by Joseph Badal
Bob averted his eyes. There was no point in antagonizing the man.
Stefan walked to where Bob sat and planted a boot in Bob’s chest, forcing him backwards. Then he stomped him in the stomach. Bob writhed on the damp, spongy earth and gasped for breath, a wave of nausea hitting him. Stefan knelt, straddling Bob, and ripped the gag from Bob’s mouth. He leaned forward, just inches from Bob’s face. Bob could smell the man’s sour breath.
“You don’t recognize me, do you, Danforth?” Stefan said. “Well, I never forgot you. You have been branded in my memory all these years. You and Georgios Makris.” Stefan exhaled a growl. “I never would have known who you were if you hadn’t done that press conference after you returned to Greece.”
Memories of George Makris, his friendship and his death, were never far from Bob’s thoughts. His mind whirled back in time and raced through the short time he had spent with George: their journey into Bulgaria to rescue Michael, the gun battle in the Bulgarian orphanage . . ..
“Figured it out yet?” Stefan asked, raising his voice. “No? That night in the orphanage in Bulgaria? You killed a young man that night. You–”
“Radko!” Bob gasped. “Stefan Radko!”
“Right, Danforth. Stefan Radko. You killed my only son, Gregorie. You’re a dead man,” Stefan said, his spittle striking Bob’s face. “I could have killed you a hundred times tonight, but I waited. I wanted to find out what you were up to. But I don’t care anymore. I’m going to enjoy making your death slow and painful.” He pulled a knife from his boot – the knife he’d used to kill Yanni – and drove it into Bob’s left shoulder.
Bob screamed and reflexively brought his knees up into Radko’s back, sending him sprawling. Bob struggled to his feet, his hands still tied behind his back, the knife blade imbedded in his shoulder. Blood ran warm from his shoulder down his chest.
SPETZNAZ team leader Bromidivic heard a man scream followed by men shouting. He raised his hand in the air, bringing his team to an immediate halt, and then waved them to the ground while listening for more sounds.
“What the hell!” Corporal Yaurie whispered to Sergeant Messina. “Sounded like somebody got killed.”
“Get him!” Stefan yelled to Zoran and Zulkar, who were standing ten yards away, seemingly fascinated by the conversation between Radko and Bob.
Bob ran for the nearby trees. He stumbled, nearly falling, but regained his balance and ran on. But he’d gone only fifty yards when Kukoch stepped from behind a tree in front of him. Bob charged, lowering his good shoulder to hit Kukoch in the middle of the chest and drive him back against the tree. Kukoch’s head cracked against the tree trunk. Bob ran deeper into the woods.
Sergeant Messina pointed at Corporals Yaurie and Wright and motioned for them to follow him. They went along a narrow path toward where they thought the scream and shouts had come from.
After several hundred yards, Messina heard the sounds of several people crashing through the undergrowth. He placed Yaurie along the trail and whispered, “First one through is yours.” Then he turned to Wright with a silencing finger at his lips. “You’ve got the second one through.” Pointing, he directed the young Marine to take cover in the bushes twenty yards down the path, then hid opposite Wright, behind a Volkswagen-sized boulder. He would take down any and all people who might be with the first two that passed his position.
Zoran and Zulkar were gaining on Danforth. But then their quarry disappeared around a boulder. They rushed after the man. As they moved around the boulder, two uniformed men confronted them. Before they knew what had happened, they were disarmed. Then all went dark.
Messina and Wright searched the two men’s pockets, taking their wallets and weapons. Then they moved back up the path to where Yaurie had taken down the first man through.
“Jeez,” Messina said. “This guy’s a mess.” He pointed at the knife hilt protruding from the man’s shoulder. Then he noticed the man’s hands were tied at his back. Messina pulled a wallet from the man’s pocket and found photo identification. He took out a flashlight and pointed it at the ID: Gregory Davis. “Sonofabitch!” he said in a barely audible voice after checking all the credentials, “This guy’s Canadian. A reporter.”
“Where’d he come from?” Wright whispered.
