by Jean Austin
All three men come to a sudden halt well before the trees, which confuses me. It’s as though they’re mannequins—statues. I run hard toward them, but my pace slows as the reason dawns on me. The two police officers stand before a couple of trampled, fallen orange flags. They call to Anton in Bosnian, so I don’t know what they’re saying, but their body language is clear—Don’t move.
“Anton!” I yell, running up beside them. One of the officers grabs me, pulling me away from the invisible barrier marked by the tiny flags scattered along the ground. There’s barely one every ten to fifteen feet. They look like toys—the kind of cheap flags kids wave at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and then leave discarded in the gutter.
I wrestle myself free from the police officer. Once he realizes I’m not proceeding beyond the flags, he lets me go.
“Stay where you are,” I say, echoing the police officers. Our eyes meet. The officers realize there’s a connection between us and fall silent, allowing me to talk to him. Anton’s twenty feet beyond the nearest flag. He’s facing slightly away from me, and twists from the waist to face me, keeping his boots planted firmly where they are. “We’re going to get you out of there. Just like Jimmy, okay? Just stay still.”
I’m panicking. I run my hands up through my hair as I pace back and forth trying to compose myself.
“You’ve got to do something,” I say to one of the officers. He’s a rotund man in his late forties—balding on top, with warts on his face, but there’s kindness in his eyes. I doubt he knows more than a couple of words of English, but he understands. He speaks over the radio, presumably explaining the situation and requesting assistance. The other officer is in his mid-twenties. He’s talking to his partner in sporadic bursts of Bosnian, pointing and making suggestions, but I can’t see how they’re going to get Anton out of there with anything other than a crane.
“You should leave,” Anton says, but unlike me, he’s not yelling. His voice is soft, barely carrying on the breeze. “Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “Not without you.”
“You don’t understand,” he says.
“I’ll testify on your behalf. I’ll tell the judge what you did for Jimmy.”
“It’s… Please, you have to go.”
“No. We’ll get through this—all of this. We’ll get you out of there. We’ll figure things out. We’ll get you a lawyer. We can do this—together.”
Anton is silent. He simply looks down at his left foot planted heavily in the dirt.
“No,” I whisper.
“It’s Betty. I finally found her.”
“No. No. No.”
“Please,” he says. “I don’t know how long I’ve got. She should have already gone off. The pressure. Just a little change. I can’t—can’t hold it forever.”
I fall to my knees in the dirt. Tears stream from my eyes.
“You should go,” he says.
“I can’t leave you.”
“You need to understand,” Anton says, pleading with me. “You need to tell them. The lethal range is thirty feet. You’re dead—all of you—along with me. The shrapnel will carry for up to a hundred yards. You must leave. Please. I don’t know how long it will hold. I felt the plate depress.”
I’m sobbing.
“There must be another way,” I say.
“I’m a dead man. But you—you can live. Your children. Your husband. Your parents. Live for them.”
I can’t leave him—but I know he’s right. I need to, and yet I hate myself for even considering that. Sniffing, I struggle to hold back more tears. I have to be brave.
I’ve never been comfortable looking someone in the eye, but with Anton it’s natural, and our eyes meet one last time. I can see so much welling up within his soul. The heartache—knowing this is the end. For Anton, there will be no tomorrow. For him, even the present is fleeting. All that was. All that could be. None of that matters anymore, just these few final seconds. Anton straightens. His muscles are cramping—shifting. I know. I understand. What we share in that moment—the tragedy, the isolation, the resignation, the longing for hope and yet the utter despair that condemns him, the helplessness, the bitter cry that can never be answered. He purses his lips, tightening his jaw, anticipating what’s about to unfold.
Neither of us are surprised by the puff of dirt beside his boot. A black cylinder springs from the soil, bounding up to waist height. The landmine launches itself into the air with the crack of a gun being fired, but I never hear the actual explosion.
