Free Fall (21 page)

‘I realised too late that I had stood up right in front of the machine gun, but that bastard had hidden himself well . . . For a second I thought I was going to die . . . If it weren't for Nosov I wouldn't be here to tell the story.'

‘You should go on making war, not love . . .' Zenith joked.

They both broke out in quiet laughter, so as not to wake the others.

I turned onto my side and put my hood over my head. I couldn't sleep but at the same time I didn't want to get out of bed. Deer was sitting in a corner, and he was eating a piece of dry bread, his teeth making a noise as if he were chewing on pebbles. I turned again, took a deep breath, then closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, but sleep didn't want to come.

Eventually I decided to get up and go outside to relieve myself. I opened the barracks door and looked at the desert of dirt and mud in front of me. The rain was coming down so hard and heavy it seemed like I had a wall of water in front of me. Without giving it a second thought, I pissed directly from the doorway. Right at that moment an officer wearing a rain poncho appeared out of nowhere and gave me the dirtiest look. Indifferent, I went on emptying my bladder, pretending not to see him. He yelled at me:

‘Soldier! Call Nosov over, now – they're expecting him at the colonel's office! All the camp officers are already there, he's the only one left!'

I went to wake up our captain, who was still sleeping in the same position we had left him in. I bumped him with my shoulder and told him that the colonel was waiting for him. Nosov asked what time it was, then with his eyes still half closed, groped around for his rifle. Deer had left it on the floor, at a safe distance from the bed, and I passed it to him.

Nosov stood up and pulled a bag out from under his bunk. He opened it, took out a rain poncho and put it on. He went up to the table and took the canteen with the vodka. He took three gulps, resolute, then he looked at me with seriousness and said:

‘Enough with the drinking. Prepare for action. Check the ammo and weapons. There are rain ponchos for everyone in here, get them out. They'll be sending us into the mountains soon . . .'

After these words, he left with the officer, who had been standing by the front door the entire time.

We just looked at one another in silence for a while, as if it seemed impossible that they really were sending us on an operation after all.

Moscow, biting off the thread he was using to sew his jacket, took a deep breath and then said:

‘Yep, looks like our vacation's over . . .'

About an hour later, someone knocked on our door. Deer went to open it and found a group of infantry explorers in front of him. Their lieutenant asked:

‘Captain Nosov's saboteurs? 76th division?'

Moscow replied in a light, almost ironic tone:

‘Yep, that's us . . . Something bad happen?'

The lieutenant looked confident. He smiled at Moscow, and, entering the barracks like an actor would take to the stage, he said:

‘For the moment nothing particular has happened, Comrade Private . . . but I think that soon all hell's going to break loose . . .'

Each of us stopped doing whatever he was doing and went over to the lieutenant to hear his explanation. He signalled for his men to come in while Deer went to put the water on to make tea.

The explorers were already prepared for the mission; they were kitted out with vests, weapons, rain ponchos. In the week following our army helicopter's mysterious accident, they had combed every inch of the surrounding mountains, informing our troops about the enemy's presence and watching every move that appeared remotely suspect.

At Nosov's request, they had brought each of us a pair of tall boots, waxed so that water couldn't get through – in war, having dry feet is very important. Personally, one of the things I hated most was when my trainers became muddy and slipped off. Running often carried the risk of ending up barefoot – not the most comfortable thing.

The explorers were equipped like Afghanistan war soldiers; they didn't have canteens attached to their belts but had a few bottles of water in their belly bags;
their rifle ammo was inside the pockets of their jackets, shortened up to the waist just like ours. They carried their knives sideways, concealed behind their belts. They also had side pouches, handmade specially; they were all armed with double magazine paratrooper rifles, some with optic or dioptric scopes. One had a precision rifle just like mine, a VSS with an integrated silencer, wrapped in a piece of soft cloth so it wouldn't get damaged.

