Warriors (9781101621189) (27 page)

GOLD KEPT HER HEAD DOWN
, waited for more gunfire from the house. None came; she heard only the beat and slap of rotors from the police helicopter orbiting the village, and the pop and squelch of radios. The police officer who'd held the bullhorn gazed at the house for a moment, then spoke into a handset. He appeared to be an on-scene commander or at least the head negotiator. The man backed away from his car and, using the cover of the ditch bank, made his way over to Dragan and the Americans.

The officer spoke with Dragan in their own language for several minutes. Then, in English, Dragan introduced him to Gold, Parson, and Webster.

“This is Inspector Petrov,” Dragan said. “One of my mentors.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Gold said.

“Sorry about the circumstances,” Webster said.

“So am I,” Petrov said. Practiced English, but with a heavy Slavic accent. Graying hair. His rimless glasses made him appear almost academic, and they softened the effect of his web belt and pistol.

“So what happens now?” Parson asked.

“That very much depends upon Viktor DuÅ¡ic,” Petrov said. “My conversation with him achieved nothing. We have breach kits and tear gas at the ready, and we are weighing several options.”

“I am very sorry about your men who were burned,” Webster said.

“Indeed. My officers would like to kill DuÅ¡ic and be done with it, but I have explained to them the value of capturing him alive.”

“Can't blame them for wanting to take this guy out,” Parson said.

“Neither can I,” Petrov said. “But if placing him on trial will defuse tensions, vengeance can wait. The situation is deteriorating all around us. Just this morning, in a town not far from here, Muslim youths beat to death an Orthodox priest. And Serbs in Kosovo have torched another mosque.”

So the trouble was not just intensifying, Gold noted; it was spreading.

A burst of automatic-weapons fire spat from a window of the house. Slugs impacted the ditch bank, the pavement, and two police cars. Gold saw no one hit, but Petrov removed his glasses and rubbed his right eye. Perhaps flying grit from a bullet strike had sprayed into the side of his face. He scowled, spoke an order into his radio. Police returned fire. Gold noticed that their rounds struck nothing but brick. Maybe Petrov had told his men only to make Dušic and his gunman keep their heads down. She admired the discipline of the police officers who controlled their fire and their emotions.

Petrov and Dragan conferred in Serbo-Croatian again. Then Petrov made a cell phone call, and Dragan spoke into his radio. Answers came back on the radio in single syllables. Officers swapped magazines, checked weapons.

“What's happening?” Gold asked.

“Normally we would wait them out in a situation like this,” Dragan said. “Let them get tired and hungry. But we're not going to sit here and wait for the next rocket.”

•   •   •

DUÅ IC FELT THAT CLARITY
of mind he had known only in the worst combat situations. Cool reason came when you accepted death as inevitable. Hope only clouded your thinking. If you decided you were already dead, you could function so much better, focus on the mission.

He would go down fighting and die with glory. But in the unlikely event he escaped, he would flee into the mountains and gather support to lead a militia. He could evade the authorities more effectively and longer than Karadžic or Mladic because he was not so well known. An attractive option, better than dying, but how might he get away?

With Dušic's mind purged by the purity of death, ideas came easily. That damned helicopter buzzing and turning overhead could serve his purposes if it came low enough. He needed to think on it a bit more.

Before he could voice his idea to Stefan, one of the officers outside popped up from behind his car. Leaned across the hood with some kind of launcher. Fired.

A large projectile sailed in through the broken window and struck the wall. The canister bounced to the floor, spewing white smoke. Dušic's eyes and throat stung.

“Gas, Stefan!” DuÅ¡ic shouted.

Dušic reached for his gas mask carrier and ripped out the mask. Placed the mask to his face, sealed the outlet valve with his hand. He exhaled hard to blow out stray fumes around the edges of the mask. Then he covered the air inlet port and tried to breathe in. The mask collapsed around his face. That told him he had a good seal. He took a tentative half breath.

The air he inhaled came through clean, scrubbed by the filter. But now he could not see, blinded by the mask's hood and head straps stowed in front of the face shield. He pulled the straps over the back of his head and yanked them tight. Tossed the mask's hood over his shoulders.

