Nicolai Lilin - Free Fall

‘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.