Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  A car bomb exploded at the curb. He twisted and fell on the pavement, his chest a gaping cornucopia of glistening organs.

  Ari. Her darling Ari.

  She lost her mind.

  Immersed her forearms in him, tried to push everything back in—as if reassembling him could make him come to life again. She pushed and grunted and gathered him into a futile embrace, screaming for help, holding him until she became exhausted and eventually understood her defeat.

  Then she did the only thing she knew how to do, the only thing that grounded her in the world surrounding her. She took pictures. Three rolls, thirty-six frames each, a hundred and eight pictures in all. She kept shooting until the rescue workers arrived and pulled her away, clutching her precious camera. In the middle of the night, she threw those three black plastic film canisters onto her editor’s desk. “Print them,” she raged, staggering wildly before him in her blood-drenched dress. “Print every fucking one and make people understand!”

  She wandered Tel Aviv alone that night, wailing, disconsolate, in a trance of despair, Ari’s blood drying on her arms and flaking off. At dawn she woke in the sea, nudged by tiny waves, her dented camera resting on her chest, her skirt billowing around her in pink water.

  He was gone.

  Daniel hesitated after Brenna left, not really wanting to follow. He’d never been a rubbernecker, never wanted to subject the sick or injured to the added mortification of becoming a public spectacle.

  That had always grieved him about Aya’s death.

  How many passing drivers had seen her on the Beltway when she was finally extricated from her chewed up Saab? How many strangers had gawked at that private, dignified woman while she lay on the road, belly huge with their unborn son, dress ripped open from neck to hem?

  Those last weeks before she died—having recently made up her mind to stop working with Driscoll and to become an independent producer—Aya had been lighter of spirit than he’d seen her in years. Already she had begun researching the first story she would independently produce: the siege of Kavsak, then in its early days.

  He was here, he reminded himself, because she never got her chance. He would do whatever was necessary.

  Sheltering his throbbing shoulder from the stream of dazed survivors rushing past him, he limped through the passageway. He stopped, looking into the heart of immorality, shocked and disbelieving that humans could intentionally hurt each other this way.

  A shrieking wail rose above the din. He gazed across the square until he found the source of the gut-wrenching sound.

  Fresh horror greeted him.

  Brenna Rease was on her knees, her lens in the face of a ululating old woman. A vulture capitalizing on tragedy—was this what he had commissioned?

  He strode across the square to her. “Turn it off,” he ordered, voice hard as ice.

  The tally light kept flickering. Ignoring him, Brenna manually adjusted the lens.

  If she wouldn’t shut it down, he sure as hell would. He leaned toward her to block the lens.

  With that superbly-developed peripheral vision of the combat photographer, she saw him coming and shoved his hand aside. “Out of my way.”

  “Stop, I said.”

  “Be quiet!” She pivoted to frame up the old man’s body.

  For the first time, he saw the corpse fully. The old man had a leathery face, coarsened by wind and sun and years of life. But from the waist down, he was gone. Shreds of his grotesque upper torso clung to the old woman’s blood-bathed hands.

  “Allow this woman some dignity,” he ordered. “Show some compassion.”

  She continued taping.

  “My God,” he growled. “You are as heartless as they say.”

  Her thumb twitched in the hand-grip. The tally light went off. She stood up and whirled on him, her eyes dark and inscrutable. “She scarcely knows we’re here.”

  “I told you what I wanted. Traumatizing this woman sure as hell isn’t it.”

  “Get one thing, Ellsworth—and get it well. You can’t stay clean here.”

  “Sure,” he snarled. “Justify it. What’s one old woman when you can win a Pulitzer?”

  Her back stiffened. Her eyes blazed with cold fury. “How dare you moralize me from your nice safe life? How. Dare. You.”

  A burning stall began to crumple along the west wall.

  She hoisted her camera onto her shoulder again. “Stay the hell out of my way,” she commanded. “I’m not turning in crap so you can sleep at night.”

