Warriors (9781101621189) Read online

  “Two-alpha again,” Irena said. “Lock it up.”

  “We’re on it,” a crewmate called. “What you got?”

  “Signal but no voice. Dušic just turned on a phone. Where is he?”

  “Right where we thought he’d be.”

  • • •

  THE MACHINE GUNNER at the checkpoint lay sprawled against sandbags, most of his head blown away. Parson was trying to see where the shot came from when the call came.

  “Dragnet,” the Rivet Joint crewman said, “we have a signal lock at your position.”

  Strange tone of voice. The man sounded scared, with a lot of ambient slipstream noise behind him. What was wrong up there? Parson wanted to ask but had no time.

  “Copy that,” Parson said. He switched frequencies and transmitted to Cunningham and Dragan, “Motown advises they have a lock.”

  “Copy that,” Dragan radioed.

  The murdered gunner proved Dušic was here, and now Dušic had turned on a cell phone. So where was the son of a bitch? Parson did not have to wonder long.

  A black Citroën nosed out of the backed-up traffic and jumped the curb. Policemen shouted orders in Serbo-Croatian. The car charged toward the Patriarchate’s entrance.

  Oh, God, this is it, Parson thought. Just as in his worst dreams, he could not make his mind or his body work fast enough to do any good. Nothing seemed to move quickly but the Citroën. Must be the car bomb. In an instant, the theoretical worst case became reality.

  Rooftop snipers opened up on the Citroën. The booms of their heavy-barreled rifles echoed through the falling drizzle. Rounds punched into the car’s hood and windshield, but the vehicle kept coming. Rifle fire chattered from points all around the Patriarchate. Who was firing? In front of the mobile command post, Dragan kneeled, brought up his Vintorez. Before he could fire, something knocked him sideways as if he had been kicked.

  Now Parson understood. Dušic had sent an assault team to take out the checkpoint, to clear the way for a vehicle-borne IED. The front of the Patriarchate had become a kill zone. Next, it would become ground zero.

  Parson tore off his headset and ran outside. A bullet scorched past his face and slammed into the side of the command post. These bastards had their own sniper.

  Men with AK-47s came from somewhere within the traffic. They sprayed on full auto, firing at policemen. One officer fell; others took cover behind police vehicles and returned fire. Shots from the rooftop dropped one of the gunmen, then another.

  Parson grabbed Dragan by the arms and pulled him behind the command post. The Serbian officer groaned.

  “I’m all right,” Dragan said. Saved by his body armor.

  Rounds peppered the Citroën as it lurched to the Patriarchate’s facade. Parson expected flame and steel to swallow him at any moment. But a strange thing happened. The driver’s door opened and a man got out and ran. Not a suicide attack, then.

  The sound of automatic fire lifted in a crescendo. One sniper atop the Patriarchate slumped over the edge of the roof. His weapon plummeted to the concrete below. Someone shouted “Allah-hu akbar!” The man who’d leaped from the Citroën stumbled, fell, regained his footing, and ran toward a side street.

  • • •

  A SEARING PAIN from a bullet wound burned Dušic’s left calf. The round had hit him just after he’d exited the car. Run, he told himself. Just run. Covering fire has got you this far.

  Bullets cracked in front and behind. He could not tell if they came from his team or the policemen trying to kill him. Spray-and-pray from the razvodniks seemed at least to force the officers behind cover. And the odds improved every time Stefan pressed the trigger of that M24.

  He saw the van on the street perpendicular to Kralja Petra, Stefan barely visible behind it, aiming over the hood. The vehicle’s rear door stood open, waiting. His deliverance. Victory so near. Had Prince Lazar felt like this as he fought his way to death and glory across the Field of Blackbirds?

  Dušic dived into the back of the van. Stefan racked the bolt of the M24, fired once more. He threw the rifle into the van and swung himself into the driver’s seat. Slammed the door shut, put the vehicle into gear, and stomped the accelerator. Dušic closed the rear door as the van sped away. He heard the impact of rounds hitting the engine compartment. Blood all over the floor now. He paid it no mind. Dušic dug for his cell phone.

