The School
On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group
struck the Russian town of
SEPTEMBER 1. AFTERNOON. THE GYM. Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging
above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with
explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds.
The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life. If it
exploded, Kazbek knew, it would blast shrapnel into the heads of his wife and
two sons, and into him as well, killing them all.
Throughout the day he had memorized the bomb, down to the blue
electrical wire linking it to the network of explosives the terrorists had
strung around them hours before. Now his eyes wandered, panning the crowd of
more than eleven hundred hostages who had been seized in the morning outside
the school. The majority were children, crouched with their parents and
teachers on the basketball court. The temperature had risen with the passing
hours, and their impromptu jail had become fetid and stinking with urine and
fear. Many children had undressed. Sweat ran down their bare backs.
His eyes settled on his captors. Most of the terrorists had left
the gym for defensive positions in the main school building, leaving behind a
handful of men in athletic suits or camouflage pants. These were their guards.
They wore ammunition vests and slung Kalashnikov rifles. A few were hidden
behind ski masks, but as the temperature had risen, most had removed them,
revealing faces. They were young. Some had the bearing of experienced fighters.
Others seemed like semiliterate thugs, the sort of criminal that had radiated
from
Kazbek studied the group, committing to memory their weapons,
their behavior, their relations to one another, and the configuration of their
bombs. A diagram of their handiwork had formed in his head, an intricate map
that existed nowhere else. With it was a mental blueprint of the school, in
which he had studied as a boy. This was useful information, if he could share
it, and Kazbek thought of fleeing, hoping he might give the Special Forces
gathering outside a description of the bombs and defenses. Already Kazbek assumed
this siege would end in a fight, and he knew that when
He evaluated the options. How does my family get out?
Escape? Passivity? Resistance? His wife, Irina Dzutseva, and their sons,
Batraz, fifteen, and Atsamaz, seven, were beside him. Kazbek was a tall man
with neat dark hair and a mustache, and Batraz, who was growing tall as well,
had the hint of a beard. Kazbek had made him remove his shirt, exposing a
boyish frame. He hoped this would convince the terrorists that, unlike his
father, Batraz was not a threat, and he would not be rounded up with the men.
Kazbek's mind was engaged in this sort of agonizing calculus, trying to
determine the best way to save his children from a horror with too many
variables and too many unknowns. How best to act? Yes, he had information to
share. But even if he escaped, he thought, the terrorists might identify his
wife and sons. And then kill them. They had already shot several people,
including Ruslan Betrozov, who had done nothing more than speak. No, Kazbek
thought, he could not run. He also knew that any uprising by the hostages would
have to be swift and complete. There were few terrorists in the gym, but by
Kazbek's count at least thirty more roamed the school. How could all of these
terrorists be overcome by an unarmed crowd, especially when even before rigging
the bombs the terrorists had created an immeasurable psychological advantage?
"If any of you resists us," one had warned, "we will kill
children and leave the one who resists alive." There would be no
resistance. Who, after all, would lead it? Already the adult male captives were
dying. Many had been executed. Most of the others were in the main hall,
kneeling, hands clasped behind their heads.
Kazbek was lucky. The terrorists had overlooked him during the
last roundup. He had been spared execution.
Now his mind worked methodically. He wanted no one to see what
he planned to do. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his hand moved over the floor
to the blue wire. Kazbek was forty-three. He had been a Soviet sapper as a
younger man. He knew how bombs worked. He also knew how to disable them. The
bomb overhead was part of a simple system, an open electric circuit rigged to a
motor-vehicle battery. If the terrorists closed the circuit, current would flow
from the battery through the wires and detonate the bombs. But if Kazbek pulled
apart the wire inside its insulation, no current could flow. Then, he knew, if
the circuit snapped closed, the bomb above his family would not explode. Kazbek
had spent much of the day folding the wire back and forth, making a crimp. It
was only a matter of time.
He lifted the wire. Back and forth he folded the notch, working
it, looking directly at the men who would kill him if they knew what he was
doing. He would disconnect this bomb. It was a step. Every step counted. His
mind kept working. How does my family get out?
9:1O A.M. THE SCHOOLYARD. Morning marked a new school year at
School No. 1 in Beslan, beginning with rituals of years past. Returning
students, second through twelfth graders, had lined up in a horseshoe formation
beside the red brick building. They wore uniforms: girls in dark dresses, boys
in dark pants and white shirts. The forecast had predicted hot weather; only
the day before, the administration had pushed the schedule an hour earlier, to
the relative cool of 9:00 A.M. Students fidgeted with flowers, chocolates, and
balloons, waiting for the annual presentation, when first graders would march
before their schoolmates for the opening of their academic lives.
Zalina Levina took a seat behind the rostrum and greeted the
milling parents. Beslan is an industrial and agricultural town of about
thirty-five thousand people on the plain beneath the Caucasus ridge, part of
the Russian
The terrorists appeared as if from nowhere. A military truck
stopped near the school and men leapt from the cargo bed, firing rifles and
shouting, "Allahu akhbar!" They moved with speed and
certitude, as if every step had been rehearsed. The first few sprinted between
the formation and the schoolyard gate, blocking escape. There was almost no
resistance. Ruslan Frayev, a local man who had come with several members of his
family, drew a pistol and began to fire. He was killed.
The terrorists seemed to be everywhere. Zalina saw a man in a
mask sprinting with a rifle. Then another. And a third. Many students in the
formation had their backs to the advancing gunmen, but one side did not, and as
Zalina sat confused, those students broke and ran. The formation disintegrated.
Scores of balloons floated skyward as children released them. A cultivated
sense of order became bedlam.
Dzera Kudzayeva, seven, had been selected for a role in which
she would be carried on the shoulders of a senior and strike a bell to start
the new school year. Her father, Aslan Kudzayev, had hired Karen Mdinaradze, a
video cameraman for a nearby soccer team, to record the big day. Dzera wore a
blue dress with a white apron and had two white bows in her hair, and was on
the senior's shoulders when the terrorists arrived. They were quickly caught.
For many other hostages, recognition came slowly. Aida Archegova
thought she was in a counterterrorism drill. Beslan is roughly 950 miles south
of
He stopped. "What are you, a fool?" he said.
The terrorists herded the panicked crowd into a rear courtyard,
a place with no outlet. An attached building housed the boiler room, and Zalina
ran there with others to hide. The room had no rear exit. They were trapped.
The door opened. A man in a tracksuit stood at the entrance. "Get out or I
will start shooting," he said.
Zalina did not move. She thought she would beg for mercy. Her
granddaughter was with her, and a baby must mean a pass. She froze until only
she and Amina remained. The terrorist glared. "You need a special
invitation?" he said. "I will shoot you right here.”
Speechless with fear, she stepped out, joining a mass of people
as obedient as if they had been tamed. The terrorists had forced the crowd
against the school's brick wall and were driving it through a door. The people
could not file in quickly enough, and the men broke windows and handed children
in. Already there seemed to be dozens of the terrorists. They lined the hall,
redirecting the people into the gym. "We are from
As the hostages filed onto the basketball court, more terrorists
came in. One fired into the ceiling. "Everybody be silent!" he said.
"You have been taken hostage. Calm down. Stop the panic and nobody will be
hurt. We are going to issue our demands, and if the demands are implemented, we
will let the children out.”
Rules were laid down. There would be no talking without
permission. All speech would be in Russian, not Ossetian, so the terrorists
could understand it, too. The hostages would turn in their cell phones,
cameras, and video cameras. Any effort to resist would be met with mass
executions, including of women and children.
When the terrorist had finished, Ruslan Betrozov, a father who
had brought his two sons to class, stood and translated the instructions into
Ossetian. He was a serious man, forty-four years old and with a controlled
demeanor. The terrorists let him speak. When he stopped, one approached.
"Are you finished?" he asked. "Have you said everything
you want to say?"
Betrozov nodded. The terrorist shot him in the head.
9:20 A.M. THE ADMINISTRATOR'S OFFICE . Irina Dzutseva, Kazbek
Misikov's wife, huddled near the desk, embracing Atsamaz, her first-grade son.
Atsamaz was quiet and waiflike but dressed like a gentleman in black suit and
white shirt. Irina could feel his fear. They hid amid papers and textbooks,
listening to the long corridor. Doors were being opened, then slammed. They
heard gunshots. Atsamaz clung to a balloon. "Where are Papa and
Batik?" he asked. "Were they killed?”
