Burn Down the Sky: Part Four

 

 

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The frigid mountain air smelled of pine. The primordial forest towered high above the muddy road to form something of a deep, dark tunnel. The darkness was filled with danger and foreboding. The treetops stood in stark silhouette against a brilliant starry night sky. A wind, as loud as crashing waves, swept down the mountain and through the trees, carrying the scent of wood smoke and occasionally the sound of distant battle. Down in the forest the night held a more ominous quality; one that reminded Alan and Emina at each turn that death lurked and could strike without warning. A hostile army moved somewhere in that forest. The frontlines there were fluid and malleable. The boundaries separating two hostile armies were more akin to two great clouds passing. Through that darkness Alan’s red Yugo crept without lights.

Alan was nervous, fighting to see into the night for any indication of impending disaster. The task was made more difficult by the car’s broken heater, for soon the windshield was hopelessly fogged. With his sleeve Alan fought to see, wiping the frost again and again from the same little piece of windshield. It was a futile exercise, he knew, for if something occurred on that desolate stretch there would be little or no time to react. Still, the effort help to focus his mind away from a fear that threatened to overwhelm him fully. Emina sat quietly beside him, but there was something more to her mood than simply the inherent fear of the mountain road. Her life was falling to pieces. Despite the deaths of Adnan’s parents Adnan’s sudden change and her tragic affair with Alan were proving too much for her fragile heart. It had been two days since she and Alan had made love, something that she now saw as a terrible mistake.

Alan was thinking about it as well. In retrospect it seemed so strange to Alan that he and Emina had made love. It had stirred something in him that he believed had died. It stirred something else in him as well, a much darker memory of another girl in another far away place. That memory made him want to fight for Emina. It begged him not to fail in Emina as he felt he had failed that other girl. But why had it come to him so strongly with Emina, and why in a place as hopeless as Sarajevo? There had been other women in other wars. He remembered them all, some of them sadly, and others that he thought about sometimes in quiet moments, but they were nothing compared with Emina. She had fallen over him like a sudden summer storm, obliterating reason and everything else.

His mind spun in crazy circles, all the while ignoring the most obvious facts. It was as if he was five years old again, having just experienced his very first kiss. He invented scenarios, and imagined taking her away from all of this, as much a way of saving himself as saving her or Adnan. He could see the house that they would one day live in, where their children (one boy and one girl) would play beneath the old willow in the yard. He found himself obsessed with kissing her and grew as anxious as a schoolboy at the mere thought of holding her hand.

But he did not kiss her, nor did he attempt to hold her hand, or even treat her as a lover. Instead something else had grown from their encounter, something more in keeping with the wishes of her mother. Alan and Emina were distant now, as if what had once seemed like their greatest hope was now their worst curse. But the silence was as terrible as the memory of their undeniable passion, and the longer they remained silent the more it only confirmed to their jaded minds what their hearts knew differently.

Alan gasped as a lone figure stepped into the road and leveled a rifle in their direction. From out of the night a dozen or more fighters appeared. Alan and Emina studied the faces of the bearded men. Their phantom-like faces were dimly lit by the soft golden glow of a fire half hidden among the trees. These were mountain warriors, men from villages on the mountain. A fundamental determination that characterized these men was readily palpable. They were fighting more for their own stake of ground rather than for some greater national or religious ideology. They were fighting as much for their families as they were for everything that their ancestors had scraped together from this harsh land. Their tempers and determination had been finely honed not only by a lifetime of backbreaking labor but also by a heritage of hardscrabble existence.

They were bundled against the mountain cold with a hodge-podge collection of clothing. Bits and pieces of uniforms were mixed with fur or deer hide coats and hats. Several had curved Turkish scimitars tucked in their belts or waistbands. Their beards were long and full, so that in the half-light they more resembled their ancestors who had defended this land for centuries than a modern military force.

The oldest of them, conspicuous by the wavy streaks of gray in his thick beard and hair, came forward. Just off to the side of the road the others stood almost casually behind him, letting their sense of the natural rhythm of the mountain and forest predict when danger was near. Their weapons rested on their hips or across their shoulders, though with fingers remained very near the triggers. The older man cradled a hunting rifle comfortably in his arms.

