Killing Pilgrim

by Alen Mattich

  “Wait here, I’m having a look,” she said, getting out of the car, but first helping herself to a Beretta from the aluminium case next to della Torre. “Try not to have a party while I’m gone.”

  Not long after, they heard a heavy car pass fast along the road, scattering gravel behind it. Rebecca strolled back.

  “The Hilux?” della Torre asked when she’d slid into the car.

  “Yup.” He noticed that she put the handgun on the floor under her seat. “What do you fellows suggest?”

  “Maybe he going to Zadar too,” Strumbić said.

  “Maybe,” della Torre echoed. “Though I’d guess they were probably looking for us.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same thing,” said Rebecca. “The question is whether they’re just following us to see where we’re going or if they want something from us.”

  “You mean if they want to talk to us?”

  “Or something.”

  “But they could stop us in Zagreb, no?” asked Strumbić.

  “Zagreb’s a busy place,” della Torre said. “People who drive cars with tinted windows tend to like their privacy.”

  “What do you think? Wait a little while and let them think we’re long gone? Go back?” Rebecca asked.

  “I’ve got a feeling you already know what you want to do,” della Torre said.

  “Why don’t you boys have a cigarette? We’ll have a drink and then carry on. The way they were moving, it looked like they thought they’d lost us. I don’t think they’ll stop.”

  They sat smoking in the cornfield while Rebecca scouted the road again before pushing off. The route through the country was quicker than the coast road, but della Torre couldn’t help but wonder what the eventual cost of speed might be.

  They were back on the half-paved road, driving between wheat and cornfields and vineyards broken up by the occasional copse. The farther they drove, the more the landscape became lumpy with rocky escarpments, the white stone of the Velebit Mountains rising up through the reddish brown earth like rows of cracked teeth from bleeding gums.

  “Winnetou is film here,” Strumbić said as they passed a narrow green valley in between two ranges of high rock.

  “Winnie what?” Rebecca asked.

  “Winnetou. Film from book. Is made here.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, unconvinced.

  “Is about famous Indian Winnetou and cowboy friend Old Shatterhand. Cowboy and Indians, you know.”

  “I know cowboys and Indians, but I’ve never heard of either of those people.”

  Strumbić was dumbfounded. Everybody had heard of Winnetou. Even if they hadn’t read the books, they’d seen the films. They were famous.

  “German movies made with the Yugoslavs,” della Torre said, remembering something Anzulović must have told him once. “They’re based on books by Karl May. May was a German who wrote a bunch of adventures about exotic places. Had a hell of an imagination. I don’t think he ever left Germany, and most of what he wrote was from a prison cell.”

  “A bad guy, was he?” Rebecca asked.

  “I think it was debtor’s prison. Anyway, he’s famous in Germany and here. And everybody in Germany and Yugoslavia loves cowboys and Indians. Mostly because of him, I think. He was Hitler’s favourite writer. “

  “German and Yugoslav cowboys and Indians?” She laughed.

  To Strumbić, nothing hitherto had emphasized Rebecca’s strangeness quite as much as the fact that she didn’t know about Winnetou. Sure, it was odd finding a woman who could handle a rifle like she did. But not to have heard of Winnetou? He’d once arrested a middle-aged farmer for killing his father with a potato. Shoved it raw down the old man’s throat because he’d turned the television off during a broadcast of one of the Winnetou films.

  They were driving between a cornfield on one side and a vineyard on the other, and approaching a wooded hillside crowned with bare white rock, when the front of the car erupted. It sounded like they’d hit a dog or burst a tire. Rebecca swerved instinctively and slammed her full weight on the brake, not even coming to a full stop before throwing the Merc into reverse. Another thud. The car bellowed as she opened the throttle fully, clouds of dust rising in front of them, obscuring the road.

  “What the fuck?” della Torre said, pinned to his seatbelt by the backwards acceleration.

  “Is not tire?” Strumbić shouted over the car’s roar.

