Black Flagged Redux (55 page)

Hadzic's field units typically overflowed with hardened paramilitary veterans of the Bosnia conflict, or former Yugoslav military. The process for integration of new recruits was brutal and discouraged most naive youth. Still, they had no shortage of volunteers, and in times of war, the training camps swelled with eager recruits, pushed through to augment roles left behind by combat hungry veterans. This platoon brimmed with newbies, and that concerned him, though he had no idea why.

His concentration was shattered by the sudden crack of automatic weapons fire, as hundreds of crows scattered, briefly drowning out the sound of the guns. Like the crows, Sava reacted instinctively and threw himself onto the ground next to the slightly raised dirt road. He flinched, but stood impassively in the middle of the road, as the volume of gunfire diminished, finally ending with an occasional crackle. He hadn't felt or heard the familiar snap or hiss of bullets passing near him, so he kept his composure. He knew exactly what had happened and turned his head lazily towards the center of the village. Occasional, single pistol shots started to fill the air, and Sava rose to his feet to rejoin him on the road.

He wore an expression that betrayed his true feelings, and Marko knew that the young Serb felt the same way that he did about the situation. They were both equally relieved to have been assigned to a deserted stretch of road, even if three hundred meters of separation didn't provide them with any absolution for their presence in the valley. Sava's radio crackled, and their respite from the madness was over. They had been recalled to the village center.

He slicked his thick, matted brown hair back with his left hand and wiped the sweat onto his camouflage pants. Sava looked terrified for the first time since they had piled into green, tarp-covered trucks in Belgrade. He patted the kid on the back and nodded.

"Let's get going."

The two of them started to jog down the road, careful not to twist an ankle in the shallow crater created by one of the mortar impacts. He spotted several AUZ jeeps in a clearing to the north of the village. All of the doors in the village had been left open, which gave the village a frightening aura. Almost like it had been abandoned. The first thing he heard was the crying, and it nearly stopped him in his tracks. He searched for the source and saw a group of women and children huddled under a tree, guarded by a soldier. As the scene started to unfold in front of him, he sensed that Sava had stopped altogether.

"Keep moving, or you'll end up in one of those trenches," Marko said, wondering if that was where they might end up anyway.

They were blocked by a group of Panthers and told to leave their weapons stacked against one of the vehicles. He saw several assault rifles leaned against a mud-covered chassis and walked over to the jeep, scanning the area. He could see the pit over the hood of the jeep, just beyond a dozen or so Panthers who were staring down into it. A few of them shook their heads, while others spit at the earth. As he placed his sniper rifle against the jeep's rear tire, Sava joined him.

"Fucking burial duty. Wonderful," Sava said.

"It's typical for new guys," Marko lied.

He hadn't seen shovels among the men standing in front of the long pit. His stomach tensed, and he fought to remain calm. This would probably be his defining "critical point," as the Black Flag psychologists termed it. They had prepared him for these moments, characterizing the different types and their significance. This one looked like a "terminal critical point." He would either survive and emerge as a trusted member of the Panthers, or he would die in the pit along with the rest of the villagers. No aspect of General Sanderson's training program could truly prepare him for what would transpire in the next few moments, and he had to make a choice.

If he lined up with the rest of the men, he would have to take his chances with a gamble he had taken a few weeks ago. A little insurance policy that might save his life. His other option was to put his training to work and fight his way out of here. He might even be able to kill all of them. Half of the group was unarmed, standing like sheep in front of their own grave, all of their weapons stacked at his feet. Twelve remaining men? He had several loaded assault rifles sitting right in front of him. He could sling two of them over his shoulder and start cutting down the armed Panthers with a third. The odds were in his favor, given his capabilities. It might even be blamed on KLA guerillas.

He glanced up at one of the men that had ordered him put his weapon against the jeep. The man's greasepaint camouflage had been recently reapplied, neutralizing his expression, but his eyes gave Marko pause. They were cold and alert. He would have to make his decision within the next fraction of a second. Taking his hand off the sniper rifle, he decided to gamble with his life. The payoff would secure his status among the Panthers, which was the ultimate purpose of his training as a Black Flag operative. He swallowed shallowly and followed Sava around the jeep, never taking his eyes off the hardened soldier escorting them.