They didn't seem anxious. Their faces were the classic faces of people who live in war: tired eyes, deep wrinkles in dry skin, skin corroded by wind, rain, cold and hunger. But behind these men's eyes there was that mix of humility and wisdom that comes only to those accustomed to dying and coming back to life several times a day. These were people who could witness the death of a friend with the tenderness of a loving mother putting her children to bed at night knowing she'll be waking them up in the morning . . .

They sat down on the crates, which were scattered around the room. Someone lit a cigarette, enjoying big gulps of hot tea while their lieutenant unfolded a map on the table and started showing us our destination.

We would have to cross the valley, go up into the mountains and reach the point on the map circled in red.

‘Command seems really keen for us to get to the area of the helicopter crash as soon as possible,' the lieutenant said. ‘There must be something important there, something we have to find at all costs. Provided the Arabs haven't got there first . . .'

‘What if we don't find anything?' Spoon asked, his mouth full with a hunk of tea-soaked bread.

‘I have specific orders,' the lieutenant said, serious. ‘If the Arabs have arrived before us, we'll have to return to base immediately. We'll give the go-ahead for a general operation, involving all the corps of the military, including the artillery and air force . . .'

Obviously, none of us knew why there was so much interest in a simple transport helicopter that was just like so many others shot down during the war. We immediately started thinking up a million reasons, trying to figure out what could have been on board the ill-fated aircraft that was so precious to command.

One of the explorers said jokingly:

‘It was probably a load of rubber dicks for the generals' wives!'

Everyone howled with laughter.

So Moscow, who was standing in the middle of the room with a boot on one foot and a sneaker on the other, triumphantly announced:

‘Brothers, before all of you, I officially give this operation code name Operation Where's The Dildo?'

We couldn't stop laughing.

‘What a great operation! Now I feel really important!' one explorer shouted.

‘Rubber dicks . . .' wailed Shoe, who was about to fall off his chair he was laughing so hard. ‘As long as they don't screw us over with them!'

‘Let's get going, boys! And if we really can't find the goods, we'll just have to satisfy our generals' dear wives
with what nature has given us . . .' Deer proposed.

The explorers laughed along with us, but their lieutenant seemed the most amused.

‘Are you kidding, brother? I wouldn't even want to see those washed-up whores . . .' Zenith tried to look serious. ‘We must fulfil our mission, I accept no alternatives . . .'

When the fits of laughter died down, the lieutenant traced on the map the exact route we had to take to reach the helicopter. At various points his finger would stop and he'd say:

‘We found traces of them here.'

We would have to go almost twenty kilometres into enemy territory. The strangest thing was that during their week of night reconnaissance the explorers hadn't encountered a single terrorist. There had to be camps or mine fields somewhere, and yet they had moved through the area undisturbed. I had a bad feeling, as I always do when something seems too simple . . .

Before an operation, command usually identified certain reference points that circumscribed the area, then they would leave us in a predetermined location and the rest – especially the particulars of our route – was up to us. Nosov had taught us something he called ‘combat recon', which meant scouting the area as the operation was underway. This strategy gave us the possibility of acting immediately, in real time, planning our moves without having to follow a particular route, able to change plans at any time based on the unpredictable developments of battle.

I really didn't understand why we should take the route
command had chosen; it didn't seem very smart to me – what did these officers know about the best path to take? They'd never set foot on those mountains; they just used the general picture the explorers had given them, and any military expert could tell you that one can't trust the information acquired through reconnaissance alone, because things change very rapidly in war and enemy positions can change from one minute to the next.

The guys kept on talking around me. Everyone put in his two cents but I wasn't listening to them anymore. It was like I was hypnotised by the map. I was inside it, on those paths, between one point and another, and trying to find an answer to the thousand questions tormenting me – like when you find yourself staring at something without really looking at it, and try to figure out what's in your head, your thoughts . . .

At that moment the door to the barracks was flung open. The explorers sitting by the entrance jumped to their feet and saluted, making room for Nosov to pass. I came back to reality and looked at our captain. He was soaked from the rain and the expression on his face definitely seemed serious. I was sure that he had a good idea of what was going on.