He didn't really need the hood; it was meant to help keep blister agents off his skin. Not necessary for police tear gas. But now he could not remove the mask to shed its hood. Through the face shield he saw white gas filling the room.

Stefan had not moved so quickly. He struggled with his mask. He had it over his face now, but he coughed and gagged with the chemicals he had drawn into his lungs. Something had dulled the man's reflexes—perhaps drink, perhaps his state of mind.

Dušic took pity and adjusted Stefan's mask for him. Tugged at the temple strap, tightened the cheek strap. Pulled over the hood so Stefan could see. Stefan still coughed, his hacking muted now by the mask, but at least he could breathe.

The canister on the floor continued spewing gas. Dušic grabbed it and threw it outside. Stefan stumbled, coughed again. He staggered in front of the broken window, exposing himself to police fire. Dušic pulled him back behind the cover of the wall.

“Are you all right?” DuÅ¡ic shouted. The mask muffled his words.

“What?”

“Are you all right?”

Stefan nodded. He lowered himself back to the floor and lay prone beside his rifle. Good, Dušic thought. Stefan remained effective, or at least partially so.

Tear gas drifted in the room. The sight put Dušic in mind of the smoke of Serb villages sacked by Ottoman murderers. Then the chemical cleared enough that Dušic could see outside. The helicopter rattled over the house, turned, came back on a new heading. It flew lower now, probably watching to see if anyone bolted from the house.

Come by a little lower, friend, Dušic thought. I have need of you.

Stefan seemed to have recovered his wits. He crept nearer the window, careful to stay behind cover. After he looked out for a minute, he tried to speak. The mask muffled his words.

“What?” DuÅ¡ic asked. He leaned closer to the voicemitter of Stefan's mask. The voicemitter made communication possible but not easy.

“They will burn us out!” Stefan shouted. “When they see their gas has not worked, they will set the house afire.”

DuÅ¡ic picked up the grenade launcher. “They will not get the chance,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

Dušic looked up at the helicopter. It circled closer now.

“I'm going to give them another problem,” DuÅ¡ic said. “When I do, we will run to my car and slip through them.”

Stefan stared. Dušic could see him blinking behind the lenses of his mask.

“Impossible,” Stefan said. “They will riddle the car—and us.”

Impossible. Dušic disliked that word. Stefan had used it when he first heard Dušic's plan to resume and win the war, to cleanse Greater Serbia of Muslims. History and logic had eventually brought Stefan around. Why was Dušic's vision impossible? What he wanted to do for Greater Serbia had already been done elsewhere in Europe. Centuries ago—in a region that became parts of Spain, Portugal, and France—Muslims had so infested the land that they considered it theirs and called it Al-Andalus. Moorish Iberia. But brave warriors hurled the Muslims back across the Strait of Gibraltar into the desert wastelands where they belonged.

“We do the impossible, Stefan. We have the strength to achieve what others only imagine.”

Stefan looked outside again. He put his hand on his M24, closed his eyes for a moment. Was he praying? A superstitious exercise, Dušic thought, but if it helped Stefan find strength, then let him pray.

“Get ready to go!” DuÅ¡ic shouted through his voicemitter.

“No, my friend. You get ready to go. Hand me your Kalashnikov.”

It took a moment to process the import of Stefan's words. Dušic knew the man had courage, but he hadn't expected this.

“You will need covering fire,” Stefan continued. “If we both go out together, we both will die. If I make them keep down, you stand a chance.”

Ever the good NCO. Stefan avoided death only because death interfered with the mission. But now his death might further the mission.

Dušic wanted to believe in the integrity of Stefan's motives, that Stefan wanted to die for the cause. But the man had seemed troubled, had taken again to the bottle. Dušic knew of troubled men inducing police to kill them, suicide by proxy. Whether Stefan acted from despair or devotion, Dušic could not tell. No matter. The effect would be the same. Dušic gave Stefan the AK. Using crutches, he could make it to the car alone. He would carry only his pistol.