  Another thud, and steam burst out of the hood and the car stopped dead.

  “Out. Out fast. Get into the corn. Grab the bags,” Rebecca yelled.

  They were scrambling out of their seats when a round hole punched through the windshield a little to the right of centre. Another hole appeared, lower and to the right. Della Torre felt air on the back of his neck, and from the corner of his eye he saw that the back windshield had disappeared. They spilled onto the tarmac, crouching behind the false protection of the open car doors, della Torre managing to grab one of the hard cases and the canvas bag. He’d left the other case in the back seat. There was no sign of Rebecca.

  “Fucking Gringo. Why is it that whenever I’m with you, somebody ends up shooting at me?” Strumbić said as they threw themselves into the cornfield.

  “Rebecca?” della Torre called.

  “I’m here,” she replied from the vineyard on the other side of the road.

  “Can you see where they are?” della Torre asked.

  “The trees in front, where the road curves,” Rebecca called back.

  Della Torre waddled in a squat back to the edge of the cornfield, where he could see down the road and smell the dripping petrol and hot oil pouring out of the car. Rebecca was opposite him, crouching between two rows of vines across the line of fire.

  “Not a very good shot, is he?” She spoke to him across the asphalt killing zone, her voice even, controlled.

  “Gives us hope,” della Torre called back in a hoarse croak, trying to make himself heard without calling attention to himself.

  Steam boiled furiously from the Merc’s punctured radiator, spreading a little cloud over its dented hood. As the other two talked, Strumbić crawled, head down, deeper into the corn. Now and again a metallic thud hit the car or the sound of rending plants resounded through the cornfield, causing both men to flinch.

  “Have you got the rifle?” she called over to them.

  Della Torre crept back to the case, which Strumbić had dragged with him, and opened it.

  “No. I’ve got the machine gun and the other Beretta,” della Torre said.

  “Can you load up and give them a spray or two so I can get to the car?” Rebecca asked.

  “Don’t be crazy.”

  “Just do it.”

  Della Torre slid a long, curved magazine into the Heckler & Koch and handed it to Strumbić, taking the Beretta for himself.

  “On three,” he called to her. “One. Two —”

  Strumbić was up before della Torre finished counting, his arm raised, pumping bullets in the general direction of the woods. Della Torre did the same. A cob of corn exploded somewhere beside della Torre’s head; he couldn’t be sure whether it had been hit by a bullet from the woods or Strumbić’s wild firing.

  “I ever mention I don’t like being shot at?” della Torre said, wiping flecks of green and yellow pulp off his face.

  “Okay, I got it,” she shouted. “Throw me a box of bullets from the canvas bag. Wrap it up in plastic so they don’t end up scattering everywhere. They’re the big ones.”

  Della Torre found them, the biggest calibre in the bag. The square box was heavy and he squat-ran back to the edge of the cornfield, where he could see Rebecca crouching on the other side. With a heave, he got the box over to her just as a bullet ploughed a furrow in the old tarmac in front of him.

  “What you think? Wait until they tired and they look for us?” St
rumbić asked.

  Rebecca ignored them as she assembled the rifle and scope. “Julius, you stay there and fire the occasional round into the woods just to keep them occupied. Marko and I are going in a bit closer.”

  Della Torre wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about her plan. But neither was Strumbić.

  “That’s great. I get to stay here for some crazy shooter to use as target practice,” Strumbić complained in Croat, but he let off a quick buzz-saw burst of bullets in the direction of the woods.

  “Julius, if you don’t mind, see if you can avoid hitting me in the back. At least not until you intend to,” della Torre said.

  “Gringo, if I want to shoot you, first I’ll shoot off your dick, and only then will I turn you around and shoot you in the back.”

  “Okay. So if I lose my dick, I’ll know it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Julius, shoot high so you don’t hit us,” Rebecca shouted from the vineyard. “I don’t want to be on the wrong end of that spray gun. Marko, only fire when you know it’s them. All right. Let’s go.”

