divine presence to refer to him in such a familiar way. Only when a strong arm wrapped around his frame and pulled him to his feet did Timur realize the presence wasn’t holy, but may as well have been. Staring down at the boy was a pair of fiery green eyes and the taut scowl of death. “What happened here?!”

“Spetznaz, Uncle Aslan….I, I tried my best! Ulman is dead…”

The older man nodded, pointing at the buildings around the burning BMP. Wordlessly teams of men and women seemed to appear behind Timur’s uncle. They moved like ghosts, despite their rifles and grenades, while Aslan himself took a pistol from his belt and handed it to Timur. “Then we’ll make sure this filth pays for every life lost here, in the name of Allah and brother Basayev. Come!”

Timur nodded and looked again at the flaming wreckage. The culmination of his life’s work and personification of his fearful rage. As sick as it made him to look upon the bodies of his fallen family, he felt a lingering touch of pride in his work in avenging them. “Steady hands, sure movements.”

Aslan looked up at the young man, having moved to secure the unused rifle magazines from the dead Russian soldiers. Though he didn’t smile, he nodded curtly at the words, “Brother Ulman was teaching you his trade?”

Timur nodded, “He showed me what was coming…”, and then he pointed at the burning hulk, “That was supposed to be saved for another mission.”

Aslan raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “Can you make another, my young nosorog?”

Timir nodded again, his hands absently winding their way through the memory of the watch gears. 

Aslan set his hands on Timur’s gently to stop them. “We’ll take you home with us, where you 

can eat and drink, then show us your work. Ulman will look down from Heaven and smile, I’m sure of it.”
Reunited with his silent fire teams, Aslan pointed southward, deeper into Grozny and Timur began to run. As they ran deeper into the besieged city, more gunfire and distant explosions rose to meet them. Timur didn’t flinch at them now,  his mind thought only of the tick-tick-tick of his next weapon.

*******

Another deep-dive into the history of the Wildlife Team, to look at what made them what they are. Making Timur a full-blooded Chechen presented a multitude of challenges when forming the core Wildlife team, but I also think that different perspective also helps in peeling back some of the layers as to what a lifetime of fighting can do to a person and where it can lead them eventually.

I hope you all enjoy.

Volk’s Side-Story

Grizli’s Side-Story

Drakon’s Side-Story