Braco (8 page)

Men shouted.

Jac looked back. A group of Bosnian soldiers emerged from the woods, weapons pointed at the peacekeepers. The soldier carrying the anti-tank weapon on his shoulder ran to the front of the carrier, shaking his head and waving his free arm. The carrier powered down. One of the soldiers walked up to the peacekeepers.

“No,” he said. “You stay. You can't leave or Chetniks come.”

Another soldier raised his rifle to Karel's chest.

“Stay,” the soldier said. “You go, Chetniks come.”

The sergeant pulled himself halfway out of the driver's hatch and twisted around.

“What's going on?”

“They're not letting us go,” Karel said.

A third soldier pointed his rifle at Erik who raised his hands away from the machine gun mounted on the hatch.

“Goddamnit.” The sergeant hauled himself up on top of the carrier then dropped to the ground and faced the first soldier. “Will you make up your goddamned minds? Do we go or don't we?”

Jac heard a commotion among the refugees and turned. Nezir had pushed his stocky frame through the crowd and was shouting in Bosnian at the first soldier. The soldier hollered back, motioning to the carrier and the refugees.

Nezir fell silent. He wiped the sweat from his brow and dropped his hand to his hip. His eyes shifted between Jac, Maarten, and the sergeant. Jac's gaze drifted down. Nezir's fingers had unbuttoned the clasp of his holster and his hand was grasping the butt of his pistol.

Jac looked up. Nezir's eyes had moved back to the first Bosnian soldier and, without a word, Nezir raised the pistol and shot the soldier in the head.

Jac sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled backwards, bumping into Maarten.

“Jesus!”

The second soldier swung his rifle around. Nezir shifted his aim and shot him in the face.

Blood splattered Janssen.

Nezir shouted at his men; muzzles lowered and the soldiers trudged away. Nezir turned to Janssen.

“Now Sergeant, you can go to Potocari,” he said. “My soldiers will not stop you. So, please, take my family and go.”

Nezir jammed his pistol back in the holster, patted the sergeant once on the shoulder, and walked over to his family. He kissed his wife and hugged his children then vanished into the crowd.

“My God,” Jac said, staring at the two bodies.

Janssen wiped the blood from his cheek and turned away from the dead soldiers.

“Let's get the hell out of here.”

Jac tore his eyes away from the bodies and followed Janssen towards the carrier.

“Keep them back, Jac,” Janssen said, climbing to the top of the vehicle. “I need some space to get out of here.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Jac stepped away and motioned to the wary crowd to stay back. The carrier came to life and the sergeant battled to pull the vehicle out of the ditch. The metal box pivoted to the left and then to the right, launching earth and rock like missiles. The crowd ducked. Some ran away.

Jac glimpsed movement in the corner of his eye; someone was running towards the carrier. He swung around. A cow trotted in front of the carrier just as the vehicle dug in and surged ahead. Erik shouted to the sergeant, but the animal was out of Janssen's line of sight. The carrier struck the cow. The animal cried out, but the sound was lost to a chorus of cracking bones and popping organs. The vehicle came to a halt and Janssen stood up in his hatch. He stared, wide-eyed, at Erik.

Erik raised his hands and pointed as he spoke to Janssen over the headset. The sergeant nodded and relaxed. Jac crossed in front of the carrier to inspect the damage. A layer of red covered the muddy white metal skin. Pieces of shattered bone poked out of the treads. Rivulets of blood flowed into the ditch.

“Is it dead?”

“Oh yeah. It's dead, Sergeant.” Jac glanced at the crowd, convinced the incident would make his job easier. “Go ahead. We'll meet you down below.”

The carrier moved away, but the crowd remained. Karel and Maarten joined Jac. They waved their arms, encouraging the anxious refugees forward.

“Come,” Jac shouted. “To Potocari. Come.”

They led the crowd along a road sheltered from the Serbs while the carrier rumbled down the lower road. After a short distance, Jac spotted Janssen standing on top of the carrier, motioning to the refugees to come forward. They approached the vehicle and stopped behind it.

“Rest,” the sergeant said.

A few refugees sat down. The rest stayed on their feet, staring at the peacekeepers.

They think we're going to take off on them, Jac thought. He took Maarten's arm and pulled him to the edge of the crowd.

“Sit down with me. Show them we're not going to leave without them.”

