Mercenary

Gunshots kept cracking behind him, but as the distance stretched out, the one-eyed enforcer found it harder to hit Gao Fei with a pistol. When Gao Fei burst out of the mouth of the alley, he turned for a glance back. Both men had come out after him, but in that brief moment he had opened a gap of more than ten meters. He swung onto the main street, not daring to pause, with no time to look back. He simply ran flat out for whatever lay ahead. He hadn't gone far when he spotted a police car. Its window was down, and he could see cops inside. As a normal Chinese citizen, running to the police when in danger was the most natural choice in the world. It didn't even require thinking. Gao Fei shouted and charged toward the police car. “Help!” The front of the car was facing him, so the cops could see him even without the shout. He threw away the folding knife in his hand without thinking, slowed down, braced both hands on the passenger-side window, and stopped there, gasping, “Save me!” The cop looked at Gao Fei, then at the two enforcers behind him, then back at Gao Fei, his expression turning very strange. Gao Fei looked at the two men chasing him as well. The gap was closing fast. The enforcers hadn't fired, but their pace hadn't slackened at all. Shouldn't men like that have turned and run the moment they saw police? Why weren't these two afraid in the slightest? Before he came, he'd heard how notoriously corrupt Moscow's police were, how they especially loved to fine Chinese people. But this was clearly no longer a matter of a simple fine. Birds of a feather. A protection umbrella. The words flashed through his mind like an electric current, and Gao Fei, who had just come to a stop, suddenly launched himself forward again. Without finishing a single sentence, he was running flat out once more. The cop in the passenger seat lunged out a hand and failed to catch Gao Fei's arm. And the enforcers behind him, in their urgency, shouted, “Grab him!” The cop in the driver's seat started the car. The police car couldn't simply reverse, because there was another car parked behind it, so it had to either swing left and turn around on the road or swing right and mount the sidewalk to chase Gao Fei. The curb was still high. The police car chose to turn around on the road, and that little bit of time let Gao Fei put a good distance behind him again. But two legs could never outrun a car. The police car caught up to Gao Fei quickly, and the situation became one where he ran along the sidewalk while the car kept pace with him one lane over. With the police car right beside him, a cop reached out of the window, pointing at Gao Fei and yelling at the top of his lungs. Behind him, the two enforcers pressed the pursuit without letup, and worst of all, the next intersection was still a long way off. It was genuinely enough to make a man despair. But just then, Gao Fei spotted two soldiers standing up ahead. Wearing camouflage uniforms and helmets, in heavy body armor, with black masks over their faces, holding AK74 rifles. Two soldiers armed to the teeth had suddenly appeared in his field of view. Yet he had no time even to feel a surge of joy before Gao Fei realized they were only two human-shaped standees. On the GG sign standing beside the standees, English letters read: Wagner Group Recruitment Office, and a huge arrow had been painted on it to point the way. A store, and soldier standees. His mind simply couldn't link the two things together, yet at the sight of those two soldier standees, Gao Fei instinctively ran straight for them. Whether it was some natural disaster or some danger, turning to soldiers for help was an almost automatic response for every Chinese person. That habit was no problem at home, but abroad it was actually quite dangerous. Gao Fei didn't slow down. He rammed the glass door open with his shoulder, charged inside, stumbled, and slammed into the desk in the middle of the recruitment office. With a loud crash, Gao Fei, having forced himself to a stop, flopped straight onto the desk. Since this recruitment office had been set up, plenty of people had gone in, but this was the first time anyone had come charging in. The man behind the desk stood up. The soldier beside him raised his rifle in alarm, and came within an inch of firing. Only an inch. If the safety hadn't still been on, the soldier would have shot right then. Gao Fei couldn't tell for a moment how many people were in the room, but he could see a soldier in Russian camouflage aiming a rifle at him. In his desperation, he sprawled across the desk and shouted, “Help!” He was panting hard, and he spoke in English, but the man standing behind the desk understood him. The man gestured for the soldier beside him to lower his weapon, then let out a breath and said, very calmly, “This is the Wagner Group's new recruit recruitment point. I'm the recruiter here. Do you want to sign up to join the Wagner Group?” “The Wagner Group?” Gao Fei caught up. The recruiter had spoken in English. He paused for a moment, then said, full of hope, “I'm in danger. There are bad men chasing me. Can I borrow a phone? Can you help me contact the embassy?” The recruiter looked at Gao Fei, then reached out and pointed behind him. “We're employees of the Wagner Group, not police, and certainly not diplomats. The police are right outside. If you need to report a crime, I can bring them in for you this instant.” Gao Fei followed the recruiter's finger with a glance back. Through the glass storefront he could see the police car already parked outside. Both cops had gotten out, but they hadn't come in right away. One had taken position at the door of the recruitment office, while