Vauthier assessed the problem right from the start.
“They must have smashed in the tarp. You can see they scraped the side of the cliff.”
A scrap of canvas was hanging from a small outcropping of rock above their heads. And on the ground, on the side of the precipice, they could also see clearly where the rear wheels had slipped, loosening a clump of earth and making the passage even narrower.
“If they made it across, then so can we . . . ”
But Vauthier shrugged, and Lionel did not insist. They had already noticed, when driving over a bridge a few days earlier, that their truck was slightly wider than the other one, by twenty centimeters or so.
“We could put a log across,” Lionel suggested.
“And do you see any trees around here?”
The mountain was completely bare. Only a few dwarf spruce trees clung to the rocks, their trunks no wider than a hand.
“Right, well,” Alex concluded, sitting on the fender.
He wouldn’t have been sorry, ultimately, if the chase had ended there. It was even the best conclusion. No one would lose face, and the worst would be avoided.
“Right, well, what?” Vauthier spat.
He would not admit defeat. While the other two watched him, he got busy on the road, tapping his foot to check how solid it was on the side of the precipice, carefully examining the cliff face and its overhang, measuring the width of the passage and that of the axles. He was turning it all over in his mind. They let him get on with it and Alex set about cooking some food. He took out the cooking stove and placed it under a canopy he fashioned by lifting up the back of the tarp. They took the time for a leisurely meal. Lionel did his best to hide his relief. Alex didn’t even try. He was whistling. Vauthier, off to one side, was still thinking. Several hours went idly by. Lionel smoked a joint to calm his nerves, and looked as if he were sleeping. Alex was clipping his fingernails.
Then Vauthier gave a sudden start.
“I’ve got it! Get up, you two. We have no time to lose.”
But as far as Lionel and Alex were concerned, a page had been turned. In their minds, the case was closed: something beyond their control had forced them to give up the chase. End of story. They had moved on to something else.
“Listen, Vauthier, you have to know when to call it quits,” said Lionel. “If it’s no good, it’s just no good. It’s nobody’s fault.”
“Get up! I’m not asking you your opinion.”
“Well, we’re giving it to you.”
Alex looked calmly at Vauthier. As he hadn’t been able to shave the last few days, his face was covered with a black beard as curly as his hair. All the childishness of his clean-shaven face was gone. Vauthier, by contrast, who was no better groomed, looked older and somehow weaker for the gray hair sprouting irregularly on his cheeks. They were obviously not on an equal footing. All the more so in that this time Lionel had clearly chosen sides. He stood next to Alex and didn’t move.
Vauthier looked at them, one after the other. Then he pursed his lips.
“Have it your way,” he muttered, scarcely unclenching his teeth.
He turned on his heels and walked calmly over to the truck. They saw him climb into the cab and rummage around inside.
When he got back he planted his feet before them.
“So you’ve been thinking?” said Alex, not looking up.
Lionel was lying down, his head against a rock. Groggy from his joint, his eyes were half closed.
“I’ve had a right good think.”
“So, what’s the deal?”
“You do what I say.”
It was only then that Alex turned and looked at Vauthier and saw he was pointing the barrel of a 9-mm gun at him.
“What’s the matter with you? What do you want?”
“They gave me a mission. I am going to carry it out, right to the end.”
“But it’s impossible now!”
“We’ll know that once we’ve tried everything.”
Lionel and Alex got slowly to their feet, not taking their eyes off the gun.
“I want you to do exactly as I tell you.”
There was nothing to say. Vauthier let a moment ago by, as if to let the new balance of power sink into their minds. Then he focused his gaze on Alex.
“When you were telling us about construction explosives the other day, you showed us a bunch, if I remember correctly. Where are they?”
Alex could lie. It would be easy, all he had to do was say that Marc had them. But Vauthier had a sharp gaze, he would miss any hesitation. And Alex had already hesitated.
“They’re in my backpack.”
“Go get them.”
Alex got up, dragging his feet. He came back with a parcel.
“I warn you. They won’t work if they’re wet.”
“That’s what we’ll find out.”
In any case, the rain had almost stopped. Vauthier opened the packet and took out the little bars of explosives. There were five of them.
“They come in boxes of six. Where’s the last one?”
Alex reluctantly got back up, rummaged in his bag again and returned with the sixth explosive.
“It’s meant for coal. I doubt it will work on anything else.”
Vauthier didn’t bother to reply.
“Lionel, get with it. Take the truck and back up as far as that spot, there.”
Lionel sat behind the wheel and reversed the truck to place it in the shelter of a fold of land.
“You, mister tough guy, get me one of the bundles of clothes those morons threw out.”
Alex got up, crossed the landslide, and seized hold of one of the bundles. It weighed at least a hundred pounds, and it was a struggle to bring it back. Vauthier had him place it against the cliff just under the spot where the overhang blocked their way.
“Now, move off over there to the other side.”
Alex walked a dozen yards in the opposite direction from where Lionel had parked the truck.
“Okay, that’s enough.”
