Free Fall Page 7

  While some enemies were shooting, others began to retreat to the other side. After a few seconds the mines began to explode – two bodies dissolved instantly, sending up a little red cloud, as if their blood had turned to mist. Someone shouted something in Arabic, and everyone else who had been running towards the mined area halted in their tracks.

  About twenty were still standing but they didn’t know what to do. The machine gunners had let up and our guys with normal rifles took down the enemy with precise, targeted shots. One of them started to zigzag; they shot at him several times, following his moves, but he seemed able to dodge all the bullets, he was so fast.

  Just then I heard Captain Nosov yell at me:

  ‘Kolima, see him? Take him down, but don’t kill him!’

  So I used the basic technique for catching a moving target; I aimed my rifle on his path. Even if he continually changed direction from right to left, there was a constant in his movements because he always passed through the middle. I calculated where he would pass about ten metres ahead and waited. When the objective came into a quarter of my crosshairs, I pulled the trigger. The bullet hit him at leg height, blowing off a piece of his knee. He dropped straight to the ground, yelling and flailing his arms.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Nosov.

  Before making a move my comrades and I waited a little, looking around, but none of the enemies gave signs of life, except the runner. He was lying in a pool of his own blood, and he was conscious. His backpack was nearby, and he was trying to grab it to get his rifle, but his movements were slow. That enormous hole in his knee must have hurt like hell.

  When we went down, the infantrymen went to inspect the area of the massacre. Everything was soaked with blood and dust; our steps were heavy because we felt a swampy mass underfoot, like mud. There were body parts everywhere – arms, legs, heads shattered like ceramic vases.

  We realised that one guy had survived. Miraculously, he was still alive and in one piece; perhaps when the chaos broke out he had hidden and we hadn’t caught him. Yet even if he didn’t have a single wound, he was completely disorientated – he walked in circles around his dead companions, disarmed, his hands raised towards the sky, speaking in his language with a desperate tone. He wore a military uniform with the insignia of one of the many fundamentalist organisations involved in the war in Chechnya; he had a long beard and a small cap completely covered in medals, the kind that Muslims usually wear. It struck me, because there in the woods among the corpses he truly looked out of place. I sensed that it would have been better for him if he were dead.

  An infantryman seized him by the beard and with the butt of a pistol smacked him in the face. He let out a cry full of pain and fell to his knees, speaking in a feeble voice full of humility. He was probably asking him to spare his life. But the soldier kicked him again in the head with his heavy boot, and the Arab was left on the ground.

  That instant, a small digital videocamera fell from his clothes. The soldier picked it up and tried to turn it on, but Captain Nosov started shouting.

  ‘Soldier! Who gave you permission to touch the technical evidence or mistreat my prisoner?’ Nosov was famous for picking fights with everybody; even the guys in the other units were afraid of him. The rumour was that no matter what he did he never got punished. He had fought in Afghanistan, and so for many he was a veteran worthy of the highest respect.

  We ourselves had once been witness to a very personal event in his life. A young nurse, who worked on a base where we were temporarily stationed, just so happened to fall in love with him. When we transferred, as we saboteurs always did, the poor girl killed herself with an injection of morphine.

  We hadn’t heard anything about this story but one day, three months later – we were on the front lines, fighting in a small city – a young investigator came from the military law office. He delivered a letter to us and started asking questions about our time on the base where the nurse had worked. In particular, he was interested in finding out whether our captain and this woman had engaged in ‘relations prohibited by military code’.

  Obviously we all said we didn’t know a thing, though someone recalled Nosov coming down with something while we were stationed on the base. So – we told the investigator – a nurse in fact did come to our unit, but nobody could remember her in any detail. The investigator asked a few more questions and then left, giving us the letter. We never saw him again.

  We all went together to deliver the letter to Nosov right away, and the captain asked me to read it. Before taking her life, the woman had written that she couldn’t imagine a future without Ivanisch. She called him a ‘heartless man’ and concluded by saying that he was ‘as crazy as he was handsome’.

  After I finished reading – the captain had remained stock still the whole time, without batting an eye – Nosov didn’t do anything in particular. He looked at us for a moment and then whispered a single phrase:

  ‘If someone is weak, they should stay home.’

  At his officer’s command, the soldier rushed over to our Captain, saluted him, and handed him the videocamera. A device like that must have been worth a lot, and for low-ranking soldiers could even present a risk. To prevent anyone killing them for it, officers would immediately take any object of value off their hands.

  Nosov carefully opened the videocamera, turned it on, and after a few seconds called three of us over:

  ‘Strays, take everything out of that piece of shit Arab’s pockets and wrap it up for consignment. We’re taking him home with us…’

  He showed us part of the film. The Arabs had captured two of our paratroopers; one already half dead, the other seriously wounded in the stomach but still alive. One Arab said something incomprehensible, and all the others started yelling and chanting religious phrases. Abruptly, mercilessly, one of them cut the heads off the paratroopers. Then they danced around with the heads in their hands, with our soldiers’ lifeless bodies in the background. One came up to the videocamera and said something in their language. Then the video broke off.

