Free Fall (37 page)

As our vehicles passed through the village, the streets filled with people, and many inhabitants peered out from behind their front doors – the eyes of the women and the old men, full of hate and a desire for vengeance, were more piercing than plated bullets. No one dared to shoot us, because they knew that if there were even one attack on representatives of the Russian Federation Army, the next day the residents would be awakened by cannon blasts from the artillery or, even worse, by the sound of helicopters, ready to generously drop their surface-to-air missiles. In just a few hours, the entire place would be swept away like the wind scatters leaves in the autumn, without even a memory left behind.

Once we left the village we took the road that led down from the mountains. Our convoy was slowly snaking through the woods along a steep, narrow path, when the terrorists showed up. Usually they would attack the head and the tail of a column, trying to trap the cars in the middle. A few bullets hit the first carrier, where the infantry explorers were; that was the car on ‘detachment', or further ahead compared to the rest of the line.

The enemy was hiding among the trees of the forest, and by taking that path we had offered ourselves up on a silver platter to their bullets. When we heard the first
shots we jumped to the ground, to the opposite side from where the shots were coming. The drivers came out of the carriers too, rolling along with us to the edge of the road, the only place where the Arabs couldn't see us. According to military regulations, at times like these leaving the car is prohibited – the unit is supposed to defend the vehicle, using their personal weapons as well as the ones the car is equipped with. But in reality, none of us ever followed this rule. An RPG shell travels very fast and can destroy an armoured car in three seconds. In just a few minutes a marksman can torch up to five standing vehicles, and if there are three or more marksmen, the crew doesn't stand a chance. That's why active units led by good officers who knew what they were doing would leave the vehicle immediately, to try to organise a counterattack.

The Arabs were shooting with three light machine guns and about ten Kalashnikovs; once in a while, like cracks of a whip, the sound of two precision rifles could also be heard. The car that had been hit was in flames, but the enemy continued to fire an impressive number of projectiles into it, trying to blow it up. Usually the Arabs would shoot a grenade launcher shell under a car, between the tracks. The explosion would break the transmission and the vehicle wouldn't be able to move; that way, after the battle, the car could quickly be repaired and used as if it were new. But it was a different story with the armoured cars that had wheels, like our BTRs – they couldn't easily be disabled, so the enemies were forced to burn them or blow them up.

Every so often a few long blasts of machine gun fire came near us; when the car finally exploded, the terrorists moved, probably to take care of the last one in the line.

The fact that they were changing positions was positive; it meant that there were only a few of them, so few that they couldn't handle more than one point of attack at a time. While the majority of their group was going through the woods above us – covered by a few single shots that tried to keep us under the effect of fear – Nosov gave the order to move out of the road towards the hill.

‘Let's go past the burned car, cross the road and get into the woods,' our captain said, amid the pandemonium. ‘We'll take those bastards by surprise, while they're on the move . . .'

Nosov hadn't quite finished his plan when one of our prisoners jumped out of a carrier. The plastic bands we used to bind prisoners were occasionally defective; the man had evidently managed to free at least his feet. He ran for the woods as best he could, holding up his trousers, which kept falling down, with his bound hands. Suddenly the terrorists stopped shooting. In fact, we could hear their shouts of encouragement – it almost felt like we were watching a sack race. But one of the OMON officers shot a powerful blast into his back, putting an end to the show. The prisoner fell face down on the ground, his trousers around his ankles, and one of his arms – riddled with bullets in the shoulder – came away from his body yet remained hooked to the other arm with the plastic band.

‘Shit, just when I was starting to have fun . . .' Shoe commented.

We set off down the hill. It was very steep and at some points we were in danger of slipping. To keep our balance we went almost on all fours, hanging on to every stone, every patch of grass, every little root poking out of the ground. Some of the OMON team came with us, while the others stayed behind; their task was to respond to the fire, to make the enemy think that all of us were still there, following the classic army tactic of protecting the vehicles.

