Bosnian Inferno

by David Monnery

  He arrived back just in time to see two shadowy figures approaching through the trees, and froze in his tracks, just in case. Then the taller of the two extended an arm into the air – the prearranged signal. It was Razor and Hajrija.

  Docherty gestured Razor into the British hide, and invited Hajrija to bring Hadzic over for a conference. Chris and the Dame were awake now and, once the two Bosnians had arrived, all six of them huddled together in the confined space, the much-amended map spread out on the small portion of hardened snow left between them. Three torches illuminated the map and faces surrounding it.

  Razor and Hajrija took turns describing what they had discovered, and then he outlined their recommended method of approach.

  ‘OK,’ Docherty said. ‘But let’s start at the end and work backwards – it usually helps. Assuming we get the women out of the hall, where do we take them from there?’ He looked at Hadzic. ‘Where will they want to go?’

  The Bosnian shrugged, or at least tried to. It was difficult when both shoulders were pinned by the person on either side. ‘Somewhere safe,’ he said drily. ‘The way I see it,’ he went on, ‘there are two choices. The first is to take them back the way we have come, across the mountain to Sarajevo. But there are reasons not to do this. We don’t know what condition the women will be in, and whether they can make such a journey. We do know that Sarajevo is not the best place to be in the world right now. So…I think the second choice is better. We take the bus and we drive it west. We will have to go through the Serb lines somewhere between here and Ilijas, but it will be three, four in the morning, and if they are not expecting us our chances will be good…’

  ‘That’s the main thing,’ Docherty agreed. ‘We have to get out of Vogosca without raising the alarm. Now, remember what the women told Razor and Hajrija about the lorry coming for them each evening around nine o’clock…’

  10

  ‘Remember to bring the blonde again – the young one with the big tits,’ his friend shouted.

  ‘I’ll bring what I fancy,’ Dragan Kovacevic retorted, climbing unsteadily into the cab and almost knocking his hat from his head.

  ‘Christ, I’d better come with you,’ his friend said. ‘The state you’re in you’ll probably come back with our grandmothers.’

  He climbed into the driver’s seat and belched loudly. ‘That’s fucking good beer,’ he said. ‘Hey, I need a piss,’ he suddenly realized.

  He climbed back down again and sent a long, steaming stream on to the slush-covered gravel, sighing loudly as he did so.

  ‘Come on, get a move on,’ Kovacevic said.

  ‘What’s your hurry?’ his friend wanted to know, lifting himself back into the cab. ‘The whores aren’t going anywhere, are they?’ He untucked his shirt and used it to dry his beard. ‘It’ll freeze solid,’ he explained, as the other man eyed him with amusement.

  ‘I’m going to cut mine off,’ Kovacevic said, turning the key in the ignition and letting in the clutch. ‘You see those boys from Goradze? They all had lice crawling in theirs. It was disgusting.’ He pulled the lorry out of the motel forecourt and on to the road.

  ‘What do you expect from that bunch? They’ve been living around fucking Muslims too long.’

  The lorry rumbled down the road into the dark town, its headlights picking out the twin tracks of clear tarmac in the snow-covered road.

  ‘I wonder what they all do at night,’ Kovacevic observed, his eyes roaming across the darkened houses. ‘No electricity for TV, no light for doing anything.’

  ‘They probably do what we do,’ his friend said with a grunt. ‘Except they don’t get such a varied menu,’ he added, laughing. ‘You know, it’s gonna be hard to get used to having only one woman after all this is over,’ he went on.

  ‘You…’ Kovacevic started to say. A light was shining on the road ahead, waving to and fro. On the bridge, it looked like. He braked, wondering what sort of idiot could have ordered a checkpoint in the middle of the town.

  There only seemed to be one man though, his face shadowed by the hood on his anorak. He didn’t appear to be carrying a gun, which was strange for a checkpoint…‘What the fuck?’ Kovacevic muttered, pulling the lorry to a halt some ten yards from the waving flashlight.

