Read THE HEART OF DANGER Online
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #War Crimes; thriller; mass grave; Library; Kupa; Croatia; Mowatt; Penn; Dorrie;
away
or throw himself to the edge of the light, but the fear was in him
and
with the fear was blindness. The old woman had been behind him. She had been in the pit behind him when he had turned away. With the
shouts, with the click of the safety catches, there was a sudden
stifled scream, a man's hoarse pain. The light never left Penn. It was what he himself would have done, or what his instructors from
far
back would have told him to do. "Put the light down, sonny boy. Be close to the light but not on it, sonny boy. "Cause if they're going to put suppressive fire down, sonny boy, it'll be the light they go
for
.. ." That is what an instructor would have said, and he realized
the
angle of the light was low, as if it was on the ground. There was
a
hammer of shots behind him, semi-automatic on a rifle, and after the
shots and the scream there was the sound, briefly, of ripping cloth.
Penn did not dare to turn to see whether Katica Dubelj, old woman
gone
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animal, old woman gone eighty years of her life, old woman who had
never been on a surveillance or an evasion course, old woman not
strong
enough to go cross country, had made it clear through the thorn and
wire in the hedge beyond the pit. There was a loaded pistol weighting
the pocket of his coat. There were four grenades in his backpack.
Penn did not dare to reach for either. Very slowly, so carefully
that
the movement should not be misunderstood, he stretched out his arms,
kept his hands open, raised his arms.
He thought he was the prize. He heard behind him, after the bullet
volley, nothing of pursuit. Fear seemed to numb the movement of his
legs so that they were rigid scarecrow stilts, and to loosen the hold
of his guts so that he wanted to piss, crap. The fear trembled the
movement of his arms, up high and into surrender. His eyes bunked,
uncontrolled, and the water from his eyes distorted the glare of the
cone of light.
There was still shouting, but coming closer to him, moving closer
and
slowly because they could not know the fear that shackled him, as
if he
was still dangerous to them.
Only his mind was not frozen. In his mind the thoughts raced .. .
Ham hadn't talked of escape and evasion. The fat-faced little
bastard
hadn't talked about what to do ... He had once been at a Territorial
Army depot in Warrington, a marksman's rifle gone missing, a
suspicion
that it might have been sold to Protestant para militaries from Ulster
which was enough to bring in Security Service involvement, and an
Escape and Evasion pamphlet picked up off a book shelf. He had been
waiting for them to wheel in the armourer, and he had flicked the
pamphlet's pages, just from interest. He had read .. . the first
moments of capture offered the maximum opportunity of escape, also
offered the maximum opportunity of getting the old head blown off
because of the high state of adrenaline of the captors .. . He had
read
that it took real guts, big bravery, to antagonize captors by going
runabout. His hands were high above his head.
In his mind the thoughts cavorted , ..
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He was shit scared, frightened, and Dorrie Mowat had been here.
Dorrie
Mowat, the horrid young woman, had kicked one man in the privates,
punched one man in the eyes, spat at the whole goddamn lot of them.
Dorrie, the one that all who had touched had loved, had sat in the
wet
grass where he now stood in surrender, and her arms had been round
the
wounded man that she had chosen, and she had sat and waited while
the
bull dozer dug out the pit. She hadn't had the fear. A shape loomed at the edge of the cone of light.
In his mind the thoughts raced .. .
Jane in the small room, little Tom on her lap, with the television
on:
"And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?" Failed her. Mary in the kitchen and making the coffee: "I think
she took a pleasure in hurting me .. . and, Mr. Penn, she was my
daughter .. . and, Mr. Penn, her throat was slit and her skull was
bludgeoned and she was finished off with a close-range shot.. . and,
Mr. Penn, not even a rabid dog should be put to death with the cruelty
shown to my Dorrie." Failed her. Basil holding court to Jim and
Henry
in the darts bar of the pub round the corner from the launderette:
"You
know what you are, Penn? You are a jam my bastard." Failed them.
The
old American Professor of Pathology: "Build a case, stack the
evidence'
.. . Maria who was a refugee: "She was an angel in her courage' ..
.
Alija who needed the operation to her eyes: "She could not protect
herself because she had the wounded fighters to help' .. . Sylvia
who
was cloaked in the nervous collapse: "Does anybody care what happened to them, who did it, anybody?" .. . Failed them.
The blow was at the back of the neck.
Failed them all ... The blow was with the stock of a rifle, short
swing.
And failed Jovic who had interpreted for him, and Ulrike who had
234
touched his arm to make a talisman for him, and Ham who had given
him
the map .. . And failed himself.
He was pitched forward by the blow. They were all around him and
the
shadows of their bodies masked the cone of white light. He wondered
if
they would shoot him there, or whether they would take him some place
else to kill him, and felt he did not have Dome's courage. He tried
to
cry out, beg mercy of them, but his voice was suffocated. The fear
consumed him. When they had hit him some more times, when he had
seen
the grinning of cold faces, when he had smelled the foul close breath
of them, then they searched him and found the pistol and they skewered
his arms back and pulled the backpack off him, then they hit him with
the rifle stocks some more.
Penn was pulled to his feet. He could hear the music from across
the
stream.
Penn (William), Five reject, failure ... He was held tight and dragged
towards the pin lights of the village across the stream.
They were through Glina.