The peacekeepers sat down in the middle of the road and, one by one, the refugees followed suit. They drank water and adjusted their belongings. One woman emerged from the forest, leading a white horse with two children on its back. Gunfire popped in the south. Mortars flew overhead and slammed into the hills above the crowd. People flinched and ducked.

“Jesus, Jac, I know they're not trying to hit us, but if just one shell falls short.”

“I know.” He looked back. Janssen was on his feet, motioning to Jac. “I think he has the same idea.”

“Get them going,” Janssen said. He dropped into his hatch.

Jac stood. The crowd stood with him

“To Potocari,” he said. “Come. To Potocari.”

Maarten walked to the front of the carrier as it started up. Jac and Karel waved everyone forward. The carrier crept ahead at a pace slower than the slowest refugee. They walked with Jac, crowding him but staying behind the carrier.

Ahead, a road to the northwest led to another Dutch observation post. The post, Tango, was manned and, the last Jac had heard, it was under fire. He imagined the crew huddled inside their bunker waiting for the attacks to end. Jac trotted up to the carrier and waved to Erik.

“Any word from Tango?” Jac asked.

Erik shrugged and picked up his binoculars, scanning the road ahead.

“Oh my God!”

“What is it?”

Erik pointed towards the intersection while he spoke into his mic, reporting to Janssen. Jac peered ahead.

“I don't see anything.”

“Refugees. Go, go.”

Jac joined Maarten and they jogged ahead of the vehicle. Then they slowed down; thousands of people were cramming the road from Tango. People who had taken refuge there but were now rushing towards them.

“They must have heard the carrier,” Maarten said.

Jac looked at the vehicle and then the crowd. The mob would swamp the main road before the vehicle could pass the intersection.

“What do we do?” Maarten asked.

Jac motioned to the carrier to speed up, but wave after wave of refugees poured onto the road ahead of the carrier. The vehicle stopped and they swarmed it like ants, crawling up the sides and fighting for space on top. The peacekeepers worked to pull down people who were capable of walking, but for every person they removed two more scrambled on top of the vehicle.

“This is useless,” Maarten shouted to the sergeant.

The refugees sat two and three deep on the carrier when the sergeant gave up. He waved to Jac who propped himself up on a track next to the sergeant's hatch.

“Sergeant?”

He rubbed the sweat from his forehead. Speckles of blood remained. “Don't waste your time. We're going. Just keep them away from me, okay?”

“Yeah. No problem, Sergeant.”

Jac dropped to the road and surveyed the scene. People trying to crawl on top of the carrier were pushed back or pulled down by others trying to scramble up the side of the vehicle. Others gave up and walked ahead. A woman shrieked.

He turned around just as two young men dumped an old woman out of a wheelbarrow. They shoved her husband to the ground and picked up stereo equipment and piled it in the wheelbarrow. Wires hung over the edge.

“Jesus,” Jac said. He stepped in front of the men and dropped a heavy hand on the wheelbarrow. “What are you're doing?”

The young men stared at Jac. One shrugged.

“How the hell are we supposed to help you if you don't help yourselves?”

They tried to move forward, but Jac kept his grip on the wheelbarrow. And then he seized a speaker and threw it into the ditch. When he grabbed the other speaker, one of the men tried to take it away from him.

“Fuck you, Blue Helmet.”

A pair of hands appeared and tore the speaker from both of them. Karel tossed the speaker into the ditch then laid his hand on his Uzi.

“Get lost.”

The men backed away, crouched to pick up the rest of their equipment and melted into the crowd.

“Why do you bother, Jac?” Karel asked.

Jac ignored him and picked up the wheelbarrow, rolling it back to its owner. As he placed the woman inside, she kissed his hand and arm. The man tried to kiss him as well, but Jac stepped back and pointed.

“To Potocari.”

“
Danke, danke
.” He wheeled his wife away.

“Christ, Jac,” Karel said from behind. “If they want to kill each other, let them. It's not our problem.”

Jac turned his back on Karel and walked away. The carrier roared to life and he shooed people away from the tracks.

They began their slow march to Potocari.

WEDNESDAY:
MICHAEL SAKIC

MIKE LEANED AGAINST
a truck, listening to a Pakistani captain argue with a Serb soldier through a translator. Beyond them, Serb soldiers loitered around their checkpoint. The barrier was down and a row of anti-tank mines were strung across the road. A large guard shack sat on the edge of the forest. Beside it, a group of soldiers encircled a fire, drinking and singing.

