by J E Higgins
“That’s assuming they do,” Abhajiri responded. “I know I’m not from this land. However, I do know the Serbian army is still the most powerful foe you have. They’re still the best trained, best organized, and certainly the best equipped. I don’t trust the Croatians either, but you’re both more formidable working together than being at odds. Taking steps such as this not only goes against the order of your own leadership, it risks creating a rift with an ally you need right now.”
The Bosnian began chewing his lips as he lowered his gaze to the man across the table. “We don’t need the Croats as allies, friends, or supporters.” He barely kept from growling. “We need to be leery of them and that means making sure they don’t have the means to easily turn on us!”
“That prophecy may be self-fulfilling if you pursue this course,” Abhajiri cautioned knowing he was treading a dangerous path with his host.
Mjovich rose slowly from his chair with his eyes fixed on the table in front of him. “I have listened to your views. My decision is final. You are here as an advisor to help us fight our enemy. I suggest you do so.”
With that, the Bosnian marched out of the meeting room leaving the Iranian alone with his thoughts.
11
The tension was high. Sauwa could sense the anxiety amongst the Croatians as they lay prone in the thickets, covered in their camouflage suits under layers of fallen leaves. The last few weeks of intense training and rehearsals had prepared them for this operation. Set up in a linear ambush formation several meters away from a grass field, they waited. Training was over, this was going to be their first actual combat mission.
Reports of patrols in the vicinity had been filtering back to them for the last couple of weeks. Sauwa had undertaken a few personal recces to see for herself. She had watched the line of Bosnian soldiers walk this route multiple times in the last four days. The timeline was desultory, but there was no deviation from the established trail. A well-beaten path in the grass field ahead confirmed this. The patrols usually consisted of eight to ten men. They never used any follow-up units for protection. Sauwa thought this was the perfect mission to initiate the Croatians.
They began settling into place in the wee hours of dawn. It was the only time she was sure they wouldn’t need to worry about an enemy patrol. Sauwa brought the squad through the woods to avoid giving away their position. She wanted an additional ambush team set up several meters down the trail to catch any retreating Serbs or provide backup in case another squad was following her people. Her uncle and Fort Doppies had taught her that ambushes could easily go wrong if the ambushed target is not swiftly killed. Sauwa opted to keep the plan simple for their first mission. The guerrillas were too anxious and inexperienced to trust with too much complexity.
Oleg, since the first recce operation to Jablancia, had started to think of himself as a seasoned professional. He had been Sauwa’s interpreter while conducting training and had gone on a dangerous mission close to the enemy stronghold. He was playing instructor to the rest of the guerrillas, and his head had swelled even more. Oleg constantly tried to correct everyone as if he were in command. The other Croatians had come to see him in this light. Oleg had become a little difficult to deal with while she was trying to set up the group’s first ambush. Sauwa let him have his moment. She figured he would be playing the role for real shortly.
Nestled deep in the trees, Sauwa kept her attention focused on the lumpy patches in front of her ─ they were supposed to be her forces. Whether they could perform had yet to be seen. During the three hours they had been waiting, she confirmed the machine gunner initiating the attack hadn’t fallen asleep. She also risked checking on some of the others to stop them from moving around. Luckily, the Bosnians didn’t arrive when she was doing so.
The Croatians were exhibiting a stronger resolve than Sauwa had anticipated. For the hours they had lain in wait, she expected the nerves to be hitting hard. She had expected some vomiting or even losing a few men trying to run away from their first experience with combat. First-time operators getting excited or unnerved could become dangerous liabilities. To her surprise, they held firm. Perhaps it was their dire situation ─ when a person’s back is to the wall, they find the resolve to fight.
The rustling of shrubbery broke the monotony. Sauwa couldn’t tell if the Croatians understood what was happening and didn’t dare do anything to alert them for fear of alerting others. The rustling became heavier and was soon accompanied by the voices of several men talking. The conversation was loud enough that, even at a distance, the language was indisputably Bosniak. By now her team had to know the moment had arrived.
