T2 Optimistic: Russian Quagmire
“Are we ever going to bug outta here, Rattle?” Thibido asked wearily. The two men stood next to each other on a serving line in a makeshift kitchen. Thibido was ladling out bowls of stew while Craigen dished out spoonfuls of vegetables.
“HQ seems to think this war is going to drag on for a long time." Craigen concentrated on not spilling the contents of his spoon, and he made sure to look the elderly man he was serving in the eye and give him a warm smile. "Now that the Russian advance has stalled out, the Ukrainian government in Kyiv thinks they may actually have a chance of winning this war.”
“Looks like ‘ole Putin ain’t got enough leverage now to really put da screws to ‘em,” Thibido agreed. "Rattle, it's plumb evil what's happened to these poor people." Thibido was also careful to keep his tone upbeat and a smile on his face as they talked. Both men were banking on the people in the serving line not understanding enough English to follow their bleak conversation.
Craigen’s stretched for a moment to ease the ache in his back. “There hasn’t been any letup in the number of people coming through this checkpoint, that’s for sure. At this rate, our whole team's going to get burned out. I've asked HQ to activate a new PIRA team to come and replace us.”
“Well, that's good news.” Thibido picked up the now-empty pot and brought it to the sink to wash. “We done what we came to do. We're a Response Team! We get in first and do the initial assessments. That's our specialty. Now dey got a million aid workers crawlin’ ‘round here.”
Craigen allowed himself a moment to indulge in a homecoming image with his wife meeting him at the airport. Trish has been worried sick about me on this deployment. “What do you miss most about home, Scooter?"
“Da food.” Thibido also seemed to be ruminating. “I’m gonna whip me up some shrimp jambalaya with bell peppers, onion, and a little bit of celery and some of that ‘ole smoked tasso ham. Whoowee! It’s time to get on back home. That’s it.”
A great smile cracked Craigen’s face, “I love it when you talk that way, Scooter.”
“Let me begin by officially welcoming you to Palanca.” Craigen began briefing the members of the new PIRA Response Team. He’d just returned from the early morning Cluster meeting, which he attended with Daryl Hoy, the incoming Rattle of the new Choir. “We were part of the initial push to get out here and set up, but there’s been a change of mission. I’ll let your RTL fill you on the details.”
Hoy came straight to the point. “They’ve assigned us to mortuary affairs.”
“Mortuary affairs?” One of Hoy’s duet leaders furrowed his brow. “Do you mean burying the dead, or processing the corpses?”
“Burials.” Hoy nodded, catching the drift of his subordinate’s question. “The casualty processing will all be conducted by local nationals who are fluent in the language and can process the necessary paperwork. Where they are short-handed is in personnel who can conduct the physical burials. As a Christian organization, we’ve also offered to say a few words over the people we lay to rest.”
“OK.”
Craigen was impressed by the calm professionalism of this new group. What they were being asked to do was far outside normal PIRA functions. However, almost all the work at the Palanca checkpoint was now administrative; checking people's identification, assisting them with travel arraignments, and contacting loved ones. The Cluster felt that the best use of PIRA assets right now was to help with mortuary affairs, and Craigen agreed.
“I always tell my team that there are no small parts, just small players.” Craigen let out a long sigh. "But make no mistake, what we're asking you to do now will be really hard. The Russians are shelling Odesa now, and the bodies are piling up. The medical teams are bagging them, and they’ve got a couple of guys with excavators digging the graves. But if we don’t help put these people in the ground, we'll have all kinds of disease and trouble here."
Thibido’s face blanched. “Let me talk to ‘em a minute, Rattle.”
“Hmm?” Craigen was surprised by Thibido’s request. However, he could tell that his friend had something important to put out to the group. “OK, sure. Everyone, this is Ricky Thibido, one of my duet leads.”
“Howdy. Just call me Scooter.” Thibido stepped forward. “Let me ask you somethin’. How many of you’ve seen corpses before?”
A couple of hands went up, and Thibido exchanged knowing looks with them.
“OK. So some of you know what I’m gonna talk about.” Thibido made a gesture like a lecturer giving a presentation, “Have any of you noticed how it’s only the old people, women, and kids that come through the checkpoint? You know why that is?”
“Because the Ukrainian men are staying behind to fight?” The tenuous reply came with a slight quaver of uncertainty.
“That’s right! The men stay behind to fight!” Thibido said encouragingly. “According to their martial law, every Ukrainian man between the ages of 18 to 60 is prohibited from leaving the country. But ya know who we’ve been burying day after day?”
Another voice. “The men?”
“That’s right, the men. Mostly it’s men, anyway…” Thibido nodded gravely. “And a lot of them are young, real young, just boys. That’s because the only men coming through dat checkpoint are da fighters who got wounded. They're tryin’ to get them to hospitals.”
Thibido walked slowly around the table to get closer to the incoming team, “But they ain’t never gonna make it to no hospital, ‘cause they’ve been blown apart.”
“Scooter, maybe we should let…” but Kedzierski didn’t get to finish her sentence.