Messina pulled a plastic packet from a pocket, tore off the edge with his teeth and shook out a large, sterile bandage. While Wright clamped a hand over the man’s mouth to stifle the moan he knew would come, Messina pulled the knife out of the man’s shoulder. Then he spread open the man’s jacket and shirt and pressed the bandage over the wound. Then he put the torn and bloody shirt and jacket back into place, and hefted the wounded man over his shoulder. He headed back toward the rest of the team, Wright and Yaurie following.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Stefan, leading a wobbly Kukoch in a search for Zoran, Zulkar, and Danforth, stopped for a moment to get his bearings.
“Zoran! Zulkar! Where are you?” Kukoch yelled.
Stefan grabbed Kukoch’s throat and hoarsely whispered, “Shut up, you damned fool.”
Then several men seemed to explode out of the ground. They were covered with brush and wore camouflage clothing. One man pulled Stefan away from Kukoch and threw him facedown to the ground. Damp earth clogged Stefan’s nostrils and mouth. He found it difficult to breathe. He felt a rifle muzzle jabbed against the back of his head.
“Ko si ti sa jebani? (Who the fuck are you?)” a voice asked in Serbo-Croatian.
Stefan recognized the Belgrade accent. They’d fallen into the hands of a Serb Army or militia unit. Think! he told himself. He turned his head slightly to look at the man standing over him.
“We’re Serb citizens following an American spy.”
The man jerked his rifle back as though to smash it into Stefan’s back. “You’re fucking Gypsies,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” Stefan said, spitting pieces of dirt from his mouth. “But it’s true about the spy.”
“Where is this spy?” the Serb said.
“He was headed in this direction,” Stefan said, pointing his arm straight ahead.
“How do you know he was a spy?”
“If you’ll let me up, I’ll explain it to you.”
The man grunted and stepped back a pace.
Stefan took that as permission to sit up. He again spit dirt from his mouth and quickly picked more out of his nostrils. He looked around and saw he was ringed by a group of Serb soldiers. Kukoch was sprawled on the ground, apparently unconscious.
Stefan adjusted his ski jacket, as though to straighten it after being tossed to the ground. He was really making sure Danforth’s money belt was secure. Then he said, “The spy claimed to be a Canadian reporter. But he had night-vision goggles and a GPS. Pretty fancy stuff for a reporter. There was another man with him, but he died.”
“What do you mean ‘died’?”
“We killed him when he tried to run away. But we couldn’t stop the other one. The spy.”
The uniformed man bit his own thumbnail while staring at Stefan. “Who appointed you Spy Catcher?”
Stefan now saw the man wore Serb Army officer insignia. Stefan gave him his most innocent look. “Captain, we are all citizens of Yugoslavia. We consider it our duty to protect the motherland.”
The officer hawked phlegm from his throat and spat at Stefan’s feet. He turned away. “Sergeant, take six men. Go around this clearing. See if you can find a sign anyone else has been through here.” Then he took the Gypsies’ wallets and pulled out their IDs, reading them in the light of the first rays of the rising sun.
Lying in high meadow grass, Lieutenant Garcia turned his wrist toward the slivers of light provided by the sunrise: 0738. He checked his GPS and confirmed they were at the extraction point – with time to spare. He crawled over to General Karadjic. The sedative had begun to wear off and the man was stirring. “Knock him out,” Garcia ordered.
The Marine guarding Karadjic opened a plastic bag, removed a chloroform
-soaked cloth, and covered the Serb general’s face with it.
Garcia crawled over to the now conscious Canadian reporter. “How ya feeling?”
“A lot better than when those Gypsies were about to slice and dice me.”
“I’d love to hear your story, Mr. Davis, but I don’t have the time right now.”
“Listen, Lieutenant, my name isn’t Davis, it’s Danforth. Bob Danforth. I’m CIA. Those damn Gypsies messed up my plan to act as an observer of your mission. I was supposed to watch your snatching of Karadjic from a hilltop in Kosovo, just across from the Albanian border. I hope you’ve got room for one more passenger on the helicopter I know you’re waiting for.”
Garcia smiled and patted Bob’s good shoulder. “Hang in there. We’ll be out of here in a couple of minutes.”