The first graders and their parents had been standing at the
main entrance and were among the first to see the attack. Irina had turned back
into the school and bolted down the corridor as the shooting began, charging
down the hall in high heels, pulling her son by his hand. She heard screams and
a window shatter. Glass tinkled on the floor. The corridor was long and still;
their footfalls echoed as they passed each door, the entrance to the gym, the
cafeteria, and the restrooms. At the end of the hall they rushed upstairs to
the auditorium and crouched behind the maroon curtain on the stage with other
mothers and students. Balloons were taped to the ceiling. Posters decorated the
wall. Behind the curtain was a door, and they pushed in and settled into an
office packed with books. Short Stories by Russian Writers. Methods of
Teaching. Literature 5. Irina looked at the others: four adults and six
children. They were cut off and could only guess at what was happening outside.
They sat in the stillness, waiting to be saved.
After about half an hour, someone pushed against the door. A
child called out hopefully: "Are you ours?”
The door swung open. Three terrorists stood before them, beards
hanging beneath masks. "God forbid that we are yours," one said, and
the group was marched down to the gym with terrorists firing rifles into the
ceiling.
In the gym they encountered a scene beyond their imagination.
Almost the entire student body had been taken captive, a mass of distraught
human life trapped as if it were under a box. Children's cries filled the air.
The gym was roughly twenty-eight yards long by fifteen yards wide, and its
longer sides each had a bank of four windows, ten feet by ten feet, with panes
made from opaque plastic. Light came in as a glow. A wide streak of blood
marked the area where Betrozov's corpse had been dragged. Irina hurried with
Atsamaz to the far corner and found Batraz, her older son. She understood that
their lives would be leveraged in a test of wills against the Kremlin. Hope
rested with negotiations, or with
Two young women wearing explosive belts roamed the wooden floor,
wraithlike figures dressed in black, their faces hidden by veils. Irina
shuddered.
Two terrorists entered the room with backpacks and began
unloading equipment: wire and cable on wooden spools, bombs of different sizes,
including several made from plastic soda bottles and two rectangular charges,
each the size of a briefcase. With pliers and wire cutters, they set to work,
assembling the components into a system. Their plans became clear. Many of the
small bombs would be daisy-chained together and hoisted above the crowd, and a
line of larger explosives would be set on the floor. The hanging bombs served
two purposes: They were a source of mass fear, forcing obedience from the
hostages underneath. And elevation ensured that if the bombs were to explode,
they would blast shrapnel down from above, allowing for no cover. Virtually
everyone would be struck by the nuts, bolts, ball bearings, and nails packed
inside. The terrorists assigned the tallest hostages, including Kazbek, who is
six foot three, to lift the bombs. The choice of suspension showed malign
ingenuity: They strung cables from one basketball hoop to the other, dangling
the bombs on hooks. Kazbek realized the terrorists had inside information. Not
only had they planned the basketball hoops into their design, but the cables
and wires were precut to size, as if they knew the dimensions before they
arrived. The bombs were a custom fit.
The weight of the rig at first caused bombs to sag near the
children's heads. "Do not touch them," a terrorist warned, and then
instructed Kazbek and others to pull the slack out of the system. The network
was raised higher, higher, and then nearly taut, until the deadly web was up
and out of reach. Kazbek assessed the trap: It was like a string of Christmas
lights, except where each bulb would go was a suspended bomb. A terrorist stood
on the trigger, and the system was connected to a battery. If the triggerman
were to release his foot, Kazbek knew, the circuit would close. Electricity
would flow. The bombs would explode.
AFTERNOON. THE MAIN HALL. Aslan Kudzayev carried a chair through
the long blue hall under the watch of his guards. He was hurrying through his
tasks. He had been put in a work gang the terrorists formed from adult male
hostages and ordered to barricade the classroom windows. The terrorists worried
that Russian Special Forces would attack. The hostages proved to be a useful
labor pool. Aslan wore white pants, a white shirt, and white shoes. He was
thirty-three and lanky, with short brown hair. As he lugged the chair, a
terrorist with a bandaged arm pointed a Makarov 9mm pistol in his face. Aslan
stopped. "You have short hair," the terrorist said. "You are a
cop.”
Aslan shook his head. "No," he said. "No.”
The terrorist told him to empty his pockets, and Aslan showed
him a wallet, money, and keys. He owned a building-supply store. Nothing about
him said cop. The terrorist signaled him to return to work.
Once the windows were blocked, the men were ordered to sit in
the hall, hands behind their heads. By now the terrorists were emerging as
individuals; the hostages were forming a sense of their captors. There were the
leaders and the led, and the led were organized into teams. Some specialized in
explosives. Others were jailers, controlling the hostages in the gym. The
largest group was in the main building: a platoon preparing to fight off a
Russian assault. They had come with packs of food, coffee, and candy, as well
as sleeping bags, gas masks, and first-aid kits. Each had a rifle and wore a
vest bulging with ammunition. Some had hand grenades. A few had 40mm grenade
launchers mounted under their rifle barrels.
Aslan began to understand their command structure. All of them
deferred to a light-footed and muscular man with a bushy reddish beard whom
they called the Colonel. He paced the corridor with a cocky strut, his shaved
head topped with a black skullcap, exuding the dark charisma of the captain of
a pirate sloop. He was charged with energy and power and seemed fired with
glee. Beneath him were midlevel commanders, including a Slav who used the name
Abdullah and had pointed the pistol at Aslan's face. Aslan grudgingly marveled
at their discipline and skill. They had taken the school, laced it with bombs,
and made it a bunker in half a day. Say what you want about these bastards,
but they are not stupid, he thought. They know what to do.
He and two other hostages were ordered to their feet and taken
down the hall to the library, where they were given axes and picks and told to
tear up the floorboards. Aslan wondered whether the terrorists had a cache of
weapons under the planks, but he could see nothing in the hole he made and was
led back to sit. Captive in the corridor, growing tired and cramped, Aslan
realized he had come to the end of his life. He fell to reverie. Slowly he
reviewed the things that made him what he had been: his marriage, the birth of
his two daughters, the success of his business. He felt regret that he had not
yet had a son. An Ossetian was supposed to have a son. Now and then he was
startled by nearby rifle fire, but he could not tell where it came from. He
returned to daydreaming. He thought: What will they say at my funeral?
EARLY AFTERNOON. THE GYM. The terrorist was sick of Larisa
Kudziyeva. She had been shouting, even after they had ordered everyone to be
quiet. She was lean and beautiful in a quintessentially
"I refused to kneel," he said.
Now she leaned over a bleeding man, struggling to save him. Her
daughter was enrolled at a medical academy. "You are a future
doctor,"
"What do I do?”
"There is no way to save him," Madina said. "His
artery is damaged. He needs an operation.”
"I need bandages," she said.
"Are you the bravest person here, or the smartest?" he
said. "We will check. "His voice turned sharp: " Stand up!”
Bolloyev grabbed her shirt. "Do not go," he said.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
He ordered her to kneel. "No," she said.
For this Bolloyev had been shot. "I told you," he
said. "Get on your knees."
"No," she said.
For a moment they faced each other, the terrorist and the
mother, locked in mental battle. She looked into his mask; freckles were
visible near his eyes. A hush fell over the gym. The hostages had seen
Betrozov's murder. Now came
Bolloyev propped himself on an elbow.
The terrorist paused. Thinking quickly, she tried to convince
him that Ossetians were not enemies of Chechens, a difficult task, given that
enmity between Ossetians, a Christian people with a history of fidelity to
"Not our wives and children," the terrorist said.
"They are the spawn of Kadyrov."
The word stung. Kadyrov—the surname of former rebels who
aligned with
"This guy wants to execute me because I asked for water and
bandages for the wounded," she said. Abdullah studied the two: his young
gunman, the woman who stared him down.
"There is nothing for you here," he said. "Go
back and sit down and shut up.”
She pointed to his bloodied arm. "Your arm is
bandaged," she said. "Give me some of those bandages.”
"You did not understand me?" he said. "There is
nothing for you here. Go back and sit down and shut up.”
AFTERNOON. THE GYM. Zalina Levina could not console her
granddaughter, Amina, and did not know what to do. She had stripped the pink
skirt and red shirt from the toddler's sweaty skin. It was not enough. Amina
cried on, filling Zalina with dread. The terrorists had grown more irritable,
and their threats were multiplying. "Shut your bastards up or I will calm them
down fast," one had said. Zalina worried the child would be shot.
Zalina knew
Now Amina kept crying and Zalina's anxiety grew. There seemed no
reason for hope. The terrorists were demanding a withdrawal of federal troops
from
As they waited, the hostages were miserable in the heat. The gym
was too crowded to allow for much movement, which forced them to take turns
extending their legs. Others leaned back-to-back. The terrorists gave little
relief. Sometimes they made everyone display their hands on their heads,
fingers upright, like rabbit ears. Other times, when the gym became noisy with
crying children, they selected a hostage to stand, then warned everyone: Shut
up or he will be shot. But silence, like a federal withdrawal, was an almost
impossible demand. Children can stay quiet for only so long.
