by Andy McNab
The football game had really warmed up now. Today’s ball had mud caked on its matted grey hair and beard. I lowered my binos. I didn’t want to see that shit. If they found me, the next head could be mine.
The ground below me was soft but sappingly cold. I wished the Regiment boys had left me a roll mat. Tensing my body, I wiggled my toes again and again, trying to generate some heat, but it wasn’t working. Mladic had better turn up soon. I didn’t have a picture of him with me because of opsec, but I’d burned one into my memory before I came out. I’d know his ugly fat face when I saw it.
The LTD was housed in a green metal box about the size of a breeze block. The tripod it was mounted on was extendable to about two feet, though I had it just inches off the ground. It had a viewfinder at the back, and a lens at the front, protected for now by a plastic cap, which would fire a laser about ten miles. There was also a laser range-finder, which was how I knew the target building was exactly 217 metres away.
The theory behind this kind of attack was very simple. A jet would come in from behind me, roughly in line with the beam from the LTD, but low, the other side of the mountain, out of sight and sound of the factory. When it was about nine or ten miles away, the on-board computer would tell the pilot to pull into a steep climb. At just the right moment he would let go of the Paveway, very much like bowling a ball underarm. By the time it had cleared the mountain, the jet would have turned and be on its way home.
The Paveway wasn’t so much a missile as a standard 2000-pound lump of metal and explosive, with some fins strapped on its tail. Once it had been lobbed, the nose-mounted detector would look for the laser beam splashing on the target, lock on, and freefall to the target. This man-in-the-loop technology was all very well, but as I watched the soccer match, hoping I wasn’t going to fuck up and become their next ball, I wished someone would hurry up and invent no-man-in-the-loop technology.
I had to be this close because of the mountains behind me. When the LTD fired its laser, the beam would break up at the point it hit the target, giving the splash the Paveway would be looking for. Had it been aimed down at an angle from high ground, there would have been less splash, and the Paveway might have trouble locking on as it came over the mountain. I had only one chance of getting Mladic. To maximize the splash, I had to aim the laser at as near to a right angle to the target as possible, which meant being virtually on top of the factory – in fact, in tactical terms, close enough to spit on it.
I checked again that the alloy tripod was nice and solid. I had filled three plastic bags with mud and slapped them over the legs to keep the beam constant and stable. If Mladic was to get hit in the building, the Paveway’s fuse would be set to delayed, to make sure it penetrated the brickwork before detonating. Paveway had what was called a ‘circular error probable’ – in other words, circumference of fuck-up – of about nine metres. If I was out by three, the bomb could be out by twelve, but pinpoint accuracy wouldn’t matter too much today. The full blast of 945 pounds of tritonal would rain the steel casing down on him, and even I’d have to get my head down.
I’d taken a pair of badly made and cumbersome black nylon gloves from a body at the roadside. I pulled one off with my teeth and reached into the top pocket of the Gore-Tex suit for another two Imodium. I tried to time my bowel movements for the night.
The sound of engines rumbled up the valley to my right. I raised the binos again as a convoy of mud-covered wagons with canvas backs lumbered towards the factory. There were six of them, civilian vehicles. They all looked as if they had seen a few winters. As they got closer, I saw the drivers were in Serb uniform.
They drove into the compound and turned. I saw heads, many in headscarves, bouncing from side to side, sandwiched between Serb guards. The prisoners weren’t just men and women. There were children too.
3
The Serbs who’d been sitting in the back, AKs over their knees, jumped down, smoking and joking with each other. The Muslim civilians clambered out after them, scared and bewildered, wrapped in blankets and all sorts against the cold. Their breath hung around them in a big cloud as they huddled together.
The bottle-washers stopped playing football. There was a new game in town. They left the head where it was and ambled over towards their weapons.
More tailgates dropped and there was a lot more shouting. Children cried as they were wrenched from their mothers and herded out of sight behind the office block. The remaining men, women and teenagers were split into groups. It was not looking good.