Vauthier put the gun in his belt and climbed on top of the bundle. From there, with his arm outstretched he could reach some cracks running along the overhang. Keeping one eye on Alex, he scraped at the earth in the cracks. He managed to make several holes into which he rammed the explosives. He jumped off the bale and put the last two explosives at eye level, just beneath the overhang. Then he took his gun back in his hand and removed the safety catch.
“You got a lighter?”
Alex came over and handed him his lighter.
“No, keep it, I’ve got matches. Okay, now it’s your turn to get up there.”
“What for?”
“When I tell you, you light the explosives up on top. I’ll take care of the two on the bottom. But I warn you: we don’t have one fuse for all of them, so we’ll have to get a move on. The minute they take, we make a run for it.”
Alex climbed on top of the bale.
“When I’m ready, I’ll start counting,” said Vauthier.
He began hunting in his pockets for the matches.
Alex, perched on his bale, put his hands on the cliff face and leaned his forehead against the cold stone. After all these days of tension, of poor sleep, of betrayals, the group falling apart, all this madness and absurdity, he felt overwhelmed. He was on the verge of tears. He looked at the little sticks of explosives and thought about Bouba. He had done all this for her and now here he was, teetering on a bale of old clothes, in the rain, doing something that no longer made any sense. Would he ever see her again? And how would they live? As he evoked her memory, he realized he almost couldn’t conjure up her features. Basically, he had loved the idea of her as much as the person, and now he no longer believed in that idea. Marc was right. You couldn’t play smart with war. It was a filthy, evil thi
ng. You had to end it once and for all and—
“Three. Did you hear me? For Christ’s sake, I said three!”
Alex came to. Vauthier had already lit his fuses and was running for shelter. Alex clicked the lighter and lit the first fuse. The flame flickered in the cold air. The second fuse. The flame went out. He flicked nervously on the striker wheel. The wind wasn’t very strong but it was blowing against the cliff face and stopped the gas from lighting. A third fuse, his hand was trembling, from the fear and cold. His thumb was slipping off the damp wheel. Below him he could hear the other fuses crackling.
“What the hell’re you doing?”
Vauthier was screaming. He’d hidden behind the side of the gorge and was peering around the corner, a wild expression on his face. He thought there was something funny going on: was Alex trying to sabotage his plan in order to save his buddy?
The fourth fuse caught. Alex jumped, but the bundle rolled beneath his feet and he tripped. Just as he was getting back up, there came the blast of the first explosion. As he’d thought, it wasn’t very powerful. It shook the rock and Alex stood up. But just when he was on his feet, the other sticks exploded one right after the other, in a shower of little stones. Until all of a sudden the rocky overhang collapsed, hurtling sharp fragments straight at Alex. They flew into him, then onto the road before continuing on their way down the precipice.
The sound of stones crashing down the slope beneath the road eventually grew fainter, then stopped. A deep silence enveloped the mountain. Lionel, next to the truck, and Vauthier, hiding behind a rock, stood motionless for a long time. Then they ran to the site of the explosion. Lionel rushed over to Alex, but Vauthier wanted first and foremost to see the results of his operation.
“He’s dead,” cried Lionel, turning Alex over on his back.
Vauthier walked over, halfheartedly. He crouched down next to Alex and took his pulse.
“He’s not dead. He’s just knocked out.”
They could see injuries in several places. The most serious was a deep gash on his left shoulder. Another rock had struck his skull from behind, and Lionel had to remove a big piece of rubble from on top of one of his legs.
“What should we do?”
“Just wait. It’s not bleeding too badly. He’ll come around. We’ll count his limbs afterwards.”
Having delivered his verdict, Vauthier went back to look at the cliff face. He was very pleased. Once they removed the rubble that had come down, the space would be wider. Above all, there would be nothing blocking the truck at the top, since the overhang had collapsed, shattered by the explosives.
Alex was moaning, beginning to regain consciousness. When Lionel tried to sit him up, he cried out, holding his shoulder. It must be worse than it looked. One arm was hanging limply, as if dislocated. Then with his good hand he rubbed his head. He was dazed and didn’t seem to know where he was. He was beginning to feel numb from lying on the cold ground, and he was shivering.
“Okay, just what is wrong with him?”
Vauthier, heartened by his inspection of the cliff, leaned over the injured man. He prodded the various spots that seemed affected and several times Alex cried out, with a start.
“Well, that’s a good sign, he’s reacting.”
“Do you think he’s in danger?”
“If we leave him lying here, I’m sure he will be. Let’s go lay him down on the bunk. Bring the truck closer, and get a fly sheet from one of the tents.”
Lionel ran off to do what Vauthier told him. He put the fly sheet on the ground and they began to slide Alex onto it. They did not know which end to lift him from without making him scream. When at last he was lying on the makeshift stretcher, they each took one end and lifted him up. It took them a good ten minutes to get him into the truck and settle him in the back.
“I’ll give him something for the pain at least,” said Lionel.
“Don’t waste your time, the other guys have the first aid kit.”
Lionel dug all the same in his own toilet bag, and found a box of Paracetamol. He gave Alex two tablets to take.