Amina cried and cried. I have to save this child, Zalina
thought. She opened her dress and placed a nipple under Amina's nose. Zalina
was forty-one years old and not the toddler's mother. But she thought that
maybe Amina was young enough, and a warm nipple familiar enough, that any
nipple, even her dry nipple, would provide comfort. Naked and sweaty, Amina
took the breast. She began to suck. Her breathing slowed. Her body relaxed. She
fell asleep. Be still, Zalina thought. Be still.
AFTERNOON. THE GYM. Larisa Kudziyeva's defiance made her known
to her captors, and in the hours after she was nearly shot, she noticed a
terrorist staring at her. He was not wearing a mask and often turned his eyes
toward her. He was just less than six feet tall, thick-armed and meticulous,
possessing a seriousness the other terrorists seemed to respect. His camouflage
pants were pressed. His black boots were laced tight. He had a freshly trimmed
beard and eyes that lacked some of the bloodlust evident in the others.
Her anger had not subsided. She had kept working on Bolloyev,
pressing rags to his wound. Each came away soaked. The blood grew sticky and
spoiled in the heat;
As Bolloyev faded, pallid and shivering, Abdullah ordered him
dragged away. "Where are you taking him?"
"To the hospital," he said.
She knew it was not true, and fumed. Later, as the temperature
soared, she took a group of children to the bathroom. Returning, she sat beside
the one who stared. There was a connection here. She intended to use it.
"You are probably the only person who can tell us something
about our fate," she said.
He looked at her, up close for the first time. She had washed
away Bolloyev's blood. "You will stay here until the last federal troops
leave
"That is not a one-day matter," she said
"Once negotiations start, you will have everything,"
he said. "Food. Water. Everything.”
He sat with his rifle and phone, an underground fighter who had
stepped into view. Men like this lived in
"Ali," he said. It was not a name common to the
mountains.
"Is that a name or a nickname?”
"I see you are a wise woman," he said.
"Answer the question," she said. "A man should
have a name. This is what differentiates him from an animal.”
"It is a nickname," he said. "Now I am Ali. In
the previous time, I was Baisangur."
"And your real name?" she said.
"I no longer need it," he said. "There is not a
person left alive who can call me by my name.”
Baisangur—a legendary Chechen warrior who had
fought
Yes, once he had been Baisangur, and before that he used his
real name. But years ago, Ali said, as
"You do not need to know it," he said. "You do
not know what is happening in
SHORTLY AFTER DAWN.
Short of the capital, the terrain becomes steep and scarred with
artillery trenches, from which Russian batteries long ago fired their barrages.
The city beyond these hills is a ruin, a warren of rubble and shattered
buildings in which many of the remaining inhabitants camp in the wreckage of
their homes. In the annals of recent conflict, few places have seen such a
multiplicity of horrors and then fallen so swiftly from the public discourse.
After
No matter those moments of military success, the Chechens'
separatist urges have led nearly to their destruction.
Whatever the merits of the conventional portrait of the Chechen
rebel, war and rackets warped many of them out of popular form, leading them to
lives of thuggery and organized crime.
Spurred by Prime Minister Putin, who was soon to become
president,
No verified casualty counts exist for the wars, but all agree
the human toll has been vast, ranging from tens of thousands of Chechens killed
to more than two hundred thousand. Setting aside the numbers, the years of
violence and atrocities made clear that as public policy, little could be less
wise than extensive killing in
The war that did not exist continued. Unable to defend
Terrorism had been part of the separatists' struggle since
before the first war. Basayev's debut was as an airplane hijacker in 1991; mass
hostage-taking began in 1995. But as death tolls rose and separatists were
driven further underground, more turned to terrorism, then suicide terrorism.
The rebels destroyed
A nationalist turned nihilist, Basayev made clear he thought
Russian civilians were fair targets. After scores of hostages died at the
theater in
Blood meets blood. Such were the rules in Basayev's war. And
this time he was not sending terrorists to a theater. He had ordered them to a
school.
EVENING. THE EXECUTION ROOM. Sometime after 5:00 P.M., while
sitting in the hall with other male hostages, Aslan Kudzayev overheard the
terrorists listening to the news on a radio. The announcer was discussing the
siege, and Aslan understood that the world knew the students of Beslan were
hostages. It was his first taste of the outside world since the siege had
enveloped them, and it gave him a vague sense that they would be helped.
A few minutes later the Colonel appeared and ordered him and
Albert Sidakov, another hostage, down the hall. Their walk ended in a
literature classroom on the second floor, where eight dead men, broken by
bullets, lay in a pool of blood. A portrait of Vladimir Mayakovsky, the
revolutionary poet, hung on the far wall, which had been chipped by bullet
impacts. Aslan understood. Throughout the day, men had been led off in small
groups. Those who had not returned had been taken here and shot. As he and the
others had sat downstairs, fingers interlocked behind their necks, the
terrorists had realized the job of fortifying the school was done. Male
hostages had become expendable. They were being culled.
"Open the window and throw these corpses out," the
Colonel said.
Aslan and Albert lifted the first body to the sill and shoved it
out. They moved to the next. So this is how Aslan would spend the last minutes
of his life: When the eighth body was pushed onto the grass, he knew, he and
Albert would be shot. Time was short. He glanced around the room. The Colonel
was gone. A lone terrorist guarded them. Aslan assumed the terrorists would not
throw out the bodies themselves, for fear of snipers. He and Albert were
valuable for a few minutes more. They pushed out two more of the bullet-riddled
men, including one who seemed to still be alive. Aslan leaned and pretended to
retch.
The terrorist had removed the magazine from his Kalashnikov and
was reloading it, round by round. "Let's jump out the window," Aslan
whispered to Albert.
Albert was silent. "Let's jump," he whispered again.
"How?"Albert said, looking overwhelmed.
Aslan realized that if he was going to leap, he was going to
leap alone. Their guard's rifle was unloaded. This was it. He bent to another
corpse, then rushed toward the bloody sill. He hit in a push-up position and
propelled himself out. The drop was eighteen feet, and he descended and slammed
onto the bodies in a crouch. A bone in his foot popped. He rolled toward the
school wall, reducing the angle the terrorist would have to fire at him, and
began crawling away from the window. He worried the terrorist would drop a
grenade. Gunfire sounded.
The terrorist's mask appeared in the window. The wall was nearly
two feet thick, making it difficult for him to fire near the foundation without
leaning far. He opted to try. His barrel blasted. Bullets thudded near Aslan.
Bits of soil and grass jumped beside him. He scurried to the building's corner.
Before him was a parking lot. He crawled on, putting cars between him and the
window. The terrorist did not know where he was and fired into several cars,
searching.
Aslan heard shouts. At the edge of nearby buildings, local men
with the police and soldiers waved him to safety. He was so close, but an
instant from death. The police had been told that if they harmed a terrorist,
hostages would be executed in return. They held their fire. More bullets struck
cars. A soldier threw a smoke grenade, hoping to obscure the terrorist's line
of sight. It sent up a plume, which drifted the wrong way. Someone threw another,
and a third, and a cloud rose between Aslan and his tormentor. He crawled with
all of his speed and reached a railroad ditch in front of the school. He rolled
in and lay still on the dirt. His white outfit was covered with grass stains
and blood. Aslan was out. His wife, two daughters, and mother-in-law were still
inside.
EVENING. THE MAIN HALL AND EXECUTION ROOM. Karen Mdinaradze was
not supposed to be here. He kneeled in the hall, his nose near the plaster,
hands behind his head. Male hostages were lined up the same way to his right.
To his left was a thin older man. Beyond him stood a shahidka, keeping
watch.
Karen's luck was worse than bad. He was not a resident of
Beslan. He was a videographer, hired to videotape Aslan's daughter Dzera during
her role as bell ringer. He had not wanted the job, but Aslan persisted, and
finally Karen gave in. He had been framing the girl in his viewfinder when the
terrorists arrived. So far he was untouched, but he suffered a banal
affliction. Karen was highly allergic to pollen, and many children had come to
school with flowers and had carried them to the gym when they were captured,
surrounding him with irritants. His eyes had reddened. His breathing was short.
He felt luck running down. At about 3:00 P.M. a terrorist ordered him to the
hall. Although he looked strong—he was built like a wrestler—his allergies
drained him. Fatigue settled over him with the arrival of dusk.
The woman near him exploded.
There had been no warning. One second she was standing there, a
veiled woman in black. The next she was not, having been torn apart in a
roaring flash. The explosives cut her to pieces, throwing her head and legs
into the geography classroom. Much of her flesh splashed along the walls.