The convoy was belting. It was not usual for the convoy manager in
his
Land-Rover to let the fifteen Seddys behind him sniff the wind and
belt, but they were all pissed off and Benny who was driving three
from
the back supposed that the wound on the convoy manager's face had
lost
its numbness and would now hurt like hell.
Benny wasn't fussed. It did not matter to him that they had been
off
the main roads, into the ditches, up bloody awful rutted lanes. He'd
done the runs into northern Iraq out of Turkey to resupply the Kurds
in
winter, grinding in low gear down tracks that had never seen a loaded
Seddon Atkinson before. He made it his business to know the land,
read
up on his guidebooks and he wrote twice every week to his wife, Becky,
235
to tell her where he had been and what he had seen. There wouldn't
be
much to write to Becky about Glina because they had belted through
the
pretty little town, but he'd think of something to say. He only wrote
to Becky about the towns being pretty, never about the people being
shit. It was not his way to frighten her, to tell her that most days
he wore a pisspot on his head and a flak jacket of kevlar plates front
and back across his body, and he didn't tell her that the doors of
the
cab were armour-reinforced, nor that he had sandbags under his seat
as
protection from mine blasts. On the main road and belting, perhaps
forty-five minutes if they weren't messed again from the Turanj
crossing, and the voice crackled on the radio in his cab.
"Guys, there's usually a roadblock between Glina and Vrgin-most. I don't want to spend half the night yammering with some defective on
a
roadblock. There's a right a few miles ahead, up to a village called
Salika, I reckon we can get round the block, then back onto the main
heave .. . OK, guys?"
They didn't have call signs, the drivers didn't like to play at
military games. If they'd had call signs then all of them would have
been Foxtrot Something, all F-word stuff. Call signs were for kids
playing soldiers .. . The answers tripped over each other, and not
many
of them polite. And Benny's next letter to Becky would not tell her
that his nerves were hacked jagged by driving in darkness on stone
tracks through these shit awful villages, through these shit awful
people.
Bad news that there would be another shit block to divert round ..
.
He flicked the 'speak' switch. It was important to get a laugh
because
the nerves of all the drivers and the convoy manager would be as hacked
jagged as his own.
"You know what Lily Tomlin said: "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse" .. ."
They brought him down to the bridge.
236
They had tied his wrists together, cutting hard, behind his back,
and
his ankles so that the bones chafed each other, and they had to drag
him.
They came down to the bridge and they pitched him onto the planks
and
he fell onto his stomach and was trying to twist his head away so
that
his nose did not take the force of his fall. There was a rusted old
hurricane lamp on the bridge that threw a good light from beside the
sandbag position of the guards. It was then he saw for the first
time
the three men who had taken him. The one was thin and big, another
had
a heavy body and was taller, the last was slight and shallow in his
build. They'd thrown him down, dropped him like the dead roebuck
that
a stalker and the keeper had shot in the long copse behind the tied
cottage, and they had the same excitement of the stalker and the
keeper, and all three had the weathered faces of the country, aged,
and
Penn knew the country was cruel ... He was a specimen to be boasted
of,
and he heard words that were similar to "English' and to 'spy', and the
old bastards were showing the young guards of the bridge his passport
and the Browning 9mm automatic pistol and the spare magazines and
the
grenades. He did not see any more at the bridge. Penn tried to tuck down his head when the young guards at the bridge took their turn.
She hadn't flinched from the kicking ... Dorrie had faced up ... She
had kicked them back, punched them back, shouted back .. . She had
kept
her pride, her goddamn courage. Dorrie Mowat, a horrid young woman,
hadn't let them see her fear. He forced his eyes open. He looked
into
their faces as she had looked into their faces, into their boots,
into
their eyes. He didn't see Jane, he didn't see Mary ... He saw Dorrie
Mowat. He wondered if she watched him and laughed at him, wondered
if
she knew the love .. . God, and he had failed her. They picked him
up
with rough hands under his armpits, and they dragged him on over the
237
bridge, and he heard the beat sound of the music from among the pin
lights of the village. The sergeant came to her with his thermos
of
coffee. A good hour gone now since the sergeant had last tried to
play
the kind uncle, and get Ulrike on her way. She took the coffee,
thanked him. She sipped the warmth of the coffee. The sergeant was defeated, knew it and did not seem to care. She was not moving. She was staying until the aid convoy came through. The convoy was eight
hours late .. . She did not believe the sweet talk of the Liaison
Officer who was long gone. Sweet talk seldom convinced Ulrike
Schmidt.
Sweet talk of happiness and friendship had lured her to the job with
the organizing committee for her city's Olympic Games. Nineteen
years
old, waiting to go to university, taking the job of helping to get
out
the results for the swimming and the judo and the archery, joining
the
weeping girls with her own tears when the shadow stain of violence
cut
down the Israeli athletes. Sweet talk of progress in ending human
misery had trapped her into United Nations work, the university
discarded, and service in Lebanon and Cambodia, becoming a part of
the
cynical company that realized nothing changed through their efforts,
little was made better. Sweet talk of love and marriage had brought
her to the bed of an Australian army major in Phnom Penh, and there
was
the letter left casually on the dressing table of his quarters, and
the
photograph of the major's wife and four children in the drawer, under
his uniform shirts.
Sweet talk in Geneva had told her that the refugees from Bosnia would