Stefan placed the automatic weapon on the floor next to his M24. He sighted through the scope of the precision rifle, made a slight adjustment to the parallax knob. Dušic found two fragmentation grenades, the hand-thrown type, in a kit bag. He set the grenades down beside Stefan.

Above, the helicopter turned again. It came straight on, backdropped by clouds the color of zinc.

•   •   •

TEAR GAS WAFTED ACROSS
the village road, over the scene of police vehicles and officers poised with their weapons. Parson caught just a whiff, and even that felt like inhaling tacks. He could see more of the chemical hanging inside the house. Anyone in that room must have been overcome, and Parson began to wonder if this whole thing was over. But then he detected movement within the house, and he understood. Gas masks. Of course the bastards wore gas masks; Dušic was a damned arms dealer.

Dragan and the other police officers held clipped conversations by radio. Gold and Webster watched the house and the helicopter circling overhead. Parson imagined the police were setting up to storm the building. He couldn't predict how this day would play out, but it seemed pretty clear that not everyone here would live to see nightfall. Maybe Dušic wanted to die, and he probably wanted to take as many people with him as possible. Parson did not know what to expect from his journey to the hereafter, whenever it came. He liked to imagine spending eternity in an outdoorsman's Valhalla, dwelling in a hall lined with antlers and pelts, surrounded by hills filled with fish and game in an endless crackling autumn. But he didn't want to go today.

The helicopter, a Bell 212, overflew the house and entered a left turn. Parson's aviator's mind noted that the pilots had a solid overcast above them but good visibility underneath. He wondered how long their fuel load would allow them to remain on station.

As he watched the aircraft, the cackle of automatic-weapons fire erupted from the house. Bullets flayed the police vehicles. The officers hunkered down, held their weapons, waited for orders. The helicopter rolled out of the turn.

A smoke trail rocketed up from the window. At the tip of the smoke, a dark object traced a path straight toward the chopper's main rotor.

The round detonated against the rotor hub. The blades appeared to flex as if made of foam. For an instant Parson thought the Bell had absorbed the blast and might fly on. But one of the blades detached itself from the hub, tumbled away from the aircraft like a discarded plank. The rest of the rotor, now unbalanced, lurched through arcs of smoke and flame. The aircraft pitched down, rolled sideways. Spiraled like a falling leaf. Centrifugal forces flung something from the chopper's cabin, perhaps a checklist binder or a crash ax.

Two helmeted figures struggled behind the windscreen. They grappled with controls that could do nothing for them. One pilot placed outstretched gloved fingers against the coaming of the instrument panel. The helicopter plunged into the garden of the home next door. A fireball erupted on impact, a swell of black and orange. Parson felt the heat flash against his cheek.

Flaming fuel splashed through the garden fence and against the side of the house. The odor of burning kerosene filled the air, and black smoke obscured the burning wreckage. Through the fire and smoke, only a bent tail boom remained recognizable as part of an aircraft.

Parson bolted from behind Dragan's police van. He knew full well the pilots were probably dead, but he wanted to get to a fire extinguisher. Perhaps by some miracle one of the fliers might have survived.

Dragan beat him to it. The Serbian officer unclipped the extinguisher from its mount inside the van. Ignoring gunfire popping from the house, Dragan ran toward the crash site. He sprinted with his Vintorez rifle slung across his back. The weapon bounced against his shoulder blades.

Parson and Gold followed close behind. He worried about leading Gold out from the cover of the van, but they could accomplish nothing while hunkered down and motionless. More police officers ran toward the helicopter, some with extinguishers. Other police returned fire at the house. Bullets peppered the police cars.

•   •   •

DUÅ IC KNEW
he had only seconds. With half the officers trying to save the helicopter crew and half pinned down by Stefan's fire, he saw his chance. Using just one crutch, he stumbled through the house and out the back door. Tore the gas mask from his face and dropped it. Pain seared through his calf. He felt a ripping sensation as he descended the steps and headed for the barn. He'd torn his sutures, and the wound began to bleed anew. Blood darkened the fabric of his trousers as he opened the door of the Lamborghini. He ignored the injury, sat in the driver's seat, punched the starter button. The V12 growled to life.