Shrapnel and heat shot out from the belt, striking the men in the corridor as
well as another terrorist who guarded them, who was knocked to the floor. The
other shahidka was also pierced with shrapnel. She fell, blood running
from her nose. Karen felt heat and debris smack his left side. His left eye
went dim. But the older man between him and the shahidka had absorbed
much of the shrapnel, creating a shadow in which Karen was spared the worst. He
was briefly unconscious, but came to, slumped forward against the wall. He
thought he was dying and traced his palms along his face and head. His eyelid
was torn, and he had shrapnel in his face and left calf. Heat had seared his
salt-and-pepper hair, making it feel like brittle wire. Someone handed him a
handkerchief and he wiped his face, pulling out plaster. "If I die, tell
my mother and wife I love them very much," he told the man.
He surveyed the gruesome space. The thin man beside him, who had
shielded him, breathed fitfully. His hips and legs faced the wrong direction,
as if his lower spine had spun around. Karen knew he was in the last minutes of
life. The injured terrorist had been set on a door removed from its hinges, and
Abdullah knelt beside him, reading in Arabic in the lilting rhythm of prayer.
Someone produced a syringe. The terrorist was given an injection, became still,
and was carried away. After a few minutes a terrorist addressed the wounded.
"Go to the second floor and we will provide you medical assistance,"
he said.
Karen stood with those who were able and limped upstairs to the
Russian-literature classroom, and saw dead hostages piled on the floor. The
injured men were given an order: "Lie down."
Their lives ended in an instant. A masked terrorist stepped
forward, shouted, "Allahu akhbar!" and fired bursts from
fifteen feet away, sweeping his barrel back and forth. The air filled with
their cries and the thwacks of bullets hitting heavy flesh. The men rolled and
thrashed. Errant bullets pounded the wall. At last the hostages were
motionless, and the terrorist released the trigger. He pulled a chair to the
door and straddled it with the hot barrel resting in front of him. He was
listening. A moan rose from the pile. He fired again.
He remained for a few minutes, watching, listening. The room
fell still. The night was warm. He rose and walked away.
NIGHT. THE
Although the main Beslan police station was practically next to
the school, its officers had not mustered a coordinated effort to aid the women
and children. Federal soldiers from the 58th Army in Vladikavkaz,
Just beyond the window from which Aslan Kudzayev had leapt,
within earshot of the executions, a vigil had formed. Relatives massed at the
NIGHT. THE EXECUTION ROOM. Karen Mdinaradze lay in the spreading
pool of blood. It was dark. The room was quiet. The terrorist had fired without
taking precise aim, relying on the automatic rifle to cut through the pile of
men, and had missed one man. As bullets killed everyone around Karen, he fell
behind a man who must have weighed 285 pounds. This man had been struck. Karen
was not. He survived his own execution. After his executioner walked away, he
lost sense of time. He saw the chair in the doorway and the open window and
wanted to leap out. But he heard footsteps and was afraid.
In time the terrorist returned with two more hostages and
ordered them to dump the bodies. Corpse by corpse they lifted the dead to the
sill and shoved them out. The pile grew on the grass below. Three corpses
remained when they came to Karen. He did not know what to do. He assumed the
two men would be shot when their task was done and assumed he would be shot if
he was discovered alive. But he knew he could not be thrown out the window; the
drop was eighteen feet. The men bent to lift him. He felt a pair of hands clasp
behind his neck and hands tighten on his ankles. He rolled forward and stood.
The men gasped. Karen rocked on his feet.
The terrorist told Karen to come near and stared at him, eyes
moving under his mask as he surveyed his intact frame. "You walk under
Allah," he said.
"Now throw out the rest of the corpses and I will tell you
what to do next.”
Two bodies remained, including that of the heavy man behind whom
Karen had fallen. He lifted him by the belt as the other two took the legs and
head and pushed him out. Another terrorist appeared, and the two captors
pointed excitedly; Karen realized they had decided not to kill him. The three
hostages were ordered downstairs to wash, then led to the gym.
Karen sat. His head was cut and bruised, his left eye blinded,
his clothes drenched in blood. A woman near him whispered—"Did they hit
you with a rifle butt?”—and he passed out.
SEPTEMBER 2ND. BEFORE DAWN. THE BATHROOM. Zalina Levina rose at
midnight. Rain was falling. Many of the children slept. The terrorists had not
granted bathroom privileges for hours, but now the gym was quieter, and she
wanted to try again. The bathroom was not lined with bombs; she thought she
might hide with her granddaughter there. None of the terrorists stopped her,
and she carried Amina into the room and sat. Her neighbor Fatima Tskayeva was
already there, cradling her baby, Alyona, as rain pattered outside.
Whispering in the darkness,
Under a desk stacked in the barricade she saw a lump of dried
chewing gum. Zalina peeled it free, rolled it into a ball, and put it in her
mouth. Slowly she worked it between her teeth, softening it with saliva. A
faint taste of sugar spread on her tongue. It was food. She kept pressing and
rolling it between her teeth, restoring it to something like what it had been.
The gum absorbed more saliva and softened. It was ready. She plucked it from
her lips and fed it to the toddler in her arms.
MORNING. THE GYM. The Colonel stormed onto the court.
Negotiations, he said, were failing.
For these reasons, he said, he had announced a strike. There
would be no more water and no food for the hostages. Bathroom privileges had
ceased. The terrorists had told
Abdullah pulled aside Larisa Kudziyeva, the commanding presence
in a gym full of fear. He wanted to know who she was. A Chechen, or perhaps a
member of another of the Islamic mountain people in the
"Do you have your passport with you?" he asked.
"Why should I bring my passport to a school?" she
said.
"Are you Ingush?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"What is your last name?”
"Kudziyeva.”
He studied her black clothes. "Why are you dressed like
that?" he asked.
"It is how I choose," she said. Her defiance was
almost reflexive.
Abdullah proceeded with his offer. The shahidkas were
dead, but an explosive belt remained. This hostage, who could look into her
executioner's barrel without flinching, was a candidate to wear it.
"We will release your children, and if you have relatives,
we will release them, too," he said. "But for this you will have to
put on a suicide belt and a veil and become one of our suicide bombers.”
"Yesterday your soldiers tried to storm the building and
they died," he said. It was a lie.
"I am afraid I may spoil everything—I am not a
Muslim," she said. "How much time do I have to decide?"
"You have time," he said. "Sit down and think.”
She returned to her children. The women nearby were curious. The
temperature had risen again. The crowd was weak. "What did he want?"
a woman asked.
AFTERNOON. THE GYM. Kazbek Misikov felt the wire separate
between his fingers. His task was done: Inside its insulation, the wire had
broken. But chance contact, he knew, might still allow a spark to jump across,
and he needed to be sure the two ends could not meet incidentally. This
required a finishing touch, and Kazbek grasped the blue plastic on either side
of the crimp and stretched it like licorice, putting distance between the
severed ends inside.
Now a new problem presented itself. Stretching the plastic had
turned it a whitish blue. The defect was obvious. The terrorists had inspected
the wires and bombs several times, and if they checked again, they would
discover his subterfuge.
He felt a surge of worry. He and his wife had made it this far
and had agreed on a plan: If the Russians attacked, Irina would help Batraz,
their older son, and Kazbek would help Atsamaz, their first grader. Atsamaz was
exhausted and dehydrated. Kazbek often looked into his eyes, and at times they
seemed switched off. But he had found a way to keep him going. Other adults had
whispered that it was possible to drink small amounts of urine. Kazbek had
collected their pee. "I want a Coke," Atsamaz had said when told to
drink it.
"After we leave, I will buy you a case of Coke,"
Kazbek said. The boy drank.
Now Kazbek had put them in fresh danger and would have to take
another risk. When a terrorist strolled past him, he addressed him politely.
"This wire lies across the passage," he said. "They are tripping
on it. Neither you nor we need these to explode."
"What can be done?" the terrorist said.
"If we had a nail, the wire could be hung," Kazbek
said.
The terrorist returned with a hammer and spike. Kazbek stood and
drove the spike into the wall. He lifted the wire from the floor and laid a few
turns around the shank, taking care to wrap with the whitish-blue section. He
put a wooden spool on the spike and pressed it tight. The severed portion of
wire was hidden. Kazbek had succeeded. He sat back with his family beneath the
disconnected bomb.
AFTERNOON. THE BATHROOM. Zalina Levina and Fatima Tskayeva hid
in the bathroom with their small children. Hours passed; more breast-feeding mothers
with babies pushed in, seeking relief from the heat. The place became a
nursery.
Abdullah passed by and taunted them. "Maybe we have
something to tell you," he said.
