Warriors (9781101621189) (14 page)

“Too late for what?” Parson asked.

Cunningham held up his hand for silence as he listened to his earpiece. He nodded, then responded to whatever he'd heard by saying, “Negative. Dragnet out.” He removed his earpiece and said to Parson, “Now, that's weird.”

“What?” Parson asked.

“Right about the time our boy there got a mouthful of the tarmac, the mission commander in the Rivet Joint recommended an abort.”

“Why?”

“Irena heard something. The Antonov pilot was on the phone again, and his boss said something about an op that had nothing to do with drugs and nothing to do with flying cargo.”

“Still, why would the cops abort?”

“So they could wait and find out whatever those jackasses were talking about. It's a moot point now, though.”

Parson wondered what that other operation could be. Had they blown a chance to make even bigger arrests?

Several minutes ticked by with no apparent activity. Eventually, Dragan emerged from the warehouse, pistol in hand. He walked casually; the stakeout had ended with success. However, he wore a puzzled expression. Evidently he'd heard the call from the Rivet Joint and, like Cunningham, didn't know what to make of it. With a practiced motion, he put his handgun's safety on and slipped the weapon into a concealment holster. As Dragan approached the car, Cunningham rolled down the window.

“You find opium?” Cunningham asked.

“Yeah, a shitload.”

“Your guys okay?” Parson said.

“Yeah, nobody's hurt on my team. One of the suspects has a broken nose, but he brought it on himself.”

Cunningham laughed out loud. “So his face is all whopperjawed now,” Cunningham said. “Serves him right. Can we see the haul?”

“Yeah, come on in and take a look. The bus will get here soon and take these losers downtown.”

Inside the dimly lit warehouse, Parson needed a few minutes for his eyes to adjust. The black-clad policemen were taking photos and placing evidence in cartons. That evidence consisted mainly of cellophane packages wrapped in clear plastic bags.

Nine men sat on the floor, hands cuffed behind them. Five wore the blue flight suits of some Russian freight airline, and one suffered a black bruise that spread from his swollen nose all the way across both cheekbones. Blood streamed from his nostrils. All the suspects stared silently at the concrete floor. One of the police officers barked something in Serbo-Croatian, apparently an order to stand up, and he marched the men outside.

“Normally I'd feel like spiking the football after a raid like this,” Dragan said. “You don't get a bust this big every day.”

“I guess you wonder why they wanted you to hold off,” Parson said.

“Yeah. I talked to your Airman Markovich on secure voice after we got everything settled down.”

“So what did she hear?” Cunningham asked.

“Something about the narcotics being just a sideshow, and now it's time to focus on the main event.”

“Who was the pilot talking to?” Parson asked.

“No idea,” Dragan said. “Not yet, anyway.”

Parson wondered if whoever was on the other end of that phone call knew his little side business had just been shut down for good. If he didn't know now, Parson realized, he'd know very shortly. The next time he tried to call his minions, he'd get no answer because their cell phones would be sitting in evidence boxes.

And if the drug trafficking was just a sideshow, what was the main event? Webster would sure as hell want to know. So the mission hadn't ended. Parson knew his part of that mission: help motivate Cunningham to think outside his island.

Dragan ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, looked at the scene around him. “I don't know what we have here,” he said, “but I really don't like it.”

“Whatever it is, I think OSI's part might be wrapped up now,” Cunningham said.

“Not necessarily,” Parson said.

“What do you mean?”

“Webster is real interested in what's going on here, and he wants you to be, too. You took me on a road trip today. I'm taking you on one tomorrow.”

GOLD READ THE MAP
while Parson drove the rental car through the Bosnian town of Bratunac. Irena and Cunningham rode in the back. They took several wrong turns as they searched. As a last resort, Gold knew, they could have Irena ask for directions. But they didn't want to put Irena in that position. How could Irena just walk up to a local resident and ask about a place like that?

The GPS proved useless; they weren't looking for a location with an address, a spot meant to be found. But Parson spared Irena an awkward task when he said, “How about this right turn?” Just outside Bratunac, he steered the car onto an unpaved path too narrow for two vehicles to meet. Gravel crunched underneath the tires. A lone European beech tree stood sentry at the corner where the path met the road. Gold considered all the things that tree might have witnessed, here where grief pooled in the valleys like floodwater.

The path led uphill alongside fields, some planted anew and some thick with last year's stubble. The land leveled, then pitched down again. In a meadow against a stand of trees, Gold saw what they'd come to find.

