Free Fall (22 page)

After thoroughly lubricating the pistol, Nosov wiped it with a rag, reassembled the carriage and loaded the magazine sending a cartridge into the chamber. Then he slid the pistol under his jacket and placed both hands on the table, as if he were at a restaurant waiting for someone to serve him dinner. Only then did he resume his story:

‘Long story short, there are two things that don't add up in this story: first, it doesn't make sense that the helicopter would go through the mountains when the better route would have been over the fields; and second, there hasn't been terrorist activity in that area for at least six months. Everybody knows that the enemy is hiding deep in the mountains, waiting to gather the weapons and manpower they need to launch a real attack . . .'

Lieutenant Razumovsky listened, sitting with his head in his hands – despite his young age he probably knew very well what it meant to deal with corrupt officers. Often they would cover up these incidents by launching a big operation, one that usually cost a slew of human lives – in this case, ours.

I felt completely paralysed. Of all the horrible things in the world the one thing I was sure I didn't want to end up dealing with was this whole thing about dead investigators, helicopters that explode while flying over a field and mysteriously reappear in the mountains dozens of
kilometres away, and especially a high-ranking officer in command who feels trapped and is willing to use all his power just to get rid of a few inconvenient witnesses . . .

‘After the explosion, some parts of the helicopter were removed,' Nosov continued. ‘The lieutenant I talked to swears that they made sure part of the wreck ended up with the terrorists deployed in the mountains in a place designated by command. The rest of the helicopter was buried to eliminate all the evidence. They want to send us up there to confirm the terrorist presence and make the lie about the helicopter seem more plausible . . . In order to save their skins those bastards didn't restrict themselves to blowing up the helicopter. They also staged attacks, faked assaults on the patrols in the area and blew up two of our cars on the mountain roads. Some of our boys died . . . Only then were they able to request help from the main troops . . . And nobody noticed a thing, for fuck's sake, while we've been waiting around for three days without firing a shot, getting drunk and waiting for Santa Claus . . . Now the officers need something more substantial – so they arranged with the terrorists to set a real trap for us; that's also why they've shown us what route to take . . .'

I wanted to leave the barracks, run over to command headquarters and take out every single person in there. I could already picture the bullets from my Kalashnikov felling all those old generals, their crisp uniforms riddled with bullets and their bodies tossed on the ground like sponges soaked with blood.

But our captain had his own ideas on how to resolve
the matter. He asked Spoon for a cup of tea, which he quickly brought over. Taking small sips, he closed his eyes like a cat lying in front of a warm wood-burning stove.

Spoon took our last lemon and sliced it, neatly arranging the pieces on a sheet of newspaper and sprinkling a little sugar on top. Our captain appreciated Spoon's care and thanked him, tossing three slices of sugared lemon into his mouth, one by one. Then he swore and started speaking in the same conspiratorial tone as before, this time looking us in the eyes:

‘Long story short, boys, none of us has any desire to die for these sons of bitches. I hope that on this point we're all in agreement.'

The explorers' lieutenant responded with a nod.

‘Good. Outside there are two transport cars waiting for us. They'll take us somewhere and drop us off. We have about five kilometres to do on foot, after which, here' – Nosov pointed to a small plain at the mouth of the valley on the map – ‘the Czechs
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will start shooting at us. They'll probably open fire once we're past the plain, so we won't have a chance to escape and they can slaughter us without any trouble.'

He took a sip of tea and ate another slice of lemon. Lieutenant Razumovsky took one as well, and then Nosov pushed the cup of tea over to him. He took a couple of sips and passed it to his men, as Spoon was already pouring
another cup. Meanwhile, we could hear Moscow – who hadn't stopped preparing the sets of tracer bullets for a second – loudly heaping insults on the officers, the army and the war.

Nosov went on:

‘The young lieutenant told me that he and another group of officers gave the investigators a statement, requesting further clarification about the case. Then they were given protective escorts. But as long as these corrupt colonels are in charge no one can go against them, so we have to carry out our mission, otherwise we all risk prosecution. But we have the right to carry it out as we see fit . . .' He gave a half-smile. ‘I've already come up with a plan, which will work one hundred per cent . . . Or at least, it'll give us a chance to come out of this shit alive.'

Nosov showed us a place on the map about five kilometres north of where they thought our skirmish with the enemy would take place.

‘We'll get to the mountain here, go all the way across on one side without ever going down to the plain. We'll find the enemy positions and once we've found them we mine their exit points. Then we'll position ourselves nearby, and as the proverb goes, “If you've got the whip in your hand, you've got to whip the horse . . .” Command says we have to travel light – they stressed that we need to have the bare minimum on us, so we'll present ourselves to them as we are now. But the lieutenant has already offered us his unit's arsenal. We'll take more grenade launchers and lots of hand grenades.
And don't forget your tracers – tonight we're going to play target practice . . .'

The idea of target practice, risking becoming the targets ourselves, didn't sit well with me – I would rather have stayed in our warm, safe barracks, drinking tea and sleeping. But by now the situation was clear, we had to steel ourselves. We had a none too pleasant excursion ahead of us.

We got dressed, prepared our jackets, and put the rain ponchos on. We each checked our weapons. I took my VSS precision rifle and a good number of rounds. That rifle was an exceptional weapon; I could shoot so fast that no matter how much ammo I had it was never enough. Naturally I took my trusty Kalashnikov, but I preferred not to load it with tracer bullets. I'd always been obsessed with the idea that the enemy would be able to figure out my position by following the green trail, a fear that snipers often have, a sort of occupational phobia.

In just a few minutes both groups were ready. We had quite a few people to kill, and we realised it wasn't going to be simple. As my grandfather Nikolay used to say, ‘Be careful when you decide to kill someone, because death is close by.'

