Deep Black Part 21

I lifted the AK and pushed the magazine catch forward to release the two taped-up mags. I pressed down on the top round in the first mag with my finger. It stopped about two-thirds of the way down: I had about ten rounds left.

Salkic and Nasir were still in dialogue as I turned the mags over and pushed down on the second. It was full, so I slotted it into the mag housing and eased back the c.o.c.king handle to check chamber. 'Anybody else got a weapon?'

Salkic translated. 'He also has a pistol and two extra magazines. And he says there is a cave the other side of these hills. The aggressors used it to store supplies.' Salkic took in another couple of gulps of oxygen before continuing. 'He said that he isn't sure which valley. It's been many years since he has attacked it.'

Nasir muttered a few more words to Salkic, who hesitated before translating. 'Do you know which man you saw dead?'

'No.'

As Salkic mumbled back to Nasir there was a sudden burst of voice traffic on the radio inside his coat. He pulled it out, maybe hoping it was our missing man.

The radio might have belonged to him, but the gravelly voice that came out of it didn't. Whoever it was started singing what sounded like a nursery rhyme. Then there was a short, piercing scream. The song continued for a moment, but was interrupted by more screams and the sound of sobbing.

Nasir went apes.h.i.+t.

Images flashed through my own head of others I'd seen taken prisoner by the Serbs, men strapped to trees who'd choked to death on their own genitals.

Nasir started downhill as the fading screams were replaced by mocking laughter.

'Salkic, turn that f.u.c.king thing off and get him back here!'

I didn't care what the f.u.c.k he wanted to do down there, but now wasn't the time. We needed a steady pair of hands on a weapon. Salkic ran ahead of him and held up a hand. I saw Nasir's shoulders heave as Salkic took a step forward and wrapped him in a hug.

For several minutes they talked to each other in gradually gentler tones. The rest of us kept our distance. At least it gave Benzil time to rest.

The torches below us were still on the move. A vehicle emerged from one of the barns, manoeuvred its way past our Audi, and headed back towards Sarajevo.

Salkic still had Nasir in his arms. They mumbled some more to each other. Both men were crying.

At length, they turned and came back up to us. Nasir carried on uphill a little way before kneeling. There was silence; no one spoke.

I stood up, and helped Benzil to his feet. 'We need to get going and be over this high ground before first light, out of their line of sight.'

Exhausted as he was, Benzil's only concern was for others. 'Is Nasir all right?'

'He will be,' Salkic said, 'but give him time. The man they just killed was his youngest brother.' He paused. 'And my brother-in-law.'

79.Nasir was lead scout.

Benzil was next. He was in a bad way, but we had to place him up there so we could keep an eye on him and go at his pace. He tried his best; Jerry, Salkic and I took it in turns to hitch his arm round our necks to help keep him upright.

Nasir was a totally steady hand. He was an old sweat, doubling back from time to time to mutter an encouraging word.

Benzil would just nod and agree. 'Yes, yes. Thank you.'

After ten minutes or so, he had to stop again. 'I'm so sorry, Nick. I'm so sorry.'

'Don't worry about it. Just try and keep going the best you can.'

There was a burst of fire in the valley below us as they cabbied at shadows.

Wind buffeted the summit, clawing at my face, cooling my sweat. At least the plastic coat kept it at bay as we started to slip and slide downhill.

The line was starting to get strung out, and not just because of Benzil. Jerry and Salkic were feeling the pace. Nasir was still up front, slowing down at regular intervals for the rest of us to catch up.

The valley gradually took shape before us as first light seeped into the eastern sky, and what I saw was not good news: next to no cover, just mud and stones. There wasn't even a road.

I stopped and waited for Salkic to draw level with me.

'We're going to be f.u.c.ked out here on open ground.' I nodded at Nasir. 'Ask him how far to the cave.'

We were in s.h.i.+t state. My jeans were in shreds; my legs s.h.i.+ny with blood and sweat. Everybody was caked in mud.

Salkic and Jerry were still struggling to keep Benzil upright as we stumbled downhill.

Nasir's eyes narrowed as he scanned the landscape below us. I could see he was getting worried, and so was I. I didn't want to use a cave: it was obvious cover, and would probably have only one point of entry and exit. If they followed us, they would check it out for sure. But as I looked around us, I realized that if we couldn't outrun them, it was probably our only option.