They look like boy scouts.
Mike glanced at his watch.
Almost midnight.

After he had heard enough, he turned and walked the length of the convoy. He passed a Dutch armoured vehicle, a Pakistani tanker, a Norwegian ambulance, and three UN transports full of humanitarian aid. His truck, which hadn't moved in three hours, was second from last. With the obvious breakdown in negotiations, the convoy would likely spend the night on the mountainside. He climbed into the driver's seat.

“I was getting ready to send out a search-and-rescue mission,” Brendan said. “What were you doing for the last two hours?”

“Your work, of course.” Mike fished out two Aspirin from a bottle in the glove compartment and chased them down with a Coke. “I just found my newest, bestest friend.”

“Who?”

Mike glanced at Robert. The cameraman had folded the back seat down and made a bed out of the bags and equipment. He lay on his stomach with his head between the front seats and his hands propped under his chin like a first-grader waiting for story time.

“The Pakistani captain. I know the translator, a guy named Jure, and between the two of them, I got a few juicy details.”

“Yeah?” Brendan raised an eyebrow. “Either one up for an interview?”

“Not if they want to keep their jobs.”

“Then that information is pretty well useless to me.”

“Well, it may be second and maybe even third-hand, but it's a starting point for a few questions in Tuzla, don't you think?”

Brendan's mouth opened and then closed shut.

“Thought so.”

“So, what did your newest, bestest friend tell you?”

Mike chuckled and flipped back a few pages of his notepad.

“Well, according to them, all this started when the Serbs came up from Skelani on Thursday and attacked the Dutch OPs down there.”

“OPs?” Robert asked.

Mike looked back at the cameraman.

“He's still a virgin when it comes to military terminology,” Brendan said. “Among other things.”

Robert slapped Brendan's shoulder. “Hey!”

“Did you know last night was the first time he saw
The A-Team
?”

“It was in Greek,” Robert said.

“It could have been in English and it would have still been Greek to you.” Brendan looked at Mike. “His parents were pacifist hippies. They didn't own a television.”

Mike eyed Robert. “And you grew up to be a television cameraman?”

“Ironic, isn't it?” he replied. He had arrived in the country two days before, replacing Brendan's regular cameraman whose wife had gone into early labour. When he first saw him, Mike thought Robert was no more than eighteen, but his passport proved he was twenty-two.

“Well, an OP is an observation post,” Mike said. “The Dutch have their main base in Potocari. There's a smaller camp in Srebrenica called Bravo. The OPs are basically bunkers manned by about a half dozen guys. There are a bunch of them stationed on the edge of the enclave to keep an eye on things.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Anyway, after the Serbs attacked the OPs, the Dutch called for air strikes several times, but nothing happened. The guys on top had a variety of excuses: no evidence of the peacekeepers being directly targeted and so on and so forth. Probably the most important thing to happen over the weekend was that a group of Muslims stopped a Dutch crew who were retreating from one of the southern OPs. They demanded the Dutch go back to stop the Serbs, but the Dutch refused. So, one of the Muslims threw a grenade and killed one of the peacekeepers.”

“I heard something about that,” Robert said.

“Yeah.” Mike took a swig of his Coke. “That made the news, but what's important is when the other crews were forced to leave their OPs, the Serbs gave them a choice between going back to Potocari or staying with them. Of course, those crews knew what happened when the first OP crew tried to go through the Muslim lines, so they opted to stay with the Serbs.”

“Instant hostages,” Brendan said through a whistle.

“Precisely,” Mike replied, pointing his pen at Brendan. “So the Serbs kept advancing and the Muslims kept withdrawing until they got close to the town where the defenders were dug in pretty good.” He flipped forward a page. “Okay. Again, the Dutch reported being attacked by the Serbs and demanded air strikes. So finally, last night, the UN agreed to send in the planes to bomb the crap out of the Serb tanks, but by the time they get their act together, it was too dark, so they decided to wait until this morning.”

“The planes can't attack in the dark?” Robert asked.

“Planes can attack after dark,” Mike said. “I think they were a little wary about striking near Srebrenica because the town is in a long valley surrounded by steep hills. They probably didn't want to risk flying into a hill.

“It's as good an excuse as any of the others,” Brendan said.

“Oh, you haven't heard the best of it.” Mike pushed his glasses up. “The Dutch in Srebrenica told the Muslims there were going to be massive air strikes in the morning, so the Muslims had little choice but to abandon their trenches. When the sun came up this morning, they were all waiting for the planes, but nothing showed up.”

