by Young, Tom
“I am very sorry. When?”
“In 1999, when the bombs hit Novi Sad.”
Dušic remembered the time well. When the Muslims in Kosovo—by all rights a Serbian province—dared to declare a separate state, Serbs moved with vengeance. The Americans interfered again, bombing targets in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and other locations to stop the righteous ethnic cleansing. The West divided its record of meddling into what it called the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, the Croatian War, and so on. But to Dušic, it was all one long conflict. An unfinished conflict.
Stefan came back inside. “You may not wish to watch this procedure,” Bradic said. “There is tea in my kitchen. You may make yourself at home.”
“Thank you, sir. Ah, do you have anything stronger?”
“Scotch whisky in the far left cabinet.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Dušic shook his head, but Stefan did not see the gesture. Perhaps Stefan wished to drink to celebrate success, though the look on his face did not seem celebratory. The act was done now; Dušic hoped his friend could keep his mind on the big picture.
The doctor began to scrape at the wound with a scalpel. Dušic felt no pain; his leg seemed a slab of cold meat. But he sensed the abrading and pulling.
“So tell me how you suffered this gunshot wound,” Bradic said. “Your friend was unclear.”
“It is better that you do not know the details. But our struggle against the Turks continues, and it will reach new heights. In fact, we will need a man of your skills once more.”
“I have seen enough of war, Viktor.”
The doctor put down his scalpel, threaded suture material through the end of a curved needle. Dušic saw his own blood on Bradic’s gloved fingers, and it made him proud. He was bleeding for his people. Bradic’s comment disappointed him, though. But perhaps it was just the sentiment of a tired middle-aged man suddenly asked to treat a kind of injury he had not seen in a long time.
Bradic sewed up the wound, gave Dušic another injection, placed fresh dressings over the injury. “You will limp for a time,” the doctor said, “but you will walk again. Now you need to rest.”
Stefan and the doctor helped Dušic to a bedroom. They removed his shirt and trousers, stained with blood and sweat. Dušic sat up in the bed, exhausted but too excited for sleep. For a light dinner, Bradic brought him tea, black bread, and sausage. Eventually Dušic fell asleep to the sound of a news broadcast from a television in another room.
• • •
WHEN PARSON LEARNED what had happened to the Rivet Joint, he could think only of how Sophia and Irena might have died in a smoking hole in the ground. Dead like Cunningham and the twenty-four other people killed at the Patriarchate. Gone like the people represented by numbers and red flags in that pit at Bratunac. And now the whole region seemed poised to go back to the days of the killing fields.
In Parson’s room at the hotel in Sarajevo, he and Webster watched CNN International. A female reporter wearing a khaki correspondent’s jacket stood in front of the remains of the Patriarchate. The building’s entire front had been ripped away. An interior stairway stood exposed to the outdoors. The reporter spoke from where the main dome with the crucifix had once been, but that was gone, too.
“The Serbian government has called for calm following this morning’s terrorist attack on the Holy Assembly of Bishops. The president says Serbs should draw no conclusions until authorities complete an investigation. However, some nationalist politicians call the blast a Muslim act of war. In fact, witnesses report hearing gunmen shout ‘Allah-hu akbar’ while spraying survivors with gunfire. A few firebrand leaders are already calling for the reconstitution of Serbian paramilitary units. Bosnian Muslim officials have, in turn, placed their own police and defense forces on high alert, raising the specter of another all-out war in the former Yugoslavia.”
Parson switched off the television. “Well, there you have it,” he said.
“This place is gonna burn itself down again if the police don’t catch Dušic,” Webster said. “The best that could happen now would be to get him alive and put him on trial. Officially, this isn’t our fight. But for me this is personal, especially after what happened to Cunningham. I know it is for you, too.”
Hell, yeah, it’s personal, Parson thought. Because of Cunningham. Because of what could have happened to Sophia and Irena. Because of all the things that had happened here in the past that Parson and the rest of the world failed to prevent.
