Free Fall (18 page)

‘What the hell are you guys doing here? Don't you know that this area is under enemy control?'

Shoe grabbed his vest from the ground and threw it at the paratrooper's feet. Looking at the bullet holes, he whistled in surprise.

Shoe shot back sarcastically:

‘Under enemy control? We had no idea . . .'

We emerged from our refuge. The paras and infantrymen went ahead, breaking through the enemy defence. I could feel my head spinning, like I was drunk. At some point, we saw a BTR pop out from a narrow road, headed towards us; on top sat Nosov and Moscow, who signalled to us not to come out into the street. We stopped by a house and hid behind a wall. The car came right to us and Nosov shouted:

‘Jump on, boys! Quick, there are still Arabs everywhere . . .'

We got on the BTR and headed off to our territory.

We powered through the streets of the city, heading for camp, passing by the ruins of half-destroyed houses that looked like the giant skeletons of prehistoric animals. One of the things that made an impression on me from the very beginning was all the rubble from the buildings. Everything around you, in war, becomes a sort of magnified image of what's going on inside you. It was like we were drowned in an inhuman violence that changed people, annihilated them, even our souls were reduced to rubble . . . I looked at the gutted houses, the collapsed walls and the burnt furniture, the photographs of people I didn't know torched and torn up, thrown aside without remorse, without any respect for memory. Anyone who experiences a war, whether fighting it or fleeing from it – either way, trying to survive – no longer has anything of his own, not even his own history.

None of us thought of the past or the future – every day was today. We were immersed in a long, single day. That's how I was, too, and by that time I'd become used to occasionally seeing toys among the ruins of houses; I didn't give them any weight, I tried to maintain the same indifference with which I observed everything I encountered along the road: burned-out cars, big cracks in the ground, broken pipes, disfigured bodies . . .

The car went on ahead, and I was lost in my thoughts. I was beginning to see the reality around me like a series of short film sequences which appeared in my mind and paused there for a moment before vanishing. We had already left the city behind; the worst was over. I felt sleep coming over me, it felt like I was falling through space, but I did everything I could not to crash. Nosov was sitting in front of us, his back against the turret of the heavy machine gun. He looked at us with a half smile on his face, he was pleased. A few armoured cars and three heavy tanks came up the road behind us: the paratroopers and explorers.

I was facing backwards, looking at the column of cars in the procession, when I heard an explosion. The ground started shaking so hard that we were all about to fall off the car – the BTR began oscillating like a sheet of paper in a gust of wind. It seemed as if everything were about to cave in.

After the first explosion, another one went off, and then another. An enormous dust cloud rose from the city, and tall flames stretched up to the sky. Soon we were hit by an unbearable wave of heat. These were the effects of the air strike. Our attack had begun.

For a second I tried to imagine what was happening back there where the cloud was: total destruction. The temperature would be so high that the armour plating on the cars would drip off, leaving only the bare chassis, as if it had been covered in liquid material. Human bodies would burn completely – afterwards, not even the bones would be left.

You couldn't even hear the airplanes, nor anything to indicate that the bombs were dropping from the sky, just a series of explosions of such force and power that all the ground around us wouldn't stop shaking. The paras counted each explosion, gleefully shouting in unison, like when people count a birthday boy's age by pulling on his ears. I felt very lucky, and it gave me goose bumps to think that we too had risked ending up beneath those bombs . . .

The car finally came to the yard of our camp, the same place we had left that morning. The sandbag-surrounded tent was still there, and the major of general command was outside, with a bulletproof vest on and a Kalashnikov in his hands. He had a lit cigarette in his teeth, and when he saw us, he rushed over to our car:

‘So you did it! My God, you're lunatics!'

He walked around the BTR looking at us one by one, as if we were objects on display in a museum. The car came to a stop and we all got out.

The infantryman sergeant approached the major and saluted:

‘Comrade Major, permission to report!'

