‘Look at this,’ he said in wonderment, and passed out.
* * *
The candle on Gerovic’s desk was a thick strip of wick floating in a cup of oil. They sat around it, watching the flame grow fainter, sharing a bottle of Lorza brandy. ‘You have to get out tonight,’ Gerovic was saying. ‘Our front lines are crumbling and there are rumors that the HVO may pull out and leave us.’
Jenny looked over at Ryan. The doctors had dressed his shoulder wound and put his arm in a sling. He sat slumped in the chair across the desk from Gerovic, massaging his aching shoulder, his eyes rimmed with exhaustion.
‘How is your friend?’ Gerovic asked.
‘I think they call it a flesh wound,’ Ryan murmured, and he looked up at Jenny and gave her an unexpected grin.
‘He can’t walk,’ Jenny said. ‘The doctors think it may have splintered his hip.’
‘He’s still lucky,’ Gerovic said. ‘Look at these men.’ He nodded towards the soldiers sitting around the basement floor; one wore a black headband, another had on bright red sneakers, another a silver medallion fashioned in the shape of a peace sign and a sleeve rolled up to reveal a tattoo of the Bosnian lily emblem. They were listening to U2 on a small tape recorder. ‘Unforgettable Fire’. ‘These men are all going to die here.’
Ryan and Jenny stared at the floor.
‘Don’t leave your friend in our hospital,’ Gerovic said. ‘You must take him with you. We are evacuating the town tonight. After sunset I absolve myself of responsibility for all of you.’ He reached across the desk and shook their hands. ‘Z’viu Miru,’ he said.
Live in peace.
Chapter 80
The evacuation started after nightfall. Almost the entire population of the town emerged from the basements and cellars to begin the exodus through the mountains towards Travnik. Suitcases, children’s plastic toys, bicycles, tables, old armchairs, wooden chairs, even wardrobes, were dragged up to the street and loaded onto the cars, trucks, tractor trailers and horse carts that were gathered for the journey through the pass, past the Serbian guns.
A man called Irfan agreed to let them travel with him and his family on the back of his wooden horse cart. Ryan and Jenny loaded Webb’s stretcher and then clambered on beside him. They set off in the darkness, headed back towards Travnik, along the perilous lifeline that had already become known as the Vietnam Road.
Jenny clung to the swaying sides of the tray. Dead animals lay stiff-legged and bloated in frozen ditches. A truck had lost its wheel and was skewed by the side of the road; a piano had tumbled off it and lay on its back. An old man was standing beside it, weeping, as if it were the body of his wife. A woman was trying to drag him away.
A death’s head image swam in front of Jenny’s vision in the darkness, underneath a single hand-painted word stark against the black forest: Minen!
The cart jolted over a hole in the road. Webb cried out in pain.
She reached for his hand. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ she whispered.
Behind them Jajce was in flames. She heard the steady crump-crump of artillery fire.
A dawn sky the color of grease. The column stretched in both directions as far as she could see, a silent army of misery. In front of them was an old Volkswagen with a baby carriage tied to the roof; behind them an ancient carthorse pulled a family of seven who were crammed into the cart alongside some chickens and a few pieces of rickety furniture.
Irfan and his family were silent, even the children. They were conservative Moslems; Irfan wore a traditional waistcoat and a loose white linen shirt under his winter coat; his father had on a yarmulke-like cap of white loose-knit cotton. They sat together on the kickboard, while Irfan’s wife and four children clustered together in the tray. The youngest of the children, a girl, was clutching a large doll. The eldest, a boy aged about eight, held a water-filled plastic bag with a pet goldfish inside.
Jenny smiled at him but elicited no response. All the children’s faces were fixed with the same haunted stares.
Jenny thought of another exodus, a long time ago, in a leaking boat putting out to sea from Vung Tau. Perhaps this was how she had looked to others. She wanted to tell them that she knew how they felt. But what comfort would that be, even if she could?
They passed an old farmhouse; four blackened walls, the roof gone.
