Warriors (9781101621189)

by Young, Tom

  Gold could hear nothing as Dragan began to speak. She didn’t know Serbo-Croatian anyway, but now she lacked even the subtle cues of voice tone. Gold had nothing to monitor but body language.

  The Serb officer gestured with open hands, fingers spread. He pursed his lips, nodded grimly as if delivering bad news to a friend. Gold detected nothing threatening in his manner, but Milica still seemed ill at ease. Dragan spoke for several minutes. When Milica finally spoke, she did so only briefly. Dragan appeared to ask a question. She spoke again, just for a few seconds. He offered her a cigarette and she took it. Dragan lit it for her, and the smoke curled toward the ceiling.

  “So,” Parson said, “do you think she’s lying?”

  “No. She doesn’t look like she’s hiding anything.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Gestures. She’s facing him, not shifted to the side. She’s making eye contact.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of interrogations,” Gold said. “You learn what lying looks like.”

  Parson at least had the grace not to ask her for details. But Gold had interpreted the words of many suspects under questioning, nearly all of them guilty. Some cursed and spewed threats. Some spat. Some refused to talk at all. Some broke down and sobbed. At one point or another, most attempted to lie. When they did so, they looked away. They looked at the floor. They folded their arms, clenched their fists. Only the most expert operatives could fake the gestures of honesty. That feat required both knowledge and presence of mind. It was almost as hard as defeating a lie detector.

  Milica began to weep. She placed her cigarette in an ash tray. She opened her purse, found a tissue, and dabbed at her eyes. Gold wondered how much Dragan was telling her. At a minimum, she supposed, he was telling Milica about the narcotics trafficking. But if he wanted her cooperation, he might also talk about her boss’s history.

  That would amount to a gamble, though. What if the woman was a hard-line Serb nationalist? What if that’s why Dušic hired her in the first place? Not likely, Gold considered. Women could hate just as well as men, but an educated European woman of the professional class didn’t fit the usual profile of a bigot.

  Dragan opened a manila envelope. From the envelope, he drew a handful of black-and-white prints. Gold saw that he had taken the gamble. One photograph showed a pile of skulls, some still wearing blindfolds. Fresh dirt surrounded the skulls, as if they had just been dug from the ground. The terrain did not look like Bratunac; the picture showed a different mass grave somewhere else. Another photo depicted Sarajevo in flames, smoke billowing from an office tower. Yet another showed a victim of shelling. A man in civilian clothing sat up on a stretcher, holding his right leg. The foot was gone; the ankle ended in a tangle of lacerated muscle tissue. Shrapnel did not cut cleanly but ripped and tore.

  Milica turned away from the photos. She cried for a few minutes. Dragan placed his hand on her shoulder. Then she seemed to pull herself together. With a fresh tissue, she wiped her eyes again. She blew her nose. She picked up the cigarette, tapped the ash into the ash tray, and took a long drag.

  Come on girl, Gold thought. Find your courage. Do the right thing.

  The secretary exhaled a plume of smoke. Took another drag, held it. Gold had never smoked, but she’d observed that smoking brought its own particular syntax to body language. As Milica kept the nicotine inside her lungs to calm her nerves, she was thinking. When oxygen debt finally got the better of her, she let out the smoke and put down her cigarette. She opened her purse, took out her cell phone. Scrolled through stored contacts. Now and then she stopped and read off a number. Dragan jotted the numbers onto a writing pad.

  “That looks like progress,” Parson said.

  “It does,” Gold said. “But can’t the Rivet Joint crew pick up the phone communications anyway?”

  “They can. But I think if they have numbers, they can narrow things down a lot quicker. They have Dušic’s cell, but they might not have all his contacts.”

  Gold looked forward to flying again, to seeing what else Irena might learn armed with new intelligence. Parson would want to get back into the air as well. Strange to see him on duty wearing blue jeans instead of a flight suit.

