Bosnian Inferno

He got back home to find his mother and Rosemary asleep in front of the TV, the living-room still littered with the debris of Christmas. On the table by the telephone there was a message for him to ring Hereford.

She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, her head bowed down, on the stinking mattress in the slowly lightening room. The first night was over, she thought, but the first of how many?

The left side of her face still ached from where he had hit her, and the pain between her legs showed no signs of easing. She longed to be able to wash herself, and knew the longing was as much psychological as it was physical. Either way, she doubted if they would allow it.

This time yesterday, she thought, I was waiting for Hajrija in the nurses’ dormitory.

The previous morning, after the two Russians had been sent running back towards Sarajevo with their tails between their legs, the four Chetniks had simply abandoned their roadblock, as if it had accomplished its purpose. They had casually left the young American’s body by the side of the road, bundled her into the back seat of their Fiat Uno, and driven on down the valley to the next village. Here she could see no signs of the local population, either alive or dead, and only one blackened hulk of a barn bore testimony to recent conflict. As they pulled up in the centre of the village another group of Chetnik irregulars, a dozen or so strong, was preparing to leave in a convoy of cars.

The leader of her group exchanged a few pleasantries with the leader of the outgoing troops, and she was led into a nearby house, which, though stripped of all personal or religious items, had obviously once belonged to a Muslim family. Since their departure it had apparently served as a billet for pigs. The Chetniks’ idea of eating seemed to be to throw food at one another in the vain hope some of it went in through the mouth. Their idea of bathing was non-existent. The house stank.

What remained of the furniture was waiting to be burnt on the fire. And there was a large bloodstain on the rug in the main room which didn’t seem that old.

Nena was led through to a small room at the back, which was empty save for a soiled mattress and empty bucket. The only light filtered round the edges of the shutters on the single window.

‘I need to wash,’ she told her escort. They were the first words she had spoken since her abduction.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘There’s no need now,’ he added, and closed the door.

She had spent the rest of the day trying not to panic, trying to prepare herself for what she knew was coming. She wanted to survive, she kept telling herself, like a litany. If they were going to kill her anyway then there was nothing she could do about it, but she mustn’t give them an excuse to kill her in a fit of anger. She should keep her mouth shut, say as little as possible. Perhaps tell them she was a doctor – they might decide she could be of use to them.

The afternoon passed by, and the light faded outside. No one brought her food or water, but even above the sound of the wind she could hear people in the house and even smell something cooking. Eventually she heard the clink of bottles, and guessed that they had begun drinking. It was about an hour later that the first man appeared in the doorway.

In the dim light she could see he had a gun in one hand. ‘Take off the trousers,’ he said abruptly. She swallowed once and did as he said.

‘And the knickers.’

She pulled them off.

‘Now lie down, darling,’ he ordered.

She did so, and he was looming above her, dropping his jungle fatigues and long johns down to his knees, and thrusting his swollen penis between her legs.

‘Wider,’ he said, taking his finger off the gun’s safety-catch only inches from her ear.

He pushed himself inside her, and started pumping. He made no attempt to feel her breasts, let alone kiss her, and out of nowhere she found herself remembering her father’s dog, and its habit of trying to fuck the large cushion which someone had made for it to lie on. Now she was the cushion and this Serb was the dog. As smelly, as inhuman, as any dog.

He came with a furious rush, and almost leapt off her, as if she was suddenly contagious.

The second man was much the same, except for the fact that he didn’t utter a single word between entering the room and leaving it. Then there was a respite of ten minutes or so, before the group’s leader came in. He stripped from the waist down, grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted up her face to meet his own, as if determined to impress on her exactly who it was she was submitting to.

She let out an involuntary sob, and that seemed to satisfy him. He pushed inside her quickly, but then took his time, savouring the moment with slow, methodical strokes, stopping himself several times as he approached a climax, before finally letting himself slip over the edge.

The young one was last, and the other three brought him in like a bull being brought to a heifer. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen and he looked almost as nervous as he did excited. ‘Come on,’ the others said, ‘show her what you’ve got.’ He unveiled his penis almost shyly. It was already erect, quivering with anticipation.

