‘Bastards,’ Docherty murmured.
He packed up the radio and took it back to the hostel, then went up to the castle to tell Nena the bad news. She took it more stoically than he expected, but then he guessed she was used to such news after her months working in the Sarajevo hospital. Back at the hostel he set his alarm for noon, and sank into an exhausted sleep.
Almost instantly, it seemed, he was woken by the clock. The sun was shining full on his face, and outside he could hear people talking. From the window he could see two women walking away down the street, as if the previous day’s bombardment had been just a bad dream.
He went to wake the others, but found their rooms empty. Chris and Razor were in the basement, drinking tea and waiting for him. Both looked pointedly at their watches as he came in.
Docherty poured himself a cup and sat down. ‘I’ve got bad news,’ he began.
‘We know, boss,’ Razor said. ‘Nena told us. But Reeve has had an idea.’
‘That sounds ominous,’ Docherty murmured, just as Reeve himself appeared on the stairs, the Dame behind him.
‘It seems to be OK,’ the Wearsider said. ‘Both cab windows are broken, so it’s going to be a bit on the cold side…’
‘What’s OK?’ Docherty asked.
‘The cigarette lorry,’ Reeve explained. ‘The one you’re taking the kids to Split in.’
Docherty looked at Razor, whose bandaged head gave him the look of a punk pirate.
‘It’s the only way, boss. If we can’t fly the kids out, we have to drive them out, it’s as simple as that.’
Docherty supposed it was.
‘And we’ve got something else to show you,’ Reeve said.
They all trooped up the stairs and out into the street. In front of the lorry stood an extremely basic-looking armoured car – one which looked old enough to have done service with Rommel in the desert. Its gun was obviously long gone, but it looked robust enough to shoot Niagara Falls. More surprisingly, given its age, the white vehicle bore the letters UN on its side.
‘I told Reeve we had UN berets,’ Razor explained.
‘We’d already painted it white for winter camouflage,’ Reeve added, ‘but the logo is still wet.’
Docherty looked round at them. ‘Let me get this straight. We’re going to use this antique to escort a lorryload of children to Split, passing through at least one Serb blockade, and possibly several others, en route?’
‘That’s about it,’ Reeve agreed.
Docherty shook his head and smiled. ‘I like it.’
‘We thought you would,’ Razor said.
‘I assume there’s no problem with fuel?’
‘Nope.’
‘So who’s coming on this jaunt?’
It was Reeve who answered. ‘Eight children and two adults – they’re a husband and wife, and they’re in their seventies. Their basement ceiling collapsed on them yesterday. And Hajrija wants to come with you. She thinks it’ll be easier to get back to Sarajevo from Split.’
‘What about Nena?’
‘She’s staying here. She says there’s nothing more she can do for the ones you’re taking, and you have Chris and Razor. Zavik needs her more.’
And so do you and the kids, Docherty thought. He was glad they would at least have the chance to try again.
‘When do we leave?’ he asked.
‘You’re the boss,’ Razor said.
Night or day, Docherty wondered. He was fed up with darkness. ‘Dawn tomorrow,’ he decided.
Later that evening Docherty visited Nena at her parents’ home. She had managed to catch a few hours’ sleep, and looked more like the woman he had known in years gone by, one with life in her eyes and a tendency to laugh. Not surprisingly, the children were still intent on monopolizing their mother, and there was not much opportunity for the two adults to share a serious conversation.
But there was one thing Docherty felt he had to say. ‘If you ever decide to send the children out of here,’ he said, ‘but can’t or don’t want to leave yourself, then we’ll be happy to look after them for you.’
‘I can’t imagine letting them go again,’ she said, ‘but thank you.’
‘And as for Reeve,’ Docherty said, ‘you know him better than I do…’
‘I think we know different sides.’
‘Aye, maybe. But I know he’s missed you, because he told me so. What that means…’ He shrugged. ‘Just thought I’d pass it on.’
