Bosnian Inferno

by David Monnery

  Hadzic and Began positioned themselves either side of the apartment door, like cops in an American TV series. ‘Need to find a love that’s gonna last,’ Prince sang, as Kaltak launched his foot against the door, and the chorus was drowned in splintering wood as the three Bosnian soldiers burst into the room.

  No gunfire greeted them. By the time Docherty and the other SAS men reached the front room three frightened-looking Serbs were being held at gunpoint. There was a heavy smell of marijuana in the air and several roaches in an ashtray that was overflowing on to the pink carpet. A large tarpaulin had been hung across the window, with a narrow opening for sighting and firing through.

  The two men who had brought the food were still wearing their coats, while the sniper seemed to be wearing about five layers of sundry T-shirts and sweatshirts. The top one bore the logo ‘Alice in Chains’, and featured Lewis Carroll’s Alice hanging from a noose. The fourfold Cyrillic C logo – ‘Only solidarity will save the Serbs’ – was tattooed on his right hand. The pupils in his pale-blue eyes were remarkably dilated.

  One of the Bosnians was tearing down the tarpaulin, revealing two broken windows. Then Began and Kaltak suddenly grasped the sniper’s hands, pulling them back behind his head, causing some reaction at last in the lifeless eyes. His legs squirmed away from the hands that were trying to grasp them, but only for a moment.

  ‘Shoot me,’ he cried out desperately. ‘I only shot people. Shoot me.’

  The Bosnians ignored him. Grim-mouthed, they carried him to the window, where, since they neglected to impart any energy into the process, it was not so much a matter of throwing the sniper into the night as of simply tipping him out. His wail faded into a faint but sickening sound, like that made by a boot crushing a ripe fruit.

  The other two captives both started talking at once. Hadzic stepped forward and shot one in the head, then the other.

  Nena Reeve sat in the gymnasium of the Partisan Sports Hall in Vogosca, remembering good things about her estranged husband. Perhaps it was more than a little perverse to choose this place and time to remind herself of his better side, but she enjoyed the ludicrousness of it all. Soon after arriving at Vogosca, Nena had decided that only her sense of the absurd would get her through such an experience. Take it all straight, and she’d go mad.

  Mad with outrage, mad with sadness, just mad.

  Across the gym two women were softly crying, like violins intertwining a melody.

  John, she told herself, think about John. Why had she left him, really? Because he was impossible. And why was that? Because he didn’t listen – that was what it all came down to. He loved her, she knew that. He loved looking after her, but always on his own terms. It was the same with the children. He’d be wonderful with them right up to the moment when they had wills and lives of their own, and then he wouldn’t know how to deal with them at all.

  The recurrent thought that the children might be dead crossed her mind. Though she’d always thought she’d know if anything happened to either of them. And John might be dead too. The thought brought a sinking feeling to her stomach. Whatever their differences, they were not finished as a couple. Not if they both managed to survive this.

  One of the women had stopped crying, but the other carried on, making a low, moaning sound, as if she was mourning a death.

  Perhaps she was. Almost all of these women and girls would have had men in their lives: husbands, fathers, lovers, brothers. Where were they now? Some were known to be dead. Some had been put to death in front of their wives and daughters, often after witnessing their violation. Some would be in labour camps, and a few might have escaped, across mountains, across borders to God knew where. Whatever had happened to them, wherever they might be, they were lost to these women.

  Talking was not allowed in the gym, but the guards were not always inclined to enforce the rule, and the need for conversation, for contact, often outweighed the risk of one more bruise. Over the last few days Nena had spoken to most of her fellow prisoners, heard the stories of their abduction and humiliation. All of them were Muslims, and all but Nena herself were from villages that had been taken over by Serb irregulars since the summer. Separated from their families, they had been loaded on buses like the one which had brought Nena, and brought here to service the local fighters. The lucky ones were taken out at night to a nearby motel where they were raped by between one and a dozen men, and returned, crying, a few hours later. The younger ones had almost all been virgins, and thought that their chances of ever finding a husband were now over. They didn’t believe that any man would believe that they had had no choice.

