Free Fall (17 page)

I aimed at the lower part of his head, right at the chin. When you do that, usually the bullet ends up hitting the temple.

The rifle did its job; the empty shell landed on the floor. Moscow, standing behind me, held his breath as I did. The sniper had disappeared. There was just a red stain on the wall behind where he had been.

The girl was still for a moment, then she stupidly went to close the window, but I already had her face in my sight. It was a second, half a breath, and I hit her too. After the
shot I saw her lifeless body still standing for a few seconds; her hat had flown off, her head seemed puffy and huge, but half of her face was no longer there. She hung on to the window with one hand, and then she fell down.

I ran straight to the next room to observe the scene from another position. I always did that so I wouldn't be found. Moscow came behind me and asked:

‘So, d'you get him?'

‘Yep, there were two of them, they were even making out . . .'

Moscow whistled:

‘What do you know, those nasty homos . . .'

I laughed:

‘They were no homos, Moscow . . .'

He looked at me, shocked, leaning his head on his rifle, which he was holding behind his back.

‘No? What, then?'

I thought for a moment, looking out of the window and through the scope, framing the point where just minutes earlier the two snipers had been talking.

I was completely beat, and a strange feeling of homesickness had come over me. At that moment I wanted to be somewhere else, away from the war, in some other reality, with other people. I don't know why, but I had a strange desire to joke. And to laugh.

I slowly looked away from the scope, and pulling myself to my feet I carefully folded my rifle stock. Then I answered Moscow, almost singing:

‘My noble lord, behold he who hath killed Romeo and Juliet . . .'

Moscow burst out laughing at my little scene.

‘Romeo and Juliet? You're crazy, my friend! And what does that make me? The Prince of Denmark?'

Laughing together, we exited the basement.

Our men were waiting for us to cross the yard. From the other side of the street they had begun firing shots from the Kalashnikov at ground level; the Arabs were trying to figure out our situation, trying to provoke us so that they could then attack us.

The bodies of the dead soldiers were in the middle of the yard. Their comrades had removed their ammo and then fired their rifles to render them unusable.

Nosov had placed a hand grenade in the car. He activated it so that if anyone opened the door, the explosive would blow up in his face.

The infantrymen struggled to carry their dead; Zenith had sewn up the head of the guy who'd been in the turret as best he could, but it was a messy wound, it bled too much, and you could see that the guy needed a doctor, some antibiotics, and some rest too.

Half our group followed them, the rest of us – led by Nosov along with Deer and Spoon – headed for camp.

The Arabs were behind us. There wasn't that many of them, probably twenty or so, only armed with Kalashnikovs – but we weren't able to move very fast.

Moscow, Zenith, Shoe and I covered the rear, sometimes
stopping to keep the enemy away with direct gunfire so the infantry could break away and retreat.

At a certain point, however, we noticed that the enemies had entered a small building, a sort of cottage surrounded by a half-destroyed fence. From there, they fired two long blasts at us – I could hear the bullets hit the house next to me. So Moscow responded to the fire with the grenade launcher. Their shelter exploded and four or five were buried in the rubble. The rest of the group started to run off, but I was still able to land a bullet in one's back. I saw him fall to the ground lifeless.

We resumed running and joined our men quickly. We were passing a road when a sudden blast of heavy machine gun fire came from the top of a building. Two of the infantrymen fell, almost split in half by the powerful bullets. The others were covered in their blood, and the gun was still shooting.

Private Ustinov, the young Cossack, and one of our comrades were carrying the soldier with the head wound. A volley of bullets hit them straight on. The wounded one literally split open – his body exploded, making a loud pop like when a tyre blows. The other soldier had taken a bullet to the chest and kept on running for a bit, but then his head turned almost all the way round, and after a few metres he fell down, dead.

Ustinov was wounded in the leg, and bleeding. His father and cousin managed to take cover in a nearby building, going through the window; some of our men and other infantrymen went with them. The rest of the group and I ducked into the house across the way.