Miriana laid flat on top of a knoll and looked down at the Americans. They’d stopped, hidden in tall grass, in a mist-shrouded meadow about one hundred meters away. Then movement far off to the right suddenly caught her eye. In the glare of the rising sun, she saw a line of men in Serb Army uniforms filing into the edge of the meadow. At first, Miriana thought they were all soldiers, but the way one of them moved caused her to look more closely. Yes, one of the men walked stiffly – like an old man. Only four men wore uniforms. She guessed they were some of the soldiers from Karadjic’s helicopter. But they were too far off and the mist too thick for her to see them clearly. She wondered where the rest of the Serb squad had gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sergeant Bruto Drobac and six of the soldiers from Bromidivic’s unit stayed just inside the treeline around the clearing. A layer of morning mist, like a lowlying cloud, moved by a slight breeze just over the tops of the tall grass. About to radio an “all clear” message to Captain Bromidivic, Drobac saw a flash of light in the grass near the middle of the clearing. He signaled his men to drop to the ground and took a pair of binoculars from a pouch hanging on his web belt. Slowly, patiently, he swept the binoculars across the clearing where he’d seen the light.
There! While the breeze played with the mist, he saw movement in the grass. He focused on the spot but nothing moved for two minutes. Then Drobac’s breath caught in his chest. A greasepainted face filled his vision. More motion. Two more men shifted in the mist.
Garcia adjusted the tiny radio receiver in his ear. He stared at his watch. The choppers were two minutes late. Then he jerked toward a harsh whisper from one of his men. The man hissed: “Armed men at three o’clock.”
Garcia spoke into his radio mic. The Marines reacted as they’d been trained to do – positioning themselves to lay down a devastating field of fire against the intruders.
A deadly stillness covered the valley. Garcia felt his heart pound. He’d seen where the intruders had dropped behind the valley’s natural cover. What he wasn’t sure of was how many men were out there, or what sort of support they had. Were the men across the field Serbs or Albanians? He searched the sky again for the extraction choppers. But he knew they weren’t there. He’d hear them before he saw them.
Then a voice from the opposite side of the field broke the quiet. “You Americans, we have you surrounded,” a man somewhere in front of them said in broken English. “Stand up. Throw down your weapons and put your hands on your heads.”
“If we stay here, Lieutenant, we’re dead,” Bob said. “They’ve got us pinned down.”
“No shit, sir.”
Bob pointed behind their position. “If we can get into those rocks, at least we’d have some cover. The morning haze will help hide us a bit as we move. In another fifteen minutes, though, the sun will burn it off.”
“How do you propose we get over there without getting shot?”
“Do any of your men speak Serbo-Croatian?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Let’s confuse these guys a bit.” Bob told Garcia to shout What do you want? pretending to be Serbian.
“What if those men aren’t Serbs?” Garcia asked.
Bob shrugged and said, “Then we’re up the creek.”
Garcia frowned at Bob, shook his head, and then yelled, “Shto trebash sa nama?”
Garcia’s use of Serbo-Croatian seemed to surprise the man to the left of the Marine’s position. After several seconds, the man said, “Trazimo Generala Antonin Karadjic. Ko zi se?”
“Oh, shit,” Garcia whispered to Bob. “Serbs. They’re after Karadjic.” He yelled back at the voice, again in Serbo-Croatian, “We’re a Serb militia unit that’s been raiding in Albania.”
The voice came again, loud, angry. “Surrender then! You have nothing to fear from us. We’re Serb soldiers.”
Bob asked Garcia, “What did he say?”
“He wants us to surrender.”
Garcia look back at the rock formation Bob had pointed out to him. “Get ready to back up into those rocks behind our position,” he radioed his men. Then Garcia shouted at the Serbs, “We left our equipment behind us in those rocks. Give us a minute to gather it.”
Then Garcia spoke into his radio mic: “In fifteen seconds we break for the rocks. Sackett, you and your team cover our 3 o’clock; Messina cover our 9 o’clock. Start firing at will as soon as we begin moving.”