Anton steps toward me. We both know why. With his last breath, he’s shielding me from the blast as best he can. There’s no time. Although it feels as though time has slowed to a crawl, everything unfolds faster than I can react. Black smoke engulfs Anton. Hundreds of red hot steel ball bearings burst into the air, traveling at tens of thousands of feet per second. A wall of compressed air rushes out, crashing into me like an automobile. The concussion wave blows me backwards, knocking me over and I skid across the dirt. Searing hot air scorches my face, slamming into me, and sending me rolling like a tumbleweed.
The police officers are lifted off their feet by the force of the blast and thrown backwards. Flashes of red stream away from behind them as their bodies are perforated by the blast. They’re wearing bulletproof vests, but their legs and arms are exposed. Dozens of ball bearings tear through their limbs like tissue paper. The side of the police car is peppered with hundreds of pieces of shrapnel, smashing the windows and embedding smoking hot steel fragments in the thin sheet metal panels.
As suddenly as it began, it’s over. The silence around me is unbearable.
I get to my feet, feeling groggy. The smell of burning metal fills the air. Black smoke drifts on the breeze. I stagger forward, disoriented, barely able to walk. Blood drips from the side of my face. My ears are ringing. My vision is blurred. It’s all I can do not to collapse on the dirt.
Anton is lying on his back. His eyes stare up into the clear blue sky. Streaks of blood and entrails lie scattered from beneath his broken, shattered body. He’s breathing, but barely.
I choke up. My hair is singed and smells burnt. I touch my cheek. My face stings. It feels as though the skin has been torn off. Blood drips from my fingers, but the physical pain I feel is meaningless next to the weight of the loss I must endure.
I’m in shock—physically, mentally, emotionally. It takes all my strength to stay on my feet. Rather than walk, my legs stab at the ground, fighting to stay upright. Orange flags crumple beneath my boots, but I don’t care. I can’t leave Anton lying there, dying alone. Dirt shifts beneath my clumsy steps as I walk into the minefield. My boots trip against clods of long grass.
Anton chokes. Blood drips from his mouth. With one hand he reaches for me, only his palm turns outward, seemingly pushing me away. He mouths the word, “No,” without any sound passing from his lips. His body quivers, and suddenly, instead of looking at me, he’s staring through me, past me, looking at something in the distance. His fingers fall limp. He’s dead. I can’t breathe. I grab at my hair, pulling at the strands in distress, tearing them from their roots.
“No,” I cry, falling to my knees in the midst of a minefield less than a foot from his outstretched hand. Soft, sandy dirt bunches up in front of my thighs, and I sob. I’m so close I could touch him. I could reach out and take his hand, but I don’t. What was once Anton is now an empty shell, and my heart breaks at the sight before me.
One of the police officers is screaming in pain, rolling over on the ground and clutching at his waist. Blood soaks his uniform. His right sleeve has been torn from his arm. Dozens of red cuts on his shoulder mark where shrapnel raked his body, but his vest took the brunt of the blast. His radio has been shattered, taking a direct hit.
I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and let these men die. As much as I love Anton, I know what he’d want me to do. He’d want me to move on. He’d want me to help them. I get to my feet, looking at the bloody path I
’d trodden beyond the flags. As best I can, I retrace my steps. I have to move. Movement is life. Life is all I have left. With each glancing step, I’m expecting the earth to come alive and rise up in anger, consuming me in a dark, violent cloud and a firestorm of shrapnel, but somehow, I make it back to the line.
The older officer lies face first in the dust. He’s not moving. Blood seeps out from beneath him, soaking into the dirt. I walk over to him with my legs splayed, trying to keep my balance. Although the youngest officer is reaching for me, screaming at me for help, I suspect the old man is in worse shape. I roll him over. His eyes have slipped into the back of his head, but he’s breathing—I can feel him exhaling on the back of my hand.
