I was frozen. I was terrified. My breath was coming in quick gasps and the camera was shaking in my hands so much that I had to move it away from my vulnerable eye sockets. Then the truck stopped, its engine grumbling.
Charlie murmured something and waved at the men, making sure they could see the grenade launcher. There was a quick confab among the group. I had the feeling that Charlie had just upset their plans, that in the rear of the truck, hidden under an old bedspread or a piece of canvas, were their weapons. But now they had to think. They had to gamble. And the gamble was whether they could pull out their guns fast enough to stop Charlie popping off a round from the grenade launcher.
I found that my breathing was beginning to ease. The equation had suddenly changed once the militia group had noticed Charlie. Now the camera wasn’t shaking as much in my hands and I could imagine what could happen. An ill-advised movement by the militiamen and then a loud pop from the grenade launcher and a loud bang! as the round found its target, a nice blossom of orange and red fire and black smoke. Then Charlie would probably pick up his M-16 and hose them down, shoot at them all, shoot at these militiamen who hadn’t expected to come up against a real soldier, nope, probably all the practice they’d had was shooting farmers and shopkeepers and businessmen and businesswomen and dads and wives and children.
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed that little fantasy of seeing these young men gunned down. They had ruled this piece of the country like their own little feudal kingdom, stealing whatever they wanted, murdering whomever they wanted, and raping anything female, from eight to eighty, that came across their path. I wanted them to be hurt. I wanted them to be scared. I wanted …
I wiped my face against a coat sleeve. I wanted to throw up, and I trembled. I imagined my father’s blood coursing through my veins right now, the temper, the violence, the easy way to settle things, either through fists or knives or bullets. It wasn’t a nice feeling.
Another quiet comment from Charlie: “C’mon, you fuckers, what you got going?”
I looked at the truck again and then put the camera back up to my face, used the zoom function once more. There was some serious talking going on among the three men in the truck’s cab, and then it seemed like the center guy—who, I now noticed, had a goatee—made a decision. Some of his companions in the rear seemed to complain, but he said something sharp and that was that. The pickup truck began to back down the driveway, and then the center guy looked back in our direction and made an expansive shrugging motion with his hands and shoulders, like he was saying, “Oops, got me, maybe next time.”
Sure. Maybe next time. I carried on taking photos until the truck disappeared into the thick fog. Then I put the camera down on the ground and sat up, wiped my hands on the side of my coat.
Charlie turned to me and grinned. “Guess I earned my salary today, huh?”
I just nodded.
CHAPTER SIX
There was a lot of talking and arguing and discussion after the truck left. Charlie just smiled at me and broke down his grenade launcher. I smiled nervously in return, and also felt an odd sense that he and I had shared something when I had passed the weapon over to him. It was like he’d had confidence that I could help him with something so important, and I felt good, even though a minute or two earlier my hands had been trembling with fear.
Peter was yammering away at Jean-Paul, who in turn was talking loudly into the satellite phone, while Karen and Sanjay were standing close to each other, trying to make sure that their voices were heard as well. Miriam, on the other hand, was standing by an open door of one of the Toyota Land Cruisers, eating a piece of German chocolate.
“ … Tell the bloody UN that we won’t move any more unless we get a proper armed escort, damn it …”
“ … If this place is so pacified, what were those militiamen doing, out in the open like that … ?”
“ … Head back to California if this happy crap holds up …”
Charlie whistled a little tune as he put everything away. I went over to him. “That was a great job you did, Charlie, a very great job,” I said.
Even though his words were calm, I could tell he was pleased by what I said. “Wasn’t much of anything, Samuel. Guys like that, they feel important and on top of the world when they’ve got the weapons and nobody else has. When the roles are reversed they just scatter away, like when you turn on a kitchen light at night and the cockroaches head for shelter.”
Having been fortunate enough in some ways not to have grown up in an environment like that, I said, “What would you have done if they had kept on coming up the driveway?”
“What do you think I would have done?” he asked, zipping closed the duffel bag with the grenade launcher inside.
I thought for a moment as the conversation continued around the besieged figure of Jean-Paul, still talking loudly and rapidly into his satellite phone, speaking French.
“ … Nothing against Charlie here, but I’d feel a hell of a lot better with a couple of APCs at our disposal …”
“ … Can’t trust what the UN says about this area, we should just pack up and get the hell out …”
“ … Agree with Sanjay, this is ridiculous …”
Charlie was waiting for a reply, so I said, “I’m not sure what you would have done. All I know is, I’d have hated to be in your position. I mean, standing here, evaluating the threat, wondering if they were just some local toughs, out exploring and looking to steal something. That’d be a hell of a thing, if you had done something and it turned out they were unarmed.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Charlie said. “That would have been a hell of a thing. So, Samuel, you still haven’t answered the question. What do you think I would have done?”
“I think you would have done the right thing, that’s what.”