Webb winced at every jolt. The doctors had no morphine for him. He and Jenny had brought a few ampoules into Jajce with them as part of their kit but they had given them to the doctors at the hospital the very first morning.
It would be a long day.
* * *
Darkness fell just after five in the afternoon. The air turned frigid. Webb groaned again as the cart bounced over the potholed road. The road hugged the shadows of the pine trees.
Ryan took the last pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offered them to Irfan and his father. They accepted but did not light them. Instead they put them in their coats. Irfan explained that they did not want to attract the attention of any sniper watching in the hills. Perhaps in the morning.
‘How is it, Spider?’
‘Never felt better,’ Webb grunted.
‘Grzic thinks the bullet may have splintered your hip,’ Ryan said. ‘That’s the bad news. The good news is it will give you something to talk about on David Letterman.’
Webb grimaced. ‘That really ... irks you ... doesn’t it?’
‘I never wanted to be famous, Spider. I’ll settle for being a legend.’
The light faded. There were occasional shouts in the darkness, sounds of explosions ahead. No one spoke.
* * *
The shell landed less than fifty metres away, without warning. A hot sliver of shrapnel struck their horse just behind the shoulder and it reared in pain and panic, then staggered sideways, losing its footing on the broken edge of the road. It went down, pulling the cart with it.
Webb screamed as he was thrown into the mud.
Ryan had been asleep. Suddenly he found himself rolling down the muddy embankment beside the road. He landed in a shallow pool of freezing slush. He scrambled to his feet, groggy from exhaustion, went searching for his dressing gown on the bathroom door of his room in the Intercontinental when he remembered where he was.
‘Jesus. Jesus H!’ He staggered, disoriented in the dark, fumbled in his jacket for his pencil light and flicked it on. Irfan was kneeling beside his horse, crying, his hands dark with blood.
‘Fuck,’ Ryan said.
Webb lay a few yards away, his body twisted, screaming. Jenny knelt beside him, trying to roll him on to his uninjured side. He went to help her, slipped in the mud and dropped the torch.
More shouts. Someone was collecting the family’s bags from the road and transferring them to their own cart. Irfan howled in rage and launched himself up the bank. Another shell burst close to the road, a hundred meters away.
If only Letterman could see them now.
Chapter 81
They painstakingly collected what the looters had left. Irfan’s son had cut his head on a rock and Ryan helped dress the wound with a dressing he kept in one of the pockets of his fishing vest. The boy was still holding the plastic bag with the goldfish. It was intact.
The remains of the family’s possessions were gathered in a sorry pile by the side of the road: a few plastic bags of clothes, a pram, some blankets, a suitcase with broken locks held together with string.
The horse, still whimpering, lay beside the road, dying. There was nothing they could do for her.
Ryan down knelt beside Webb. ‘Spider.’ He lit a match and shone it on his face.
‘Just bugger off,’ Webb murmured. ‘I’m tired. I hurt. I want to go to sleep.’
‘If we leave you here, you’re going to die,’ Ryan said. ‘The only way to get you out is for us to carry you on the stretcher the rest of the way. But my shoulder’s buggered so I can’t.’
‘What are you telling me?’
‘I’m telling you you’re go
ing to die.’
Webb closed his eyes.
‘Spider?’
‘Go away, Ryan.’
‘I wouldn’t really leave you, mate. I just don’t know how we’re going to bloody shift you.’
Jenny knelt down beside them. ‘Sean,’ she said.
He turned around. Irfan was standing beside them with the pram. He gave a sheepish smile. ‘Perhaps if it will help your friend,’ he said.
* * *
Webb lay sprawled in the pram, arms and legs dangling over the sides, head lolling backwards. The fall had reopened the bullet wound, and the bottom of the pram was pooled with fresh blood. They had rejoined the column on foot, Irfan and his father leading the way, his wife waddling behind with the children and the bags. Ryan and Jenny took the rear, taking turns to push the pram.
