Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

In April each year, the relatives of the young men killed in 2010 visit and clean around the graves, maybe bring a bouquet or a jar filled with flowers. Otherwise, the place is usually deserted, apart from the woman who works in the small yurt-shaped museum, a guard at the turn-off from the main road, an occasional tourist ticking the site off his list of things to see.

Older tragedies are also commemorated. It was only in 2016 that a monument was built to remember the Urkun , the Exodus, when men, women and children fled during an uprising against the Russian Tsarist forces. Perhaps a hundred thousand people and their animals perished trying to escape over the Tien Shan mountains as winter set in and the mountain passes became snowbound killing grounds.

Even now, a century later, at the Bedel Pass, four thousand metres above sea level near the Chinese border, you can wade through icy spring snowmelt and pick up human and animal bones, gleaming white where the water has brought them down and scrubbed them clean.

Not many people visit Ata-Beyit. It’s a reminder, after all, of suffering, murder, lives lost. And people are busy, of course, with the day-to-day stuff that fills our lives: fields to plough, livestock to tend, getting the children off to school. Visiting the dead isn’t a priority.

It was in this most sombre of places I’d decided to face Aliyev once and for all.

The clouds were looking ominous as I stopped the car down a rutted path two hundred metres away from the entrance to Ata-Beyit. My watch said it was just after noon. Aliyev and his men would arrive soon, set up an ambush, gun me down as I arrived, innocent and trusting.

I climbed over a fence to avoid the guard at the entrance, walked up to the main memorial ground, where the victims of the purges lie together underneath a symbolic tunduk , the round smoke hole at the top of every yurt. Our national symbol, it’s a sign of our nomadic heritage; you’ll even find it at the centre of our flag. Beyond the mass grave is the memorial and burial place of Chingiz Aitmatov. A metal bas-relief of his face hangs on a white marble wall behind his grave, also capped by a tunduk .

I’m not the world’s greatest shot with a rifle, but it wasn’t as if my targets would be a kilometre away. I’d found the gun when I was searching an old warehouse used in a couple of murders. The decapitated corpses had been removed and all that remained was to find the heads. The gun was hidden under an old paint-stained tarpaulin, nothing to do with the murders. I replaced the rifle, came back that evening, gave it a new home in my lock-up. I didn’t imagine I’d ever need it, but in my line of work, you never know what hides around the corner.

Now, with Aliyev coming mob-handed, as I knew he would, I needed every advantage I could get. I’d also got my service issue Makarov, and my Yarygin. If I needed more than the eighteen bullets it held, I was going to be dead by the end of the afternoon anyway. I told myself I’d save the last bullet for myself, if I had to, but I intended to make sure I was the last man standing.

I checked my line of sight, making sure I could see the main road and the turn-off to the complex. There’s a small space for parking, with steps leading to the lower level where the gravestones stand in disciplined ranks. If I took up a space among the graves, I’d have a clear field of fire. I thought about shooting Aliyev first, dismissed the idea. Disposing of his troops first was not the sensible option, but I wanted this to be a duel between Aliyev and me.

Black clouds were moving in over the mountains, and I could smell rain in the air. Not yet cold enough to turn rain into snow, but that time was fast approaching. The end of the year, perhaps the end of many things.

I sat down, back to one of the tombstones, where I was concealed but could watch the road. My fingers brushed the incised lettering of the name of the young man who slept beneath me. Twenty-four, his face open and trusting, unweathered by experience, a slight smile for the photographer. Did he have a wife, children? Did they think of him as they played with their toys, sat through boring maths lessons? I’ve tried to find a meaning to life, to death, but never been able to reach any conclusion other than: it simply is.

I wondered about lighting a cigarette, decided against it. Smell carries a long way on mountain air, and I didn’t need to give Aliyev any more clues to where as I was than I had to.

I checked both the Makarov and the Yarygin again. I could smell gun oil on my fingers, sharp, acrid, the scent of death.

It was a little before three o’clock when I saw the SUV turn off the main road, stop at the guard hut, then drive on up to the car park. After parking, no one got out for a couple of moments. Looking to see if I was waiting and welcoming with open arms: here I am, come and kill me.

The rear doors of the SUV opened and three men clambered out. No one I’d ever seen before, bulky in warm winter jackets that left their arms free. They stood looking around, stamping their feet on the ground, ensuring the coast was clear before Aliyev left the safety of the vehicle. I couldn’t see anything through the heavily tinted glass, but my guess was he’d been driving, taking complete control at the climax of the mission.

My rifle barrel felt like an extension of my arm, the barrel a giant finger pointing towards the SUV. As I watched, finger taut on the trigger, the tallest of the men reached into the back seat, began to pass out weapons. I knew it was time.

The man’s navy blue watch cap pulled low over his ears suddenly flowered into a scarlet mask as I shot him in the head. A spray of red spattered the side and roof of the car as he fell back, slumped and slithered to the ground. My mouth was dry, tasted sour and metallic from fear and adrenalin.

I shot again, missed, saw the side window shatter, the remaining men diving for cover. My next shot was luck rather than aim, and I saw one of the men half-sit then roll back, clutching his right thigh, the blood already pouring in a thick stream. I wondered if I’d hit an artery, decided I didn’t care.

At this distance, I couldn’t hear him, but I watched his mouth freeze open in a long, drawn-out scream. I didn’t expect Aliyev to rush to his rescue, and I wasn’t disappointed. There was no movement from the guard hut by the road. Aliyev must have made a pay-off; either that or the guard had more sense than to come to investigate.

The SUV rocked slightly as the doors on the side away from me opened, and I put another shot into the bodywork, just to keep things interesting.

Bullets were coming in my direction now, none close enough to cause me any worries. In any case, being shielded by a dead man’s tombstone is a great way of ensuring you don’t earn one yourself.

The man lying on the ground had stopped moving, and I wondered if he’d bled out already. The SUV was moving forward now, slowly, acting as cover for whoever was left. My guess was Aliyev and the last of his men; the odds were better but still not in my favour.

As I watched, one man broke cover, raced towards the shelter of a statue of three men in chains. I aimed, fired, missed, turned my attention back to the SUV. Their aim was to outflank me, knowing I couldn’t watch every direction. It was time to move.

I dropped the rifle, crawled behind the line of tombstones, rose and raced for the upper level of the complex, expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades every step of the way.

The upper level of Ata-Beyit is dominated at one end by a marble memorial wall behind Chingiz Aitmatov’s grave. It was there I took cover, waiting for Aliyev and his men to hunt me down.