Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1)

by Joseph Badal

  At 2315 hours, after Garcia had fused the available intelligence into a cohesive operations plan for his team, he briefed the entire unit on the mission – they all needed to know the assignment in case an alternate was necessary. He answered their questions and directed Sergeant Messina to supervise the inspection of the men’s equipment.

  Corporal Joseph Yaurie hung back when the others left the briefing room.

  “Something on your mind, Corporal?” Garcia asked.

  Yaurie came to attention. “Yes, sir!” Yaurie’s face turned crimson. His eyes were fixed on the center of Garcia’s fatigue blouse.

  “Well, Corporal.”

  “Well, sir, you know . . . I’m single. Got no . . . wife or kids,” Yaurie stammered. “At least . . . no kids I . . . know of.” He smiled, but got no reaction from Garcia. His face got even redder. “I was . . . just thinking . . . what with Hawkins‘ . . . situation, maybe—”

  “What do you mean ‘Hawkins’ situation?’ ”

  “He got a letter today. Found out . . . his girlfriend’s, well, you know, pregnant. She said he had . . . to marry her. He’s kinda got his mind on . . . other things right now.”

  “Okay, Corporal Yaurie, I got it. Anything else?”

  “No, sir,” Yaurie said. “Thank you, sir.”

  Garcia watched the Marine walk out of the room. Dammit, he thought, Hawkins is my best radioman. But I can’t have a guy along who might have his head somewhere else.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The two-car caravan bounced over Kosovo’s rutted roads. Most of the paving had worn away, leaving muddy rainwater-filled depressions. Soon the pavement disappeared altogether and the road was nothing more than washboarded, potholed dirt. Worried about jostling Yanni, Bob slowed down and avoided the potholes as best he could.

  Bob’s attempts at conversation with the hawk-faced man, Stefan, had met with limited success. So far he’d learned only that he and his men were KLA members, fleeing to Albania to avoid Serb arrest warrants.

  “We murdered a Serb general and his aide last week,” Stefan boasted.

  Bob had studied piles of intelligence before leaving Langley. There’d been no report of a Serb general being assassinated.

  Two miles north of Djakovica, Bob turned to the west and followed another dirt road through dense forest. After five minutes, he stopped the car. The Fiat pulled up behind him. He checked his GPS. They were slightly more than a mile from the Albanian border.

  “End of the line,” Bob said, more to himself than to his passenger.

  Stefan looked confused at Bob’s use of American slang. “This is as far as I can take the car,” Bob explained. “I’ll have to leave it here.”

  “We will go along with you,” Stefan said.

  “That’s not necessary,” Bob answered.

  The leader shrugged. “You are going in the same direction as we are.”

  Bob threat sensors were all on high alert. Stefan and his crew gave him the creeps. “Maybe one of you could stay with my friend,” he said. “I don’t want to leave him alone in the car.”

  “Fine,” Stefan said. “But we should move him into the forest, out of sight of any patrol that might come this way.

  “Good idea,” Bob said.

  Bob grabbed the strap of an infrared night-vision scope from the back of the car and draped it around his neck. Then he and the man named Zulkar carefully pulled Yanni, partially conscious now, from the car. They each shouldered one of Yanni’s arms and began walking toward the treeline. Yanni groaned with each step. Stefan, Zoran, and Kukoch followed.

  “Stefan,” Zoran whispered. “Why are we following this man? We can kill him and his friend right here, take their car, and go back home.”

  Stefan glared at the man, then ran a hand through his thick white hair. He took Zoran’s arm and pulled him to him. “This guy is no reporter. Yes, I can kill him, but he’s up to something. I want to find out what. Maybe there’s money involved.” He shrugged and let go of Zoran’s arm.

  The group moved forty yards into the trees, with Bob and Zulkar half-carrying, half-dragging Yanni. Suddenly, from a clump of trees ahead, came the sound of voices. They all dove to the ground. But the voices did not come any nearer.

  “Doesn’t sound like Serbo-Croatian,” Bob said in a hushed voice to Zoran, who lay next to him.