Workers in white suits stepped around in a muddy patch that had been opened in the grass. Some of the workers held trowels in hands covered by blue latex gloves. Forensic specialists, Gold knew. Here and there through the mud, red marker flags fluttered in a light breeze.

If Gold had not known where she was, she might have thought this an archaeological dig, or perhaps a group of agricultural scientists taking soil samples. But just outside the mud, in the grass where the ground remained unbroken, about a dozen transfer cases sat lined in a row, each case covered with green fabric. Here was a Bosnian mass grave.

Parson stopped the car. Gold got out feeling as if she had arrived late to a funeral. An older man approached her immediately. He wore the same white trousers as the other workers, but he had removed his white overcoat to reveal a flannel collared shirt. The man carried a clipboard and a satellite phone. Someone in charge, Gold presumed, and used to shooing away curiosity seekers.

Gold took out her United Nations ID and her passport—not the blue civilian passport but the burgundy one. The one that read
The bearer is abroad on an official assignment for the United States government.
She introduced herself by name but not by rank, and she passed the man her documents.

“Sir, I cannot give you details, but my team is investigating something that may or may not have a connection to events like”—Gold gestured toward the open pit—“like this.”

“If you are looking for evidence, you will find much here,” the man said, “though not much to tie this massacre to a particular perpetrator.”

British accent. The man did not bother to give his name or title, but Gold assumed he was a colleague from the UN. He inspected her ID and passport and handed them back.

“We have come not so much for evidence as for—” Gold paused, unsure how to explain.

“Perspective?”

“That's a good way to put it. May we visit the site?”

“You may. Do not touch anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gold made a beckoning motion toward the car. Parson, Cunningham, and Irena got out and joined her.

“Are we sure we're not trespassing?” Cunningham asked.

“It's all right,” Gold said.

“Webster wanted us to understand just how bad things can get around here,” Parson said. “Nothing will do that like a visit to a spot like this.”

A half-truth, Gold knew. Parson needed no convincing. But there was no reason for Cunningham to feel like he was getting some kind of remedial schooling. And Gold believed she, too, had things to learn here. She would leave Bratunac a little wiser and much, much sadder.

They walked through the grass to the edge of the grave site. Gold expected to pick up whiffs of the stench of death, but then she realized far too much time had passed for that. The place smelled only of churned soil; the flesh that had covered these bones had become soil itself.

On a black tarpaulin, the workers had placed a number of objects from inside the grave. Gold saw a mud-caked watch with a metal band, hands long stilled at 3:12. Had that been the time of death two decades ago? Probably not. She imagined the watch strapped to a decaying wrist underneath the ground, running on battery power perhaps for a few years in a hopeless effort to track eternity.

Next to the watch lay a wedding ring and a wallet. The wallet looked as if it had been dropped in the dirt yesterday. The owner might wipe it off and return it to his pocket. But the owner resided in that pit somewhere, represented by a red flag.

Gold found it odd that these valuables remained. She'd seen horrific scenes of mass murder in Afghanistan, and the killers usually took everything useful from the bodies. These victims had been slaughtered and buried by people in a hurry.

Irena bowed her head as if in prayer. Parson stood with his hands clasped in front of him, as near to reverent as Gold had ever seen him. Cunningham just shook his head, turned away and looked into the woods, turned again and faced the grave.

“God, this is horrible,” he said. “Hard to believe these things went on.”

“They went on because the world didn't care enough,” Irena said.

Gold thought of words from John Donne. “‘No man is an island, entire of itself,'” she said, “‘every man is a piece of the continent . . .'”

Cunningham looked at her, nodded. He went over to the edge of the pit and kneeled. His eyes wandered across the grave site and seemed to stop where a forensic specialist dug at a skeleton only partially visible. Beside one of the red flags, accompanied by a placard with the number 15 on it, there was a human skull. The specialist used a trowel to work at the other bones. Roots curled around a clavicle as if the land resisted giving up its secrets.

As Gold looked more closely, other skulls became visible in the grave. She had to observe with care; the bones were not bleached white but had taken on stains the same color as the earth around them. Some of the skulls bore bullet holes in the back. A few of the skulls appeared too small to be those of adults.

Nearer to Gold, a specialist dug where no skeleton was apparent. The worker shoveled soil onto the screen of a sift box and began to shake the box. The wet earth did not sift well, but eventually enough dirt fell away to expose the delicate metacarpal bones of a hand, detached like puzzle pieces. The next bite of the shovel brought up what at first looked like a primitive bracelet. Gold recognized it as the circles of wire that had bound the hands.

“Who does things like this?” Cunningham asked.

