Warriors (9781101621189)

by Young, Tom

  Perhaps thirty Muslims sat on the floor. They ranged in age from about twelve to seventy, all men and boys. All wore soiled shirts and wrinkled slacks, probably not changed in days. Just like the women Dušic had seen earlier, these males dressed like any Yugoslavs of their class—no dishdashas or turbans like their towel-head cousins—but again, Dušic wasn’t fooled. Mladic addressed the prisoners.

  “Hello, neighbors,” Mladic said. “Do you know who I am?”

  Some of the Turks said yes, some nodded, and some remained silent. Dušic found it infuriating that these filth could address this man without bolting to attention, without starting each sentence with “sir.” Mladic unwrapped two morsels of chocolate, handed them to the youngest two prisoners. Dušic liked that bit with the candy. Let them hold on to a shred of hope.

  “If you did not know me before,” the general continued, “now you see me. And now you see what your illicit government has done to you: abandoned you. The United Nations cannot protect you. NATO can do nothing. We are not afraid of anyone.”

  The Turks fell silent. The odor of their sweat filled the room, and the smell disgusted Dušic. He found it hard not to smirk as Mladic spoke truth to these traitors. Dušic admired the man even more when he considered how the general continued serving his people after such an awful personal loss. The year before, Mladic’s daughter had been found dead of a gunshot wound. Western propaganda mills reported that she had taken her own life after reading foreign news reports of how her father savaged Sarajevo. But Dušic had no doubt the beautiful young woman had been murdered by Muslims. Some called Mladic crazy with grief. But Dušic felt grief merely focused Mladic, made him stronger.

  The general turned to Dušic and said, “Carry on.” Then he strode from the house, boots clomping. Dušic took his mentor’s actions as a great compliment: no further instructions, no guidance, no admonitions. Mladic trusted him to complete his own small part in the orders of the day.

  At nightfall, Dušic rounded up a few of his young razvodniks. He ordered them to tie the prisoners’ hands and march the Turks onto a waiting bus. Stefan and the other sergeants would have handled this task better than the razvodniks. Dušic had even recommended Stefan for a battlefield commission. But Stefan and the rest of the NCOs were supervising similar tasks at nearby sites. Officers and sergeants were spread thin that night because so much had to get done, and quickly. That left Dušic with his newest, dumbest troops. No matter. The razvodniks would not need to use their minds, only their trigger fingers.

  As the bound prisoners filed onto the bus, some of them began to murmur questions and protests. This insolence would not do. Dušic drew his CZ 99. Pointed the pistol at arm’s length. Fired over the heads of the Turks. They flinched at the blast.

  “Silence!” Dušic shouted. “All your questions will find answers soon enough.”

  On the bus, the three razvodniks guarded the prisoners. The privates held their Zastava rifles, seemed unsure what to do next. Dušic pointed to one of them.

  “You,” he said, “drive the bus. Follow my truck.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” the boy said.

  Dušic stomped from the bus, took his seat on the passenger side of the army truck. His driver waited behind the wheel.

  “To the field,” Dušic ordered.

  After the truck rolled through a few miles of dark turns and twists, bright lights shone up ahead. As the truck drew nearer, Dušic saw the lights were the lamps of a backhoe. The backhoe idled at the end of a twenty-meter ditch.

  Dušic opened his door, swung himself down from the truck as the bus pulled up behind it. Fresh mud clogged the treads of his boots. He walked around to the back of the truck and retrieved a cardboard box filled with rags. He dropped the box in front of the bus. When the door of the bus levered open, he called to the three soldiers inside.

  “Line them up,” Dušic said. “Blindfold them.”

  The razvodniks peered outside the bus windows, looked at each other as if they did not understand. Dušic had not briefed them on tonight’s operation for fear of a security breach. But now their task should have become obvious.

  Morons. Minds filled with teenage mush, the products of idle hours spent listening to Madonna or, God forbid, those American Negro rappers.

  “Now!” Dušic shouted.

