Free Fall (12 page)

‘I've already come up with a plan, which will work one hundred per cent . . . You and your boys keep responding to the fire from the left side of the building, but don't shoot at the house next door. Actually, act like you've completely given up on that position. My guys and I will cross the street, shadowing the fence at the back of the building. We'll come through the rear, where there's the curve that goes right to the side of the house . . . If they're
there like I think they are, we'll get rid of them and go back to the main road – no doubt some of them will come after us, so your boys'll have to cover us, otherwise we'll lose our hides . . .'

The lieutenant looked at us for a second, trying to figure out if our captain was joking or not. We were already getting ready, removing all the inessentials so we could run faster, and when he saw that we were serious, the lieutenant, a spark of daring in his eyes, said:

‘Then let's do it, boys! God bless us!'

We headed out behind our captain.

Usually in city operations we were only armed with Kalashnikovs, each of us always having a couple on him. I had two rifles: a VSS, which I kept slung at my back along with five clips for a total of fifty rounds, and my trusty AKSM, which I carried by hand. This was the paratrooper assault rifle, a model with a short barrel, reinforced compensator, folding stock and dioptric sight, the one with the red dot that we jokingly called ‘Lenin's lamp'. This time, however, the operation was particularly dangerous, and Nosov had also brought along a loaded grenade launcher, plus a backpack with another three rounds. Two of our men had 7.62-calibre submachine guns.

We were all wearing light jackets, with jumpsuits underneath, trainers on our feet and no helmets on our heads, just regular beanies. Mine was grey with a pom-pom on top. The other units made fun of us, calling
us ‘bums' since we wore whatever we came across. Obviously it bothered them to have to wear uniforms; they would rather have been able to do as we did – when it was hot we could wear shorts. None of us shaved, we all had goatees or at least a few days' stubble, and we often kept our hair long. By our looks we were more likely to be taken for a group of terrorists than a unit of the Russian Army. We did it on purpose, obviously, because we often ended up going behind the line and having to blend in with the enemy, even though every so often one of our own shot at us, thinking we were Arabs.

We slowly walked across the courtyard, which the infantry was watching over. The dead bodies of enemies were left on the side of the road. We sprang over to the fence. We could hear the infantry shooting as well as the Arabs, who were attacking the left side of the building. The road made a curve that would lead us to the house, our objective.

From there, however, we could see that two hundred metres ahead, right in part of the yard where our troops were, another group of enemies was hiding behind a half-charred armoured car, shooting now and then at our soldiers.

‘Let's cross the road without firing,' Nosov said. ‘One of you cover, everyone else run.'

I positioned myself to cover the others. My comrades hunched down and sprinted almost on all fours, and when they had all reached the opposite side of the road I followed. Together we went behind the trees, and then
emerged in front of a small building, some kind of old bar, from inside which we had a clear view of the house.

We stopped in the bar to figure out whether there was movement around the house. Nothing happened for fifteen minutes; nobody came, every so often in the distance we saw enemies running over to the building occupied by the infantry. The lieutenant's men shot a few rounds at them, a few Arabs fell to the ground lifeless. A group of enemies continued moving about in a seemingly chaotic manner: they came out into the open clearly with the intention of attracting the infantry's attention, shooting blasts of fire at them almost randomly, without aiming, then going back to shelter.

The captain commented:

‘They think they've really got us – look how they're jumping around, they look like mountain goats . . .'

We kept quiet, waiting. At a certain point, however, the situation around the house changed. Two blacks, Africans, came up to the building shouting. One went inside and started kicking in all the doors. More men popped out from a road carrying a heavy machine gun and a cylinder grenade launcher, an American-made weapon. Another little group followed them, carrying the cases with the cartridges, protected by men armed only with Kalashnikovs.

The two black men almost started arguing at the entrance, without being afraid of being hit; sure they were safe behind the house. One of them motioned towards the street and was saying something, the other guy was yelling.

Nosov said:

‘Boys, at my signal . . .'