As he approached the rest of the men, a buzzing sound hit his ears, causing him to stop.

"Get with the rest of them," someone barked from behind, and he continued forward.

A few of the dirty soldiers ahead of him laughed and pointed down into the pit, which demonstrated exactly how clueless some of the new recruits were, when confronted with the obvious. He saw the guards from the eastern side of town walk around the pit to join them. They had the same look on their faces as Sava when they glanced downward.

Marko caught his first look into the shallow trench and fought the urge to gag. He betrayed no emotion as the full scope of the atrocity appeared before him. He no longer wondered about the buzzing sound. Thousands of flies swarmed over the freshly slaughtered corpses; fighting to land in bright red pools of blood, drawn to the stench of involuntarily voided bowels. The smell started to overwhelm him, and he decided to stop and turn around.

He faced members of the same firing squad that had put all of the village's men into a hastily dug mass grave. The rest of the shooters mingled with him, some complaining about being put on burial duty, others bragging about the accurate shots they had fired into the "terrorists." One of the loudest newbies called out to the platoon commander, who was talking into a radio headset.

"Hey, Nenad! How about the guys with the easy jobs on the road bury this garbage?" he said, pointing toward Marko and Sava.

"How about you shut the fuck up!" a stocky Serb crouched near one of the jeeps said.

The man's bravado disappeared, and he started to melt back into the dozen or so men standing around in front of the trench. Marko took in the scene. Nobody was pointing weapons in their direction, but he could see the looks passing surreptitiously back and forth. He located some shovels nearby, which were caked with dirt and had probably been recently used by the slaughtered Kosovars to dig their own grave. Nobody else glanced at the shovels. This was not a work detail. This was either some kind of sick initiation that might involve the surviving women and children, or something entirely different. Either way, he wondered if he had made a mistake. His eyes found the nearest M-90 assault rifle, and he did the calculations, casually looking around. He could put a knife through the owner's throat and get the rifle, but his chances beyond that were now non-existent.

The sound of vehicles broke his concentration, and everyone's heads turned to see two black Range Rovers speed down the road from the east, kicking up a storm of dust behind them. He saw the armed Panthers straighten themselves up, and some of them even attempted to brush off some of the dirt and mud in a futile effort. Nenad Sojic and his radio operator, Goran, jogged to the road to meet the occupants. He recognized the SUVs, and suddenly it all made sense. He might survive the day, but only if Radovan Grahovac, Hadzic's security chief, decided to indulge in his patented sadism for a few minutes, before putting them all into the ditch. He was optimistic. Radovan didn't like to stray too far from Belgrade without the promise of some entertainment.

The Range Rover doors opened simultaneously and disgorged their cargoes. Serious, brutal-looking men dressed in pressed camouflage uniforms formed a loose perimeter around the man who had emerged from the front passenger door of the lead vehicle. Radovan Grahovac stood in the middle of the heavily armed men, surveying the destroyed village and nodding in agreement Nenad Sojic, who gestured toward the mass grave at Marko's feet.

Marko was as equally interested in Radovan as his security detail, and he scoured their faces to determine if he might survive what lie ahead in the next few minutes. As Radovan's group walked toward the pit, his heart sank, and he thought about the closest assault rifle. Maybe with this distraction he could pull it off. If he could get the rifle and find cover within a few seconds, he might be able to survive long enough to channel these overconfident simpletons into a few fatal funnels, which would give him easy targets until he developed a plan to escape.

He found too many flaws in his plan within the span of this millisecond long planning session. He carried the wrong ammunition magazines for an assault rifle and would not have time to grab more if he wanted to survive the first few seconds. Plus, Radovan's entourage was comprised of special operations types that had worked together extensively for years. He could handle them alone, with the element of surprise, but in this scenario, their presence would weigh heavily against his survival. Just as he finished this thought, he spotted his only hope of surviving the day. Andrija Brujic was among Radovan's security team this morning and represented Marko's salvation.

As Radovan approached, Nenad Sojic, de facto platoon commander, issued orders to Marko's group.

"Turn around and face the pit!"

