Free Fall (28 page)

We kept on running. The sky was clear, everything was preparing for the coming of the light. The air was cool and damp – if I closed my eyes for a moment it felt like I was back home on my boat, on the river, out in the morning air, on my way back from a night of fishing . . .

Suddenly I felt a shove and I fell forward onto my left side. Tracer bullets were coming from the mountain in front of us, I don't know how, but we were in the middle of gunfire. I'd been saved thanks to the soldier who had pushed me down. He and I rolled into a nearby ditch and took cover, and I realised that my comrades were already there. The fire was so heavy that we couldn't raise our heads at all. The soldier next to me started shooting with his assault rifle, but I stopped him right away:

‘You have to cover the flash supressor; otherwise they'll keep shooting at us!'

The infantrymen's Kalashnikovs didn't have modified compensators or flash suppressors; the rifle's burst of flame could easily be seen.

None of us responded to the fire. We all hid in the ditch, our heads down, listening to the bullets exploding all around us. In all that pandemonium it was hard to work out the one thing that mattered to me most: whether or not they had a sniper.

At some point something strange happened – the enemy stopped shooting volleys. Only single shots came, and we
couldn't quite make out where they hit; perhaps the enemy couldn't tell where we were. Then we heard the unmistakable sound of a battle in the distance. From the way the echo reverberated off the rocks, these new rounds were coming from the opposite side of the valley – in fact, right from where we were headed ourselves.

There must have been a very violent battle going on. We could hear every sound of the fight perfectly, as if we were at the cinema instead of in a ditch. I recognised the pounding of a heavy machine gun, every now and then the roar of an RPG, and in the background the incessant bursts of the Kalashnikovs – the assault rifles shrieked so loudly it seemed as if they were going to drown out their own voices.

The captain said:

‘Shit, those are our men. They're pushing them to the other side of the mountain . . .'

A few Kalashnikov shells came near us, but they seemed to be aimed at a point much higher than where we were. Nosov ordered everyone to identify himself, reporting his status. As soon as he was able to get in touch with our superiors, he would communicate precisely who was wounded and who was not. My comrades identified themselves, stating their role and unit, and then added the most important thing: ‘in rank'. The expression ‘in rank' meant they had not been hurt and could continue to fulfil their tasks. When it was my turn I said: ‘Sniper, saboteurs, in rank!' Luckily, nobody had been hurt or killed; all of us had been able to take cover from the unexpected fire.

Cautiously, I raised my head above the ditch and through the scope of my precision rifle I began observing the mountain opposite us. I saw the first enemies about two hundred metres away. There were three of them, slowly moving towards the valley. I reported to the captain:

‘Ivanisch, I see three subjects coming down . . .'

‘Liquidate them immediately!' he ordered.

I hit the first two with four rounds but the last one responded to the fire, shooting at us, but without good aim. Then he started running higher. I decided to follow him with the scope; I wanted to see where he would lead me.

He was climbing the mountain very quickly, first running in a zigzag pattern; then when he noticed I wasn't shooting anymore, he slackened his pace and started following the path. After about fifty metres he came to a flat area by a forest, and there he sat down on a rock to catch his breath for a moment. I fired, but I wasn't able to hit him – he stood right up, so I shot at his legs, and this time he fell down, letting out a long, pained howl, which faded in the damp mountain air like a gust of wind. Just after that, another man came out from behind the trees. I got him straight in the chest. The guy who was already on the ground suddenly turned and shot another blast in our direction, but it too was imprecise. I aimed carefully and this time I took him out, blasting two rounds into his chest.

‘Those bastards are hiding in the woods . . .' Moscow said. I hadn't even realised he had come up to me.

‘Our men should have defeated them,' I replied. ‘They're abandoning their defence and coming towards us . . .'

