Dick Winchester in... The Enlistment

Book 1, Chapter 8

Content Warning: Warfare, violence, death

I’ll never look into your eyes again

– The Doors, “The End”

***

I suppose it’s finally time to put it in writing.

It wasn’t all that long ago I was like the rest of them. Fresh-faced and full of all the enthusiasm that four years of college at $30,000 a semester brings. More than enthusiastic. Hungry. Hungry to find my place in this world.

A place somewhere that wasn’t below a mountain of debt, if I had my pick.

Naturally, the world decided that Dick Winchester still had a thing or two to learn, and the employment prospects were slim.

So, when the job posting popped up in my LinkedIn alerts promising a fast-paced environment with multiple open positions and possibility for rapid advancement, I leapt at the opportunity.

One failure to read the fine print later, and I found myself in Ukraine in the opening days of the Russian invasion.

Now, another man might have found himself relegated to some rear echelon posting, working the bureaucratic levers and paperwork of war, or perhaps in a reserve unit where the possibility of seeing real fighting would be slim.

Instead, these hardened men saw a kindred spirit, and I found myself with a Soviet-era submachine gun strapped to my back and boxes of ammunition in each hand, scrambling through the gutters and alleys of Mariupol as the Russians closed in and the city turned to rubble with each passing day.

Of course, my minor in Slavic languages may have also played a role. Despite it all, I had beaten the odds and put my college education to work.

I still remember the shells, those indiscriminate harbingers of destruction thrashing the earth. The Russians had decided we were getting too comfortable in our stone hollows and set out to remind us there was still a war on.

Quite courteous of them.

“You impress me, American,” my fellow ammo runner, Bohdan, told me one night as the shelling took on a particularly violent tenor above.

“Oh?” I said, passing the sole cigarette from the day’s ration to him.

“You are here, in the middle of this conflict that has drawn the eyes of the whole world, and you have yet to take a single selfie. I thought your people lived for the social media clout.”

Your people, of course, meaning Americans.

Bohdan blew a smoke ring, and it lingered amid the damp, frigid air of the basement. The missiles and artillery had already turned the apartment block above into a mound of stone, which served to better insulate us from the barrage.

I allowed myself a slight smile. “Would it reassure you if I told you I looked the other day and there’s no service?”

Bohdan laughed for a long moment, as did several of the other members of our squad where they slumped against walls and water heaters that had long run dry.

“You don’t say? No water, no electric, no gas, but Mr. Musk could not be bothered to deploy Starlink satellites to save the brave people of Ukraine? Where is the West when we need them?”

“Not to worry,” I replied. “The Pentagon will deploy them just as soon as they have boots on the ground. Can’t have our boys going without their Instagram.”

That got the expected laughs.

“Wise words, American,” Bohdan replied. “In the meantime, we will have to settle for thoughts and prayers, no?”

“I’m sure there’s already an online petition demanding the Russians leave Ukraine.”

“The little man in Moscow must have heard. That’s why they knocked out the WiFi—so we cannot sign it!”

Somehow, I look back on those nights curled up in our subterranean shelter, the odor of mildew clogging our nostrils, as some of the finest moments of my life. Something about knowing you’re going to die breaks down barriers between people.

All except our commanding officer Captain Pavlo. He looked at me with disdain, and behind his eyes I knew he saw a tourist. A 20-something playing at war.

But desperate for men as they were, he would not turn away the sightseer.

In the following days, things started to fall apart. First, the Russian armored divisions cut off the northern access to the city. Then, the encirclement complete, they proceeded to bombard us in every way known to man.

I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if I was one of those brass-balled recruits who scaled the high vantage points, where you had absolutely no cover and only a prayer that the ordnance wasn’t thrown your way, and found the Russians had brought the cannons they seized from Napoleon out of retirement.

Hell, even a catapult or two wouldn’t have shocked me.

After all, the Ukrainians were no strangers to repurposing their own retired stocks. That was how I ended up being issued a PPSH 41, a submachine gun that had last been used to blow away Nazis. Save the modern stuff for the front line, not someone like me that wasn’t expected to face the enemy head on.

For better or worse, it didn’t turn out that way.

A couple weeks of intense shelling later, the Russians finally started their operation to seize the city.

Now we went to work, running ammo back and forth between the different strongpoints defending the approaches to the city. Vehicles made too big of targets for aircraft and drones. Plus, many of the streets had been rendered impassable by craters, collapsed buildings, and unexploded ordnance.

This would be how I go out, I remembered thinking as I scrambled over a rubble pile. Thunking my boot against some shell that didn’t do its job the first time around.

Still, using the green boxes full of belted 7.62 rounds as handholds when I needed to scrabble over a crevasse in the debris, I carried on. Face covered in dust, palms raw from the heavy metal handles, nose stinging from the smell of cordite, I carried on. It had become natural.

War had become natural.