“Hang on, Curly. They need to hear this.” Thibido’s tone would brook no dissent. “It don’ matter if they clean ‘em up or not. What you’re gonna see, and what your gonna do will stick with you for the rest of your life. All dem kids blown apart… it’s gonna haunt your dreams forever.”
Thibido exchanges a few knowing looks with the senior members of the team, the ones who’d raised their hands to indicate they had worked with corpses before. “OK. I'm gonna turn you back over to your leads now. You got to watch out for each other out here. You got to know the signs of trouble. And if you get trouble, you just remember that a lot of us has been through it before. You pull somebody over and talk it out, OK? Don' go tryin’ to be a hero. It ain't a weakness to talk about your feelings.”
The PIRA team spent the next half hour going over the details of the assignment. Long faces looked resignedly at notepads as salient details were dutifully recorded. There was the usual bantering and cross-talk, but after Thibido's warning, it was muted. Sometimes work was dirty, but Craigen felt so proud of his team and proud to be a part of PIRA. This is why I keep doing this.
I'm so ready to go home. As he sat with the Choir in the Chişinău International Airport terminal, Craigen marveled at the thronging mass of humanity collected there. For the most part, people were packed into hurried, bustling groups of exhausted-looking people heading en masse for the departure gates. But he noticed there were also a fair amount of adventurous-looking people disembarking from the arrival gates. They were easy to spot with their safari shirts, hiking shoes, and outsized bags that probably contained cameras or other gear.
Did we look like that when we first arrived? Craigen wondered, fully aware that his team’s appearance now fell squarely into the category of exhausted-looking, rather than adventurous. How long have we been doing this? Eight years? Ten? So many deployments together. Now we’re wrapping up another one. He experienced a warm glow of satisfaction. He closed his eyes and smiled, savoring the sensation.
“They've got President Zelenskyy walking around the streets of Kyiv," Bolanger was scrolling the headlines of some news source on her cell phone. "It's a photo op of him talking to the troops. He's encouraging the Ukrainian soldiers to keep up the fight. He says soon the Russians will pull back from the cities of Mariupol, Kharkiv, and Kyiv."
“I don’t know if Putin’s been read into that plan.” Craigen opened his eyes, the euphoric buzz he’d been experiencing evaporating all too quickly. “He’s already made a bargain with the devil. The Chinese are holding half of Siberia ransom for his war debts. He’s gotta know they own him now. Yet he keeps pushing this foolish war. Full self-destruct. The only guarantee is that the longer this thing goes on, the more damage will be done.”
“Rattle, I need you over here ASAP.” Kedzierski tapped on Craigen’s shoulder, interrupting his conversation with Bolanger.
The urgency conveyed in her hushed, whispered words instantly triggered all of Craigen’s alarms. Despite the pounding of his heart, he responded to her in the same discreet tone, “What’s the matter, Curly?”
“The suit at six o’clock is giving us the hard stare.” Kedzierski took Craigen by the arm and innocuously angled him so that he could see better.
The PIRA team used the term "hard stare" to indicate a potentially dangerous encounter, generally with a government official, or possibly criminals or other people who meant harm. Craigen picked the man out instantly. He was openly staring at the Choir. However, the stare seemed unnaturally wide-eyed.
Creepy, was Craigen’s first thought. Then the man started walking directly towards him. There was obviously something wrong with him. He wore an expensive suit with a vest, tie, and highly shined shoes. This alone made him stand out in the crowd of war-battered airline passengers. But Craigen noticed the jacket was not buttoned improperly. Instead of a smooth, clean line, it gapped awkwardly. His gait was also peculiar. It’s not a limp, Craigen surmised. He looks …dizzy.
By instinct, Craigen held his hands out, palms showing, with his arms hanging down by his sides. He smiled broadly to indicate he was no threat. “Dobryden,” he offered. This was one of the few Ukrainian words Craigen had been able to learn. He hoped he pronounced it correctly. “Can I help you, friend?” He continued in English as the odd man came to a stop in front of him. Craigen hoped his friendly tone would convey his meaning even if his words failed.
There was an uncomfortably long pause. The strange man looked in Craigen's direction, but he seemed to stare right past him. "Are you Christian?"
The question caught Craigen off-balance. He'd been expecting some sort of official questioning, perhaps a demand to see identification, passports, or travel itinerary. The airport lobby was packed with people, and it struck him as incongruous to be asked about his faith in this environment.
“You look like Christians.” The man indicated the PIRA team with his words, but his glassy eyes remained fixed on Craigen’s face.
Relieved that the man at least spoke English, Craigen replied cautiously, “We’re with the Parousia International Relief Agency, PIRA, yes. Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Hadeon …I am destroyer. Please,” he refocused his seemingly distant gaze to stare into Craigen's eyes with startling intensity, "do you have any Bible? I am going to hell."
“Yes. Of course we have a Bible.” Craigen shot a meaningful look to Kedzierski, who started opening her backpack to find one. "Sit down right here Hadeon," Craigen steered the man to an empty chair. "You look like you're about to fall over."
Kedzierski approached quietly and placed her own well-worn Bible in the Hadeon's hands. Rather than open it, he just held it in his lap, gazing at it with that same distant stare.