Ustinov was on the ground, right between our two positions; the bullet must have fractured the bone because he couldn't get to his feet. The Arab with the machine gun tried to hit him, but he was able to hide behind a row of cement poles. Then the gun went for the poles and they crumbled one by one, exposing our wounded man's position more and more.

His father, Vasily, was on the other side, watching the whole scene from the window in desperation. Private Ustinov tried to hide as best he could, but the poles around him were popping off like matches.

At some point Shoe said:

‘I can't stand here and watch this anymore!'

He took off his vest, belt and side pouches, and was left with just his jumpsuit. His vest was in pretty bad shape – it was full of dents and had two big holes in the chest.

Shoe put it over his head, and backing down the hall, he said:

‘Cover me, boys! And forgive me if something goes wrong!'

He leapt out the front door, sprinting like a tiger hunting its prey. The machine gun began shooting at him too late, by the time he had already reached the poles, and didn't hit him.

From the windows, meanwhile, we fired non-stop towards the building where the Arab with the machine gun was. Kalashnikov shots came at us from a different direction, so I signalled to my men, pulled out my precision rifle, and moved to the back room of the building.
Moscow came with me, to cover me in case anyone ambushed us.

From the house across the way, Nosov launched a grenade. It blew up just above the machine gun, and while the machine gunner's position was enveloped in dust and flame, Shoe stood up, threw Ustinov over his shoulder, and threw the open vest on top of him. Then he rushed towards us.

They were shooting at him from the bottom floors. I hit one guy in the head – he had made the mistake of looking up and staying at the window a few seconds too long. I got another one in the chest; he fell backwards and didn't get up again. One, however, wouldn't let me catch him. He was very agile; he went from one room to another, appearing at a window and disappearing immediately afterward. I began to shoot at all the windows on that floor and hit him by chance.

Shoe hurtled into the house and fell face down on the floor, along with the wounded man. We all thought they'd killed him. Often someone would get hit by a bullet, even in a vital organ, but still keep running for a few metres.

Zenith jumped on him and turned him over. He was fine, without a scratch, he was just breathing heavily and couldn't talk yet.

Ustinov was completely white – he'd really had a close call. Zenith and Moscow treated his wound, using two individual medi-kits. They wrapped it in an entire roll of bandages, and with another they applied some medication right below the knee so he wouldn't lose too much blood. But it was clear that if he didn't see a doctor soon, the dressing wouldn't be enough.

Nosov loaded another grenade but this time he aimed perfectly. He hit their position straight on, and the machine gun fell to the ground along with some of the Arabs, right in front of the windows of our building.

We joined the rest of the group, and quickly consulted the map with Captain Nosov. We had to get to the closest building, on the other side of the street; we would enter it and then exit through the back. There, according to the directions, there was a group of private houses with gardens, and behind them we would finally find our positions. A few Arabs continued shooting a Kalashnikov from the windows, trying to catch us.

We made a shield that would allow our men to cross the street. The Cossacks carried their wounded relative, the others tried to run as fast as possible. Inside the house there was a small enemy group, but the infantrymen confronted and eliminated them in no time; when we got there all the work had been taken care of.

There was a large block of cement in the middle of the yard – it looked like the foundations of a building that had never been finished. It was about twenty metres long and empty inside, a good place to hide in. One by one we jumped in.

We were exhausted, all breathing as if we were on the verge of one big heart attack.

Nosov said that he and Moscow were going to try to reach the line to ask for assistance from our troops to create a free corridor for us to pass through. The Arabs had stopped shooting, and Nosov wanted to make the most of that invaluable moment. He removed
all his ammo, threw it at my feet, leaving just two clips attached to his rifle. Following my lead, Moscow did the same, then he took his Glock from under his vest and gave it to the wounded Cossack. Though he was in such a bad way that he couldn't even keep hold of his rifle, he took Moscow's pistol and held it to his chest.