  The unlucky ones were taken out and not returned.

  Usually, according to the few women prepared to talk about it, the rapes were speechless affairs: the men were using the women to demonstrate their dominance and as substitutes for masturbation. Nena heard several accounts of men who couldn’t get an erection seeking compensation by urinating on the woman.

  She herself had not been molested since her arrival, and supposed she owed such tender mercy to her age. Hoping to encourage such neglect she had tied her blonde hair back in a tight bun. And every night when they came and took other women away she felt guilty for her own good fortune.

  But not on this night. The man came with his torch, moving along the wall from face to face, picking out one girl who seemed to be always chosen, another who was selected almost as often, and finally, almost hesitantly, bathing Nena’s face in the beam.

  ‘A blend of youth and experience,’ he muttered to himself, like a football coach.

  Nena’s first reaction was surprise, her second a sense of emptiness that came close to panic. In the back of the van she told herself she had survived the four men in the mountains, and she could survive as many more here as she had to. This had nothing to do with her. It was like being shot by a total stranger: it might hurt like hell, but if the bullet didn’t kill you, then the wound would heal. There was no need for her mind to get involved. Just turn off, she told herself, looking at the blank faces of the two younger women. Just turn off.

  And it worked as well as anything could have worked, at least until the sixth and last man came into the motel room. He was no younger than the rest of them – in his early twenties – but he seemed to lack his comrades’ macho shell of assurance. Seeing her laid out naked on the bed, fresh bruises growing on her breasts and bloody between the legs, he hesitated before reaching to undo his belt.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, breaking her own rule of silence, and cursing herself for doing it.

  ‘Your people are doing the same to our women,’ he said, but not with any great conviction.

  He might well believe it, she thought, but he didn’t seem to find it a good enough reason to reply in kind. ‘Does that make it right?’ she asked him. ‘What do you think your mother and sisters would say if they could see you now?’

  ‘I don’t have any sisters,’ he said. The belt was undone, but he had made no move to drop his trousers.

  ‘You have a mother,’ she said.

  ‘I have no choice,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to…’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  ‘We have to,’ he whispered fiercely.

  ‘No one will know,’ Nena said. ‘Think of your future. How will you ever know love if this picture is in the back of your mind?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Just shut up.’

  9

  The unit got back to the Hotel Starigrad shortly after dawn, tired but mostly satisfied with the night’s work. Hadzic and Docherty agreed that their combined unit would leave for Vogosca an hour before midnight the following day. The next thirty-six hours would need to be spent gathering intelligence on the military situation between Sarajevo and their destination, working out the safest route and possible assault plans, and making sure that they had everything they needed, both for this op and the subsequent mission to Zavik.

  Razor and Hajrija were charged with ac
quiring the necessary maps, and with interviewing refugees who knew anything of the current situation in Zavik or its surrounding region. Chris and the Dame were put to work securing supplies. Extra emergency rations would be needed for the Bosnians, and since the party would have to spend at least one night camping out in the snow, digging tools of some sort would also be necessary. Vogosca might be only four or five miles away as the crow flew, but there was a Serb-held mountain ridge in the way, and no chance of reaching the town, doing a proper recce, launching a rescue and getting back to Sarajevo, all in one night. The unit would have to spend a whole day hidden up in the hills above Vogosca, ready to launch their assault early the following night.

  Docherty himself went to see Brindley at the HQ of the British UN contingent. The major’s makeshift desk was overflowing with pending paperwork, and he seemed only too pleased for a chance to take a break. He led Docherty across a car park crammed with white UN vehicles and into the steamy Portakabin which did duty as the unit’s mess. The coffee was even worse than Docherty expected, despite the generous nip of whisky from Brindley’s hip-flask.