Nasir started gobbing off. Salkic nodded and turned back to me. 'Not far, near the bottom. I know the cave he is talking about now. My father also fought there.'

This side was much steeper, and we stumbled after Nasir as he picked his way through the mud and rock, trying to find an easy route down. He stopped after another couple of hundred metres and pointed east. I followed the direction of his finger and could just make out a dark shadow on the side of the hill.

A second later, there were two high-velocity cracks above us. I looked up and saw the first of our pursuers crossing the skyline. f.u.c.k it, the decision had been made for us.

80.It looked like it had been a natural cleft in the rock that had been given a makeover with several crates of Serb high explosive: the mouth was now big enough to take a truck. Rubble was piled up on each side, and the tyre ruts in the track leading to it were smothered by gra.s.s and weeds.

The interior was cold and dank, but at least it gave us shelter from the wind. The walls glistened with slime and puddles of water splashed around our feet. Two rusty old cars and a skip full of wood had been abandoned just inside the entrance.

The further we went inside, the more it stank of mould and decay. The darkness and a couple of mounds of rock spoil, debris from the blasting operation that had widened the cave, gave us cover, but this was going to be as much of a tactical nightmare as I'd feared: a confined s.p.a.ce and the only way out the way we had come in.

Benzil was suffering big-time. Jerry and Salkic lowered him on to the floor behind one of the mounds and tried to make him comfortable. He hardly even had the energy to apologize.

'Don't worry.' I crouched beside him to move some stone away from his head. 'It's OK. Just rest.'

There was no reply. His breathing was shallow and worryingly fast.

Salkic collapsed the other side of him in the gloom. Jerry just dropped where he was and fumbled with the clips of his b.u.mbag. I crawled up the rock pile and looked through the cave mouth, about forty metres away, at the brightening sky. It was still dark this far in, and should stay that way. My eyes were already adapting.

Nasir had put himself on stag at the top of the pile to my left, and was also staring intently towards the entrance. I looked around at the other three. It's natural for people to bunch up in situations like this, and they were tearing the a.r.s.e out of it. I got them to spread out a bit. If rounds started bouncing about in here I didn't want the flat tops getting two hits for the price of one.

'f.u.c.k.' Jerry showed me what was left of his Nikon. A round had entered the left-hand corner and exited top right. He tried the power b.u.t.ton. Not that that would help, even if the battery pack was OK. The lens was shattered.

'The phone, Jerry is the phone OK?'

He nodded slowly, but I could see it wasn't much consolation.

Nasir started gobbing off and I could see movement on the hill a couple of hundred metres or so from the cave mouth. 'Here they come.' I turned back to the others. 'We got five.'

Jerry scrambled up to me. 'Coming this way?'

'Not yet.'

I felt it; the look on Nasir's face said it. We were f.u.c.ked.

Nasir settled himself into a fire position, scooping away some of the stone to make room for the curved magazine of his AK. The magazines on these things were so big and long that when you lay down you couldn't fire them from the shoulder. It was part of the doctrine according to Dr Kalashnikov: the AK was intended to be gripped in front of a hero of the Soviet Union as he leaped from the back of an APC and charged gallantly forward on full automatic.

Nasir's eyes never left the men on the track. He gobbed off something to Salkic.

'What's he getting so excited about?'

'Nasir said I must never tell anyone where Hasan is, or his brother's death would be in vain. He also wants to kill the aggressors.'

Nasir got the drift of what was being said and grunted. They were both grim-faced. As far as these boys were concerned, the war had never really ended.

I leaned into my pile of rocks, digging a s.p.a.ce for my own magazine. 'Ramzi, you're the only one who knows?'

Salkic was taking deep breaths; Jerry slid back down to help Benzil into a more comfortable position. 'The only one here.'

Nasir muttered something and I looked out. 'They're coming.'

I slithered down too.

'Jerry, you got any idea how to use a pistol?'

He didn't bother looking up, just nodded.

'Good. Ramzi, tell Nasir to give him it.'

Nasir handed it over, along with a couple of mags. I couldn't see the make, but it didn't matter at this stage, as long as it went bang and Jerry knew how to point it and reload. Whether he had it in him to kill a fellow human being was something we'd be finding out soon enough. As for me, I'd always managed to be pretty calm at times like this, maybe because I could accept when I was in the s.h.i.+t, and had never been particularly bothered about dying. I just wanted to make sure I took as many of the f.u.c.kers with me as I could.

