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The School

The inside story of the 2004 attack in Beslan.

By C.J. Chivers
Esquire, June 2006, Volume 145, Issue 6
Photograph by Dmitry Beliakov

Video form the school:
http://www.esquire.com/features/video/video3q.html

On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group struck
the Russian town of Beslan. Targeting children, they took more than
eleven hundred hostages. The attack represented a horrifying
innovation in human brutality. Here, the first section of an
extraordinary accounting of the experience of terror in the age of
terrorism. The rest of the story appears in the June 2006 Esquire.

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
Chechnya and Russia's North Caucasus during a decade of war. Two were
women wearing explosive belts.

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 Russia's soldiers
rushed these rooms, their attack would be overpowering and imprecise.
He knew this because he once was a Russian soldier himself.

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?

The rest of C.J. Chivers's remarkable story appears in the June 2006
Esquire.


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