  “Albanian. Maybe KLA. They vill shoot us just like the Serbs vould.”

  “I thought you were KLA,” Bob said.

  Zoran snorted. “What gives you such crazy idea?”

  Bob’s pulse rate accelerated. His instincts had already told him these men were “wrong.” He didn’t yet know what he’d gotten himself into, but he knew it was nothing good.

  Then the voices stopped. No sounds of movement from the trees. Stefan and Kukoch crawled closer to Bob.

  “We need to get away from here,” Stefan said. “We’ll leave your friend here. He’d just slow us down.”

  “You’re mad if you think I’ll leave him,” Bob whispered.

  Stefan rose from his prone position and knelt next to Yanni. He pressed one hand over Yanni’s mouth and nose. With a knife in his other hand, he slit Yanni’s throat before Bob could react. Arterial blood sprayed.

  Bob reached for the pistol in his jacket, but Zoran brought a piece of dead wood down on his gunhand, knocking the pistol from his grip. “You sonofabitch,” he rasped at Stefan.

  Stefan’s black eyes narrowed. “Had you fired your weapon, that patrol out there would have found us. We’d all be dead.”

  A gurgling sound erupted from Yanni’s throat and his body convulsed. Bob jerked around to look and swore to himself he’d find a way to take revenge for Yanni’s death.

  “Now,” Stefan said, “you will do exactly as I order . . . Mr. Robert Danforth.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lieutenant Emil Garcia watched the helicopter disappear while he and his men moved from a clearing to a stand of trees. He had no idea where the aircraft was headed – and didn’t care, as long as it came back to pick up his team at 0800 hours, four hours and forty-five minutes from now. He said a silent prayer of thanks the rain had finally stopped. He knew they could now make better time. Faces streaked with black and green grease paint and camouflaged clothing blending into the vegetation, the Marines were nearly invisible in the moonless night.

  There were no buildings or people in sight. The little valley was narrow – about three hundred yards across and a couple miles long. It ended to the west at a steep incline that rose straight up for several hundred feet. To the east, the floor of the valley meandered along the course of a stream and disappeared into the forest. This was the direction Garcia and his men were headed.

  Garcia sent two men to the east side of the stand of trees to reconnoiter the open area between their present position and the forest ahead. When the men radioed the all clear, Garcia and his men moved out.

  The Marines maintained a steady pace in the dark. They moved cross-country through fields and around a couple of small Albanian villages. They scaled rocky, forested hills, and scrabbled down shale slopes – not a word spoken. After forty-five minutes, they came to a barbwire fence near the Albania/Kosovo border. One Marine held up the top wire strand and put his foot on the second strand while the rest of the team passed through the gap. The last man opened the wire for the lone Marine still on the other side of the fence. Garcia signaled his men to take cover among the trees. They would rest for ten minutes.

  Garcia positioned two men to provide security – one to cover their backs, the other to watch the path ahead. While his men rested and drank water, he pulled a GPS receiver from his pack and a flashlight with a red lens from his web belt.

  “Right on target,” he said to Sergeant Jimmy Messina, after using it. The hooded flashlight illuminated his map, and he pointed toward two hills with a higher elevation than the others in the area. “The smaller of those two hills is 652,” Garcia told Messina, pointing at the map.

  M
essina nodded, then circulated among the squad, getting the men ready to move again.

  An hour and twenty minutes later, they reached the base of Hill 652. They used goat trails to climb through thick foliage until the natural cover gave out fifty yards below the flat top of the hill. Garcia donned night vision goggles. Seeing no movement ahead, he ordered Sackett and Messina to position the men on the western slope of the hill – just inside the line of foliage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Miriana sat frozen with fear in a backseat of the Russian-made helicopter.

  Karadjic looked over his shoulder from the co-pilot’s seat and caught her eye. He winked. “What’s wrong, my little Gypsy? You don’t like flying?”