Alan had been on the mountain before, covering various stories over the last several months. He had been there enough that he felt comfortable among these men. There was an honesty to the way business was conducted here, a live-and-let-live attitude both men instantly understood as their eyes met. It helped to calm Alan’s fears for he knew that honesty and trust were king, and that dishonesty and evasion was certain to bring a quick bullet to the head. Such men were the same all across the planet, and Alan’s experience had shown him that he could trust men such as this without question. They were honest, because they lived honest, though they weren’t above testing a person to have a little fun.

Down in the valley, or in the city Alan would already have had his Press identification and passport ready. Instead he looked the mountain man square in the eye and offered a firm handshake. As though that handshake confirmed a pathway for truth between them the mountain man held tightly to Alan’s hand. He only glanced at Emina and seemed shy before her.

“Shto hochesh?” What do you want, he asked? His tone was almost helpful, as if the pair was simply lost on an otherwise quiet night. Alan understood well enough, but deferred when Emina leaned over.

“This American is taking me up the mountain to the 9^th Corps camp,” she told the mountain man in his native Bosnian dialect.

“And who are you?” replied the mountain man, unimpressed.

“My father is Mustafa Hodzich.” The man looked at her blankly. “Minister Hodzich,” she said with emphasis. Her tone belied a sense of privilege Alan knew was sure to put the man off.

“Send your father then,” the man was suddenly indignant. Alan pursed his lips. “Those guys at 9^th Corps go by strict Shariat law, totally by the Koran. They won’t allow a woman into camp, especially uncovered, and they definitely don’t like Americans. This is a dead end, sister. Best to go back. “

“We’re expected.”

“They’re expected!” the man bellowed to his comrades.

“Since when do the Mujahedeen have a secretary to make appointments!” chided another, bringing laughter from the others.

“Suit yourself,” said the man, “but we warned you.”

The men stepped aside and watched after the little red Yugo before filtering back into the trees and their fire. From the checkpoint the road grew steeper and more winding. It narrowed as branches and trees almost threatened to overtake the road. Off to one side there were small gaps in the trees, offering brief glimpses of the valley far below. All around the valley shellfire and tracer rounds flickered like so many fireflies.

Alan was fuming now and could hardly hold back his anger. He breathed in an exaggerated manner wanting her to know how upset he was. She knew, of course, but was in no mood for an argument. She knew it was about much more than the checkpoint and just couldn’t bear it right now. There was a small clearing ahead, a sheltered piece of ground just off the road. Unable to contain himself any longer Alan steered the car from the road.

“Better put something on your head,” he told her. “A scarf or something.” Eight months with the Muj in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan some years back taught him a thing or two about how fundamentalists interpreted Koranic law.

“I’m a European woman, not a covered woman. This is Sarajevo, not Kabul.”

“I won’t go any farther,” he glared. “I swear I’ll leave Adnan to the Mujahedeen. It is up to you.”

She drew a scarf from her bag and looked hurt. “I didn’t realize that you could be so terribly cold.”

“This American? That was cold, if you ask me. You know better than to act like that, especially among those men. Women are second class here, and you know they won’t appreciate you being so, so…”

“What?”

“Bitchy!”

“This is not the time, Alan,” she looked out over the valley. She could feel his eyes burning into her. His face was reflected in her dark window. The rage she found there shattered her already breaking heart “What do you wish from me? It was, it happened, but we mustn’t see anything more into that.”

“I just want to know if you feel as I do?”

“Why? What will it prove?”

“Because then I will know whether I should fight for us, or if I should let you go.”

She looked at him for a long moment. His eyes begged for more than an answer. Indeed, they begged for confirmation, and for far more than she could possibly give him. She felt so terribly torn and confused. How had she ended up between her mother and the man she loved? Indeed, how had she ended up forced to choose between the man she loved and her own religion? The choice was an impossible one.

“Let me go, Alan.”

The words hit him like a hammer, but he knew in his heart that she felt differently. He studied her face for clues, a quiver in her voice, a revealing sigh, a tear, anything that might save his crumbling heart.

“I don’t believe you.”

Emina fought to hold herself together, turning it instead to anger that Alan would pressure her in this way. Emina’s hands fidgeted in her lap.

“Let’s just get this over with.” She looked at him, this time her eyes begged him to let her go and relieve her of this terrible burden. “Please, Alan.”

He bowed his head and knew that there was nothing he could say. He was forcing her into a corner, all because his heart begged for some small saving word. Forcing her to do what she could not lightly bring herself to do only made all of this harder for both of them and drove her further away.

“You’re right, let’s just get this over with,” he said pulling the car back onto the road.