  It was the last sound he ever made. The windows imploded as the silenced MP5s raked the cab with automatic fire, leaving an echo of breaking glass to compete with the swift-flowing river in disturbing the night’s silence.

  Docherty pulled open the cab door and yanked the bearded soldier out and down on to the icy road. Chris was doing the same on the other side. Razor and the Dame had taken up covering positions twenty yards back up the road. No lights had gone on in the nearby houses, but that was presumably because of a lack of electricity. No one had appeared out of the darkness, which suggested either bad hearing or a healthy instinct for survival.

  The PC pointed the flashlight up-river, switched it on and off three times, and then set about heaving the Chetnik’s body across to the stone parapet. Once there, he lifted the shoulders up across it, and then used the legs to lever the corpse out into space. The splash was barely audible above the sound of the rushing water.

  The corpse from Chris’s side followed it in, and Docherty had a momentary memory of a Saint book he had read as a youth, in which the hero had come across three men attacking one on a bridge like this in Innsbruck. Being the Saint, he had tipped all three into the icy river, only to belatedly discover that they were policemen trying to arrest a thief. The Saint’s Getaway. He had loved those books.

  The six Bosnians loomed out of the dark like wraiths and, without a word, clambered into the back of the lorry. They were good soldiers, Docherty thought. He checked that all the bergens had survived the journey and then, signalling Razor and the Dame to join the Bosnians, picked up the Chetnik’s hat and climbed into the cab. Chris was already waiting at the wheel, broad-brimmed hat perched on his head, looking like anyone’s idea of a drunken Australian.

  There was a rap on the cab’s back window. ‘Let’s go,’ Docherty said. ‘And keep it slow.’

  Chris obliged, rumbling past the town’s neat orthodox church, several official-looking buildings and an apparently empty supermarket with one large window boarded up. The road curved round to the left, and the Sports Hall came into view. ‘Where the fuck do they park it?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Up against the side of the building,’ Docherty suggested. There wasn’t anywhere else he could see. ‘But where’s the fucking bus?’ This lorry would do at a pinch, but it would be a real pinch, with thirty women to transport.

  ‘It’s round the back,’ Chris said, braking to a halt. ‘Razor’s new girlfriend saw them move it there.’

  ‘OK,’ Docherty said. He took a deep breath. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then let’s do it.’

  They got down from the cab, adjusted the hats as low across their faces as they could without looking ridiculous, and started walking towards the corner of the building. The entrance was reportedly on the other side, and they were just rounding the corner when they heard the sound of a door opening. Someone had heard the lorry arrive.

  A man stepped out through the doorway, silhouetted against the dim light that came from within. Docherty didn’t break step.

  ‘Zdravo,’ the man said.

  ‘Dobro vecer,’ Chris replied.

  They were only a few yards apart.

  ‘Koja…’ the man began, suddenly suspicious.

  Docherty flicked open his coat and fired the MP5 from the hip. The man was still falling as Docherty sped in through the doorway. Another two men, both well into middle age, were looking up from a makeshift table, cards spread around the yellow-glowing kerosene lamp. Docherty’s finger tightened on the trigger, and then slowly unclenched itself.

  ‘Tell them we’re looking for a reason to kill them,’ he said to Chris. ‘And find out where the women are.’ He went back outside, dragged the body off into the shadows, an
d went to get the rest of the unit.

  ‘The bus is round the corner,’ he told the Dame, who sped off to check it out.

  Lujinovic and Began started off up the road back into town; their job was to provide early warning of any enemy approach. Docherty didn’t know how long the Serbs at the motel would be prepared to wait for their victims, but, always assuming they weren’t all too drunk to notice, he doubted if their patience would survive much more than half an hour.

  Abdulahu and Kaltak had clambered into the lorry’s cab, with Razor still seated in the back. They were waiting to move off in the opposite direction, towards the checkpoint a few hundred yards further down the road, once any problems in the Sports Hall had been dealt with.

  Docherty led Hajrija and Hadzic round to the entrance. Chris was standing over the two Serbs, whom he’d ordered to lie flat on the wooden floor. ‘In there,’ he said, pointing towards double doors further down the corridor. ‘This is the key,’ he added, handing it to Docherty.

