Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 73
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
Like Maric, he knew that intel was everything. He had lookouts posted in several places along the treeline, and these gave him an overview of how the fighting was going.
“We’ve got a situation in the middle of the village,” he said crisply. “There’s been movement around the vehicles in the square for a few minutes, but now it’s turned ugly. There’s a group of people loading up four of the pickup trucks, and they’ve just drawn their weapons on others who were standing around them.
“At the moment they’re arguing. No, wait. Now the people away from the vehicles are raising their hands.”
“It sounds like some of Ilic’s troops want to defect from his little operation,” said Maric. “Probably what’s left of the mercenaries. That’s not surprising, now the body count is on the rise. I want you to look for others coming back from the hangers. I’m picking they’ll want to be paid in goods, right now, rather than stick around for cash.”
“I’m not seeing any change in the situation,” said Shehu, after a while. “It’s still tense down there. No one has challenged the defectors, and I’m not surprised. The old Fifth Brigade members are too busy staying alive to do much about a side action.”
Maric was running the situation through in his mind. It made sense. Mercenaries could disappear from Boluka and turn up anywhere guns for hire were needed. But the old Fifth Brigade members lived in this part of the world, and they would be trying to avoid capture. That would lead to prosecution for their crimes during the Balkan wars. They wouldn’t surrender easily.
“Two men have just appeared,” said Shehu suddenly. “They’re coming from the direction of the hangers, and they’re carrying boxes. I can see four men with them, holding automatic rifles at the port arms position. They’re all moving fast, and they look as if they’re expecting trouble.
“Now they’re loading the boxes onto one of the truck,” he continued. “Whole group splitting up now, . . . and boarding the trucks. No reaction from the ones left behind. I think the defectors might get away with it.”
“What assets have we got at the road block coming in from Revatske?” said Maric. “The mercs will leave that way, because it takes them onto the shortest route back through Montenegro. Once they get back to their base they’ll vanish.”
There was a chuckle from Shehu.
“There was no time to rebuild the road block. You wanted most of my men on the other side of the valley in a hurry, and I didn’t want to spread the defenses along the treeline any thinner.”
“What are you not telling me?” said Maric. It was clear the old KLA commander had been up to something.
“I mined it,” said Shehu. “I figured that was as good as a road block. The mines turned up when I sent the boys south to pick up ammo and whatever else they could lay their hands on. They cost us almost nothing. The minefields from the Balkan wars are still being cleared, so they were secondhand.
“Most of them should still work!” he said, hopefully.
Maric thought about it. The mercenaries weren’t directly part of the smuggling operation that had taken away the freedom of innocent people. On the other hand, it was hard to say whose bullet had killed or wounded the casualties on Maric’s side of the war. Maybe fate was going to sort that dilemma out for him.
Maric acknowledged Shehu’s information, and went back to planning the final assault on the village. He brought his leaders together so they could discuss the end game, and he started to tell them what he wanted them to do. He was interrupted by a series of loud thumps some distance away, in a northerly direction. It was the road out to Revatske.
He was about to continue the meeting when there was one last solid boom. He figured some ordnance on one of the pickup trucks must have gone up when the mine blew.
Maybe some of the mercenaries would escape, maybe fate had decided which ones that would be. It was out of his hands. Then he dismissed the fleeing pickup trucks from his mind. His people had work to do.
Maric split his army into groups, with a mix of skills in each one. They would move forward through the village as a line, keeping in close contact so they could work together against enemy weaknesses. Each group had a special forces soldier at its head, and he cleared out the houses while the rest of his team provided cover, and sometimes a diversion.
The new approach brought a great sense of relief to the tall man. This was how he had been trained, and this was the type of warfare he felt most comfortable with. He would leave the grand battle plans to generals in future. As far as Maric was concerned, he liked to be somewhere in the front line.
Then it was time to get underway. The captured RPGs cleared out the occasional knot of stubborn resistance, and prisoners began to pile up back in the safe zone. Behar had something to do at last, trussing up the newcomers so they wouldn’t become a problem if their numbers grew too large.
Costas was with him. They spoke Albanian to each other, and spent a lot of time in friendly bickering over the best knots for each situation. When they had Ilic’s men tied hand and foot, they went on to tie them together in rafts of five.
The prisoners looked beaten, and Behar could understand their fear. They dreaded the War Crimes Tribunal, but more than that they had committed crimes against the families of the men they were fighting against. A battlefield execution wasn’t that unlikely. All the same, Behar had no sympathy for the prisoners.
Maric didn’t have a bullhorn, but his voice carried as he went from house to house offering the enemy a deal. He worked his way up and down the battle line, telling Ilic’s men they would be turned over to the Kosovo authorities if they surrendered, and they would not be killed outright.
It wasn’t much of a choice, but some came out of the houses with their hands up. Some got shot in the back by their die-hard mates as well.
Then Radic’s team had Ilic’s offices surrounded. He called Maric over, and the tall man did something unusual. He went back to the safe zone. Then he asked for all the villagers who had lost a partner to Ilic’s men, or had someone they loved beaten by them, to step forward. There were four in total, and Dea was one of them. Only one was a man.