This was the third job with Paveways I’d been on since the end of August. The theory was that if you wiped out the Serb command, the troops would dissolve into chaos and the Muslims might stand a chance against the fourth largest army in Europe.
The first two principals I’d hit were colonels in charge of ethnic cleansing brigades. I’d heard the horror stories. The Serbs moved in after the shelling and rounded everyone up. The men would get separated, then they’d get dropped. Then the women and children were brought forward and despatched alongside their husbands and fathers. Anyone unfortunate enough to be female and between the ages of about fourteen and thirty was raped, often repeatedly. Some were killed during the assaults. Many were held until they were at least seven months pregnant before being released.
Others were sold into the sex trade, exchanged for cash and drugs with the traffickers who follow all wars and do business with both sides. A white girl could be worth up to fifteen thousand dollars these days.
4
I checked my watch. It would take the Serbs a good half an hour to sort out the prisoners. If I called in the air strike right now, some of these people might stand a chance, if they survived the blast. It was worth a shot; as things stood, most of them were going to die anyway.
As I watched a 4x4 bouncing along the track towards the factory, I wanted to reach for the beacon big-time. But my hand didn’t move. That wasn’t the mission. I was here to take a life, not save it. It was not the best of choices, and I knew I’d be waking up in a sweat at three a.m. for the next few weeks, feeling a low-life for not having done anything but, fuck it, we all had to die some time. I just wished I wasn’t the one with his finger on the button.
The segregation was almost complete, except for one boy’s mother arguing with a soldier. The bottle-washers were kicking her, trying to pull her son away from her and put him with the men. She begged and pleaded, holding on to the boy for dear life. He didn’t look much older than thirteen.
My view was blocked for a second by the arrival of the 4x4, an unusually shiny Land-cruiser. The door opened, and out of it came a slight figure with a flowing beard, not very tall, who walked calmly towards the mother and son.
The man seemed to float across the mud. The Serbs couldn’t take their eyes off him. There was no begging, no arm-waving, the newcomer just held his hands in front of him and talked. I studied him through my binos. He was in his early to mid-twenties, and wore a Russian-style fur hat and a heavy greenish coat. His body language was confident. The bottle-washers seemed almost subservient to him. They stopped kicking the woman. She stayed on her knees in the mud, clutching her child to her chest.
The bottle-washers looked like they’d been told off at school. I couldn’t help feeling that the boy’s reprieve would be short-lived.
Beardilocks helped them to their feet and took them back to the group of women. The Serb guards even parted ranks to let him through.
Then there was a shot, a stunned silence, and another shot. Two of the male prisoners crumpled to the ground.
As the truth dawned, the women and children began to wail and scream.
There were two or three more shots. Slow. Rhythmic. Methodical.
More cries. Just tens of metres away, husbands, sons, uncles, brothers were getting it in the head.
I got my head back down into the hide, mentally numb now, as well as physically. You had to be able to throw that switch or you’d be barking at the moon.
5
For the next ten minutes, all I could hear were screams and the rhythmic tap of single shots. Then I heard the sound of vehicles, gradually getting louder. I slowly raised my head, and pointed the binos down the road.
A convoy of seven this time, all civilian Toyota 4x4s, two with flat beds and .50 cal machine-guns mounted over the cabs, was moving fast up the valley. The vehicles were new, too good for squaddies to be messing around in, and they bristled with whip antennae. This looked like a command group.
As they swung into the compound, I checked each one, but the windows and windscreens were too splattered with mud to make anyone out. The only people I could see were the heavily wrapped-up gunners on the .50 cals, who were being thrown around on the back, but trying to look cool.
The convoy pulled up outside the office block. Soldiers and bottle-washers ran towards them and fell in at attention. This was looking promising. I felt warmer already.
