‘You running away from my unit makes me look bad. If this story got out I’d have problems with superior command, and I don’t want any problems with them, understood? You know, don’t you, that all deserters get sent to military prison? You know what that means? Well, don’t think that just because you’ve been in juvie a couple of times you’ve seen all there is to see in this world… The point, dear Nicolay, is that starting tomorrow I’m going to send you on clean-up duty for three days. You’ll help the team that runs the military prison here, not far from our base. When you return, you can decide whether to run away or stay here and do your duty like the rest of us…’
We returned to camp. I went to sleep in the barracks and in the morning a sergeant woke me up with a taunt:
‘Let’s go, Count of Monte Cristo, they’re hauling you off to jail!’
I got dressed while my comrades were still sleeping, and went out to the yard. A car was waiting for me, with three soldiers and a lieutenant. We introduced ourselves, and after the military formalities we left for the prison.
Zabelin hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told me about the prison. In the yard, a few soldiers were walking in a circle, wearing faded old military uniforms; huddled together they looked like an indistinct dark grey blob. They had big white numbers on their backs, and they were frighteningly thin, shuffling around hopelessly, dragging their feet in imitation of a military march. It was the most horrible place I’d ever seen in my life.
A soldier holding a baton stood in the middle of the circle and barked out commands:
‘Left, left, one, two, three!’ He had an iron whistle in his mouth, tied to a little strap around his neck.
When he whistled, everyone immediately dropped to the ground, their bodies straight like logs, their hands on their heads. Yet one of them remained on his feet.
The soldier screamed at him, his voice almost hystericaclass="underline"
‘You! Did you not hear the whistle?’ Then, seeing that there was no reaction, he moved quickly over to him. The prisoner’s knees shook so hard you could almost hear them knocking, but he kept on his feet. ‘For fuck’s sake, are you deaf?’ the soldier said, standing right in front of him. And without warning, he unleashed a series of blows with the baton, on the man’s back, neck, head. The man fell to his knees and wet his trousers. He was crying, begging the soldier not to beat him anymore. But the soldier’s only response was to laugh in his face.
‘You piece of shit traitor, you pissed all over yourself! How dare you?’ He gave him another volley of blows. The prisoner was on the ground now, the soldier’s boots kicking him.
The most chilling thing was that the whole scene had taken place in absolute silence. No one breathed, as if the yard were completely airless, without oxygen, without anything at all. It was like we were trapped inside a bubble that kept us from understanding what was going on.
My task, along with six other men, was to do the cleaning and take the food to the blocks where the military prisoners were being held. None of them was mentally stable; it was like they were in a catatonic state. They didn’t respond to questions; they behaved like animals, scurrying from one side of the cell to the other and then freezing the moment you looked at them, as if they were afraid to be caught moving. They lived according to the simple orders dictated by the whistle; they would eat in their cells, then march out to the yard, take their blows, undergo humiliation and torture from the guards, and then go to sleep at night only to wake up the following morning and start it all over again. They couldn’t communicate with each other, and any activity that would let them think was prohibited. They were unrecoverable, so deeply traumatised that – as one of the guards later confirmed – once they left prison, they never managed to reintegrate into society again. Many of them committed suicide; some wandered the streets until winter came and the cold killed them.
After three days in that prison, I decided not to tempt fate again, and so I returned to the routine of boot camp.
We saboteurs had an unusual uniform; we wore civilian clothes, things from home. As we would be conducting missions behind the front lines, travelling through territory under enemy control, it was essential that we be able to pass unrecognised. ‘The most important thing,’ Zabelin always said, ‘is your shoes.’ He explained to us that in wartime many soldiers complained of foot pain because of their boots, and he made us wear trainers so we would always be comfortable and light on our feet.
Zabelin had taught us the precious rules of ‘saboteur survival and solidarity’, as he called them. They were like commandments, and each of us had to learn them by heart. The idea was to create a sense of unity, to make us into our own clan within the army. The rules were very precise: saboteurs obey no one outside their commanding officer; under no circumstances may saboteurs be transferred to other units of the armed forces; in armed combat, saboteurs are forbidden to leave their dead on the ground. If a group suffered serious losses and was left isolated from the rest of the unit, they were not allowed to retreat from the line of operations. The only valid alternative was the most drastic: suicide. Each of us carried a personal hand grenade, which we were supposed to use to blow ourselves and the others up should the unit be surrounded by enemies and run out of ammunition. They were extreme rules, and I didn’t like them very much. I didn’t understand why we would have to kill ourselves, just because the saboteur strategy had no retreat plan, unlike every other unit of the Russian army.
What’s more, unlike the rest of the Russian army, we had nothing to do with military law. Every Russian soldier is required to memorise if not the entire military code, at the very least the principal articles. But as for us, we’ve never even touched our books, just as none of us has ever learned to march or salute properly.
Our weaponry, however, was better than the rest of the army’s. The paratroopers were equipped with Kalashnikov assault rifles, models with folding stocks and silencers which were attached in place of flash suppressors. With the silencer fitted we used ammunition with less gunpowder – the bullet would explode with less power so as not to exceed the speed of sound, and thus the weapon effectively turned out to be almost silent compared to the rifles they used in the infantry.
In actual war, I was soon to discover, you would detach the silencers; they were cumbersome, and during a mission it was hard to get the right ammunition. The charges you could find on the front line were the usual Kalashnikov ones, whereas you had to ‘reserve’ the special stuff at the warehouses, which wasn’t very convenient. This is why everybody would replace the silencers with flash suppressors picked up from wherever, often taken from an enemy. If you were lucky, you could find nice handmade models that worked to perfection – that is, that completely concealed the burst of flame created by the shot.
My comrades and I used two precision rifles. One was the classic Dragunov with a long barrel, useful for covering long distances. With one of these, its release modified and reload slowed down, an expert soldier – if he had the right cartridge – could shoot up to a kilometre away. It was a rifle used primarily as a field weapon, good for operations in wide-open spaces or at the foot of the mountains. The other rifle was a variation for special units: a VSS with a folding stock, a scope that detached easily for transport and an integrated silencer on the barrel. I liked that gun; it was light, precise, and it never betrayed you. The scope in particular was very sturdy and even if it slipped or hit something heavy it didn’t break. The VSS didn’t make any noise, but it only worked with a certain type of cartridge. It was able to cover a maximum range of three hundred metres, and it was useful for urban combat, where the gunfights were at very close range. You could also use it for reconnaissance, scouting and sabotage operations. The back-up groups for the assault squads often used it to keep watch over enemies without being seen.