A welcoming party, of sorts, awaited them around the next turn. A squad of eight men fell out of the forest and quickly took up positions to either side of the car. Startled Alan ground to a stop. He and Emina looked sharply at one another, relaxing only when they spotted the blur fleur-de-lis arm patches of the Bosnian Army. Unlike their cousins down the road these men looked and acted like real soldiers.

There were rumors that foreign operatives and mercenaries had trained some units in order to tip the balance against better-trained Serb forces. The precision with which these men moved seemed to confirm those rumors. Their tactics reminded Alan more of US Special Forces, or British SAS, than the rag-tag Bosnian fighters often portrayed by the Foreign Press. They were dripping with weaponry, and appeared quite capable of handling anything that came their way. They moved as if they were of one mind, quickly finding defensive positions around the car and to either side of the road.

The reporter in Alan began to catalogue every detail about this mysterious group of men. They had the long beards that characterized Mujahedeen units, but otherwise their hair was neatly trimmed. Green scarves were tied around their heads, some with Koranic phrases in Arabic script upon them. Their uniforms and equipment were obviously American made, though their weapons were Chinese or Uzbek by the looks of them. It was difficult to know for sure in the dark as Alan tried to absorb these details without being obvious.

 The squad leader came forward and made a cursory check of the car. Certain that the occupants meant no harm he signaled for two men to cover the road below. The men moved without hesitation and soon disappeared into the night. The leader took a piece of paper from his pocket and read it at a whisper, sounding out the syllables.

“Al-an Kir-by?” he asked in a heavy accent.

“I am,” he replied in English. He had learned never to speak in the native language with soldiers or policemen. Doing so immediately aroused suspicion that perhaps he might be a spy. Even if it didn’t people quickly clammed up or became very guarded about what they might say. Over the years Alan had gotten the jump on the competition or overhead exclusive details by not unnecessarily giving away any knowledge of the native language that he had.

“I am Alan Kirby, and this is…”

The soldier cut him off quickly. “You were expected. Someone has vouched for you.”

“Who?”

The soldier didn’t answer. “She must stay here. Don’t worry, these are good Muslim men, best fighters in all Bosnia. No harm will come to her, not even if whole Serbian Army comes up this road.”

Alan looked to her. Their argument a moment ago now seemed wholly irrelevant. “I won’t leave you if you say so.”

“I know, Alan,” she touched his hand. He found real tenderness in her eyes, and a genuine appreciation for all that he was doing for her and Adnan. “Go find him.”

The 9^th Corps base was little more than a muddy outpost cut from the forest. It amounted to little more than a handful of dugouts built into a wooded hillside, but the bunkers and defensive positions that guarded the little clearing were made with exacting precision. The dugouts were fortified with logs and sandbags, and camouflaged so well that they were almost invisible at first. In fact, there was almost no indication of the outpost until Alan was almost upon it. There was no refuse, and no fires in the open. There was only a small clearing where the Muj would say their daily prayers.

Alan’s guides were two young troopers, one of them so young that he could hardly grow a beard. What beard he did have, which signified that he was a man and had learned something of the Koran, was hardly more than a dark wispy shadow along his jaw. Alan studied the faces of the men he passed without being overt. There was a quality, a sense of anguish moving beneath the surface of steely-cold expressions. Alan knew that many of these men had suffered the loss of their families in the war, or had witnessed terrible brutality. Some were survivors of concentration camps, or refugees driven out of their homes, but those that frightened him the most were those who had chosen to fight rather than waiting for something terrible to befall them and their families. These were cornered men, and cornered men were always the most dangerous and unpredictable.

The Bosnian guides led Alan past the dugouts and up into the trees along a muddy little trail. The trail ran uphill into the darkest forest Alan had ever known, obliterating even the ambient starlight struggling against ghostly white clouds. A machinegun coughed in the distance. After a few yards they stopped.

“You see?” said the boy, straining his meager knowledge of English. He pointed to a red dot painted on a tree to the right of the trail just above eye level, and then to another dot painted a few yards further along. Alan had to squint to see the markings. Patting Alan’s right shoulder he said, “Only here. Understand?”

“Keep this on my right?” Alan clarified. The boy nodded.

“Very dangerous. Meena. Boom-boom!”

“Landmines?”

“You go boom, I go boom. No good. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, ‘aymo.” Let’s go, he said.

