by Tom Saric
A fist reached in, holding a dark object. He noticed the tattoo on the inside of the wrist: a tiger’s head with a snake protruding out of the mouth. The insignia of the White Tigers, a ruthless paramilitary group.
By the time he caught a glimpse of the black metal and recognized the object in the hand as a grenade, Luka was already in a full sprint. He slammed into the door with his shoulder, crushing the assassin’s forearm. The grenade dropped, bouncing on the ceramic floor with a hollow thud.
Luka turned and ran the other way, grabbing Čapan by the collar and pushing him towards the kitchen. He willed himself forward, but his legs couldn’t seem to move fast enough or take steps large enough to outrun the blast. He had only made it ten yards when he felt a sear in his thigh before a force lifted him off the ground; his head was thrown back, arms whipped wide, air blown out of his lungs. He felt weightless. And just as quickly, he dropped to the ground, sprawled on top of Čapan.
His head pulsated and he couldn’t hear a thing. Čapan’s mouth was moving, and he was wincing and holding his shoulder, but Luka heard nothing other than a single tone, louder than any noise he’d ever heard before. He took a deep, painful breath, trying to pull air into his lungs.
Through the hum he heard an echo, a knocking sound, like someone was hammering underwater.
Raising his head was painful, and it sent jolts down the back of his neck. He lifted his head just enough to see another grenade spinning in the hallway.
Luka forced himself up, everything stiff, and dragged Čapan into the kitchen. He closed the door and turned the knob just as a wave of heat rose from underneath the door. Then a moving mass thrust the door off its hinges, tossing Luka backwards, weightless again. This time, he didn’t feel pain, or hear a sound, or see himself collapse across the room like a rag doll.
This time, his eyes shut.
2
Natalia ran barefoot up the hill. She ignored the pain of rocks and thistle cutting her feet. When it got too steep, she dropped on all fours, hands grabbing, propelling her forward. Her legs felt hot and wobbly. But she had to go higher and higher. As far from the burning house as she could.
Her home.
Tata had warned her not to play in this field. Soldiers buried bombs here. But she wasn’t playing now. This wasn’t a game.
The Bad Man was down there. He had big, wide steps. She had to move faster. She glanced behind her, panting. Her foot caught something hard, her ankle bent, and she collapsed on her belly. Her cheek scraped against the ground.
She turned over, wincing from the pain in her foot. She wanted to cry, but why? Mama couldn’t kiss it better anymore.
She looked down the hill. No one was there. It was quiet except for a distant rumble. The Bad Man wasn’t chasing her. She felt a surge of energy. She could make it over the hill. She might be safe.
She got up on one leg, and as she put pressure on her sore foot, she stopped. She heard a noise. Holding her breath, she focused on the sound: crunch, crunch, crunch. Faster, louder.
Cresting the hill was a man all in black, holding a gun. Sprinting directly towards her.
No. She wouldn’t let The Bad Man get her, too.
She scrambled up to a standing position and ran down the hill. Lances of pain shot up her leg with each stride. She sped up, her feet barely touching the ground. She was flying.
By the time she realized that her feet couldn’t keep up, she was already doubled over, her head smashing onto the gravel. She felt her legs whipping over her head, her back skidding along the ground.
The Bad Man appeared beside her. Glancing up at his dead eyes as he held his rifle over her, she prepared herself for her fate. He stared at her, eyes moving from her head to her toes, studying. She shut her eyes.
“Alive?” he said.
She said nothing, keeping her eyes closed. She heard him shuffle, and then felt his warm body near hers. She could smell his body odor. Two thick fingers pressed her neck, just below her chin. She sensed a shadow looming over her.
Natalia opened her eyes and saw his ear a few inches from her mouth, listening.
No, she wouldn’t be scared. She wouldn’t let him hurt her like he’d hurt her parents. She opened her mouth and clamped down on his ear. The man screamed in pain, but she pressed her teeth together harder.
Natalia could taste his blood. Now he felt pain too. His head thrashed back and forth until part of his earlobe tore off in her mouth. She spit it out on the ground and leaned to run again when she felt his powerful hand grab her throat.
“Little bitch.”
He flipped her around, and she was face to face with The Bad Man, his dead eyes now alive and wild. She didn’t flinch as he cocked his head back and then thrust it forward.
Sitting in the backseat of the car, squished between the woman wearing a long, flowing dress and the window, Natalia listened. The two men in the front seats used the language of the people on television. Rough voices. Soldier voices.
She had been in the car for a long time, so long that it was now dark outside and the wind that came in through the open windows was cold and raised gooseflesh on her arms. She didn’t mind, though. The cool air soothed her scrapes and throbbing head. The headlights illuminated a brush-lined, crumbling road. The black mountains in the distance cut through the indigo sky.
Over those mountains, she tried to convince herself, her parents were safe. They’d escaped the house and were roaming the fields, looking for her. They were looking for The Bad Man with the gun, who had set the house on fire. They knew that he had run after her up the hill and that she couldn’t outrun him. Tata would know. He would follow the footprints to the house that The Bad Man had carried her to, where he’d handed her over to the woman in the dress in exchange for a thick envelope. The woman had said she would take Natalia to her home instead of an orphanage. “You don’t want to go to an orphanage, do you?” she’d said.