  Daniel stood there, rooted in the evil scene, watching her back disappear into the chaos.

  “Agresori! Agresori!”

  He was body-slammed from the side. Blinding pain shot through his shoulder. He lurched and momentarily lost his balance.

  A young woman with flame-red hair frizzed around the ears of a knit cap pulled desperately at his forearms, babbling in Kavsak. “Agresori! Agresori!”

  He looked at her, not comprehending.

  The redhead shook the old woman’s arm. “Agresori!” The widow’s primitive howl strangled in her throat.

  He circled, looking around him. Everyone had taken up the cry. A wave of panic was surging across the market.

  At his side, the redhead pulled the old woman to her feet. She threw a final warning to Daniel over her shoulder and rushed her away.

  Something frightening was happening, but he had no clue what.

  “Agresori!” panicked civilians cried, stampeding toward the tunnels.

  Brenna turned the camera on the nearest passageway and zoomed the lens to telephoto so she could see what was happening in a close-up. A crush of people trying to escape, but getting shoved back in. Shit. They were being corralled. But—by whom? She dropped the camera, her mind racing. Well, hell. Who else? Cavic’s Nationalist army. Here to finish the massacre.

  Old City was being invaded!

  She spun, spotted Ellsworth. He was planted in the middle of the square, immobile as a boulder in a raging river.

  She raced toward him and grabbed his sleeve. “Ellsworth. Come on!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nationalists!” She held fast, dragging him against the human torrent running in the opposite direction. He ran alongside her into the blinding sunlight at the western side of the market.

  “Back here!” she shouted, racing behind a shimmering veil of smoke, into the searing heat of a flaming stall. She reconnoitered the wall looming straight above them, looking for the section with the most severe shrapnel damage. There was a deep gallery above them—a promenade from which to view the market.

  She stopped deep behind the fire and turned to him, the side of her face burning from the reflected heat. “I’m going to boost you. Pull yourself up to the balcony.”

  His doubtful gaze followed hers—a dozen feet, straight up.

  A cry rose from the crowd on the other side of the crackling fire. The Nationalists were pushing the civilians back into the square.

  She set down her camera and pulled some crates nearer. She put her hand on his uninjured shoulder, steadied herself, and clambered onto the wobbly pile. She turned, footing uncertain, and pressed her back against the wall, squatting slightly so her thighs formed a ledge. “Alright, Ellsworth. I’m a ladder.”

  He squinted at her through one rapidly-blinking eye.

  “Get on the heap, then step onto my thighs and up to my shoulders,” she said, illustrating his footholds with her hands. “Use the gouges in the walls as hand-holds. The balcony is up to you.”

  “What about you?”

  “Just do it!” Every moment he delayed was one she would not have later to scale the wall unaided. She held her hands out for his, balancing him as he stepped up. His weight shifted the pile and they lost inches from their base.

  He cursed.

  “Up, up, up,” she ordered. “Don’t stop.”

  He released her hands and took her shoulders. Reluctantly, he put a shoe to her left thigh and shifted his weight onto he
r, wincing as it pulled his shoulder. She grunted, holding her position, letting him use his own power to straighten himself. If he could get footholds on her, she could straighten. Her own six-foot height plus his would close the gap to the railing. Wrenched shoulder or not, he’d have to haul himself over it.

  He reached above her with his right arm, leaning into her, seeking hand-holds in the pocked wall. She looked up at his grim face, framed by his outstretched arm and upper body. The extra time it had taken to get to the most bitten-up part of the wall was about to pay off. His fingers gripped a mortar hole. It held. He turned left, seeking a similar purchase that wouldn’t overextend his damaged shoulder. Twice his fingers tentatively left her shoulder and returned. On the third try he caught the hand-hold and shifted his weight.

  Grit floated down. She hid her face in him, smelling his denim jeans as he stretched past her.