‘I think he’s ready,’ the leader joked, and the other two grabbed hold of Nena and pushed her back across the mattress, legs hanging out across the floor. Then they pulled them wide. ‘That’s where you aim for, Sergei,’ one of them said, running a finger down her bloodied vulva. ‘We’ve got her nice and lubricated for you.’

He came when he was only halfway inside her, to the drunken jeers of his companions.

After that they retired to the room next door, leaving her lying, rolled up in a ball. She tried to ignore the pain, wondering how they could let her live after what they had done. Did they think the war would last for ever, that law and decency would never return, that they were immune to any retribution?

They probably did. She hoped they did, because what other reason could they have for leaving her alive to tell the story?

And if they did make that mistake…She lay there trying to fix all the details in her mind: the place, the faces, the tattoos, the names they had called each other, the individual smells…

She could hear them talking in the next room, and laughing too. She started to cry, silently at first, then in great, wracking sobs which seemed to go on and on and on.

Exhaustion must have driven her to sleep for a few moments, because she suddenly woke to find the group’s leader standing over her once more.

‘You’re in luck,’ he told her. ‘The rest of the lads haven’t come back, so you’ve had an easy night. But I thought I’d come for dessert.’

He pulled down his trousers and stood there, his cock hanging in front of her face. She could smell it, smell herself on it. ‘Make it grow,’ he said with a leer, and she took hold of it, trying to imagine she was back in the hospital, examining someone. And in his case, hoping to find something seriously wrong.

It swelled in her hand.

‘Now suck,’ he said, looking down at her.

She didn’t say no, but there must have been something in her eyes, because he abruptly changed his mind, pushing her back across the mattress, roughly pulling off her jeans, and rolling her over. ‘You’d bite it off, wouldn’t you?’ he hissed into her ear, and thrust himself into her anus. She cried out involuntarily, which seemed only to increase his ardour. After a minute of energetic pumping he pulled himself out rolled her back over, wedged her legs open with his own, and rammed himself into her vagina, this time coming almost instantly.

He exhaled noisily and lifted himself up, looking down at her. ‘You enjoy it really, don’t you. All you Muslim whores enjoy it.’

She said nothing, but she couldn’t control the look in her eyes, and he hit her once, as hard as she had ever imagined being hit, across the side of the face.

Perhaps she had blacked out for a few seconds, because her next conscious thought was of the door closing behind him. And then she had lain awake for what seemed like hours, feeling that a stain had been etched into her soul, and that nothing would ever be the same again. And when the morning light had appeared around the edge of the shutter it had seemed the greyest of lights.

Now she sat there, hugging herself around the knees, waiting to find out which fate awaited her – death or more nights like the last.

They were awake in the room next door, and this morning she could hear them talking, as the wind outside had died down.

‘I like blondes,’ one man was saying. ‘Fucking a blonde is…it’s sort of cleaner, know what I mean? Dark women feel dirtier somehow…’

‘Why can’t we keep her?’ a younger voice asked.

‘Listen to the kid. Thinks he’s a stud already.’

‘But why can’t we keep her?’ an older voice asked. ‘They expect us to look after the area, freeze our balls off on that road. We only get down to Stovic about once a month.’

There were a few moments of silence, moments in which Nena tried not to wonder what the alternative was to being kept.

‘We’re not keeping her,’ the group leader said. ‘Keep a woman here permanently and we have to feed her, watch her, keep her clean…’

‘What for?’

‘Because they don’t feel as nice if they’ve been rolling around in their own shit,’ the leader said.

‘She could do the cooking,’ someone objected.

‘Yeah? The moment you let her out of that room she needs a guard, right? Which means one of us will have to stay here. It’s not worth it. She’s not that great a fuck, anyway. All bones. She’s old enough to be Koca’s grandmother. She’s going to Vogosca.’

Those last four words caused Nena to almost gasp with relief. Vogosca was a small, predominantly Serb town about four miles north of Sarajevo, and though she didn’t know what awaited her there it had to be better than dying in this mountain village whose name she didn’t even know.