Blood seems to be coming from everywhere. His vest has spared his chest, but blood soaks his arms and legs. A large piece of metal is embedded in the top of his thigh. The blood there is coming out under pressure. It’s not squirting, but rather rising like water from a hose. I apply pressure, trying to stop the bleeding, but it’s hopeless. I need a tourniquet. My mind casts back to Anton removing his belt when rescuing Jimmy. I could try to remove the officer’s belt, but he’s heavy and difficult to move, and his belt is laden with equipment. I need something with some elasticity. I reach behind my back, unhooking my bra and slipping it off. In seconds, I have it wrapped twice around his thigh, pulling it tight and stopping the flow of blood.
The young officer works his way over to me, pushing off the dirt with his boots and sliding on his back over the grass. He points at the police car, babbling in Bosnian, but I can guess what he’s saying.
“First aid.”
I run to the car, but my legs betray me, and I stagger sideways, fighting not to collapse on the ground. I pop the trunk and find a first aid kit there. It’s heavy, unlike anything I’ve ever had back home in the US. The police here in remote, rural Bosnia are prepared to deal with severe medical emergencies.
I drag the kit back to the officers and open it. There are large gauze pads in plastic wrappers, rolls of tape, vials of saline solution, medical shears, compression bandages. The young officer pulls himself up beside me, reaching in and grabbing materials, smearing blood everywhere. He works on himself, cutting away his trousers and applying a bandage. The other officer groans. His eyes flicker.
I press a thick bandage against his arm, soaking up the blood, and wrap a compression bandage around his bicep to stop the bleeding.
“Radi,” the old man says, coughing up blood as he taps my arm and points back over his head at the police car. “Radi.”
“Radio?”
He nods.
I make my way back to the car. I’m dizzy. The world around me slips from color to black and white, and then to pitch black for a moment, but my hands reach the door handle. I’m weak. It takes all my effort to pull the door open. I grab the radio handset, squeeze the transmit button, and start talking, hoping someone will hear.
“Send help. Landmine. Officers injured.”
On releasing the button, there’s a flurry of discussion on the radio, but none of it in English. After a few seconds, someone says something I recognize.
“Location?”
“I—I don’t know. Outside of Zepa. In the hills. There’s a firebreak. I—I can see over the valley. Big minefield. Towers with lights.”
I slip on the blood on the seat, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s mine. I haven’t looked to my own injuries. I’ve lost a lot of blood. I go to say something, but gravity overwhelms me. The handset slips from my fingers. I have to get back to the wounded officers—I have to help them. I slide out of the car and turn, but my legs give way and I collapse to the dirt. Darkness washes over me. The last thing I see is Anton’s body lying in the middle of a minefield.
Chapter 10: Goodbyes
“Hey, Baby.”
It’s been a long time since anyone’s called me that. I open my eyes, squinting at the overhead lights.
“Dad?”
I try to sit up, but I’m weak. White sheets reach up to my chest, with a thick, heavy woolen blanket on top. An IV feeds into my arm. I look around. Paint peels from the walls of an aging hospital.
“Easy,” Dad says, reaching out with his hand and resting it on my arm. “Just rest.”
“Wh—How?”
“Mom and I flew in this morning. We came as soon as we heard.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember? Do you know where you are?”
Painful memories come flooding back, overwhelming me in an instant, leaving me reeling with a sense of immeasurable loss. “Bosnia.”
“You’re in a hospital on the outskirts of Sarajevo. They brought you here after the explosion. You’ve been out cold for a couple of days.”
I feel a rush of adrenalin. “Jilly? James?”
“They’re fine. One of the ladies in the village brought them to Sarajevo.”
“Branka?”
“Your mom’s with them back at the hotel.”
I reach up, touching at the bandage wrapped around my head. A doctor walks in. She’s dressed in the classic white coat, with a stethoscope draped over her shoulders and a clipboard in her hand.
“Ah, Mrs. Hallam.” She smiles warmly. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“Wh—?” I say, but it’s difficult to talk. My throat is parched.
“You suffered multiple lacerations and significant blood loss, but no major wounds. You picked up an infection from the shrapnel, but the antibiotics we’ve had you on for the last two days have worked well.”