  ‘Look after those two,’ the PC said. He passed the key to Hadzic, and followed the Bosnian commander and Hajrija down the corridor. The Bosnian turned the key and opened the door on to the darkened gym. Almost immediately, it seemed, several invisible people started to cry.

  Hadzic stepped in with his torch, and the wailing seemed to go up a notch in volume.

  Sensing what was happening, Docherty went back outside to collect the kerosene lamp.

  ‘We are here to rescue you,’ Hadzic said in his native tongue, but there was no response, save perhaps a muting of the keening sound.

  ‘Nena, are you there?’ Hajrija asked, as Docherty came back in with the marginally brighter light.

  A sound like a sob escaped from Nena Reeve’s lips. ‘Hajrija?’ she said disbelievingly.

  Hajrija shone the torch into her own face. ‘It’s me. We’ve come to take everyone away from here.’

  Nena pushed herself up from the wall and walked across towards her friend, slowly, as if she feared speed would dissolve the mirage. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, and at that moment she caught sight of Docherty.

  ‘This is a dream,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, Nena,’ Docherty said.

  Outside in the parking area the Dame had found the bus. The destination board read Foca, but presumably hadn’t been changed since the war began. The tyres were worn, but snow-chains had been fitted, which more than made up for them. There was no key in the ignition. He set about trying to hot-wire the vehicle, and a few minutes later was rewarded with the motor chugging noisily into life.

  Rather too noisily. The Dame checked the petrol gauge, which seemed to be hovering between a quarter and half full, before switching off the engine and stepping back down to the ground. He had a momentary glimpse of a slim moon rising above the mountain before someone started shouting at him in a language he didn’t understand.

  A uniformed soldier was hurrying towards him, doing up his coat as he came. The Dame just stood there, his mind utterly calm, as the man strode up. He watched the soldier’s face turn from anger to surprise, the body try and fail to apply the brakes, and then he stepped in like a ballet dancer, taking the man around the neck with one arm and pulling back, his knife slicing across the outstretched throat.

  The warm blood gushed across his hand, and he let the body gently down to the ground, before doing a panoramic turn, eyes searching the shadows for other sources of trouble. Satisfied there was none, he pulled the body into the deeper shadow beneath the wall, and washed his hand in a small drift of snow. Looking down he had the momentary illusion that the stain was spreading towards him.

  Once Chris had given him the green light, Kaltak had started the lorry down the road in the direction of the checkpoint. They quickly left the town behind, the road running between the river and a narrow meadow, aiming for the mouth of the valley. The lone house ahead was unlit, but beside it a yellow light seemed to be hanging in the air just above the road. As they approached, it revealed itself as a kerosene lamp perched on a wooden bench that was placed across the highway.

  The lorry slowed, one of the Bosnians rapped his knuckles on the cab’s window, and Razor leapt nimbly down to the road. He reached the bank of the river as the lorry came to a halt in front of the makeshift barricade. There was still no sign of life inside the house.

  The Bosnians climbed down, and stood there waiting for a moment, wondering what to do. Razor asked himself whether they could trust the men inside the house – always assuming there were some – not to wake up at any time in the next hour. The answer, unfortunately, was no.

  Kaltak and Abdulahu had obviously reached the same conclusion. The latter climbed on to the lorry’s running board, reached in, and blew a short blast on the horn. It sounded almost deafening to Razor, but he doubted whether the noise had travelled across town to the motel.

  For a moment it even seemed that the blast had failed to rouse anyone inside the house, but the door abruptly banged open, and a man stepped out, complaining loudly. He had no hat on, but the bottom half of his face was darkened by a beard. Razor waited until he was out in the open before knocking him down with a three-shot burst of the silenced MP5.

  At the same moment another man came through the doorway, also apparently complaining, and ducked back instantly the moment he saw his comrade fall. Razor cursed and went after him, his mind registering the fleeting impression that the man had not been carrying a weapon. He leapt on to the low veranda and rushed in through the doorway, moving swiftly to his right to avoid being silhouetted against the lighter outside world.