  The interview ended, and everyone filed out of the interrogation room. Gold and Parson waited for about half an hour in the observation room. Maybe the police were briefing Milica on the steps they’d take to protect her now that she’d cooperated, Gold thought. Gold wished she could meet the young woman, offer some assurance that she’d made a good decision. But by the time Dragan came into the observation room, Milica had gone home.

  “Did you get anything useful?” Parson asked.

  “We did,” Dragan said. “Seems our friend Dušic has a right-hand man named Stefan, and she gave us his phone number.”

  “She looked pretty rattled,” Gold said.

  “She was. I tried not to frighten her. She’s a nice girl, and I don’t believe she had any idea her boss was up to no good.”

  “Arms dealers aren’t usually the salt of the earth,” Parson said.

  “Yeah, but everything Dušic did in the daylight was legal, and I think that’s all Milica knew about.”

  When Gold and the others left the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was nearly seven in the evening. Dragan led the group to a local pub for dinner. During the walk, he stopped at a newsstand for a paper. The police officer tucked under his arm a copy of Vecernje Novosti.

  The pub appeared to be a watering hole for workmen. Patrons crowded around the bar. Blue smoke hung in the air. Pulsing electronic dance music blared from speakers, though the pub had no dance floor. The music and the chatter and babble of the crowd made conversation difficult, so Dragan suggested a table outside.

  Cunningham and Dragan, Gold noted, sat with their backs to the wall so they could observe everyone coming and going. Police instinct, she supposed. Gold sat next to Webster, across from Parson. The waitress came to their table, and she looked no more than nineteen. The woman had dyed streaks of red and purple into her black hair, and she wore a ring through her lower lip. Loose white T-shirt with no bra, black leather pants. Dragan said in English, “Beers?” Parson and Webster said yes. Dragan spoke in his native language, and the waitress nodded and disappeared.

  Peals of drunken laughter emanated from the bar. Another workday done for plumbers and electricians, postmen and truck drivers, looking forward to the weekend, Gold imagined. Dragan opened his newspaper and scanned the top fold. He sighed and tossed the paper onto the tabletop without reading further.

  “What does it say?” Gold asked.

  “More trouble,” Dragan said. “Another riot. Cars torched.”

  “What the hell?” Parson said.

  “I was just thinking that,” Dragan said. “Why now, after all we’ve been through? I worry that it won’t take much to set off something very bad.”

  Without further comment, Dragan watched bar customers come and go. The waitress returned with a tray of beers. She set down each glass with a dull thunk, and she sloshed suds down the side of Parson’s glass. He wiped away the spill with his own handkerchief.

  “I wonder if the service here is always this good,” Parson said. Dragan shrugged, and he eyed the waitress as she disappeared back inside.

  Several minutes later, two men came out. Both looked drunk; Gold gathered they were the source of some of the laughter and roars she’d heard from inside. One of them stopped and stared at Parson. The man swayed on his feet. He looked like he weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds, most of it muscle. Beard stubble and a dirty sweatshirt. The other guy was thinner, and both were probably in their thirties. Gold took them for coworkers in some city public works department, or maybe an auto body shop. The big one muttered in Serbo-Croatian, and Dragan looked straight at him. Then the big one spoke in English.

  “You Ameri
cans,” he said to Parson. Gold couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement.

  By way of greeting, Parson raised his beer glass. Probably as good a response as any, Gold figured. Courtesy with as few words as possible was the best way to get rid of a drunk.

  “You bomb my country and give it to Turks,” the big guy said. He leaned over Cunningham to glare at Parson.

  Dragan spoke in Serbo-Croatian, and the drunk answered with what sounded to Gold like epithets. The smaller guy pulled on the drunk’s arm, and the drunk pushed his friend away.

  “Come on, dude,” Cunningham said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “You, too, American,” the drunk said.

  Once more, Dragan said something in his own language. The drunk spat a response that made Dragan reach for an object under his jacket. His badge or ID, Gold hoped, instead of his gun.

