A war that was not supposed to be. An excerpt from the novel "Airport" Sergei Loiko

ForumDaily, with the permission of the author, Sergey Loiko, publishes an excerpt from his acclaimed novel "The Airport", artistically interpreting one of the most heroic and tragic episodes of the Russian-Ukrainian war in Donbass. Sergey, a Russian journalist and photographer who had worked for The Los Angeles Times for many years, got to the Donetsk airport in the midst of fierce fighting. The seen and felt became, as a result, the artistic document of the war that is still going on, shaking through to shivering. In 2015 for his work in eastern Ukraine, Sergey Loiko was awarded one of the highest awards in American journalism - the Overseas Press Club Bob Considine award.

FROM THE AUTHOR

This book is about war, which was not supposed to be. This book is about heroes who did not want to die.

The romance begins at the airport, and its main line unfolds by the minute in the last five days, more than an 240-day siege.

The small Ukrainian garrison of the Airport day and night reflects the attacks of the enemy, repeatedly surpassing it in manpower and equipment. But here, in this destroyed to the base of the Airport, the insidious and cruel enemies are confronted with what they did not expect and could not believe in reality. With cyborgs. That is how the defenders of the Airport were called by the enemies themselves for their inhuman vitality and stubbornness of the doomed. Cyborgs, in turn, called enemies orcs.

Along with the cyborg at the airport is an American photographer who, for several reasons, is experiencing this seemingly unnecessary war for him, as a personal drama. With his eyes, as if in a kaleidoscope, in between the battles at the Airport, you will see the story of what objective researchers would call the Russian-Ukrainian war. The war unleashed by the Kremlin regime in the spring of 2014, immediately after the occupation and annexation of the Crimean peninsula. The war, which did not end, despite numerous truces, is still.

The book has many characters, many intertwining plot lines. The novel is not only and not so much about the war. He and about love, betrayal, passion, betrayal, hatred, rage, tenderness, bravery, pain and death. About our today's, yesterday's and, God forbid, tomorrow's life.

All the heroes of the book are fictional characters in the proposed circumstances. Any resemblance to living and living real people is nothing more than a coincidence. There is nothing in common between the author and the main character, except for some random and minor details.

But most of the war scenes and events are taken from reality and are based on the observations of the author, who spent the entire war in the war and, in particular, was the only foreign correspondent at the Airport during the siege.

Many events are shifted in time and place, which does not make them less real. In addition to the author’s observations in 2013-2015, the book’s main, military, and its parts were forty-three hours of interviews with soldiers and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including cyborgs, who defended the “last” day of the Airport and the meat grinder.

The author does not draw political conclusions. For him, the heroes of the book do it, and in the future, I hope, the readers will do it, if they have not already done it - before reading the novel.

I offer to the attention of ForumDaily readers one of the chapters of the novel. The Ukrainian garrison, surrounded at the airport, is suffering heavy losses. Armored vehicles sent by the command to evacuate the dead and wounded are having difficulty making their way through the dense fire of the separatist forces and regular army units sent by Moscow to help them. Meanwhile, two paratroopers from the group protecting the airport are called to pick up the remains of a Ukrainian tankman, a member of the crew of a damaged and burned tank, discovered on the takeoff field, in order to pack them in a box and send them to the base, and from there home, for burial, when (and if) ) transport will arrive, which they call “seagulls” in their jargon.

With respect and gratitude to the reader,

Sergey Loiko

CHAPTER VIII

BEAR PROFESSOR

Still all sorts of fools happy brave singing soldiers.

Bulat Okudzhava "Oh, the war, it will not last a year»

18 January 2015 of the year. Krasnokamensk Airport

While they are unloading everything they need and trying to place the wounded inside the MTLB, the Triton and Professor run on the take-off, jumping over the obstacles and dodging bullets, but not so many lives left as in a computer shooter.

- Stop! It is somewhere here! - shouts the Professor, and they freeze, crouching behind the charred carcass of the T-64 tank, catching their breath.

