Lev looked over at Borya talking with the other mechanics and just continued for a while as I stood there. Then he just sighed and turned towards me and spoke.
"It was 1979, we had been ordered to get ready for a deployment. They had sent us to Termez out in Uzbek. Borya, Sevastian, and I were in the 56th Air Assault Brigade, we were fresh to the unit as they had four mechanics dissappear one day and needed replacements. I wasn't concerned about our deployment and played around with the guys, 'We're mechanics, what are you worried about' 'we'll actually be fixing and patching up these babies' It was the excitement that comes with no experience. We would stay there until the 13th of January, when we left Termez and had our Mi-8s and Mi-24s move to Kanduz, across the border. We had lost a chopper on the 9th and command wanted something to show for it".
At this point, Lev was shaking his head and crossed his arms. He was holding something back.
"It made things worse. I had been excited, but I wasn't ready for the 23 hour shifts. If I wasn't patching up bullet holes and taking shrapnel out of fuselages, I was running and completing maintenence. Our responsibilities were 2 Mi-24 Hinds and an auxiliary Mi-8 Hip that was used for emergency medical flights and important officers. One day Borya didn't come to his shift, Sevastian and I found him drunk and bawling his eyes out in our bunks. Over-night at around 3am on March 7th, the Hip had crashed, it was on the way to pick up some new commander, probably for an operation that was coming up. Borya was in the middle of his shift, midnight to eight when they informed him. All they could tell him was that the Hip was flying one minute and then the next it's tail malfunctioned, followed by it's main rotor, a textbook generator failure they had said. He had freaked and collapsed. After that he was different. For the rest of the time we were there he would spend hours checking wiring and the normal maintenance on our Hinds. He's still shaken up, fighting isn't really his thing anymore".
Lev was still keeping something from me, Sevastian was more qualified to be a mechanic than join our search, but if their were other factors in his choice, I won't dig into it.
"Thanks for letting me know, Lev, I'll keep that in mind"
I turned back to my guys, Luka was still out of it and trembling. I could hear Yuli and Yemelyan talking about what to do.
Yuli said, "I can't get him to respond to anything"
Yemelyan went and took out a flashlight. Luka's trembling got worse. Yemelyan shined it to the left and right of Luka's head. He sighed and put the flashlight away.
Yemelyan responded, "Shit, it's fatigue, don't bother, he's going to need to stay in the trucks from now on, hey Slava! Get over hear and help Yuli carry Luka back to the truck!"
Slava got up, everyone except Luka had almost completely recovered from the ordeal. Yuli and Slava were able to get Luka to stand and guided him to the cab of the truck.
Yemelyan yelled at them "One of you make sure to stay with him for a while until I come and get you".
As Yuli and Slava guided him to the truck, Yemelyan walked over to talk
"Bratan, I think we will have to rearrange our formations for our search tomorrow Luka is suffering from fatigue, and the men are exhausted after only covering a small portion of the area"
I chuckled, "Yeah, Yemelyan, Luka is out of the question. From my best understanding the mechanics can be ready to help by the day after tomorrow. I think it will be better if we all stick together and check the Northern area, the wolves were wanting us gone".
Yemelyan nodded and walked away towards Alik, Aleksi, and the rest to update them. I approached the mechanics and they were arguing over what to do.
"We should just get to work and finish it faster so it's less dangerous", a taller mechanic said.
"You idiot, all it takes is a chance encounter and then boom, we're all dead, we need to play it safe and do the rotations", a redheaded mechanic replied.
"Guys, guys we can work this out," Borya yelled, "We can probably make an safer option and also keep our schedule, we planned ahead and flashlights. We'll work in pairs like we have been, but we'll build up a few fires around to light everything up. We are used to 24 hour days so we can make this work, I and Lev will be on guard duty, and swap at midnight so the guards will stay fresh. Ivan and Osip, you two head into the truck and get some sleep, I'll wake you when it's time. Any objections?" The redhead and the taller mechanic grunted and began to clean up to get some sleep. No one objected and began to head back to their jobs. Borya turned around and spotted me. He just nodded and walked over to Lev who had lighters, axes, and AK's and began to chop some trees down for the fires.
The sky was beginning to dim and there was only an hour or two of light left. Yemelyan had finished talking to the exploration group and had sent them into the back of a truck to get some rest. He began walking over.
"Bratan, let's talk about Luka real quick".
Yemelyan pulled out a smoke and lit it. Taking in a puff he sighed.
"Bratan, I'm going to be honest here, guys who have waht Luka got, I served with many men during the Great Patriotic War, half of my friends died, and the other half went to institutions afterwards" He took another puff, the mood had sombered quickly. "The best way to treat Luka is to either keep him close to the guns or keep him away from it all. There is also the chance that he will permanently be broken, there's no guaranteed method to fix what he has, it's ultimately up to him, Bratan. Remember that, no matter how hard you try, if he won't accept help, he can't be helped. Goodnight Bratan, see you tomorrow".
Yemelyan walked off to go releave Yuli of watching over Luka, and I was stuck thinking about waht to do.