When we got to the first car, we heard not only the sound of ammo exploding inside it but also the voices of our explorers, cursing. So they were alive! Somehow they had managed to get out of the car before it caught fire.

‘Come on, strays, let's get to this fucking forest . . .' Nosov had his own way of encouraging us.

An infantryman rushed up to us, and stopped in front of our captain. I glanced at his uniform; he was a lieutenant major.

‘They got my machine gun and two drivers. Fuck . . .' he said, breathing hard. ‘And my radio man has a hole in his stomach . . . What are you guys doing?'

He didn't seem scared or worried, but he was angry, and somehow surprised, as often happens to people taken body and soul by war.

‘Bring the wounded down here away from the vehicle and the road. Leave three men with them, get the rest of your guys and follow us – we're going into the wood . . .' Nosov gave him a light shoulder tap, to demonstrate his support at that difficult moment.

‘All right, Captain,' he replied. Then he pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took in a long drag of smoke. ‘Just give me a moment!'

He went back onto the path. You could hear his shouts amidst the shooting, then gradually his soldiers joined us, transporting the wounded and the dead. The radio man had just died – the mask of suffering was still plastered all over his face; they say that stomach wounds are some of the most painful. He was very young. He had delicate features; he looked like a young girl.

We kept moving. Three explorers and their lieutenant had joined our group. The OMON guys passed a cigarette around, each taking a drag and then handing it to his neighbour, like people do with joints. Despite everything, some even managed to joke around. One man asked, ‘How's it going, little brother?' and the other replied, ‘Great, just like when you have diarrhoea. Be careful not to sneeze or else you'll end up with your arse in the shit!'

We had got far enough away. Nosov jumped up onto the road and we followed his lead, running across with our weapons in hand, keeping far apart from each other, to avoid being hit as a group by likely enemy fire. Before us were the forest and a hostile, rocky hill, wet with all the humidity.

Once we were all in a huddle, Nosov reminded us of the tactics to employ in forest battles.

‘We'll take that route,' he said, pointing to a spot on the mountain. ‘It's important to maintain visual contact, otherwise we risk killing each other if some of us arrive at the battle site early . . . When you see an enemy do not wait for a command, fire immediately. Just make sure your position is safe. Don't shoot in the open – conceal yourself behind a tree or lie on a rock, and remember that your primary objectives are the terrorists armed with optic rifles or RPGs. If someone gets wounded, don't all jump on him, only his neighbour helps him. The others must continue fighting. If you decide to retreat, don't shoot behind you while running, you could hit one of your comrades . . .'

Nosov went into detail because he knew that the OMON guys weren't used to fighting in operations like this one – lots of them had come to Chechnya directly from their local police force. They didn't have any experience of war – they shot badly and they weren't trained, but they were good men, courageous and full of a great desire to serve the Motherland. Many of them would later become career soldiers, joining the FSB or special counter-terrorism teams.

‘If you decide to use hand grenades, never throw them upward. They can bounce off a branch and fall back onto you or your comrades. Only throw them from high to low, or at human height. Try to shoot single rounds – in the woods, the more chaos there is, the more confusing it can be, and often under violent fire it's easier for the
enemy to retreat. Shoot one or two rounds and then correct your aim, but if you can't see your targets anymore save your ammo, change position instead, watch carefully for the enemies to come back into your field of vision. Don't trust any sounds. Don't believe everything you see or hear – the woods can play tricks on your senses, don't forget . . . Are you ready?'

We all nodded, and so Nosov added:

‘Come on, let's waste those monkeys . . .'

We climbed up the hill following a tactic called the ‘avalanche', which was used in patrolling mountain areas, when it was necessary to keep watch over a very steep incline. This is how it works: everyone moves at a distance of five to ten metres apart, but the ones who are up higher move slightly to the right while the ones down lower slightly to the left, in relation to the vertical line of the mountain. That way everyone can fire in the same direction. The ones up higher shoot lower and lower, down to the last person in the line. No one shoots upward, because he knows that there's someone covering him above; that way they avoid the risk of getting caught in friendly fire or more than one of them shooting at the same target without being aware of the others. The avalanche works well if everyone follows the rules, forming a chain of soldiers who have one another covered.

