Fear Incorporated

by Hervey Copeland

  The Russians rolled into the city in tanks and armoured vehicles before the break of dawn. They moved in from four directions, northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest. At first they didn’t encounter any resistance, but that all changed in the afternoon when Chechen paramilitary units started attacking. Their tactics were rock solid, they attacked the lead and rear vehicles simultaneously with rocket propelled grenades, in effect creating a traffic jam. Then they took their sweet time and finished off the rest of the tanks in between. In many ways it was like watching hunters shooting ducks in a barrel.

  I was up on the roof of a building about a hundred and fifty yards away, filming the entire thing when the first RPG slammed into the lead tank. It pierced the relatively thin metal of the turret and exploded in a massive fireball, destroying it and the personnel inside it with ease.

  Holy fuck! I thought. I was witnessing one of the supposedly strongest armies in the world getting their arses hammered by a bunch of guerrilla fighters. From inside buildings on the other side of the street I could see the muzzle flashes of AK-47s ripping into the mainly Russian conscripts who were fleeing from their vehicles in panic. I could also see the very short flight of the RPGs as they buzzed through the air like giant darts and exploded on impact with a deafening boom. In less than half an hour, the Chechens had destroyed nearly a dozen tanks and a dozen armoured vehicles. And all around there were dead Russian soldiers, splayed out on the street and on the sidewalks, their blood mixed with the grey slush on the ground.

  After the successful ambush was carried out, the Chechens poured out of the buildings in the surrounding areas and started moving in a south-westerly direction. I spent another ten minutes up on the roof before I made my way down onto the street. I was still fairly shaken up by what I had witnessed, and I had no desire of ending up in a crossfire or receiving a bullet in the back of my head from one of the stragglers. I could hear the gunfire coming from the direction the fighters had disappeared in, which I later found out was the railway station. They had been called over there to assist some of their comrades who had ambushed another group of Russian soldiers that had recently assembled there.

  I ran down the staircase of the old tired looking building, went through the door and ran straight into a group of Chechen fighters. There were nine of them all together, their faces hardened and showing signs of the emotional experience they’d just gone through. In their hands were AK-47s and a couple of belt fed machine guns. By the look of things they were on their way toward the railway station, and when they heard me exit the building they turned around and looked back at me.

  Fuck! I thought, cursing myself for not having taken more care before I left the building. I stood absolutely still, and stared right back at them. A few seconds passed, where absolutely nothing happened. It was kind of like a scene from an old western movie, where the two gunslingers eyeball each other, figuring out when is the right time to draw their weapons and shoot. My heart was pounding away, and I felt the blood in my head start to drain and hit the lower sections of my body. I’d just watched the Chechens kill at least a hundred Russian conscripts, and I was very aware that they could do the same to me.

  As I was thinking about all of these things, one of the fighters started walking toward me, the AK-47 raised and aimed at my chest. Then he shouted something at me in Russian that I didn’t understand.

  I did the only sensible thing that I could do given the circumstances; I raised my hands until they were in level with my eyes and shook my head.

  “I’m a journalist don’t shoot,” I said in broken Russian. Then I added, “I’m working for the BBC.”

  The guy with the AK kept on walking and stopped when he was a few yards away from me. His expression hadn’t changed, and he looked quite intimidating in his woollen beanie and his dirty uniform. His eyes were boring into mine, his lips were parted slightly as if he was some kind of predator assessing his prey. He had a long black beard that touched his chest, thick eyebrows that were lowered, and under no circumstances did he come across as a person that would take any bullshit.

  He said something else in Russian that I didn’t understand, and it was impossible to tell whether he believed me or not.

  “I don’t speak Russian, only English,” I said. It was one of a handful of sentences in Russian that I had learnt to say before I arrived in the country. I was nervous, but I tried to remain calm. I knew that the Chechens wanted journalists to report about the war and show the rest of the world what was going on.

  The guy looked at me for a good ten seconds, ostensibly trying to figure out if I looked like a foreign journalist or not. Then one of his comrades who was talking on a walkie-talkie said something and the guy turned around. Then moments later the group started running toward the railway station, where things had started to heat up judging by the explosions and gunfire coming from that direction.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled, and felt an enormous relief. It was not the first time I’d stared death in the eye, but it was the first time I didn’t have a weapon to defend myself with. I promised myself there and then that this was not going to happen again.

  I reached inside my backpack and retrieved the blue vest that had ‘Press’ printed on it at the front and back in big white letters. The vest had been placed there before I left the UK, but I had been reluctant to wear it as I didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to myself. But the circumstances had changed, and wearing it would now probably be an advantage. I quickly put it on, placed the backpack over my shoulders and began moving down toward the train station where the bloodbath had started to repeat itself.

