Free Fall (38 page)

He nodded, then went over to the position I had pointed out to him.

We could hear shots and the explosions of the hand grenades below, interspersed with the shouting of our men and the enemies – the violence of the battle was increasing at light speed.

‘Down here, down here! Help!' one of the OMON boys shouted, from the group that was the furthest down,
almost at the foot of the mountain. ‘They're pushing, trying to come out into the road!'

‘Zenith, Deer, Moscow!' Nosov's voice was agitated, but filled with the desire to win. ‘Get down there, stop those arseholes – don't let them come out otherwise they'll be right on top of us!'

As usual, even at the most difficult moments, our captain showed the gusto for danger that a pirate might have.

From somewhere behind the trees the enemy shot an RPG round.

‘Oh God, they shot my leg off, they shot my leg off!' one of the OMON boys started screaming in desperation. His screams were so loud and high-pitched that they almost drowned out the sound of the shooting.

I tried to spot the place where the Arab with the grenade launcher was hiding, but the trees were obstructing my view. So I fired a few shots at random, near a clump of bushes that seemed to be moving. I immediately heard a bullet fly over my head – they had a sniper too.

‘Let's go down lower,' I told the other man.

It was an inferno down below. The soldier who'd been hit by the grenade kept screaming, while Nosov let out a string of curses, trying to call back one of the OMON boys who had gone out of formation and had started shooting uphill:

‘Come back here, you fucking idiot, get back here now . . . or stop shooting! Fuck, you're going to hit us!'

‘Reznyak, you filthy bastard, take your position or I will kill you myself!' the OMON officer commanded. ‘Either come back here or I'll shoot you in the face!'

We went a few metres further down. I positioned myself next to a brook and sent my comrade a little further ahead. From that position the area could be surveyed more easily – I saw a man armed with an RPG almost immediately – but I couldn't locate their sniper.

My comrade aimed at the man with the RPG, getting him with the first shot, full in the chest. But the Arab fired as he fell, and hit a tree in front of him.

After the explosion, a young man with a Dragunov on his arm emerged from one of the nearby bushes. He was covering one of his ears and was making strange movements with his head, as if he had a bug stuck in his hair and was trying to get rid of it by shaking his head wildly. He must have taken a hit; the shell had exploded too close to him.

Without a second thought I shot a few rounds and he fell to the ground; the rifle came out of his hands and sailed through the air like a feather carried by the wind. Two other men came out behind him, one with a machine gun and the other with a Kalashnikov. I aimed at the one with the machine gun and fired, and then he leaned against a tree and responded with such a long blast in our direction that his weapon started to smoke. He was shouting like a madman, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of his own weapon. I fired again, twice, because I couldn't tell if I had hit him. He dropped to his knees, but didn't stop shooting, even though his bullets were going too high – he was probably wearing a bulletproof vest. I pinpointed his head in my sight; he kept shaking it like a wounded animal that senses the end is near.
Without pity, I planted a bullet in his face. The tree behind him was splattered with blood; through my scope I could see a dark stain spreading over the bark like a moving, living substance.

The young sniper took out the guy with the Kalashnikov, landing two bullets in his back as he was trying to run away. The enemies hadn't expected this kind of attack.

‘Excellent work, friend,' I whispered.

He flashed me a big bright smile, like a little kid.

We moved again – we needed to move together to push the enemy further down and surround him. And we had to be quick, so as not to give the Arabs the chance to flee in the other direction.

‘Close in on the area, don't let them get away!' Nosov ordered.

Our avalanche began turning towards the road. We went downward, inspecting every tree in search of hidden terrorists. The air smelled of freshly cut grass, newly split logs, mould and burned flesh.

‘Don't touch the corpses – they could be hiding some nasty surprises!'

We knew exactly what our captain was alluding to – often enemies would leave hastily made traps as they fled. They would put bombs under bodies, hiding them between the legs or beneath the backs of their dead, so that if anyone moved them to take a weapon he would get blown up.

