Red Army

"Sleep, Vassili Rodionovitch?" Shilko said, moving his tired body in the seat and drawing up his reserves of good humor. "I slept like a peasant when the master isn't looking. What time is it?"

"Two o'clock."

Shilko nodded. "Always punctual, Vassili Rodionovitch. But I'm keeping you out in the rain. Go back inside. I'll join you in a moment."

Romilinsky saluted and trotted off toward the fire-control post. Shilko shifted in the seat, wishing he were younger or at least wore a younger man's body. His kidneys ached. He had slept only a few hours, but it had been the plunging, hard sort of sleep that wants to go on for a long time.

46

RED ARMY

The preparations for war had exhausted most of the officers and men.

What effect would war itself have on them?

Despite his seniority, Shilko had never been to war. Instead, his son had gone to Afghanistan as a junior lieutenant, fresh from the academy, and he had come back after only four months, with neither his legs nor a career. Shilko continued to be haunted by guilt, as though he had sneaked out from under his responsibilities intentionally, sending his son in his stead, although that certainly had not been the case. Meeting his returned son for the first time in the military hospital, with the medal "For Combat Services" and the Order of the Red Star pinned to his pajamas, and the bottom half of the bed as flat as the snow-covered steppes, had been the most painful experience in Shilko's life.

Overall, he counted himself a lucky man. He had a good wife, and they had had healthy children together. He had work he didn't mind, and he enjoyed the personal relationships that developed in the small unit families where he had spent most of his career. He had never expected to be a marshal of the Soviet Union, recognizing even as a young man that he was not cut out for special honors. So he simply tried to do that which was required of him as honestly as possible, content to be at peace with himself. His daughters had always seemed like the real fighters in the family, and it seemed to him as though they only married so they would have new opponents against whom to try their tempers. He could not understand it. His wife, Agafya, was a fine big happy woman, well suited to him. But the girls were an untamed, greedy pair. Perhaps, Shilko thought, trying to be fair, Romilinsky was much better off just as he was.

Pasha had been different from the girls. He had excelled at sports but had not been overly proud, with nothing of the bully about him. All things considered, he had been a kind boy, and decent to the girls. He had never given Shilko any serious trouble, and he had done well enough at the military academy.

Shilko had been proud to see the boy off to Afghanistan, although ashamed that he himself was staying behind. Then Pasha had come back missing parts. The boy had stubbornly tried to make it on his own, but the reception for the Afgantsy was not a good one. Shilko could not understand what was happening to the country. Instead of being respected, veterans were ignored, or even mocked and slighted. Pasha had been denied ground-floor living quarters, despite his handicap and although such an allocation had been easily within the powers of the local housing committee. And, as Pasha himself bitterly told it, when he complained about the low quality of his prostheses to the local specialist, the doctor had replied, "What do you expect me to do? / didn't send you 47

Ralph Peters

to Afghanistan." The prostheses had not changed much since the Great Patriotic War over forty years earlier. But something in the spirit of the people had changed.

No, Shilko told himself, that was probably incorrect. Even the Great Patriotic War had undoubtedly had its little human indignities and examples of ugliness. That was human nature. Yet . . . somehow . . .

there was something wrong.

Shilko fitted his cap to his head. He avoided wearing a helmet. He valued small comforts. And he was conscious of how foolish he looked with his big peasant face and potato nose under the little tin pot. He had no illusions concerning his appearance. He had grown fatter than he would have liked, and he would never appear as the hero in anyone's fantasies. But that was all right, as long as he didn't look like a complete fool.

He swung his legs out into the slow drizzle, then grunted and huffed his body out of the vehicle. He stood off to the side for a moment, relieving the pain in his kidneys. Then he moved toward the shelter of the fire-control post at a pace that compromised between his desire to get in out of the rain and his body's lethargy.