We readied our rifles, aiming at the targets. The captain settled the grenade launcher on his shoulder and went to the window. My comrades stepped away from him so they wouldn't get burned when the grenade exploded.

‘Fire!'

In an instant, the spot where the two black men had been arguing had become a hole in the pavement. Meanwhile we had taken down, one by one, almost the entire group. Not expecting an attack from our direction, those poor devils hadn't even been able to make a move. Only one volley of bullets reached us, but it went too high and immediately drowned in our fire, as violent as a hurricane.

The cases with the clips began to explode one after the other, making a racket.

‘Let's go back, before they all get here!' shouted Nosov.

We went out from the bar and ran across the main road to the building. From the third-floor windows came the volley from our machine gunners to cover the area behind us, as we had arranged earlier.

Suddenly Nosov stopped in the middle of the street, and amidst the shouts and shots of the enemy – who had seen us and was fast approaching – launched a grenade at the armoured car where the Arabs were hiding. The car blew up, then I opened fire on the enemy, and Moscow and Shoe joined in. In the meantime, Deer and Spoon had already reached the building, and together they fired from the second-floor window. Zenith had taken cover by the
building's entrance, and from there opened fire with a grenade launcher hooked to his Kalashnikov, hitting one man full on – we saw bits of his body go flying. Nosov started running again and in a moment we were all back in the building. The infantrymen were looking at us like we were crazy.

As always, our captain asked:

‘Everyone in one piece? No holes?'

We were all down on the floor, trying to catch our breath. To be able to answer Nosov, first we had to figure out what our status was, check to see if there was anyone injured or anything. A bullet had split the sole of my shoe, right at the heel. I slipped it off with my knife and showed it to the others.

‘For the love of God, Kolima, stop playing these jokes . . .' Spoon said to me, smiling, and everyone started laughing.

Just a few centimetres further up, and that bullet would have hit my ankle.

From that moment on, the battle was like a volcanic eruption. The Arabs, after having lost the machine gun and grenade launcher, were furious and started throwing themselves on our position almost hysterically, attacking repeatedly without stopping even for a second. Fortunately the infantrymen were ‘well dressed', as we would say when someone was armed to the teeth; they had three machine guns and every single hole in the wall under surveillance.

We took positions on the second floor. With two other machine guns, my comrades had emptied four
cases, ten thousand rounds, in half an hour. I took out three snipers who were trying to climb onto the roof of the nearby apartment building; one of them, before I was able to pinpoint him, had seriously wounded one of the infantry sergeants, hitting him right in the chest. Unfortunately, he died two hours later in his comrades' arms, down in the cellar where there were another seven wounded.

In the subsequent four hours, after nightfall, there was nothing to indicate the presence of live Arabs. The whole street in front of the building was filled with bodies; everywhere you looked you saw nothing but corpses. None of our men shot anymore, and you couldn't hear anything in the vicinity either.

We arranged rest shifts, while some ate and others stood guard. I was able to close my eyes for an hour or so. Hearing only the voices of the guys rehashing the details of the various battles or talking about their families, the houses they were born and grew up in, all the conversations blended together in my head . . .

When I got up I took over from Moscow, and he instantly plopped down on the empty crates of machine gun clips; he was asleep in seconds. I drank a broth made with bouillon with some dry black bread and pieces of stew from the American cans of preserved meat that our men had found on the Arabs.

Nosov was telling a story. I had missed the beginning
because I had gone out into the yard to relieve myself, but it was something about a personal experience of his in Afghanistan. Everyone was listening raptly, and he spoke gently, remembering the men who had been in that war with him, every so often adding a fond phrase like ‘May his be the kingdom of heaven' after someone's name . . .

At some point, on the road in front of the building – making a terrible noise as the bodies of the dead were swept aside – about ten armoured cars and light tanks arrived. It was our paratroopers, and they were about to make another advance into enemy-controlled territory.

They asked us to come along. We gathered our things promptly, waking Moscow and the others who were sleeping. We said a quick goodbye to the infantrymen, with whom we had fought very well. We jumped onto our BTRs and were on our way to the line of fire yet again.