The woman now wrapped her arm around Natalia and pulled her closer. She smelled like strong perfume and cigarettes. She ran the back of her hand down Natalia’s cheek. Natalia stiffened and closed her eyes. She made a picture in her mind. It was her beautiful Mama holding her, not the lady with the wrinkles on her face. She pretended that the coarse fingers on her cheek were her mother’s gentle touch. Tata was driving the car. They were driving to the coast to go swimming in the Adriatic Sea. Just like last year.
“Don’t worry, beautiful girl,” the woman said, her voice deep. “We will keep you safe.”
Natalia kept looking straight ahead. She didn’t believe the lady. The soldier with brown eyes had promised he would keep her safe when he pulled her out of the bathroom. Before that, when The Bad Man had come to the house, Mama had whispered to her that everything was okay, right before she pushed Natalia under the sink. That was when she folded the photograph and stuffed it in Natalia’s dress pocket.
“Give this to someone you trust,” Mama had said, her face wet with tears.
Natalia didn’t trust the lady, so the picture stayed in her pocket.
The woman placed her fingers under Natalia’s chin and lifted it until Natalia made eye contact with her.
“I want you to know that we are your family now. You can call me Aunt Azra. I will take care of you. What is your name?”
Natalia said the first name that came to mind.
“Filipa.”
The lady smiled.
“A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. But I’ll call you Pipa. Do you have sisters, my dear?”
Natalia shook her head.
“All of the beauty was taken up by you.” She let go of Natalia’s chin and turned towards the window. “You will meet your new sisters when we get to your new home. You will be the prettiest one of all.”
The car slowed down and vibrated over the potholed road. Bright lights were on ahead, and they joined a line of cars. At the front of the line, Natalia saw soldiers walking from car to car. Each had a machine gun hanging over his shoulder. Some of the men ha
d sky blue helmets.
Natalia sat up. Her heart fluttered. When soldiers had come to her village last year, during the first bombing, Tata had said that she could trust the men in those helmets. They were there to help.
The lady who called herself Azra pointed ahead.
“These are dangerous men, Pipa. We must be quiet as they ask the drivers questions or they will kill us.”
One of the soldiers with a blue helmet came to the window and asked for documents. The driver passed the soldier a handful of little papers and booklets. The soldier then removed a flashlight from his belt and shone it through the car. When the light landed on Natalia, it stopped. Natalia squinted and put her hand in front of the light.
The soldier with the blue helmet said something in the language that the two men in the front were using, but Natalia couldn’t understand. They spoke too quickly. The man in the passenger seat opened the glove box, removed an envelope, and passed it to the soldier. The soldier folded the envelope and put it in the pocket on his sleeve.
He took two steps back from the car and waved to the men beside the fence. They opened up the gate, and the car drove through.
Natalia felt her eyelids become heavy as they drove down more highways. She only saw one street sign, blue with an arrow and the word Tuzla on it, before she allowed herself to close her eyes.
When Azra woke her up by stroking her face, it was light outside. Natalia rubbed her eyes and looked out the window. The car pulled into a gravel driveway outside a two-story concrete house. A concrete fence that was too high to see over ran along the perimeter of the yard.
She heard laughter and turned towards the front yard, a patch of asphalt. Two girls, both in flower-patterned dresses, chased each other on bicycles. Three men sitting in plastic deck chairs, sipping coffee underneath the shade of a trellis, watched them. Two of them smoked cigarettes. They talked loudly.
At the sight of the car, the two girls dropped their bicycles and ran over to it, giggling. Azra stepped out and hugged both of them, lifting them up in the air.
“Mateja, Julia, meet your new sister.”
The two girls waved for her to come out, but Natalia hesitated. She watched as one of the men—the oldest one—lifted himself out of the deck chair and lumbered over. He wore brown pants, sandals, and a white sleeveless shirt. He held a cigarette between his lips. He didn’t smile. The driver and the passenger walked around the car and shook his hand.
“Debeli,” the driver said to him. Fat Man.
Debeli pointed to the car.
“Anyone know who she is?”
The passenger shook his head. “Parents are dead. Caught her running from the house in a mine field.”
Debeli nodded and looked through the windshield at Natalia. He turned to the driver again. “How old?”
“Not a day over seven.”
Debeli nodded, walked over, and opened the car door. He crouched down in front of Natalia and smiled.
“Do you like ice cream?”
Natalia stared but didn’t respond.
“You can call me Uncle. And when you’re at Uncle’s house, you can have as much ice cream as you want.”
Mateja and Julia clapped their hands together at the mention of ice cream. The man offered his hand for Natalia to take.
3
Split, Croatia
Six Years Later
“Do not answer the door,” the voice on the line said.
Luka stood with his back to the wall in the hallway of his apartment beside the door, pressing the phone to his ear and holding a newspaper in his other hand. He stayed corpse-still in the dark hallway, remaining in the shadows, away from the fan of blue moonlight.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The door rattled with each knock.
