Point of Impact

by Point of Impact (retail) (epub)

  Pausing from time to time to check his GPS, he pushed on up the progressively steeper mountainside, stumbling over tree roots hidden in the shadows as he climbed.

  His luck held. He neither saw nor heard any trace of patrols and, though every hoot of an owl sent his pulse soaring, he pressed on, growing in confidence.

  The tree cover grew thinner as he climbed higher, the moonlight throwing the rocky slopes above into sharp relief. At the treeline he paused and crouched down to drink greedily from a stream. Then he straightened up and scanned the ridge above him.

  There was no sign of movement but it was small consolation. There was little cover to be had on the kilometre of rocky, open ground separating him from the ridge, but he had to cross it and be down amongst the trees on the other side before morning. If he was still out in the open in daylight, he would be a simple target.

  Taking a deep breath, he forced his protesting body onwards, climbing up over the loose rock and scree towards the ridgeline. The wind was bitter and, despite his exertions, he could feel a numbing cold seeping through him, but he forced himself on.

  He reached the ridge, starkly outlined in the moonlight, at two in the morning. With scarcely a glance towards the snowy peaks rising still higher to either side, he began to descend. The moon set behind banks of cloud piling up from the west. Flurries of snow blew around him, chilling him even more and making the ground slippery and treacherous.

  In the darkness he lost his footing repeatedly and slipped and tumbled amongst the screes, once sliding out of control for thirty metres before he could bring himself to a stop. He remembered no precipices from his flying over these mountains but each hesitant footfall remained a step into the unknown.

  At last he saw blacker shapes looming up at him through the darkness. He stumbled past the first stunted trees and struggled on into another dark forest, groping his way downwards. The snow had been replaced by a damp, insistent drizzle, soaking and chilling him once more to the bone. His teeth chattering with cold, he hurried on down the mountain, casting an anxious eye at the reddening sky to the east.

  In the cold, grey light before dawn he came to the edge of a small clearing. He circled it cautiously, peering into the shadows, then crawled into a hole in the undergrowth a few yards into the forest, dragging branches across to hide himself.

  He checked his position on the GPS, his heart sinking as he read the distance covered: a mere twelve miles in the night’s travelling. At this rate of progress, it would take him almost a week to reach his destination. Even if the Serbs did not find him, he was unsure if he could keep going for that long.

  Again he forced himself to be positive. Cut the crap, he thought. Nick’s dead. Whatever it takes, you’ve got to get home and tell them what happened.

  He drank another of his precious sachets of water, then wrapped himself in his space blanket and his map, and pulled the camouflage net awkwardly over the top. He sat for a few minutes, eyes blank, fingering the piece of metal on its blood-encrusted thong, then slipped it back into his pocket.

  Finally he settled down to rest, but every time he closed his eyes all he could see was the body of his friend, riddled with bullets, twisting slowly in the wind.

  * * *

  He opened his eyes to find himself looking down the barrel of a gun. Two unshaven men, farmers, probably father and son, stood peering down at him through the foliage. The older, white-haired and grizzled, held the ancient double-barrelled shotgun. The yellowing teeth of the other man were exposed by a long scar that pulled up the corner of his mouth in a sneer. He prodded Drew repeatedly in the chest with a thick walking stick, shouting at him and signalling him to get to his feet.

  Warily Drew complied, crawling out of his hide, then standing up and raising his hands above his head. As he did so, the old man stepped back, keeping a few feet between them. Drew looked back towards his hide and saw a silver flash, an upturned corner of the space blanket that had betrayed him.

  His only glimmer of hope lay in making an immediate escape, before the men alerted Serb soldiers. The easiest time to escape was as soon as you were captured; he remembered that much from his combat survival lectures. But, though he felt the reassuring weight of his pistol inside his combat jacket, he knew that, if he tried to draw it, the old man would kill him in an instant.

  Scarface jerked his head towards the clearing and Drew walked on ahead of them into the open, his hands still above his head. In his haste to find cover before daybreak, he had missed the wooden roof of a farmhouse nestled among the trees not two hundred metres away.