Nasir started muttering and I crawled back up my pile. The guys on the track had disappeared.

'Where'd they go?' I murmured to Salkic. 'Ask him where they went.'

Salkic did so. They'd gone off to the right, into dead ground.

The Motorola sparked up. 'Ramzi Salkic! Ramzi Salkic!'

The gravelly voice echoed round the cave.

I looked at Salkic for clues. His face was stony, but Nasir's was contorted with rage. He immediately started shouting back, then he turned and yelled at me too, so vehemently that flecks of spit showered across my face. If the flat tops hadn't known we were in here, they certainly did now.

Nasir rammed his weapon into his shoulder and fired off a burst.

I had to scream above the firing. 'For f.u.c.k's sake, stop! Ramzi! Get him to stop!'

Spent cases rattled on to the stones. The air was thick with cordite. Salkic tried to calm him down and at last he succeeded. Benzil stared up at me, eyes wide as saucers, trying hard not to look scared.

Return fire ricocheted off the walls as the flat tops shoved their automatic weapons around the edge of the cave and squeezed off. There was nothing any of us could do but curl up and hope.

Apart from Nasir, who yelled at the top of his voice and sprayed half a mag at nothing in particular.

'For f.u.c.k's sake, stop firing! Save ammo.'

Another long retaliatory burst came our way, filling the cave with sound heavy enough to feel.

Salkic shouted at him and tugged at his trouser leg, but I knew Nasir wasn't listening: blind hatred had taken over from common sense. If only he'd kept quiet, we could have let them come in and maybe been able to drop one or two.

It stopped as quickly as it started. I raised my head just enough to look over the top of the mound but saw nothing. Benzil was still curled up below me, Jerry half covering him despite my instruction to spread out. Salkic was below Nasir, who was up on his knees straining to find a target, still wanting to kill the world and his dog. He turned to me with wild eyes, and let loose another stream of angry words and saliva. His echo was as loud as their gunfire.

I ignored him and kept my eyes on the cave mouth. If he'd wanted to top me he would have done it by now. I wasn't sure what he was most sparked up about: his brother, me bringing the flat tops to Salkic, or that he wanted to kill everyone within reach. I hoped he still realized that if we were going to get out of here alive he'd need my steady pair of hands, as much as I'd need his not so steady ones. I waited until he'd finished and got his eyes back on stag.

'What's all that about, Ramzi?'

There was no answer. I turned and even in this light saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes.

Nasir tuned up again, venting his rage between Salkic, me and the cave entrance. Salkic reached up and put a hand on his leg, attempting to soothe him.

'What's going on, Ramzi? What the f.u.c.k is he saying?'

'He's blaming you because you led them to me in the mosque.' Salkic's face was a mask of pain. 'Not only is his brother dead, but now they say they are collecting his brother's wife, my sister, from Sarajevo. They have a family, two children.'

81.There was a few seconds' stunned silence as I slid down rocks next to Jerry and took the Thuraya out of his b.u.mbag. The little red LED glowed brightly in the gloom when I hit the switch. 'Your sister got a phone?'

He recited the number and I tapped the b.u.t.tons.

'We'll need to get nearer the entrance for a signal. Can we call Nuhanovic to get us out of this s.h.i.+t?'

Salkic shook his head. 'He has no phones. I drive there each time we need to talk. I'm sorry, this is not all your fault. I was in too much of a hurry after meeting you and Benzil. They must have followed me to the farm. Now we all have to pay the price.'

I checked Baby-G and the Thuraya: 06:47 and no signal.

I pulled up the antenna and pointed it at the entrance. 'You up for it?'

He stood, without a flicker of fear.

'Stay to the right, hugging that wall. If there's trouble, just turn and run back. Whatever you do, don't move into the centre of the cave.'

I held out my AK to Jerry. 'Can you handle one of these?'

He didn't look too sure, but he'd probably photographed enough guys using them to have a vague idea of which end was which.

'Ramzi, tell Nasir what we're doing. Tell him, if he's got to fire, to use single rounds and aim. We must save ammunition. Got that?'

He nodded and started to gob off in Serbo-Croat while Jerry took the AK.

'There's one in the chamber. You know how to work the safety catch?'

To my surprise, he immediately looked in the right place. The safety on an AK is a long lever on the right-hand side. All the way up is safe; first click down is fully automatic; next click down is single shot. Old Soviet doctrine: lots of firepower and not much aiming.