the other was jogging quickly off to one side. “The Wagner Group provides all-around help and protection only to its own employees. Join the Wagner Group now, and you can have shelter immediately.” This was no hint. This was open robbery while the house burned. Gao Fei whipped his head around to stare at the recruiter, and the recruiter produced a form like a magician, slapped it down on the desk with a crack, and pushed it across, proving with his actions that he cared nothing for whatever trouble Gao Fei had run into. “All you need to do is sign here, and you join the Wagner Group right away.” He tapped a finger on the signature line and smiled. “I suggest you sign now, because the police outside are not here to protect you.” Gao Fei was no stranger to the Wagner Group. The Wagner Group was a mercenary group, and by now probably the most famous of them all. Since the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, the Wagner Group hadn't missed a single major battle. So the recruiter's attitude made sense, and for a simple reason. If Gao Fei had committed some serious crime, then handing him straight to the police outside was the obvious move. But if Gao Fei had merely run into extortion, or a brawl, or just some other trivial matter, then the Wagner Group would immediately have one more new recruit, and this recruiter would have completed a recruitment quota. No risk at all, nothing but upside. Anyone who wasn't a fool would seize a chance like this to hit his KPI. Join the Wagner Group? More precisely, join the Wagner mercenary group? No, no, no. That was out of the question. Gao Fei had come to collect a debt, not to be cannon fodder. Being taken away by the bad guys meant certain death. Being taken away by the police would end no better. But becoming a mercenary — what decent person goes off to be a mercenary? Gao Fei hesitated, while the recruiter was in no hurry whatsoever. At last, a cop slowly pushed the glass door open and walked in. Hearing the sound, Gao Fei turned to look at the cop. The cop glared at him, then immediately started jabbering in Russian at the recruiter. The recruiter nodded, then said to Gao Fei, “This officer says you committed robbery. He's taking you away now.” Robbery? Just robbery? So the cop hadn't told the truth. Or maybe the two enforcers had hidden the truth. Gao Fei said at once, “I didn't rob anyone! I ran into a human trafficking ring. There are two men outside. They want to kill me, cut out my organs, and sell them. Do you understand? They're the bad guys!” The recruiter smiled. “I'm not a police officer, so I don't care whether you robbed someone or got robbed. I only recruit soldiers. Understand?” The cop hurriedly said a few more sentences. He said quite a lot to the recruiter this time, and Gao Fei had no idea what. But from the look of it, the cop had no intention of hauling Gao Fei away by force. He seemed to be negotiating with the recruiter. It looked like the police were wary of the Wagner Group, but Gao Fei didn't know whether the recruiter would change his mind. Gao Fei picked up the contract and gave it a careful read. The contract was written in Russian and English, and the content was very simple. No questions about nationality, no questions about background, no questions about age. The contract listed no obligations, stated no responsibilities, and mentioned no sums of money. It merely confirmed that the person filling out the form was joining the fight of his own free will. Using the time it took to read the contract, Gao Fei quickly thought through his situation. Hou Yanguo had bled out from his carotid artery. He was certainly dead by now. As for that boss, he was probably dead too. If he didn't sign this contract, the police would take him away. Never mind whether the police would hand him over to those bad men — even if they took him to the station, how was he supposed to explain his actions to the Ukrainian police? How was he supposed to prove self-defense? ID card, passport, phone, money — everything was lost. If he turned to the embassy, how would he prove who he was, and how would he explain his situation? Something in what the cop said had changed the recruiter's expression. He turned to size Gao Fei up, and it was the kind of look that went from head to toe, then he seemed to grow thoughtful. Gao Fei felt his skin crawl under that look, but the recruiter suddenly said, “Shall I tell you about the pay and benefits of joining the Wagner Group? If you have no service record, we'll send you to the new recruit training camp in Krasnodar for full training, and once your training ends, you'll immediately receive a base salary of five hundred euros a month.” Five hundred euros a month? Only five hundred euros? At the current exchange rate, that was just three thousand five hundred yuan. The recruiter smiled. “But if you're a veteran, that's different. You can go straight into combat, with a base salary of one thousand euros a month.” One thousand euros came to seven thousand yuan a month. Gao Fei's expression began to turn serious. “If you have a particular specialty, and it checks out, you can get a base salary of two thousand to five thousand euros a month, and there are bonuses on top of the base pay.” Gao Fei's eyes lit up, and he couldn't help asking, “There are bonuses too?” “Yes. Base pay differs between new recruits and veterans, but the bonuses are the same. For example, ten thousand euros for knocking out a tank, five thousand for an armored vehicle, or cash rewards for performance that gets recognized. It's the same for recruits and veterans.” Gao Fei couldn't help licking his lips. He licked at the blood on his lips, not yet fully congealed, yet