  There was another shout. Drew halted and turned to face his captors. Whitehair said something, obviously asking him a question. Drew shrugged his shoulders in incomprehension. Immediately there was a flash of white light in his head and a blinding pain as Scarface smashed the stick into his face, sending him crashing to the ground.

  He dragged Drew to his feet again and Whitehair repeated the question. As Drew shook his head in a show of dumb incomprehension, Scarface lashed him again. The stick shattered with the impact. Furious, Scarface began kicking him as he lay on the ground. Drew’s mouth had filled with the sweet, sickly taste of blood. His left eye was closing rapidly and the Serbs’ voices seemd to be coming from a long way away.

  Panting with the effort, Scarface stepped back and motioned Drew to his feet. Drew dragged himself upright, shaking his head to clear it as he raised his hands above him. The old man uttered the question a third time, raising the shotgun menacingly to his shoulder.

  Looking into those expressionless eyes, Drew knew he was going to be killed. Still with his hands up, he bent his right hand downwards and pointed his fingers towards his belt. Whitehair eyed him suspiciously and then nodded. Very slowly, Drew put his hand down and pulled out his wad of Deutschmarks. The old man licked his lips but kept the gun where it was.

  Scarface said something and both men laughed. As he stepped forward to take the cash, he moved between Drew and the barrel of the gun. Drew let the notes slip through his fingers and the breeze caught them and sent them fluttering away.

  Scarface half turned after the money and Drew shoved him into the old man and took off, diving back into the forest as a shot rang out and buckshot peppered the trees just behind him. He sprinted along a track for a hundred yards, then threw himself down behind a bush and pulled out his pistol.

  Leaving the old man chasing banknotes, Scarface came running along the track, clutching the shotgun. Drew screwed up his still-closing eye and took aim with his pistol, not even sure if he could shoot the man in cold blood.

  Scarface kept coming, stopping barely twenty metres away as he raised the shotgun to his shoulder. Before he could pull the trigger, Drew fired twice. The first shot hit the man squarely in the chest. The impact sent him backwards, crashing to the ground. The second shot went high, but Scarface was already dying. Pink froth bubbled from the hole in his chest.

  Drew stood up, rooted to the spot, staring in horrid fascination at the dying man. A shout from the old man snapped him out of it. He dragged his gaze away from the body and was off and running, deeper and deeper into the forest.

  He sprinted for a few hundred yards but then forced himself to stop, reload his pistol and check his GPS. Then he ran on through the silent forest in a slow, sustainable jog, keeping to a south-west course the best he could.

  As he ran, he cursed himself for his carelessness in siting his hide. Now he had lost his blankets, his radio, his map and most of his water. All he had were his pistol, some emergency rations and the clothes he stood up in. Even worse, he was now forced to move in daylight, dog-tired and an easy target for the Serbs.

  He pushed the thoughts out of his mind and hurried on, ears pricked for the sounds of pursuit. He had been running for about half an hour when he heard a familiar sound, a helicopter flying low, skimming over the treetops. Hope rose in him, even though logic told him it could not be a rescue package. He had made no radio contact since ejecting from
his aircraft and was now over a dozen miles from where it had crashed.

  As the noise of its rotors grew louder and the downwash whipped the tops of the trees, he hid under the foliage of a fallen beech, peering upwards through the leaves at the black shape hovering like a hawk above its prey.

  It was a Serbian Gazelle. Drew dropped his head in case the white of his face betrayed him and stayed motionless until the sound of the rotors had faded, then crept out of his hiding place and moved on. Several times he had to dive for cover again as the chopper returned, quartering and requartering the area, but each time it passed him by.

  The trees thinned steadily, leaving him with more and more open ground to cross. Each time he lay motionless in the shadows at the edge of the wood, scanning the area for movement and listening for the telltale beat of the helicopter’s rotors. Then he was off, scurrying across the open spaces, half crouching as he ran, diving into the next patch of cover, sobbing with effort and relief.

