Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

  Ntarinada nodded. He understood perfectly well how a man like Zulu could be fighting in his own country. “Zulu is a good man. Okay. Tell Lascelles I said okay. But get me money and some guns!” He drank. “I keep overall command,” he said.

  The Frenchman shook his head. “Sorry. Zulu.”

  “Never!”

  “Insurance.” The Frenchman smiled. “How about—shared command? You’re both colonels now.”

  Ntarinada looked away into the little room’s shadows. He was looking into a century of colonialism, the bitter darkness of working for the whites. “All right,” he said. “I’ll share command with Zulu.” He ran his hand over his thin face, sighed like a man dying of exhaustion. “You bastards.”

  Above Tuzla.

  The Canadian driver loved the Humvee and couldn’t stop demonstrating it. Alan got the hairiest ride he’d had on dry land since a drunken Italian had taken him on the Amalfi Drive. He found it oddly exhilarating, maybe from having had eight hours of sleep so deep he didn’t even dream. Still, it was nice to know it was a trip he’d have to make only once.

  Except that he made it three times—three times up, three times down. And the last time wasn’t until the next afternoon.

  The trouble up there wasn’t something that needed a linguist; it needed a good listener. And Alan was a pretty good listener, like anybody who wants to make it in intelligence. The fact that he knew both languages helped, sure; to the Kenyan doctor in charge of the medical unit, there was a plus in hearing a non-African say that it was baridi, baridi kabisa—bloody cold, man. And Alan had been in Kenya and could at least talk as much as a traveler can about the coast and Nairobi and problems up on the Sudanese border. So he learned that the real trouble between the Italian soldiers and the Kenyan medics was not that the Italians were racists or the Kenyans were bad nurses, but that they had all been there too long and none of them felt he had done shit to help the peace and now they were being pulled out and replaced by NATO. To make it worse, the unarmed Kenyan medics felt isolated by language and color and abandoned by the very people who were supposed to protect them, and they took it out in gallows-humor jokes, and some of the jokes were about how the Italians had got their asses whipped twice in Ethiopia—once by the Ethiopians and once by the Brits and the Kenyans.

  For Sale: Like-new Italian rifle. Only dropped once.

  The jokes had gone stale, then bad; there had been shouting—and, the doctor admitted, a bad fight, a punch that had emptied the benches and become a brawl. Bad.

  So Alan got several of the officers from both units together and badgered them into eating their MREs in the same tent—it was lunch, and partway through one of the Italians produced some wine—and, when a shouting match broke out, he got the doctor to calm down enough to snarl that they, the Kenyans, were catching hell from the Serbs, who were just over the newly drawn border two miles away, and the Italians were doing nothing to stop it.

  “We can’t do anything to stop it, you cretin!” the Italian screamed. Alan translated this as “We do everything we can, sir.” The Kenyan hollered, “You were afraid in 1942 and you’re afraid now!” which Alan didn’t translate at all. Another Kenyan, a senior surgeon named wa Danio, shook a finger at the Italians and told them that it was the civilians, the civilians over there, they were being tortured, maimed, massacred, and the Italians were doing nothing. The senior Italian, Captain Gagliano, threw up his hands and said, “Nothing, nothing—there is nothing we can do! Anyway, we are leaving.” After lunch, Doctor wa Danio insisted that Alan come with him to the ward, where he showed him an old man who had had his feet cut off with an axe and who had crawled the three miles to the Kenyan unit.

  “You know, Lieutenant, we Africans are supposed to be uncivilized, but this is a horror. This is not stupid men swinging pangas; this is deliberate, organized hell. The Italians think we are savages, but we know those bastards over there are monsters!” He showed Alan a woman who had been gang-raped and beaten. A child with one hand, the other lost when he had tried to keep his already wounded father from being beheaded. Alan had a child. He felt sick, then thought what it would be like to sit here week after week, helpless to stop it …

  So Alan went down the mountain. On the way down, he figured how it could be done. A warning bell rang in his head but he turned it off, paid no attention, and instead he listened to an inner voice that said, Okay, Suter, you want liaison and intelligence support and acquisition. I’ll give it to you, right up the nose.