Zalina's mind whirled. Who was coming?
At about 3:00 P.M., a new man passed the door. He was tall and
well built, with a thick mustache and graying hair. He wore a clean gray sport
coat. They recognized him at once: Ruslan Aushev, the former president of
Ingushetia, a republic bordering
Zalina felt hope. Aushev! she thought. We will be let
go! Applause sounded in the gym. Aushev stopped before them. A terrorist
pointed in.
"Here are the women with breast-fed children," he
said.
"Do you know who I am?" Aushev asked.
"Of course," a mother said. He turned and left. The
women rose, holding their babies, shaking with anticipation. They had been captives
for more than thirty hours, without food, with little water, and with no sleep.
There had been shooting and explosions. Their babies could take no more. Soon
they might start to die. Abdullah stood at the door. "We will release
you," he said. "But if you point out our photographs to the police,
we will know immediately, and we will kill fifty hostages. It will be on your
conscience.”
"Now," he said, "one breast-fed child with one
woman." He motioned for them to go.
"Let me take all of my children," she pleaded,
reminding Abdullah of her two others, including Kristina, with the weak heart.
"You helped her yourself," she said. "Let us all go.”
"No," he said.
"Let my children out. I will stay.”
"No.”
Abdullah's anger flashed. "I told you, bitch, no," he
said. "Now I am not releasing anyone because of you."
He looked at the other women. "Everyone back to the
gym," he said. Panic flowed through Zalina. Sweeping up her granddaughter,
she stepped past Abdullah.
Rather than turning left for the gym, she turned right, toward
the main school. She had decided. I am leaving, she thought. Let them
shoot me in the back.
Another terrorist blocked her. "Where are you going?"
he said.
She tilted her head at Abdullah. "He allowed me," she
said, and brushed past. The main hall was a few yards away. The walk seemed a
kilometer. Zalina passed through the door and saw Aushev by the exit at the end
of the hall. She moved toward him. He waved her on.
Zalina walked barefoot in quick strides, Amina's cheek tight to
her own. Her heart pounded. Would she be shot? She did not look back. The
corridor was littered with bits of glass. She did not feel it nicking her feet.
Behind her the other women followed. A chain of mothers and babies was making
its way out, twenty-six people in all.
Zalina focused on the door. She passed Aushev, who stood with
the Colonel. "Thank you very much," she said. The exit was barricaded
with tables, and a terrorist slid them aside and opened the door. Air tumbled
in, and light. She stepped out.
Behind her in the corridor, Fatima Tskayeva wailed as she
carried Alyona, her infant. She could not go any more. Sobbing, she handed the
baby to a terrorist in a black T-shirt and mask. She had two more children
here. She had decided to stay. The terrorist carried Alyona down the hall to
Aushev and handed him the child.
Outside, Zalina rushed Amina past the place where the assembly
had been the day before. Discarded flowers were on the ground. A man shouted
from a roof.
"There are snipers," he said. "Run!”
The line of women followed, and together they approached the
perimeter. An aid station was waiting with medicine, food, and water. Zalina
knew nothing of it. She trotted for her apartment, which was inside the
perimeter, reached the entrance, climbed the stairs, and stood at her door. She
had no key. She banged. It had been a mistake to bring Amina to school. It had
been a mistake to have been taken hostage. But the terrorists had mistaken her
for a breast-feeding mother. It was their mistake that she was out. They were
free. Amina was alive. Who had a key? She descended the stairs to the entrance.
Four Russian troops approached.
"Give me the child," one said, extending his arms.
Amina saw their camouflage and began to howl. "Do not touch her,"
Zalina snapped. "No one will touch her."
EVENING. THE GYM. Karen Mdinaradze slipped in and out of
consciousness. Once he awoke to see a woman over him, fanning him, another time
to find children cleaning his wound with a cloth soaked in urine. He awoke
again. A teenaged girl thrust an empty plastic bottle to him and asked him to
urinate in it.
"Turn your eyes away," he said, and he pressed the
bottle against himself and slowly peed. He finished and handed the bottle back.
The girl and her friends thanked him and quickly poured drops to wash their
faces. Then each sipped from the bottle, passing it among themselves, and
returned it to him. Karen's dehydration was advanced; his throat burned. He
poured a gulp of the warm liquid into his mouth and across his tongue, letting
it pool around his epiglottis. The moisture alleviated some of the pain. He
swallowed.
He looked at the bottle. A bit remained. A very old woman in a
scarf was gesturing to him, asking for her turn. He passed the bottle on.
SEPTEMBER 3RD. PAST MIDNIGHT. THE WEIGHT ROOM. Irina Naldikoyeva
picked her way by the hostages dozing on the floor. Her daughter, Alana, was
feverish. The 0gym was connected to a small weight-lifting room, which had
become an informal infirmary. Irina asked permission from a terrorist to move
Alana there. He nodded, and she carried the drowsy child and laid her on the
room's cool floor. Perhaps fifty people rested in the space, mostly children
and elderly hostages.
A water pipe was leaking, and, unsolicited, a small boy came to
them and gave Alana a cup of water. She drank thirstily and lay down. Gradually
her breathing slowed and deepened. She drifted to sleep. Irina returned to the
gym, retrieved her son, and placed him beside his sister.
After several hours caressing the children, Irina dozed off, the
first time since they were taken hostage that she had slept. Her father appeared.
He had died several months earlier, but his face hovered before her, an
apparition with gray hair. He did not speak. Nor did she. They looked into each
other's eyes.
After perhaps twenty minutes, she woke. Her father, Timofey
Naldikoyev, had been a gentle man, quiet and kind. She had never dreamed of him
before. She wondered: What does it mean?
MORNING. THE GYM. Forty-eight hours after the hostages had been
taken captive, the survivors were sliding to despair. They were beginning their
third day without food, and their second without water. Almost all had slept
only in snatches through two nights. They were dehydrated, filthy, weak, and
drained by fear. They slumped against one another and the walls. The terrorists
seemed tired, too, frayed and aware that their demands were being ignored. They
had become nastier and drove the hostages out of the weight room to the gym,
shoving some with rifles.
As the sun climbed and the temperature again began to rise, the
two terrorists who specialized in explosives roamed the court. Their explosives
were arranged in at least two circuits—the more visible one connecting the
hanging bombs. A second circuit wired together a string of bombs on the floor,
including two large bombs. The terrorists moved this second chain near one of
the walls. Irina Naldikoyeva watched, struggling to stay alert. She was
massaging her son, waiting for a sign.
MINUTES AFTER 1:00 P.M. THE GYM. The explosion was a
thunderclap, a flash of energy and heat, shaking the gym. Twenty-two seconds later
a second blast rocked the gym again. Their combined force was ferocious.
Together they blew open the structure, throwing out the plastic windows,
splattering the walls with shrapnel, and heaving people and human remains
through the room. One of the blasts punched a seventy-eight-inch-wide hole
through a brick wall twenty-five inches thick, cascading bricks and mortar onto
the lawn. It also lifted the roof and rafters above the hole, snapping open a
corner of the building like a clam before gravity slammed the roof back down.
Much of the ceiling fell onto the hostages below.
Scores of hostages were killed outright. Their remains were
heaped near the fresh hole and scattered across the basketball court. But most
survived, hundreds of people in various states of injury. At first they hardly
moved. Many were knocked senseless. Some were paralyzed by fright. Others,
worried about another blast, pressed to the floor. At last they began to stir,
and escape.
Dzera Kudzayeva, the first-grade girl who was to have been the
bell ringer, had been near the blast that knocked out the wall. She had been
asleep under her grandmother, Tina Dudiyeva, whose body had seemed to rise
above her with the shock wave. The child stood now, and seeing sunlight through
the hole, she scampered out, over the shattered bricks and onto the lawn. She
began to run. She had arrived on Wednesday in a dress with a white apron and
ribbons; she left now in only panties, filthy, streaked in blood, sprinting.
She crossed the open courtyard and lot and came to the soldiers who ringed the
school. She was free. The sound of automatic weapons began to rise.
The hole was only one route. The pressure of the explosions had
thrown the windowpanes clear of their frames, exposing the room to light and
air. The hostages reacted instinctually. A desperate scramble began. The sills
were a little more than four feet above the floor, and throughout the room many
of those who were not badly injured rushed to the sills, pulled themselves up,
and dropped out to the ground.
Karen Mdinaradze had been unconscious on the floor and had not
been struck by shrapnel. He woke, heard moaning, and found himself surrounded
by gore. Human remains had rained down; two girls near him were covered by a
rope of intestine. He saw people hurdling the windows, mustered his energy,
stumbled to the sill, and followed them out.