  28

  DRAGAN AND PARSON CROUCHED behind the mobile command post, watched the van escape. One of the police marksmen on the rooftop fired at the vehicle, but Parson could not tell if the bullets connected.

  “We gotta evac this place now,” Dragan said. He barked an order in Serbo-Croatian into his radio, then shouted, “Svi napolje!”

  Parson needed no translation to know that meant Get everybody the hell out of here! Clerics and laymen poured from the entrance of the Patriarchate, apparently alerted by officers inside who’d heard Dragan’s radio call. People fled across the street and down the sidewalk in an effort to put as much distance between themselves and the building as possible.

  An elderly man in black vestments stumbled down the entranceway. The man lost his footing and went down amid the rush of the crowd. Parson pushed his way toward the old priest. He found him at the base of the steps, clothing dirty and trampled. Parson leaned down, lifted the priest by the armpits. He swung the priest’s arm around his neck, bent low, and put the man across his back in a fireman’s carry. The burden felt light; the old cleric must have weighed barely a hundred pounds. Parson ran across Kralja Petra as the priest moaned something unintelligible. Rifle fire popped to Parson’s left and right. He could not see the shooters. Dragan sprinted the other way and charged into the Patriarchate.

  Other police joined Dragan’s effort to clear the area. “Svi napolje!” the officers yelled.

  At what Parson hoped was a safe distance, he stopped and lowered the priest to the sidewalk. From there, Parson could still see people running from the Patriarchate’s entrance. The old man sat on the concrete and yammered in his own language. Parson had no idea what the man was saying, but he did not seem seriously hurt.

  A flock of buntings swished overhead, startled by the rush of humanity into the street. Even the birds knew something was wrong.

  A thundercloud of black and orange boiled up from the Patriarchate. The boom registered so loudly that Parson’s eardrums transmitted not sound but shock. A flash of heat burned his cheeks. The blast wave took his breath, flung stinging objects into his face. The fire did not dance like normal flames but twisted through itself, curled around rolls of smoke.

  Debris shot from the fireball, trailed plumes of smoke and flame. A gnarled chunk of steel clanged to the sidewalk near Parson. Dust and smoke rolled down the street, enveloped Parson and the priest in a blinding, choking netherworld. When Parson tried to breathe, his lungs seemed to fill with sand. For an endless instant, all physical matter seemed intent on burning, cutting, and suffocating.

  • • •

  “FINE WORK,” DUŠIC SAID as he turned off his cell phone. Stefan’s car bomb had performed flawlessly. Dušic looked behind him to see the pillar of smoke rising above the Patriarchate, receding into the distance. His limbs felt damp with sweat and blood. He took a moment to catch his breath. Finally he said, “For a second there, I thought they had me.”

  His lower leg throbbed, but he felt flush with success and victory. Dušic could not tell how many casualties the bomb had inflicted, but it almost didn’t matter. Serbs would view this strike as a Muslim act of war, and history’s wheels would turn as they should. He wanted to savor the moment, but immediate problems needed attention.

  For one, a pair of bullets had slammed into the van. The first had only popped through the windows, left white holes to the left and right. The second had entered the engine compartment. Dušic had thought his getaway nearly perfect, but now the engine rattled, and a
temperature light displayed on the dashboard. He could not afford a breakdown now, especially not here—surrounded by Belgrade traffic and never far from police.

  “We will not get much farther,” Stefan said.

  “Can you reach the storage facility?” Dušic asked, still breathing heavily. “We can take my Lamborghini.” His car lay just a few kilometers away, across the river in Novi Beograd.

  “Very conspicuous,” Stefan said.

  “Yes, but it is fast, and we have few options. Damn, this leg hurts.”

  The other problem was his wound. Dušic raised his trouser cuff as Stefan coaxed the overheating van to struggle on. A bullet had ripped through Dušic’s calf. Fortunately, it had missed the bone. But the slug’s passage had not left clean entrance and exit wounds. Instead, the bullet had torn away a chunk of flesh and left a ragged gash that would not stop bleeding. He reached for the medical kit.