‘If you see anything on the ground that attracts your attention, do not go near it!' Nosov yelled, continuing the accelerated survival course for the OMON team.

The enemies resumed shooting at us. It didn't seem like they wanted to flee; they were really trying to wipe us out. We dropped down, sticking as close to the ground as possible. When someone shoots at you from that close and you don't have anywhere to hide, you start to see the ground as a magical substance, ready to change its form just for you, as if it were a blanket that could mould itself to your shape to protect you. A hole, a small pit, becomes a world.

Nosov shot a blast in response to the enemies and hit one; a few metres away from me I heard a short moan, the kind we called ‘the last breath' – the unmistakable sound someone makes just before he dies.

I stood up and took cover behind a tree, followed by my comrade from the OMON. The enemy fired a series of short blasts, and a few bullets hit our tree – I could see the wood exploding all around.

‘Christ, what do we do now?' the kid asked.

‘We can't do anything but kill them . . . They feel trapped and they're trying to come out, but there aren't many left and we can crush them . . . Now, let's move ahead and get them from the side . . .' I tried to give him a little faith in himself, even if in that situation I needed it just as much.

We scrambled further down and positioned ourselves behind a tree from which we could see three terrorists trying to get to the road. Two of them carried a wounded man on their shoulders. The man had lost consciousness – his head dangled forward, his trousers were completely soaked with blood.

I pointed out the targets to my comrade:

‘You take care of the lone one; I'll handle the two carrying the wounded guy.'

In seconds we had taken out the entire group. One man, however, didn't die right away – he was on his knees, screaming. Nosov threw a hand grenade to finish him off. As soon as the bomb went off we raced down.

Our captain, Moscow, and my other comrades were getting closer and closer, the ring was tightening. For an instant I felt like the fight was over – it was a sensation I felt when a moment of calm suddenly occurred during a battle. You don't hear anyone else shooting around you and you feel as though you're the only agitated, vengeful person left in the whole universe. Everyone else is calm and peaceful . . . It only lasts a few seconds, but it's enough to make you feel a sort of shame, as if the blame for everything that was happening lies on you alone – and that's the moment when you're most in danger of losing touch with reality. That's what happened to me. As I ran I began to overthink the situation, and I passed a live terrorist without even noticing.

He was a young Chechen armed with a Kalashnikov, with a shadow of a beard on his face and a strip of green cloth affixed to his wool cap. He was sitting against a tree, and when I passed beside him he decided to shoot me in the back. Unlike me, my comrade had seen him
and stopped to shoot him. But the Chechen moved faster, and emptied his clip into him.

I turned, and without hesitation fired my entire magazine at him, keeping the rifle at my right side. He tried to respond but the rifle fell from his hand. His face was white, his eyes startlingly open, and his mouth kept opening and closing – he looked like a fish that had flopped out of the water. He tried to remove the heavy jacket he had on, as if it were suffocating him. I kept shooting, and as I shot him he tried to shield himself – he put a hand in front of his body, as if to protect himself from the bullets, but his arm immediately lost its strength and his hand flailed, groping in mid-air. At last a bullet crushed his chin and part of his jaw; his head whipped to the side and froze in a surreal position. The broken bones of his face, the shattered teeth, the blood pulsing from his open veins and uprooted tongue: all these details made the wound look like a flower. Seeing that macabre botanical composition above a man's shoulders had a strange effect; it seemed as though he had not died but had transformed into something new, something that, for those of us still in this world, was impossible to comprehend.

‘Kolima, that's enough,' Moscow said, placing a hand on the rifle to make me stop. I hadn't noticed that he had approached. ‘He's dead.'

Only then did I look at the OMON officer. He was lying on the ground next to his rifle. His eyes were still open, but he was no longer breathing – he'd taken a bad hit directly to his chest. His mouth was full of dark blood; his stomach and lungs must have been pierced by the
bullets. I bent over and checked his vest; the iron plates weren't there. He had probably removed them so as not to carry any extra weight.