‘Like taking baby for a walk,’ Ryan said. ‘Bloody ugly baby, but.’
Shell bursts flashed around the horizon. A blood moon rose over the hills; rockets arced across the sky. There was fresh blood on the asphalt, sticky underfoot.
The column ground to a halt. People started screaming in panic. A truck tried to turn around on the road and got bogged in the mud. People rushed past them, heading back towards Jajce.
‘What’s going on?’ Ryan shouted to Irfan.
‘Serb, boom-boom,’ he said, trying to explain with his few words of English. ‘No can, no can.’
But Ryan understood. The Serb artillery had trapped them in a bottleneck. They could not go forward; they could scarcely go back.
He saw an old man dragging his horse and cart off the road, up a mud track through the pine forest. Impossible for cars or trucks to follow, but on foot...
He pointed the way.
Irfan helped them drag Webb and the ancient pram down the embankment and up the muddy slope. Ryan threw the helmets and the flak jackets into the bushes; they were too heavy to carry now. He even ditched the spare cameras. He was too exhausted now to care about how much they cost. It was just about staying alive now.
I’ve got out of worse messes than this, he told himself. I can do it again.
Chapter 82
Their breath formed thick clouds on the still morning air. They stopped to rest, stamping their feet against the cold. They were alone on the muddy track, the forest around them still dark.
A dirty light tried to pierce a dense mist.
‘How far are we from Travnik?’ Jenny asked him.
‘I don’t know.’
‘We must be close.’
Four soldiers appeared out of the mist on the path ahead of them.
They all wore brimless olive wool Chetnik caps, and their hair and beards were long and unkempt in trademark fashion. They were well armed. Even at this distance Ryan could see they were all carrying Kalashnikovs and had Bowie knives in their belts. One of them had an RPG strapped to his back.
He heard them release the safeties on their weapons.
Irfan and his family were far ahead of them, at the crest of the rise. Irfan was carrying his youngest daughter in his arms; his old father, still in his carpet slippers, was supported by Irfan’s wife. They had abandoned many of their possessions by the road during the night. Now the woman carried just one black plastic bag of clothes, all that was left of their former life.
The three small boys trotted bravely behind.
When he saw the soldiers, Irfan lowered his daughter to the ground, scrambled around in the black plastic bag, took out a white shirt and waved it above his head.
Ryan stopped, breathing hard.
He did not like the look of this.
The Chetniks were silhouetted against a lightening sky. They swaggered across the path in the attitude of bullies in a ghetto street. Ryan felt a chill in his stomach as he watched Irfan and his family trudge towards them. The sixth sense that had served him well all through his life now told him it was time to run.
‘Jump ship,’ he said, and pushed the pram towards the edge of the road. Then he was running down the slope, through the forest of oak and chestnut trees. He could hear Jenny crashing through the undergrowth behind him.
We must look ridiculous, he thought.
He was running too fast, the hill was too steep. The pram tipped. Ryan felt it wrench his wrist and then he was falling too, rolling down the slope. The breath was hammered out of him. He heard Webb scream, a short high-pitched sound like a wounded animal.
Then silence.
He lay on his back. Through a break in the mist he saw the morning star, cold and white. The Chetniks were calling to each other on the track, less than fifty metres away.
Close.
Closer.
Too close ...
Then another shout, from further up the road, and he heard the soldier turn and run back up the road to rejoin his companions. Ryan could imagine the conversation:
They must have run into the woods.
I can’t see them.
Leave them. It doesn’t matter.
And then a short burst of gunfire. He heard a woman screaming, but the sound was cut off by another burst from a Kalashnikov.
You mongrel bastards, Ryan thought. You’ve killed Irfan. May you all rot in hell.
They came back down the road.
They were searching the forest. They’ll see that old perambulator sticking out of the undergrowth, Ryan thought. Unless ...
The sun had not yet risen over the mountains and the gloom was deeper beneath the canopy of the trees. The mist had cut visibility down to a few yards. With the casual violence of rogue soldiers, they might just get tired of the search and move on, forget them as easily as they would soon forget the bodies they had left behind them on the road.
