Shortly afterward, no more than three hundred metres away, the column we’d been waiting for appeared. We gave the entire group enough time to enter the valley and then, as planned, our machine gun started shooting at the last ones in the row. Those machine guns were ‘toys’ to the night scouts – they were extremely powerful weapons, beasts that could shoot up to six rounds a second; the bullets were large calibre, capable of splitting a body as if it had been chopped in half with a giant axe. We only had a light 7.62-calibre RPK machine gun, manned by Zenith. As the Arabs began to move towards the mines, our machine gunner went to work on the rest of the group.
I followed right after Zenith’s gun, aiming for the front of the line. In the first ten seconds, nobody responded to our fire; enemies fell to the ground one after another without having time to react.
Through the lens I saw human bodies disintegrate with the machine gun blasts – arms flew off, faces blew up; I shot at the torso, as they teach you to do with moving targets. After I hit them they would keep running for a couple metres and then suddenly drop, as if hit by a powerful gust of wind.
Then some of the Arabs took positions on the ground, shielding themselves behind their comrades’ bodies, and started shooting at us. The bullets went just above our heads – they were experts, they aimed towards the shells from the precision rifle my comrade in the infantry was using. He had a weapon without a silencer, whereas I had an integrated silencer and the sound produced by my rifle was no louder than a handclap. People who have grown up in war-torn areas can hear and recognise every single noise. From a mere series of blasts at several metres’ distance they can get a clear idea of the type and number of weapons, and are even able to figure out their location.
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.