The situation was troubling. Our men would follow them, and we – who, without a radio, couldn't send any kind of communication – risked getting caught in friendly fire. Paradoxically, our men could be more dangerous to us than the enemy, especially if the infantry units were among them, or worse, the Internal Ministry's Special Rapid Response Unit. The soldiers in the rapid response unit didn't listen to anyone, they shot at anything that moved. It was best to avoid them, to quickly come up with a plan to make sure we weren't spotted.

We had been in a similar situation before, when, because of a misunderstanding, we saboteurs had a very close call . . .

On that occasion, we had been stuck in a building for three long hours, besieged by constant fire from our own infantry.

What had happened was, as we approached their position, we had shot two red signal flares to identify ourselves, as we had determined before the operation. But their officers didn't see them – one was seriously wounded and in the infirmary, while their lieutenant, recovering from a long battle in another part of the city, was sleeping in an armoured vehicle.

The lieutenant colonels, sergeants and soldiers hadn't heard a thing about the red flares. After shooting them
in the air, we headed for their position, crossing the yard with complete ease. From the third floor of another building about five hundred metres away, two heavy machine guns and a Kalashnikov started going to work on us. Deer took a volley of bullets right in the chest, but luckily his vest saved his life. We hid inside the adjacent building, with nothing to do but wait, hoping they would soon run out of ammo. They even threw a couple of grenades inside our refuge, to burn the house and force us outside where they could kill us. We were able to hide in the cellar, but if the infantrymen decided to enter we would really be trapped.

Their lieutenant only woke up three hours later. When they told him they were shooting at an enemy group who had fired two red signal flares before approaching, he ordered them to cease fire immediately. He sent over a group of explorers – by a sheer miracle we didn't shoot at one another. The explorers then escorted us to our positions, communicating their status via radio.

Having too many soldiers in a military operation isn't always such a great thing.

About ten enemies began going down the path; some running hard, trying to escape faster, others stopping and trying to set up a cover. Further up, a group of our men continued shooting unceasingly; we could hear them shouting orders in the distance.

Deer squeezed in between Moscow and me:

‘Christ, the guys are really pushing – in a few minutes they'll be taking us out too . . .'

The battle went by fast, almost in a flash, and at some point our men loaded a grenade launcher. After a few seconds the first bomb hit the enemy, then another, and another . . . The trees and bushes caught fire immediately, and the Arabs started yelling. Through my rifle scope, the whole tremendous spectacle looked like a puppet show: the enemies' burned bodies, reduced to bits, fell through the air into the valley.

Two rounds had landed very close to the place where I had taken down the last enemies –
too
close . . . I checked the path and saw three enemies hiding in a bush; one started going down, trying to flee our soldiers' attack. I shot and killed him, then I tried to pinpoint the other two. I shot a few rounds, wounding one of them; then our men threw a hand grenade at them, leaving no trace of the enemies' bodies.

Nosov took control of the situation:

‘Join up for immediate retreat! Saboteurs go first, infantry follows a hundred metres behind. In case of enemy fire, do not shoot without my permission; our men are in the area . . .'

We jumped to our feet and began running down the road after Nosov. We had to scram before our men noticed us . . .

We ran like men with nothing to lose, until we came to a point where the road became very narrow.

‘Once we're past the bend,' the captain said, ‘we'll leave this fucking mountain behind us . . .'

Passing through the bottleneck between the rocks we reached the other side of the mountain. A wide plain appeared before our eyes.

We could finally see the light of day. The sun was rising, but we had to be sure we were in the clear before we could stop running.

After half an hour, Nosov let us take a break.

‘Two minutes!' he yelled.

We were exhausted, panting. I took the canteen from my side pouch and drank greedily. Just then I heard a blast of gunfire coming from the top of the mountain on our left. I dropped the canteen and threw myself under a rock. Seconds later we were all belly down.

‘Shit, it's not over yet . . .' said Spoon.

The bullets lodged one after the other in the ground in front of us. We couldn't see anything, just a sea of sand, clay and pebbles that rose and kept moving through the air, like a whirlwind. Keeping your eyes open was impossible and painful, they instantly filled up with sand and dust. I felt trapped. Everything had happened so fast, I didn't even know exactly where the shooting was coming from; they seemed to be firing from every direction.