He didn’t say anything in reply, but his smile was wide. Then I looked over at Miriam, who carefully folded up the chocolate wrapper and placed it in a pocket of her down vest. She smiled and winked at me, and I smiled back, thinking then and there that I was falling in love with her. It would have been so simple for her to have let the wrapper fall to the ground but no, she was showing respect and she wasn’t about to trash this destroyed family farm.
“Bien, bien,” Jean-Paul said, hanging up the phone and then rubbing a large hand across the top of his head. His face was red and when he turned away from the phone everyone who had been talking fell silent. I was suddenly glad that I had kept my mouth shut, for he looked like he was one sharp comment away from blowing up. That might have been amusing to watch, but my amusement meter was pegged pretty low after what had just occurred.
“All right, my friends, this is what’s happening,” he started out. “I’ve contacted the military liaison. There’s a quick-reaction force coming here shortly. We are to stay here until they arrive. Charlie, you have my gratitude and that of our little crew here. That was spectacular, what you did, facing them down. Truly spectacular.”
Sanjay interrupted, “We should be doing something more, Jean-Paul. We should make sure that the reaction force knows what they’re looking for. Those men and that truck should be taken off the streets—”
Peter interrupted in turn, “Yeah, and what kind of bloody description can we give them? A bunch of men in a black pickup truck? You know how many of the towns and villages around here have pickup trucks?”
Charlie spoke up, quieting everyone with his strong voice. “Talk to Samuel, why don’t you?”
All faces were turned in my direction, and Jean-Paul said, “All right, let’s talk to Samuel, then.”
Charlie was smiling again in my direction, and I said, “I’ve got photos.”
Karen said, “Photos? You’ve got photos?”
“Sure he does,” Charlie said. “While the rest of you were hunkered down, Samuel here was doing his job. He got nice photos of those bad boys—am I right, Samuel? Lots of nice photos.”
I turned to Jean-Paul and said, “I’ve probably
got a couple dozen or so. Group and individual pics of the truck and its occupants.”
Finally, Jean-Paul grinned, came over to me and slapped me on the shoulder. “Very good. Here, while we’re waiting for the reaction force to arrive, we’ll uplink your photos to Geneva. Very good, Samuel, very good.”
So I got back to work, with words of congratulation from everyone else in the group—except Peter, who was busy checking on what we had available for lunch later. Which was fine by me, for Miriam had slipped me another piece of her German chocolate, and that was worth much more than any words from Peter.
BY THE TIME we had uplinked my photos of the militiamen—using, at his request, Jean-Paul’s data system, which was much more high-powered and encrypted than mine—the quick-reaction force had arrived: four APCs with big black tires and machine guns and grenade launchers mounted on a turret on top. All four had UNFORUS painted on the side and the flags they were flying from radio whip antennas on the rear were Ukrainian. Three of the APCs took up positions on the road, while the lead unit came up the driveway and the unit commander—wearing camouflaged clothing and the blue beret of the UN—spoke in fairly passable English to Jean-Paul. At the time I was standing next to Charlie. I thought he might amble over and talk to the Ukrainian army officer, as one professional to another, but he didn’t. He had a grim look on his face and when Karen said something about him going over and explaining what had happened, he said no, he wasn’t going to do that.
“That’s Jean-Paul’s job,” Charlie said.
“Well,” Karen said, “don’t you think it might be helpful—”
Charlie walked away, shaking his head. “Ukrainians—can you believe it? In my fucking country.”
And I knew why Charlie had stood still. Foreigners under arms, in his country, doing his job. To Charlie, no doubt, that was disgraceful. Me, I was just glad to see the extra firepower.
With the photos uplinked and my gear back in the Land Cruiser, Sanjay came over to me and said, “Good job again, getting those photos.”
“That’s my job,” I said.
“Still …” Sanjay looked around him and leaned toward me, speaking softly, so that Karen wouldn’t hear him, I suppose. “That was a brave thing to do, to take such pictures of the militiamen when they were so close to us. Me, I don’t even pretend to have such bravery. I went to medical school and learned all there is to know about human bodies and the creative ways men devise to hurt them and destroy them. But I cannot handle dealing with the living—their fears, their wishes, their demands, their families. I prefer the dead, for what is the worst you can do to a dead man?”
“Not a hell of a lot, I guess,” I said.
“So true. And I cannot even handle my family, who felt disgraced that I would lower myself to working with the dead. So the coward’s game again: here I am, with the UN, far away from my home.”
I nodded toward the APCs. “Hell of a place for a coward.”
He smiled widely. “We take what we can, don’t we?”
“That we do.”
Eventually the APCs backed down the dirt driveway, their engines burbling loudly, the yellow and blue flags flapping in the breeze. I got into a Land Cruiser with Peter and Miriam, Miriam this time sitting in the front seat. She said, “Jean-Paul told me that one of the Ukrainian APCs will be with us for a while. Isn’t that good news?”
Peter shook his head. “Bloody soldiers will ask us to feed them, just you wait.”
I said, “Having protection like that should be worth a meal or two.”
“Fine,” Peter said. “Then you can cook for them.”
