Free Fall (8 page)

Their leaders, though, were professional mercenaries who had fought in several wars – in Afghanistan, in the former Yugoslavia, in all the conflicts that the Muslim world had taken part in. They were cowards, they'd take those soldiers to the battle site completely high on drugs and then abandon them. Their only interest was
organising direct encounters and then vanishing, taking off. The only thing they were capable of was throwing the clueless to the wolves and making a nice chunk of change off it, which – as our captain Nosov said – ‘came straight from Red Square'.

But if those desperate men were in the hills it was because of a plan developed on the desk of one of the strategists at general command – after a month of intense fighting, our men had pushed them there. They couldn't move quickly because the mountains started just beyond the hills, and going through the valleys in large numbers would mean incineration by helicopter fire. Therefore, the only thing the Arabs could do now was try to escape, in small groups of fifty to sixty men.

At the same time, also thanks to the decision of some genius of military strategy, part of one of our units – about sixty men from the 72nd paratroopers – had been sent by night to the area to occupy a strange, pointless position on the side of one of the hills. They were young men from the latest draft, accompanied by about ten officers and expert sergeants; they had no reserve ammunition, but in exchange they had quite a burden on their shoulders – they carried their tents and coal stoves for camp like mules. Someone had decided to transport the heavy artillery and ammunition by helicopter, to lighten their load and allow them to reach their post as quickly as possible.

Yet even that midnight, as they were crossing the first hill, a group of scouts and paratroopers ran into an enemy group. They fought a series of short battles, but unfortunately couldn't retreat, because in the meantime other
Arabs had already blocked their way from the other side. Any subsequent change in position looked more and more like a hopeless attempt to flee – they had no choice but to run, and so at five in the morning they found themselves smack in the middle of the valley, in a small young wood, surrounded by at least two thousand of the enemy.

The gunfire lasted barely ten minutes, after which the paratroopers ran out of ammunition. The Arabs, however, kept shooting at our men with mortars and launching hand grenades repeatedly and ceaselessly (incidentally, as we realised later, amidst all the chaos some of their own men had been wounded by shrapnel from their grenades). The surviving paratroopers, in the desperation of the battle, jumped into an exhausting hand-to-hand fight, using the knives and small folding blades they had on them.

But the agony of our men didn't last long, and within half an hour they were all dead.

The signal reached us saboteurs at six in the morning. Some big shot in the paratroopers' command insisted that the ones to go down into those mountains and eliminate the first enemy group – which had a two-thousand man cover – should be us.

Our intervention was to serve as an ‘opener' – it was just the start to a big operation. We had to go there by helicopter, block the pass in the valley and attack them by surprise. There was only one objective, and it was very clear: ‘to eliminate all enemy human units', as our executive orders usually put it. According to the signal, the group we were to face had left for the valley that divided
the mountains and it included some professional mercenaries and commanders of military terrorist operations. The leaders, to be precise.

Some men from the armoured infantry base, at the foot of the mountains, were supposed to pick us up right after the battle was over and then the paratrooper unit would take care of the rest. In short, what they had in mind was some sort of revenge.

None of us was keen on the idea of going to fight in a place where there were two thousand enemies. We knew how things had gone in the last few hours, and we hoped that we wouldn't end up like the others – victims of a strategical error on the part of our command. Every time we had to work behind the front lines, in enemy-controlled territory, we felt like we were playing Russian roulette.

The preparations were always the same; we had to check our weapons, ready our jackets and fill them with ammo. Usually each of us brought sixteen long magazines, four or five hand grenades and a pistol with a few spare cartridges. We never carried our guns on our belts, as is usually done; we put them under our jackets at waist or chest height, where we had hand-sewn a special pocket ourselves. It was important to have our bodies free to run and move without making noise. Before heading out, we would always jump on the spot a few times or make a few sudden moves, so we could tell if anything was loose that could make a lot of noise at the wrong moment.

Our rifles were also modified to be as silent as possible when we moved. The first thing a saboteur had to do with his Kalashnikov was saw off the little iron hooks for latching the gun to his sling. Usually the metal parts kept touching and made a lot of noise – at night, especially in humid air, that noise could be heard up to twenty-five metres away. We used the classic Kalashnikov sling – or alternatively a mountain climbing rope, the ten millimetre ones – and wrapped electrical tape around it several times to attach it directly to the folding stock and the grip, which was plastic on the new models and wood on the old ones. The tape blocked all sound, and it was very resistant. In city battles, where you always needed to have your hands free and your rifle handy, we would often tape our Kalashnikovs right on our chests, against our jackets. I always wore my bulletproof vest wherever I went – it was like a sort of underwear. I even wore it to the bathroom, whether I was on base, with my comrades, or on a mission in the middle of the woods.

Once we were ready to go, we all sat in a circle and had a few minutes of silence. It's an old Russian tradition, called ‘sitting on the road'. They say that before embarking on any journey, or beginning anything, carrying out this simple ritual brings good luck.

Later we would be transported to wherever our assistance had been requested. Many times, we jumped out of a plane, primarily at night – that's why our parachutes were black, and the other paratroopers called us ‘bats'. At the end of a mission, attack, or any other military operation, to show the others that we'd been the ones
who took care of the mess, we would draw a bat somewhere. It was a kind of signature, a sign of recognition and valour.

The other military corps had symbols too; every wall in the cities where there had been battles was covered in tags, often along with messages. The soldiers expressed their feelings in sentences like: ‘If I die, don't wake me up' or ‘Once all my ammo's gone, remember me with kind words.'

In special operations, like ambushing nerve centres or freeing hostages, our captain would leave in plain view a white glove, which was part of the uniform saboteurs wore during military parades.