He landed in the courtyard and ran in a panicked human herd. A
mother weaved in front, pulling her small boy. Bullets snapped overhead. They
dashed across the courtyard toward the far corner, following those in front
toward a gap in the fence. The mother went down. Her son stopped.
"Mama!" he screamed. Karen bent and scooped the boy with his right
hand as he ran past, pulling him tight like a loose ball. He charged for the
fence opening and passed through it and out of the line of fire. Beside him was
a small metal garage. He placed the boy inside. The mother ran around the
corner. She had not been shot. She had stumbled. She fell atop her boy,
sobbing. Soldiers, police officers, and local men were hunched and running
toward them; Karen stumbled on, one-eyed and bloody, until a man hooked an arm
under him and steered him down the street to an ambulance, which drove him
away.
The first rush of escapes was over. Back in the gym, Aida
Archegova had been leaning against the wall opposite a large bomb and had been
stunned by the explosions. A piece of ceiling had fallen on her. She woke to
glimpse her older son, Arsen, eleven, scrambling out. She recognized him by his
blue briefs, which she had folded dozens of times. She did not see her younger
boy. She pushed aside the ceiling and scanned the room. Where is Soslan?
Gunfire boomed. A terrorist stood at the door, shouting. "Those who are
alive and want to live, move to the center of the gym," he said.
Aida picked her way through the corpses and mortally injured,
looking for Soslan. He was not among them. A boy about four years old told her
he was looking for his brother. She took his hand and led him to the door and
told him to wait. Another boy approached her, and a girl about twelve. "I
am scared," the boy said. The girl said her sister was dying. Bullets
zipped through the gym, the tracers glowing red, smacking walls. "Lie down
here and wait," she said. "You may be killed.”
Terrorists clustered in the hall, and Abdullah approached and
ordered the hostages to follow. They formed a line, and he led them down the
long hall to the cafeteria, a light-blue room where perhaps forty hostages were
sitting or lying on the floor. Terrorists ducked behind barricades at the
windows, firing out. Buckets of water rested on the table, with cookies and
salted cabbage. The children took bowls and dipped them. Some drank six or
seven bowls, unable to slake their thirst, and then began to eat with their
hands.
Abdullah ordered the women to the windows. "Put the
children there as well," he said. Aida froze. Bullets buzzed and popped
through the air, pecking the brick facade, pocking the plaster walls. "If
children are there, then they will not shoot and you will be safe,"
Abdullah said.
Six large windows faced the front of the school, each with steel
bars, which prevented escape. Aida stepped to a middle window, lifted a boy who
appeared to be about seven, and laid him on the sill. She took her place beside
him. She made a highly visible target, her black hair falling on a red blouse.
Her feet were on broken glass. The Russians were advancing. Abdullah ordered
her to shout to them. She found a piece of curtain and held it through the
bars, waving it. Other mothers were being used the same way. Beside her, Lora
Karkuzashvili, a waitress at a local restaurant, frantically waved a strip of
cloth. They were human shields. "Do not shoot!" the women screamed.
"Do not shoot!"
1:10 P.M. THE GYM AND THE WEIGHT ROOM. Atsamaz stood over his
unconscious father. "Papa!" he shouted. "Papa!”
His father, Kazbek, was stunned. Inside his haze he heard the
boy and remembered his agreement with his wife. He was to get Atsamaz out. He
opened his eyes. The bomb overhead had not exploded. It still hung there. He
saw Atsamaz and looked for his wife, Irina, crawling to Batraz, their older
son, who was curled lifelessly on the floor. She rolled him over.
"Batik!" she screamed.
Both of her eardrums had been ruptured, making even her own
voice seem muffled. "Batik!" she shouted. He did not move. He was
wearing only black pants. Blood ran from his left knee. "Batik!”
Batraz stirred. Irina cradled him, urging him toward alertness.
The survivors were in motion. At the opposite wall, children
were going out the window, using the body of a fat old woman as a step. One by
one they scrambled over the corpse, becoming silhouettes in the window frame,
and then were gone. Tracers zipped in; Kazbek worried his family would be shot.
He wrapped Atsamaz with his arms and lurched to the weight room.
Putting Atsamaz down, he saw that the boy was covered in someone else's blood.
Kazbek inspected himself. A chunk of his left forearm was gone, as if it had
been cut away with a sharp scoop. Blood pulsed from the wound. His right arm
was injured, too; a bullet, he thought, must have passed through it.
He felt weak. If he were to keep bleeding like this, he knew, he
did not have much time. He pulled a bright orange curtain toward him, made bandages,
and tried to stop his bleeding. His head was injured, too, with cuts and burns.
After dressing his arms, he tied a piece across his scalp, making a garish
turban, and sat down. There were three windows, each covered with bars. They
were trapped.
About a dozen hostages were in the room, including Larisa
Kudziyeva and her family, and Sarmat, Vadim Bolloyev's small son.
"No, it is yours," he said.
Ibragim disconnected a bomb at the doorway and rested it on the
floor. "Make sure the children do not touch it," he said to her, and
left.
The terrorists had staged equipment in the weight room, and
"At this moment I am as good as your mother," she
said. "Sit. Eat."
Kazbek was slumped on a wrestling mat, fighting for
consciousness. His bandages were soaked. Shooting roared at the windows. He
knew Russian soldiers were closing in. Soon they will be tossing grenades
through windows, he thought, and then asking who is inside. His wife was
nearby. Blood ran from her ears. A bone in her neck had been cracked. The
building shook from explosions, and he was falling asleep. He saw Irina's face,
her soft cheeks and warm brown eyes. It was beautiful.
"Do not die!" she said.
1:25. THE GYM. Irina Naldikoyeva had been lying among corpses
for at least twenty minutes, covering her son, Kazbek. Her niece, Vika
Dzutseva, fifteen, was beside her, in a sleeveless blue dress, with Alana.
Flames were spreading in the ceiling. The children wore only soiled briefs.
The children had been asleep on the floor at the moment of the
first explosion, and were protected. But the first blast sent shrapnel into
Irina's leg; the second sent more metal into her neck and jaw. She was
light-headed and unsure what to do. Helicopters thumped overhead. She worried
one would be disabled and slam into the gym. She had watched other hostages
being led away and was wary of following the terrorists, but was running out of
choices. The gym was afire.
Abdullah entered, looking for survivors. "Those who are
alive, stand and go to the cafeteria," he shouted. His eyes met Irina's. This
means you.
She took Kazbek by his hand and told Vika to take Alana, and
they made their way to him. Broken bodies were packed in a wide arc around the
hole in the wall, so many that Irina and Vika had trouble finding places to put
down their feet. Several times they had to lift the children over the tangle.
In the main hall Vika collapsed with Alana, but a terrorist
drove Irina on to the cafeteria, where she looked in and saw bloodied hostages
and terrorists firing through the windows. Her instinct was to hide. She kept
moving, heading upstairs to the auditorium and slipping behind the maroon
curtain on the stage. Perhaps twenty hostages were there. A girl came to Irina,
tore off a piece of her black skirt, and bandaged her leg. Irina held Kazbek
and waited. Bullets pecked against the school's outer walls.
BEFORE 2:00 P.M. THE COACH'S OFFICE. With so many armed
terrorists inside, School No. 1 was difficult for rescuers and the Special
Forces to approach, especially because they had been caught unprepared. At the
moment of the first explosion, two T-72 tanks had been parked with engines off
on
Along the uneven perimeter, held by a disorganized mix of
Ossetian police officers, traffic cops, conscript soldiers, local men with
rifles, and Special Forces teams, disorder and confusion reigned. Some men were
ordered to advance, while men beside them were ordered to hold their fire.
Gradually, however, a sense that the final battle had begun took hold, and the
men moved forward. Volleys of bullets smacked into the school, kicking up red
dust. Litter bearers followed.
After an hour the Russians were pressing near the gym, and the
volume of their fire, coming from so many directions, had begun to reduce the
terrorists' numbers and push them out from many rooms. Several terrorists were
injured, and others were dead. The gym, with flames crackling on its ceiling,
had become untenable to defend. The terrorists were making a stand in the
cafeteria, where the windows had iron bars.
For this they wanted hostages as shields, and Ibragim returned
to the weight room to retrieve the group hiding there. He was a dark-haired
young man, appearing younger than twenty-five, wearing a T-shirt and an
ammunition vest. He entered the room and shouted at the hostages on the floor.
Kazbek was there, wrapped in orange bandages, looking near death. Others looked
capable of walking out. "Those who want to live, come," he shouted.
No one complied.
"Get the people out!" he shouted. "The ceiling is
on fire.”
"You leave,"
"The roof will collapse," he said.