  He told Murch that the problem up there was not language or jokes or nationalities, it was frustration, fighting men and medical personnel who were frustrated and angry and unappreciated. They wanted to go in and make one hit on the Bosnian Serbs who were committing the atrocities before they were pulled out.

  “We can’t go in there,” Murch said. “We’re protectors. Not aggressors.” Murch’s mouth seemed to lose some of its muscle: he was afraid.

  “They say there was US armor up there a week ago and it got turned back.”

  “Mm, yeah, all the women and kids in a Serb village blocked the road, lay down in front of a tank—they’re fanatical up there. Leave it.”

  “Going in to get war criminals would be allowed.”

  “I’m not at all sure of that, and we don’t know anything about war criminals over there.”

  “The Kenyans say that they know for certain of a house ten miles in that serves as a command center for the butchery. They say it’s used for torture. Everybody knows it, they say.”

  “Oh, Christ, Alan, ‘everybody—’” He was afraid of his place, his next evaluation, his career. Fuck him.

  “Look, the Italians are good guys and they’re hot to trot. They’ve been sitting up there for two months and their hands have been tied and they’ve had to watch—to watch—while civilians get slaughtered, because of this phony ‘border.’ They want to do something.”

  “We all want to do something. Alan, there’s nothing—”

  “Yes, there is.” He was feeling pretty good, still. He thought he’d start to sink, but he hadn’t. It was two in the afternoon; he felt really good. Not wired, but charged. “Hit that two-bit torture center in Pustarla.”

  “We can’t do that! Al, look, you’re exhausted, you’re not thinking clearly—”

  “If we have intelligence that the house is a center for war crimes, we can go in and hit it. In and out.”

  “I don’t have the authority.” Murch’s face got stiff. “Canada prides herself on not involving UNPROFOR ground forces.” His voice became pleading. “We’re out of here! IFOR has the responsibility now!”

  “UNPROFOR hit Udbina and took out the airfield! UNPROFOR used artillery in Sarajevo! What the fuck, you’re making noise about a goddam hit on one house?”

  “Udbina was part of Deny Flight. Alan, please! Go see IFOR.”

  They both knew that was bullshit. IFOR command was back in Sarajevo, and they’d say it was an UNPROFOR problem, because weren’t the Italians and the Kenyans the remnant of UNPROFOR? “The Italians are fed up. Their colonel might say no, but he’s taking a few days R and R in Dubrovnik. A company-level hit, that’s all they want. We’d need choppers; I think two would do it.” He was thinking of his own experience, of being pulled out of a firefight by two marine helos. Of course, these guys wouldn’t be US marines. And Alan wouldn’t have his wife in command of the choppers this time. “Who’s got big choppers? You guys have two brand-new Griffons. No? I’ll check the order of battle.”

  “Alan—we don’t have the intelligence!”

  Alan stared at him, saw a man who wasn’t fed up with bullshit yet, maybe wanted to dedicate his life to bullshit. Why had he thought he liked this guy? He went to the outer office and got the package of photos he’d brought in that morning—all photos that had already passed through his hands once—and pulled a couple and went back to Murch, got a grease pencil, and began to make small circles.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Th
is is intelligence.”

  Murch leaned in close. “Fuck, man—”

  “I could do better with a stereo magnifier.”

  Murch provided one. In fifteen minutes, Alan had marked the house that they said was a torture center, five “suspected grave sites,” an outbuilding that the Kenyans’ patients told them was a torture chamber. “Crematorium,” he said, circling something with a chimney.

  “Aw, shit—!”

  “You been there?”

  “No, but—”

  “It’s as good as the crap the CIA gives the President.” He handed the photos to Murch. “Copies to whoever has to okay the choppers, plus the Italians, plus me, plus the chopper crews; give us blowups of the house and surroundings. You got a problem?”

  Murch shook his head. “Man, you’re something else.” He looked as if he might cry.

  “You asked for me.” He was checking the order of battle. “The French have five Pumas; they’re pretty ballsy—they picked those SAS guys out of Gorazde.”

