There was still snow huddled in the shelter of the pines, but it was largely cleared in any open area.  Soon it would warm further and become an endless marsh hundreds of kilometers in every direction.  Impassable.  Even for tracked vehicles.  This was the last hunt.

Colonel Yuri Korsakov drove the third truck in the column.  He preferred to drive.  He wanted to see the road and feel the road.  He wanted to know how much farther they could go into the Siberian marshes.  He felt his truck slide slightly to the left and knew they were getting near the end.

An open area lay ahead.  He beeped twice.  The signal for the column to stop.  The men were busy for the next hour.  Wood was gathered and a large fire constructed.  Five men set up a propane stove and heated stew.  Four men sat on the ground, their hands bound behind them, two men with rifles standing over them.

Mosquitoes were out.  Full daylight and snow on the ground, yet somehow mosquitoes were already out.  A few.  Not the hordes that would explode from the puddles in the next weeks and suck the life from any mammal still in the marsh.  Annoying.  A warning to get this hunt done and not return before October. 

Korsakov hoped he would never have to return.  This was his fourth “hunt.”  He wanted it to be his last.  The first three hunts had taken out one man each.  Department heads.  Robbers running the commissary and mess hall and construction crew.  Invited out to join the other officers for a spring wolf hunt, they had not returned.  Listed as deserters.  They would never be seen again.

Four this time.  The motor pool.  Crimes there were unforgivable.  Thirty men had eagerly joined the colonel for this hunt.  Korsakov waited until every man had eaten.  The sky darkened.  The temperature dropped.  Men moved closer to the fire. 

The four men to be executed were just within range of the light from the fire.  Just at the edge.  Shadows flicking over them as men moved around the fire to get a bit more stew or find a more comfortable place to sit.  The four had the sense to keep silent.  Words might get them a beating.  Silence might mean there was some chance they would face a better ending.

The trial had occurred a week earlier in the Colonel’s office.  Investigators described dates and amounts.  Tonight was not about evidence.  Tonight was about consequences.  At a nod from the Colonel the first of three tankers spoke.

“We had no targeting electronics.  We had the fucking Ukrainians out in the open.  Three tanks.  One was one of ours.  They had painted over the Z after they captured it.  I wanted that one.  I wanted to blast those fuckers back to Kiev.  But none of the range finders worked.  We got no targeting information.  We aimed visual and fired.  We got off three rounds.  None were even close.  Sasha was the best gunner in the battle group, but without electronics…  By the time we got the third round fired, they had already taken out our track.  The three of us got out of the hatch, but they went after us with machine guns.  What saved us was our tank.  When it blew it spread out a cloud of smoke that hid us as we ran for some trees.”

Silence after that.  Silence as thirty men stared at the four men at the edge of the clearing.  Korsakov waited several minutes, then nodded to the second tanker.

“It felt like there was a million of us.  We come down out of Belarus straight for Kiev.  Open highway.  Four hours.  We were sure we would be there in four hours and shove our barrel up their ass.  They had nothing on the highway, nothing in the air.  Nothing to stop us.  Ukraine would be returned to Russia in four fucking hours. And then shit started happening.  No fuel.  The gauge said full, the engine said empty.  Truck after truck, tank after tank.  Four hours from complete victory, and these fuckers had sold our fuel.”

He gestured toward the four.  This time there were shouts.  Curses.  The men getting ready for what would surely come next.  The Colonel nodded to the third speaker.

“Pavel died shitting himself.  He ate the rations stored in our tank.  They smelled bad, but hell, you all know what a tank smells like.  It was just one more bad smell.  He was out of the tank, curled up on the ground by nightfall.  He couldn’t stop puking.  He couldn’t stop shitting.  He was too weak to get his pants down, and it was too cold.  We put blankets over him, and tried to get water into him, but he just puked it back up.  That was his last night.  Lying by the side of the road, shaking from the cold while he filled his pants with shit.  He was dead by morning.  Tell me.”

He shouted and pointed at the four.

“How much did you get for our food?  How much was Pavel’s life worth to you?  Greedy bastards.  Tell me.  How much?”

The time had come.  All the men stood.  They formed an arc a dozen paces from the four.  No order was given to fire.  One man fired, then others.  Not all, but most.  It was over in less than a minute.

They slept in their trucks and returned to base at dawn.  The four would be listed as deserters.  Left a hundred kilometers north of the base, deep in the Siberian marshlands.  They would be food for wolves and other predators.  Within a week there would just be scattered bones and fading tire tracks to show they had ever been there.

Korsakov was back in his quarters by noon, shaved, showered and changed, then to his office.  The general’s door was open.  His wife and daughter had arrived.  Orlov saw Korsakov pass down the hall and waved him in.

Smiles, introductions, small talk, and a quick assessment.  She was perfect.  Tall. A former athlete, a former soldier.  American, with that American poise.  The daughter was smallish, but pretty as well.  She stood slightly behind her mother, a small hand clinging to her skirt.  Uncertain of her new surroundings.  The mother – Catherine – kept a hand on her daughter’s head, slowly stroking her hair.  A good mother.  A careful mother calming and reassuring her child.

There was small talk.  A bit about Poland and the mother’s role there.  A few words about the general state of Europe.  All interesting but unimportant.  Korsakov saw what he wanted and chose to go for it.  Within ten minutes he was back in his own office making a phone call.