The Marines backed up toward the rocks while firing their weapons in semi-automatic mode. The Serbs didn’t immediately return fire, apparently surprised by the vicious firing against them. But they didn’t hesitate for more than a few seconds. The Serbs unleashed their weapons on the Americans. Their firing came from the left and right of the Marines’ position. The sounds of the shots echoed off nearby hillsides, seemingly trebling the noise of the firing in the narrow valley.
The back of the head of the Marine nearest Garcia erupted in an explosion of blood, bone, and brains. Garcia’s tense expression turned to an open-mouthed look of shock.
“Yaurie’s been hit,” Messina shouted.
“Goddammit,” Garcia said under his breath. Then he shouted to Sergeants Sackett and Messina, “Get the men behind those rocks.”
Dragging Yaurie’s body and Karadjic, the Marines moved out of their positions toward the rock formation. They fired at the Serbs, but Garcia ordered his men to cease firing when he realized they were shooting at ghosts. The Serbs were so well hidden the Marines were just wasting their limited ammunition. Once the Marines reached the rocks, the Serbs had also stopped firing.
The Marines dropped low behind the cluster of boulders and granite slabs. Garcia quickly took inventory of his men. They’d suffered only one casualty – Yaurie – but General Karadjic, screaming like a banshee, had taken a round in his right thigh, shattering bone. Garcia had just ordered one of his Marines to take the radio from Yaurie’s body and try to raise the helicopter pilots, when the Serbs started firing again. Bullets ricocheted off the rocks and whistled around Garcia and his men. Rock splinters were flying like explosive shrapnel.
The team’s Navy corpsman went to work on the General’s leg, while the Marines repositioned themselves to take advantage of the terrain’s natural cover. Garcia made sure his men were positioned to cover the two Serb positions and ordered them to fire at targets of opportunity.
“I’m hit! Corpsman, Corpsman!” one of the Marines yelled.
The sounds of firing weapons nearly obscured the man’s shouts. Then another Marine shouted that he’d been hit, and still another man screamed. Garcia said a silent prayer the helicopters would show while jerking a grenade from his web belt. He launched the grenade at the Serbs on the right. The explosion was followed by the sounds of men voicing the terrible agony of hot metal wounds. Wounded men’s screams from both sides vied with the clamor of weapons releasing their horrible missiles.
Garcia looked at his watch again. The helicopters were now nine minutes behind schedule.
Into the rat-a-tat confusion of automatic weapons fire, a different sound suddenly imposed itself – the sound of helicopter rotors heavily beating the morning air. The thrumming of the rotors seemed to vibrate Garcia’s
breastbone. Garcia stared in the direction of the noise, but when the aircraft came into view, it was not an American gunship. It was a Russian-made helicopter with Serb Army markings.
Garcia realized it must be the one that had carried the General and the Serb team to Hill 652. He watched the hovering helicopter descend to about two hundred feet above the clearing. Two bursts of flame shot from the helicopter toward Garcia. Rockets! The air in the valley seemed to shudder, and then the boulders around him shattered, rending the air with sharp-edged, granite shrapnel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Bromidivic shouted into his radio to the helicopter pilot. “They have General Karadjic.”
The pilot sharply veered away from the clearing and settled in a hover about three hundred feet above the clearing.
Bromidivic looked over his shoulder. “Where are those fucking Gypsies?” he shouted.
His men looked back where the two Gypsies had been lying in the grass a moment earlier. None of them had an answer for their Captain.
“Sir, the corpsman’s down,” Messina shouted. “Sluter’s dead. Frantz, Kelly, and Koury are wounded.”
“How bad?” Garcia demanded, ducking down when small arms fire erupted from the Serb position to his left, behind a stand of trees.
“Frantz and Koury can fight. Kelly’s bad. You’re bleeding, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll live; it’s just rock splinters.”
The voice again from the Serb position on the left: “You men are finished! Throw down your weapons! Come out!”
Garcia gritted his teeth. Things did not look good at all.
A blast of static from Garcia’s radio, then words: “Homing Pigeon to Bird Dog, pickup in one minute.”
Garcia shouted into his radio, “Homing Pigeon, this is Bird Dog. Homing Pigeon, we got enemy soldiers north and south of us. And a Serb chopper on top of us. We’re pinned down. Got casualties.”