Hold on, she told herself, hold on. She put her coat on and waited.

One of the men came to get her an hour or so later – the one who had not said a word as he raped her. ‘You have to get washed,’ he said, and he prodded her out through the house’s back door. The clouds were almost touching the ground, the mountains completely obscured from view, but the snow still seemed dazzling to her eyes. ‘You can clean yourself with that,’ he said, pointing at the nearest snowdrift.

She looked at it. ‘What kind of men are you?’ she asked before she could stop herself.

He wasn’t offended by the question. ‘We are Serbs,’ he replied. ‘Your men are taking our women just the same way.’

She walked across to the snowdrift, took down the bloody jeans and squatted in such a way that she could wash between her legs. The snow made the abrasions sting, but somehow that seemed almost a blessing.

After she had finished he took her round the outside of the house to where the Fiat was parked and told her to get inside. She sat alone in the car for about ten minutes, and then he returned, climbed in and started the car.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Not far,’ he said. Once they were outside the village he lit a cigarette, and, after a moment’s hesitation, offered her one.

‘I don’t smoke,’ she said. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she added, without thinking.

‘Yeah?’ he said, interested. ‘I’ve got a pain in my chest right here,’ he said, tapping it with the hand that held the cigarette and giving her an enquiring glance.

‘That could be a lot of things,’ she said. Hopefully lung cancer, she thought.

‘You think it could be serious?’ he asked anxiously.

‘It could. Why not just stop smoking,’ she said coldly.

‘After the war’s over,’ he said. ‘It’s too fucking nerve-racking without cigarettes.’

After the war’s over you’ll be on trial for rape and murder, she thought.

Another ten minutes and they had reached a larger village. In its centre both Serb irregulars and uniformed Yugoslav Army troops were in evidence. A tank sat to one side, its gun barrel depressed towards the slushy ground, and on the other side of the road two empty armoured personnel carriers were tilted against the verge. Beyond the tank a civilian bus was parked. The indicator board still announced Travnik as its destination, but the driver was wearing military uniform, and the passengers were exclusively female.

Nena’s abductor pulled her out of the car and pushed her on to the bus.

‘Only one this week?’ the driver asked sarcastically.

Nena was surveying her fellow-passengers. There were about a dozen of them, and they all seemed to be Muslims, ranging in age from the mid-forties to just past puberty. Every one of them appeared to be in a state of semi-shock, as if the worst had already happened but they didn’t yet know what it was.

‘Where are you from?’ Nena asked the woman nearest the front.

‘No talking,’ the driver screamed at her.

The two women’s eyes met in shared resignation, and Nena sat down across the aisle from her.

At least three hours went by before a couple of uniformed soldiers came on board, and the journey began. Nena was growing increasingly conscious of how thirsty she was – one handful of snow in twenty-four hours was nowhere near enough to satisfy anyone. Hunger was less of a problem. She realized that living in Sarajevo for the last few months, she had grown accustomed to life on an empty stomach.

The afternoon dragged on, the bus coughing its way up hills and rattling its way down them. It was growing dark as they finally entered Vogosca. Nena had driven through the small town many times, but couldn’t remember ever stopping. The bus drew up outside the Partisan Sports Hall, and the twelve women and girls were ordered off. A Serb irregular sporting the badge of the White Eagles gestured them in through the front doors, and once inside another man pointed them through a further pair of twin doors.

It was dark inside the room, but as Nena’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom it became apparent that they were in a gymnasium; one, moreover, that was already home to other women. All around the walls they sat or lay, thirty or forty of them, and as yet not one of them had uttered a word.

‘What is this?’ Nena asked, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. As if in response someone started to cry.

‘It’s the shop window of a brothel,’ a dry voice said.

4

Chris Martinson pulled the jeep into the car park of Hereford Station and looked at his watch. The Dame’s connection from Worcester was not due for another five minutes, which probably meant a twenty-minute wait. A ferocious rain was beating a tattoo on the jeep’s convertible roof, and almost visibly deepening the puddles in the car park, but at least it was relatively warm for the time of year. Chris decided to stay where he was until the train came into view under the bridge.