“I don't know,” Parson said, “but I think Webster's point is that some of the people who do these things are still around.”

Another shovel full of dirt went into the sift box. This time the soil filtered away to leave a single shell casing. Not the short casing of a pistol cartridge but the longer, necked-down brass of high-powered rifle ammunition.

Gold imagined the scene that had taken place here. She could see the trucks trundling up the narrow path, the victims herded into a swale near the woods. If the atrocity had happened at night, headlights of vehicles would have thrown stark beams and shadows.

What last words had these victims spoken? Had they screamed or cried, pleaded for their lives? Had they said anything at all? And what thoughts could have gone through the minds of the shooters?

Another shovel of earth went into the sift box. The sifting yielded two more empty rifle cartridges. The forensic worker placed them next to the first casing, lined up in a row on a strip of plastic sheeting. Gold could almost hear the explosions of gunfire, the rifle reports rolling in waves, the dead dropping in ranks.

Now the dead who remained in the pit waited their turn to be placed into a transfer case. Perhaps they would make one final journey to a proper cemetery to rest with their ancestors.

Cunningham stood up, stepped away from the pit. “You guys up in the airplane heard something about a sideshow and the main event,” he said. “Is this what somebody could mean about the main event? More of this?” He swept his hand toward the mass grave.

“There's no telling,” Parson said. “But I think we want to hang in with this mission until we find out.”

Cunningham looked into the grave, then off into the woods. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we do.”

AT HIS DESK
, Dušic seethed. He fought the urge to hurl his telephone through the office window. No answer from the pilot, Dmitri, since yesterday. No answer at the warehouse. For security reasons, Dušic never left voice mail messages, but if any underlings ever missed his call, they'd dial back right away. So far, nothing. He could not escape the obvious conclusion: Those fools had gotten themselves arrested. Thank God he'd not been at the warehouse himself.

“Milica,” he called to his secretary in the next room, “has anyone phoned on the landline this afternoon?”

“No, sir. It is nearly six, Mr. DuÅ¡ic. Do you have further need of me?”

Dušic ground his teeth, but he saw no reason to take out his anger on Milica. She was his youngest employee and the only woman on his payroll, and he saw her as the future of Serbia. The chaste daughter he never had, the counterpoint to those Muslim whores who bred like rabbits. He had never once raised his voice to her, and he often counseled her to find some promising Serb officer and start a family. Do not let the Turks outnumber us, he joked with her.

“You may go, my dear,” he said. “Business may take me out of town for a few days. Sort the mail and tell any callers I can be reached on my mobile. If they do not already have the number, do not give it out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dušic listened to her gather her things and leave. When the outer door clicked shut, he closed his eyes and tried to settle his mind. Unlike the recent plane crash in Kyrgyzstan, this disruption was no mere setback but a genuine combat loss. However, a commander must handle these things. What would General Mladic do in this situation? He would adapt.

Now Dušic needed to act quickly: withdraw some funds, procure some weapons, go to ground. He hoped those idiots who got arrested wouldn't talk; surely they could imagine the consequences of betraying him. But even if the underlings kept their mouths shut, the authorities might still pick up the trail.

He would have to complete his mission under less-than-ideal circumstances, but that was war. No plan survived contact with the enemy.

Dušic removed his jacket and tie, rolled up his sleeves. He slid open the bottom drawer of his desk and lifted his CZ 99 and shoulder holster. Slipped on the holster, drew the weapon, and pulled back the slide just enough to see the gleam of the brass cartridge. Satisfied that the gun was loaded, he released the slide, holstered the pistol, and donned his jacket over the shoulder rig.

At a safe mounted in his office wall, Dušic tapped a combination into the keypad: 15-6-1389. The date of the battle at the Field of Blackbirds. A moment in time that transcended time, a portal through which vengeance flowed forever.

The lock's bolt retracted, and Dušic opened the safe. He removed a manila envelope filled with euros, American currency, and Serbian dinars—in all, just over one hundred thousand dollars.

By the time he pulled out of the parking garage in his Aventador, a charcoal dusk had turned Belgrade to shades of black and white, highlighted only by the colors of traffic lights. Pigeons flapped into the cornices of buildings, settling into their roosts. Dušic considered the problem of communication. Were his phone calls being monitored? He decided his throwaway cell phone was safer than his landline. His office location was public knowledge, and if the authorities decided to investigate him, they'd probably start by tapping his office numbers. As he drove, he used the cell phone to ring Stefan.

“Can you meet me tonight at the storage facility?” DuÅ¡ic asked.

