Three Russian energy experts and their Iraqi interpreter, who was driving, were going by jeep to Latifiya, fifty kilometres south of Baghdad, morning May 10. Another car, three unmasked men in it, passed the jeep soon after it left Al Mahmudiyah, and sharply dropped pace for the Russians' jeep to catch up. The men opened stormy automatic fire as soon as it did.
Alexei Konorev, in the back seat, died on the spot. His body protected the others, in the front seat, from the bullets, which riddled the car sides and back. The fire did not get Meshcheryakov and Alexander Gordienko by sheer miracle.
When the jeep stopped with bullet-pierced tires, the survivors made a dart for a roadside village, whose scared people refused to let them in. The pursuers were shooting to kill. Hiding behind a village house, the fugitives saw they were doomed, exposed in the desert.
With a light wound, the Iraqi determined to face the bandits, and try to persuade them to spare his companions. The pursuers appeared taken aback as they heard they were after Russians. They let the interpreter go, and ordered the two others to get into their car.
"They took us half an hour's drive away," Alexander Gordienko joined in the interview. "They had fallen on us by mistake, and would soon release us, our captors told us the same night. We were treated rather decently-if that's the word for captives, with armed men all around. Many fighters were quite young kids." Alexander looks forward to coming home near Stavropol, in European Russia's south, to rejoin his pregnant wife.
As for Andrei, he is too rundown to make plans. "I must have a shower and change from these rags of mine-and then, we'll see," he said.
