Free Fall (26 page)

The captain seemed lost in thought, and then all of a sudden he turned to me, pointing to the machine gun:

‘Kolima, make sure the scope works and that it's calibrated right. If everything's okay, Zenith can keep it. It could prove useful to us in our next battle . . .'

I took the machine gun and examined it. The scope had a cloth cover, very crudely hand-sewn; I took it off and switched on the night scope. I waited a second for it to come on and when I saw the shine of the phosphorescent
reticule, I brought my eye to the lens. The view was very good, the scale clear. I set the weapon on its stand and after pointing it at the field I loaded the chamber. The release was smooth, making an even duller sound than a Kalashnikov. I aimed the crosshairs at a dead Arab lying on the ground, arms outstretched, in the middle of the camp. I couldn't see the surrounding area too well because of the flames – the camp, the body, the trees, everything was bathed in a hazy green light. So I removed the night scope's battery and the light scale went off; then it had the faint light of a regular scope.

Every scope has an indicator – a ‘fixed point', ‘single point' or ‘pattern' – that signals the distance from the weapon to the objective. Usually on precision rifles this point corresponds to about two hundred metres. At that distance there's no need for correction; once the target has been pinpointed you can fire.

If the target is at a distance of more than two hundred metres you have to correct the sight a point lower on the scale, while if the target is closer than that you have to go a point higher. You also have to take into consideration certain external factors: wind, rain or the specifics of a given place – if there's a river nearby, for example, the air will be more humid – will vary the correction. This goes for the precision rifle scope. A machine gun, however, is a little simpler. Its fire capacity is higher than a rifle's, but it's much less precise; besides single rounds – which aren't its forte – it can cover a very broad area with a single volley of bullets.

*

‘Is it any good?' Zenith asked, impatient. He was pacing more nervously than a father waiting to find out whether his newborn child was okay.

‘Just one second, brother,' I replied, moving the selector to single shot.

I took my mouth guard out of my pocket – I carried it with me for shooting a Kalashnikov. It prevented my jaw from getting hit too much and the headache that would ensue. I framed the head of the corpse lying in the middle of the camp in the sight. The trigger was hard to pull, unlike the one on my rifle, which was nice and smooth.

I fired a round, and the head of the corpse came apart. Although I had a good hold on the weapon and was in a comfortable position the recoil was so strong that I felt it smack me in the shoulder. There was an annoying whistling in my ears, though I thought I'd compensated the force of the shot better than that . . . It was very strange. I switched the regulator onto blast and, clenching my teeth, I aimed at the Arab's vest. It literally burst into pieces, as if it had exploded from inside.

My comrades were speechless, and I couldn't believe my eyes either. Machine gun bullets could make holes in bulletproof vests, but usually they didn't destroy them in such a violent and devastating manner.

I had a hunch. I took a flashlight and pointed it at the chamber, opened it up and examined the cartridges. The shell was grey instead of brass.

‘Fuck,' I said out loud.

‘What? What?' Zenith asked, all excited.

I stood up and reported my discovery to Nosov:

‘Ivanisch, there are amazing bullets in this little toy,' I said, my voice serious.

The captain took the gun and examined it carefully.

The bullets were polished to a mirror shine, the tips painted black. These were very expensive special cartridges, definitely not stuff meant for the army. The body was steel, covered with a light coat of varnish, and the tip was metal so it could go through kevlar or iron the same as air. The matrix was liquid mercury, which made its trajectory extra precise; most importantly, the gunpowder charge was stronger than normal, because it had to create enough force to propel the bullets, which were much heavier than normal ones.

We didn't have ammunition like that in our possession, only the Arabs did. It came from the black market, through ties with America. People said that a special company in Texas manufactured them, and that they cost five dollars each. This type of projectile was famous and feared among the soldiers, because there was no bulletproof vest that could withstand their force. In military slang they were called ‘bye-bye mommas' – if a round like that hit you were done for.

Nosov passed Zenith the gun.

‘Nice surprise. Use it wisely, son . . .'