  Both della Torre and Rebecca moved away from the dead Mercedes and each other — he, deeper into the corn rows, while she walked along the vines. He could hear the angry bark of a powerful rifle and the tall cornstalks ripple and shred as though lashed by a metal-tipped bullwhip.

  Now and again he heard the woodpecker hammer of Strumbić’s machine gun — three, four sudden bursts, and then silence.

  Once he’d got far enough away from the car, a good fifty metres from the road, della Torre hazarded a look through the plants’ tasselled tops. At a quick estimate, he figured three hundred metres separated him and the shooter. He continued his reluctant walk towards the wood, stooped and cautious as he moved through the corn, trying not to ripple the stalks for fear of alerting the gunman. But the shooter seemed to be concentrating on Strumbić, who was returning fire from farther back in the cornfield.

  The road ran between him and Rebecca, straight towards the hill, before curving sharply to the left on Rebecca’s side, following the contour of the land. Eventually she’d have to leave herself exposed if she wanted to cross into the wood. Not that it would be much easier for della Torre. The cornfield ended about twenty metres before the wood; in between was a strip of weeds and piles of white stone shifted from the field by generations of farmers.

  He was already near the edge of the cornfield. Farther to the right was a mown meadow. If he tried crossing there, the shooter would have a clear view of him. Worse still, there seemed to be heavy brambles in that direction, and bushes with long, ugly thorns. He’d have to take his chances here.

  The heavy rifle hidden in the wood barked regularly. From the delay between shots, della Torre guessed it was bolt-action. From the damage the Merc had sustained and the raw, throaty sound the gun made, he figured it was around .50 calibre.

  He wondered whether this was a Serb ambush. But why hadn’t they given the Hilux the same treatment?

  For a long few minutes he squatted at the edge of the cornfield, building up the courage to launch himself into the woods. He breathed deeply and steadily, willing his heart to beat less frantically. He held the Beretta hip-high, gripping two spare magazines in his other hand.

  Strumbić was still shooting from somewhere behind him. Ahead and a little to the right was the gunman. Sweat plastered della Torre’s cotton shirt to his skin. He wished he was wearing his sunglasses or a hat. The sun was relentlessly bright and high.

  The gunman fired three or four rounds a minute, sometimes in rapid succession and sometimes as if he was waiting. Strumbić fired mostly during those quiet periods. Was the shooter alone? No other gun was heard, but that might not mean much. If he wasn’t alone, how many of them were there? What other weapons did they have? Was the shooter there just as a distraction while his companions stalked them, much as della Torre and Rebecca were trying to do in turn?

  He paused to listen. Silence. And then the rifle’s bark.

  He ran. Hard, fast, and low, stumbling over the rocks of the nettle-choked strip of no-man’s land. He caught a glimpse in the distance, where the road curved away from him, of a black truck. The Hilux.

  A small-gauge automatic opened fire from the woods. Until then, there’d only been evidence of the big rifle. It meant they’d spotted him.

  He heard an angry buzz of bullets whipping through the corn behind him. The run was the longest twenty metres of his life.

  Strumbić’s machine gun coughed out its reply. Della Torre didn’t envy him. The corn offered decent cover, but no protection. Strumbić would have been unlucky to catch a bullet from the big rifle, but it was going to be harder to hide from a spray of automatic fire. The light-calibre gun might not be as accurate over that distance, but those scattered bullets could wound or kill just as effectively.

  Then again, della Torre wasn’t too happy about his own circumstances either.

  Thorny shrubs tore at him before he made it to the safety of a big oak. He wished he had more firepower than the Beretta. He didn’t really know what he ought to be doing. He didn’t want to get too close to the shooters, not least because he didn’t want to risk being hit by Strumbić’s occasional wild salvo. But if he could somehow flank them, he might be able to draw a bead on one of them.