- There he is, tankman! How alive! “The professor points toward a dark, charred piece of human flesh, from which a thick broken yellow bone protrudes.

Triton lays down on the ground a wooden box from the RPG-26 [rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade. - Note], opens up. The professor in cloth gloves picks up the tanker's thigh, throws it into the box. They close the box, grab the iron handles on the sides and run one-two-three back.

The bullet passes through the professor's left forearm. He releases the box, falls on the concrete, groans and curses.

Triton crawls to him.

- Bear, how are you? Where are you?

- In the left! Aaaaaaa! B ... d! We'll have to change hands.

Misha rises. They, bending down, pick up a box, now having exchanged the parties, and again run. Misha's left sleeve is black with blood. He, like a pierced radiator, leaves a dark, wet mark on the take-off dotted line.

Reaching the car, drop the box. Misha falls face up. Breathing loudly, with moans. Triton leans over him.

- Let's see.

- Then, Triton! Tie a tankman, and then I will die in vain!

The Triton is looking for a free frame, moves the arms and legs of the dead in different directions, finds it, hardly lifts the box, puts it in with the stored wire.

Now the tankman will go home to his mother, or to his wife, or to whom a piece of the foot of a dead soldier must go.

The professor rises to help, and gets a stray bullet in the temple, right under his helmet. On the spot.

- Misha! Misha! - shouts Triton, conjures over him.

Call of Sergeyich.

Sergeyitch resorts, removes his helmet, shakes his head. Misha-Professor died, saving the leg of a dead tanker.

At this time, Stepan-Bander understands that all the wounded in the MTLB is no longer crammed. He also understands that this may be the last “seagull” on the “mainland”.

Counts remaining outside. Six more! Shooting from both sides does not subside.

- So, men! Stop your chance to be overwhelmed. Go to the armor! Lagaymo neatly. Sashko, kaptiorki bronh dvokhsotyh two! By predatkovomu armor on his feet, inside the belt! Trimaiosa for ramie! Come yak hearse. Znіmaymo z our dvokhsotih mіshki, schob krashte bulo bachiti, just like [ – Yes, guys! This is the last chance to stay alive. You'll ride with armor! We lie down carefully. Sasha, pull the 200th armor plates from the store! For additional armor on the legs, from the waist up! Let's stay in pairs! You'll ride like a hearse. Let's take the bags off our two hundredths so we can better see what we're carrying. - Note].

The fighters, the wounded and the whole, unwind the sacks from the frames, pull out the dead and pull them back to the frames and to each other. Triton is crying, pulls Misha. Warm blood runs down Mishkin’s face, along open, frozen eyes on Triton’s arms.

The triton falls to its knees, tears off its helmet, throws it down with force on the concrete, tears down the machine gun, smashes it against the helmet with all its might, throws back its head and shouts, tearing its voice:

- E ... I'm a war !!! I hate it !!! I hate b ... d! I hate it !!!!

He has a tantrum. In war, it can happen to anyone at any time. The cyborg has one life, and there is no spare head.

Sergeyich embraces the Triton hysterical with one hand, with the other he puts on his helmet and brings a flask of alcohol to his lips, then he takes a quick sip and wipes his wet eyes with the back of his hand.

Mekhan stands nearby, eagerly drinks hot coffee from a tin mug. NZ boiling water from Bandera, so as not to fall asleep on the way back (the water did not reach, remained in the burned-down BMP). The face is black. Eyes - do not even say what. Inhuman.

- Kazak, wiklikai meni p'yattiashchih rosiyan on ixnіy frequencies. We will rub for truce. Іnshogo vihodu nema [– Cossack, call me the fiftieth Russian on their frequency. We will talk about a truce. There is no other way out. - Note].

Bander wants to talk directly with the commander of the Prstovsky Russian Airborne Brigade, which has dug round the perimeter, cuts off the transport and supports the outburst of separars and Chechens with fire.