Ryan heard Webb moan.
Shit, shit, shit. Webb was sprawled on his side, unconscious. He moaned again. Ryan put his hand over his mouth.
Shut up, you useless bastard, he thought. I’ll choke you if I have to.
He heard another hurried exchange between the soldiers. They were making up their minds.
Please, Spider, not a sound.
He watched blood leaking through Webb’s fatigue trousers. Webb twitched, and for a moment Ryan thought he was going to spasm. He held him. Fuck you, Spider, you’re always make trouble for me. He held his breath.
Then he heard the soldiers moving away, heard the crunch of their boots on the frozen mud.
He looked around for Jenny, heard her moving through the undergrowth nearby. He hoped she wasn’t hurt. It was still a long walk to Travnik.
* * *
An hour later Ryan picked his way back up the slope. By now the sun had risen over the mountains, but a heavy mist clung to the trees. He reached the track and waited, making sure the Chetniks had gone. In the distance he could hear the distant crump of artillery. Travnik.
The bodies of Irfan and his family lay a hundred yards away, in the tangled and unnatural attitude of the dead. He felt the bitter taste of his bile in the back of his throat. Oh, for God’s sake. He counted the bodies. Irfan, his wife, his father, looking a little surprised to have died in his carpet slippers. The three boys.
The goldfish was dead, too. The plastic bag had burst on the road where the boy had dropped it, and the fish lay on its side, partly frozen.
And where was the girl?
He searched the track. There she was. They had let her run for a while.
He made up his mind that he didn’t want to die like this, his guts spilled all over the road. So what the fuck was he doing in Bosnia? It was the little girl that really upset him. As she was dying she had pawed a hole in the half frozen mud with her fingers, like a small puppy.
He picked up the old plastic bag Irfan’s wife had been carrying and lugged it back up the track. He found Jenny and Webb among the trees.
Jenny’s face had deep scratches where she had run into tree branches during their flight into the forest. She was sitting with her back against a chestnut tree, cradling Webb’s head in her lap. He was conscious again, but
his face was grey.
They had found the old perambulator. The axle had broken in the wild ride down the hill. It was useless now. If they were going to get Webb to Travnik, Ryan would have to carry him on his shoulders. That would be fun, they’d been picking bits of shrapnel out of his arm a few days ago. There was still fresh blood on the dressings.
‘If we stay on the track we could get picked off by snipers, or run into more Chetnik patrols. If we don’t, we could get lost, or stumble into a minefield.’
‘So what should we do?’ Jenny asked. ‘You’re the expert.’
‘If I was on my own I’d manage all right, no worries.’ He looked down at Webb. ‘Perhaps we’d better leave him behind.’
‘You’re not serious?’
Webb turned his head slightly to look up at him. ‘You leave me here ... you bastard ... and I’ll come back ... and haunt you.’ He laughed.
‘That’s not what they say in the films. Why can’t you be a hero about this, Spider?’
‘We can’t leave him,’ Jenny said.
‘Well then, it looks like we’ll have to take our chances on the track. I can’t walk through this shit. My vote, we wait for tonight. There’s a stream down there, so we’ve got fresh water. I also rescued some dry clothes Irfan’s wife was carrying. They’ll keep us warm and we’ll have a better chance out here dressed as refugees than we will as Presna.’
‘Like Irfan,’ Jenny said.
‘I hope that sun breaks through soon or we’re going to freeze to death. Let’s find some dry ground and try and get some sleep. If I’m going to carry that long streak to Travnik I need some rest.’
Chapter 83
They woke soon after dusk, stiff and cold from the damp ground. They had heard intermittent bursts of small-arms fire and mortar duels from Travnik right through the day. They had slept in staccato spells, surfing black waves of exhaustion, starting awake at the slightest noise. Once Ryan had ventured down to the stream at the bottom of the valley to refill their canteens.
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