  The big gun kept up its regular delivery, always aimed towards Strumbić. The smaller automatic ripped through the foliage, but nothing much seemed to be coming his way. As far as he could tell, all the noise was coming from the same direction. The shooters were sticking together. Whoever had followed them from Zagreb to the wilds of the Dalmatian hinterland seemed to be amateurs at this game.

  During a brief break in the firing, della Torre thought he heard a familiar metallic clank in the distance, though he couldn’t be sure. He listened for it again, but it was pointless — Strumbić and the rifleman had gone back to trading volleys.

  He edged deeper into the woods, where there were fewer low shrubs. The big beeches and chestnuts kept the ground clear, giving him passage. He noticed plenty of ankle-high blueberry bushes and could smell the forest mushrooms amid the decomposing leaf litter. His arms stung with tiny rips from the thorn shrubs he’d charged through. They’d pricked through his trousers as well. He could feel the heat of the afternoon even in the shade of the trees. At a guess, he figured he was within a hundred metres of the shooters. There was still no sign of them separating.

  He scrambled uphill, hugging the profile of the landscape, careful of twigs and loose stones, hoping to make his approach from behind and to the side. He turned towards the sound of the rifle once he got about forty metres into the woods.

  He used every skill he could remember from the commandos to move silently, but each one of his steps filled his ears with a dry explosion, a starburst of noise.

  He was wary of the smooth rock that frequently broke the surface of the earth here. He moved patiently. High overhead he heard the tearing of leaves and the thud of bullets against branches. Strumbić’s fire.

  And then, there they were. At first he could only hear them; they were dressed in camouflage, including their baseball caps.

  “Kill him yet?”

  “He’s still firing, isn’t he?”

  “Well, give me a go, then.”

  “You had your go. You barely hit the car.”

  “Think they’re all there?”

  “Course not. There’s the one who made it to the trees.”

  “I told you to let them get closer before you started shooting.”

  “I got it, didn’t I?”

  “You got the car, dimwit. I didn’t see you hit anyone.”

  “Think we hit the redhead?”

  “Must have done.”

  “Shame.”

  “There’s the one in the cornfield still shooting and the one in the woods.”

  “What do you think he’s doing
in the woods?”

  “Taking a piss. How the hell do I know?”

  “Think he’s going to try to get to us?”

  “With what?”

  “He had a gun.”

  “I didn’t see a gun. Had a good sight of him and he didn’t have a gun. Nothing serious, anyway.”

  “If you had such a good sight of him, why didn’t you get him?”

  “’Cause my fucking machine gun jammed.”

  “It didn’t jam, you just forgot to take the safety off.”

  “Same fucking thing.”

  “That’s not a jam.”

  “Will you shut up? I can’t think to shoot straight.”

  One had a deep voice. The other’s was as high as a woman’s. They both had lugubrious Bosnian accents.

  Bosnians . . .

  Why was it always Bosnians?

  Della Torre finally sighted on them, but he did not have a clear enough line to be sure of hitting them with a pistol at that distance. There was a big fallen tree in the way, which they were using as cover. He estimated he was about sixty metres away. Too far to be reliable with an unfamiliar handgun and precious little practice.

  He’d have to get to within thirty metres before risking a shot. He didn’t want to miss. Given the damage it had done to the Mercedes, the rifle could probably shoot through trees. He kept low, moving smoothly.

  He was close, almost close enough to be sure of hitting them, when he slipped. He was on slightly higher ground and was heading down when the leaf litter fooled him. It hid one of those flat, smooth white rocks. His leg shot out from under him, dropping him on his back as if he’d stepped on ice wearing hobnailed shoes. He tried to catch himself with his weak left arm but it buckled under him, and all he managed to do was lose the spare magazines he’d been holding, hammering his right elbow in the process. He’d switched the safety off and the impact fired the Beretta, only just missing his own foot.

  The Bosnians reacted immediately. The one closest to della Torre turned his machine gun on him, but he aimed too low. The spew of bullets took chunks off the trunk of the mighty fallen oak, sending bits of bark flying.