She smiled ruefully at him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, just as her son imposed his head between theirs and began talking nineteen to the dozen.
An hour later Docherty and Reeve were drinking each other’s health in René’s Café. ‘Didn’t London even bother to mention me?’ Reeve wanted to know.
‘Oh aye, they bothered. “Require Friend to accompany.” The friend is you.’
‘What do they expect you to do – tie me up and throw me over your shoulder?’
‘Christ knows. Who bloody cares?’
‘What are you going to tell them?’
Docherty grunted. ‘That you’re more valuable here than they’ll ever be anywhere. And that they can go fuck themselves.’
Reeve grinned. ‘You know, I didn’t think it was possible that you could grow more insubordinate with age, but you’ve managed it.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to the journey.’
16
The sun was still hidden behind the mountains, the town still far from awake, as the convoy began threading its way out through Zavik’s narrow streets towards the road that ran west up the valley. A Renault Five containing Reeve and three of his men led the way, followed by Docherty and the Dame in the armoured car, with the lorry bringing up the rear. Razor was driving the lorry, while Chris and Hajrija served in the back as combination nurses and tail-gunners.
The number of passengers had dropped over the past twenty-four hours. The old woman had passed away in the night, and her husband’s determination to live seemed to have died with her. It had taken all of Nena’s persuasive powers to get him aboard the lorry.
One of the nine children had also died, and another two were withdrawn by parents unable to bear the thought of dispatching their only child into the void beyond the valley. Of the six that remained, four had been orphans since the first hour of the Serb bombardment forty-eight hours before, and the other two came from large families.
Half a mile outside the town the convoy passed through the inner ring of Zavik’s defences, an apparently unmanned checkpoint where the road was hemmed in between a steep cliff and the river. The guards, Reeve had told them, were stationed out of sight above the road. With a flick of a detonator switch they could send half the cliff down on top of any hostile intruder.
They continued on up the winding valley, with all concerned keeping their eyes skinned for signs of an enemy presence. Reeve had sent scouts back up the mountain the day before, and they had found vultures hovering over the three burnt-out transit vans, but no sign that the Serbs below had discovered what had happened to their mountaintop unit.
It was this chronic lack of coordination between the various bands of irregulars which gave Docherty hope for the break-out attempt. As long as they could deal with the enemy piecemeal, they had a fighting chance of making the coast. But if one band managed to get word back to another, and give the other time to prepare a hot reception, then getting through might well prove impossible. There were simply too few of them, particularly since they also had six children to protect.
The convoy reached the checkpoint which marked the outer ring of Zavik’s defences. Here the road was constrained between trees and the river, and two of the former had been cut down to block the road. The ropes and pulleys used to lift them aside were operated by men hidden deep in the trees – a technique which Docherty remembered Reeve using in a jungle exercise in Brunei twenty years before.
Sunlight was now slipping down the slopes across the river, and the only definite Serb checkpoint was not much more th
an a mile away. According to Reeve, it was usually manned by only three or four men, and then only out of habit. Why, after all, would anyone want to break out of Zavik into Serb territory?
The convoy came to a halt a quarter of a mile from the checkpoint, and the occupants of the Renault transferred to the armoured car. The vehicle was quite spacious inside, its Soviet makers having dispensed with luxuries like seats and equipment, but with six men aboard it was still something of a tight squeeze. Docherty was reminded of the stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera, and hoped that they would burst out with as much alacrity, and rather more control, when the time came.
The armoured car rumbled down the road with its hatch down, the Dame peering forward through the open slit as he drove. Some way behind, Razor was edging the lorry slowly forward, letting the distance between the two vehicles lengthen.
As the leading one rounded a bend in the valley, the Dame saw the checkpoint up ahead. No attempt had been made to block the way, but two cars were parked between the road and a house set back from it. There were no people in sight.
The Dame picked up speed slightly, causing the armoured car to shudder violently for a second. The sound of its passage would be enough to wake the dead, he thought.