“USAFE, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, has been talking to Central Command,” Webster continued. “They want us to stay here and stand by. The most valuable things we have now are the recordings the Rivet Joint guys picked up.”
Parson could follow the logic. Maybe, just maybe, if they got Dušic, the recordings would prove what he’d done. And then, just maybe, people would follow the trial and chill out instead of going for one another’s throats. But the whole thing depended on hope and goodwill, two commodities in short supply here.
He thought about Cunningham and all the years the young agent should have had ahead of him. Other losses came to mind: Parson’s C-130 crew in Afghanistan, and Afghan fliers he’d known during his tour as an adviser. Losses made him angry. Made him want to take some kind of action: start engines, call in air strikes, pull triggers. Merely observing and witnessing didn’t square with his nature.
That’s why the Bosnian hills had become so soaked with blood twenty years ago. Too much witnessing and not enough ass-kicking.
30
VIKTOR DUŠIC AWOKE in the morning refreshed from ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. For just a second the unfamiliar surroundings of Bradic’s guest bedroom left him confused. Then he remembered all that had brought him here. He closed his eyes for a moment, relished the sense of accomplishment.
During the night, Dušic had dreamed of final victory. In a mountain village, Serbs gathered to celebrate the death of the last Muslim in the Balkans. The war had raged for years, but the Americans and the British and NATO had stayed away this time, weakened by recession and riven by political infighting.
To honor the architect of final victory, the villagers danced a kolo in Dušic’s honor. The women wore traditional dresses of red and white. The men wore white shirts and red vests. The dancers joined hands and formed concentric rings around Dušic, spun and twirled to the music of tamburicas and frulas.
Dušic stood in the center of the dancers, and he held high the old Mauser he’d used as a crutch. Each time he raised the weapon above his head, the townspeople cheered. They did not know the details of how he had engineered the last stage of their struggle, and they did not care. The villagers knew only that their land was theirs, all theirs, now and forever.
The dream left a glow inside Dušic’s heart, but he knew such a moment of completion lay far in the future. Much work remained. The most immediate tasks concerned eluding capture by the current Serbian authorities, those lapdogs of the West.
His wound felt stiff and sore, but not unbearable. He sat up and examined the dressing. The bandages remained all white, not pinked by bleeding. Bradic had done a good job.
At the foot of the bed, the doctor had left a change of clothes. Bradic had not kept himself as well conditioned as Dušic, so Dušic imagined the dress shirt and black cotton trousers would hang a bit loose on him. Too large would have to do. Dušic put on the clothing, found it ill fitting but adequate. His Mauser stood in a corner. To replace it, Bradic had brought a proper set of crutches. Dušic lifted the crutches from a trunk beside the bed, tested his weight on his good leg. He curled his fingers around the rubber padding of the grips and raised himself to a standing position. He did not call for help; he despised the role of an invalid. Unaided, he hobbled down the hall. What he found disgusted him.
Stefan lay on a couch, still fully dressed. His left arm lolled onto the floor, knuckles against the hardwood. An empty bottle rested beside h
is hand.
“Get up, you drunkard,” Dušic said. “It is well to celebrate success, but we must remain alert. What if the police showed up right now?”
Stefan stirred, opened his eyes. They were shot with red. He rubbed his hand over his mouth and groaned as he sat up. Put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
“Saint Sava, forgive us,” he said.
Dušic kneeled beside Stefan. The effort sent a stab of pain through Dušic’s leg. He let go of the crutches and grabbed his old comrade by the shoulders.
“You stop this!” Dušic shouted. Looked around, lowered his voice to a hiss. “You know the grand strategy. You know we’ve only set a priming charge. Do not become weak like that lily-livered razvodnik I had to shoot.”
Stefan looked up, perhaps wounded by the implicit threat. He opened his mouth to speak. Before any words came out, Dušic punched his shoulder almost playfully.
“Change is hard, Stefan,” Dušic said. “It requires strong men. Serbian children will sing of us a hundred years from now if we hold fast and see this thing through.”