  It turned out that Murch wasn’t such a bad guy, after all: he said, “Don’t ask the French.” Alan stared at him. The French had been part of UNPROFOR, were now in IFOR, but a different sector. What was wrong? Murch dropped his voice to almost a whisper. “Just don’t ask the French right now, okay?” The two intel officers looked at each other.

  Problem—he means there’s a problem. Leak?

  “Gotcha.”

  While he was getting his materials together, Murch bent over the aerial photos. When Alan was ready to leave, Murch handed him one with grease-penciled circles. “There’s two armored cars by a building down the road—has to be the police station. One’s in the snow, no tracks around it, so I think it’s down. Probably parts; the embargo’s hurting them bad.” Murch tapped the photo and Alan put it down and looked at it with the magnifier. “I think it’s an AML, maybe French-made, but they’ve licensed countries all over the place. Old, but one of them’s operational—look at all the tracks.” Alan grunted. “Scout car configuration,” Murch went on. “Just machine guns, no cannon—see the shadow?” Alan punched Murch on the shoulder. “We’ll need a couple of shooters. Good catch.” Murch, he decided, was a really okay guy. Just a little—let’s use a polite word—cautious.

  He went back up the mountain. The nineteen-year-old driver was beside himself. The gunner, hanging on the back, was not so delighted; he didn’t even get to fire his weapon. Up on the mountain, the Italians were skeptical and the Kenyans wary, but Alan explained how it could be done and asked them to say yes. Two squads plus medics. “Plus me,” the Kenyan surgeon said.

  “And you?” the hawk-faced Italian captain said to Alan. It was a challenge. These guys were ready to dislike anybody.

  “You want me?”

  “I want you to believe in your intelligence. Enough to go along, I mean.”

  What had Suter said? He was going to keep Alan away from anything that even smelled like glory? He grinned. “Count me in. As an observer, of course.” He didn’t say that he might be risking a court-martial.

  The Kenyans and the Italians looked at each other.

  “When?”

  Alan thought about his own orders, about how long it would take Suter to figure something out. “Soon,” he said.

  The Italian officer murmured, “If I give my colonel time to hear about it before we do it, well—”

  The Kenyan surgeon said, “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow dawn,” Alan said.

  The three of them looked at each other. They shook hands. He turned the problem of the helos over to the Italian captain and went back to the Kenyan hospital and spent time interviewing the civilians, getting as much hard data as he could on the house in Pustarla. Murch would be putting together a route, he hoped; he should have the latest data on Serb positions and air defenses. Alan’s belief from shipboard intel was that there was no air defense, but out in the Med he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to this hate-filled line where Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs were supposed to divide themselves, and people who happened to be in the minority on either side were being terrorized.

  Then he went down the mountain again and used Murch’s computer to write a report on suspected war crimes and criminals in the Bosnian-Serb Pustarla region, pulling in this and that from Intelnet, creating a nice little package of the kind that admirals liked to be briefed from—maps, pretty pictures, juicy quotes from victims. Murch had marked out a route and made a real briefing packet he could use with the troops. He was liking Murch again.

  “You got a journalist in your pocket?” he asked Murch.

  “Are you wacko? Jesus, Craik—!”

  “Wassamattayou? You never heard of PR? Nothing covers your ass like a news report, Murch.”

  “Suppose this bombs out?”

  Alan had thought about that. “If you’ve got a journalist in your pocket, it’ll come out as a victory no matter what. I’ll get some color photos for him, give him the story, exclusive. He’ll kiss my ass if I ask him to. Yes or no?”

  “My boss—”

  “Fuck your boss! Yes or no? If the story is out quick, nobody will dare bitch. ‘Brave UNPROFOR Forces Score One for Humanity!’ Come on!”

  Murch rubbed his jaw. “There’s a Brit named Gibb, he’s okay, he—”

  “Tell him to be at my Humvee in ten minutes. He can watch the prep and he can be there when it’s over, first to interview the brave troops and all that crap. He cannot go along. I’m outa here.”

