The Landfill

Several hundred guns, grenades, and cartridges clanged in the pickup bed when Ramzan stomped on the brake pedal. Beside him, Dokka gasped. They had just crested the hill and right there, not fifty paces away, stood two armored personnel carriers, two UAZ jeeps, and a tank crowned with a machine-gun turret: federal Russian forces. The jeeps sped toward the idling pickup truck. The emerging soldiers were not the tattooed contract soldiers Ramzan remembered from the mopping-up operations; compared to those hulking Russian bears these conscripts were half-starved fawns. We may live to see the sunset, he thought.

Four soldiers struggling to hold their Kalashnikovs approached. He raised his open palms to the Feds. Dokka followed suit.