  He could hear the man running up the stairs, and restrained himself from instant pursuit. Five seconds, ten, and his eyes were more accustomed to the dark. As he made out the foot of the staircase there were raised voices upstairs, the thud of moving feet on the ceiling above.

  Razor went for the stairs, climbing as swiftly and silently as he could manage. There was a faint light above, and three voices talking excitedly to each other, or maybe only two. The thought flashed through his mind that this was a modern house, probably someone’s pride and joy before the present war. He wondered what had happened to the people who had lived there.

  Thumping footsteps gave the Chetnik away before his silhouette appeared at the head of the stairs. The SAS man fired an automatic burst, and the man crashed backwards, his weapon bouncing past Razor down the stairs. By the time it reached the bottom another man had died. Driven into view by his own inertia, unable to find a target for his AK47, this Serb managed one shot before the MP5 took out his left eye and threw him back on to his partner’s body.

  The sound of the shot echoed round the house, dying into silence. Razor advanced carefully, ears straining for evidence that there was a third man present. He heard a whimpering noise, which was suddenly drowned out by the entrance of his two Bosnian allies downstairs.

  Razor put an eye cautiously round the top of the stairs. The dim light was coming from the room across the landing. There were two other doors, both shut.

  He edged his way on all fours towards the half-open door, and gently pushed it wide. The whimpering grew louder, but no shots came out.

  ‘You OK, English?’ one of the Bosnians whispered loudly from the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Da,’ Razor whispered back, using half of his Serbo-Croat vocabulary and wishing the other half was the Serbo-Croat for ‘wait’. The whimpering inside stopped suddenly, and for a few seconds the only sounds to break the silence were his own breathing. Then the shot resounded inside the room, followed in quick succession by the sharp thunk of something metallic hitting the floor and the duller thump of something bigger.

  Razor put his eye to the crack between door and frame, and then wearily climbed to his feet. ‘It’s OK,’ he shouted down the stairs. Inside the room he found the youth – he was about fifteen, he guessed – crumpled on the floor. The half of his head that was missing was still sliding down the wall. The AK47 which had put it there was lying in the middl
e of the room.

  Why? Razor asked himself. He turned his head away, and found the answer. A young girl, younger even than the boy, was stretched out on the bed, naked but for the sock stuffed in her mouth and the scarf that had been tightly looped around her neck.

  He yanked out the sock and undid the scarf, almost in a frenzy, wanting to cry out something, anything.

  He reached for the carotid artery and felt life. The pulse was slight, but she was breathing, almost desperately now, and even in this light there was a blueness around the lips. There seemed no external injuries other than a redness around the vagina, and Razor turned her over, moving one arm and leg outwards to stop her lying flat. The breathing seemed to ease.

  Abdulahu appeared in the doorway, took in the scene and said something in his own language, something that seemed to encompass surprise, resignation and sadness. He squatted down next to Razor by the bed. ‘She OK?’ he asked.

  As if in answer the girl’s eyes opened, slowly at first and then wide with fright.

  Abdulahu said something and took her hand. She began shivering.

  Razor looked round for her clothes, but could see none. He yanked the curtain violently down from the window and covered her with that, as her eyes seemed to search his face for understanding. He turned away and stood there for a minute, thinking furiously. ‘You stay with her,’ he told the Bosnian, miming to reinforce the other man’s understanding.

  Abdulahu nodded. ‘She come with us,’ he said.

  Razor walked out of the room to where the two dead men lay twisted together and, on an impulse too strong to resist, lashed out a foot at the nearest body. Then, for the first time that he could remember in his adult life, he simply lost control, kicking and kicking the lifeless heads until Abdulahu gently pulled him away.

  Back at the Sports Hall Docherty had heard the two shots in the distance, but only faintly. He very much doubted that they would have been heard across the town, and his only real worry was that Razor or one of the Bosnians had been on the receiving end.