“And the Serbs happily took those unoccupied trenches, right?” Brendan asked.

“Who's telling the story here?”

“Sorry. It's just that this crap is becoming predictable.”

“Yeah.” Mike flipped to the next page. “So, where was I? Okay, no air strike and Potocari checked with Tuzla this morning to find out what happened to the planes. Now, listen to this. They were told the request was filed on the wrong bloody form.”

“What?”

“Oh, that's still not all. Potocari resubmitted the form and it gets rejected because the targeting information wasn't right. Then the fax in Tuzla broke down.”

“Holy shit,” Brendan said. “Next thing you know, they'll be saying the dog ate the request. You can see what's happening here, right?”

“What?” Robert asked.

“The UN is dragging its feet,” Brendan replied. “Srebrenica is in the way of a peace deal. The Bosnian Serbs don't want a Muslim community smack dab in the middle of their territory and they're not going to make peace until it's gone.”

“The UN wants peace,” Mike said. “The Serbs want Srebrenica. The Muslims get screwed.”

“Okay,” Robert said. “So, what happened with the planes?”

“Well, we know two Dutch planes made a run this afternoon. They dropped two bombs and, as we expected, the Serbs threatened the Dutch hostages. That was it for air strikes.”

“So, what's going on now?” Brendan asked.

“Nothing they could tell me. The latest they've heard is that most of the Dutch are back on the base in Potocari and they estimate some twenty-five thousand civilians are either on the base or in the factories surrounding it.”

“Twenty-five thousand?” Robert's eyebrows were almost at his hairline.

Mike flipped a page over and tapped his pen against the pad. “That's what he said.”

Robert looked at Brendan. “Didn't you tell me there were almost fifty thousand people there?”

“Yeah. A conservative estimate really.”

Robert turned to Mike. “So, where're the other twenty-five thousand?”

The two Americans stared at Mike.

There was a sharp tap on Mike's window. All three men jerked their heads around. A Serb soldier was standing on the other side of the glass, motioning to them to leave the vehicle. Mike opened his door and stepped out. The tail gate dropped.

“What's going on?” Robert asked.

“They're searching for weapons,” Brendan replied, stepping outside.

Robert slid over the tailgate. The Serbs soldiers were pulling equipment and bags out of the truck and dropping them on the ground. They checked every compartment they could open. One soldier let the air out of the spare tire. Another used a mirror to check underneath the truck.

A soldier walked up to Mike and held out his hand. “Passport. Press cards. Travel papers.”

Mike collected the documents and passed them to the Serb. The soldier took his time examining the paperwork. His flashlight moved from each document to the corresponding face and settled on Mike's. The Serb shone the light back down at the passport and then up into Mike's face again.

“You are Michael Sakic?” he asked in English.

“Mike Sakic. Yes.”

“Come with me,” the soldier said.

“What's the matter?” Brendan asked.

“It's fine,” Mike said. “This isn't the first time.”

“First time for what?”

“It's fine.” Mike walked away with the soldier.

Brendan and Robert followed. The soldier led them to a corporal and handed over the documents. The corporal examined them and the two soldiers began speaking in their own language.

“I'm not Croat,” Mike said to them in the same language.

The soldiers stared at him.

“I'm not Croat. I'm Canadian.”

“Sakic,” the corporal said, holding up Mike's passport. “You're Croat.”

Mike shook his head and pointed to his passport.

“No. I am Canadian. Look. I was born in Winnipeg. It's in Canada.”

“You speak the language very well for a Canadian.”

“My grandparents taught me. They were Croat. I'm Canadian.”

“What's going on?” Brendan asked, elbowing Mike.

Mike explained the situation to him.

“Does he speak English?”

“I do,” the corporal replied.

Brendan took the Serb corporal aside and they spoke in whispers.

“What are they talking about?” Robert asked.

“No idea,” Mike replied then sighed. “But I can guess.”

The corporal laughed and patted Brendan on the shoulder. Brendan glanced at Mike and then passed something to the Serb. The soldier gave the documents to Brendan and he walked back to the truck. The soldiers returned to the checkpoint, leaving the luggage and equipment on the ground.

“So,” Mike said, leaning on the driver's door and checking his documents. “How much of my fee did that cost me?”

Brendan poked his wallet away and smiled.