There was more gunfire ahead. Small arms fire popped and rattled higher up the mountain. It wasn’t constant, but seemed to be building to something. The shots punctuated every slippery footfall and Alan’s labored breathing. Wet autumn leaves hung low across the trail. Branches snapped back against his face and arms. In the frigid air the sting was sharp and immediate. For a time Alan believed he had more to fear from the branches than from the gunfire. He focused on the branches, diverting his thoughts from the fighting, which should have sent him running back down the mountain.

Alan fought for every step as he slipped over the rocky uneven ground. He grabbed for exposed roots and branches, anything to pull him along. The gunfire grew louder, and near enough that he could hear the occasional bullet whistle overhead.  Alan could feel in his chest that the battle was about to erupt full fury at any moment. That old familiar feeling came over him, something between fear and a super-heightened awareness. It was that second sense that kept a body alive in battle. It was the drug that made war so terrible addictive.

Along the trail he found more and more war refuse; dissolving sandbags, bloody bandages, shell casings and ammo boxes. The trash deepened and grew in volume as he climbed towards a rise of earth where the Bosnian trenches lay. The spot stood stark against the starry sky as a ragged line. A mortar exploded somewhere down the line. Alan ducked instinctively.

He cursed himself for agreeing to come up here hoping to talk some sense into Adnan. As tragic as the loss of Adnan’s parents were, and regardless of his personal feelings for Adnan, Alan was there to do a job, not to get involved in the litany of tragedies that made up a war. This, he told himself, was the price of falling in love in a war zone, a lesson he should have learned long ago. It was a distraction that more often than not led to potentially deadly situations. And this one was shaping up to be particularly nasty.

Alan and his guides paused several yards short of the trench to be identified. The trees there were battered and stripped by gunfire. A body lay beside the trail, close enough that Alan could have touched it if he chose. It was half covered by a poncho and still warm. Steam still rose from the body. A burst of machinegun fire had stitched the man from head to crotch, and his insides had spilled out. The stench of feces and visry almost made Alan gag. It was something he had never become accustomed to. From the trench came a call for the three to identify themselves.

“Rayevosa,” the boy offered the approved code word. The word was taken from a local sort of Pig Latin that meant Sarajevo.

“Nadrealisti,” came the reply, using the name of a pre-war comedy troupe from Sarajevo.

Alan and his guides climbed the last few yards and slipped into the deep trench. At that moment the Serbian attack began. The whumpf-whumpf-whumpf of mortar tubes from the opposing trenches signaled the assault. Alan recognized it immediately and screamed, “Mortars,” as much out of habit as fear.

The Serbs were off their mark with the first volley as the shells landed short of the line by a good ten yards, throwing dirt and broken stones into the trench. The bravest Bosnians (or most foolhardy) knew that the Serbs were already up and out of their trenches, charging hard across a hundred yards of rocky ground. The Bosnians were up and firing over the edge of the trench. They weren’t aiming, but were just hoping to thrown enough lead at the onrushing enemy to slow their advance 

By now the Serbs had adjusted their aim as the next mortar volley came down right on top of the Bosnians, with devastating effect. Alan pressed himself to the front wall of the trench as the ground shook and erupted all around him. The air was alive with red-hot shrapnel whistling and screaming and thwapping into sandbags and bodies. The sound of crying and dying men filled the night. It mixed with the ear shattering clatter with what fire the Bosnians could bring to bear against the enemy.

The boy who had guided Alan up the mountain was still beside him. Alan could feel him trembling and could see utter terror in the young man’s eyes. Alan was no less terrified, but somehow felt the need to calm the boy as best he could. He saw himself in that ditch in Vietnam twenty years earlier. Mustering what courage he still held, Alan rubbed the boy’s shoulder and forced a smile.

“No problem,” he said. The boy seemed to rally himself around Alan’s strength and gave a nod.

The barrage was ending now. The Serbs were close enough that their cries could be heard as they died in the effort to reach the trench. Alan could see the desperation in men’s eyes and knew the Bosnian lines were in danger of being overwhelmed. If it fell the whole line might collapse. The Serbs would pour men into the breach to exploit their advantage slaughtering everything in their path. 

Alan felt trapped, his mind racing through a thousand scenarios. He had to find a way from the trench, but the fighting left him utterly disoriented. As panic threatened to overcome him, Alan groped in the dark and among the dead and dying for a weapon. This wasn’t something unknown to him. Alan had been here before…