  ‘So what have you lot been doing with yourselves?’ the major asked.

  ‘Oh, just getting acclimatized,’ Docherty replied, wondering exactly how much he should be telling the other man.

  ‘Have you found the woman?’

  ‘We’ve found out where she is.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Not really. She’s in a Serb brothel in Vogosca.’

  ‘Oh Jesus…’

  ‘But not for long, we hope. We’re going after her…’

  Brindley’s eyes widened. ‘Is that…’ he started to say.

  ‘Is that what we’re here for?’ Docherty completed for him. ‘Probably not. And that’s why I’m here.’ He paused, ordering his thoughts. ‘You know how hard it is for the UN to be involved in a war and still not take sides…’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think there’s any chance of us keeping our hands as clean as you lot have to. If we’re going to have any chance of doing what it was we were sent out here to do, then we can’t afford to be choosy about accepting help. So our trip to Vogosca is a joint op involving men from a Bosnian Army anti-sniper unit…’

  ‘Oh boy,’ Brindley said with a smile.

  Docherty smiled back. ‘I wanted someone to know,’ he said, ‘and you’ve been selected. If we don’t come back, at least they’ll be some facts for the Regimental magazine.’

  ‘And after Vogosca?’

  ‘Then we head for Zavik. Just the four of us and Nena Reeve – assuming we’ve found her and she’s willing to go.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Depends what we find when we get there. But I’ve no intention of making it my permanent address. If we say two days to Vogosca, another three to Zavik and a couple of days there, then add three or four to reach the coast…I’d like to be in Split again around two weeks from now.’

  Brindley nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I take it you haven’t called Hereford since you got here. I could fix it,’ he added. ‘It might take a while, but there are ways…’

  ‘We could call them ourselves,’ Docherty said, ‘but they know nothing about the situation here, and there’s nothing they can do to help us. Anyway,’ he added with a grin, ‘they don’t like to be bothered.’

  Brindley wished them good luck as he and Docherty parted again in the vehicle park.

  The PC made his way back to the Holiday Inn, wondering what Barney Davies would make of the decisions he was taking. There was no way he could officially agree to joint action with local forces, Docherty knew, so there was no point in telling him. The fact that HQ had made no attempt to reach them since their arrival in Sarajevo seemed to suggest that the CO had an equally firm grip on reality.

  The combined unit’s jump-off point was a house on the road to the mountain village of Nahorevo, just inside the city’s northern boundary. The ten soldiers arrived in dribs and drabs throughout the day, so as not to tip off any watchers in the hills that an operation was imminent. They sat around drinking dandelion tea, smoking cigarettes, rechecking their equipment and reading one of several hundred copies of Mad magazine. The house’s owner, a member of the anti-sniper unit who had been killed a few weeks earlier, had obviously been a subscriber.

  They left the house at 2200 hours, following the Nahorevo road uphill for a few hundred yards before turning on to a path which ran diagonally up across the slope of the hillside. The ridge-line was still some five hundred yards above them. And up there were some of the Serbian guns that continued to pound what remained of Sarajevo.

  There would also be some sort of encircling ring of troops, deployed to prevent goods and men from either entering or leaving the besieged city, but opinions in Sarajevo had differed as to how thick or thin this cordon would be. Hadzic was gloomy on the subject, and feared that they might not find a way through without alerting the enemy. His main hope lay in the silenced MP5s.

  Docherty was of a different opinion. His experience told him that such cordons often existed mostly in the mind, and only needed minimal manning to reinforce a false impression of impregnability. Historically, in most sieges, both sides tended to become stuck in the roles of besieger and besieged, to the point where neither felt able to cross the line between them. The Serbs up above, Docherty thought, would not be expecting anyone to try what they were trying. Consequently, they would not be expending scarce manpower on blocking off such a possibility.