  The Russian soldiers who had met very little resistance up until that point had entered the building and were mentally completely unprepared for what was about to happen next. I had made my way to the top of one of the buildings overlooking the area and was able to witness the entire thing. The Chechens seemed to have descended upon the area from all over the city, and the Russians were completely surrounded. Their military vehicles out front were quickly destroyed and the soldiers were shot one by one. Towards the end of the intense fire fight, I could see some of the Russians fleeing the area in panic, and I could see Chechens chasing after them. Some managed to get away, some were taken prisoners and quickly executed. I witnessed quite a few of those episodes, a quick interrogation, then an equally quick bullet to the head. But it was what happened on the following days that earn the battle of Grozny the description ‘Hell on earth’.

  After losing close to a thousand soldiers and numerous tanks and military vehicles on the first day, the Russians decided that it would be a good idea to literally obliterate the entire city. And that’s what they did. Their artillery bombarded the city from all sides. Some estimate that their rate of fire was close to thirty rounds a minute, and we’re not talking about cherry bomb sized explosions. The artillery rounds were packed with explosives and destroyed anything within a sixty yard radius. And it was during this time that I almost lost my life. Looking back at it, it still baffles me that I managed to get away, but somehow I did.

  It was just after noon, and I was walking around the area where the presidential palace was located, filming the explosions of the shells slamming into the building. I had been on the phone with Dirk, and had been instructed to focus on that area, so that’s what I did.

  I was on the north side of the building, about four hundred yards away. I was hunched down, sitting at the corner of a building that had taken a direct hit from the Russian artillery. I had just lowered my camera after having recorded about an hour of continuous explosions, when I noticed something moving on my right hand side. Less than a second later bullets were flying into the wall behind me and I could hear the very distinct sound of an AK-47.

  I immediately threw myself down on the ground and rolled behind the corner. My heart was beating heavy and the adrenaline kept rushing into my system. I scurried up on to my feet and with lightening speed stuck my head around the corner to see who
was shooting at me. And there about sixty yards away, I could see a Chechen wearing civilian clothes come sprinting toward me. When he saw my head, he lifted the automatic rifle again and fired a few more rounds toward the corner of the building. The bullets pried some of the render away, but I was unharmed.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that the guy was shooting at me, I would have stayed put and explained to him that I was just a journalist documenting the destruction of the city. But given that he was, I did the only sensible thing, I took off.

  The area in front of the presidential palace was open ground and thus represented a certain death. The area to the left had several buildings to hide inside.

  I ran as fast as I could to the other corner of the building and flung myself around it and ended up in a narrow alleyway. I could see the road going past the buildings about eighty yards away. It might as well have been four or five hundred yards, because there was no way I could reach it before my pursuer rounded the corner and sent me to kingdom come.

  I felt the desperation starting to rise as I raced down the narrow path. At tops I had four or five seconds left until the bullets would start to tear into my flesh. I had run for no more than two or three seconds, when I saw the open door to my right, and without giving it a second thought I flung myself through it. A tenth of a second later another quick burst of bullets flew past in the alleyway. But I paid no attention to them. The only thing that mattered to me there and then was to find a way out.

  I was inside some type of warehouse. Furniture and shelves were strewn across the floor, and to my left about twenty feet away or so, was a brick wall with a big hole in the centre of it. I had no idea what was on the other side, but at that particular time, I didn’t really care. The only thing that mattered was to get away from the guy with the Kalashnikov. I jumped over a shelving unit that had been torn away from the wall and dived through the opening.

  This room was bigger, but it was in a similar state as the other one with rubbish and all kinds of trash strewn out across the floor. It was also much brighter than the other room, and when I looked up to see why, I discovered that a large section of the roof was missing. Most likely as a result of a direct artillery hit.

  I didn’t stop to think about it, but instead kept running over toward the easiest accessible escape route, a broken window a few yards away. There were noises coming from the room I’d just left and it would only be a matter of seconds before the guy would reappear. I ran as fast as I could, and almost lost my balance while stepping on a piece of wood, but luckily managed to stay afoot. Then I bent my knees and threw myself head first through the window opening.

  I dampened the impact with my hands, the adrenaline numbing any pain that I might have suffered otherwise, and immediately got back up on my feet and ran back in the direction I’d come from. The corner of the building was at least twenty yards away. I pushed myself to the limit and felt my legs carry me over the white slush at a rapid pace. If I could make it to the corner before he spotted me, I might just stand a chance. I grimaced and dug deep into my reserves and increased my speed some more. I was only a few feet away from it now. Please, don’t let him see me I thought as I was about to round the corner. Then a tenth of a second later, I felt my feet slip on the snow. My boots were leaving the ground, and I tried desperately to regain my balance. But it was useless, I had reached the point of no return, and I was going over.