After a couple of minutes, the assistant commander, a hefty baton with the call sign Kazak, reports that there is no connection.

- So ... Clearly, they decided altogether ... Aybolіt, finish shooting, know jacket. "Shvidku will help" robity be [- So ... Clearly, they changed (they changed the frequency of the radio exchange) already ... Aibolit, finish shooting, take off your jacket. Make an “ambulance.” - Note.].

Behind Dr. Sergeich’s jacket is a large white circle with a red cross in the middle. Bander cuts Sergeyitch's jacket, pulls yellow (native-alien) tape to a crooked, but a long piece of iron window frame. What is not a pole? Sticking this piece in the hole machine-gun turret. One of the wounded on the armor must support him ...

All somehow settled. Live on the armor depict corpses among the corpses of these.

Last briefing for Semanych Mekhan.

- Marvel, Semenich, zhodnyh rivkіv. Dreyfuєsh povіlno on the first. Already rozvidnіlosya. Stinks can be broken, just in us for the car, so the flag is not spread. Yak mix, stink you up! І you at once z usіma! Yak mene zrozumiv, hero? [– Look, Semenych, no jerks. Drifting slowly in first. It's already dawn. They should see what kind of car we have if they don’t look at the flag. If you move, they will burn you! And you along with everyone! How did you understand me, hero? - Note]

- Got it. Light trot, as on parade.

Mehan disappears into the hatch. The car pulls away with a jerk, so that some of the wounded almost fly off to take-off. The remaining gazes out the most amazing car that they have seen.

MTLB, hung with stirring armor from the living and the dead, slowly creeps into the mist, which quickly dissipates.

What does each of the wounded on the armor think about in the cold metal of the car or in the cold flesh of the dead? It is terrible to imagine what they have in mind, what prayers whisper lips.

The fog completely dissipates when they leave because of the second landing sleeve to take-off. The banner with the red cross is kept on the right side. Shooting subsides.

- Twentieth, twentieth! What do you have for x ... me? Why do not you work on the object? I report a movement! - Colonel Sivko, the commander of the Prstovsky airborne assault brigade, originally from the Ukrainian Kherson, calls the battalion commander.

- Comrade fiftieth, see for yourself. From you, the object is now also visible. They are still five hundred meters to cut. I am waiting for an order, the battalion major Ikonnikov violates the charter. He has an order for a long time. Quite clear. Shoot everything that moves and does not move along the takeoff to the terminal and back.

Colonel rises on the parapet of the checkpoint, takes the binoculars from the observer, adjusts the sharpness, lowers the binoculars:

“What the fuck is your mother?”

He had never met such military equipment.

- Twentieth, twentieth! According to the goal does not work. One or two warning in the air to know that we are here. Run! - Sivko lowers the radio, goes outside, sits in the "Gas-2330-Tiger" and says the driver three words: - In the city, b ... d!

While the car is jumping over the bumps of the front-line, raising waves of dirt and growling, the colonel pulls out a treasured flask from the seat pocket in front of him and, without wincing, takes a couple of sips.

“E ... I'm a war.” Damn her! I hate it!

* * *

Nikolai Sivko, Hero of Russia, did not like to fight. In his 45 years, there were already several wars behind his back, one worse and worse for another. He still didn’t have another job, and he did it professionally. But such a war, as here, he could not imagine. Yes, art worked all the same, the soldiers and officers also carried out his orders, digging in, going on reconnaissance, attacking, killing, dying. And the glass of vodka in the damp tent still did not go down the throat in the evenings.

But here, in this bad war (the mildest epithet in the language of all his familiar officers), everything was different from the very beginning.

* * *

One of the days of the defense of the Donetsk airport. Photo by Sergey Loiko

On a hot July afternoon, near Saur-Mogila, where Ukrainian paratroopers fought long lasting shooting battles, barely restraining the superior forces of the Russian troops that unexpectedly crossed the border, Colonel Savinykh, commander of the APU assault brigade, was going to send a special forces unit to find and return to the location wounded and killed - from his fighters: intelligence in the morning ran into an ambush. I waited for Russian art to stop working. They had already struck his position right from Russian territory. Basically "Grads" and 152 mm howitzers. Suppress their art was strictly prohibited.