“I can,” Stefan said. “But I am home in Sarajevo. I will need some time to make the drive.”

“Very well. Just make sure you get here. Bring your utility van. A problem has arisen.”

“Are you calling off the operation at the Patriarchate?”

“Security, my friend,” DuÅ¡ic said. Though he doubted this number would ever be monitored, he did not want any carelessness. “I will answer your questions when you arrive,” he added.

At an automatic teller machine, Dušic withdrew additional cash. He knew how events could overtake even the best commanders, and he wanted to have plenty of emergency money on hand. If police closed in, he might not be able to risk making an appearance at a bank or using his credit cards. His latest withdrawal left an electronic signature that placed him in Belgrade, but so what? That's where he lived. But if he needed to start moving around, the cash would allow him to do so without leaving more clues.

His safest move, he knew, would be simply to disappear. He could go to Russia, where kindred spirits and expatriate veterans would give him shelter. Mladic and Karadžic had hid out for years right here at home; in Russia or perhaps Ukraine, Dušic could vanish forever. But a life in hiding held no appeal. And if his plan succeeded, Serbs would hail him as a hero, and there would be no more need to hide.

Dušic felt he had pushed off from a shore to which he could never return. He had started across the Rubicon, and he would lead his people to the glory they deserved.

Full darkness had fallen by the time he reached his storage facility in Novi Beograd—New Belgrade, just across the Sava from the old part of the city. A chain-link fence with an automated gate surrounded rows of corrugated metal sheds, most of them available to the public for rent. But Dušic had bought one set of the storage units, wired them for electricity, installed climate control, and enclosed them with his own locked inner fence. He stopped his Aventador at the outer fence, reached through his open window, waved his security card at a card reader. The reader box beeped once, and its indicator light changed from red to green. An electric motor began to hum, and the gate inched open.

Dušic took his foot off the brake and rolled forward a few meters through the gate. He stopped to wait for the gate to close behind him. When the gate lurched shut again, he drove forward and turned left onto a concrete driveway that ran between the rows of storage units.

He kept his own fence locked with low technology: a padlock and chain. Dušic shut down his car and keyed open the padlock. More sophisticated gear protected the roll-up doors to his storage sheds. At one of them he entered a code for an electronic lock, and when it released, he raised the door and turned on the lights.

Man had always channeled much of his ingenuity into inventing ways to kill, and Dušic prided himself in trading on that ingenuity. The fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead illuminated the best of his stock in small arms, optics, night-vision devices, and other infantry gear. He bought and sold equipment up to and including Sukhoi jets, but hardware a man could carry represented Dušic's bread and butter. He always kept supplies on hand for small orders, and from that cache he would outfit himself and his team.

AK-47 assault rifles hung from racks along one wall. Dušic hoped Stefan had recruited more
razvodnik
s, and he selected five AKs for the attack on the Patriarchate. For his own use he preferred other firearms, but Kalashnikovs were usually the weapon of choice for Muslim terrorists, probably because the rifles were durable as earth itself and could be operated by any fool. The whole point of his upcoming operation was to make it look like a towel-head strike on an Orthodox holy place.

But Stefan, Dušic knew, had the talent for instruments of more precision. For his friend, he reserved an American M24 sniper rifle. Though Dušic had no use for Americans, his judgment in weapons knew no politics, and he cared only about quality. And the Americans, he admitted, made some of the finest weapons in the world. In the right hands, this thing could deliver death from afar like bolts of lightning, guided by a telescopic sight with fine adjustments marked in increments that looked like the scales of a micrometer. In keeping with Stefan's preference, the rifle was a bolt-action. Dušic had long since quit trying to talk his friend into using automatics; Stefan had demonstrated well enough what he could do with one bullet at a time.

Dušic set the weapons by the door, the equipment protected by foam-padded cases. Then he collected cans of 7.62-millimeter ammunition, batteries, handheld radios, and other accessories that might come in handy over the next few days. He even picked up body armor and a few fragmentation grenades for good measure. The Holy Assembly of Bishops would take place in the following week. If all went according to plan, the clerics would become martyrs by Dušic's hand, and their deaths would serve a more sacred cause than their lives ever had. Those clerics who must die had been called by God to the service of the church. Dušic had been called to the service of his people. Surely fate had intended this convergence.