  The soldiers hefted their weapons, issued instructions in tones that sounded more like requests than orders. Still, the Turks rose, shuffled down the steps and onto the wet ground. When they saw the blindfolds and the ditch, some began to moan and cry out.

  One of them turned to Dušic and said, “What wrong have we done to you?”

  Who did this impudent Muslim think he was? In a flash of anger, Dušic pulled his handgun. Swung it like throwing a roundhouse punch. Smacked the barrel against the Turk’s face. In the glare of headlamps, the man dropped.

  “Get up,” Dušic said. Dušic kicked the man until he staggered to his feet, blood streaming from his nose.

  In a few minutes, all the Turks stood blindfolded at the edge of the ditch. All remained silent. Dušic gave another order to the razvodniks.

  “Are you waiting for Saint Sava’s Day?” Dušic said. “Fire!”

  A trembling private stared as if he didn’t understand Serbo-Croatian. “Sir,” he said, voice quavering, “is this proper?” The other troops looked at Dušic and the private. Blank expressions all around.

  Weaklings. Sentimental fools. When Stefan and I were laying waste to Sarajevo, Dušic thought, these pups were playing computer games and watching television. Had their parents not taught them what Muslims were like?

  Dušic snatched the Zastava from the boy’s hands. Snapped the fire selector to J, for jedinacna. Single rounds, semiautomatic. Pointed it one-handed at the back of the first Turk’s head. Squeezed the trigger.

  Booming report of the rifle. Glimmer of tumbling brass. Spray of blood and bone. The Muslim collapsed into the ditch. Burned gunpowder salted the air.

  Dušic shoved the rifle back into the razvodnik’s arms with enough force to push the soldier back two steps.

  “You fire this weapon,” Dušic hissed through gritted teeth, “or I will put you in the line with them.”

  The privates raised their Zastavas. Flame spat from the muzzles. Bodies tumbled into the ditch like sacks of laundry. Echoes of the shots reverberated through the night. In the stark glare and shadows thrown by headlights, a few limbs wriggled in the mud. Rifle smoke drifted across the enclave of Srebrenica.

  13

  PARSON FIGURED THE INVESTIGATION could go in one of two ways. Agents could trace the opium supply backward and target corrupt Afghan military personnel. Or agents could trace deliveries forward to Belgrade and find out who was selling the narcotics in Europe. When higher-ups chose the latter, Parson felt disappointed at first. He’d invested a lot of himself in creating the new Afghan Air Force, and he wanted nothing more than to get his hands around the neck of anyone who betrayed the oath of enlistment by smuggling that garbage. But he had to admit it made sense to go after bigger fish. Irena and her crewmates had picked up intel that established pretty firmly that the boss operated from Belgrade—or at least someplace where people spoke Serbo-Croatian.

  The surprise came when Webster asked if Parson and Gold could help in the probe, wherever it led. At a meeting in the base commander’s office, Webster presented the idea as an extension of Parson’s duties as safety officer. Gold and Cunningham sat with Parson as Webster described what he wanted.

  “Your crash analysis opened this whole can of worms,” Webster said. “Cunningham can use someone who knows air logistics. And if the bad guys are talking to people in Afghanistan, I can probably use a Pashto speaker, too, if Ms. Gold is up for it.”

  Why the hell not? Parson thought. Might as well see this thing through to the end. If another serious accident happened at Manas, God forbid, he could always go
back and deal with it. But more than likely, nothing would happen on his watch any more important than the problem before him now.

  “Well,” Parson said, “I could sit around here telling people not to run with scissors, or I could go help catch this son of a bitch screwing around with the air force I helped build.”

  “I hoped you’d see it that way,” Webster said.

  “What about you, Sophia?” Parson asked. He hoped she’d agree to stay with the investigation; he wanted to spend more time with her.

  “I’ll help if I can,” Gold said. “But my civilian status might limit what I can do.”

  “Ah, I took the liberty of making some calls,” Webster said. “If you’d like—and it’s entirely up to you—the Army will put you on orders as an individual augmentee for as long as you want.”