Craigen wrapped one big arm over the man’s shoulders, but Hadeon seemed oblivious to the kindness contained in the simple act. Shell shock, Craigen’s diagnosis was the obsolete term for post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I don’t know what to do with this.” Hadeon said at last, his morose voice tinged with despair.
“Just talk.” Kedzierski also placed her arm around him. The three sat huddled together. From countless interactions with people experiencing grief, the PIRA team had learned that the best way for someone to begin to come to terms with their feelings was to just talk. Otherwise, destructive thoughts would swirl around and around in their mind, gathering energy that often led to desperate action.
Hadeon seemed to consider the invitation, then stated, “We did this.”
“What did you do, hon?” Kedzierski prompted him to continue.
“All this. The war, the bombings, the bodies, all of it. We did it only for money.” The words were delivered devoid of emotion. More sinister for their coldness.
How is this guy connected? Politician? Business exec? Craigen cast a suspicious eye out at the crowd. Is he being watched? He didn’t notice any obvious surveillance. “It’s OK, bro.” Craigen couldn’t think of anything better to say. “This is Putin’s war, don’t blame yourself.”
“Putin is nothing!” Hadeon lashed out, mouth twisting into a snarl, eyes blazing with a terrible inner light.
Oops! Triggered something. Craigen leaned back, shifting his grip on the man's shoulder to allow for a quick takedown and submission hold if necessary.
"We did this. We have blood on our hands! We used to sit together with the Russians and laugh over vodka about how much money we would make when the war came. We knew it was coming, and we laughed!"
Kedzierski seemed unconcerned with Hadeon's outburst, and she continued speaking to him in a calm and reassuring voice. "There is no sin greater than God’s ability to forgive. Why did you laugh about the war?”
Her words brought Hadeon back to earth. He seemed to consider the question. “I sat on the board of Naftogaz. Do you know this company? It is a natural gas firm run by the Ukrainian government. When they came after us for corruption, we bought them off. They were so dirty, it was easy. We bought them off with money, with drugs, with sex, whatever they wanted. And with every blackmail and extortion, we skimmed our filthy money."
“Who was dirty?” Kedzierski encouraged him to continue.
Hadeon flinched at the question, and Craigen tightened his grip to keep him from lunging at Kedzierski. "Why do you want to know this?" he demanded. But before she could continue, Hadeon stood up, brushing away Craigen’s protective grip. Craigen let him go because he seemed to be heading in a safe direction, away from Kedzierski.
“Everyone is corrupt!” Hadeon shouted, causing looks of alarm and heads to turn their way. “Putin is dirty! Zelenskyy is dirty! Even your American President and his perverted son are filth! Everyone is in on this, don't you see? Now the bombs are coming, and they keep coming and coming, and we are the ones who did this. We have the blood on our hands. All the people are dying, and there is so much blood. Look, I’ve got money!” Hadeon reached into his briefcase and began pulling out fistfuls of bills and throwing them on the ground haphazardly. “What good is this dirty money now? Now that my family is dead,” he sobbed. Hadeon kept throwing bills on the floor until his briefcase was empty, and then he threw that away too.
By this time, a large crowd had gathered around the PIRA team, witnessing Hadeon's outburst. Despite the large amount of cash scattered around, no one moved to pick it up.
Hadeon turned to go, and Kedzierski recovered her Bible and went after him. “Please take this with you! It’s not too late to…”
She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Hadeon whirled about and struck the Bible from her hand, knocking it to the floor. “It’s too late for me!” he declared. “Nothing can save me from hell. All of you,” he spun to face the crowd, “all of you are going to hell! You will run out of fuel, you will run out of food, the whole world will come crumbling down." He pushed his way forward, and the crowd opened to let him through. "We will all burn!"
Craigen caught Kedzierski’s arm and pulled her back. “Let him go, Curly.”
“But he’s suffering…”
“Let him go.” Craigen pulled Kedzierski into an embrace, “You can’t save ‘em all. You know that. Let him go.”
She wept.
A very old woman, a babushka in a dark dress with a headscarf tied under her chin, leaned down with difficulty and retrieved the discarded Bible. She reverently handed it back to Kedzierski, touching the younger woman’s hand and arms affectionately while muttering something unintelligible to the still weeping American relief worker.
To Craigen, it seemed the simple gesture brought Kedzierski a great deal of comfort. Even though the words did not translate, their meaning was clear. The two women embraced. The crowd dissipated, and people resumed shuffling their way through the packed airport to reach their destinations, stepping around the dirty money that lay on the ground, untouched.
You are the Chief of the PIRA Operations Center. You make the call:
Choose Option 1: You have managed to preserve your team despite the difficult and dangerous conditions they have encountered. Your small portion of the humanitarian relief mission has been largely successful. However, the greater war will continue to rage on indefinitely. Choose this option if you wish to return to the start point and explore other possible outcomes.
Choose Option 2: You have managed to preserve your team despite the difficult and dangerous conditions they have encountered. Your small portion of the humanitarian relief mission has been largely successful. However, the greater war will continue to rage on indefinitely. Choose this option if you wish to quit this exercise in Directed Fiction and continue to the solutions page to learn more about how these scenarios were developed.