By the time Radic and his team had cleared out the offices, Maric and his small group of villagers had arrived.
“No one’s come out of there with two fingers missing off his left hand?” said Maric, and Radic confirmed it. There had been no one like that among the living or dead they had cleared out of the building. The whole of Maric’s army was now looking for the man with the crippled left hand, and so far he hadn’t been found.
The tall man thought about this fact for a moment. He didn’t think Ilic would have tried to escape with the mercenaries earlier. They would have no love for him, not after so many of their number had died here. There was also the threat of Shehu’s men around the treeline. Ilic’s chances of making it out of Boluka alive were slim if he made a run for it.
Sticking with his men wasn’t going to work either. The old Fifth Brigade were being whittled away by death and defection as the battle was fought out between the two forces. He would eventually be discovered. No, decided Maric, Ilic would have gone to ground. But where would that be? The tall man motioned Radic to join him, and they stepped into Ilic’s offices together.
There was an outer room with two desks, and the usual office equipment plus some filing cabinets. Neither of the men sensed anything out of place here.
The inner room wasn’t large, but Ilic had made it his own. Military memorabilia hung on the walls, and sometimes adorned flat surfaces. Maric picked up a toy cannon from Ilic’s desk. It wouldn’t be from the American Civil War, not here in Europe. It might be from the Napoleonic Wars though.
He looked around the room carefully, high and low, and positioned himself so he could see out the windows, and look into every corner. Then he did something strange.
“Nope, he’s gone all right!” he said heartily, as he winked at Radic. “We’ve missed him. I guess we turn the case over to the Kosovo authorities now.
“Anyway, we got what we came for. We’ll turn a tidy profit on this!Let’s wrap it all up and head home.”
Maric had to look pointedly at Radic before the special forces man caught on.
“Yep,” he said agreeably. “We’re gonna do all right out of this for sure. I guess we better get back and help with the last of the fighting.”
The two men returned to the street outside, and then moved some distance away from the offices. Finally Radic turned to his boss.
“What the hell was that all about?” he said, in a whisper.
“What did you see in his office?” said Maric quietly.
“Nothing!” said Radic. “There were no spaces behind that chest of drawers on one side, and the floor sounded solid to me, which left nowhere to hide. That’s where you’re going with this, right?”
Maric nodded.
“Don’t let me down here, Trainee Radic,” said the tall man, urging his soldier on.
“There was a ceiling panel half way along one wall,” said Radic. “It was a bit duller than the others at one end, but maybe that was a bad batch of paint, maybe it was the heat from a desk lamp rising at that spot.”
“Good,” said Maric, “that’s what I wanted you to see.
“One end of that panel is dull because Ilic has been washing his finger marks off it. Even with clean hands there are natural oils from his skin, and maybe ink marks now and then. It all builds up over time.
“But unfortunately for him that panel has been scrubbed a little too clean.”
“You mean, he’s up there?” said Radic, incredulous, and the tall man nodded.
“I’m going back in,” said Maric, “and I want you to keep everyone away until I call you. Bring my little group of villagers with you when you come.”
“No back up?” said Radic, and Maric shook his head. He checked his pistol, and took a spare magazine from Radic. He was confident it wouldn’t go past that.
“I might be a while,” he said, “and there might be shooting, but you stay here. And you see no one else comes in. Understood?”
Radic nodded. He understood the instruction, but he didn’t understand what Maric was going to do, or why he was doing it by himself. That was army discipline. Radic would be given only part of the plan, the bit he had to get right.
Maric walked slowly into the outer office, and then he went through into Ilic’s home away from home. He took up a position crouched beside the chest of drawers, so he could bounce his voice around the room. Then he spoke.
“It’s about time you and I had a little talk, Vuk Ilic,” he said.
CHAPTER 36
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There was no reply.
“Oh, come on,” said Maric. “Did you think an SAS soldier was going to miss your little panel in the ceiling? Besides, I can feel your intent, and I can tell from that you’re armed. Though I’m guessing you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
There was another silence.
“Okay, a little proof then,” said Maric. “And I’m going to be kind. I’m not going to shoot directly at you – this time.”
The tall man put a tight grouping of three bullets into the ceiling. They made a series of sharp clangs as they went through the corrugated iron sheeting of the roof. He could imagine the sudden rays of light piercing the gloom of the ceiling space.
The response was a wild outpouring of pistol fire. Ilic managed to hit everything in his office, and even the chest of drawers Maric was sheltering behind. Then there was the hiss and click of another magazine going into Ilic’s pistol. Maric looked up, and saw a whole lot more holes in the ceiling panels.
“Bit overdone, don’t you think?” he said conversationally. “I don’t know if you understand the situation. It’s not difficult. I know where you are, but you don’t know where I am. My group of three holes is half a meter toward the door from your current position. Now, do you want me to put the next three into you?”
There was a sudden shuffling in the ceiling space, but then it stopped. Ilic hadn’t moved much, and he must have realized he was just as much a target shuffling about as staying still.