The major stared as if he had a ghost standing in front of him:

‘Permission granted, Comrade Sergeant!'

The soldier took a deep breath and began, with a tired but firm voice:

‘I, Sergeant Lavrov, from the explorer unit of the 168th armoured infantry division, report that the unit was surrounded by enemy forces and pushed into the occupied
zone. We took defence of the perimeter, but sixty-seven soldiers, thirteen lieutenant colonels and four officers fell in battle.' He spoke these words with his lips taut, almost like he was shooting them out with a machine gun. ‘Thanks to the assistance of the saboteurs, the unit returned to the safe zone, but during the course of the operation seven soldiers fell and one was wounded. Numbering nine soldiers, the unit is now at your command.'

The major paid great attention to Lavrov's report. He looked as if he'd been listening to news about his own family. At the end he shook his hand:

‘We honour your courage, Sergeant. The whole unit displayed real . . .'

He wasn't able to finish his sentence because, on the other side of the yard, three of our infantrymen jumped out from the entrance to the building, yelling. One of them had been hit in the neck, but from the way he was moving you could tell that it wasn't serious; even if blood was gushing out the bullet must only have grazed him. Their shouting had interrupted the major, who'd been about to venture into one of those touching military speeches usually given by those who never go anywhere near the front line and are impressed by everything, placing grotesque importance on every little banality of war.

‘For fuck's sake!' the wounded man yelled. ‘What the fuck are you doing there, they're pushing us hard! Everyone over here, now, or else we're screwed!' And with some more insults as well as a nice string of expletives the soldier went back into the building. A battle was
underway. Some enemies had managed to escape the air strike and attack our line of defence. Although some had died immediately, others had pushed themselves all the way to our camp. Now, a group of Arabs – probably about fifty men – was trying desperately to get into the building under our infantry's control. They were armed with light weapons, shouting, while our explorers, with ten support tanks, exterminated everyone they encountered on their path.

The other two infantrymen went to a crate of ammo in the centre of the yard and began filling their pockets and side pouches with Kalashnikov clips. Without waiting for an official invite, we went to help them out. There was no time to tie all the clips together, so I took a few individual ones, throwing them in my trouser pockets, and I slid a couple under my jacket.

The hammer of heavy machine guns on our tanks could be heard everywhere. I saw a spray of bullets hit a small group of about fifteen men; in an instant, body parts, arms, legs flew off. Everything was soaked in blood. Our tanks continued to advance, pushing them against the building. Although the building was defended by three machine guns shooting from under the roof, a few Arabs had managed to break through the defence nonetheless, penetrating the left wing on the ground floor and landing in a large room. We all ran towards the building to give the infantry our support.

Smoke was coming out of the left wing, and long blasts of gunfire could be heard; one of our men was calling for help, others were shouting to be careful of the hallway,
because some enemies had hidden in the rooms, waiting to shoot anyone who passed by.

It was total chaos. It was impossible to tell where our men were or where theirs were. These situations are absolutely the most dangerous, because you can catch a bullet even from your own, or get trapped in gunfire from both sides, not to mention the shrapnel from hand grenades flying everywhere . . . In military slang, a situation like this is called a ‘hurricane in a box', and the likelihood of getting wounded amidst all the chaos is very high.

We went down the corridor; we had to cross it all the way to reach the room at the end. Moscow was running in front of us, with a hand grenade poised to throw. Nosov was behind him, then Zenith, with his vest unfastened, hanging off him like the armour of a medieval knight. I was running behind him. Suddenly I slipped on a piece of broken glass and fell, hitting the wall. I got up almost immediately, running again as if it were nothing, but my ankle kept getting worse.

Moscow was going past a doorway when gunfire came from the room. He fell to the ground, letting out a yell, and then the hand grenade exploded in the room. I threw myself down, hitting a wall again, while the shrapnel from the bomb flew over our heads. Usually an explosion from a hand grenade makes holes in the upper part of the walls, which are made out of brick or another light material; whereas the supporting parts, made out of cement, can better withstand the force of the explosion and repel the shards.