- What are you, Savinykh, oh ... ate at all ?! Well this war will be! War, b ... d, not x ... p dog! Do you understand this, Colonel, with your bad head? The general was yelling into the phone, so that dust was falling from the concrete floor of the dugout. - We have the ATO, Savinykh! You see, ATO, e ... and his mother! I repeat the last time for a special, b ... d, resourceful! E ... this ATO! And no more x ... me! How did you understand me, Polkan?

Polkan realized that this way from his brigade soon there would be no wet or dry place. But it was necessary to fight, the ATO or a horse in a coat.

As soon as the Russian art finished work, the mobile phone rang.

"Wife! Called the same. Here is a stubborn woman ... "

- Hi Sasha. How are you? - “stubborn woman” started talking to some hoarse, once familiar, male smoked bass.

- Who is it?

- Do not cry, do not grieve! In vain the tears are not lei! A better kiss, when we return from the camps ... - the bass in response sang a line from the unforgettable front-gunner of their training platoon in the Ryazan paratrooper.

- Hey, ale! Who is it? Who are you? - Sasha's voice suddenly subsided.

- Sasha, b ... d, this is Kolyan, your little brother fighting! Forgot how we in Ryazan, in school, annealed? Like in Salang, in the tunnel e ... nome, dead-gasped, blood, b ... d, cawing, how did you carry me out of there? Sasha, it's me, Kolya!

- Kolka! Kolya! Alive! How are you? One hundred years, b ... d! How did you find me? Damn, I can not believe! Kolya is a brother! Where are you?

- Sasha, listen carefully now. I am here, Sasha, here. In front of you. I have your two hundred and three hundred! It is necessary to grind. Water pumping broken in neutral. Sixteen zero-zero. One. Without weapons. End of communication.

Sasha spent all these three hours rooted to the spot, not rising, not giving orders. A whole life flashed through my head. For some reason, I especially remembered how an entire company ran along a white sandy forest road near Konstantinovo, Yesenin's homeland, rolling like a head over heels from a steep bank, throwing off boots and trousers as they went, killing everything living around with the sharp smell of footworms - the most lethal weapons [weapons of mass destruction. - Note] in the world. As they rushed with a shout, laughter and obscenities into the cool, blue-blue river ... As everyone swam together, but soon they turned back, and only Kolyan swam to the other side and lay exhausted on the hot sand ...

And now the river separated them again. This time, not the blue-brightening Oka, but the river of death, where they stood by its banks ... Against each other.

At ten to four, Sasha drank a glass of vodka, smoked a couple of cigarettes, picked up a bottle, gave the mortar men coordinates, left the gun to the commander and slowly walked through the front line.

They met in a dilapidated, roughly composed of hard-beaten, since then, bullets and fragments of red brick, pumping near the completely destroyed pumping station.

Hugs ... The memory of the goose bruised the back. Standing out of the bottle, they drank a bottle, not choking, not taking their eyes off each other, not believing their eyes. It can not be! This, b ... d, should not be. This, b ... d, is not normal.

We talked about life, wives, children, women, the wages of a miserable, failed life. They themselves could not formulate it, but subconsciously both of them were hammering like the fragments of armor the same feeling - someone betrayed them, and there was no way out.

- Sasha, I, in fact, what came, finally came to the point of Kohl. - Let's change. I have two of yours - two hundred and three hundred. We kid first [help] had. Shoulder. Through. Will live.

“Kohl, I have a herovo with the exchange fund today,” Sasha answered, almost feeling an awkward feeling of guilt in front of his friend that he had not killed or injured his people.

- Take a loan. Then you will give ...

Looked into each other's eyes again. Both have a different look. The high banks of the timeless river Oka were covered with snow.