Ibragim forced them on, mustering more hostages he found alive
on the floor. At the far end of the gym, he directed them to the coach's
office, where he looked out the window to see what he could of the Russian
advance. When he turned, Ivan Kanidi lunged.
Ivan was seventy-four years old, but he retained the muscularity
of a lifelong athlete. He seized Ibragim's rifle with two thick hands, trying
to rip it from his grasp. The rifle barrel swung wildly as they struggled and
spun. "Get the children out!" Ivan shouted.
"Let go, old man, or I will kill you!" Ibragim
snarled.
Back and forth they fought, pushing and pulling each other
around the room by the rifle. Basketballs and other sports equipment littered
the floor. After what seemed a minute, Ivan fell backward with the rifle in his
hands. He was a nimble man, big-chested but lean, with a finely trimmed gray
mustache. Before he could turn the rifle, Ibragim drew a pistol and shot him in
the chest. He was motionless. Ibragim leaned down, retrieved his rifle from the
dead man's hands, and looked at the group. "Everybody out," he said.
They began the walk to the cafeteria. Kira Guldayeva, a
grandmother Ibragim had rousted from the gym, was suspicious, and when Ibragim
looked away, she pulled her grandson, Georgy, six, into a classroom. Larisa and
Madina remained under Ibragim's control, arriving at the cafeteria under his
escort.
The place was a horror. Each element of the siege—from the
capture of the children to the enforced conditions of their captivity among the
bombs to the murders of their fathers and teachers in the literature classroom
to the explosions that ripped apart people by the score—had been a descent
deeper into cruelty, violence, and near-paralyzing fear. Now they had reached
the worst. Women stood at windows, screaming and waving white cloths. Bullets
struck the walls. Dust and smoke hung in the air. Glass covered the floor, much
of it splattered with blood. The room stunk of gunpowder, rotting food, and
sweat. Terrorists raced through the haze, bearded, whooping, firing, and
yelling instructions.
JUST AFTER 2:00 P.M. THE WEIGHT ROOM. Kazbek Misikov tried to
focus. He had fainted from blood loss, but Atsamaz revived him by dumping water
on his face. He knew he had to rally himself. Roughly a dozen hostages remained
in the weight room, but only three were adults, and he was the only man. Heat and
orange glow emanated from the gym. Sounds of battle boomed outside. They were
in a seam, forgotten but alive.
The barred windows offered no escape. Irina found paper and made
a sign with red lipstick. DETI, it read, Russian for
"children." She held it up at a window so they would not be shot.
Kazbek staggered beside her, put his head at the window, where it was exposed.
"There are children here!" he shouted. "Do not shoot!”
He was wearing a bloody turban and wondered if he would be
mistaken for an Arab. Peering into the narrow alley, he saw the district
prosecutor looking back. They both were startled. "Alan!"Kazbek said.
The prosecutor rushed to the window. "What can we do?"
he said.
He was accompanied by a man with a rifle, and Kazbek asked him
to aim at the door, in case a terrorist returned. He was weak but managed to
lift a barbell and pass it between the bars. The men outside used it as a lever
and popped the frame free. An escape route was open. Irina started handing out
children: First the little ones, and then the adults helped her with a badly
burned teenage girl. When the last child was out, the adults followed.
The Misikovs emerged behind the school. Soldiers passed them
going the other way, rushing to penetrate the building through the hole they
had made. The fire in the gym roof, which had spread slowly, was now a
conflagration. Smoke rose over the neighborhood. Kazbek moved woozily to a
stretcher, lay down, and slipped out of consciousness.
The children were handed from rescuer to rescuer in a chain.
Atsamaz was passed along with the others until he ended up in the arms of
Slavik, his uncle, a face he knew in the chaos. Slavik embraced him. Atsamaz
realized he had been saved. He clung to the man. "Papa promised me I could
have a Coke," he said.
AFTER 2:00 P.M. THE CAFETERIA. Less than fifteen minutes after
Irina Naldikoyeva and her son found refuge in the auditorium, the terrorists
forced them downstairs to the cafeteria and its tableau of misery. Hostages
crowded the room, partially dressed, soiled, riddled with shrapnel, shot,
burned, dehydrated, and stunned. Irina saw her niece, Vika, slumped beneath a
window, her long black hair matted with sweat. "Where is Alana?" she
asked.
"Here," Vika said, pointing to a child, naked except
for dirty panties, curled under a table.
Bullets were coming in from the Russians firing outside. Irina
grabbed her children and scrambled with them along the floor, stopping against
a large freezer, panting. A terrorist handed her a bucket of water, and she tilted
it and gave each child a drink. They gulped voraciously. At last it was her
turn, and she put the bucket to her lips, poured the cool water onto her
tongue, eager for it to hit her parched throat. But instead the water splashed
onto her floral blouse. Irina did not understand and reached under her chin and
felt the place where shrapnel had passed through. The bottom of her mouth was
an open hole. Blood and water soaked her torso. She put the bucket aside.
Around her were at least six dead children, and she knew this
place was not safe. She crawled to the dish-washing room, pushed the children
under the sinks, and lay her body across them. Bullets kept coming. Some
skipped off window frames or iron bars and whirred by, ricochets. One plunked
the sink above her son.
A terrorist was on his back on the floor, motionless with his
mouth open, showing gold teeth. His head had been bandaged. In the cupboards
along the floor were more small children, hiding with pots and pans. The
terrorist stood and lurched back to fight. On the other side of the door, Lora
Karkuzashvili stood at a window. Aida Archegova was to her right. Abdullah was
ducking and shooting, moving between them. Ibragim was in the corner, firing
through the bars, his arms streaked in blood. Volleys of bullets came back in.
Lora was struck in the chest, dropped, and did not move. Aida was standing,
shouting and waving a cloth. A boy sat beside her, exposed. "Do not
shoot!" Aida screamed.
Aida had been at the window for at least twenty minutes; somehow
the bullets missed her and the child. She did not know his name; only once had
he spoken. "I do not want to die," he said. Every chance she had, she
put him on the floor. Always Abdullah told her to put him back. But Abdullah
looked away again, and Aida swung the boy off the sill and placed him under a
table. She stood upright and felt a tremendous slap on the left side of her
face. The impact spun her head. Much of her jaw was gone. She had been hit. She
looked at Abdullah, who was using her for cover. "May I sit now?" she
tried to ask. "I am bad.”
"I do not care if you are bad or good," he said.
"Stand if you want to live.”
She was dizzy. There was an explosion. Aida fell.
Everyone was wounded, cowering, or dead. A creaking and rumbling
sounded outside, and the turret of a T-72 tank appeared near the fence
bordering the school grounds. Its barrel flashed. There was a concussive boom.
The entire facade shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. The shell had struck
another room.
MIDAFTERNOON. THE GYM. Pushed away by flame, sniper fire, and
charging infantry, the terrorists yielded the gym. The place in which they had
confined more than eleven hundred people, the pen with its matrix of bombs, was
no longer theirs. Flames rolled along its ceiling and roof. Beneath the fire,
on the basketball court, corpses and gravely injured hostages were spread
across the floorboards, partially dressed or nearly naked, twisted into
unnatural shapes. Heat seared the room.
For a long time almost no one moved, but at last Marina
Kanukova, a first-grade teacher who had been feigning death with a third-grade
girl, stirred. The heat had become too much, and she had heard a soldier's
voice telling those who were alive to crawl to safety. The bodies were too
thick to crawl over, so she took the child by the hand, crouched, and with
flames roaring overhead they stepped across the dead to the weight room, where
they were met by soldiers and local men, who directed them out a window. Behind
her, bit by bit, coals and the flaming roof were dropping onto the injured and
the dead. The air filled with smells of burning plastic and roasting hair and
flesh.
Flanked by the Special Forces, a BTR-80 had arrived on the gym's
western side. An eight-wheeled armored vehicle with a 14.5mm machine gun on a
turret, it rolled toward the door where the hostages had first been forced into
the school, its gun firing as it advanced, and rammed the wall and windows.
Soldiers and local men climbed into the bathroom and freed a
group of screaming, terrified hostages, many slicked in blood and shit. Teams
of soldiers pushed into the school. The Russians were inside at last,
possessing opposite ends of the gym. Their storm had come late. On the
basketball court, burning bodies were before them by the score.
MIDAFTERNOON. THE CAFETERIA. The survivors slumped in the corner
by the dish-washing room, perhaps twenty-five people crammed in a tiny space.
Still the bullets kept coming. A crash sounded along the outside wall; they
noticed that the iron bars on the window in the left corner were gone. Three
Russian commandos climbed in.
They were a fit and nimble trio, carrying rifles and wearing
body armor and helmets. They stood among the dead and the injured, weapons
ready, blood, broken glass, and spent shells around their feet. One of them
bled from his hand. "Where are the bastards?" one whispered.