Stefan raised his head, looked at Dušic. His eyes did not show resolve, but at least his words conveyed purpose.
“Then we shall,” Stefan said.
“Very well. Now check your weapons and make ready for anything. I believe we are as safe here as anywhere, but you must not let down your guard like this again.”
Dušic noticed movement in the corner of his eye. He turned to see Bradic standing in a doorway. Had the doctor heard the conversation? Bradic held two steaming cups.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” the doctor said. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Dušic said. “Not at all.”
Bradic came into his living room and set down the cups on a table beside Stefan’s M24 rifle.
“The news reports since last evening are troubling,” Bradic said. “What do you know about that explosion in Belgrade?”
Dušic cut his eyes at Stefan, thought for a moment. He knew Bradic had no use for Muslims. But could the doctor understand the broad context of the events now unfolding? Bradic had received his commission because of his medical training. He’d functioned primarily as a healer, not truly a combat officer. How much steel did he carry in his spine? Better not to have to find out.
“We know only that the Turks have committed an act of war,” Dušic said, “and a war they shall have.”
• • •
OUTSIDE THE SARAJEVO HOLIDAY INN, Gold saw what she considered the saddest sight on earth: preparations for battle. No war had been declared, and top leaders still called for reason. But arson and riots had broken out all over Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.
The hotel manager remembered what had happened in his neighborhood before, and he’d started stacking sandbags behind all the windows. Razor wire stretched around the hotel grounds. Police and army patrols rumbled past, driving what Gold’s Army colleagues unofficially called BFTWGs, pronounced “biftwigs,” for “big fucking trucks with guns.” The gloom of low-hanging clouds made it all seem even more dire.
Dragan arrived at the hotel with a contingent of Serbian police. In a conference room, they met with their Bosnian counterparts, along with Parson, Webster, Gold, and the Rivet Joint crew. Dragan wore black tactical clothing, pistol and magazines on his belt, Vintorez rifle on a sling over his shoulder. He spoke in Serbo-Croatian for a couple of minutes, then he addressed the Americans.
“I just told my Bosnian Muslim friends we have a common goal now,” Dragan said. “This isn’t 1995. You guys have a role, too. We’ll take all the help we can get.”
“What can we do now that the jet’s grounded?” Parson asked.
“What we need from the jet now is not its wings but its recordings. I think we’ve already got enough to prove Dušic is behind this.”
“You bet we do,” Webster said.
Still the prosecutor, Gold noted.
“Don’t ever think your help isn’t valuable,” Dragan said. “Information from American and British intelligence helped us get Radovan Karadžic back in 2008. I was a rookie officer then, but I took part in Karadžic’s arrest. That bastard had lived as a fugitive for more than a decade.”
Dragan told them about the long hunt for the former Bosnian Serb president. At one point, authorities thought they’d tracked him to a church compound in Pale. The British SAS raided the compound, but found that Karadžic had slipped through their fingers, perhaps by just seconds. Eventually, the politician who’d whipped his people into a genocidal fury changed his name and appearance.
“He went all granola on us,” Dragan said. “Started calling himself ‘Dr. Dabic, alternative healer and spiritual explorer.’ I’m telling you, you can’t make this shit up.”
Most of the Americans laughed, and Dragan continued. Serbian police finally caught up with Karadžic as he rode a bus through the Vracar district of Belgrade. As a young police sniper, Dragan watched the arrest through his rifle scope, ready to fire if Karadžic tried to use deadly force.
“I would have loved to put a round through him,” Dragan said, “but we took him without firing a shot. He just pushed and shoved a little bit.”
“Better that way,” Webster said. “He gets to sit and think about what he did.”
“You should have seen him,” Dragan said. “Long white beard, and he had tied his hair in some kind of topknot like Santa Claus on meth.”
More laughter, but Dragan turned serious.
“We have every law enforcement agency in the world looking for Viktor Dušic,” he said, “but we don’t think he could have gone far. Listen, you got Osama. You got Saddam. We got Karadžic and Mladic. And we will find this son of a bitch.”