  With the sun high in the sky, he found himself on the edge of open country. Ahead lay a web of rough pasture and meadow, studded with a few dilapidated barns. A single, unmetalled road wound through the fields towards a tiny hamlet.

  He was working his way cautiously around the hamlet, using the walls and hedges linking the barns as cover, when he heard the rumble of engines. He stiffened and shrank back behind a low wall as he saw a convoy of military lorries come rattling along the road, trailing dust behind them. They screeched to a halt at the edge of the hamlet and soldiers piled out.

  Drew’s heart sank. The helicopter must have spotted him. He looked around but there was no cover between him and the edge of the woods and no prospect of reaching them without being spotted.

  He flattened himself against the wall, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he was discovered. He no longer had the strength or the speed left to outrun the troops and his cover was minimal. As the Serbs fanned out to search, they could not fail to find him.

  He pulled out his pistol and cocked it, prepared at least to try to kill a couple of soldiers before they shot him. He peered cautiously around the end of the wall, using a clump of thistles as cover. To his astonishment, he saw the soldiers moving away from him into the hamlet itself.

  He withdrew his head, exhaling slowly with relief, but then his heart jumped as shooting broke out. He took a cautious look back around the wall. The Serbs were sprinting from house to house, firing as they ran. Punctuating the shots, there were crashes as doors were kicked in and cries as old men, women and children were dragged out into the open. They were forced to sit in a circle on the ground, their hands on their heads.

  For over two hours Drew remained in his hiding place, hearing sounds plucked from the inferno. There were terrible, unearthly screams interspersed with bursts of gunfire, smashing glass, splintering wood and other nameless, horrible noises whose meaning Drew could only guess.

  He heard a roar like a fire-breathing dragon, and peered around the wall. A Serb soldier with a flamethrower sent a jet of fire into one of the houses. As flame and black smoke began pouring from the building, a figure ran from the door, hair and clothes smouldering. The soldier swivelled to track her with his weapon and pumped another burst of fire at the fleeing figure, turning her into a human torch. She tottered a few more yards, then crumpled to the ground, the flames still licking greedily at her blackened body.

  The pillar of thick, black smoke rose higher into the sky as more and more buildings were torched.

  A young girl leapt from an upstairs window as her home dissolved in flames and ran frantically towards the edge of the village, but the Serbs were on to her like a pack of hounds. She was dragged back, her pitiful cries echoing in Drew’s ears.

  One soldier seized her by the hair and punched her repeatedly in the face, then hurled her against a wooden gate. Others eagerly seized her and spreadeagled her, face down, across the gate, lashing her wrists with rope. A succession of soldiers then raped her, urged on by the men waiting their turn as they guarded the circle of terrified captives. The girl’s screams kept rising and falling, her voice cracking with agony and terror.

  Finally, he saw one of them fix a bayonet to his rifle. Drew buried his face in his hands as he heard the girl give a scream more terrible than any she had uttered before. Then there was silence.

  When Drew looked around the wall again, the girl’s body had sagged against the gate, still held by the ropes at her wrists, as a dull red stain spilled slowly down over her thighs and dripped on to the ground.

  The group of soldiers were beating, kicking and punching the handful of remaining captives as they herded them into the backs of the lorries. Suddenly a man broke away and ran frantically down the road away from the village, but a barrage of shots rang out and he pitched forward into the dust. He twitched and lay still. One of the soldiers sauntered down the road, rolled the body over with the toe of his boot and, satisfied, strolled back again.

  The last of the captives were forced into the lorries. The soldiers clambered in after them, carrying bottles and other loot from the houses, one even swinging four live chickens in his hands. The engines started up and the convoy rumbled off down the road, firing volleys into the air in celebration of their morning’s work.

  Drew watched and waited, his shoulders shaking. In the space of twenty-four hours, he had seen more dead bodies than he could count, each killed savagely, some defiled and mutilated. He felt sick with the shame of his powerlessness to intervene.

