by Andy McNab
Deep Black
( Nick Stone - 7 )
Andy Mcnab
A simple quest in Baghdad takes Stone into the heart of a chilling conspiracy; too late, he realizes that he is being used as bait to lure into the open a man he believes can offer some salvation but whom the darker forces of the West will stop at nothing to destroy.
1
Bosnia, October 1994
From where I was hiding, the bottom of the valley looked like no man’s land on the Somme: acres of mud churned up by tank and heavy vehicle tracks, mortar craters filled with dirty water. Here and there a dead hand clawed at the sky, pleading for help that had never arrived.
It was a grey and miserable day, not yet freezing, but plenty cold enough to have robbed me of a whole lot of body heat over the last three days. Even so I was still luckier than the scattered corpses, half buried in the mud. Judging by their state of decomposition, some had been there since the summer.
I was about a hundred Ks north of Sarajevo, dug into the treeline at the base of a mountain. My hide looked across the valley to what had once been a cement works, precisely 217 metres away. The problem for the owners was that it had been a Muslim cement works. The perimeter fence had long since been flattened by Serb tanks, and not a single part of the complex had been left unscarred by the bitter fighting. Most of it had been reduced to rubble. A three-storey building that I guessed had once been a block of offices was just about standing, heavily pitted by artillery and small-arm rounds. Black scorch marks framed the holes where there’d once been windows.
I’d counted maybe thirty or forty Serb troops through my miniature binoculars, and I could see they were as cold and pissed-off as I was. Smoke billowed from an annexe, mixing with the occasional burst of diesel exhaust; one or two of Mladic’s boys were starting the vehicles, so they could get warm inside the cab.
I could only guess that, like me, they were waiting for the general’s arrival. Ratko Mladic, the commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb Army, had been supposed to show up the day before, but that hadn’t happened. Fuck knows why. Sarajevo had just told me to wait where I was, and that was what I’d do until they told me to lift off the target.
I was up to my ears in a Gore-Tex sniper suit, a big, bulky overall with a camouflaged outer and a duvet-type lining. It had kept me warm for the first few hours, but prolonged contact with the ground was steadily draining me. I had about two days’ food left, but being so close to the target, I was on hard routine. I couldn’t heat up food, or make a brew. Still, at least I was dry.
I raised the binos and scanned the ground again, controlling my breathing. It wouldn’t take much of a vapour trail for someone to think I was having a cookout.
The coffin-shaped scrape I’d dug after moving covertly into the area was about two feet deep and covered with camouflage netting. I adjusted it again to make sure the objective lens at the front end of the LTD [laser target designator] had a clear field of view to the factory. When Mladic arrived to do whatever he was going to do in the middle of nowhere, I’d call it in. The Firm, getting shelled to shit by the Serbs back in Sarajevo, would green-light a fast jet loaded with a 2000-pound Paveway laser-guided bomb. About fifteen or twenty minutes later, depending on how long it took the platform, as we said in the trade, to deliver, there’d be a top-level vacancy in the Serb high command.
After the hit, I’d get the fuck out as quick as I could. The Serbs weren’t fools; they knew these precision bomb strikes were man-in-the-loop technology and they’d be out looking for me.
Apart from the LTD and my daysack, everything from the sniper suit to the plastic bags of shit and petrol can of piss would stay in the hide. It wouldn’t matter if the Serbs unearthed it: this wasn’t the first time they’d been marked, and it wouldn’t be the last. They knew who was doing it, but would blame the Muslims anyway. I’d rather have left the LTD as well, but there was a difference between the Serbs knowing they were getting designated and being able to prove it.
After extracting myself from the immediate area, I’d just hit a road and become Nick Collins, freelance reporter, again. I carried a Sony Hi-8 video camera and a Nikon 35mm SLR in my daysack. On the way in to the job I’d mixed with the local population here and there to make sure I had plenty of shots. If I was caught, I wanted to look the part.
Nick Collins had an Irish passport for this job. Irish or Swiss, they’re the safest documents in the world. Who’s ever pissed off with Dublin or Berne? With a name like Collins but a London accent, I’d have to say I came from Kilburn. Dad just never got round to taking Brit nationality when he finished working for McAlpine in the early seventies.
Freelancers like me were two a penny out here. Young guys, and the occasional girl, trying to make their fortune with bang-bang pictures and footage that might be good enough to be syndicated round the world. I’d joined a cast of hundreds who’d booked an air ticket then headed to Dixons in search of a decent SLR camera and a few hundred rolls of film. Once in-country, they asked where all the chaos was and made for it like bees to a honeypot.
Shouts were coming from the factory. I raised my head slowly and squinted through the dull, grey light. A group of Serbs were playing football again to warm themselves up. They were in a ragbag of uniforms. Some had camouflage; some were in what looked like German army-surplus parkas. Some were wearing wellington boots with thick, knee-high socks folded over at the top; some had decent calf-height boots. I’d seen better dressed and better organized Serb troops; maybe these were the cooks and bottle-washers. Whatever, they had a new football today.
I’d watched as these guys killed two Bosnian ‘soldiers’ the morning before – an old man and a boy of about fifteen. They’d taken them into the factory. Judging by the screams, they’d probably interrogated them, then brought them outside and shot them in the chest. I thought it strange at the time; why not in the head? That was what normally happened. I found out why at afternoon kick-off.
The whole thing over here was a fuck-up from start to finish – if there ever was a finish. I thought about the young girl I’d met a few days before, shivering at the roadside with a much older woman. She spoke a bit of English, so I asked their permission to take some photographs to fill up another roll of thirty-six for my cover story. She smiled shyly and told me her name.
‘Where you going, Zina?’
She shivered again and motioned down the road. ‘Sarajevo.’
What could I say? She was jumping out of the frying-pan and into the fire. The Serbs had had the place under siege for over two years. As well as constant sniper fire, they were lobbing about four thousand mortar and artillery shells into the city every day. The UNPROFOR troops who controlled the airport had their hands tied. About the only thing they could do was fly in aid for the half-million or so Sarajevans who were trapped. Thousands had been killed, but maybe this lot would be among the handful who made it through the Serb front line and into somebody’s basement. I hoped so. If we both got to the city I might get my jacket back.
Even in this fucked-up place, some situations were more fucked-up than others. The old woman had been wearing a once-pink anorak many sizes too small for her. Her face was barely visible under the hood’s fringe of white nylon fur, but I could see in her eyes that she was dying.
‘Here.’ I was still several Ks short of the cache – where the LTD and all the other kit I’d need had been dug in by the Regiment as soon as the cement works became a possible target – but I couldn’t just leave the young girl like that. I took off my red ski jacket and gloves and handed them over.
She thanked me. Then, as if she had forgotten her plight for a few seconds, she struck a pose, right shoulder towards me, head flicked to the side as she zipped up her new jacket. ‘Kate Moss,
no?’
I brought the camera up to my eye but I couldn’t bring myself to press the shutter release. Tears were suddenly streaming from very clear brown eyes and down her face. She was already back in the real world.
2
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.