Deep in the thickets, Sauwa readied herself. Her eyes darted from the ambush site to the line of her camouflaged guerrillas as she anticipated the nervous twitches and movements that would inevitably alert the oncoming Bosnian patrol. The rustling bushes and voices grew louder. The Bosnians seemed unconcerned about the degree of noise they were making. The patrol acted bored and tired. The tone of their conversation sounded irritated and defeated. She assumed they had been on patrol for some time. Despite being experienced, the Bosnians were still quite primitive as a fighting force and tended not to implement the best field discipline.
The Bosnians slowly poured from the tree line looking more like a group of weary travelers than a military patrol and walked haphazardly into the open field. Their weapons were draped over shoulders or dragged by one arm. A short fellow in the middle of the group wore the insignia of triangular stars of a Kapetan though he didn’t act like it. He did not seem to care a bit about his troops’ behavior.
Sauwa tensed and clutched her rifle tightly. Her apprehension was as much for her own troops as the Bosnian soldiers. So many things could go wrong in an ambush. It took one soldier seeing something in the trees and alerting his comrades before the ambusher became the ambushed. She feared her troops would start to shake or give into other habits that would give them away.
The Bosnians were in a long line out in the grass field sitting like ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. As they neared the point where the machine gunner was waiting, Sauwa hoped the gunman was paying attention and ready to do his part. The Bosnians were so close now that a failed ambush would have deadly consequences.
Trying to focus was difficult. Sauwa’s mind raced through all the different possibilities of what could go wrong, and how she would react to them if they did. She found herself taking short, deep breaths to keep her own body under control.
The eruption of machine gun fire thundered as bullets tore from the bush line. Within seconds, the ambush party joined in with the machine gunner, and the tree line was ablaze with gunfire exploding everywhere. The Bosnians, taken completely by surprise, stood frozen as the bullets ripped into their bodies. The Kapetan, who only a short time before was oblivious to the world, was now running about screaming wildly to a non-existent audience. His unit began to break apart with men running in every direction trying to get away.
Picking up her rifle, Sauwa took aim at the officer and firing off a burst hit him squarely in the chest. As scared and frantic as he was, it took the Kapetan a few seconds running around before he clutched his chest and slowly sank to the ground. Entirely leaderless the remaining Bosnians stopped to fire off a few sporadic bursts of return fire in a vain attempt to retaliate. Doing so sealed their fate.
Sauwa chose targets the furthest targets away knowing her Croatians had not mastered their weapons well enough to take long-distance shots. One of the Bosnians was running the long way out of the field. He was not zigzagging but running in a straight line. He was less than fifty meters out, but it was still beyond the marksmanship of her novice guerrillas. Another target had made it back to the trees but had stopped to look back. A burst from her rifle brought him down instantly.
In less than twenty-seconds, the gunfight was over. The silence was haunting. Not even the sound of birds chirping could be heard. The once green fields were awash with blood stains and littered
with corpses. There was no time to assess the situation before Oleg jumped from his hidden position and began shouting for everyone to search the bodies. Acting like a bunch of excited children they started to rush in unison out into the open.
Exasperated, Sauwa leaped into action screaming at her pupils to hold steady. Confused, the Croatians looked at her unsure what to do. Oleg, his face red, approached her. “Woman, we must hurry and collect what we can!” He was bitter that she was contradicting his self-bestowed command.
“We need to move carefully,” she explained. “Place some people in security on our flanks. If we get caught by unforeseen threats, we will have some protection.”
Oleg stared at her for a time; he was quite aware that all eyes were on them both. The mercenary held her position staring back at him. Finally, nodding his head and waving his hand in the air, he turned and began instructing some of his people back into the trees to provide security. The rest immediately raced into the field to begin pillaging the bodies. Sauwa trod lightly. She knew Oleg was becoming dangerous with his arrogance, and she tried to keep up the appearance of being merely an advisor.