  The hamlet remained silent and deserted. Nothing moved, no birds sang. Finally he got to his feet and inched his way forward, using the barns and hedges as cover. When he reached the first body, he gingerly closed the man’s eyes. What he had to do was already hard enough without the accusing eyes of the dead man upon him.

  He dragged the body off the road and into a ditch and began to strip off the coat, shuddering as his fingers slipped on the blood-coated buttons.

  He pulled off one sleeve then turned the corpse over to free the other arm. Air trapped in the man’s lungs escaped with a gasping wheeze, as if the body was coming back to life.

  His heart beating wildly, Drew managed to get the coat free and then began struggling with the trousers. The bootlaces were knotted and soaked in mud and blood. He searched his own pockets for his knife, then remembered he had left it lying on the forest floor near Nick’s grave when he had blundered off into the forest.

  Without it, Drew could neither undo the laces nor drag the trousers over the boots. He grew increasingly frantic, tearing at them with his fingers, which just made the knots tighter. He rifled the man’s pockets, but found nothing sharp, only a piece of string and a battered leather pouch containing a few coins and a photograph of a woman and three small children.

  Drew stared at the shy, smiling faces and his eyes filled with tears, but he couldn’t stop now – he had to have the clothes. He searched through the undergrowth at the bottom of the ditch, for an old tin can or anything that might provide a cutting edge. Finally he saw the glint of broken glass.

  As soon as he had the boots off, he began pulling at the trousers. He jerked them free, twisting the body awkwardly across the ditch, the legs obscenely white against the bloodstained mud.

  In a feeble attempt to leave the man some dignity, Drew straightened him out and crossed his hands on his chest. He put the photograph of the woman and children between the stiffening fingers, then stripped off his combat jacket and flying suit and covered the body.

  He hesitated over the UN beret. If he was stopped in civilian clothes he could be shot as a spy. While scarcely a uniform, the beret at least was a badge of military involvement. Abruptly he made his decision and crammed it into the pocket of the dead man’s coat.

  He moved to the edge of the hamlet, scanning every shadow for signs of life. The silence was now broken by a low drone as swarms of flies feasted on the bodies. Drew gagged and turned away.

  A few houses had been spared the burning, though thei
r windows were smashed and broken furniture littered the ground. The door of one swung drunkenly off its hinges. Hating himself for this further violation but driven by hunger, Drew pushed his way inside and began rummaging through the kitchen. The only food he could find was a scrap of leathery goat’s cheese and a piece of stale black bread as hard as timber.

  He had already swallowed the cheese and begun gnawing at the bread, when he heard a sound behind him. He whirled around. In the darkest recess of the room an old woman was hunched, her arms hugging her knees. Her white hair was matted with blood, her face was bruised and her lips cut and swollen. Her skirt lay in tatters around her, ripped open to her crotch.

  She scarcely seemed to see Drew as she rocked herself endlessly to and fro, her eyes staring sightlessly at the floor. But, when he took a step towards her, she shrank back and a thin keening issued from her toothless mouth. It was the most desolate sound Drew had ever heard. Ashamed and helpless, he took out his emergency rations and placed them on the table alongside the remains of the bread. Then he turned away and stumbled out of the house.

  As he ran blindly through the hamlet towards the fields, his mind reeling, he heard the clatter of a helicopter’s rotors. He ran into the open, waving his hands, praying for his rescue.

  The sound of the rotors grew louder, shaking the ground as the helicopter swept up the valley, hidden for the moment by a copse of trees. Suddenly the black shape loomed up over the treeline. Drew froze for a moment as his brain struggled to make sense of what he saw, then the sound of gunfire broke the spell.

  He turned and ran as shells exploded around him, then threw himself over a stone wall. His foot caught and twisted, and he fell heavily. There was another rattle of machine-gun fire and he pressed himself flat, trying to bury himself in the soft earth. He lay there, his eyes shut in fright, a sickly sweet smell in his nostrils. It was strange and yet oddly familiar.