For a week, we managed to hold them at the outskirts. Then, the ammunition started to run dry for the machine guns and heavy weapons. Sensing the shifting balance, the Russians launched an armored column to break through our defensive ring. With most of our anti-vehicle ordnance exhausted, command turned to the two resources we still had in abundance: RPGs and men willing to get in close enough to use them.

The anti-tank teams set up along the main route, crawling through half-collapsed buildings and sewer drains to disguise their movements from aerial observation.

“Our rats,” as the front-line soldiers now referred to us, followed in their tracks with additional warheads. Now I not only had to worry about unexploded ordnance but the several pounds of explosives strapped to my back. Telling yourself the warheads are unarmed only does so much to ease the tension.

This particular day, I scrambled up the creaking staircase to where the anti-tank team had positioned themselves on the third floor.

“Ah, good,” the spotter said, turning from his binoculars only for a moment. “You’re just in time to see the fireworks, rat.”

“Two o’clock, two hundred meters,” he stated to the man holding the launcher. “Target the flank.”

Now came the riskiest part. The man stood up, exposing himself in the blown-out window, and checked his sight picture. Then the room shook with the backblast as the warhead ignited and sprang from the tube.

“Fuck, it’s short!” the spotter exclaimed.

“Reloading,” the tube man responded without raising his voice.

Then the room shook a second time as the T-72’s turret-mounted DShK ripped through the concrete wall. My only saving grace was that I had knelt to offload my RPG rounds and was low to the ground. Still, my face and arms were sliced open by the bits of brick dislodged by the massive rounds.

Once several moments of silence had passed, I crawled to the two men, gagging on the brick dust that now choked the air.

The launcher fell from the man’s limp hands. Taking one look at the spotter, I decided he was also gone and started to crawl away. Then fingers wrapped around my ankle.

“Kill it...” the spotter gasped. “We must hold them here...”

I stared at the man for a moment as blood trickled out of the side of his mouth. Even as the light dimmed in his eyes, he still cared more for the mission than himself.

And, somehow, he made sense. I had watched the process enough times.

So, I unhooked the final RPG warhead from my back, hoisted the launcher onto my shoulder while ignoring the blood seeping into my shirt, and armed the projectile. All that was left was to crawl to the now much wider window and take aim.

Below, in the street strewn with bullet-ridden cars and burned debris, I saw the green flank of the T-72 rolling forward past its smoking comrade. If I hit it now, the two tank wrecks would block the thin lane. Despite seeing two men mown down, despite the fact I had never fired an RPG before, despite the fact that I would almost certainly die whether or not I hit my target, my hands did not shake.

Instead, I took a deep breath and lined up the sights on the rear exhaust vents.

The next thing I remember, the gray smoke of the massive diesel engines had turned black, and the treads sputtered to a halt.

Only problem was, there was a smoke trail leading right back to the source of the rocket: me.

I turned, watching with a certain kind of numbness as the next tank in the column halted and began rotating its massive main gun toward my position. I could have run, I suppose, but I knew the blast wave would get me either way.

Then the room shook, but not from the impact of a HEAT round on what remained of the wall in front of me. I watched as another RPG streaked forward from a window further down the room and sliced into the side of the second T-72.

For a moment, it seemed the whole world held its breath. The turret halted in its traverse, and I remained rooted to the floor.

Then the Russian tank disappeared in a blinding flash as its rounds cooked off. The floor shook, and I found a new fear supplanting the old that the shell-scarred building would finally succumb to gravity and bury me.

Instead, the pedestrian overpass behind the tank, caught in the blast, gave way first, blocking all other vehicles from advancing.

I finally looked over. Had the spotter somehow revived and fired the second rocket?

Instead, I found Captain Pavlo looking back at me as he laid his launcher against the wall.

“You are a soldier now, American,” he said as he reached down to help me up.

Only now, after the adrenaline started to ease, did my hands start shaking.

He was wrong. I wasn’t a soldier yet. That time would come when things turned bad. Really bad.

We were out of almost everything. Food, medicine, water. The rats, now left with nothing to ferry and with the front line no longer so far away, found themselves in the infantry.

My PPSH, intended as a weapon of last resort for an ammo carrier, now found itself back in its Kraut-killing prime. Most of the time, I shot at the suggestion of enemy movement. But as the battle lines drew back toward our final redoubt at the Steel Works, the engagements became closer, and more than once I found myself looking directly into the face of the man I’d killed as the color drained from his cheeks.

Damn that Soviet submachine gun kicked like a bronco.

Most notably, we had run out of anti-aircraft ordnance, and the Russian Ka-52 attack helicopters roamed the skies with impunity. Often the foot soldiers were used to draw us out and reveal our positions so the choppers could come in with their cannons and rockets.

When we weren’t exchanging fire with the enemy, the rats became scavengers.

Bohdan and I had been sent to scrounge for water in one of the back alleys of the Steel Works when the air began to thrum.

We both froze, knowing that moving, much less running, would be a dead giveaway. But if the pilot were high enough, then we might just appear as two more mounds in the rubble.

No luck: the tenor of the chopper’s blades intensified as he began his attack run.