Mladic got out of the second vehicle, dressed in American camouflage BDU [Battle Dress Uniform] and a Serbian pillbox hat. He was just like his pictures; fifty years ago he could have been Hermann Goering’s double.
After a quick fuck-off salute, he was bonding big-time with the local commander. As he stood over the bodies, chatting to his junior officers, I turned on the beacon to get the platform stood to. It had only one frequency, constantly monitored by an American AWACS aircraft, circling the country some forty thousand feet above me.
I hit the send button. This close to the target, I couldn’t risk speech.
I kept on hitting it, maybe six or seven times, before a soft American female voice came through the earpiece. That was a pleasant change: last time it had been a hard-nosed guy with the kind of East Coast accent that took no prisoners.
‘Blue Shark Echo? Radio check.’
I hit the pressle twice. She would get squelch into her headphones.
She came back on, very quiet, very slow. ‘That’s OK, strength five, Blue Shark Echo. Do you have a target?’
I hit the pressle twice.
‘Roger, Blue Shark Echo. Stand by.’
AWACS would be telling Sarajevo I had the principal. The whole detect, decide, destroy system was being bypassed because the decision to destroy had already been taken. All Sarajevo had to do was authorize the aircraft to stand to.
Because this job was known only to about a dozen people, there was no way the command set-up could have operated from the UN safe zone at Sarajevo airport. Instead, they were in an office above a café in the city, probably huddling under the table right now as another Serb artillery bombardment rattled their windows.
Maybe an American pilot on one of the carriers was striding to an aircraft. Very soon he or she would be circling above the Adriatic, waiting for the call to make their approach to target. Maybe it was a Brit Tornado based in Italy, less than the distance from London to Scotland but a whole different world away. The crew wouldn’t even have time to get comfortable before they’d be heading home for hot coffee and a video. I didn’t have a clue, but it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t going to hear the aircraft, let alone see it.
I was waiting for her to come back and tell me a time to target. I just hoped that Mladic stayed static long enough. On the last job, time to target had been fifteen minutes.
The bottle-washers were getting busy again. Two were blacking out the ground-floor door-frame and windows with blankets. Then foldaway chairs and trestle tables were dragged out of the 4x4s and taken into the office block, followed by baskets of food and armfuls of wine bottles.
I couldn’t believe what came out next: a pair of candelabra, complete with candles. It reminded me of the cavalry officers I’d known before I’d joined the Regiment, who’d carry the regimental silver with them in their tanks on major exercises and set the table for dinner as if they were taking a break from the Charge of the Light Brigade. As an infantryman I used to honk about the crap hats and their fancy ways, green with envy as I opened my ration can of sweaty processed cheese.
Mladic just stood there with his hands on his hips, apparently oblivious to the carnage.
My new best friend was back on the net. ‘Blue Shark Echo, over.’
I hit the pressle twice.
‘I hear you fives, Blue Shark Echo. You will have a fifteen – that’s one five – minute time to target. Copy?’
I did. I hit the pressle twice as I watched bundles of firewood being taken into the office. Smoke was soon streaming out of the cracks in the wall. With luck he would just have sat down to eat by the time I started easing the Paveway up his arse.
I pulled my glove off with my teeth then slowly reached out to the front of the LTD and lifted the little plastic cover from the objective lens. Next I dug around in the breast pocket of my sniper suit for some toilet roll and gave the glass a wipe from the centre outwards to clear it of condensation. Then I eased myself up a little so I could look at the sight picture in the viewfinder. I aimed the crosshairs at the ground floor, on the area of wall between the two covered window-frames. I moved them vertically up, aiming at the point where the first floor hit the front elevation. With nine metres margin of error, I wanted to make sure that there was no chance it would just plough into the ground. Now it didn’t matter if it was nine metres high or left or right, it would still hit.
It looked as if pre-dinner drinks were about to be served. Mladic headed for the office block, his sidekicks in hot pursuit. The shooting continued as he disappeared inside.