Miriam glanced back at me as we bumped down the driveway, and I leaned over the rear of the seat.
“OK,” I said. “I guess I can maintain your high standards of cuisine.”
Miriam smiled and Peter said nothing else. I was feeling pretty good, until I looked back and remembered that I hadn’t taken the photo of the farm, the one I had wanted so much to.
IT TURNED OUT to be a long day as we tracked down two possible locations for the elusive Site A. The first place was an athletic field for a regional elementary school. We parked the Land Cruisers in a paved lot at the rear of the school and the APC parked there as well. Without any prompting from Jean-Paul we put on our helmets and protective vests again, and we gathered around a wooden picnic table that had its footings set into concrete. The school was brick and one-story, with lots of windows—and with most of them shattered. What few windows weren’t broken had children’s drawings and paintings on paper taped to the glass. New grass had grown in the field and at both ends what looked like soccer nets stood sentinel, their netting torn and flapping in the breeze.
Jean-Paul said, “We received two pieces of intelligence saying that bodies have been buried here, in this field. Air surveillance last week proved inconclusive. So now it’s our turn.”
Sanjay turned and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. “That’s bad intelligence, and you know it, Jean-Paul. Look at that grass. Nothing’s been disturbed here, nothing at all.”
“True,” Peter said sharply. “But we follow orders, don’t we? The word comes down from on high that we search this field, and that’s what we’re going to do. Right, Jean-Paul?”
Jean-Paul folded up his map and didn’t take the bait. He said, “So glad you agree, Peter. So let’s get to work.”
It was rather dull work. The Ukrainian soldiers stayed in their APC, keeping its hatches open, and Charlie sat on the ground by one of the Land Cruisers, his M-16 across his lap. It looked like the Ukrainians wanted to spend some time with Charlie but our Marine would have none of it. Foreign troops in his country. I could hardly imagine the humiliation he must have felt. We stretched across the field in a line, maybe five or six meters long, carrying thin metal probes. I had the feeling that if Peter had been in charge we would have finished this search in ten minutes or less. But Jean-Paul was doing things by the book and he set a slow pace as we marched across the field, looking for mounds of earth, for any fresh disturbances, poking and prodding at the ground with our metal probes.
By now the sun was higher up in the sky and with our helmets and protective vests on we got hot indeed, even though the calendar said it was fall. Since our line was so short, we had to trek up and down the field four times, finding absolutely nothing except on our third pass, when we found the remnants of a parachute flare. We gathered around it and Peter rolled over the heavy cardboard canister, saw the RAF markings. Part of the NATO contingent that had first come here after the troubles.
“A postcard from home,” he said, smiling. “How brilliant. How about a picture, Sammy?”
I looked at Jean-Paul, who gave a small shake of his head. “Sorry. My gear’s back in one of the Toyotas. Maybe later.”
Peter nodded and turned back, and we returned to work. I imagined a school band out here, playing for the students: it was spookier than hell, looking over at the school building, wondering where the children were, where they had all gone. Despite what the PM had ordered last spring, lots of families here and elsewhere had snuck across the border into my home country while so many others had just hidden out with families or relatives in the basements of their homes. The streets were almost always empty, and it was that emptiness that sometimes creeped me out most of all.
LUNCH WAS AT the picnic tables at the rear of the school, near where some swing sets and other play gear was set up. The Ukrainians surprised us all by not only having their own food but by sharing what they had with us. There were four of them and only their officer could speak English, but that didn’t stop the other three from flirting with Karen and Miriam. They laughed a lot and eventually so did Miriam and Karen. They had loaves of chewy black bread and some sort of meat paste and cheese gunk in tubes, which they spread on torn-off chunks of bread. Peter, however, made do with a couple of hard rolls and a jar of peanut butter from South Africa. Charlie, as usual, ate by himself, still sitting on the ground, ignoring the Ukrainians
.
When we were done, Jean-Paul made a brief report over his satellite phone, and then we drove out of the schoolyard. In front of the school was a white flagpole, and a dark flag hanging from it flapped in the breeze. Miriam looked up and said, “That flag is black. Completely black. What does it mean?”
I waited for Peter to say something and was pleased when he didn’t know the answer, which I supplied. “Anarchists,” I said. “The black flag is the flag of anarchists.”
Miriam asked, “What do they want?”
“Anarchy,” I said.
“Goody for them,” Peter said, as we turned and got onto the road, the APC leading the way. “At least somebody’s got what they want.”
WE DROVE ABOUT three kilometers to another site. The roadway passed through a cluster of small homes, each of which had been burned. The houses were smaller than what I had been used to when I’d been growing up in peaceful and prosperous Canada, but the yards were neat and well-maintained, with stone or wire fences separating them from their neighbors. Miriam shook her head as we proceeded, saying, “So sad, oh, how sad.”
“Maybe so, but it’s just real estate,” Peter said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
Peter said, “Look at all those houses. You see anything missing from the driveways?”
I looked out the side window, saw what Peter was driving at. “Yeah,” I said. “There’s no cars or trucks.”
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