  “Policija,” Dragan said. He flipped open an ID folder, but the drunk didn’t see it. The man lunged at Cunningham and Parson, grabbed Cunningham by the shirt collar. Tried to push over Cunningham’s chair.

  Cunningham did not push back. With what seemed an effortless motion, he took the drunk by the head with both hands and pivoted out of the chair. Using the drunk’s own momentum, Cunningham shoved the man’s head against the wall. Gold heard a nasty thud when the drunk’s skull contacted wood, but the blow did not put him out. He scrabbled to his feet, snatched up a bottle, and raised it like a club.

  Against whatever skills Cunningham possessed, the big drunk’s size and strength seemed only to work against him. When the drunk swung down with the bottle, Cunningham stepped inside the arc of the swing. He took the man’s wrist in what could have been a dancer’s move. Sidestepped behind the drunk, folded the bottle arm against the man’s back. Bent the man’s hand.

  Gold heard the wrist crack. The bottle dropped and shattered. The drunk screamed. Cunningham kicked his feet out from under him and dropped him to the ground. Dragan pulled his handgun, pointed it at the man, and shouted, “Policija!” Then he smiled slightly and added in English, “Police, you stupid son of a bitch.”

  Cunningham turned toward the drunk’s friend. The man raised his hands and said, “Soh-ree, soh-ree.”

  “Cover this genius for me while I make a phone call,” Dragan said to Cunningham. Cunningham drew his own service weapon. Dragan dialed his mobile phone. “I’ll get a car down here to take this guy to jail,” he said.

  “Why the fuck did they pick on us?” Parson asked.

  “He got drunk in there talking about how much he hated Muslims,” Dragan said. “Wait—hang on.” The Serb officer began speaking on the phone in his native language.

  Webster picked up the thought. “He got all drunked up, and then he came out here and heard us speaking English. Maybe he noticed your blue jeans.”

  “Oh, shit,” Parson said. “My bad.”

  Gold could understand Parson’s mistake. Every U.S. military member knew you didn’t advertise your nationality in certain places. You wouldn’t put on a cowboy hat to walk through a mall in Saudi Arabia. But blue jeans shouldn’t have been enough to cause trouble in the former Yugoslavia. The atmospherics here were changing, and not for the better.

  Dragan ended his mobile call, and he spoke in Serbo-Croatian to the drunk’s friend. The man responded with what sounded like gratitude and apology, and he turned and walked away.

  “Damn,” Parson said to Cunningham, “you just about made that guy kick his own ass.”

  “They teach you all kinds of good stuff in OSI,” Cunningham said. “He shouldn’t have made me get all tidewater on him.”

  “Guess not.”

  Dragan pulled the injured drunk to his feet, sat him in a chair, and handcuffed him. The man moaned when the cuff went around his right hand.

  “Quit crying,” Dragan said. “You did it to yourself.” Then Dragan switched to Serbo-Croatian and spoke for two full minutes. A lecture.

  A police car pulled up in front of the pub. Its lights flashed, but the officers did not use the siren. When two uniformed police officers got out of the vehicle, Dragan motioned them over and briefed them. Then he said in English, “You know why I despise people like our Nobel Peace Prize winner here? If they could, they would drag us straight back to hell.”

  20

  DUŠIC TURNED ON his laptop computer in his hotel room in Tuzla. Ever since the arrests at the airport, he had worried whether any of the fliers or ground crew would talk. He’d awakened this morning with a brilliant idea: check the flight schedule for the Russian freight airline he’d been using. The police would surely have impounded the aircraft. If they released it, and if the same flight crew flew it out, that would be a good indication those fools had cooperated with the authorities.

  The airline’s website came up quickly; Dušic had listed the address under “Favorites.” Only the company’s best customers got passwords to view the flight schedules and crew rosters. Dušic typed ZASTAVA#1, then pressed ENTER. He gazed out the window while he waited for the schedule to pop up. Outside, the early morning fog drifted like smoke from a firefight.