It woke the Serbs. One man half-clambered, half-fell out of one of the car doors, a rifle in his hand. He stood there for a moment, peering at the strange white object rumbling towards him, and then opened his mouth wide, presumably to shout. It was impossible to hear anything above the din of the armoured car.
As if by magic, three other figures emerged from the two cars at the exact same moment. Two were carrying Kalashnikovs, one an SMG. The Dame relayed this information to the men crowded in behind him. It was a pity the armoured car had no gun, the Dame thought, as he slowed the vehicle down.
The four Serbs had fanned out like Western gun-fighters, but the expressions on their faces were more amused than hostile. The Dame could almost hear the thought running through their minds: the fucking UN busybodies had gone and got themselves lost in the mountains.
The armoured car came to a full stop. ‘They’re ten yards away,’ the Dame said, ‘at ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, noon and two o’clock. The man at eleven o’clock has the SMG.’
‘Ready?’ Docherty asked. ‘Steady. Go!’
In the same instant both side doors and the hatch swung open. Docherty was up through the latter like a jack-in-the-box, swinging the Browning toward the eleven o’clock position, fine-tuning his aim and firing before the man with the sub-machine-gun had time to raise it. He fell back, hitting the ground with the SMG still gripped in his lifeless hand.
Less than a second later the other three had joined him in death. Reeve and his three men had thrown themselves out through the side doors, and before the surprise had time to die on the faces of the Serbs, the attackers had rolled to a halt in the snow, guns already blazing.
The sound of the river re-emerged as the echoes of gunfire faded down the valley. Reeve and his men went to check out the house but, as expected, found no one there. Razor, meanwhile, was bringing the lorry forward on Docherty’s signal.
‘You know where you’re going, then?’ Reeve said. ‘When you get to the crossroads go left, follow that road for about twelve miles and you’ll reach the main road to the coast. Once you’re on that I reckon your chances of getting hassled are less, especially with such a finely drawn UN logo. You could be in Split for lunch.’
Docherty offered Reeve his hand, wondering if they’d ever see each other again. ‘Good luck, Reeve,’ he said.
‘Seconded,’ Razor said from the lorry cab.
‘You too. Now get going.’
Docherty climbed back aboard the armoured car and gave the Dame the nod. With a great whoosh of black smoke the vehicle started off, the lorry behind it. In the latter’s side mirror Razor had a last glance of Reeve and his men walking back down the valley to where they had left the Renault. Behind them the bodies of the four Serbs lay sprawled and already forgotten in the snow.
The road continued up the ever-narrowing valley, until slopes seemed to rise up ahead of them as well as to either side. The crossroads finally appeared. The straight-ahead road was no more than a dirt track, the one across the river rendered unusable by the destruction of the bridge which had carried it. Their road climbed up through the trees in a succession of hairpin bends, emerging on to a snowswept plateau.
The armoured car, which had struggled up the steep incline, now found a new lease of life, and Docherty’s worries about its staying power receded somewhat. He was riding with his balaclava-clad head out of the hatch, prepared to endure the stinging-cold wind if it meant having advance warning of any trouble on the road up ahead.
For the first few miles he might have been travelling in Antarctica. There were no signs of human habitation; the road itself offered the only proof that humans had ever passed that way. A polar bear sunning itself in a meadow wouldn’t have seemed out of place.
They soon left the barren heights, winding their way down into another forested valley. The armoured car enjoyed descending even more than riding on the flat, and for the next few miles they made excellent speed. Docherty was just beginning to take Reeve’s idea of lunch in Split seriously when disaster struck.
The two vehicles were nearing the bottom of a long, curving slope when the armoured car suffered a tremendous jolt, strong enough to almost launch Docherty out through the hatch. The PC was still thanking his lucky stars that no permanent damage had been done to the vehicle when the horn sounded behind them. The lorry was limping to a halt by the side of the road.