  Miriana shook her head and scrunched even deeper into her seat. It wasn’t the flying she was afraid of. It was dying a cruel death. If Olga’s plan worked, she was finished. She wasn’t supposed to be on this damned helicopter. That had been Karadjic’s doing at the last minute. She and her family were supposed to be spirited out of the country while Karadjic was being kidnapped.

  Karadjic laughed – more like a bark – then lapsed back into the sullen mood he’d been in since they left Belgrade.

  “General, the hill you want is straight ahead,” the pilot reported.

  “I can’t see a damned thing,” Karadjic said.

  “Take my word for it, General. The instruments on this aircraft are the most advanced the Russians have.”

  “Fuck the Russians,” Karadjic growled. “Set us down on the crest of the hill and be ready to take off again in a few minutes. I don’t like being out here with only a squad of soldiers. Too damned close to Albania.”

  “Yes, sir,” the pilot answered. He put the helicopter down near the center of the hilltop. The rotors continued to rotate while the Russian-trained members of a Serb Army Special Forces Team – SPETSNAZ – leaped out of the cargo bay behind the seats to establish a protective perimeter around the helicopter.

  Karadjic awkwardly climbed out of the helicopter on his stubby legs. He reached in and released Miriana’s seat belt. Then he pulled her from the jump seat into the brisk, predawn air. He then lifted a small wire cage from the helicopter.

  “Okay, Miriana, tell me again how I can defeat the bad omen you saw in your vision,” Karadjic said. But before she could answer, he added, “You’d better be right about this omen. Dragging me out here in the middle of nowhere is not my idea of a good time.”

  Miriana’s voice quavered. “I don’t know why you suddenly doubt me, General. Haven’t I given you good advice in the past?”

  Karadjic grabbed the front of Miriana’s sweater and slammed her against his chest. “You’re only as good as your last act, my little Gypsy.” He released her. “Now, what must I do?”

  “You have to walk alone down to the edge of the hilltop, where the bare rock stops and the bushes start. You must shout as loudly as you can, ‘I curse the Turks and all Muslim heretics. I have slaughtered and raped tens of thousands of Kosovars. Beware, Albania, I come for you next.’ Do this five times. Then release the bird.”

  “And this will save me?” he asked again, incredulity and hope in his voice. “This will void the prophecy you saw?”

  “Yes, General,” Miriana said, as she glanced over the general’s shoulder. She looked for movement in the bushes. Nothing. Then she added, “But only if the bird flies towards Albania. If it flies toward Kosovo, there is no hope.”

  Karadjic took a step toward the end of the clearing, one hundred yards from the helicopter and the SPETZNAZ team. But he stopped abruptly and turned around. He grabbed Miriana’s wrist and yanked her down the hill.

  When they were half-a-step from the end of the clearing, up against the dense field of chest-high bushes and shrubs, Karadjic pulled Miriana against his chest again. He stood nose-to-nose with her. “If this goddamn blackbird flies toward Kosovo, I’ll cut your throat,” he said. Then he faced west and began mumbling what she’d told him to say. “I curse the Turks and all Muslim heretics. I–”

  “No, no, General Karadjic,” Miriana interrupted. “You have to yell.” That’s what Olga had told her. She looked again into the brush line, trying to spy movement there. Olga had explained there would be men who would snatch the general. She breathed out a slow, steady breath.

  Karadjic looked at her, then turned and shouted.

  Crouched in the bushes a few steps away from Karadjic, Marine Sergeant Eric Sackett listened to Karadjic yell against the backdrop of the noise coming from the helicopter’s engine and rotors. He didn’t understand a word the man said; but he thought the General must be nuts to be screaming into the night. Sackett waited for the Serb to stop yelling, as he’d been ordered to do, then turned off the miniature tape recorder he had been issued before leaving the ship. Sackett knew the tape was to be used as evidence against the General. He hoped it would pick up the general’s words with all of the aircraft noise.

  Karadjic bent to lift a container at his feet. The Serb unlatched a door at one end, reached inside, and pull out a black bird. He put the box down and held the bird in both hands. Then he threw his hands into the air and the bird flapped away.

