Author's Note: I felt like I needed something to do justice to the character of Irina Spalko, who is one of the more complex characters in actions flicks like Indiana Jones.
Disclaimer: I do not own Colonel Spalko. No one can own Colonel Spalko. No one!
She was, in a word, brilliant. Not the loving, radiant ball of warmth type of brilliant, but the calculated and cunning form of brilliance fueled by an insatiable hunger for knowledge that I could not help but admire. She was as cold as tempered steel, as so many years in the KGB (or any army, for that matter) would do to you. They wore you down with every death until you were numb to it all. And for someone like Colonel Spalko, who already possessed the mind of a fox, that numbness made her brilliant. She was the person who would walk away behind an explosion unscathed, not even expending the effort to turn around and watch smoke fill the sky.
The only time the mask slipped was when Colonel Dovchenko fell to the ants. There was something so grotesque about losing your life not to an army of enemy soldiers but to an army of biting ants that even our most weathered soldiers cringed. And inside Colonel Spalko, something snapped.
Anyone who looked at them knew they were close; everyone who looked carefully knew that there was no romantic interest between them. That was why they worked together so well. A goal-oriented man, Dovchenko knew that she would not let emotion get in the way of her duty and Spalko could be sure he wouldn't try to get in her pants, and thus didn't feel the need to stake out her personal space by means of martial arts. An alliance of the most brilliant sort was born then, and for a time, things ran smoothly.
Then Dovchenko died. Colonel Spalko could be overheard that evening conversing with herself, as if her partner in crime were still alive. She discussed what she would tell Dovchenko's family, as she couldn't very well say that he'd been slowly consumed by vicious South American ants on a quest for an extra-terrestrial skull. It just didn't add up. She announced to us later that the official casualties report would state that he died heroically in hand-to-hand combat, struggling to obtain the skull from Dr. Jones. No one questioned the order, but I got the feeling she almost believed the story herself, as if filing the report would erase the memories of her, dare I say, friend writhing and screaming as insects filled every hole in his body and consumed him from the inside until the sandhill closed around him. I didn't blame her. Not even the untouchable Colonel Dr. Spalko was able to wipe that image from her mind.
I wasn't there to see her die. No one was. We didn't believe it when we first got the news. How was it that such a great commander could fall so quickly and quietly? At the least, she should have gone down like a true hero of legend, in a rain of gunfire, with enough time for a good old-fashioned farewell speech. But at the time we were all simple, young recruits, and to us, Spalko had been immortalized. Her skills were unmatched, both in combat and any form of philosophical discussion that you dared engage her in. Not a speck of dust on her uniform nor a hair out of place no matter the situation she found herself in (and she had found herself in quite a few outlandish situations). To the world, she was hyper-observant. To us, she was telepathic. To the world, she was a Colonel. To us, she was a deity and simply could not die. It was impossible.
And so it was that many legends came to being surrounding her death. A few said she had been lifted off to a new life with the alien ship. Others suggested she had run off with the enemy - Jones and his family. I dismissed the latter indignantly. The Colonel was as loyal to her country as one could be after suffering so much warfare in its name. One man even said she had run off to the mountains of Peru to birth and raise the illegitimate child she had conceived with Colonel Dovchenko. Pssh. Illegitimate child my ass.
But I knew, deep down, that these men were simply unwilling to accept the casualties of war, and the plain knowledge that I had come to terms with. That the brilliant Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko was dead.
I'm debating over whether this is sad or just an observation from a soldier's eyes. But it falls more to the side of sad for me. Read and review!