That time, Nosov explained the situation to us in detail, and he figured we could even capture a few hostages because, as he said:

‘The guys up there' – that is our superiors – ‘like to push around prisoners of war.'

We set off in two transport helicopters, plus an assault helicopter for protection from possible ground attacks. As a means of transport, helicopters, like everything in war, weren't very safe. There was always the danger that somebody could shoot off a flare and down it, even if they crashed more often because of mechanical problems than from enemy attacks.

We reached the spot at the prearranged hour, around eight in the morning. We found a group of night explorers and special infantry units waiting for us near the woods. They were all people ruined by war – they were very cruel, and after their operations you would often find
among the bodies men who'd been tortured, their fingers or ears cut off; cases of violence against civilians were frequent. Within the infantry division,
dedovshchina
was extremely common, even during war; the older soldiers exploited the new conscripts and would force them to go through countless humiliations. This is the reason why the infantry has always had the highest amount of suicides and deserters – many of them can't stand the injustice, and they suffer more from that than from the reality of war.

As soon as we landed, it was clear to both groups that we would have to collaborate – the infantry, like the other units in the Russian army, weren't too fond of us. Other soldiers were always obliged to follow the orders given by any higher-ranking official, whereas we never were. This is why we'd clashed with the officers of other divisions many times, especially the younger ones who would give us orders that we never obeyed. Our freedom from military hierarchy wasn't liked by anyone.

As the first order of business, we set a trap for our enemies. According to command's predictions, the Arabs would arrive around nine-thirty. We covered the positions on one side, at the point where the valley narrowed, while on the opposite side two of our men placed the anti-personnel mines and fastened hand grenades to the trees. A string was stretched taut across the ground, and as soon as someone passed by and broke it the bomb would explode.

We still had half an hour to go before the enemy's predicted arrival, when our sentinels suddenly rushed
back to us – we'd sent them to explore three kilometres ahead.

‘The column is composed of sixty-three armed men,' said one of them, with extreme precision, ‘and it's advancing very quickly.'

‘We saw lots of mercenaries . . .' another added.

We were happy. Killing mercenaries meant taking home lots of trophies – American things and other various trinkets. The night explorers immediately started fighting over who would get to keep the hiking boots. Usually the Arabs wore boots produced in the West with high-quality materials, and every infantryman dreamed of having at least one pair.

The column moved along at a clip because they feared direct conflict and they wanted to get out of the area as quickly as possible.

I was positioned a little higher than the others, hidden behind a large tree, where I had established my line of fire. From that spot, the view of the valley really opened; I was able to survey almost a kilometre and a half of the area.

About fifty metres below me was the night explorers' sniper, a professional soldier with whom I had divided tasks – he would cut off the column from behind and I from the front; that way nobody would be able to escape.

The strategy we used was very simple, and, as far as I knew, had been perfected during the war in Afghanistan,
against the Taliban. On one side of the space where the battle unfolds, it's open fire; on the other side, there are the mines. This way, the enemy is disorientated and he's forced to move away from the bullets to find a comfortable position and respond to the fire, but he steps on a mine and blows up. A mine causes a lot more damage than any other heavy weapon, because it's absolutely unexpected – a blow from a mortar or grenade launcher is very loud – and even if in the din of the gunfire it's hard for the untrained ear to tell one sound from another, if you're quick enough and hear the explosion, you can manage to avoid the worst.

For us snipers, chaos was the ideal atmosphere in which to work without being discovered. As long as the surprise-effect lasted and the enemy showed fear, we would knock down every subject that looked dangerous, like the ones with grenade launchers and heavy artillery, snipers, sharpshooters armed with rifles that had optic and dioptric devices, the soldiers with equipment to communicate with the field, the expert commanders and mercenaries, easy to recognise from the superior quality of their dress, arms and ammo. Lots of Arab commanders loved the U.S. Marines' bulletproof vests, which were easy to spot from afar since they were less heavy and bulky than Russian ones. They always had the best weapons, usually 7.62x39-calibre AKS-47s, with American-made scopes or dioptric lenses mounted on top. They were always the first to hit the ground.

Sometimes, however, it wasn't so easy to push men onto the mines. Lots of them tried to turn around and run or
would throw themselves forward. At first you had to concentrate your fire on the first and last in line, continuing to reduce the target range but being careful not to hit the people in the middle. This way, human instinct would take over – seeing others fall dead in front of them and behind them, the men would head for the opposite side of the road, and would end up on the mines. After a while, we would also aim at those remaining in the middle, and one after the other they would all set off our fatal traps. Stepping on a mine meant blowing up on the spot.

The mines we used were in part Russian-made, in part taken from the enemy. In the Russian army, it was hard to get anti-personnel mines for normal operations; according to regulations, it was supposed to be expert military strategists who mined an area following a specific plan, established with command. The use of mines or other explosive devices was defined as ‘tactics of terror', and since the whole world knew that we were fighting against terrorists, we were supposed to be different from them. If any enemies blew up on a mine and command asked us for an explanation, we all said they'd been put there by the Arabs – nobody could say precisely who, when, or how it had been planted.

To avoid potential problems at the administrative level, all the units would take some of the mines planted by the strategists and keep them for when we would need them. We often bartered with officers or the soldiers who ran the explosives depot; they would give us some of their stuff – mines, bombs, grenades and other explosive
material – and in exchange we would bring them the weapons we had taken as trophies.

Much later, when I was back home, I was watching television when I heard a correspondent talking about how the Chechen war had been fought.

He said that the Russian soldiers had scrupulously followed the moral principles of modern war, and that in our army the use of anti-personnel mines was officially prohibited, for any military operation.