He placed the phone down on the tile floor, got down on all fours, and crawled over to the door. He saw four rectangles of light under the door. Four legs. Two people.
He looked towards the bedroom at the end of the hall. Inside the second drawer of the nightstand, atop the Bible, was the gun. He pressed his eyes closed at the thought. The gun wouldn’t help.
He rose slowly, face pressed to the heavy oak door near two steel deadbolts and a heavy chain latch. His eye found the peephole. One of the figures was tall and notably wiry, even though the fish-eye distortion made him seem round in the middle. The short one was older, rounder, and balder, and under his partly zipped jacket that read INTERPOL on the chest were the bulges of a bulletproof vest. The tall one shrugged and then raised his fist to pound another four times against the door.
Luka dropped to the ground and took a deep breath. A moment later he heard murmuring and shuffling on the other side of the door. The shadows disappeared, and when he stood again and looked through the peephole, the hallway was empty.
He picked up the phone, then swallowed hard and said, “I think they’re gone.”
“Not for long,” the voice said. “We have to meet now.”
“Right now? I thought that—”
“This is happening more quickly than I expected. You don’t have time.”
As the voice gave him instructions, Luka nodded, listening to every detail and committing them to memory. He put the phone down on the hallway table beside the glass ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. He picked up Jutarnji List, the day’s newspaper, and flipped it over. His eyes darted across the page as he scanned the headline for the umpteenth time that day, each time desperately hoping he’d read it incorrectly.
“MORE HEROES INDICTED”
He stared down at the black and white photo of a younger, thinner version of himself standing in front of a dozen troops, with the caption: Luka Pavić, speaking to his troops prior to the Oluja offensive, is now wanted by The Hague.
The newspaper trembled in his hands as he was sucked into reading through the first paragraph again.
Two more Croatian officers have been added to the list of people wanted by The Hague for war crimes related to the Croatian War of Independence. An indictment was issued by Nicole Allegri, the chief prosecutor at The Hague, on May 30th, at 8:00 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, for Luka Pavić, age 29, a retired sergeant in the Croatian military, and Ante Čapan, age 27, a retired corporal. The document cites, among a few other offenses, the executions of fourteen Serbian civilians in a house in Nisko as the primary reason for the indictment. Both men are to report immediately to the nearest local authorities for extradition to The Hague...
Luka looked up from the newspaper, staring out the window in the living room towards the black night sky, into nothingness. He remembered the day the picture was taken. He had just made staff sergeant, ahead of two older, more seasoned soldiers, and a handful of reporters wanted a feature on this rising star in the Croatian military. How had the picture now become this, a poster for the reviled?
He looked at the indictment date. Statehood Day, of all days. His jaw tensed and his hands contracted, crumpling the paper into a ball. Then he stopped himself, letting his arms drop and pushing the thoughts away. He flicked the ball onto the floor.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! “Luka Pavić, open up!”
Luka bolted upright. He cocked his head to the side, listening to the murmurs. They couldn’t possibly think he was inside. It was Independence Day. No one in the city stayed home tonight.
He moved through the darkness to the balcony door at the back of the apartment and slid it open an inch. The street was deserted. Cars were parked along both sides, the road and low-rise buildings awash in the glow of orange streetlights. The faint cheers of a crowd singing and the vibration of a bass guitar in the distance broke the thick silence.
Footsteps clicked on the sidewalk below. The tall officer stepped into the light, looking towards the balcony window. There were only two ways out, and the officers had now blocked both. Luka knew it would take a reasonably fit individual twelve seconds running at full sprint to get from the back of the building, where the young officer now stood, to the front entrance. That didn’t ac
count for a delay in reaction time, which would add another four. Sixteen seconds.
Luka slipped through the shadows to the bedroom, opened the nightstand’s second drawer, and pulled out the gun. He shuffled through the hallway and grabbed a set of keys from the table. Standing in front of the door, he silently turned the two deadbolts, then lifted the chain a millimeter off the guides and dragged it across to the opening. He lowered the free chain, leaving it hanging. Ever so slightly, as though moved by a draft, the chain swung and tapped against the door. Click.
Luka stepped three feet back, revolver pointed squarely at the door, and waited.
Bang! Bang! Ba—
With his left hand, Luka twisted the handle and swung the door wide open. At the sight of the gun, the short officer immediately raised his hands. Luka grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the apartment. He pushed the man forward until he was facing the bedroom, his back to Luka.
“On your knees. Hands behind your head.”
The man’s hands shook, and he interlaced them behind his head before lowering himself onto his knees.
“Kiss the floor.”
The man tipped forward, groaning as his face hit the floor.
Luka began counting.
One.
He ran out the door and down the hall to the stairway.
Two.
He flew down the three flights of stairs four steps at a time.
Three. Four. Five.
Luka knew that the round man was now realizing that he was alive and alone. Radioing his partner.
He slammed his way out the door and into the alley.
Six.
He sprinted up the street, where his motorcycle was parked between two Fiats.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
He hopped on, inserted the key, and turned the choke on.
Eleven. Twelve.
He pressed the kick starter twice. Nothing.
Thirteen. Fourteen.