Now running was the only option left to us. Behind, approaching far faster than either of our frantic strides, cannon shells raced up the alley, the roar of exploding asphalt becoming impossibly loud.

I risked a look back to see just how little time I had left, and saw Bohdan give a final burst of speed. But it wasn’t to save himself. Instead, he bowled his shoulder into my back and sent me hurtling into a pocket between two dumpsters.

It took several moments for the stars of the impact to clear from my vision.

By then, the whirring call of death had faded into the sky. It left Bohdan splayed across the ground in its wake, his torso savaged beyond recognition. Yet his face remained intact, and his eyes somehow peered directly into mine even as he saw nothing.

That was when I became a soldier. Unable to save my friend, unable to see vengeance upon his killer, laying bloodied and beaten in some gutter. Utterly powerless.

Yet, still, somehow, alive.

I carried on in that state, my only companions now hunger, thirst, and a numbness that held the other two at arm’s length. Still, the Ukrainians continued to fight, and I with them.

The Russians, however, were content to bombard our final holdout and save their men the trouble.

In those final hours, as the last of our supplies ran out, a call traveled through the ranks for volunteers. Captain Pavlo was going to lead an attempt to break through the Russian lines and escape the stranglehold.

It was, as we all knew, suicide. The Russians had us hemmed in with armor and machine guns.

And yet, dozens stood up and shouldered their weapons. I rose with them, comforted that I would soon be free of this rat’s nest one way or the other.

That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Captain Pavlo shaking his head.

“Not you, American. This is not your land to die for. Your war is elsewhere.”

I watched as these brave men and women moved forward, knowing I would never see any of them again. Captain Pavlo, intentionally or otherwise, had broken through the haze. He had given me permission to live.

When the flurry of gunfire and explosions died away, the word quietly passed through the ranks that we were surrendering. The commanders had held the order so that Captain Pavlo and his cohort would not die in contradiction of orders.

I would never know what became of the other holdouts in the Steel Works. When we marched out under the white flag, something apparently stood out about me to one of the Russian officers.

I’ll never forget the look of delight when they found my United States Passport at the bottom of my field pack. To be honest, I’d forgotten I still had it.

The officer made sure to snap a picture with me to mark the capture. He even gave me a copy.

I’d finally gotten my selfie.

After a few days' detention inside Russia, they escorted me to an airport and tossed me onto a plane. Apparently, as bad as U.S.-Russian relations were since the invasion, the Kremlin did not want to risk an escalation in Western involvement in the war by detaining an American national.

The bastards didn’t even bother to spring for Economy Plus.

Back home, angry, isolated, and unable to sleep without Bohdan’s face appearing behind my eyelids, I had only time to reflect on what had happened those last two months.

Turns out, you’re not entitled to any of the free education, health benefits, or discounts at Denny’s if you go and fight in someone else’s war. Unemployed, I had nothing to distract myself from my dwindling bank account and the ever-present feeling that I somehow could have done more over there.

“Well,” one of my few remaining friends had said, “why don’t you try driving for Uber or something?”

It was, as they say, the spark.

I had tried things the traditional way. I had seen a job ad, I had applied, and I had gotten an offer, only to end up in a warzone with men dying all around me.

This time, I would go the non-traditional route. America was a land of opportunity. Of entrepreneurship.

Yes, I would go into business, but not with Uber. Against Uber. The food delivery scene had become stagnant with each service establishing their geographic zones and thriving on their own artificially engineered lack of competition.

The market was rife for a shakeup. But not anyone could break into this industry. Uber, DoorDash, GrubHub, and the others were more than willing to intimidate and, when threats proved not enough, eliminate threats to their established order.

But these corporate thugs were pussycats compared to the things I had seen.

Captain Pavlo had been right. My war was not in the burned-out apartments of Mariupol. That had all been a warmup.

My war was here, in the lawless streets of Arlington, Virginia.

That night, from the depths of a bottle of Evan Williams, Winchester Delivery Services rose.

That night, the war for the soul of the Arlington online food delivery business began.

###

Author’s Note: This is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Mariupol. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I also want to clarify that this story was intended to be released a lot later in the Dick Winchester adventure sequence. However, I thought it had a slim chance of winning the Mythmaker Challenge (key word “slim”), so here we are. If this was a bit of a blindside versus other Dick Winchester adventures, 1) thanks for being a fan 😊 and 2) this will be set up a lot better in the eventual anthology. Appreciate you bearing with me as we jump ahead in the order. It won’t happen again*

*Results may vary

More Dick Winchester in...

The Opening Salvo (Book 1)

1. The Box with No Name
2. The Last Word
3. The Hat Trick
4. Dick Winchester Episode 1: Gratuity Not Included
5. The Terminus — print exclusive*
6. The Fairy Tale
7. The Cop Out — print exclusive*
8. The Enlistment — you are here
9. The Cliffhanger
10. The Cliffhanger, The Prequel
11. The Cliffhanger, The Finale

*When the book is released in September 2024

The Counterattack (Book 2)

• Opening chapter: The Deflation