The few Bosnians still alive were executed on the spot. The guerrillas couldn’t afford to take prisoners or leave witnesses to provide dangerous information. Sauwa’s stomach turned as she heard the gunshots after the desperate words that could only be pleas for mercy.
Sauwa undertook searching the body of the Kapetan for any vital documents while the Croatians collected all the weapons, ammo, and all the military supplies they could. She investigated the Kapitan's uniform as if it were a Chinese puzzle box. Searching through it, she managed to find a bundle of documents stuffed into a leather pouch strung along his tactical web belt. She didn’t take time to try and review it, she would do that back at camp.
Oleg, at Sauwa’s suggestion, began calling for the guerrillas to fall back into the wood line. The whole exercise lasted no more than five minutes. The Croatians jaunted somewhat leisurely back toward the bush line with Oleg leading the pack playing the role of triumphant hero of the day feeling confident from their victory. Sauwa looked about nervously. This was the most critical moment in an ambush. Everyone was exposed and vulnerable, and they had no idea if the gunfire had been heard by anyone else or if any enemy forces were on their way.
This notion was definitely lost on the guerrillas who were too wrapped up in their own triumph to understand the danger they were still in. Sauwa followed behind them looking back at the blood-drenched field. She kept waiting for enemy troops to emerge. Thankfully, no one appeared. Despite his derelict behavior, Oleg did maintain the exfiltration route Sauwa had mapped out after she and Oleg had recced the area earlier. It ensured they followed a path within covered foliage and led to a well-protected rally point they could easily defend if they found themselves pursued.
The trouble was that feeling the excitement and triumph had made it hard for the Croatians to contain their jubilance. Some were already bragging loudly about their exploits. Far from curtailing such behavior, Oleg began promoting it by building on the momentum. He began touting the episode as an example of Croatian superiority over the Bosnians which resulted in a chorus of cheering. Sauwa tried to catch Oleg’s attention and have him contain the noise. She’d motioned with her rifle and body toward their surroundings ─ an unspoken reminder of the danger still present. All the lessons of field discipline were be being entirely disregarded.
Arrogantly, Oleg responded with a simple yet condescending smile as he goaded the others to continue enjoying their victory. He even began singing one of their traditional victory songs. He was soon joined by the others. Only Sasha seemed to take her warnings to heart and remained quiet and alert.
Anticipating the gradually heightening noise level would lead to a bad outcome and unable to get control over the guerrillas in their moment of excitement, none of the Croatians noticed Sauwa slowly falling back even further. They marched on in ignorance as they sang ever louder with their new feeling of self-confidence and invincibility. Such obliviousness was only proving the validity of her concerns. She lamented not having Sasha with her. He usually provided the right counter-balance to Oleg’s abrasive arrogance. Having been with her on that first recce, many of the guerrillas tended to revere the former hunter. And, unlike Oleg, Sasha didn’t seem to milk his new found fame.
Looking about the trees and foliage, she tried to conceive where the greater threat might emerge. She assumed the left side would be less defendable for the Croatians. Veering to the left she skirted the guerrillas’ left flank. If an enemy came up behind them, she would be able to give warning. If a counter attack occurred by more enemy forces, she could at least distract them coming up on their side. Either way, she would be of far better use protecting the weak spot on the current path.
The guerrillas were a considerable distance from her, but Sauwa could still see them well enough to keep up. Because the noise they were making gave her a perfect means to follow them, she didn’t really need to stay close. She clutched her weapon and trekked slowly amongst the trees and bushes looking for anything suspicious. Her mind ran through the scenarios of what could plausibly happen. The singing was loud enough she could clearly make out the words. Sometime later she was going to have a discussion with Oleg in private. A conversation with the self-styled combat expert was going to find rather humbling.
