Free Fall. Nicolai Lilin

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* 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 hardly 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