“You might have heard me making your boys an offer earlier,” said Maric. “If they surrendered, they wouldn’t be shot outright. Now I’m prepared to make you a similar offer. If you come down from your hiding place, I won’t shoot you, and neither will my men.
“If you stay there, though, I’m not risking men’s lives trying to capture you alive. You’re not worth more than the cost of a bullet to me.
“So, how long do you want to think about it?”
There was a long silence, then more shuffling, as Ilic worked his way along the planks he’d laid over the ceiling joists. The ceiling panel was lifted to one side, and then a short length of ladder dropped from the ceiling. It stopped half a meter above Ilic’s desk.
That was when Maric understood the old-fashioned window opener in the far corner of the office. Such a thing was only of use if there were louvered windows in the room too high up to reach – or if someone wanted to bring down a ladder from a secret panel in the ceiling.
Ilic was wearing a uniform Maric didn’t recognize, and he assumed it was an old police commissioner’s uniform from the 1990s. Ilic’s command had never been military. The Fifth Brigade had always been a police force, put to a different use in times of war. There were medals on his chest, and these were probably in recognition of bravery, or perhaps exceptional deductive work. Or maybe for surviving in the job long enough.
Ilic must have been wearing the medals to inspire his troops. He must have finally begun to realize that Maric’s army was neither as small, or as poorly trained, as he’d first thought. Now Ilic’s clothing looked rumpled, and he seemed to Maric little different to any third-world dictator.
Maric patted him down, but he didn’t have the pistol any longer. It had remained with the treasure trove Maric was sure he would find in the ceiling space. But that could wait. He sat Ilic in his office chair, and bound his wrists together, locking his arms around the back of the chair.
“Bring ‘em in, Radic!” he called, and half a minute later Radic ushered the four villagers into the room. The sight of Ilic took them all in different ways. Dea was the only one who remained composed. She looked hard, determined, and her arms were held stiffly at her side.
“These are four people you and your people had the worst effect on, Vuk,” said Maric. “Alac here had a pretty young wife, and one day she just disappeared. We can assume one of your men took what he wanted, and then got rid of the evidence.
“These two women have men who will never be the same after the beatings. One will always walk with a limp, and the other is mentally damaged.
“This last one is Dea. You beat her husband to death.”
Ilic was looking more and more like a cornered rat.
“I didn’t know that would happen!” he said. “You can’t blame me for everything that went wrong!”
“It didn’t ‘go wrong’ in your eyes, Vuk, it was just collateral damage. Acceptable losses. Don’t try and pretend it was anything else,” said Maric.
“You’ve got a dozen life sentences hanging over you from the Balkan wars if you go before the War Crimes Tribunal, and that’s before your crimes in Boluka.”
Ilic twisted in his seat. There was nothing but hatred for him wherever he looked.
“I don’t want him to go to trial,” said Maric, looking at the four villagers next to him. “The more publicity people like him get, the more chance there is that other idiots will follow in his footsteps.
“You might think that he’s been caught, and will be punished, but the mentally sick think differently to you and I. The chance to do what they like for three years of war, and then escape punishment for another twenty years, makes their death or imprisonment worth while – to them.
“You may feel pity for this man, but I ask you to temper that pity with what your decision will mean for the society you live in. Pity is often mentioned as a good thing, but pity without its consequence is a very dangerous thing.
“You have the most right to demand justice. This way is clean and quick. You don’t have to suffer a second time, waiting to see if he will go to gaol, and if he will ever get out.”
Ilic couldn’t contain himself any longer. He could see where this was going. “You said you wouldn’t shoot me!” he screamed. “You said none of your people would harm me!”
Maric turned to look at him. “These are villagers,” he said, “they aren’t under my command.”
Alac spoke up. “My Mereana always said that we had to put the war behind us. She lost both parents to thugs like this, but she was trying to move on. I can’t go against what she believed in.”
Maric accepted this with a nod. Ilic was openly moaning and weeping now, seeing the angel of death coming for him, but the tall man ignored police boss. One of the women whose husband was living a damaged life took the pistol Maric offered her, and even raised it to point at Ilic. Then her hand wavered, and she dropped the pistol down again. Maric took the weapon from her gently, and told her he understood.
Dea took the pistol firmly, and hefted it twice, feeling the weight of it. Ilic was screaming now, and then his nerve cracked, and a wet patch spread across his trousers as his bladder let go.
“There’s no safety to worry about,” he said quietly to her, “and you’re best to aim for the heart. That’s right of chest when you’re looking at someone facing you.”
He stopped for a moment. “Since Ilic doesn’t have a heart, though,” he said, “that might not stop him either.”
She actually snorted at that. Then she leveled the pistol at Ilic’s chest, a little to the right, and commenced firing. Maric pushed her hand down after three shots, and the fourth went into the floor to one side of the chair. By the time they both looked up again, Ilic’s head had slumped onto his chest, and breathing had stopped.
“Good shooting,” said Maric firmly. “Sorry to stop you there, but I want to make his death look like a suicide, and too many bullets might confuse that scenario.”