A door to the storerooms swung open. Ibragim was there.
Simultaneously, the commandos and the terrorist opened fire over the hostages.
Ibragim stepped aside, then reappeared, holding two hand grenades. Bullets hit
him as he let them go.
Time seemed to slow.
Larisa Kudziyeva watched one of the grenades, a smooth metal
oval about the size of a lime, as it passed over her, fell to the floor, and
bounced off the kitchen tile toward the soldiers. Her son was beneath her and
her daughter beside her. She squeezed the boy, threw her leg and arm over him,
and swung her other hand over her daughter's face.
A hand grenade is a small explosive charge surrounded by a metal
shell, whose detonation is controlled by a fuse with a few-second delay. When
the charge explodes, it shatters the metal exterior, turning it into bits of
shrapnel that rush away at thousands of feet per second, accompanied by a shock
wave and heat. It can kill a man fifteen yards away. The nook was less than six
yards across.
The grenade exploded.
After the wave of metal hit her, Larisa was encased in something
like silence, a state in which the absence of sound was overlaid by the ringing
in her ears, leaving her to feel an effect like a struck crystal glass. How
easy it is to die, she thought. But she did not die, not immediately, and
as if in a dream she ran an arm over her son, who was beneath her. He was
alive. "Mama," he said. "Mamochka.”
The shrapnel had blasted the right side of her face, tearing
part of it off, and ruined her right arm.
Her daughter crawled to her. A teacher beside
"We will take care of her," a soldier said.
Madina picked up her little brother, handed him out the window
to a man outside. The man helped her down, too, and the brother and sister ran
out into the neighborhood. They were saved.
Inside the dish-washing room, Irina Naldikoyeva had felt the
wall shake, but she remained on top of her children, holding them down, unsure
what had happened. There were two doors into the tiny room, and after a few
minutes a man's head appeared along the floor at one of them. It was a
commando, crawling. He wore a helmet. His face was sweaty. Irina understood:
Russians were inside. The children hiding with the pots understood, too. The
cupboard doors flew open and they scuttled out and bounded past him, looking
for a way out.
Irina followed with Kazbek and Alana, out the door, past the
mangled corpses, to the window. She handed out the children and then shinnied
down. She was out, in autumnal air, standing on grass. She walked unsteadily
and turned the corner at the first house on
She sat for a long time, afraid the terrorists might return and
wondering when the rescuers might reach them. "Stay here," she told
the boy, and crept to the door.
A Russian soldier stood across the hall. They appraised each
other, two faces in the chaos. He dashed toward her.
As he crossed the open, gunfire boomed. A bullet slammed into
his head. He staggered into the room, dropped his rifle, grasped for his
helmet, and collapsed. He did not move. His dropped rifle pointed at Kira and
Georgy; she pushed it away with a board.
Another soldier followed him in and leaned against the wall. He
was injured, too. "Lie down," he said to them, and began applying a
bandage to his leg. A microphone hung at his throat, into which he spoke in
clipped tones. More soldiers entered. The school was falling under Russian
control.
They put Kira and Georgy on stretchers, and she was handed
through a window. Litter bearers ran with her, tripped, and dropped her to the
ground. "Where is the boy?" she screamed. "Where is the
boy?"
LATE AFTERNOON. THE CAFETERIA. Larisa Kudziyeva awoke, unsure
how much time she had spent on the floor. The hostages near her were all dead.
She tried to move, but her right arm felt as if someone were atop it.
Much of her face was gone; soldiers stepped past her as if she
were a corpse. They seemed calmer, having for the moment taken control of the
room. One stood above her, a blurry form. She raised her left hand to wipe
blood from her eyes. He glanced down, surprised.
"Girl, be patient," he said. "They will bring
stretchers.”
His voice sounded kind. If he can call me girl when I look
like this, she thought, then I can wait. She drifted to sleep.
LATE NIGHT. A HOSPITAL ROOM IN VLADIKVKAZ Nikolai Albegov arrived
at the door and surveyed his son's wife. He was sixty-six, a retired truck
driver, fidgeting where he stood. The thin frame of Irina Naldikoyeva, his
daughter-in-law, was extended on the bed. Her head and her neck were wrapped in
gauze. She was foggy from painkillers. An IV snaked into her arm.
Throughout Beslan and Vladikavkaz a fresh horror was descending.
The morgue in Beslan was overflowing, and bodies were laid on the grass.
Vladikavkaz's morgue also had a growing display of corpses waiting to be claimed.
The dashes out of the school, and the rescues, had been so spontaneous and
disorganized that many families were not sure whether their spouses and
children had survived. The families also heard of blackened remains encased on
the basketball court under the collapsed roof. The living roamed among the
dead, peering at the unclaimed, looking for their own.
Nikolai's family had been spared this. For nine years Irina had
lived in his home. She had borne the family a son and a daughter and performed
much of the daily labor. Nikolai kept one of the most traditional households in
Beslan, and under the mountain customs he observed, he was the khozyain,
the elder of his domain. Irina was not allowed to address him. Shehad never
spoken to him unless he had asked her a question. They had never embraced.
He stood at the door in a suit, a leathery, strong-handed old
man in his very best clothes, assessing the woman who had come into his home.
He did not yet know what had happened in the school. But she had brought his
family out. Tears ran down his dark face. He walked to her bed, found a spot on
her face where there was no bandage, and gave her a kiss.
SEPTEMBER 4. EVENING. A HOSPITAL IN VLADIKAVKAZ. The doctor
assessed Larisa Kudziyeva. Twice they had operated on her, but she had remained
in a coma. Shrapnel had cut too many holes through her; blood transfusions
leaked out. Her blood pressure had sunk. She was near death. The hospital was
overwhelmed with patients, and at last Larisa was triaged. Nurses washed her
and put a tag on her toe.
But Larisa Kudziyeva would not die, and hours later another
doctor found her alive where she had been left for dead. Early on September 4
she was put back on an operating table. Much of her eye socket was gone. The
right side of her face was mashed. Her right arm was shredded and broken in
three places. Her middle finger was snapped. Her side had absorbed a shock wave
and shrapnel blast. But the metal had missed her main arteries and her right
lung. She stabilized before sunrise.
Now she was awake, barely. The surgeon questioned her, running
through a simple neurological exam.
"What is your birthday?" he asked.
"The fourteenth," she said.
"What month?”
"May," she said. It was true. But it was not.
"No, forget that day," the doctor said. "Your
birthday is September fourth."
EPILOGUE. The Beslan siege claimed a greater toll of human life
than all but one act of modern terrorism, the destruction of the World Trade
Center. The terrorists' actions and the bungled rescue efforts ended with the
deaths of 331 people, not counting the 31 terrorists the Russian government
says were killed. Among the dead were 186 children and 10 members of Russia's
Special Forces, whose individual acts of courage were undermined by the
incompetence of their government's counterterrorism response. More than seven
hundred other people were injured, most of them children.
The siege ended with no victor. Faith in Russia's government,
and the ability of its security agencies to protect its citizens, has been
shaken. Sympathy for Chechen independence has shrunk. Even some of Chechnya's
separatist fighters, men claiming loyalty to Shamil Basayev, have questioned
the utility and rationale of such tactics, although the underground rebel
government, unwisely, has not distanced itself from Basayev, who was appointed
its first deputy prime minister in 2005. His retention of such a post, no
matter his earlier guerrilla prowess, discredits the separatists and is grounds
for shame.
The Russian and North Ossetian parliaments have opened
investigations into the terrorist act, which thus far have led to inconclusive
findings and drawn accusations of cover-ups from survivors and the bereaved.
Official lies have eroded public confidence, including the insistence during the
siege that only 354 hostages were seized, and an enduring insistence that the
T-72 tanks did not fire until all the survivors were out, which is false. It
remains unclear, and a source of acrimonious debate, what caused the first two
explosions and the fire in the gym, although the available evidence, on
balance, suggests that the blast damage and the majority of the human injury
were caused by the terrorists' bombs. There is similar uncertainty about the
reason behind the explosion of the shahidka. Other points of contention
include what help, if any, the terrorists received from inside Beslan, whether
the terrorists hid weapons in the school before the attack, how many terrorists
were present, and whether several of them escaped. A third of the dead terrorists
have not been publicly identified, and their names are officially unknown.
Ibragim was killed; this is clear. But many hostages, including Larisa
Kudziyeva and Kazbek Misikov, have studied the known pictures of the dead
terrorists and insist that Ali, previously known as Baisangur, and others were
not among the dead and were not seen on the last day of the siege.
Almost all of the surviving hostages remain in
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