The young infantry lieutenant and some other guys from his unit appeared at the third-floor window. As he had done earlier that afternoon, the lieutenant shouted:

‘Good luck, boys! May God bless you and forgive you!'

We waved goodbye, although we couldn't see them in the dark, and Spoon replied:

‘God willing, we'll see each other again, brothers!'

Our car went after the column of paras.

*

In the dark, the city looked like a cemetery. No lights, no movement – the only things visible were the yellow headlights of our armoured cars illuminating the road. The sound of our engines made us sleepy, but we had to stay awake.

I looked up and the sky seemed empty, everything seemed empty. I felt abandoned, alone, trapped in a god-forsaken place from which there was no possibility of return.

As we approached the line we could hear the sounds of the battle. The skirmish seemed really serious: heavy machine gun blasts, grenade launcher shots, tank cannon blasts . . . Our order was to be as careful as possible; we were in full battle mode. But I felt like I was going to pass out from exhaustion. After all the shooting, my head kept feeling heavier and heavier.

We had fought for two days without pause. Sometimes by ourselves, other times with the paras or infantry explorers, who didn't even have time to retreat before they had to keep up the defence in other areas. We had pushed ourselves so hard without ever really resting. Sometimes during transport we were able to get a few minutes of shuteye, just to fool our bodies into thinking they had slept a little.

Our infantry had sustained many losses; the enemy was fighting with desperation, because they knew there was no way out. The streets our cars went through were filled
with bodies, the houses were crumbling under cannon fire – in the midst of that chaos it was impossible to coordinate ourselves. The paras accidentally opened fire on the infantry units twice, killing a few of our own.

By that point the end was near; the battle for the liberation of the city was becoming increasingly fierce. You could feel the hate, fear and death in the air. Everyone was exhausted; many were overtaken by fits of rage, even the simplest of conversations became a form of violence. Everyone's nerves were at breaking point, and I was seriously on the verge of losing it.

As we were going down a road where the paratrooper assault units had just finished a battle, I saw an American-made armoured car in flames. Black smoke rose from the tyres, and the internal mechanisms made soft popping noises, like when coffee boils on the stove.

On the front of the car, on the windscreen, wire-bound to the chassis like Christ on the cross, there was a bare-chested Arab covered in blood. His face had been completely skinned: you could see the muscles and bones; the eyes, big and round, seemed made of glass. On his head he wore a blue beret with the paratroopers' insignia, and a battle knife had been stuck between his teeth, affixed to his jaw with the wire. Someone had taken a big strip of cardboard from the boxes of food rations and hung it around his neck, then used his blood to write: ‘Allah isn't great, 'cause he has no blue beret.' Beneath there were the names and nicknames of some of the paras who had fallen in the battle.

Passing that tremendous sight, the paras who were with
us in the column stood on top of the cars, removed their berets and saluted their fallen friends, shouting their beloved slogan in unison:

‘Angels in the sky, demons on the ground!'

Torturing prisoners was prohibited by military regulations, and according to the law any perpetrators of such an act were to be tried in court and at a minimum sentenced to serve in military prison. Of course, I've never heard of any of our men who had tortured or disfigured prisoners' bodies being reported or turned over to the authorities.

Once, our paras, in a town that had just been liberated, captured an Arab; after cutting off his nose and ears, they gouged out his eyes and filled the sockets with gunpowder. Not content with that, they kicked his arms until they were broken and then shot him in both heels. In that piteous state, in agony but still alive, he was left right in the middle of the main street.

Only afterwards did it come out that the Arab was a big shot – a terrorist wanted by the secret service, who had experience in the Yugoslav wars and a close network of important connections; some people even said that he had studied law at a university in the United States . . . This story quickly reached the ears of a general in central command, who went personally to the front line to track down the culprits. When the general asked the entire paratrooper division (composed of almost six hundred men, all assembled before him) who was responsible, everyone
– including officers and lieutenant colonels – stepped forward. To prevent a nationwide scandal, the general went back to command and swore never to stick his nose into the affairs that took place on the front lines . . .