‘We'll be back with our men in fifteen minutes,' said Nosov. ‘Wait here, stay out of sight, and do not provoke combat in any way.' Then he jumped to the other side and started running across the yard.

Moscow went after him, saying in his usual lighthearted tone:

‘See ya later! Be good!'

We stayed inside that makeshift cement shelter, waiting for our boys.

Waiting is the hardest thing. When you're waiting for something that isn't within your control, every second that goes by is torture. I checked my watch every ten seconds, then I realised that it was just making me more nervous and I stopped looking. So I took a better look at my new comrades – we had been through quite an ordeal, and I still hadn't seen their faces.

Sergeant Lavrov had slightly pointy ears and wavy blond hair – he looked like an elf. Private Ustinov, on the other hand, was an exact replica of his father. All that was missing was the moustache; in every other way they were identical. One soldier had a scar on his face, perhaps he'd got it even before entering the army. Another pulled a little kitten out from his jacket; it was black and white,
with a dark spot around the eyes that looked like a bandit's mask. It was scrawny and scared, trembling all over and looking around, meowing weakly.

The soldier started petting him and he purred right away.

‘How old is he?' Zenith asked.

The soldier smiled. ‘A month old. I took him from the mother cat in the artillery unit last week . . .'

Shoe broke out laughing:

‘So young and already initiated into battle . . . He'll become cat general!'

I was looking at the kitten and I felt like him. At that moment it was clear that we were all exactly like that kitten; alive because of fate. And it wasn't over yet, neither for him nor for us, unfortunately . . .

Vasily, the old Cossack, was breathing heavily. His face was bright red, and he was bathed in sweat. He had removed his jacket and was just in his undershirt, over which he had put a bulletproof vest. I noticed a few dents in the vest, a sign that he had caught a bullet or two. His son was sitting in front of him, his head down, as if he were ashamed of something. He was still hugging Moscow's pistol to his chest.

My ankle hurt like hell from the sprain I'd got jumping off the car. My foot was all swollen. I noticed just then that I was still and was breathing more calmly. Examining my vest I saw that a bullet was lodged in one of the Kalashnikov clips I kept in my inside pocket – amidst all
the gunfire I hadn't even felt the impact. Shoe was also tracing the cut a bullet had made on one side of the vest he had thrown on Private Ustinov earlier; the projectile had taken a miraculous path, skimming the surface without going inside the vest. In military slang an occurrence like that is called ‘blessed', as if God had intervened at the last minute to save a soldier's life.

We were all incredulous that we'd made it through such a close call. I'm sure that each of us, more than once that day, had silently bid farewell to life . . .

At some point Vasily took an orthodox cross from his pocket, stood up and went over to Shoe. Then he leaned over him and put the cross around his neck. Shoe looked at him in astonishment, standing up too. The Cossack embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks:

‘Today is a happy day . . . Our Lord sent me another son . . .' The old man almost had tears in his eyes; he was as proud as a father at his son's wedding. Shoe looked at the cross for a moment and then responded, scratching his head:

‘Thanks, uh . . . The fact is that we tend not to leave our men in the lurch.'

The Cossack smiled without saying a word.

We had been waiting for over half an hour, but there was still no sign of Nosov and Moscow. Every so often we could hear a few shots in the distance, and all of us were secretly thinking the worst.

I had just decided to poke my head out to get a look at the situation outside, when suddenly I had to duck back down. There were two huge explosions, most certainly the cannons on the heavy tanks. Right after that, we heard a brief burst of gunfire – the shots seemed right behind us.

I inserted my last cartridge in my Kalashnikov and sent the round to the chamber. I placed the selector on the single shot and along with the others got ready to fight. Just then we heard our men's voices; a group of paras was rushing across the yard behind the enemy positions. The gunfight was right in the back of the yard. Suddenly a paratrooper lieutenant jumped into our shelter, landing right in between us. Astonished, he looked at us for all of a second and then said: