The cases with the clips began to explode one after the other, making a racket.
‘Let’s go back, before they all get here!’ shouted Nosov.
We went out from the bar and ran across the main road to the building. From the third-floor windows came the volley from our machine gunners to cover the area behind us, as we had arranged earlier.
Suddenly Nosov stopped in the middle of the street, and amidst the shouts and shots of the enemy – who had seen us and was fast approaching – launched a grenade at the armoured car where the Arabs were hiding. The car blew up, then I opened fire on the enemy, and Moscow and Shoe joined in. In the meantime, Deer and Spoon had already reached the building, and together they fired from the second-floor window. Zenith had taken cover by the building’s entrance, and from there opened fire with a grenade launcher hooked to his Kalashnikov, hitting one man full on – we saw bits of his body go flying. Nosov started running again and in a moment we were all back in the building. The infantrymen were looking at us like we were crazy.
As always, our captain asked:
‘Everyone in one piece? No holes?’
We were all down on the floor, trying to catch our breath. To be able to answer Nosov, first we had to figure out what our status was, check to see if there was anyone injured or anything. A bullet had split the sole of my shoe, right at the heel. I slipped it off with my knife and showed it to the others.
‘For the love of God, Kolima, stop playing these jokes…’ Spoon said to me, smiling, and everyone started laughing.
Just a few centimetres further up, and that bullet would have hit my ankle.
From that moment on, the battle was like a volcanic eruption. The Arabs, after having lost the machine gun and grenade launcher, were furious and started throwing themselves on our position almost hysterically, attacking repeatedly without stopping even for a second. Fortunately the infantrymen were ‘well dressed’, as we would say when someone was armed to the teeth; they had three machine guns and every single hole in the wall under surveillance.
We took positions on the second floor. With two other machine guns, my comrades had emptied four cases, ten thousand rounds, in half an hour. I took out three snipers who were trying to climb onto the roof of the nearby apartment building; one of them, before I was able to pinpoint him, had seriously wounded one of the infantry sergeants, hitting him right in the chest. Unfortunately, he died two hours later in his comrades’ arms, down in the cellar where there were another seven wounded.
In the subsequent four hours, after nightfall, there was nothing to indicate the presence of live Arabs. The whole street in front of the building was filled with bodies; everywhere you looked you saw nothing but corpses. None of our men shot anymore, and you couldn’t hear anything in the vicinity either.
We arranged rest shifts, while some ate and others stood guard. I was able to close my eyes for an hour or so. Hearing only the voices of the guys rehashing the details of the various battles or talking about their families, the houses they were born and grew up in, all the conversations blended together in my head…
When I got up I took over from Moscow, and he instantly plopped down on the empty crates of machine gun clips; he was asleep in seconds. I drank a broth made with bouillon with some dry black bread and pieces of stew from the American cans of preserved meat that our men had found on the Arabs.
Nosov was telling a story. I had missed the beginning because I had gone out into the yard to relieve myself, but it was something about a personal experience of his in Afghanistan. Everyone was listening raptly, and he spoke gently, remembering the men who had been in that war with him, every so often adding a fond phrase like ‘May his be the kingdom of heaven’ after someone’s name…
At some point, on the road in front of the building – making a terrible noise as the bodies of the dead were swept aside – about ten armoured cars and light tanks arrived. It was our paratroopers, and they were about to make another advance into enemy-controlled territory.
They asked us to come along. We gathered our things promptly, waking Moscow and the others who were sleeping. We said a quick goodbye to the infantrymen, with whom we had fought very well. We jumped onto our BTRs and were on our way to the line of fire yet again.
The young infantry lieutenant and some other guys from his unit appeared at the third-floor window. As he had done earlier that afternoon, the lieutenant shouted:
‘Good luck, boys! May God bless you and forgive you!’
We waved goodbye, although we couldn’t see them in the dark, and Spoon replied:
‘God willing, we’ll see each other again, brothers!’
Our car went after the column of paras.
In the dark, the city looked like a cemetery. No lights, no movement – the only things visible were the yellow headlights of our armoured cars illuminating the road. The sound of our engines made us sleepy, but we had to stay awake.
I looked up and the sky seemed empty, everything seemed empty. I felt abandoned, alone, trapped in a god-forsaken place from which there was no possibility of return.
As we approached the line we could hear the sounds of the battle. The skirmish seemed really serious: heavy machine gun blasts, grenade launcher shots, tank cannon blasts… Our order was to be as careful as possible; we were in full battle mode. But I felt like I was going to pass out from exhaustion. After all the shooting, my head kept feeling heavier and heavier.
We had fought for two days without pause. Sometimes by ourselves, other times with the paras or infantry explorers, who didn’t even have time to retreat before they had to keep up the defence in other areas. We had pushed ourselves so hard without ever really resting. Sometimes during transport we were able to get a few minutes of shuteye, just to fool our bodies into thinking they had slept a little.
Our infantry had sustained many losses; the enemy was fighting with desperation, because they knew there was no way out. The streets our cars went through were filled with bodies, the houses were crumbling under cannon fire – in the midst of that chaos it was impossible to coordinate ourselves. The paras accidentally opened fire on the infantry units twice, killing a few of our own.
By that point the end was near; the battle for the liberation of the city was becoming increasingly fierce. You could feel the hate, fear and death in the air. Everyone was exhausted; many were overtaken by fits of rage, even the simplest of conversations became a form of violence. Everyone’s nerves were at breaking point, and I was seriously on the verge of losing it.
As we were going down a road where the paratrooper assault units had just finished a battle, I saw an American-made armoured car in flames. Black smoke rose from the tyres, and the internal mechanisms made soft popping noises, like when coffee boils on the stove.
On the front of the car, on the windscreen, wire-bound to the chassis like Christ on the cross, there was a bare-chested Arab covered in blood. His face had been completely skinned: you could see the muscles and bones; the eyes, big and round, seemed made of glass. On his head he wore a blue beret with the paratroopers’ insignia, and a battle knife had been stuck between his teeth, affixed to his jaw with the wire. Someone had taken a big strip of cardboard from the boxes of food rations and hung it around his neck, then used his blood to write: ‘Allah isn’t great, ’cause he has no blue beret.’ Beneath there were the names and nicknames of some of the paras who had fallen in the battle.