  Gold raised her eyebrows. Then she said, “All right; I’ll do it. But I don’t have any uniforms with me.”

  “You won’t need them,” Cunningham said. “Civilian clothes for this op.”

  For Parson, that was unusual but not unheard-of. He’d once flown a C-130 into Bangkok on a peacetime relief mission. In a concession to Thai sensitivities, the crew was ordered to wear civvies—not just when on the ground, but while flying. One of Parson’s weirdest memories involved operating a military aircraft while wearing jeans and tennis shoes. He didn’t know who they’d fooled, though. The airplane still had U.S. AIR FORCE painted on the side in three-foot letters. But perhaps wearing civvies made the diplomats happy.

  “So where are we going?” Parson asked.

  “Sarajevo,” Cunningham said.

  “Some folks way above my pay grade have been talking to the Serbian government,” Webster said. “The Serbs plan to help, but they don’t want the Rivet Joint landing in Belgrade.”

  Probably had something to do with NATO planes bombing targets in Belgrade several years ago, Parson thought. Didn’t matter. The surveillance jet could take off from Sarajevo, in Bosnia, and listen to comms all over the Balkans.

  After the meeting broke up, Webster motioned for Parson to stay. The commander closed his office door.

  “There’s another reason I want you and Gold to go with Cunningham to Europe,” Webster said.

  “What’s that?” Parson asked.

  “Some of the folks at OSI want to hand this off to Interpol and be done with it. In a lot of ways that makes sense. But given the part of the world this is coming from, I’d like us to stay with it, especially if it involves a bunch of ex-military types.”

  “The good old FRY,” Parson said. “Former Republic of Yugoslavia.”

  “Nothing in that place is ever simple. This could turn into a lot more than dope peddling. So I want you and Gold to make Cunningham understand why this is important. If he stays on task, maybe OSI will stay on task. You know what happened in Bosnia and Kosovo; you flew there. But Cunningham’s not old enough to remember.”

  Parson knew all too well the things that had happened there, and he wished he didn’t remember some of it. But how to get Cunningham to understand? He’d have to think on that one.

  On their last night at Manas, Parson and Gold had dinner together in the chow hall. Gold teased him that he should call the dining facility by its more correct term: DFAC, pronounced “dee-fak.”

  “The military’s getting way too PC for me,” Parson said.

  “Yet you’re still hanging in there.”

  She had a point. The Air Force had been Parson’s life. He’d devoted himself single-mindedly to his career for two decades. He had enough years to retire and move on to something else, but he could not picture himself as a civilian.

  “Yeah,” Parson said, “sometimes I think my glory days are behind me. I just don’t know what should come next. Looks like you have a pretty good plan, though.”

  “We’ll see if I do. On some days I miss that sense of purpose I had in the Army. I need to spend more time in the new job before I get it all figured out.”

  “And here I’ve just roped you into coming back on active duty for a little while. I thought this would give you only a short break. I hope it’s not causing too much trouble to leave the civilian job for this long.”

  “Well, there’s never a good time to leave it. And I hate to leave my friends in Afghanistan, but I know I’ll have to leave them sooner or later. We’re drawing down.”

  “You do what you can, where you can, when you can. Then you gotta let go.”

  Peering over her paper cup of iced tea, Gold rolled her eyes at him. He knew what she meant. Both of them had trouble letting go. Both had an instinct to try to fix the world in their different ways. And, Parson thought, both of us should know better by now. Yet here we are, on the wrong side of the globe from home, because we have the stones to think we can make a difference.

  “You know,” Gold said, “when you’re young and you want to do good, somebody will tell you what to do. Go learn a language. Go learn to fly. But when you get older, you have to find your own path with a lot less help.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Parson said. Not for the first time, Sophia had found the words to express what he was thinking. He didn’t know what should come next in his life. But he wanted to do something helpful. And he wanted her to be part of it.