  I hit the ground on my side, and as I rolled over and managed to get behind the corner, I heard the shouting from behind me and saw the bullets fired from the AK 47 kicking up the slushy ground next to me. I wasted no time getting back up again and kept running, hoping that I could make it around the corner of the next building. I figured I had three, tops four seconds to make it, and I felt the desperation sweep over me. This was my last day on earth. This was where I was going to die. Shot and killed by an unknown Chechen soldier in a war ravaged country in the middle of nowhere. I squinted and felt the acidic taste in my mouth as I desperately raced over to the other corner. Please let me make it. Please!

  I could hear the sound of an incoming artillery shell, the eerie whistling sound getting closer and closer. And in my mind I was praying that the guy chasing me would take cover and let me slip away. The guy was about to clear the corner any second now, and if his aim was any good, he should have no problem finding his target. I tried to prepare myself mentally for what was going to happen next, the bullets slamming into my back, the pain that would follow and the blackness when the pain disappeared.

  Then all of a sudden the whistling noise stopped and for a hundredth of a second everything was calm. Then came the massive explosion. The ground shook like someone had grabbed hold of the earth and was shaking it like a pair of dice at a Vegas Casino. Some invisible force scooped me up and propelled me forward, then a few seconds later threw me back down hard on the ground and knocked the air out of my lungs.

  I was lying there in the snow for a good thirty seconds, just trying to regain some control of myself. My ears were ringing and I felt like someone had just whacked me over the head with a pickup truck. Slowly I pushed myself up with my arms and shook my head. It didn’t feel like I was hit, at least I felt no pain, other than that which had resulted from the impact with the ground after my short airborne flight.

  Slowly I managed to get back up on my feet, and after a quick visual inspection to confirm that I wasn’t hit, I turned around and saw that the corner of the building that I’d just escaped from was no longer there. Now there was only a big hole and flames feeding on the wood that had been inside the building. The guy who had chased me was nowhere to be seen.

  Holy Fuck! I thought as I looked back at the impact centre of the latest Russian artillery shell. The Russians had achieved a direct hit on the building, and in the process they had completely vaporised the guy that had wanted to kill me. I just couldn’t believe it. I’d been saved by a god damn artillery shell. I stood there, eyes fixed on the scene, not knowing what to make of it. Then I could hear the new whistling sound of an incoming shell and I was snapped out of my stupor. I continued running and was able to cover another fifty yards before a second shell landed about a hundred yards away, right where I had spent the last hour filming the devastation that was being wreaked upon the presidential palace. Luck was still on my side it seemed.

  I spent four more days in Grozny after that, documenting the shelling of the city, which literally reduced it to a giant bomb crater littered with the bare skeletons of the buildings that had once stood there. I watched Russian soldiers being hunted down by Chechen paramilitaries, and quite a few of them having their heads cut off.

  There were some close calls in the days that followed, but nothing as serious as the incident in front of the presidential palace. Bullets whizzing past and shells impacting in areas within close proximity to me happened on a daily basis, but that is war. I had a job to do, and I carried it out in a very professional manner. And the members of Fear Inc. got what they were after, a detailed and very graphic description of what goes on in a warzone. They got to place their bets, and those that banked on me surviving making a nice little profit. They also got their adrenaline rush without having to expose themselves to any dangers, while I got my hundred thousand dollar completion fee and lived to see another day.

  There have been numerous missions since, and for some insane reason, I managed to fulfil them all with nothing more than a few scratches, some bruises and two broken bones. Some people have asked me if I would do it all again if I was still young and fit, and I guess I would. The money was excellent, the excitement out of this world, and more importantly, I didn’t hurt anyone.

  There has been talk about taking the concept and turning it into a reality TV show in the future, but I guess that’s still a long way off. I am however a hundred percent certain that it will happen someday. As long as there are people willing to take the risks, there are people willing to pay them handsomely for doing so. In a way it’s kind of like a m
odern day gladiator game. The participants enter the ring, give it their best, and those who remain standing at the end of the session are generously rewarded for their efforts.

  Who knows? If the concept turns out to be a popular one, maybe they’ll ask me to host the show? I’ll certainly do it, provided they pay me the right amount. That’s just the way this old world works. Money talks.

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  Hervey

  Other books by Hervey Copeland;

  No man’s land

  Links; US UK

  “Author Mark La Croix has left the hustle and bustle of the city and is leading a quiet life in a cabin, deep inside the Colorado Rockies. While working on his latest novel, he makes a gruesome discovery and uncovers secrets that some would want to remain dead and buried.

  Soon Mark becomes a target and is forced to run for his life. The nearest town is thirty miles away, and the only way to escape is through the forest. The people chasing him are hot on his heels, and will stop at nothing to prevent him from getting out of the wilderness alive. But Mark is determined, and he promises himself that he's not going to end up as a silent victim in the dark, black forest.