I cough. “And the others?”
“The two officers? You saved their lives. You did well stemming the blood loss.”
I only really helped one of them, but I appreciate her kindness. There was one life, though, I couldn’t save, and my heart sinks.
“How do you feel?” the doctor asks, peering in my eyes, switching from one to the other with a penlight. I’m connected to a device monitoring my heart rate and blood pressure.
“I’m fine.”
The doctor doesn’t look convinced.
“Your pain level. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being unbearable.”
“I’m a little sore, that’s all.”
She nods, making notes on a chart.
“Well, if you need anything, press the buzzer beside your bed.”
“Thank you,” I say, but I feel as though too much fuss is being made over me. I’m worried about Jimmy and Jilly. I want to get out of here. The doctor walks out. Dad wrings his hands.
“What happened out there?” he asks. “We saw the videos on the internet—Jimmy in the minefield.”
I’m silent. I’ve always been stubborn, and with all I’ve been through over the past few days, I’m in no mood for a lecture from Dad. He means well, but he doesn’t understand.
“You’ve got to think about how this will look to the court,” he says. “Running off to Europe. Technically, it’s parental abduction. Paul could charge you with kidnapping. Even if the charges are dropped, do you realize what that would do to your chances of getting custody of the kids?”
I’m frustrated. I’m angry.
“You really don’t understand,” I say.
“Then help me understand. Help me figure out why my daughter would run halfway around the world to live next to a goddamn minefield?”
I shake my head.
“It’s not like that… This… This is why I ran. I couldn’t deal with this kind of scrutiny from you—from Mom. I needed some space.”
Tears roll down my cheeks.
“Don’t you get it? It was supposed to be a holiday. It was supposed to be a chance to get away from everything—to regather my strength.”
I’m shaking.
“I was hurt,” I say, my voice trembling. “I was hurting… Look at me. Here I am, wrapped in bandages. I was caught in the blast of a landmine, but you know what? That didn’t hurt—not like Paul hurt me. Seeing my husband screwing another woman in my own home�
�in my own bed. That tore out my heart. I could walk over landmines all day long and not feel a fraction of the pain I felt as I stood there in that doorway.”
Dad hangs his head.
“I had to get away.”
He runs his hands through his hair. I know what he’s thinking. He believes me, but he doesn’t know how he’s going to convince anyone else to believe me. He sighs.
“What about this guy Tarik?”
“Anton?” I ask, suddenly feeling exposed. I cover my tracks. “He saved Jimmy’s life.”
“He’s a murderer,” Dad says. Cops tend to see things in black and white, without any of the ambiguity that clouds real life.
“That was his brother,” I say, not feeling I have to give any more explanation than that. “Anton was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Dad shakes his head. He’s looking for quick answers—clean answers—something that will explain what’s happened and solve everything, only life doesn’t work that way. Life is a mess. My life is a junkyard. Dad rubs his hands together, he’s agonizing over something. There’s something he doesn’t want to tell me, but I know him—he will. He’s a good man.
“Funeral’s today,” he says, looking down at the worn linoleum on the floor.
“We need to go,” I say. Even for all our differences, Dad and I have a wonderful relationship. There is no way in hell he would withhold that information from me, even though he doesn’t agree with me about Anton, and I reciprocate with, “We need to,” including him in the decision. He looks at me, purses his lips, sighs, measuring his words before he speaks.
“I thought you’d say that.” He looks at his watch. “It’s 9am. The service is at three. Let me talk to the doctor.”
Dad leaves. I stare out the window at a grey overcast day. I’m not sure what floor I’m on in the hospital, but I must be up high as I can’t see anything other than the clouds. No distant hills, no buildings, just the sky weeping for the fallen.
The doctor is not impressed by my desire to attend Anton’s funeral, but relents after much discussion with both me and my father. I love my dad. We could yell at each other for hours and then turn right around and support each other to the hilt when dealing with someone outside our family. I’m glad he came to Bosnia.