  Before tying up the Arab prisoner, we inspected him thoroughly. He had a small fabric bag hooked to his belt: inside there was a portable computer, a map with some notes and a series of Afghan and Russian passports, all with different names but various photos of the same face.

  Nosov was satisfied.

  ‘This time we got the good one…’

  Meanwhile, the infantrymen took the shoes and other things that could be of use from the bodies. It was like being at an outdoor market – they kept shouting things like:

  ‘Forty-six, boys, who wears a forty-six? I’ve got a good pair of shoes here, come and get ’em!’

  ‘Help me cut open this bloody jacket – there’s a Colt under there, I can see the butt but I can’t get it off this fucking fatso!’

  ‘Hey! I’ve got two full Beretta clips! Does anyone need them?’

  ‘Fucking hell, this guy’s shoes were practically new and even the kind I like – too bad our guns blew all these holes in them…’

  ‘Guys! I have a cool designer[3] bayonet over here! Who wants to trade for a pair of shoes?’

  In this way, in fifteen minutes the infantrymen had picked the dead clean, leaving them barefoot and unarmed. We’d made an agreement with the infantry; since they were only rarely involved in operations like that and they needed shoes, guns and so on more than we did, they were free to take their trophies. They would leave us the rifles, scopes and infrared laser pointers, which the Arabs had in abundance, given that the United States systematically and with great generosity refurnished them with all the necessities.

  We took the new Kalashnikovs to reinforce our equipment and put everything else in a pile with a hand grenade underneath, which would render the weapons completely useless. I kept for myself a Finnish-made precision rifle, equipped with an American scope and ten full cartridges.

  When we were getting ready to go back to the base, Nosov went over to the guy I had hit in the knee. He was h
ardly moving. His face had gone white, he was losing a lot of blood and if it went on that way he wouldn’t last much longer.

  The captain looked at him with a wry grin and said:

  ‘You had some fun here in the valley, huh?’ He placed his foot on the wound, right where the white bone was poking out, and pushed down with brute force. The poor wretch shouted hopelessly, it seemed like he was going to explode from pain any moment. Nosov laughed softly, looking him right in the eye.

  ‘Piece of shit Arab, you made a bad move coming here. They told you a load of crap about the Russians… You think that your people killed the infidels, right?’ Nosov didn’t raise his foot from the man’s knee and his entire body was shaking. A dribble of dark spit trickled out of his mouth, as if he had eaten dirt. He didn’t have the strength to scream, he just made a quiet moan, like the cry of a sick dog. The captain pulled his knife out of his jacket, and stroked it as he continued his speech.

  ‘I know you think you’re going to your nice little Muslim paradise now, but you can’t be so naïve as to think that they’ll let you in without you suffering a little here on earth…’

  We had all realised that something truly horrendous was about to happen, but we were paralysed.

  A young officer in the infantry, who seemed to be the most cruel of their group, stood there like a statue; open-mouthed, as still as if he had seen a ghost.

  Nosov exposed the Arab’s chest, ripping off his military jacket. The man stared at him without saying anything, his eyes bulging with terror.

  ‘Thank goodness I’m here, always willing to help you good people, to oil the gates of the garden of your god. So when you finally open it, it won’t bother you with its squeaking…’

  Nosov bent over him; he put one knee on his chest, the other on his legs, then stuck the knife in his belly and began to cut.

  The Arab howled so loud that his voice gave out soon after; he just let out a sort of prolonged, inhuman whistle, like a machine with metal parts grating against each other.

  Our captain continued carving into his chest, accompanying his work with a song, a kind of saboteur anthem:

  ‘A bayonet in the back, a bullet to the heart,

  the wolves will pray for our souls!

  The dead aren’t warmed by triumph or glory,

  Blood runs in our veins, the blood of the Russian,

  today we will satisfy death, God forgive us!’

  The louder the Arab wheezed, grimacing with pain, the louder Nosov sang, while he continued carving with patience and calm.

  ‘Born and raised there, where the others will die,

  that’s why fate made us saboteurs!

  The Motherland, great Russia, even she is afraid of us,

  we are her true sons, for her we’d drown in blood,

  but our hearts burn with true love!’

  When he was finished, the captain got up slowly, and with a sadistic smile said to the rest of us:

  ‘We were here, the saboteurs!’

  The man’s entire torso was skinless, from his navel to his neck. The Arab had lost consciousness, but you could see he was still breathing softly.

  Next to him, on the ground, there was a layer of skin. Nosov had cut it in the shape of a bat, just like the ones we drew on the city walls.

  The captain said to the infantrymen:

  ‘Go ahead and take it if you want, keep it as a souvenir. That way you can tell everyone that at least one time in your pointless lives you knew some real men… Remember that being cruel doesn’t mean cutting the noses or ears off the dead to make a necklace or a keychain… You don’t rape women or beat children. Try to look your enemy right in the eye when he’s still alive and breathing, that’s enough… And if you have the balls to do something else, well go ahead…’

  We said nothing, mulling over what had just come out of our captain’s mouth. The infantrymen seemed frightened, some had stepped back, pretending they hadn’t seen anything.