We stuck to the mountain as closely as possible. We had about fifty centimetres of room where the bullets couldn't reach. Our infantrymen, on the other hand, had taken cover behind a row of big boulders. From there, they began shooting over our heads – they must have spotted the enemy. So the Arabs stopped shooting at us and responded to the infantry. The dust in front of us faded little by little.

One of the enemies let out a loud yell – he had probably been hit; another fell in front of us. He had a fatal wound in his neck, but he was still moving. Moscow finished him off with a couple of shots.

While the infantrymen distracted the enemy, we tried to change positions, dragging ourselves to the opposite side of the road. I was last and I couldn't see where we were going, but any other hiding spot would be better. The Arabs threw a grenade somewhere close to us. The explosion was deafening, and everything filled up with dust again. I had sand in my eyes, my nose, my mouth . . . It was as if I had dived into a pool of sand, and then my ears started to ring . . . Someone grabbed me by the jacket and started dragging me, scraping me against the ground. I couldn't tell if it was someone in my group who wanted to save me or an enemy who wanted to capture me, all I could do was hold the rifle tight in my hands while I kept repeating:

‘I can't hear! I can't hear!'

It was an ugly moment. My eyes hurt like hell. My back came up against something hard, and then gradually I could hear voices. It seemed like my comrades, but I still couldn't completely make them out. Someone splashed my eyes with water, and I was able to wipe away some of the sand.

‘More . . .' I said. ‘More . . .'

More water splashed onto my face, and the figure of Nosov slowly came into focus. He was standing over me and staring.

‘Were you hit by shrapnel?' he asked me, alarmed.

I looked around, a little stunned. We had all moved behind a rock, and my comrades were trying to set up a position, responding to the enemy fire from this new shelter.

‘No . . . I don't think so . . .' I replied. ‘I don't feel any pain, I don't think . . .'

‘Well, Kolima, you have Deer to thank – that bomb almost blew up on top of you, and if he hadn't taken you out of there . . .' Then he went to see how the rest of the group was doing.

The situation was clear. We had to arrange our cover so that the infantrymen could get through – now they were the ones who were trapped. Even if we had the enemy under fire, even if they were busy responding, it appeared that they had no intention of letting up on our infantry.

‘Stand back,' Nosov said as he loaded the RPG.

He placed the mouth of the grenade launcher into an opening between the stones and shot a round towards the Arabs. As soon as the bomb exploded, the infantrymen took advantage, coming out from their cover and running over to us.

Moscow and I started shooting in order to create a wall of fire and keep the enemy from hitting our soldiers. The Arabs, from above, started throwing more hand grenades.

The skirmish was violent. Neither we nor the enemies had a decent position; we were all behind rocks, fifty metres apart. The bullets whizzed over our heads and there were constant explosions all around us.

Moscow took a round in the chest. The bullet was stopped by the vest but it still managed to send my friend's body flying as if he were a doll. He fell at my feet.

‘Everything okay, brother?' I asked, still shooting.

He gestured that he was okay; he just had to recover from the blow.

A bomb hit the bottom of the valley, exploding in the distance. Another ricocheted off a rock without hitting the road; it blew up, bringing lots of stones down on the soldiers' heads and forcing them to slow their retreat. The last bomb fell right behind them, and after the explosion we saw an infantryman hit the ground. His comrades picked him up right away and rushed over to our shelter.

The guy who had been hit had some nasty cuts on his legs and his jacket was full of shards. Some infantrymen joined us to increase our firepower, while others treated their comrade as best they could. The infantry lieutenant, along with one of his men, made an improvised stretcher out of the wounded man's vest.

‘We have to get out of this hellhole, now,' Lieutenant Razumovsky said. His face was very pale – you could see that he was concerned about his man's fate.