Nosov stopped at the table; the infantry lieutenant rose and saluted him.

‘Lieutenant Razumovsky, leader of the 34th infantry division explorer detachment! My team is ready for action, Comrade Captain!'

Nosov answered the salute with an apathetic lift of the hand:

‘Nosov, captain of the saboteurs . . .'

Usually before an operation our captain tried to make a show of being resolved and positive, to assure us that he had everything under control, to – how should I put it – lighten our mood. But that time he looked at us one by one, and then taking a deep breath, with his eyes down, he said:

‘Well, boys, I don't know any other way to explain to you what headquarters has cooked up for us . . . So, I'll just say it straight and clear, tell you the truth as I always have.' After a short pause, all in one breath he said: ‘Some piece of shit among our generals wants us dead, and it's going to happen tonight.'

A dead silence fell in the barracks. The only thing that could be heard was the rain beating on the roof and the irritating sound of Moscow's joints cracking, as they did every time he got nervous or had to concentrate on something important.

We all expected Nosov to go on, but instead our captain stepped back from the table, sat down on a chair and pulled out from underneath his bunk a zinc case full of AK tracer bullets, the ones that leave a green trail in the air when you fire them.

Before putting normal cartridges into our rifles, we would also put a few tracer bullets in to alert us that the clip was almost empty – in the middle of battle, when we didn't have the chance to keep track of how many rounds
we'd fired, we would immediately change the clip as soon as we saw the green trail, without reloading the carriage, so at least one round stayed in the chamber and we saved precious time.

Those bullets also helped us to identify distant targets with precision and to correct our fire. A group of soldiers, the spotters, would be near the enemy positions where they could best spot the weak points where we should concentrate our fire. They would shoot at the enemy with tracer bullets, and our men at the machine guns in the more protected (and therefore best from which to fire) positions would follow the green trails and fire at the target, creating a constant, solid wall of lead. Being a spotter was very dangerous, because in addition to being in close proximity to the enemy you had to be very quick and skilled in changing positions at the drop of a hat. Usually people who joined the spotter team had lots of war experience and weren't afraid of close combat.

Lastly, tracer bullets were very useful at night, when we needed to follow a precise line of fire, because during combat in the dark there was a serious danger of falling victim to friendly fire, especially when the unit was scattered across several positions and couldn't communicate. That's why each of us carried four magazines with tracer bullets.

While Nosov was taking care of the magazines, Lieutenant Razumovsky made a move as if he were about to speak, but instead he said nothing. He scratched his head and sighed, looking at us almost as if he expected some sort of explanation from us.

We saboteurs, however, just stood there observing our captain. Nosov, after filling two magazines with tracer rounds and binding them together with black electrical tape, turned to Moscow:

‘Take over for me, prepare twenty of these . . .'

Moscow obeyed right away.

Nosov went over to the table, pulled his pistol, an Austrian Glock, out from his inside jacket pocket, and began to disassemble it.

Without anyone asking him, Spoon got the jar of oil we used to lubricate the weapons, which were often full of gunpowder residue, and set it in front of the captain. Nosov dismantled the carriage of the gun, removing the spring, then the barrel. He lifted the barrel to the light and examined it carefully, then blew inside. Only when he started cleaning it did he begin to speak, but he didn't take his eyes off his weapon, as if he were ashamed of something:

‘One week ago, in the early evening, a cow
*
left from this camp. On board there was an inspector from the military prosecutor's office and an investigative team composed of five army officers who were looking into the case of a general accused of collaborating with terrorists . . . The investigators had found a connection between that piece of shit and some of the officers from this camp, and had come here to conduct an interrogation. When the inquiry was over, they left. They had been in the air for a few minutes when their helicopter exploded. Nobody
saw a damn thing, but a young lieutenant, who apparently isn't too fond of his superiors, revealed to me that the helicopter didn't explode in the mountains like they want us to believe, but in a field nearby . . .'