  He gained the toe-holds he needed on her shoulders, right side first, then left. His weight compressed her vertebrae. She felt them squeezing together. She shoved her back hard against the wall and willed her trembling thighs to stop, already.

  The rumble of diesel engines reverberated in the narrow passageways. The Nationalists were too close for comfort. Sweat rolled into her eyes. Above her, Ellsworth grabbed the railing and pulled himself over it, falling with an audible thud on the inside.

  Released, she leapt to the ground for her camera.

  He peered over the railing. “Jesus, Brenna! Leave the camera.”

  “Take it!” she ordered. She stood on the pile, arms quivering as she held the unit high above her head. Toes hooked under the railing for counterbalance, he leaned over and took the camera.

  She peered up, plotting her hand-holds. She would use the same ones he had used—the reach of their arms and legs was similar.

  Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the crush of civilians caught like trapped water sloshing between the hull of a ship and a dock. The roar of truck engines suggested the advancing troops were crushing the civilians confined in the passageways against the mass pressing from the square. The machines would win.

  She clambered up, using all her strength to hug the wall, shifting her weight from handhold to handhold. Her head flush with the floor of the gallery, she grabbed the railing, and started pulling herself up. The bags criss-crossed over her chest unbalanced her. Her feet skittered out beneath her. She dropped straight down, feet scrabbling for toe-holds, her hands barely keeping their grip on the railing.

  Automatic fire erupted in the passageways.

  She was screwed.

  Chapter 8

  A shadow descended over her from above. Ellsworth’s fists clutched her jacket and shirt. She was dead weight. He was injured. Impossible. But she felt herself rising, belly scraping the wall. He heaved her over the railing and dropped her onto the rubble-strewn upper gallery.

  He collapsed beside her, pale, sweating, panting from the effort.

  She scrambled out of view. There wasn’t a moment to spare for gratitude or relief. “Get back. Behind the post.”

  He was retching, clutching his shoulder, unable to obey.

  She grabbed a handful of his Levi’s and yanked, dragging his butt into the cold shadows at the base of the broad archway column.

  The Nationalists breached the square.

  The crowd roared.

  She squeezed against him, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, out of sight of the yard. Ripping the bags off, she kicked them to the base of the far wall, out of sight of anyone on the ground. Pressing the camera hard against her free hip, she pulled her knees into her chest. The smoke up here was thinner, less concealing. She had put some distance between themselves and the Nationalists, but they were still trapped.

  If the Nationalists had any tactical know-how, they would take the high ground—the balcony. Two staircases served it, one nearby, the other diagonally across on the eastern side. She’d once tried to get up to the balcony to take pictures, and discovered the stairways were gated and padlocked. She assumed they still were, or the rest of the panicked civilians below her now would also be up here.

  Best case, the lazy Nationalist bastards would see the imposing gates and be dissuaded from coming up.

  Next best case, they might scale the walls, but not occupy both L’s of the square, as complete encirclement would put their own men in the crossfire. She had chosen the western side of the market knowing the troops would choose the east to keep the morning sun at their backs.

  Worst—and most likely—case, her little postponement tactic would be discovered, and she and Ellsworth were toast. Whatever came next, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  She edged the camera nearer, rotated the viewfinder so she could see it from above, and verified the machine had survived the bumpy trip up the wall. Satisfied, she crept the camera to the inner corner of the balustrade, keeping the unit tipped downward so the rubber hood over the lens would prevent the sun from glinting off the glass. There were pictures to take. She had a job to concentrate on.

  A gradual, deadly, hush fell over the square. Even the injured stopped screaming.

  “What’s going on?” Ellsworth murmured.

  She shook her head. She didn’t know.

  Rifles at their waists, the troops had formed a tight semi-circle around the civilians, like wary cowboys expecting the livestock to spook and stampede. What was the army waiting for?