My comrade's eyes shone like two polished buttons on a general's uniform.

*

In the meantime, Moscow and Deer opened their backpacks and began passing out the ammo they found in the camp – many were clips for AKs.

Moscow came over and held out two clips:

‘See if they work on yours, they won't fit in mine . . .'

I took them, but even though they were the right calibre they didn't work in my pistol either. But so as not to throw away useful stuff I put them in my side pouch anyway, under the medi-kit. We weren't short on ammo, but it was always better to have a little extra.

We put all our weapons in place, making sure everything was in order. I pissed in the bushes and had a big drink of water.

Nosov and Lieutenant Razumovsky had spread out the map on a rock and were trying to decide the best way to circumvent the other enemy group. We had to keep hugging the mountain, then at some point the road would open out onto the valley. There, we had to go down and cross the valley, and then we would be on the way home.

Nosov set off down the path with a fast and determined stride, and the rest of the group followed behind. The explorers joked amongst themselves, a sign that after our victory morale was high. One of them passed me a piece of bread; I thanked him and started chewing on it slowly. Only then did I realise that I was hungry. Despite my days
of rest and the spreads on base, I devoured it in seconds. As my elders often said:

‘It doesn't take long to get used to the good things . . .'

We walked quickly in the cold morning air. The moon in the sky was a thin crescent and soon would disappear with the dawn. Nosov was watching the road and we were trying to keep up. The road was flat; once in a while there would be some bushes and then our captain would send one of us on recon. I took advantage of those moments to close my eyes and try to get at least a few minutes of rest.

Thus we continued for a while, until we reached a spot with a view over another mountain. It seemed close by. The sky was dotted with little clouds, riddled with holes as if someone had shot at it with a machine gun.

Nosov and the infantryman lieutenant stopped, ordered us to go to the side of the road and take a break. We didn't make them say it twice. We sat right down, leaning against the huge rocks that must have slid down there who knows how many years ago. We were all really tired. Some drank, others ate, and one infantryman took off his backpack, put his rifle down, lay out on a flat rock and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for about a minute, and then got up, stretching and yawning, as if he had just got out of bed.

Nosov gave me a piece of hardtack, and rubbing his neck, sat down beside me. For a while he didn't say anything, and then he explained:

‘The next leg will be almost all in the open, near the boulders. It's a three-kilometre route.' He pointed to the
space between the two mountains. ‘At the point where these mountains are at their absolute closest they're probably about three hundred metres apart. That mountain leads to the north, and it's completely treeless, whereas this one has some very dense areas of forest . . . If I were in the Arabs' place I'd hurry across the valley, then I'd go up by the trees to set an ambush, that would be the only safe place. They're afraid of direct combat – I'm sure they'll station themselves there. Just as long as they can get there in time . . .'

I chewed on the biscuit as if hypnotised. When I listened to my captain's voice the rest of the world turned off, there was only room in my mind for whatever he was saying. He put his hand on my head, as if giving me a blessing, and continued:

‘Get ready – in five minutes you'll go with Moscow and Zenith to survey the hill. You'll go on “detachment”.
*
We won't be there to cover your arses, so be quick and keep your eyes peeled . . . Stop every ten metres and observe the terrain carefully. If you see any strange movement, if there's something that makes you suspicious, come back immediately . . . We'll be twenty minutes behind you, don't forget. And be careful – I don't want anyone losing his hide.'

In short, it was clear that the whole operation had reached the crucial moment, the turning point that could determine our future (or non-) existence.

When I went on recon I became another person. I
was much less confident than when I just had to be a sniper. I worried about making mistakes, not being able to observe the terrain well, not noticing important details . . .

Reconnaissance, in war, is a very difficult task. It doesn't only mean penetrating the enemy's territory unseen and watching them, it's a matter of assessing various factors, in order to reach a conclusion and deliver it as quickly and precisely as possible to your captain. Each operation is different. You have to spot the things that seem invisible to the normal eye, predict the enemy's moves, think like him. It's like hunting in the woods, following animal tracks. The difference is that in war both sides have weapons, the hunter and the hunted.