• • •
AFTER THE MEETING, Parson bought three cups of coffee in the bar and sat down with Dragan and Webster. The other bar patrons eyed Dragan’s clothing and weapons but did not seem surprised. Perhaps they’d seen it all before.
Parson thought Dragan had given a good briefing, but he still had questions. To begin with, if Dušic hadn’t gone far, where might he be? Traveling by air would likely prove impossible for him. Crossing borders by road would, too, if every country had been alerted.
“He may not need to cross borders at all,” Dragan said. “He could find plenty of sympathy and shelter among the old hard-line Serbs, sad to say.”
“Sounds like he could hide off the grid for a long time,” Parson said.
“Unless someone gives us a tip,” Dragan said. “Even Serbs who hate Muslims might not tolerate what he’s done, if they suspect he did it.”
“Have you found any more evidence?” Webster asked.
“We found the van he used as a getaway vehicle. It’s registered to a guy who served with Dušic back in the war.”
“So if he’s not with the van, how’s he traveling?” Parson asked.
“Not sure. Dušic has a Lamborghini. Witnesses say it was parked at the storage facility where we found the van, but it’s not there now.”
“Storage facility?” Parson asked.
“Yeah. Dušic has a whole row of buildings where he keeps weapons. Most of it’s legal; he’s an arms dealer. No doubt he took some stuff with him, so if—when—we find him, we’re probably in for a fight.”
A fight that, in a larger sense, Parson had fought before. Sometimes old evils returned, and you had to face enemies you believed had been defeated.
He thought of a hunting trip he’d taken a few years ago. An Air Force buddy brought him to the mountains of east Tennessee to pursue wild boar. The animals were descendants of domesticated hogs escaped and gone feral; in just a few generations they returned to their wild nature in both appearance and spirit. An unaccustomed quarry for Parson, more used to taking deer and elk in the West.
For this hunt, Parson did not carry any of his usual scoped rifles
, fine-tuned for long-range accuracy. Instead he used a brush gun, a lever-action .30-30 with open sights. Near the end of the day, the dogs jumped a big male hog with black fur and tusks like scimitars. The boar charged uphill through the woods, well ahead of the pack. But the redbones and blueticks gained on their prey, and they cornered it against a rocky outcropping.
Beyond the outcropping, a sheer rock face dropped five hundred feet to the valley below. With nowhere to run, the boar whirled and fought.
A dog lunged at the boar, bit down on its hindquarters. Parson wanted to fire, but the dogs closed in too near. A redbone snarled and leaped for the boar’s throat. That was the dog’s last mistake.
In a flash of white tusks, the boar gored the redbone in the ribs. The dog yelped and fell back bleeding. Perhaps energized by the smell of blood, the boar shook free of the dog at his hindquarters and gored that animal in the neck. Now two dogs lay whimpering and writhing among dry leaves spattered with blood.
Sensing an opening, the boar plowed through the other three dogs. With a clear target now, Parson took a snap shot, brought the .30-30 to his shoulder and pressed the trigger. The instinctive aim at a moving target felt more like wing shooting than riflery, but Parson knew he’d scored a good hit. The boar stumbled and rolled, yet it ran on.
Surely he’d dealt the animal a mortal wound; the boar left a blood trail that disappeared into a rhododendron thicket. But the sound of its hoofbeats through the leaves continued for several seconds. The wild hog took the bullet and just kept going.
At this point Parson wished he’d never joined this fight. Not his territory, not his game. But the hunt had exacted an awful toll already, and he felt obligated to finish what he’d started.
Rifle across his chest, Parson waded into the thicket. The sun sank lower, and in the heavy vegetation he had trouble distinguishing solid from shadow. He lost the blood spoor, and he had no idea where the boar had gone.
Parson’s buddy stayed back to attend to his two gored dogs, both dying. The other three dogs ranged the mountain, looking for scent. Occasionally one of them bayed, far out of sight, the howl echoing through a forest fast approaching darkness. To Parson, it sounded like a cry of anger and grief.