Small chores kept him occupied while he waited for Stefan. Dušic conducted function checks on his radios and optics. He made sure everything turned on and tested good, and that things adjusted, focused, zoomed, and tracked. When he completed all of those tasks, he sharpened tactical knives and charged up nickel-cadmium batteries. After what felt like an eternity, the glare of headlights and the crunch of gravel announced the arrival of a vehicle. Dušic walked to the main entrance. When he recognized Stefan's van, he opened the gate. Stefan waved as he drove through. Neither man smiled. Stefan stopped and lowered his window.

“Drive down to small-arms storage,” DuÅ¡ic said. “I will brief you there.”

Inside the shed, Stefan surveyed the gear DuÅ¡ic had collected. “This feels like the old days,” Stefan said, “when we visited the quartermaster before an operation.”

“I had the same thought,” DuÅ¡ic said, “but we have no time for reminiscing.” DuÅ¡ic told Stefan about the arrests.

“A sad turn of events,” Stefan said.

“If they talk, they die.”

“To be sure.”

Dušic outlined his plan for the days remaining before the Assembly of Bishops: lie low, brief the
razvodnik
s on their final instructions, and watch for any hint of betrayal by the fools now in custody.

“The car bomb is ready,” Stefan said. “I wired together three shells, as we discussed. I need only to install the battery and drive the car into place.”

“Excellent,” DuÅ¡ic said. He considered the yield of such a weapon. The explosion would amount to three simultaneous direct hits by large-caliber artillery. It would rip the Patriarchate right off its foundations. And the act would rip away the inhibitions and caution of the Serbian people, stir them to finish what they had started in DuÅ¡ic's youth.

“I obtained the vehicle as well. Everything is set.”

“Were the funds I gave you sufficient?” DuÅ¡ic asked. He had wired Stefan nearly two million Serbian dinars to purchase a car for the operation.

“Actually, I can return all the funds to you. I hot-wired some Turk's Citroën. If any identifying marks remain on the engine block, the police will trace it to a Muslim who says his car was stolen.”

DuÅ¡ic laughed, clapped his friend on the back. “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” he said. “At least something has gone well. And I have a gift for you. Open that long case.”

Stefan gave a puzzled look, kneeled, and popped the fasteners on the case. He opened it to reveal the M24.

“A Stradivarius for the maestro,” DuÅ¡ic said.

“Very fine,” Stefan said. He lifted the rifle, clicked open the scope's spring-loaded lens caps. Shouldered the weapon and sighted through the scope. Then he placed the rifle across his knees and unscrewed the thread protector at the end of the barrel. The effort revealed the threads that could accept a noise suppressor. Stefan found the suppressor inside the rifle's case, and he twisted the device onto the barrel. Hefted the rifle and looked through the scope again. “Very fine,” he repeated. “I thank you.”

“If you do not need such a rifle in our opening phase,” DuÅ¡ic said, “you will surely need it later.”

Stefan examined the markings on the Leupold scope. “Telescopic sights keep getting better and better,” he said. “With this reticle, one can estimate range very accurately.”

The two men loaded the gear into Stefan's van. Prudence dictated that Dušic leave Belgrade until the day of the bombing, and that he travel in something less eye-catching than the Aventador. He removed his briefcase and laptop computer from the car and placed the items in the van.

“I will leave the Lamborghini here,” DuÅ¡ic said, “if I may ride with you.”

“Of course.”

“I have kept the car in my enclosure here before, so the people who rent storage units should not think it strange. But I believe we should get out of the city for now.”

“Where shall we go?” Stefan asked.

“Tuzla. That is a fairly central location for the
razvodnik
s to meet us when the time comes.”

“It is. And I have found three more, all veterans of volunteer units.”

“You have no doubts about their commitment?” DuÅ¡ic did not want to have to shoot another weak-minded, untrainable moron.

“None. I interviewed them extensively.”

“Good. Then let us be on our way.”

Dušic turned off the lights in his small-arms room, rolled down the door, and activated the electronic lock. He chained and padlocked his fence, scanned his surroundings for any witnesses. He saw no one, heard only the distant barks of a dog and the rush of traffic on the two-lane highway that ran past the storage units.

“What shall we do in Tuzla?” Stefan asked.

“Little, I hope. I will pay for our rooms with cash, and we will register under assumed names. Barring something unforeseen, all we have left to do is give the shooters their final instructions.”

After the bombing, naturally, there would be much to do. But Dušic's moves during that dynamic phase would depend on unpredictable factors. Would the Belgrade government begin an offensive against the Turks immediately? Or would politicians follow public opinion rather than lead it? Volunteer militias might have to make the first strikes. In that case, Dušic could find himself leading bands of ruffians in tactical operations rather than commanding entire armies from a post within the Ministry of Defense. No matter. He could lead wherever necessary.