We were covered in mud when we returned to my little cave base. Alexei and I shrugged off our packs. I took inventory of our stuff while Alexei tried to clean the mud off himself by standing in the rain. We had managed to grab four pieces of 6x8ft waterproof and tear-resistant tarp, a sleeping bag, 40 MREs of assorted flavors, a tent kit, about 25ft of rope, four camping knives, 90 rounds of 5.56 hunting ammo, and a hammer.
I had an idea; I grabbed one of the tarps and went outside. I unfolded the tarp, dug a slight indent in the rich soil, and then placed the tarp over the hole. Next, I pushed the middle of the tarp into the hole so it would start collecting rainwater. Alexei watched this with slight interest. I noticed, so I told him, “Please don’t wash anything here. This water is for drinking .” Alexei just nodded and went back to rain bathing.
I grabbed a couple of tarps from the cave, plus some parts out of the tent kit and the hammer.
I got to work.
More than a few minutes later, we had something that functioned like a tent door. We had made it by using the tent stakes as big nails and nailing the pieces of tarp above the cave entrance. With That done, I laid out the last tarp as a welcome mat to hopefully catch any mud or rainwater from making it too far into our little abode.
Alexei looked at me clearly impressed by my shelter-building abilities. I shrugged that off and replied to his praise by stating.
“given enough time and duct tape, anyone could do this or better.''
We talked for a bit, and I showed him how to make MREs; it was mainly just reading the instructions to him. We had a friendly chat; then he got up. He looked like he had just thought of something. He grabbed the remaining tent spikes, found two parts of the wall across from each other that were softer than the surrounding rock, and started hammering them in.
He finally hammered the stakes into place. He asked for the rope. I gave it to him. Alexei tied some fancy knots that I would have no idea how to replicate. In the end, we had a mini clothesline. You must be thinking how we should have taken off all of our wet clothes when we got back to base. First, being wet or damp is just part of being lower enlisted. Second, we would get yelled at by our NCO if we took off our combat vests on patrol, and this was a long combat patrol in my eyes.
We started hanging up our wet clothes. Mostly just our backpacks, secondary clothing, and vests. We still needed our BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms) not to be naked, which was the most significant piece of wet clothing on us, but it was an improvement at least.
“Hey Alexei, let’s flip a coin to see who gets the fun time of staying up past their bedtime and who is a good little boy who listens to his parents and goes to bed,” I said jokingly. The Russian responded,
“Alright, Harly Davidson, you seem like a bad biker guy, but us, Russians, are always the bad boys.” with a non-minuscule amount of humor. I fished a coin out of my pockets. It was a quarter.
“So, Ruski, what side do you want?”
“I want the imperial eagle of the ‘motherland,’ of course,”
“Alright, I guess I get the great George Washington, don’t let me down, ol’Georgey.”
I flicked the quarter into the air, the spread wings of the eagle clutching gleaming arrows and the head of George Washington glimmering off the dull sunlight that came through both the rain and the tarp door.
“Fuck…”
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I said with a mix of disappointment and resignation. The Russian happily and cheerfully shot up from where he was sitting on the floor, ran over to the unrolled sleeping bag near the back wall, and slipped in. “This is better than the soviet cots back at base!” he said then He abruptly fell asleep.
I sighed, put the coin back into a pocket, put my damp vest back on, and watched for trouble.
____________________________________________________________________________
A few hours later…
“Hey, buddy, it’s time for you to take watch,”
I said as I poked the sleeping form of Alexei with a boot tip. He got up with lots of groaning and moaning, but he did get up. I put my vest back up on the drying rack and slipped in with a sigh. I slept so well that I didn’t even have any dreams, just black.
___________________________________________________________________________
Another few hours later…
“Comrade, get up,”
he said in such a forced, calm tone that it made my brain kick into overdrive panic mode. I got up and out of the sleeping bag as quickly and quietly as possible. I looked around for the Ruski and saw him crouched by the tent door. I grabbed my vest and rifle, walked over to Alexei, and tapped him on the shoulder, letting him know I was ready to go.
On the other side of the canvas covering, we could hear scampering, growling, and finally, a human scream. I whispered directly into Alexei's ear,
“we are going to sweep out there on five. I’ll take the left side; you go right. You ready?”
Alexei nodded, his grip tightening on his rifle, “One,” I racked the charging handle on my rifle slowly and quietly. “Two,” I flicked off the safety on my gun. “Three,” Thump, Thump, my heart beats like a steady, consistent horse trotting. “Four,” my vision narrows in on the tarp as if I might get the ability to see through it any second. “Five.”
Alexei drew aside the canvas covering as I ran out to the left side of the cave. It took my eyes a second to adjust to the early morning light. I squinted as I scanned around. I saw a man on the wet dew-covered grass with a big cat on top of him and what looked like two more big cats behind and left of him. They were down by the small stream. So what was making that scratching sound?
“Get down!”
I dropped as a bullet seemed to wiz inches over my head. Alexei’s AK had rung out and had shot something big behind me. I could tell because of a series of thumps of a corpse falling down the hill ending with a crack of something breaking a tree.
I looked at him just in time to see an ice spike hit him in the chest, and he crumpled to the ground with a whimper coming out of his trembling mouth.
“Fuck!”
I cursed as I spun onto my back and forced my gaze to scan above the cave entrance to see a snow leopard with a glowing white tail. I fired my rifle at the damned creature in front of me. I only managed to hit the dirt around the slender figure of the snow leopard, spraying dirt and mud all over its snow-white coat. It ran off as fast as it could go, I think anyway. Which was an easy 30-40 MPH. (48-64 kilometers per hour for the non-Americans)
I snapped my attention back to the other guy. I stubbled into a crouch and scanned the streamside for the guy and the remaining big cats. I found the man under a big dead cat, with the other two big cats circling, only being fended off by the sharp edge of a giant knife the man was swinging around. I steady my rifle, put one of the beasts into my crosshairs, and opened fire at the two beasts. A barrage of bullets took the closest one down, but I didn’t get as lucky with the other one because my magazine ran dry, it just managed to limp off into the leafy surroundings before I could finish reloading.
With the fight over for the time being, I could try to help Alexei and the other guy. I know I should help the other guy first, but I headed to check Alexei. So I ran to Alexei and ripped off his vest to find that it didn’t penetrate his armor, so he would probably live. So I shouted down toward the other guy,
“HEY, STAY RIGHT THERE! I’M COME’N JUST STAY THERE!”
I grabbed Alexei and dragged him back into our makeshift base. His boots made a trail in the dirt as I dragged him away.
Then I ran down to check on the other guy. He had passed out from shock and was bleeding out fast. I dragged the dead cat off him and grabbed his giant ass knife, just in case he woke up in a bad mood. I also pulled him back to the base and tried my hand at healing the unlucky bastards.
It was going to be a long day.