Your senses must always be on alert, especially if you don't know the area. You have to memorise every detail, even the most insignificant. Each individual stone and ditch, every tree and possible path. If something unexpected happens, it's crucial to have already figured out a quick escape route different from the one you took there. And to give a precise report, you have to remember all the places where firing positions can be set up, probing every bit of land to find the most appropriate plan.

Even today, I often find myself observing open spaces and thinking how perfect they would be for a military operation. Where a normal person sees a landscape and
contemplates the beauty of nature, I realise that, against my will, I am figuring out where the machine gun should go.

I was sitting and chewing on the biscuit the captain had given me and trying to gather whatever strength I had left to carry out my job. Meanwhile, Nosov had gone first to Moscow and then to Zenith to give them the same little speech he had given me.

We had to cover two kilometres through a small forest, after which, according to Nosov, we would come to the clearing. This was the point from which we would go and explore the other mountain.

My comrades and I started filling our pockets with ammo. Zenith pulled an individual medi-kit out of his side pouch and put two clips in its place. When we went on recon we had to travel light but carry as many clips as possible. Getting into fire combat without anyone covering you was usually the fastest way to reach the great beyond.

We did our usual jumping on the spot to make sure nothing we had on us would make too much noise when we moved. I asked a soldier drinking some water from a plastic bottle if he would let me have some. I drank slowly, leisurely, letting the water slide down my throat. My head was light, I felt as if I'd got a second wind. In a certain sense, it was as if our adventure had only just begun.

Moscow came over and smiled at me:

‘It's up to us once again, little brother . . .'

‘May Jesus help us this time too, as always,' I replied.

We saluted and headed out.

Zenith walked behind us. With the machine gun he'd found and all the clips on his jacket he looked like some kind of robot.

At a certain stretch, when we were already almost past the first curve, Nosov came running up. For a second I thought he wanted to join us, but that wouldn't have made any sense.

He gave Moscow two hand grenades and, looking at us almost affectionately, he said:

‘Be careful, boys, this isn't a walk in the park . . .'

We went through the woods. A few times we dropped to the ground, alarmed at noises that seemed like footsteps very close by, but that were actually stones falling down somewhere else.

Trees became more and more sparse, and after a very tight curve we saw a wide, bare rocky area ahead. Crossing that entire stretch in our two groups without being discovered – if there was anyone hiding out waiting to kill us – would be no easy endeavour.

‘I'll go first,' I said, trying to muster my courage. After a long breath, I went onto the path, flattening myself against the wall of the mountain. I realised that there was a small ditch at my feet, almost half a metre deep, perhaps created by the rainwater, so I tried walking inside it. It was easy going, and it gave me a sense of protection from possible bullets, but the path was
irregular; in some places the ditch slanted up and almost reached the level of the main trail. I went on like that for about ten metres, then I stopped and signalled to my comrades that I was going to come back onto the path.

I lay down on my belly. I could really smell the wet grass, the air was still completely moist, but there was no fog. I went on my hands and knees across the trail until I got to the other side. The ground was soft, swollen with rain, and the water went right through my clothes, right to my skin. We had taken off our rain ponchos because they limited our range of motion significantly, and besides that they made enough noise to reveal our presence immediately.

I turned on my rifle's night scope and looked at the mountain. The first area I decided to scout was about thirty metres wide and half a kilometre long; it was covered with small trees, but they weren't very close together. I looked slowly, moving the scope from high to low, right to left and then back. To scout a place it has to be divided into sections, so first you give the entire area a quick once-over. At this stage, it's helpful to identify some features of the landscape that you can use later as points of reference, like a stream, a fallen tree, a big or unusually shaped rock . . . Each of these elements serves to create an imaginary network in your head that you can go back over later through the scope for more careful inspection. An expert eye can notice a human presence even with peripheral vision. The important thing is never taking your eye off the scope, not changing
position or allowing yourself to be distracted by anything outside your field of vision.