It was terrible to discover that the boy had died in such a stupid way, because of my mistake – one moment of inattention had cost another man his life. A man who was now a piece of motionless flesh at my feet, without wants, fears, loves . . . everything that had connected him to this world. Who knows what his last thought had been before dying, or what words had died on his lips, caught in that mouth filled with black blood.

Moscow ran off towards the others. I told him I would be right there.

I inspected the corpse. I found four rifle magazines, and I took his gun. I hadn't even had the time to ask him what his name was.

The fire fight was still raging. I could hear Nosov giving orders while someone from OMON was busy talking on the radio. None of us had been carrying a field radio, so that meant we had finally made it back to the road.

I was heading in the direction of the gunfire when I came upon Shoe. He was lying on the ground behind a tree, looking at the sky, oblivious to everything that was happening around him.

‘Hey, what are you doing over there, taking a nap?' I positioned myself not far from him, trying to inspect the area below us.

‘There are four spirits. I'm waiting for Nosov's signal to throw the hand grenades, then they'll hit them again with the machine guns . . .' Shoe was relaxed; he seemed far away from the war, like a tourist who'd dropped in from some Caribbean beach, sunbathing and sipping on a nice cold drink.

‘There's the body of an OMON guy in the woods, their sniper . . .' I said, peering out a little to observe the situation better. ‘An enemy shot an entire clip into him. We have to take him down to his men . . .'

‘Hey, quit sticking your damn head out,' he scolded me with a little kick on the leg. ‘In a few days you'll be discharged, isn't that enough for you? You want to leave the army in a coffin with the band behind you?'

‘Relax, brother, I see them.' I took my rifle and got into a comfortable position. ‘I'll take care of them; there's no need to pollute the wilderness with your bombs . . .'

The men were hidden in a deep pit, with their backs to us, about fifty metres away. I shot an entire clip at them. Three fell immediately. One managed to move in time and began to fire in my direction, but I shot him in the forehead.

We heard shots coming from the other side – our men were attacking the same enemy position, which no longer contained any live Arabs.

‘We already handled it, Ivanisch!' I yelled.

‘Why do you always have to do things your way?' Shoe asked me, smiling. ‘So, where's this kid's body?'

We went back up to get it. Shoe took his rifle; I took the young Chechen's. I inspected the enemy's body and
found army documents, a plastic card and a piece of paper covered in Arabic handwriting and various stamps. I took everything, because our commanders and secret service agents loved playing with the paperwork – when it came to tracking down our soldiers killed or gone missing in the war they'd beat around the bush, but when it came to terrorists they were always at the ready. They would even send entire investigative teams to find the body of some Islamic extremist.

Shoe and I picked up the sniper's corpse, and, holding him by the jacket and feet, we went down to the road.

When we arrived the fighting was over. Our men stood beside ten or so enemy corpses piled up at the edge of the road, while the OMON dogs ran in circles, agitated, sniffing the air and growling in the direction of the dead.

One of the OMON men sat on the ground; Spoon was treating a hole just above the knee on his right leg. Another was already on a stretcher; his comrades were trying to make room for him inside their car. The driver stood next to them, and he kept repeating, like a prayer, the phrase:

‘Put him in feet first, remember, feet first . . .'

This had to do with an old Russian custom, according to which only the dead should be transported with their heads towards the front, so that they come out feet first. Drivers and pilots always made sure the wounded were loaded feet first, so that when they reached their destination they would come out like the living, head first – this was a kind of insurance, a good luck charm that prevented the wounded from dying during the trip.

An OMON soldier was fiddling with the radio while Nosov spoke on the handset. Before going into the woods, Nosov had given the order to call in reinforcements to ensure the transport of the wounded and the prisoners, since two of our vehicles had been attacked. The reinforcements had started on their way, but they had run into enemy fire on the road. It sounded as though they were still in the middle of a battle; you could hear shots and explosions through the radio.