There was nothing I could do now but wait. I couldn’t afford to call the platform in just yet. He might take it into his head to come outside again with his G and T and go for a wander. With the amount of alcohol, food and candelabra on show there was no rush. Well, there was, but I couldn’t cut corners.
I gave it ten minutes. Chances were he was staying inside now. I hoped he had seen enough dead bodies for the day.
I got on the net and hit the pressle five or six times.
‘Is that you, Blue Shark Echo? Send again.’
I hammered the pressle another couple of times.
She came back. ‘Do you have a designation?’
Press, press.
‘Roger that, confirm you have designation.’
Press, press.
‘Delayed fuse?’
Press, press.
‘Confirm no change to attack profile.’
I pressed again. The platform was coming in on the same bearing.
She’d be giving the good news to Sarajevo, and they’d be passing it on to an aircraft orbiting over the Adriatic.
It was about thirty seconds before she came back. ‘Blue Shark Echo, you have a platform. Time to target plus one five minutes. Five, four, three, two, one, check.’
I double pressed to acknowledge. That was it. Precisely fifteen minutes from now, the Paveway would make contact. All that was left for me to do was switch on the LTD in eight minutes’ time, make sure I could hear the little motor start up, check the sight picture hadn’t been moved from the building, then splash the fucking thing before ramming both index fingers in my ears and getting my head down.
I heard shouting and lifted the binos. Beardilocks had swung back into action. He must have torn himself away from the rest of the prisoners, because he was now at the door of the building, remonstrating with a guard. Not many seconds later, the blanket across the door was pulled aside. Mladic appeared, his features contorted by rage.
6
The general’s BDU jacket was off, revealing an olive shirt with rolled-up sleeves. There was a towel in his hand. He combed back what was left of his grey hair and prodded Beardilocks angrily in the chest. The guy stood his ground, calm and collected. It was Mladic who was going apeshit. I was just waiting for him to take the pistol from his belt and discharge it into his head.
Beardilocks’ hat fell into the mud as Mladic struck him, but he didn’t even blink. He had a black skull cap underneath. He was either a very mad mullah or a very brave one.
He took the beasting completely calmly, just wiping the mud off his beard now and again with his right hand as he picked himself off the ground. Mladic was the frustrated one, still hollering and shouting, waving his arms about. His hair had lost its groomed look.
Mladic knocked the bearded man to the ground one final time, then stood, hands on hips, looking down at him. Finally he shouted something to one of the officers and, pointing at the track, disappeared back inside the building.
The officer moved over to a group of soldiers and barked a series of orders. They began to herd the prisoners together on the football pitch. An old woman bent and picked up the ball, cradling it in her arms. The bottle-washers just looked on, smoking, weapons hung loosely over their shoulders.
I got myself ready to hear the .50 cals open up to finish the job quick time.
Instead, something strange happened. Under Serb orders, the survivors started to shuffle back towards the trucks. Beardilocks stood by the door, waving for them to get a move on. Some paused to kiss his muddy hands.
I checked my watch. It was time. Whoever was driving those trucks had better get their foot down. I checked that the spring was holding the green cover on the objective lens in position. There was no need to worry about the sun giving away the hide today. I grabbed a sheet of toilet paper and wiped the lens again. I couldn’t lean forward enough to see the glass; I just had to hope it was clean.
I checked the viewfinder one last time, then tightened the adjustment screw on the tripod. It didn’t need it: it just made me feel better. We were set. I pushed the power button and listened for the gentle whine of the electrics. A small red LED told me the target was being splashed.
Just six minutes to go. The platform would be screaming in towards the mountain range now, keeping below the skyline, ready to pull up and lob its load.
I looked back at the building. The last of the trucks was leaving the compound. Two remained. They weren’t needed: their passengers were all lying in the mud. Beardilocks was still by the door, his gaze fixed further inside the factory compound. I followed his line of sight.
