Free Fall by Nicolai Lilin Read Free Book Online

Zabelin’s a professional saboteur. If he were completely fit he’d be here with us right now.’ Nosov said this with anger. Then he stood up and stepped out of the vat, resting his feet on an empty wooden crate, the kind they use to transport Kalashnikovs.
    â€˜Soldier, towel!’ he thrust out his arm, waiting for Moscow to pass him the green rag that he’d already beenbrandishing for a while, almost like a votive offering, the ones they would put at the statues of pagan gods in ancient temples. Just then I realised that it wasn’t a towel but a flag; it was green, with different-coloured stripes and some Arabic writing in white. Nosov took the flag and started drying himself, making the strangest faces.
    I couldn’t help laughing. His face turned serious and he asked:
    â€˜What the fuck are you laughing at, delinquent? I put my skin on the line every blessed day to conquer these shit flags – I have the right to use them to wipe my ass, since they’re no good for anything else.’
    Moscow laughed too, and bit off another hunk of black bread.
    Nosov cut us short:
    â€˜Listen, boy, this is how things work around here; until you’ve had some experience in the clean-up crew, our family won’t accept you for military operations. Now go and eat, rest, and starting tomorrow you’ll go and clear the fields. Just the other day we finished a mission close by, so you’ll have some work to do. Then, we’ll see.’
    He started getting dressed, throwing the green flag to the ground. It was soaking wet; it had become a useless scrap of fabric, destined to be buried in the mud.
    Moscow and I went back to the barracks, and on the way he told me how things worked in the unit. From what Iunderstood, the two most important rules were: don’t try to escape, and eat at every opportunity.
    â€˜What’s this business about the clean-up crew?’ I asked impatiently. ‘What fields am I supposed to clear? It’s not like I have to go pick tomatoes, right?’
    â€˜Really? You haven’t figured it out?’ he said, giving me a sad look. ‘You have to collect the bodies. They make you do it so you get used to contact with dead bodies, so you won’t have a hard time at the crucial moments. We’ve all been there, friend – you’ll be on clean-up duty for a couple of weeks.’
    The next morning, following Moscow’s directions, I reported for duty at a big military truck. There, on the wooden benches placed along the walls, sat ten others. I said hello and took my place.
    The clean-up crew was composed of twenty people or so. Calling them ‘soldiers’ didn’t really seem right; they were like gravediggers, except they wore uniforms and drank a lot of alcohol.
    Our job was very simple. We would go wherever battles had taken place, often major clashes, and gather all the bodies – human and animal – that we saw on the ground. We would toss the bodies into the truck, then jump in with them and take a pleasant ride back to camp.
    My first ‘pick’, as we called them, was in a half-destroyed and long abandoned village.
    They gave me a pair of thick rubber gloves that wentall the way up to my armpits, typically used in the chemical protection units. Then they gave me a long rope with a slipknot at the top, like the kind people hang themselves with. One guy explained succinctly how to move the bodies:
    â€˜You take two of them, tie their legs together with the rope and then drag them to the truck. Don’t go through their pockets and don’t take anything from the bodies, otherwise you’ll be in deep shit. If you find any weapons, take them to the sergeant.’
    The battle had taken place a few days earlier. There were bullet holes everywhere, and the streets were filled with craters from the explosions from mortar fire and hand grenades. At the entrance to the village there was a Russian armoured car,