  The next day, Parson sat again in the jump seat of the Rivet Joint as the aircraft thundered off the runway at Manas. The mountains dropped away and dissolved into the haze below. Gold and Cunningham rode in the back with Irena. Up front, Parson sipped coffee and watched the pilots and navigator work, and he monitored their chatter on interphone and radios. He felt like a crew dog again, and he could almost imagine himself waiting to take his turn at the control yoke or the nav console. For the most part, however, those days were behind him. This wasn’t his jet, and he didn’t know its systems and procedures.

  But he did know the sucker had plenty of power. He could see that from the healthy climb rate registered on the vertical speed indicators. After several minutes, the Rivet Joint leveled at thirty-four thousand feet, and the pilots throttled back to a silken cruise.

  The aircraft commander put the plane on autopilot and opened his flight manual. The man studied for about half an hour, frequently glancing up at instruments and making sure the copilot had things under control. Eventually he said, “Okay, I’m bored. Nav, can you find us some news on HF?”

  “Coming up,” the navigator answered. A few seconds later he said, “BBC on HF1.”

  Parson turned a volume knob on the jump seater’s comm box. A female newscaster spoke in crisp tones, with just a hint of an Indian accent:

  “In other news, tensions between Serbs and Muslims are on the rise across Bosnia and Serbia following a chain of church and mosque burnings. Officials say three people died in continued rioting today in the Bosnian town of Zvornik, a scene of wide-scale atrocities during the 1990s. The leaders of Bosnia and Serbia have appealed for calm. In Belgrade, the president’s office issued a statement saying Serbs have no desire to return to the dark days of ethnic warfare.”

  “Oh, great,” the copilot said. “Why is there always trouble wherever we go?”

  “Because we’re in the military, dumbass,” the navigator said.

  “Seriously, though, I thought that place had quieted down.”

  “It had,” Parson said. “I don’t know why this shit’s flaring up again.”

  Parson thought back to some of the earliest missions in his career, when he’d been a young lieutenant not long out of ROTC and nav school. He remembered one night in particular when he’d sat at the navigator’s station in the lead aircraft of a three-ship formation of C-130s. The formation had droned through the darkness, heading for the initial point on a run to drop bundles of food and medical supplies.

  On his scope, he saw the blips of the left wingman and right wingman. All three C-130s used SKE, or station-keeping e
quipment, to maintain formation position on instruments in the murk that shrouded Bosnia. The weather made things tough that night. Clouds obscured the drop zone.

  Parson had to “shack” this drop—put it exactly on target. If he missed, intelligence officers had warned, the bundles would fall outside the safe zone. The relief supplies might lure the IDPs—internally displaced persons—to their deaths at the hands of the Bosnian Serb Army, or Arkan’s Tigers, a freelance death squad.

  The pilots and engineer wore night-vision goggles, but Parson kept his own NVGs turned off. He couldn’t drop visually in this soup, so he relied on the adverse weather aerial delivery system’s computer to help him. He checked his scope again. Almost time.

  “Thirty seconds to slowdown,” Parson said.

  He watched the numbers count down on his instruments, bathed in the green glow of NVG-compatible lighting.

  “Five seconds to slowdown,” Parson called. Please don’t let me screw this up, he thought. Four Mississippi, three Mississippi, two, one. “Slow down, slow down now.”

  The pilot knuckled back the throttles, and the flight engineer began reading the checklist.

  “Flaps.”

  “Fifty percent.”

  “Aux pump.”

  “On.”

  Parson’s eyes darted between his checklist and his scope and instruments. No room for error now. He breathed through his oxygen mask in the depressurized airplane. The pure oxygen felt cool as it filled his lungs, and it helped settle his nerves.

  “Ramp and door.”

  “Clear to open.”

  A swirl of cold air entered the flight deck as the back end of the aircraft yawned open. Parson could not see the cargo and the open ramp; the flight deck bulkhead blocked his view. But he could imagine the two helmeted loadmasters back there, standing by for his one-minute call. The engineer and the pilots finished configuring the C-130 for the drop.