  That’s when Sackett leaped. He struck Karadjic on the side of the head with a lead-filled sap, knocking him to the ground with a thud. He dragged Karadjic into the cover of the bushes and covered the Serb’s face with a chloroform-soaked cloth. Then, to Sackett’s surprise, the young woman who’d stood next to Karadjic sprinted past him down the hill – away from the helicopter and the Serb troops.

  Garcia and Messina ran over to Sackett’s position, staying behind the cover provided by the bushes along the side of the hill. Messina gagged the General. Garcia stuck a syringe into Karadjic’s arm, sedating him.

  They carried Karadjic down the hill to where the rest of the team now waited. Sackett heard the caw of a bird overhead. The bird’s cries carried to him more faintly while it appeared to fly eastward – deeper into Kosovo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Serb Special Forces team leader was getting nervous. Captain Slobodan Bromidivic had heard much about General Karadjic from other army officers. Eccentric and brutal, they said. Egotistical. Even depraved. The General’s shouts in the darkness only reinforced what Bromidivic had heard about the man. At first, he hadn’t the nerve to interrupt the General in whatever he was doing down the hill with the Gypsy woman. But after there had been no shouts or other sounds for several minutes, Bromidivic took one of his men and descended the hill. He focused his flashlight ahead, but saw no sign of General Karadjic or the woman.

  “Here,” his man suddenly yelled. “Over here.”

  The beams of their flashlights shone on a syringe lying on the ground and the General’s campaign cap. Several sets of fresh bootprints in damp earth led down a path through the bushes. The general and the Gypsy had disappeared.

  Lieutenant Garcia moved his team as fast as possible toward the extraction point back across the Albania border. Four men at a time carried the limp Serb general.

  They retraced the route they’d taken into Kosovo. Garcia breathed a little easier when they recrossed the fence line, putting them back inside Albania.

  “We should be safer here in Albania,” he told Messina. “I’m hoping the Serbs – If they’re following us – won’t want to risk capture in Albania.”

  Miriana had never been more frightened. She’d run down the hillside and crawled under a bush at the bottom. When the soldiers ran past, carrying Karadjic, she’d followed them as fast as she could, blood pounding in her throat, her lungs burning. She knew her only hope was getting away from the Serbs. Once they realized the general was missing, they would suspect her of being involved. After all, it was she who told the general where he needed to go to void the prophecy. The sudden lightening of the sky, with the moon escaping from behind clouds, allowed her to catch periodic glimpses of the men from a distance, so even though she couldn’t match their pace, she could at least follow their route.


  The Serb team, unencumbered by the dead weight of General Karadjic, raced down through the thick bushes at breakneck speed. At the bottom of the hill, Bromidivic led them into a meadow a foot deep in lush grass and wildflowers. His flashlight revealed a trail trampled in the grass. The Serbs followed it to the apparent crossing point at the fence. A sign was attached to one of the barbwire strands: Albania. Bromidivic and his men didn’t hesitate; they crossed into foreign territory.

  Bromidivic knew his career – and perhaps his survival – depended on rescuing the General.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Zoran tied Bob’s arms behind his back while Kukoch tied a gag around his mouth. Zoran then searched Bob, removing his wallet and the money belt, and handed both to Stefan.

  Bob wondered how Stefan knew his real name. Had he been compromised? But by whom? A double agent?

  They walked through the forest, Stefan and Kukoch ahead of Bob, Zoran and Zulkar behind. They reached the barbwire fence marking the Albanian border. The fence had been knocked down; dirt covered the wire strands. Stefan led the way, marching purposefully into Albania. When they were a hundred meters past the border, Stefan called a halt.

  Bob sat on the ground and stared at him, trying to figure out who the man was. He appeared to be about seventy, with snow-white hair and dark skin like thick parchment. Too old, Bob thought, to be traipsing through the forests of Serbia and Albania – or any forests. The man’s eyes seemed to burn like pieces of black coal. When he looked at him, Bob felt as though he’d seen the face of something evil.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” Stefan hissed in English.