Free Fall

I found out from some friends in the army that Captain Nosov and Moscow fell in battle – a few months after my discharge – in a mountain area between Chechnya and Dagestan. They had gone on reconnaissance and found themselves surrounded by a large group of terrorists.

The infantry night explorers who went to recover the dead that day said that Nosov’s and Moscow’s bodies had been mined. Evidently one of the two, before he died, hadn’t wanted to give the enemy the chance to commit dishonourable acts on their remains.

I visited their grave, in the military cemetery of the city of M—. According to army tradition, friends who have fallen together are buried together.

Shoe was wounded, but not seriously, a few months after my discharge. Nobody knows how, but he was able to get into the secret service and over time has climbed the ladder in the FSB. Our paths have crossed many times; we have remained good friends.

Zenith decided to stay on contract. I didn’t know much about his whereabouts; once in a while I would hear some story from mutual friends in the army who had run into him during a mission. He also went into the counter-terrorist wing of the FSB, the secret service.

Last spring, as I was beginning to write this book, I found out that he was killed during a counter-terrorist operation in a small town in Dagestan. Nobody could tell me anything about his death, only the place where he was buried.

I lost track of Deer. Some say that after getting discharged he went to live in southern Siberia, where he got married and works in the forest service.

Spoon is still part of the saboteur unit today. He was wounded twice, earned a few medals and, as far as I’ve been told, provoked the ire of a powerful general after courting his young wife.

A few years ago I came across him by chance while surfing on the internet, on a recorded television show about the war in Chechnya – he recounted the details of one of our missions. It struck me that he was losing his hair; he was almost bald. Then I realised that we were exactly alike.