  “How is that injury?” Stefan asked.

  Dušic regarded his leg, clamped his fingers above the wound to stanch the bleeding. With a more narrow laceration, he would have had Stefan sew it with thread. The kit lacked any anesthesia, but Dušic could have borne a little pain for his people. However, this gash gaped too wide for inexpert sutures, and some of the shredded muscle probably needed debridement. Dušic had seen such wounds in the field before.

  His sock sagged with blood. Some had splashed over his boot, but the sock now acted as a wick and drew blood down inside the boot. Dušic felt his own blood squishing between his toes.

  “I must get to a doctor eventually,” he said.

  Dušic tore open a gauze dressing and placed it over the wound. Blood soaked into the fibers.

  The sound of sirens rose across the city. Stefan turned a corner, headed out of the old section of Belgrade. Smoke began to curl from under the hood.

  “Did the razvodniks survive?” Dušic asked.

  “I saw two go down. I do not know about the others.”

  “I hope they made their escape. They conducted themselves well. As did you.”

  Stefan did not react to the praise. Perhaps he needed time to process what he’d done. Of course, he would take no pride in killing Christian clergy. But from this point on, operations would focus on the true enemy, the Turks. Serbs deserved their land and their glory, but Dušic did not believe in predestiny. They would have to take what was theirs, and now he had opened the way.

  Fingers sticky with blood, Dušic unrolled a bandage and wrapped the fabric over the dressing. He tied it off with care, hoping to stop the bleeding without cutting off circulation. The bleeding seemed to slow down.

  “Will you be able to walk?” Stefan asked.

  “Not well, but I am mobile.”

  A helicopter thudded overhead. More medical and police response to the bombing. Dušic’s own medical needs would have to wait. He knew of an old army surgeon who might help him, even shelter him, but right now he just wanted to get out of Belgrade.

  More smoke boiled from under the hood. The van left a wisping trail as it crossed the Gazela Bridge.

  “We must not become stranded,” Dušic said.

  “It now comes down to luck,” Stefan said.

  He had a point. The van would make it to the storage facility or not, simple as that. The vehicle sputtered into the streets of Novi Beograd, smelling of burned oil and overheated radiator fluid. Traffic flowed lighter now, and no one seemed to pay any attention to the smoking engine.

  Stefan turned one more corner, and Dušic saw the storage buildings ahead. Relief flooded Dušic’s whole being. His luck continued to hold; he saw no cars but his own at the storage center. Good; no witnesses. If people showed up, Dušic would have to make a quick decision about whether to let them live. He opened his wallet, found his security card, and handed it up to Stefan.

  “Wave this at the card reader to open the gate,” Dušic said. He unsnapped his body armor and removed it. The weight off of his shoulders and chest came as a mercy.

  Stefan lowered his window, stopped at the entrance, waved the card. The gate began inching open.

  When Stefan drove through, Dušic felt a strong urge for them just to get into the car and flee. But a commander had to think clearly amid the fluid nature of battle. And there was nothing more suspicious than an abandoned, bloody van with bullet holes in it.

  “Stop by my car,” Dušic ordered. “Open the inner fence and move the weapons from the van into the front boot of the car.”

  Dušic gave Stefan the key to the inner fence’s padlock. Ahead he saw his prized Lamborghini, a little dusty but still mission ready.

  Stefan stopped, got out, unlocked the padlock. He let the chain rattle to the ground. He swung open the gate, returned to the van, drove through. Stopped beside the Aventador.

  “Let me help you,” Stefan said.

  “No. I think I can move. Just transfer the weapons. You may have to unscrew the suppressor from your rifle to fit it into the boot. Take some AKs, too, and plenty of ammunition.”

  Dušic also told Stefan to drive the van to the back of the storage buildings, hose away the blood, and knock out the windows punctured by bullets. Drape a floor mat to cover the bullet hole in the engine compartment. Make the vehicle look like a derelict smashed by vandals instead of something recently used in a crime. Leave it in the back.