Everyone called their own group with a stretcher. Without weapons.

Some brought, others attributed to their main product in the war - the dead and wounded.

Two days later, Sasha called Kolya. His men picked up a murdered Russian and two wounded. He was ready to repay the debt.

Everything was, as for the first time, only without vodka, tears and hugs.

“I gave you the three hundredth, and you brought me two.”

- And I return to you with a percentage.

Neither one nor the other laughed at the joke.

“Oh, by the way,” said Nick, saying good-bye, as if he remembered something insignificant. - Art today will work. Three thousand shells. Let's start with 22's. You prikapaysya just in case.

- I do not have time, almost all positions have changed, - Sasha replied gloomily.

“Okay, think of something.”

Throughout the night, art dug along a deserted black forest. Kohl changed the coordinates for them - "according to the latest intelligence ..."

In the morning, from some unfamiliar number, Kolya received a message: “Thank you.”

Since then, they have not met once and have not called each other.

* * *

Ukrainian soldier patrols in Donetsk airport. Photo: Sergey Loiko

This was the only time Kolya disobeyed the order and committed an official malfeasance.

In August, near Ilovaisk, everything was different.

Kohl personally agreed with the Ukrainians that they would come out of the boiler on foot, without equipment. Ukrainians needed to carry the wounded by trucks, or at least by "moto-races." Kohl agreed.

When the Ukrainians, several thousand, exhausted by the fighting in the environment, moved in an endless column along the “corridor”, a general descended on the brigade headquarters.

- What is your parade, Sivko? Lost the edge completely, the dove of the world x ... eve ?!

- We have agreed on the conditions ... I reported to you, comrade general.

- That you agreed with them! I did not give a command!

- You were not against. That's what they said!

- I do not know what I said! And the Supreme is against! Personally! This is his order! Ukrainians should, b ... d, understand, understand, b ... d, that we, b ... d, will not joke, and fraternal, b ... d, friendship with the fascists pi ... dec. Got it?

- I understand you.

- Especially since they come out on the technique.

- They need to take the wounded out. They have hundreds of three hundred. Will die on the road.

- These are their problems. And you, Sivko, are not Mother Teresa. Fire, b ... d, of all the guns!

- Yes, comrade general!

And the fire from all guns Sivko opened.

The terrible picture presented to him the next day, when he and his retinue examined the field of "great victory." Funnel funnel. The remains of people everywhere, even in neighboring trees. Hands, feet, heads, guts ... Hundreds of the dead. Dozens of burned infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers and trucks. More than two hundred prisoners — almost all wounded.

For successful Ilovaiskaya operation Sivko and received the Hero of Russia. Quiet, no noise.

Colleagues joked that he is now the first Hero of New Russia - Sivko-Ilovaisky.

* * *

“I hate it,” Sivko repeats loudly, wiping his lips.

Having calmed down a bit, he gets a mobile phone, reads the last message: “Unavailable again. Children will forget their father so much. What are these endless teachings like that? I love, kiss, wait.

He takes another sip and does not have time to push the answer. At the entrance to the city, two Uragan rockets, one after another of the five shot down, turn the Colonel's Tiger into a pile of smoking, twisted metal.

Colonel "died at the exercises at the site in the Rostov region." In a week, a truck of the so-called humanitarian convoy will deliver ammunition and provisions for the front to Red Stone. And take home the disfigured, half-burned body of the colonel and another ninety bodies of Russian servicemen. There will be seven trucks in the humanitarian conquest. Three of them with freezers.

In the meantime, on an MTLB takeoff at a speed of a hearse, they carry fourteen (no, already fifteen) dead and eighteen wounded to their armor and under armor. This is the last "seagull". No longer…

Russian paratroopers almost rise to their full height in their trenches and give one who, two shots, and who turn in the air from all types of weapons.

The mechanic Semyonitch, without ceasing, is baptized inside the “motor-leash” with his free hand. He does not know that this is a "salute".

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