Docherty walked back to where Razor was examining the underside of the vehicle. The Londoner got back to his feet with a grim look on his face. ‘The front axle’s fucked,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, boss, I didn’t see the trench until it was too late.’
‘Neither did the Dame,’ Docherty said, looking around. The road ran uphill in both directions, and everything else was forested slope. The wind had got up, and it seemed to have grown appreciably colder since their departure from Zavik. He wondered what the fuck were they going to do now.
Chris emerged from the back of the lorry looking sombre. ‘One of the kids got a knock on the head where he was already wounded,’ he reported. ‘Doesn’t look good.’
Razor went to take a look, leaving the other three SAS men standing in the road.
‘Any suggestions?’ Docherty asked.
‘Could we all get into the armoured car?’ Chris asked.
‘Not unless you’re into breaking the number of people in an armoured car record. You might be able to get all the patients in, but not in the sort of comfort they’d need to survive a sixty-mile journey. And we’d be sitting ducks on top.’
‘We could take the armoured car and go looking for another lorry,’ the Dame suggested.
‘How far are we from the main road?’ Chris asked.
‘About nine miles last time I looked,’ Docherty said, taking the map out of his pocket and unfolding it. ‘Yeah, I reckon we’re about here,’ he said, pointing with a finger. Between seven and nine miles.’
‘Boss, I think someone’s going to have to walk,’ Chris said. ‘The temperature’s going down like a stone. I was already getting worried about how cold it was in the back of that lorry, and with this wind…I think the kids should be moved into the armoured car, where there’s a heater.’
Docherty blew into the hands he was holding over his nose. ‘OK,’ he said eventually. ‘I can’t think of a better plan. Can either of you?’ he asked Razor and Hajrija, who had just appeared beside them.
They couldn’t, and for the next fifteen minutes Hajrija and the four SAS men ferried the wounded from one vehicle to the other, with Chris dividing up the small space between them, and keeping up a constant conversation with each child as he did so. The old man, once he realized how small the space was, adamantly refused to take up any of it. It took an almost superhuman effo
rt on Hajrija’s part to make him sit in the cab of the lorry, whose heater was fighting a losing battle with the broken windows.
‘Say, three hours to get there, and, at best, twenty minutes to get back,’ Docherty told those who were staying.
He and the Dame set off up the road, one ten yards behind the other, their MP5s cradled in their arms.
Once they were gone Razor and Hajrija took up stations about a hundred yards either side of the stranded vehicles. They had no idea what the chances of traffic were, but there had to be some, and anything which passed would inevitably see both lorry and armoured car. It might have been possible to get the latter off the road, but only at the expense of either lengthening the ferrying of the children or jolting them around inside.
Chris was left to look after them, which presented some difficulty. There was no room for him to get in with them, and he didn’t think it would be wise to shut them up in the dark, no matter how warm they might then be. He compromised by keeping the hatch open, and talking to them through it.
It was mostly a one-sided conversation. Nearly all the children were in considerable pain, and their powers of concentration greatly diminished. What amazed Chris was their fortitude – though none was older than ten he heard no whining and saw very few tears. While telling a funny story he even had the feeling that some of the children were forcing themselves to smile out of sheer generosity.
As he looked down at their upturned faces, eyes bright in the gloom of the armoured car’s belly, he had the feeling that here was a sight every soldier should see.
And it tore at his heart.
As the morning passed Docherty and the Dame ate up the miles. The road ran roughly south down the widening valley, keeping close to the river, and such houses as they saw in the distance were perched on the lower slopes. Several times the PC thought he saw far-off moving figures, but none appeared before them on the road, and no vehicles passed in either direction.
After an hour and a half’s walking they found themselves looking down on a village which straddled the road, and which Docherty thought it prudent to bypass. The resulting trudge across forested slopes added an extra hour, and it was almost eleven o’clock before they came in sight of their destination. From a convenient hilltop they surveyed the cluster of buildings which marked the spot where their road met the main highway to Split.
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