Victory
Could there be a more unambiguous term? In contests of any sort, in sport, at work, the winners take all. The successful are hard to miss.
But is a success as easy to establish in life? Or during a war?
Today, the whole globe is fighting a virus but even the countries that have come out on top are deeply scarred by its rampage. Yet we must fight to win for the alternative is worse for all concerned. Therefore, we endure the struggles and persist for small hard-fought instances of unclear success.
This issue of True Fiction, The Capture, traverses a similar journey of bittersweet victory where both sides lost, neither won yet peace prevailed.
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E
veryone inside the Dubrovka theater sat spellbound by the musical rendition of Nord-Ost. The second act of the sold-out play had just begun and the actors on stage made the audience forget everything else. A few minutes after 09:00 p.m., the dark form of a bus slid smoothly to the theater’s doorsteps and stopped. Shadowy figures jumped out in quick succession and mounted the stairs, their boots clicking loudly on the hard stone surface.
A surprised concierge opened his mouth to shout a protest but the punch that landed on his face ended that attempt before it began. Nobody stopped to watch his limp body hit the ground and within seconds, fifty pairs of heavy boots stormed the plush corridor inside. Then the men and women clambered up the stairs and entered the main hall where the audience sat.
At first, the sight of hooded men and women in battle gear confused the audience. The dim lighting didn’t help matters any. Soon they realized that the assault-weapon-carrying-intruders weren’t part of the play. This was real. They were actual attackers. The gathering’s screams of fear replaced the operatic crescendos onstage and panic broke loose.
Four kilometers away, Kremlin heard.
As the helpless crowd watched, the assailants took positions in different parts of the building. A lucky few languishing backstage when the attackers arrived jumped out of windows to freedom. One of them notified the police and soon the entire world knew about the 800 odd persons being held hostage at that theater in Moscow. Many countries worried. The hostages included foreigners as well.
A video recording of the terrorists’ demands surfaced. They claimed to be Chechnian nationals and they had one demand: the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya. The Russian government refused, saying that such a move would take weeks, if not months.
The rebels weren’t unreasonable. They stepped down a little and freed a few hostages, mostly women and children as a show of good faith. The Russians too announced a ceasefire of sorts in Chechnya.
Both were steps in the direction of an amicable end to the crisis and the whole world welcomed the moves.
Negotiators joined the fray. Prominent persons of society with strong convictions about their persuasive abilities entered the theater, which was by then the site of a siege with the entire might of the Russian military lined up outside. To the millions glued to television screens the world over, everything looked ominous.
Inside the theater though, the attackers were unperturbed by the build-up. When they launched their attack in the heart of the Russian capital, they had known that things could end only one way—in a bloodbath.
Their goals were different: global acknowledgement of their cause, respect for their efforts from fellow countrymen and above all, some positive action towards winning freedom for their nation.
To break the impasse, the terrorists needed to want to live, especially since the Russian government had agreed to full amnesty for all of them in exchange for the hostages. But they wanted to die. They wanted a fight, a bloody battle, the last thing the local government and the world desired.
The situation kept the globe on tenterhooks for four days.
One would expect that at times like this, a nation like Russia with top-class Special Forces would take quick decisive action. But they didn’t because they faced problems of their own.
The theater’s layout was such that, to access the main hall where the hostages were kept, one had to cross a 100ft long open corridor and then climb up a heavily guarded staircase.
Any soldier crossing these two stretches would be an easy target for the heavily armed hostage-takers hiding out of sight. The human cost of sending troops along that route was too high to attempt.
If they climbed down from roofs and windows, the assailants could kill many of the innocent hostages in the time it took for the commandos to eliminate all fifty of them.
Both alternatives meant a carnage: scores of dead soldiers or hundreds of innocent civilians killed, that was the choice before the Kremlin.
At midnight on 26th Oct, the Russian radio reported a leaked intelligence report which stated that the Special Forces planned an attack at 03:00 am that night. The terrorists who had been waiting in eager anticipation of such an event prepared to retaliate with their full might when the time came.
Between them, they had almost as much firepower as a mini-army and the Russian troops knew that. The negotiators who had visited the hostage site had reported at length about the grenades, mines and improvised explosive devices strapped to each rebel’s body and other ammunition that each attacker carried. One could only guess where else they had deployed other destructive devices.
At 03:00 am, everyone was on guard inside the theater but the attack never came.
They waited, for five, ten and twenty minutes but outside the building, everything remained still. By 04:00 am, the rebels knew that they had been duped. The military wasn’t planning an assault.
Then, at around 04:30 something happened.
A mild smell drifted around the room becoming more pronounced every minute. Within another five minutes, the militia knew what was happening. They were being gassed.
The hostages panicked. One of them called the radio station and live-streamed the situation from inside the hall. Had the Russian government decided to execute all the civilians along with the rebels? That appeared to be the consensus opinion. Hysterics broke out.
At 05:00 am, Russian special forces, the Alpha and the Vympel launched their assault. They tore open the roof, the front door and windows of the building and poured into the theater, their Kalashnikovs firing.
By then most of the hostages and their assailants had blacked out. A few hostage-takers with gas masks were still conscious and they put up a valiant fight. The shooting continued well past dawn.
At 09:00 am, the government announced that the hostage crisis had ended and that all the terrorists had been eliminated. In addition, over 100 hostages also perished that day. Nobody ever found out if the civilian casualties were due to the crossfire or the gas.
Were they right in gassing innocent persons? Was the human cost of this operation too high? Could a better solution have been possible? What was the gas used?
This hostage drama had many twists and turns and the tragic ending only made matters worse.
This crisis taught the Russians, patriots, who favor armed rebellions and the world citizens many difficult lessons and blurred the definition of victory once again.
It’s a wrap. Until next time, stay safe, stay at home.
Happy Reading