  Under normal circumstances, that might not fool the police for long. But Dušic hoped war would overtake all other concerns for the police and everyone else very soon.

  More helicopters pounded across the city skyline. All headed to the Patriarchate, no doubt. And if witnesses had seen the van, Dušic needed to get himself and Stefan as far away as possible, regardless of how Stefan changed the vehicle’s appearance.

  “We should move,” Dušic said. He opened his door, stepped out of the van by himself.

  When he put weight on the injured leg, pain stabbed harder than he’d expected. Dušic hissed through clenched teeth. But he remained on his feet.

  “Viktor,” Stefan said, “let me—”

  “Just put the equipment in the car,” Dušic said, “then do what I said with the van. Hurry.”

  Dušic limped to his car, leaned against the driver’s door. Closed his eyes and fought the pain. He unlocked the Aventador so Stefan could open the boot. Then he hobbled to his small-arms shed and keyed in the lock code.

  Inside, he looked for something he could use as a cane or crutch. Found nothing more satisfactory than an old Mauser. He opened the bolt, placed the muzzle to the floor, and held on to the grip. The weapon wasn’t long enough for use as a proper crutch, but better than no support at all.

  They still had the storage center to themselves. Dušic thanked his stars it wasn’t a weekend, when storage renters would be more likely to show up. Bangs and crashes sounded from out back—Stefan taking care of the van’s windows. Good. Dušic scrounged for anything else that might prove useful in the coming days. He chose an RPG-7 grenade launcher. Old technology, but highly effective. Recalling the tear gas police had used earlier, he also took a pair of gas masks.

  Dušic waited for Stefan to finish the job on the van. The vehicle had made awful noises as it lurched away; perhaps its life had ended by the time Stefan got it behind the storage units. When Stefan came back, Dušic gave him the RPG-7 and some rounds for it. Stefan also loaded more pistol and rifle ammunition into the car. The Aventador’s small cargo space could not accommodate all the gear, so Dušic sat in the passenger seat with the RPG-7 resting on the floorboard. Stefan locked up the small-arms shed, sat behind the wheel.

  “Where to?”

  “A place outside Novi Sad,” Dušic said. “I know a doctor there.” About seventy kilometers away.

  Stefan started the engine. Dušic talked him through the use of the paddle shifters, and Stefan steered out to the street. Dušic cautioned him not to speed through the cit
y; the Lamborghini drew enough attention standing still. But once the avenues of Belgrade gave way to the E75, Dušic let his friend drive the Aventador as its designers intended. The car accelerated to 150 kilometers per hour. The V12 ran smoothly, more like the hum of an electric motor than the controlled explosions of internal combustion.

  Dušic watched the trees blur past. Finally, he allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. History did not flow in straight lines and constant speeds the way his Lamborghini now rocketed along this highway. History turned on certain events, swung on pivot points engineered by great men. Like him.

  • • •

  THE RIVET JOINT SHUDDERED through its descent. Gold gathered that the pilots had recovered control of the aircraft; she felt no more steep banks or rapid dives.

  “We’re below ten thousand,” the aircraft commander announced on interphone. “You can come off oxygen.”

  Gold pulled off her oxygen mask. The nape strap felt damp; she hadn’t realized she’d sweated that much. Irena untangled herself from the mask and hose and adjusted her headset.

  “What do you think happened?” Gold asked.

  “Beats me,” Irena said. “I don’t know as much as the fly guys up front, but airplanes don’t just go bang and start swerving all over the sky. I’ve heard of engines disintegrating by themselves, but nothing like this.”

  Had the jet been sabotaged? Quite a coincidence to suffer a failure nobody could explain just as the bishops began their session. What was happening down there, anyway? Dušic had shown up and turned on a cell phone. That could mean nothing but bad things.

  “Any report from the ground?” Gold asked, off interphone.

  “I’ll check,” Irena said. She keyed her talk switch and asked, “Collins, anything from Dragnet?”