  The adenoidal horn of a military jeep announced its arrival through the southern gate. The throng turned as one to watch it enter. The vehicle broke into the bright daylight. A collective gasp went up from the crowd. Two red flags snapped at the corners of the hood, signature emblems that struck terror in the city like a skull and crossbones had once struck terror on the high seas.

  “Cavic,” she whispered, and zoomed in on him.

  Dressed in fatigues, he stood Patton-like in the front of the open jeep. Legs and arms spread wide, he gripped the windscreen. His characteristic pair of field glasses hung at his neck. He carried them, it was said, so he could see the far edge of his killing fields without having to walk among the dead. He was a bulky, authoritative sixty-year-old with closely cropped gray hair. In a business suit—which he would wear when he sat across the negotiating table from her father in Vienna—he would look like a corporate executive.

  Her skin crawled. He wasn’t a CEO. He was Southeastern Europe’s most ruthless mass murderer, Satan’s big brother—perfectly centered in her viewfinder, perfectly focused so his identity would be incontestable.

  The General lifted a bullhorn to his mouth. “I am God,” he said. “No one can save you.”

  He dropped the bullhorn to the seat and raised his hands, as if calling an orchestra to attention.

  On the downbeat, the troops opened fire.

  Daniel shivered uncontrollably. Darkness had closed in. The temperature had plummeted. Wind, gusting through the gallery, magnified the chill. Five hours had passed and he was still propped against the column, trapped with Brenna while Nationalist soldiers roamed the square below.

  He couldn’t believe what had happened. Slaughter. With his back to the shooting, he’d only seen it peripherally. But the gunfire and the screaming had told the story.

  Voodoo-like as it sounded to his stolid New Englander’s ears, today he had sensed a malevolent presence. A palpably evil force had brushed past him and sucked his soul out of his body.

  He rested his head against the column, grimacing. His skull felt like it was caught in a junkyard car crusher. He was parched, his muscles painfully-contracted. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t hurt. Every breath he took felt like a knife sliding between his ribs.

  He rolled his head sideways and glanced at Brenna.

  She was sitting with her back turned, a silent and immobile figure, her gaze fixed on the yard below, as it had been all day. Seemingly incapable of averting her attention, she’d been held spellbound by the carnage. Was she an excitement junkie, ever in search of the next high
, unable to live life on a normal scale?

  He shifted uncomfortably, stifling a hiss of pain. Everything about her was contradictory. She’d been livid with him, but she’d ensured his safety. She acted tough, but her touch was gentle. Her photographs were compassionate, but she knelt callously in men’s blood to get them. She said she believed in survival, but she lived in Kavsak.

  Christ. What did he expect from a woman who belonged to a profession that rushed to places sensible people fled?

  Today, she hadn’t just looked the devil in the eye. She’d taken his picture.

  I am God, the General had said. No one can save you.

  The carnage took one minute of sustained gun fire, Brenna figured—not counting the occasional later burst as some hapless survivor was discovered alive and dealt the coup de grâce.

  Those sixty seconds of bearing witness had taken every bit of courage she had, but she’d done it. Focused meticulously on the faces of men who shot unarmed civilians. Recorded their deeds for posterity. Even if her pictures were destroyed, she had seen the murderers through her viewfinder, memorized their features. Not once in a hundred and sixty-seven deaths had she looked away. Not once could anyone claim she hadn’t seen precisely what occurred. She could stand before any tribunal—before her father—and attest to what she had seen.

  She had accounted for each of the lives lost below her. The dead were part of her.

  The General was long gone, of course. But it took time to clean up after a holocaust. His troops had spent hours stripping the dead of their valuables, and loading their corpses onto flatbed trucks like so much cordwood. The victims would be dumped, no doubt, in one of those mass graves everyone denied existed.

  Now, only a handful of men remained in the courtyard, smoking cigarettes and joking as if they’d just finished their day at a desk job. She wondered if they’d stay and hold the market, or if they’d return to their unit.