  Or so he hoped. At least they were on the move, and in the right direction, away from Sarajevo. The evening before, in the bar of the Holiday Inn, he had got into a conversation with a fellow Scot, a journalist with one of the quality Sundays. The man, who looked around forty-five, had been pleasantly drunk, and most of the conversation had been small talk, ranging from Celtic’s fall from grace to the fate of the SNP. But like a cloud-laden sky parting briefly for sunshine, their good-natured banter had parted to reveal a glimpse of something close to despair. ‘Say what you like,’ the journalist had said, ‘but what has died in this city is the belief that humans have learnt anything from this century.’

  Docherty had wanted to disagree, but could think of no reasons for doing so. Nor could he now, climbing the dark path behind Hadzic and Hajrija. And with that realization came another question: if the world was up shit creek without a paddle, then what the hell was he risking his life for?

  A friend? He liked Reeve, but he had no sense of obligation to the man that would outweigh his responsibility to Isabel and the children.

  Regimental duty? He’d done his share of duty. The SAS wasn’t a religion, and Barney Davies wasn’t the high priest. No, he’d accepted this job almost out of habit. And out of curiosity. And now he was beginning to wonder whether it had been the stupidest decision of his life.

  A couple of Bosnians behind him, Chris was not wondering about what might have been. He rarely did. In this life, he reckoned, you opened doors and then dealt with what was on the other side. And he loved opening them. Of course there was always the chance that he’d not beat the clock on this one, the way Eddie and Anderson had failed to beat it in Colombia, but that was the chance you had to take. Knowing that was the one thing he and Eddie had had in common, but it was so basic that it had made up for all the things they had disagreed on.

  Eddie had loved moments like this, walking across a mountain in almost total darkness, senses attuned to every little noise, utterly alive in every respect. Chris did too. He loved the idea that every place they got to was somewhere he’d never been before. Even Sarajevo had been incredible. Downright tragic, certainly, but fascinating. It hadn’t looked like he’d imagined it, but then places never did.

  So far, his only regrets regarding this op concerned the paucity of birds he’d been able to see. There had been the usual Mediterranean coastal types around Split, but since their arrival in Sarajevo he’d hardly seen any at all. That said a lot for their
intelligence, Chris thought. What birds in their right minds would want to winter in a city pounded by sustained artillery fire? Once they started out for Zavik, though, who knew what he might see. Maybe a booted eagle, or even a Bonelli’s eagle.

  Twenty yards ahead, Razor was thinking about a different kind of bird. Hajrija was walking in front of him, and, even bundled up like a bear, she was offering the Londoner more than enough food for his fantasies. No amount of clothing or equipment could quite disguise the grace of her walk, and the long wisps of hair escaping from the woollen balaclava seemed unbelievably feminine. Physically she reminded him a little of Maureen, which wasn’t the best of omens.

  Maureen had been a couple of years older than Hajrija, a divorced occupational therapist who lived in Hereford with her six-year-old son. She and Razor had met in a pub, and taken to each other immediately. They didn’t have any interests in common, but the sex was great and he got on well with the kid. Within three months they had arranged to get married. He couldn’t remember ever having been happier. Even his mother’s announcement that she was remarrying, and going off to Australia for at least three years, had failed to really upset him.

  Then the roof had fallen in. Maureen had called off the wedding a month before it was due to take place, and announced that, for the boy’s sake, she was going back to his father. Razor had thought the man lived in London, but it turned out he had been back in Hereford for several months.

  Six weeks later his mother, to whom he’d always been close, left for Australia. For the first time in his life Razor had felt uncertain of his own judgement, rootless, and mortal.

  That had been two years ago, and things had not changed much in the intervening period. He had acquired a sense of time passing, and a tendency to reflect on the past, which he had never had before. His job in the Training Wing was interesting, even challenging, but seemed to be leading to nothing more than a distant retirement. And there was always the chance that the loss of his happy-go-lucky self had made him less of a soldier.