he couldn't taste any of it in his mouth. He owed the workers their wages. He owed the suppliers their goods payments. The bank was about to take the house. His father was already a deadbeat debtor blacklisted by the court, and he was still lying in the hospital. A minor cerebral hemorrhage, but from now on his father probably wouldn't be able to go out and earn money again. And Gao Fei couldn't think of anything he could do after going back home that would pay off all that money. After the bankruptcy he had driven for a ride-hailing service, but Gao Fei's temper wasn't suited to that line of work. He didn't indulge weird passengers, so after being complained about three times in a single month, he decisively switched to delivering food. Delivering food wasn't any better. These days there were far too many morons who thought spending a little money made them lords of creation, but delivering in a county town, the most he had ever taken home in a month was just over four thousand. He'd had no choice but to come to a foreign land to collect a debt, and not only had he failed to collect it, he had now become a criminal. When a man's life had come down to this, what was left to hesitate over? Gao Fei picked up the pen and signed an English name with a heavy hand. The instant Gao Fei finished signing, the recruiter didn't hesitate for even a moment. He pointed at the cop, then swept his hand toward the glass door and said, calm and arrogant, “He's our man now. You — get out!” The recruiter had made his choice. The cop shook his head helplessly, said nothing at all, and simply turned and walked out. Gao Fei watched the cop leave, watched the two cops meet and mutter a few words to each other, and then watched the two of them get straight into the police car and drive away. Only then did he finally let out a long breath and drop into a chair. The recruiter didn't treat driving off the police as any great feat. He still had his work to finish. Picking up a form, the recruiter said easily, “Welcome to the Wagner Group. Now I have a few questions you must answer truthfully, and then I'll send you where you fit based on your situation. First question: do you have any service record?” He had shaken off the trouble for the moment. Now he had to face a new challenge. Gao Fei had never served in the military. He had never touched a gun, had never even had the chance to see a real one up close. By all rights, Gao Fei should have started out as a new recruit. But Gao Fei said without hesitation, “I have a service record. I'm a veteran with five years in!” New recruits made five hundred euros, veterans started at one thousand, but that wasn't why Gao Fei lied. The reason Gao Fei chose to pose as a veteran was simple. Both the Russian and Ukrainian sides liked to put inexperienced recruits at the very front of the line, because forward positions got plowed flat by artillery. To guard against shelling, all they could do was dig trenches to reduce the lethality of the shells, but even with trenches, the positions were bombed over and over again by suicide drones. So whether veteran or recruit, anyone stuck on a forward position had a terrifyingly high death rate. In any war, veterans are worth far more than recruits, and positions cannot be left undefended. So the sensible move is to leave a small number of recruits on the forward positions to serve as an early warning, while placing the veterans further back, in the second line or beyond. Whether attacking or defending, it is those veterans who make the difference. The result was that during major Russia-Ukraine battles, the average survival time of a new recruit was twenty-four hours. Both Ukraine and Russia had large numbers of mercenaries, and many of those mercenaries livestreamed from the battlefield. They had leaked a great many battlefield secrets, so the correct choice was to become a veteran who could be placed in the second line, rather than a recruit used to fill the trenches. The recruiter didn't doubt Gao Fei. He ticked a box on the form, then asked the second question. “Do you have any specialty? For example, drone pilot, EOD or combat engineer, sniper, demolition man — any of those will do.” Gao Fei's specialty was an extremely rich stock of theoretical knowledge: an old-school heavyweight of the military forums, a first-rate armchair warrior, a paper-only small-arms expert, a hobbyist student of tactics — in short, a military buff. Unfortunately, that specialty couldn't be stated, and what mattered most was that nobody would accept it anyway. Gao Fei said with total confidence, “I'm an outstanding infantryman!” The recruiter shook his head. “‘Outstanding’ is an evaluation, not a specialty, so that means you have no specialty. And if you have no specialty, there's nothing more to ask. Take your registration card, and don't lose it. Next you'll be sent to the training center, where they'll register your full details, and then they'll send you where you fit. Now go wait in the break room at the back.” Gao Fei reached out to take his registration card, and just as he got hold of it, the recruiter kept his fingers on it and didn't let go. Then, with a serious face, he said, “On your criminal record, I wrote ‘none.’ If anyone at the training center asks you, say no.” Gao Fei froze for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you. You saved me, and I'm very grateful. I hope I can repay you somehow, so can you tell me your name?” The recruiter let go of the registration card and gave Gao Fei a gratified smile. “I'm Osokayev. All right, go wash your face. And whatever trouble you're in, you don't need to worry about it anymore. Relax a little. Good luck. Goodbye.”