  The flight schedule appeared on his screen, with origin and destination cities listed in alphabetical order. He chose cities of origin and began scrolling down: Adana, Ankara, Aviano Air Base, Bali. Dušic stopped when he found the Slavic spelling for Belgrade: Beograd.

  And there it was. Same tail number, same crew. Departing this evening.

  Dmitri had betrayed him.

  Dušic felt anger rise within him. The emotion came in hard lines and sharp points, like a bucket full of nails. He could not tolerate security breaches such as this. By now, all his underlings should have understood the price of failing him, but he could see they needed a reminder. He phoned Stefan in the next room.

  “Change of plans,” Dušic said. “Pack your things.”

  “What is wrong?” Stefan asked.

  “Get in here and I will tell you.”

  Stefan sat on the bed while Dušic briefed him. He nodded gravely, opened his mouth to speak. But he held his silence until Dušic finished outlining his plan.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Stefan asked finally. “It could jeopardize the main operation. And the damage is already done.”

  “I intend to see no more damage is done.”

  “But we are so close to zero hour, Viktor. We have only to drive the bomb to the Patriarchate and get the razvodniks in place with their weapons.”

  “Who is to say more people will not talk?” Dušic said. “What if the razvodniks lose their nerve? I find a little retribution tends to keep mouths closed.”

  “It is risky to return to Belgrade now.”

  Dušic closed his eyes and sighed. He mustered patience he could find for no one but Stefan. The man had proved his courage and loyalty, and he deserved a little forbearance. “My friend,” Dušic said, “if you wanted safety, you would not have chosen the path of the warrior.”

  That ended the argument. Whenever Stefan needed persuading, Dušic found he could appeal to his war comrade’s soldier ethic or Serb pride. Either worked pretty well.

  They checked out of the hotel, and Dušic paid with cash. Stefan drove the van. He scanned the terrain as the vehicle rolled by villages, forests, and fields. The fog was lifting now, and sunlight dappled the wet road.

  “Has that M24 ever been fired?” Stefan asked.

  “No,” Dušic said. “It is brand-new.”

  “If we’re going to do this, I will need to sight it in, at least roughly.”

  “Very well. Find a good place and do what you need to do.”

  With the sound suppressor, Stefan could sight in the rifle without drawing too much attention. The device would eliminate much of the rifle’s report, though not all. Dušic thanked his stars and his own good judgment that he’d purchased the full M24 sniper system, silencer included
. Cutting corners never paid off. When it came to weaponry, he believed in eliminating every technical disadvantage. You still needed the right men behind those weapons, but you owed your troops proper equipment.

  Stefan slowed as he approached an open meadow, but then he accelerated, evidently rejecting the spot as too exposed. He repeated the process at two other fields. But at a bend in the road where the forest grew so near that spruce limbs overhung the pavement, Stefan coasted to a stop. He examined the woods, and he pulled the van onto a farm path.

  “This spot will do,” Stefan said. “If we are discovered, we can just say we were poaching game.”

  Dušic hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but they had to take the risk. Without fine-tuning the rifle’s optic, Stefan’s bullet might fly wild and render this entire side mission pointless. Stefan shut off the engine, unbuckled his seat belt, got out, and opened the back doors of the van. He lifted the M24 from its case. Paused and looked around.

  “I have no paper targets,” Stefan said.

  On the floor of the van, Dušic saw a yellowed copy of Politika Ekspres, a defunct nationalist tabloid. He tore off the front page and folded it in half. “Use this,” he said.

  Stefan took the paper, turned, and stalked into the forest. The crackle of his footsteps over twigs and spruce needles remained audible even after he disappeared from view. When he returned, he gathered up a box of 7.62-millimeter cartridges. For ammunition, Dušic had also selected the best: hollow-point, match-grade bullets, 175-grain. Expensive little bastards, nearly a hundred dinars every time you pulled the trigger. Stefan pressed four of them into the rifle’s magazine and closed the bolt on a chambered round. He carried the weapon, the box of ammunition, and a pair of binoculars to the edge of the woods. The nearest house was about a kilometer away.