We came out of the barracks and went over to the yard where two armoured cars were already running. The rain was heavy, like a curtain between me and the world. In accordance with regulation we lined up in front of the
officers' barracks, and shortly one of them came out, even if you couldn't see his stripes since they were covered by his rain poncho. His face had the typical grimace that all command officers have. All it took was a glance at that bastard and already I felt like throwing up.

As the highest ranking soldier, it was Nosov's duty to report first. Nonchalantly, he began to yell, managing to be heard over the pounding rain:

‘Comrade Colonel! The sabotage and exploration group of the 76th division is ready for orders! Group commander Captain Nosov at your service!'

The colonel gave a listless salute, then gave us a quick once-over and asked Nosov:

‘Don't you have a radio?'

‘We're saboteurs, Comrade Colonel; a radio is not part of our equipment!' Nosov replied, like a perfect soldier. Only to us was it clear that our captain was mocking him.

That pig looked at us again and without even listening to the explorers' lieutenant, who was supposed to report second, he said:

‘It's better that way, you can travel light – this is a walk in the park. Come tomorrow evening and you'll already be back on base having dinner!' Then he turned around and went back into the barracks.

What a dick, I thought, reflecting on how many guys like me he must have sent to their slaughter over the course of his military career.

We ran over to the armoured cars, light tracked vehicles. A man in civilian clothes was saying something to one of
the two drivers. The guy said hello to Nosov, and I reckoned he was the young lieutenant who was saving our hides. Before going off to talk to him privately, our captain turned to us and said:

‘Get in there nice and tight now; I don't want to see anyone riding on the armour!'

We obeyed immediately, also because the idea of being outside in that rain was not too appealing. As my comrades were getting into the car, I peeked inside. It was immediately clear why Nosov had told us to ‘get in tight'; it was packed with weapons, grenade launchers, ammo – there were three heavy machine guns, various cases full of bullets and three boxes full of hand grenades. Thinking about how tiring it was going to be carrying all that stuff while we were walking up in the mountains, I got in too. In the two cars, including the infantry explorers, there were fourteen of us in total.

Nosov joined us and sat in his favourite spot, with his back up against the door, which he had just closed with a bang. Smiling at me, he said:

‘Wake up, Kolima, we've been sleeping enough lately . . .'

The cars advanced through the mud while we made the final preparations. My job was to assemble the hand grenades. I took the explosive parts from one box – the ones with the characteristic lemon shape, except they're green, and on the surface they're cut into little squares like a tortoise shell – and the detonators from another box, where they were kept separately for safety. I screwed a detonator into each grenade. It was a strange device,
thin as a pencil, with a handle on one side and a ring in the middle. Once I had assembled the two components, the grenade could be used at any time, you just had to pull the pin and the mechanism would go off – in three to four seconds it would explode.

There were different types of detonators: the most common were the ones for throwing, with a delay mechanism that allowed the bomb to be launched in complete safety. There were some slower detonators, where the explosive is contained in three separate compartments, which allows almost a minute between activation of the mechanism to the actual explosion; these were very useful for retreating from positions, or for when you're being pursued. A group of soldiers at the end of the column would stay a little behind and throw these bombs, leaving a kind of improvised mine trail. Then there was the model with the direct detonator, which went off as soon as the pin was pulled, but perhaps the most famous and also the easiest to put together were the ones with the trip wire, which in military slang we simply called ‘trips'. The enemy would trip on the wire tied to the ring and immediately be blown to bits.

We saboteurs had every kind, because the nature of our actions was so broad that we had to be ready to use any tactical solution. The important thing was not getting them mixed up in the chaos of battle – that's why we each carried certain types of bombs in certain places that everybody knew, so if one of us happened to get hurt or killed, the others could take his bombs without wasting time figuring out what colours they were marked with. And of
course the marks were very subtle; they couldn't be seen very well during the day, let alone at night or in the middle of pandemonium – one mistake could prove fatal.

I was afraid of grenades, as I was of explosives in general. They gave me the sense of something unstable, extremely dangerous. In my jacket, in a pocket I'd sewn on the back, I always carried one, but I never wanted to take more than that – expert snipers would often aim right at grenades naively kept in the most visible parts of a jacket. Once during a battle, I saw a stray bullet hit a grenade hanging from the vest of a VMF soldier. That mistake cost the soldier his life, and some of his nearby comrades were seriously wounded by the shrapnel. Fate is terrible: a weapon can be dangerous even for the person carrying it.

After about forty-five minutes, the cars – which used night scopes for illumination, keeping the headlights off – stopped near a bridge that spanned a small river. From there on we would have to go on foot. The rain only seemed to fall harder, and as soon as we got out we sank into the mud.

It was completely dark, and this combined with the rain created an uncomfortable sense of disorientation. We couldn't see the horizon, neither the sky nor the earth; we couldn't tell if the sky was up or down, if the water was falling or rising. I felt like I was floating in mid-air; I had the impression of being surrounded by emptiness and of being more than empty myself.

I leaned on the vehicle and as soon as I put my hand on the armour I realised I was standing, that the ground was beneath me and that therefore the sky was up above, because that's how things in nature worked . . . From behind, Moscow gave me a shove:

‘What's come over you, brother? You okay?'

‘It's nothing . . . it's just that for a second I couldn't tell up from down with this rain . . .' I replied, a little out of it.

‘What's there to tell? It's as simple as shit: water is falling, that means it's raining.' He nudged me with his shoulder and went to help the others pull the gear out of the cars.

It took just a few minutes to distribute the weapons and ammo. The drivers wished us luck and vanished into the dark in their vehicles, splattering more mud on us.

Nosov quickly explained our situation. Despite the torrents and the darkness, we had to trust him and follow his lead. We set off without a word, and the explorers followed behind.