Sergeant Docherty had called him with the request to pick the Dame up at the station, and though Chris had not had much to do with Docherty during his eight years in the SAS – the older man had left B Squadron for the Training Wing before Chris won his badge – he had managed to piece together an impression of him from what others had said. It would have been hard not to, for Docherty was something of a legend – the man who had almost succumbed to personal tragedy, and then come home the hard way from Argentina during the Falklands War, walking out across the Andes with a new wife.

Chris had a good idea how hard that must have been, having been involved in something similar himself in Colombia. Only he had neglected to bring a wife.

Docherty was not just known for his toughness though. He was supposed to be something close to the old SAS ideal, a thinking soldier. There were many in the Regiment who lamented the shift in selection policy over the last decade, which seemed to put a lower premium on thought and a higher one on physical and emotional strength. Others, of course, said it was just a sign of the times. The Dochertys of this world, like the George Bests, were becoming extinct. Their breeding grounds had been overrun by progress.

It suddenly dawned on Chris why Docherty had sent him to collect the Dame. The Scot had thought it would be a good idea for the two of them to talk before being confronted with whatever it was they were about to be confronted with. To psych each other up. Chris smiled to himself. A thinking soldier indeed.

A two-tone horn announced the arrival of the train, seconds before the diesel’s yellow nose appeared beneath the bridge. Chris jumped down from the jeep and made a run for the ticket hall, his boots sending water flying up from the puddles.

The Dame was one of the last to reach the barrier, his dark face set, as usual, in an almost otherworldly seriousness, as if he was deeply involved in pondering some abstruse philosophical puzzle.

The face broke into a smile when he saw Chris.

‘Your humble chauffeur awaits,’ the latter said.

‘I suppose the birds aren’t flying today,’ the Dame said, eyeing the torrential rain from the station entrance. ‘How many miles away have you parked?’

Chris pointed out the jeep. ‘Do you think you can manage twenty yards?’

The two men dashed madly through the half-flooded car park and scrambled into the jeep.

‘What’s this all about?’ the Dame half-shouted above the din of rain on the roof.

‘No idea,’ Chris said, starting up the engine. ‘But we’re about to find out – the briefing’s due to begin in about twenty-five minutes.’

‘You don’t even know where we’re going?’

‘Nope. They’re playing it really close to the chest. All I know is that it’s a four-man op.’

‘Who are the other two?’

‘Sergeant Docherty and…’

‘I thought he’d retired.’

‘He had. He’s been reinstated, presumably just for this one show.’

‘Christ, he must be about forty-five by now. It can’t be anything too strenuous.’

Chris laughed. ‘I shouldn’t say anything like that when he’s around. He didn’t look too decrepit the last time I saw him.’

‘Maybe. Who’s Number Four?’

‘Sergeant Wilkinson. Training Wing.’

‘I know him. At least, I’ve played football with him. He must be about thirty-five…’

‘Hey, I’ve turned thirty, you know. Someone obviously decided they needed experience for this one, and you were just included to provide some mindless energy.’

‘Probably,’ the Dame said equably. ‘Wilkinson always reminds me a bit of Eddie. London to the bone. A joker. He’s even a Tottenham supporter.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Chris said, and both men were silent for a few moments, thinking of their old comrade, who had died in the village by the jungle river in Colombia. Probably with some witty rejoinder frozen on his lips.

‘How was your Christmas?’ the Dame asked eventually.

‘Fine,’ Chris said, though he’d spent most evenings desperately bored. ‘Yours?’

‘It was great. My sister got married yesterday, and I had to give her away. It was great,’ he said again, as if he was trying to convince himself.

Chris looked at his watch as he turned the jeep in through the gates of the Stirling Lines barracks. ‘Time for a brew,’ he said.