I was one of the first to go up, as the upper position is more useful for precision shooting. To be honest, it's the least dangerous part of the avalanche – the risk is much higher if you're in the middle, where my other
comrades and the explorers were that day. Above and below them were the OMON guys. I stood next to one of their snipers; he was probably about five years older than me. He was armed with a brand new Dragunov, but it worried me that he held it to his shoulder as you would with any old assault rifle. I could tell he was nervous; at every little sound, his finger leapt to the trigger like a crazed grasshopper. There was a risk that he would reveal our position.

I went over to him and said:

‘You don't need to hold this like an AK. Put it in front of you. Bend your left arm, so you can use it as support. When you need to shoot, you just straighten your arm and the gun will bounce onto your shoulder by itself, like this . . .' I showed him what I meant. ‘When we hear the first shots we have to be ready to move forward and set up a well-concealed position to fire from. Our bullets have to be in the background of the gunfire . . .'

The kid was all ears.

‘Is this your first time in Chechnya?' I asked, in a tone of solidarity.

‘Yes . . . Shit, I've fired a few bullets at the range, but I'm not sure I can aim well here, in the middle of all these trees . . .'

He was being sincere; he cared about doing his part but didn't feel confident enough of his ability. A man who finds himself in the middle of a war for the first time suddenly has the realisation that human lives depend on his actions, and every personal failing takes on the magnitude of real tragedy. These men need to be talked to, they
need to be helped and kept under watch, otherwise in the middle of combat there could be a bad surprise.

‘Don't worry,' I told him, smiling. ‘When we get started, stay with me. I'll tell you who, how and when to shoot. You just need to aim, breathe slow and stay calm . . .'

When he moved I couldn't help but hear all the noise the metal hooks on his rifle sling made, or the thousand other sounds coming from various parts of his jacket, or the poorly attached ammo . . . This was something that we saboteurs couldn't stand – we would rather be on our own than in the company of people who made more noise when they walked than the tracks of an armoured car. Fortunately, it was loud as hell – the enemy was shooting wildly at the last car in our convoy, so they wouldn't have noticed if an elephant had come up behind them.

The bullets were getting closer and closer – it seemed like they were shooting right in our ears. And then I realised that we could also hear the enemy's voices. I went down to the ground and motioned to the sniper to follow my lead.

We crawled over to an enormous tree that had grown next to a wide, jutting rock that formed a kind of terrace. I stopped a few metres below, in the bushes. My observation point had an excellent view down below. Between the trees I had a clear sight of part of the road – there was our car and the other two OMON cars which hadn't yet been attacked. I couldn't see the last car in the column, but it must have been hit too because black smoke was rising into the air.

I focused on a cluster of bushes that was moving
strangely. Since there wasn't much wind that day and all the animals of the forest had certainly run away already, it was obvious that there were enemies hiding in there. When our comrades shot a few rounds, further down, a young man leapt out from one of the bushes I had been watching, armed with a machine gun and an empty RPG around his shoulder. There were fewer than a hundred metres between us; I aimed at his chest and fired. He grimaced with pain and, bringing both hands to his chest, he tumbled to the ground, as if he had lost his balance. I aimed a second round at his head, and he fell backwards, vanishing into the grass.

I showed my neighbour a well-protected spot between the roots of the tree.

‘Go and lie flat over there. Hide so that you can't see the barrel of the rifle poking out from the other side. Stay low, don't move and observe everything carefully. I'll cover the right side, you do the left. If you see a target, take a nice deep breath before shooting. Pull the trigger slowly, almost gently, and when you let go don't close your eyes. Can you handle that?'