Almost to the rendezvous point, she heard a gunshot. It wasn’t the slight crackle associated with a traditional automatic. It was the cannon-like boom from a high caliber rifle. The exuberant singing had been replaced with an equally loud chorus of screams. The Croatians were in trouble. Picking up her pace, Sauwa began moving in the direction of the gunfire. She could already hear a barrage of wild return fire. It seemed like the guerrillas were firing blindly in response.
Sensing it was a sniper by the lack of follow-up fire coming from the booming weapon, she moved up hoping the gunman had hit his target and moved on. A professional knew better than to stay in the same place after a shot. It was the amateur who stuck around and tried to rack up kills leaving muzzle flashes and enough time for people to spot their location.
Another cannon-like boom dispelled her of this notion ─ the sniper was racking up kills. This report prompted another wild barrage of gunfire from the Croatians confirming the sniper had been successful yet again. This time, however, Sauwa was able to determine a general location of where the sniper’s shot had to have come from. Despite the Croatian gunfire tearing through the bushes she continued to move ahead looping around in the hopes that she would come up behind the shooter. She imagined in her absence, Oleg would actually have to be a leader for a change rather than just play one.
The cannon-like boom echoed loudly in the air. This time it was louder and closer, and Sauwa started to close the distance. Again, it was followed by an uncontrolled barrage of return fire that didn’t even seem to come close to the sniper’s position. She saw him at a distance ─ a shadowy silhouette of a person tucked closely to a cluster of trees. The rifle, a long powerful looking piece, was perched nicely in the pocket of a tree branch. The shooter may have been an excellent shot but, as she surmised, he was not a professional sniper. He didn’t have much in the way of deep camouflage and was relying on the trees and shrubbery to conceal himself. He did not change positions after each shot ─ which would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Moving up a little to close the distance, Sauwa sank to one knee as she sighted in her rifle. With the sniper in her sights, she fired a single round in his direction. The shot hit within inches of his head smashing into the tree branch next to him. Taken by surprise, the sniper fell back blinded by the shards of wood that flew into his eyes. Dazed and confused, he rose to his feet in an attempt to wipe the debris from his eyes. Doing so he automatically turned in her direction presenting a full silhouette. She took her kill shot. Firing at center mass she watched as the sniper clutched his chest and fell backward.
“Cease fire! Cease f
ire!” She screamed hoping the Croatians would at least recognize her voice and stop shooting.
“Mercenary! Is that you?” It was Oleg’s voice; he had never gotten Sauwa’s name and had generally begun referring to her as mercenary.
“Yes, it’s me. I got the shooter so stop firing!”
A few more shots rang out from the Croatian side. Like the rest, they were wild and shooting blindly. “Stop shooting!” She heard Oleg yelling angrily. “We’re coming to you,” he shouted at her.
“I’m making my way toward the shooter,” Sauwa called back. She hoped the guerrillas would hone in on her voice. She carefully approached the location of the sniper. She watched carefully for any movement that might indicate danger. There was nothing. The sniper’s body was sprawled over a bush that had kept him artificially propped up.
She could hear the rustling of bushes as the Croatians neared her position. “I’m this way!” She called out assuming Oleg was amongst those coming. There was no actual response, but the muttering hinted at both anger and fear.
The sniper’s body was soaked in a thick pool of dark blood. She instantly identified the uniform as that of the Serbian army. When she found him, Sauwa imagined the camouflaged figure had been lingering until shortly before she arrived. A black knit baklava covered the man’s face except for his eyes. Usually, she would have checked for a pulse to ensure her target was dead, but the blank stare from his lifeless eyes looking off into nowhere told her enough. She had seen enough dead men up close to know the difference between a decoy and the real thing.
By now, the Croatians had found her as they trotted through the trees. She didn’t have to look to know their guns were out and pointed squarely at the dead sniper. She felt Oleg move up past her as he reached to grab the sniper’s throat and press the barrel of his pistol at his head. Her presence no longer necessary, Sauwa shifted her attention to the tree where the sniper had taken up his position.