Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) (23 page)
Read Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) Online
Authors: Joseph Badal
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue, #Espionage
Sergeant Bruto Drobac and six of the soldiers from Bromidivic’s unit stayed just inside the treeline around the clearing. A layer of morning mist, like a lowlying cloud, moved by a slight breeze just over the tops of the tall grass. About to radio an “all clear” message to Captain Bromidivic, Drobac saw a flash of light in the grass near the middle of the clearing. He signaled his men to drop to the ground and took a pair of binoculars from a pouch hanging on his web belt. Slowly, patiently, he swept the binoculars across the clearing where he’d seen the light.
There! While the breeze played with the mist, he saw movement in the grass. He focused on the spot but nothing moved for two minutes. Then Drobac’s breath caught in his chest. A greasepainted face filled his vision. More motion. Two more men shifted in the mist.
Garcia adjusted the tiny radio receiver in his ear. He stared at his watch. The choppers were two minutes late. Then he jerked toward a harsh whisper from one of his men. The man hissed: “Armed men at three o’clock.”
Garcia spoke into his radio mic. The Marines reacted as they’d been trained to do – positioning themselves to lay down a devastating field of fire against the intruders.
A deadly stillness covered the valley. Garcia felt his heart pound. He’d seen where the intruders had dropped behind the valley’s natural cover. What he wasn’t sure of was how many men were out there, or what sort of support they had. Were the men across the field Serbs or Albanians? He searched the sky again for the extraction choppers. But he knew they weren’t there. He’d hear them before he saw them.
Then a voice from the opposite side of the field broke the quiet. “You Americans, we have you surrounded,” a man somewhere in front of them said in broken English. “Stand up. Throw down your weapons and put your hands on your heads.”
“If we stay here, Lieutenant, we’re dead,” Bob said. “They’ve got us pinned down.”
“No shit, sir.”
Bob pointed behind their position. “If we can get into those rocks, at least we’d have some cover. The morning haze will help hide us a bit as we move. In another fifteen minutes, though, the sun will burn it off.”
“How do you propose we get over there without getting shot?”
“Do any of your men speak Serbo-Croatian?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Let’s confuse these guys a bit.” Bob told Garcia to shout
What do you want?
pretending to be Serbian.
“What if those men aren’t Serbs?” Garcia asked.
Bob shrugged and said, “Then we’re up the creek.”
Garcia frowned at Bob, shook his head, and then yelled, “
Shto trebash sa nama
?”
Garcia’s use of Serbo-Croatian seemed to surprise the man to the left of the Marine’s position. After several seconds, the man said, “
Trazimo Generala Antonin Karadjic. Ko zi se?
”
“Oh, shit,” Garcia whispered to Bob. “Serbs. They’re after Karadjic.” He yelled back at the voice, again in Serbo-Croatian, “We’re a Serb militia unit that’s been raiding in Albania.”
The voice came again, loud, angry. “Surrender then! You have nothing to fear from us. We’re Serb soldiers.”
Bob asked Garcia, “What did he say?”
“He wants us to surrender.”
Garcia look back at the rock formation Bob had pointed out to him. “Get ready to back up into those rocks behind our position,” he radioed his men. Then Garcia shouted at the Serbs, “We left our equipment behind us in those rocks. Give us a minute to gather it.”
Then Garcia spoke into his radio mic: “In fifteen seconds we break for the rocks. Sackett, you and your team cover our 3 o’clock; Messina cover our 9 o’clock. Start firing at will as soon as we begin moving.”
The Marines backed up toward the rocks while firing their weapons in semi-automatic mode. The Serbs didn’t immediately return fire, apparently surprised by the vicious firing against them. But they didn’t hesitate for more than a few seconds. The Serbs unleashed their weapons on the Americans. Their firing came from the left and right of the Marines’ position. The sounds of the shots echoed off nearby hillsides, seemingly trebling the noise of the firing in the narrow valley.
The back of the head of the Marine nearest Garcia erupted in an explosion of blood, bone, and brains. Garcia’s tense expression turned to an open-mouthed look of shock.
“Yaurie’s been hit,” Messina shouted.
“Goddammit,” Garcia said under his breath. Then he shouted to Sergeants Sackett and Messina, “Get the men behind those rocks.”
Dragging Yaurie’s body and Karadjic, the Marines moved out of their positions toward the rock formation. They fired at the Serbs, but Garcia ordered his men to cease firing when he realized they were shooting at ghosts. The Serbs were so well hidden the Marines were just wasting their limited ammunition. Once the Marines reached the rocks, the Serbs had also stopped firing.
The Marines dropped low behind the cluster of boulders and granite slabs. Garcia quickly took inventory of his men. They’d suffered only one casualty – Yaurie – but General Karadjic, screaming like a banshee, had taken a round in his right thigh, shattering bone. Garcia had just ordered one of his Marines to take the radio from Yaurie’s body and try to raise the helicopter pilots, when the Serbs started firing again. Bullets ricocheted off the rocks and whistled around Garcia and his men. Rock splinters were flying like explosive shrapnel.
The team’s Navy corpsman went to work on the General’s leg, while the Marines repositioned themselves to take advantage of the terrain’s natural cover. Garcia made sure his men were positioned to cover the two Serb positions and ordered them to fire at targets of opportunity.
“I’m hit! Corpsman, Corpsman!” one of the Marines yelled.
The sounds of firing weapons nearly obscured the man’s shouts. Then another Marine shouted that he’d been hit, and still another man screamed. Garcia said a silent prayer the helicopters would show while jerking a grenade from his web belt. He launched the grenade at the Serbs on the right. The explosion was followed by the sounds of men voicing the terrible agony of hot metal wounds. Wounded men’s screams from both sides vied with the clamor of weapons releasing their horrible missiles.