Marko turned his body, along with most of the group. A few hesitated, possibly sensing what was in store for them, and one of the men, a particularly overzealous Nationalist named Vukasin Mokric, refused to follow Nenad's abrupt order. Vuk wasn't intelligent enough to realize the gravity of the situation, and Marko assumed his defiance had more to do with one of his many personality disorders than any sudden enlightenment regarding what was in store for them.

Nenad issued an order directed at the platoon, and Marko heard the metallic sounds of several rifles put into an immediate ready state. Rounds chambered and safeties disengaged. He didn't have to look back to know that these rifles were now aimed at their backs, or in the case of Vuk, at his face.

"What the fuck is going on here? If this is some kind of initiation joke, I'm already fucking initiated. Get your rifles out of my face, motherfuckers," Vukasin said.

The platoon commander ordered him to turn around, and Marko heard a few of the soldiers reinforce the command.

"Nenad, this is fucking bullshit. I joined this group to fuck and kill these pieces of shit. Not to be treated like a fucking dog," he persisted.

"All thieves are dogs," a voice boomed, followed by two sudden pistol shots.

Marko heard Vuk's body hit the ground, and everyone in the line started mumbling prayers.

"Fuck with Mr. Hadzic's money, and you get treated like a rabid dog. No better than the scum rotting in the pit at your feet," the voice continued, and Marko now recognized it as Radovan Grahovac's.

"Just one week ago, a large sum of money disappeared from one of Mihail Kunac's safe houses. This money was on its way to Mr. Hadzic, when someone broke into the safe house, killing the guard responsible for watching the money," Radovan said.

"Evidence suggests that this was an inside job. Mr. Kunac had just stepped out when the money was stolen. I arrived with a small group to personally collect this money, no more than thirty minutes after the hit. The poor shit assigned to watch the money was still fucking warm when we got there. This is all too much of a coincidence for me, and you can only imagine my embarrassment. I'm ultimately responsible for this money, and having to explain to the loss of nearly fifty thousand dollars to Mr. Hadzic is not a pleasant experience!"

Fifty-three thousand, two hundred and eighty dollars to be exact.

"I had to front this fucking money to keep my own head from showing up at his feet! I haven't had a theft like this in over three years, so what's changed? We bring on a fresh batch of recruits, and I suddenly have a fucking major theft on my hands. I want this money back, and one of you pieces of shit knows exactly where to find it! Someone better start talking, or every one of you will end up in that pit…blamed for the worst massacre in recent history."

Time stood still, silent for several moments, until another gunshot broke the quiet, startling all of them. Marko felt a warm spray hit the left side of his face, and a large volume of thick, dark red fluid bathed the filthy corpses directly below him in the pit. Time slowed even further for Marko as he registered the absolute insanity of the moment. He was actually standing in a line of men about to be executed by a stark raving mad lunatic, and very little stood between his own death and salvation. His thoughts came quickly and clearly, almost serenely, as the man's body was kicked into the pit before it could even fall to the earth.

Marko gauged the moment and decided to let one more person die before making his play. He figured that the chance of Radovan shooting someone consecutively in line was unlikely. The mind worked in strange ways, and he just knew the next bullet wouldn't be his. He figured the next one to be killed would be the first person to open their mouth with nothing to say. He was right.

"Mr. Grahovac, I wasn't even in Belgrade when this…"

A sudden gunshot completed the kid's sentence, and another body tumbled into the pit, momentarily disturbing the flies.

"I'll kill every one of you until I figure out who did this," he snarled and started to walk back toward Marko.

At this point, Marko knew that Radovan had no intention of sparing any of them. He apparently had no idea who stole the money, and based on the fact that he had potentially killed three people who might have admitted the crime, it was clear that he didn't care. Radovan was deviously intelligent, and Marko figured this public stunt was designed to seal his legend as the most ruthless, unforgiving crime boss in Serbia. If he couldn't punish the actual thief, he could send a clear message that stealing would result in random, murderous consequences. Sensing his time near, Marko made a comment that he purposely intended to be undecipherable by Radovan. He made it quick, and there was an air of confidence to the statement that might have prevent his immediate execution.