Moscow had a hole in his left leg. He was furious,
and from a sitting position kept shooting into the room, out of which billowed dust and smoke – you could hear cries coming from inside, a man desperately shouting something in Arabic. It was hard to listen to, it was like an animal bellowing at slaughter. Nosov went into the room; the man said something else and our captain shot him, point blank. We scrambled to get a closer look; the Arab was stretched out on the floor, still moving. His body went through one last tremor of pain, and then went still. His legs were in tatters from the shrapnel; his right arm had been blown off at the elbow. Nearby were the bodies of three more; one of them must have tried to save his friends by jumping into the bomb, and had been literally disintegrated by the explosion. Bits of his body were stuck to the walls and there was a lot of blood.

I went to the window and saw three more Arabs coming to jump inside. They were about five metres away; one of them was surprised to see me there but didn't have time to lift his rifle before I'd framed him in the sight of my Kalashnikov. Trying to bend down, he let out a howl, and right after that my bullets hit him head on; I could see bits of his flesh flying through the air. I kept shooting, I couldn't stop, and I knocked down the other two as well. I used up an entire magazine on them.

Nosov looked at me and said:

‘It's going to be a long day, boys . . .'

We went out into the hall. Moscow had got up from the ground and had resumed leading the group. He was really agitated; his leg must have hurt like hell.

Nosov yelled at him:

‘Keep up, otherwise today will be your last!'

Moscow just made a gesture of irritation, and when he got to the end of the hall he went into the room first. The situation was really bad – our infantry already had six losses. There were so many Arabs: they were shooting from the windows and then hiding, probably waiting for the right moment to burst out.

One of the infantrymen said that the enemies had reached the stairs, so we divided tasks: Zenith and I would go on reconnaissance on the upper floors while the others would fight in the room along with the infantry.

We rushed up the stairs. On the second floor, we found three soldiers dead and one seriously wounded; he was lying down and couldn't speak, blood gushed from his ears, his legs were filled with shards – a hand grenade must have exploded right next to him. As soon as we looked into the hallway to go up to the third floor, we were met by a short burst of gunfire at the top of the stairs. A round hit me in the vest and I fell to the floor. Zenith responded by firing the grenade launcher attached to his Kalashnikov. I got to my feet and moved towards the stairs, this time more carefully.

I had almost reached the stairs, when one of our soldiers opened fire with an RPG heavy grenade launcher from the opposite side of the hall. I was hit by a powerful blast of air, which lifted me up like a leaf and propelled me all the way down the hallway.

*

I was stunned, I couldn't see a thing, and everything had suddenly become mixed up in my head. Scenes that I had gone through that day and other events in the previous days were getting confused with one another. I couldn't tell which way was up – I had a whistling in my ears that kept getting louder and I could hear voices but they were very far away, as if they were behind a closed door.

When my sight returned I realised that I was lying against the wall. Five infantrymen were running towards me, while Zenith was above me, trying to lift me off the ground.

‘Cease fire, cease fire! Saboteurs, 76th division!' he yelled.

Little by little it seemed like the vertigo was fading, and the ringing in my ears had become a little more bearable.

I managed to stand up.

The infantrymen were explaining to Zenith that more enemies had reached the building and were preparing to enter. Then they turned to me, checked that I was okay and asked me if I could set up a sniper position over the left wing. I said yes, but my head was still spinning. I started walking towards the exit. Zenith went with the infantrymen to the fourth floor, where they had placed another machine gun, to check the area outside.

That whole day I went around in the midst of the battle like a ghost. I don't remember exactly what I did, I just remember that at some point someone gave me a grenade launcher and told me to shoot outside. I couldn't swear whether it actually happened or I imagined it, but in my
head I have a very clear image of lifting the grenade launcher to my shoulder, trying to find a good room to shoot from, as perhaps someone from command had ordered me to do.