Free Diggers by Viktors Duks Page A

little bit. I was late by 47 minutes in the end. Me—the guy who’s always early for the date. I hate it when someone has to wait for me! Why did I oversleep? I sat with Mario in the kitchen, we drank whiskey and talked about our stuff. As a result we only went to bed at four o’clock in the morning.
    Our destination is the Curland Cauldron. Our plan is to pump out the bunkers, dig up a flyer and look for potential sites for the future.
    It’s a true expedition. We have three girls from the press and four people from the Environmental Film Studio with us. In two days’ time I never did count up how many we were—let’s assume that there were between ten and 15 people.
    I won’t get into the details, I’ll start at the place where our caravan moved off the gravel road and rolled into a meadow. The road ended there, to tell the truth. We drove about 150 meters into the meadow and stopped for our first discussion.
    Now, while writing and thinking about the two days I spent with these “crazy people” of various ages, I found out many new things. To put it more precisely, my suspicions were confirmed. The world is based on the crazies, the hotheads with their logical thinking, and there is nothing that can’t be done—you just have to do it. Everything will happen then.
    â€œForget this! Let’s go!” Anatolijs said this and got into his Niva, behind which he was hauling a trailer with the 200-kilogram pump.
    He drove on the road, which, in truth, was one only in name. A tractor with proper treads would drive it without problems, but a Niva? Of course it got stuck. The rear wheels stirred up a porridge of clay and water, while the front was firmly embedded on a harder hill of clay. The Communicator, and amazing arranger of work, got all of the guys to know what they needed to do in just a few minutes’ time—where to go, what to push. We picked up one edge of the Niva, stuck wood under it, and for the rest of the kilometer I guess we all pushed the car to the place where our car could no longer enter. Mario pointed out a precise direction. He is amazingly good at orienting himself in a strange environment. The first scouting expedition, including me, carried our stuff and a can of gasoline. Coming back we met guys with the heavy pump. Crazy people! That can’t be told in a story, it can’t be described with a pen. A forest in which everything grows, starting with raspberry plants and bushes and ending with large, fat and small trees, among which fallen tree trunks lie horizontally. How far can four grown men carry a pump in one go? Ten meters, fifteen, maybe twenty. Then you have to change hands, or—even better, replace the people. Seven of us carried the thing. It was heavy, but we got to the bunker—tripping, falling, hissing, but we got there.
    After half an hour, when the Communicator and his colleague had fixed the ignition, which we had shaken up while toting the device, the pump went to work. It did well. The Classicist and I trod into the forest. A director, soundman and cameraman followed us. A comical sight—you go, on your heels there’s a cameraman, a soundman and a director. They were almost on our heels. The Classicist announces that the camera’s battery is dead. SUPER! I say nothing—I’m the one who left almost the main piece of equipment at home. The camera remained in my hall, and I was doubly angry about it.
    â€œThe metal detector quit,” the Classicist announces quietly. No sound at all.
    At the beginning of the season! An outrage!
    Four confused eyes stared at the silent machine. There was still my machine, though, and we could work with it.
    What did we find? One winged mine—the so-called sugar beet, as the people dubbed it—and approximately100 machine gun shells. After we dug around in the forest for a while, we went back. The bunker was pumped empty to the point where there was just a