Vauthier was getting impatient. All these maneuvers had slowed them down, and the light was beginning to fade. He had vague hopes of being able to get past the obstacle that same day, and he set about moving the stones that were still blocking the road. But some of them were too heavy to be moved by one man alone, and he had to wait for Lionel to finish looking after the injured man before he could get him to do some work. Once they had cleared the area, they saw that it was wide enough now for the truck to go through. But it would be a very tight squeeze all the same, and it was out of the question to attempt it right away, with the fading daylight. They had to resign themselves to camping on the spot and waiting until morning to continue.
For Vauthier, the only encouraging thing was that Alex’s accident put him temporarily out of action. Only one man left to keep his eye on . . .
“Do you think they managed to get through?”
Maud was lying on the seat, her head against the door. The burn on her cheek was stinging and her back was very painful. She must have fallen harder than she realized, and she could barely sit up.
“I don’t think so. But with that bastard Vauthier, you can’t be sure of anything.”
Marc had been driving since morning. Maud was in too much pain to replace him at the wheel. She could see he was at the end of his rope. His eyelids were heavy, and from time to time his eyes closed. She had tried to put on the radio, but in these mountains there was no reception. At one point they heard a faint buzzing sound, getting louder. They thought they’d managed to get a radio station. But then the sound was suddenly very loud and they recognized a jet engine. Two fighter jets flew high above them, then disappeared beyond the ridge.
The road was wider now. There was no longer a precipice on one side, which meant the driving was not as dangerous. They were heading across a gentler slope, the landscape less rugged. The wind was driving a continuous fall of fine snow straight at them. It was taking a while for the snow to stick, because the ground was not yet very cold. But before long it formed a visible layer, painting everything white, even the road.
When night fell, Marc turned on the headlights but it was just as difficult to see. Fatigue, poor visibility, and the fact that they could no longer tell the road from the shoulder compelled them to stop. Marc took out a sleeping bag and covered Maud with it. He wrapped himself up in blanket and wedged himself behind the wheel. In less than five minutes he was asleep.
Maud could not sleep. In the dark her injuries seemed even more painful. From time to time she managed to doze off, but then she was awoken by nightmares. She dreamt she was falling off a precipice, or that she was crushed by a boulder hurtling from the top of the mountain. Worst of all, she imagined Vauthier suddenly standing there with a gun in his hand. She saw herself cutting his throat.
It was strange how much she had changed by growing closer to Marc. Before this, for as long as she could remember, her rebelliousness had been an abstract thing: she hated the injustice of the world, but she had no grudges against anyone in particular. Aid work had given her the means to act on her diffuse indignation. It was not satisfactory, and gradually she had been compelled to commit herself more directly, to leave behind the sacrosanct principle of neutrality. In the end she had followed Marc into his idealism of combat. Now the world, for her, was no longer a magma where the invisible forces of evil were laboring. It was a battlefield, where friends and enemies clashed. She had never had an enemy before now. At the most, she’d had to deal with adversaries. It wasn’t the same thing. When confronted with an adversary, you fight. An enemy, you eliminate. She was discovering a new feeling: hatred. She hated Vauthier and everyone like him. And when she surrendered to her daydreaming, thoughts of murder came to her. To her complete surprise, she was not disgusted. She even felt a deep pleasure imagining a knife si
nking into that man’s throat, seeing the gush of blood, hearing the death rattle. And she was terrified by her own transformation. Wasn’t she becoming just like all those ruthless paramilitaries, those men who were guilty of the worst atrocities? Because she sensed that the nature of hatred meant knowing no bounds. If Vauthier were handed over to her, unarmed, in chains, at her mercy, would she not be capable of killing him all the same? And would she not feel an even greater pleasure in watching him suffer?
One thought chased another. She could not unravel them. All she knew, hounded by pain in this silent darkness, was that she felt lost.
Just before dawn she fell asleep, and when she woke again it was broad daylight. A strange daylight, as it happened, because the light seemed to come from the snowy ground more than from the gray sky, where the snow was still falling. Marc must have begun driving again very early. There were dark shadows around his eyes and his black stubble, so carefully shaven every other morning as was his habit, darkened his features and made him look harder than ever. Driving through snow and mud required great concentration. He was visibly exhausted.
Maud tried to move, to see if she could drive, but it was even worse than yesterday. Sleeping in the cold had exacerbated the pain. Never taking his eyes from the road, Marc reached behind him for a packet of cookies, and handed it to Maud. She smiled at him but he didn’t look at her.
“So how are we doing? Is it still far?”
“We’re driving along the side of the mountain, now. It won’t go up anymore.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes and no. If they’re following us, they’ve got a better chance of catching up with us than if we were going uphill.”
She peered out at the landscape. These old mountains, like the Vosges or the Jura, had rounded summits, and they had come to a sort of high plateau which they had to cross to reach the other slope. From time to time they saw farms and sheepfolds again.
“You’re not going to drive all day, are you?”
“I’m okay for now.”
The high plateau of central Bosnia undulated interminably. Sometimes they went down into hollows, sometimes they regained altitude. When they reached the top of one of these high points, Marc stopped the truck, with no explanation.
Checkpoint Page 20