  The silence that had fallen around that inhuman torture was broken by Shoe. With an almost indifferent and calm expression – as if he were on vacation – he proclaimed:

  ‘Well, not too bad, Ivanisch, that bat almost looks real!’

  A young officer from the infantry pulled his gun out of his holster and went over to the Arab, aiming at his head. Nosov gave him a dirty look.

  ‘What are you doing, son?’ he asked, calm.

  ‘Enough, I can’t take it – I’m going to kill him…’ The officer was shaken up. His hand trembled as it gripped the weapon.

  ‘This guy stays as he is,’ Nosov yelled, ‘and in fact I hope he lives till his friends get here… They think they’re cruel? They don’t know shit about cruelty! I’ll teach them personally what it means to be cruel!’

  Then he went towards the prisoner on whom we’d found the videocamera and the passports. He was all tied up, ready to come with us. Nosov grabbed him by the beard and dragged him over to his freshly skinned companion:

  ‘Look, and look hard, Arab… You don’t know who you’re playing with! Pray to your god that command is interested in you, otherwise I’ll skin you alive and make my guys belts out of your hide!’

  After about ten minutes, the helicopters came. We jumped on while the infantrymen stayed behind, waiting for two special infantry units to close off the valley.

  We headed back to base, tired and loaded with useless stuff as usual, this time with an Arab prisoner to boot, who, while we were up in the air, suddenly started to cry.

  Moscow, feeling sorry for him, gave him some water to drink, and the captain smiled.

  ‘Give him a drink; I’m sure his throat is all dry… What a shitty day, boys, surrounded by a bunch of homos…’

  When we got to base, there was already a delegation waiting to pick up the prisoner.

  Captain Nosov spoke to the colonel while his men loaded the Arab onto another helicopter. The colonel called Nosov ‘son’, and the captain called him ‘old man’; you could tell that they were buddies.

  The colonel said:

  ‘The infantrymen complained, saying that you made a bloodbath, you tortured a prisoner…’ He wasn’t at all angry; he spoke with a mixture of complicity and irritation.

  Nosov, as always, was playful and in good spirits:

  ‘You know how they are, old man, those guys shit themselves as soon as they get wind of an Arab… They need to be shown that we’re the dangerous ones – they should be afraid of themselves, not those ignorant, incompetent, drugged-out religious fanatics…’ Whenever he spoke, Nosov had a mysterious power; his words carried a strange certainty. The colonel thought for a moment, and then, smiling, clapped a hand on his shoulder:

  ‘Son, you’d certainly know better than anyone else. But remember, if anything ever happens, I’m always here…’

  As the helicopter ascended, the colonel smiled from the window and waved. Then he made a sign on his chest, as if he were drawing our bat with his finger. Still smiling, he clenched his fist, as if to say ‘Keep it up!’ We all broke out in big grins and waved back at him, as if he were our own grandfather who had come to visit us.

  I thought a lot about what happened that day. Sometimes I regretted not having killed that poor man I’d shot in the knee. But later, after some time had passed, I came to understand the insane logic that guided our captain’s actions, and I realised that, yes, it was true that he made some extreme decisions, but he did it so that we could keep fighting the war the way we did.

  We owed our reputation to Nosov’s great skill in handling complex situations well in the face of the realities of war.

  And if his choices didn’t always conform to human morality, it was only because they reflected the horror and the difficulty we endured every day in the war, trying to stay alive, strong and sound.

  FIRE ON US

  …for this offensive special commitment is required of the soldiers and officers in the assault units and of all the active units on the front lines. Given the high priority o
f this operation, the nature of the task does not call for the capture, arrest or transport of terrorists or any other member of an illegal armed group. All human units who pose a threat or cause difficulty in carrying out orders during direct combat must be physically eliminated; whatever weapons or ammunition they may have must be destroyed on the spot or used by the active units to carry out the received order. Any form of communication with representatives of illegal armed groups is prohibited, as with civilians or any individual who does not belong to the units working in the area. Respond to any requests from terrorists for medical aid, negotiation, conversation, or unexpected offers to surrender to the law of the Russian Federation with gunfire.

  Part of the order transmitted via radio to all the units involved in the offensive in the city ‘N’ in the Chechen Republic, 1999

  Pummel, throttle, crush…

  A favourite saying of General Aleksei Yermolov[4]

  If you only knew what a friend I lost in battle…

  It happened not forty-two years ago, but just the other day…

  In the middle of the mountains, in the sand, where the heat burns all,

  sparking my memory, now far away from youth…

  Can you hear me, my friend?

  My dear friend, in the end we were able to climb,

  climb to that height that cannot be measured in words,

  under which you fell…

  What a friend I lost in battle…

  As kids we would read war stories,

  he certainly couldn’t have imagined

  I would have to drag his body behind the rocks…

  Thirty metres away, only thirty metres,

  but how far that road was, between night and day…

  Sand and stone,