ridge so he could not get through. He then thanked his men and shot
triumphal footage of them with the dead tiger, including close-ups of the
tiger’s face and teeth. Gorborukov noted the time: 12:35 p.m. Though
seriously underweight, the tiger was an otherwise impressive specimen
with huge paws and magnificent fangs. The head was enormous—in
Sasha Dvornik’s words: “as big as a basin.” Its fur was a russet brown
laid over with broad black bands; around its chest, the shaggy white of
the underbelly carried on up across its ribs. Its eyes appeared
exceptionally slanted, even for a tiger; they were set in the face at an
angle approaching forty-five degrees, and further accentuated by the
mascara-like striping that ran up from their outside corners.
Trush managed to get Schetinin on the radio, and he was told to bring
the tiger directly to the village. Schetinin wanted the people to see it in
the flesh—to know that it was dead so they would no longer be afraid. As
emaciated as the tiger was, it took all four of them to wrestle it into the
back of the Kung. Shibnev and Pionka rode in back with the body, and it
covered the floor. Trush rode in front with Gorborukov and, although he
does not smoke, he asked Gorborukov for a cigarette. “When he was
handing me the cigarette,” Trush recalled, “he said, ‘Has it finally sunk
in?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And then he noticed my trembling hands.”
It took him longer to notice that Trush was bleeding. Between his long
underwear and the heavy sukno, much of the blood had wicked away, but
eventually Gorborukov realized that the obvious rips in Trush’s clothes
had been caused by the tiger and were deeper than they appeared. Trush
had claw wounds on his back, arm, and thigh; the latter was deep, and
needed to be stitched, but they had no thread in their first-aid kit. When
they got to Sobolonye, the men applied a field dressing that was in
common use during the Afghan War, and it offers an insight into the
appalling conditions under which Russian soldiers served there. Trush
was put back together with a “herring,” a name derived from the cans
from which these improvised staples were often made. The method is
simple, if unsanitary: with a knife, slice a short strip of steel out of a
handy can; after pinching the wound together, bend the strip in half, place
it over the wound, and clamp it down. Repeat as necessary. Trush was
ron
(Ron)
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