Garcia looked at his watch again. The helicopters were now nine minutes behind schedule.
Into the rat-a-tat confusion of automatic weapons fire, a different sound suddenly imposed itself – the sound of helicopter rotors heavily beating the morning air. The thrumming of the rotors seemed to vibrate Garcia’s breastbone. Garcia stared in the direction of the noise, but when the aircraft came into view, it was not an American gunship. It was a Russian-made helicopter with Serb Army markings.
Garcia realized it must be the one that had carried the General and the Serb team to Hill 652. He watched the hovering helicopter descend to about two hundred feet above the clearing. Two bursts of flame shot from the helicopter toward Garcia. Rockets! The air in the valley seemed to shudder, and then the boulders around him shattered, rending the air with sharp-edged, granite shrapnel.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Bromidivic shouted into his radio to the helicopter pilot. “They have General Karadjic.”
The pilot sharply veered away from the clearing and settled in a hover about three hundred feet above the clearing.
Bromidivic looked over his shoulder. “Where are those fucking Gypsies?” he shouted.
His men looked back where the two Gypsies had been lying in the grass a moment earlier. None of them had an answer for their Captain.
“Sir, the corpsman’s down,” Messina shouted. “Sluter’s dead. Frantz, Kelly, and Koury are wounded.”
“How bad?” Garcia demanded, ducking down when small arms fire erupted from the Serb position to his left, behind a stand of trees.
“Frantz and Koury can fight. Kelly’s bad. You’re bleeding, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll live; it’s just rock splinters.”
The voice again from the Serb position on the left: “You men are finished! Throw down your weapons! Come out!”
Garcia gritted his teeth. Things did not look good at all.
A blast of static from Garcia’s radio, then words: “Homing Pigeon to Bird Dog, pickup in one minute.”
Garcia shouted into his radio, “Homing Pigeon, this is Bird Dog. Homing Pigeon, we got enemy soldiers north and south of us. And a Serb chopper on top of us. We’re pinned down. Got casualties.”
“Hear you loud and clear, Bird Dog. I got the aircraft on my scope. Pop smoke so I can see your position. Keep your head down.”
Garcia jerked a yellow smoke grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade twenty yards to the front of their position. “Homing Pigeon, I’ve just popped smoke; advise what color you see.”
Two AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters peeked above the western treeline. Like a spectator at a sporting event, Garcia watched the Super Cobras emerge above the tops of the trees – from main rotor to windscreen to fuselage to skids.
“I got yellow smoke, Bird Dog. Over.”
“That’s us,” Garcia replied.
One helicopter loosed a Sidewinder missile, which streaked to its target, sounding like a giant hissing cobra. The Serb helicopter exploded. The shock wave crashed onto the meadow, followed by fiery rubble.
The two Super Cobras swooped down on the Serb positions. Their pilots softened the opposition by first firing 2.75” rockets. Then they fired their turreted cannons and spewed 20mm rounds. In ten seconds, the giant chain guns each fired more than half their 750-round magazines. The Serb soldiers were left bleeding into the Albanian turf.
The Super Cobras rose above the extraction point and a troop-carrying MV-22 helicopter swooped in.
The Marines moved quickly, carrying their dead and helping the wounded to the aircraft.
The last few Marines were boarding the MV-22 when Bob pointed out the door and said, “What’s that?”
A young woman, skirts flying and arms pumping, ran toward them. Lying just inside the helicopter’s open door, Karadjic shrieked, “Miriana, you bitch!”
Bob realized this must be the girl, the fortune-teller, who’d helped snare the general.
“Let’s get out of here,” the pilot shouted.
“Hold it!” Bob said. ”Wait for the girl.”
The pilot looked over his shoulder at Bob, then turned his head back toward the aircraft’s instrument panel and waited.
Stefan and Kukoch stood behind large trees. Stefan patted the front of his jacket and smiled at the thought of the money in the belt he’d taken off Danforth. He and Kukoch watched the carnage created by the American helicopters and watched the third, bigger helicopter drop into the grassy meadow. They’d observed the Americans clamber aboard. Then a flash of color moved from the left, diverting Stefan’s attention. A young woman in Gypsy dress raced toward the American aircraft. He recognized her clothing and the way she ran: Miriana.
“My God,” Kukoch said, “it’s your daughter. What’s she doing here?”
Stefan could not believe his eyes. He never knew exactly what would happen to Karadjic, but he had not for a moment thought Miriana would be anywhere near the action. She was supposed to be back in Belgrade, from where they were all supposed to be flown out of the Balkans. That bastard Karadjic! He’d obviously dragged her along with him to the Albanian border on the helicopter.
Then another movement distracted Stefan. A man rose in the clearing. He held a rifle. Stefan screamed, “No!” and ran toward him, willing his old legs to stretch to their limit, to run faster. It was the Serb officer, wounded – bloodstains on the back of his uniform. Stefan felt as though he was moving in slow motion. Everything seemed so clear – the bloodstained uniform, the man’s broad back, the rifle pointed in the direction of the Americans. Again Stefan screamed, “No!” He launched himself at the man just when the crack of the Serb officer’s rifle reverberated through the clearing.
Stefan ripped the knife from the scabbard on the man’s belt and sliced the Serb’s throat. He got to his feet and looked for Miriana. He saw the Americans lift her into the helicopter. She appeared limp . . . lifeless. His wail was washed away by the helicopter’s revving motor and whining rotors.