The water-buffalo’s head which reigned over ‘the Kremlin’s’ briefing room – a memento of the Regiment’s Malayan days – seemed to be leaning slightly to one side, as if it was trying to hear some distant mating call. Forget it, Docherty thought, you don’t have a body any more.

He knew the feeling, after the previous night’s evening in the pub with old friends. The good news was that he and Isabel couldn’t be drinking as much as they thought they were – not if his head felt like this after only half a dozen pints and chasers.

‘Bad news,’ Barney Davies said, as he came in through the door. ‘Nena Reeve seems to have gone missing. She’s not been to work at the hospital for the last couple of days. Of course, things being the way they are in Sarajevo, she may just be at home with the flu and unable to phone in. Or she may have been wounded by a sniper, or be looking after a friend who was. They’re trying to find out.’

‘MI6?’

‘Presumably. Did Robson get here all right?’

‘Yes, boss,’ a voice with a Wearside accent said from behind him. The Dame and Chris filed in, swiftly followed by Razor Wilkinson.

Docherty got to his feet, shook hands with the new arrivals, and then took up a position half-sitting on the table at the front, while the other four arranged themselves in a semicircle of upright chairs.

He began by introducing everyone. ‘You two have been recommended to me by the CO,’ he told Chris and the Dame. ‘Though you may wish he hadn’t by the time we’re finished. We’re going to Bosnia, gentlemen,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

He went through the whole story from the beginning, all the while keeping a careful watch on the two new men’s faces. The mere mention of Bosnia seemed to have brought a gleam into the eyes of the lad from Sunderland, and as Docherty talked he could almost feel the Dame’s intense eagerness to get started.

The Essex lad was a different type altogether: very cool and collected, very self-contained, almost as if he was in some sort of reverie. There were a couple of moments when Docherty wasn’t even sure he was listening, but once he’d finished his outline it was Chris who came up with the first question, and one that went straight to the heart of the matter.

‘What are we going in as, boss?’ he asked.

‘That’s a good question,’ Barney Davies said. ‘You’ll be flying into Split on the coast of Croatia, and while you’re there waiting for transport to Sarajevo – which may be a few hours, may be a few days – your cover will be as supervisory staff attached to the Sarajevo civilian supply line. Once you’re in Sarajevo…well, not to put too fine a point on it, you’ll just be one more bunch of irregulars in a situation which is not too far from anarchy.’

‘But we have troops there, right?’ the Dame asked. ‘The Cheshires and the Royal Irish.’

‘One battalion from each,’ Davies confirmed, ‘and a squadron of Lancers, but they’re under UN control, and that means they can only fire off weapons in self-defence. Their own, not yours. You should get some useful intelligence from our people out there, but don’t expect anything more. The whole point of this op, at least as far as our political masters are concerned, is to restore our reputation as peace-keepers, with the least possible publicity…’

‘You make it sound like the Regiment has a different priority, boss,’ Razor said, surprising Docherty.

‘I think it might be fairer to say we have an additional priority,’ Davies said. ‘Looking after our own. John Reeve has been an outstanding soldier for the Regiment, and he deserves whatever help we can give him.’

There was a rap on the door, and an adjutant poked his head around it. ‘The man from the Foreign Office is here, boss,’ he told Davies.

‘Bring him through,’ the CO ordered. ‘He’s going to brief you on the local background,’ he told the four men.

A suited young man, carrying a briefcase in one hand and what appeared to be a large wad of maps in the other, walked confidently into the room. He had longish, curly hair, circular, black-framed spectacles, and the overall look of an anorexic Malcolm Rifkind.

‘This is Mr Castle, from the Foreign Office’s Balkan Section,’ Davies said formally, as he walked across to make sure the door was firmly closed. Docherty suddenly realized how unusual it was for the CO to introduce a briefing. He wondered how many other members of the Regiment knew of this mission. If any.

‘He is going to give you a basic introduction to what the newspapers now like to call “the former Yugoslavia”, the CO went on. ‘I know you all read the Sun voraciously,’ he added with a broad smile, ‘so most of what he has to say may be only too familiar, but just in case you’ve missed the odd page of detailed analysis…Mr Castle.’