  Then he went back up the mountain, the journalist Gibb laughing nervously as the Humvee spun mud and gravel into the black gulf at the edge of the road. Gibb was on something, might have been a better companion if he hadn’t been, but Alan suspected the man was strung out like everybody else, thought he needed help—whatever gets you through the night. Alan left him in the Kenyans’ civilian ward. He spent half an hour with the hawk-faced captain and the Kenyan surgeon and a cluster of men in battle dress, planning. It was going to be kept simple, except nothing involving death is ever simple. The captain was unhappy about the armored vehicle but didn’t want to use anti-tank rockets—they had old Canadian Hellers—which he thought might go right through the meager armor without exploding. He was taking bullet-trap grenade launchers with HEAT, instead. Alan frowned when he heard but muttered, “Well, it’s your call.” Except that he would be there, too.

  Two Ukrainian Mi-26s “diverted” from Zagreb would come in at 0300, and Alan would brief their crews. Off at 0445. Seven hours from now.

  He slept.

  When he woke, he reached for Rose and murmured her name. His hand felt the grit of the floor and he remembered where he was, a cot in the company office. Through the door, he could see men in flight suits and hear their talk, all charged up. The chopper crews. He had slept right through their arrival. Sitting up, he felt how tired he really was, and he thought, This isn’t a good idea. I’m wiped. But it was too late.

  He put his wallet and his tags in his pack, checked himself for anything that would show he was American. His watch. His wedding ring; it came off hard, and he sucked the knuckle and got it off with the spit. Reluctantly, he put the Browning in the bag; he wanted to carry it, but it had been his father’s and had personal engraving on it. Even his skivvies, which had a label. Then he dressed from the skin out in stuff the Italians had given him. No rank marks. This is really stupid, he thought. He pushed the pack toward the Italian captain. “If something happens—I’m anonymous. My people will figure it out.” He wrote a couple of lines to Rose and stuffed the paper in the pack and pushed away the thought of what she would say if she could see him. Then he was on.

  “It’s a short trip, gentlemen—ten miles in, ten out. I figure six minutes’ flying time each way, including diversion. The target is a house in a village called Pustarla, just one street and a few houses around it. Problem: there’s deep snow everywhere. Roads around the place took a week to get plowed, then some of it was done with horses—we got aerial photos. Only two
sure places to put down a chopper, the town soccer field, which I’ve marked Bravo, and this smaller place marked Alpha, which is cleared—for a helo, we think, but the helo wasn’t there yesterday. We believe no land mines. It’s a hundred meters from the target; the soccer field is close to four hundred. The village street is a mess—ruts, ice, high banks. The police station is three hundred meters farther along; there should be ten to twelve guys there, well armed, capable. Respect them! They’ve got two armored cars, one probably inoperable because it hasn’t been dug out of the snow.

  “We’re going in to Alpha as our primary landing zone; Bravo is backup and will be where the helos go if there’s trouble while the troops are at the target. That would leave us four hundred meters to cover on foot to get out.” He didn’t like that part. Four hundred meters could be a long way in snow.

  “If the Yugoslavs scramble aircraft, they’re only fourteen minutes away. However, if they do that they’re going to get pasted.” Deny Flight was still on under a different name, the pilots impatient because nothing much was happening in deep winter. The F-16s and F-18s, Jaguars, Hornets, Tornados, and Fighting Falcons of several countries would love it if the Serbs scrambled so much as a flying chicken.

  The Ukrainian choppers had come with crews and their own ground defense, two tough guys each with squad weapons. Alan made sure there would be room for prisoners and material coming back, double-checked with the Kenyans and the Italian ground troops. It would be tight: the Kenyans had insisted on sending two medics per helo; they wanted in on the action. The Italians were sending twenty altogether, two teams they had decided to call Romulus and Remus. Oh, shit, why not? Gagliano had told him that the Dutch had a mortar unit up the hill that was itching to put stuff over the border if the militia there made a move; the Canadians would have two electronics surveillance F-16s in the air, with the new US Air Force operation at Tuzla on alert. Certain shrugs, looks, and evasions suggested that the operation had been put together the way crucial spare parts were sometimes got—what was called “moonlight acquisition.”