Читать книгу The Skinner's Revenge - Chris Karsten - Страница 10

Mountains, forests, rivers. Rolling verdant hills dotted with villages. Cottages built of stone, corrugated iron and wood huddled around places of worship. Bells pealing in church towers, muezzins calling from minarets. Riverbanks with trees and fruit-laden orchards, juicy red pomegranates, vegetable patches, fields of oats and wheat, grassy pastures covered with white and yellow daffodils. A landscape unchanged for centuries, inhabited by simple people going on their unhurried way. Not always at peace, for these parts have had their fair share of bloodshed and suffering. The Balkan killing fields: the scene of invasion and massacre by the Barbarians and Vandals in the Dark Ages, by the medieval Ottomans, by the power-crazy Austro-Hungarians, by adversaries in two World Wars.

Now there was a new invasion: brutes operating in the name of reprisal are advocating bloodshed, even calling it necessary. It can be traced all the way back to the Great Schism in the eleventh century. So old is the suppression and annihilation of the Serbs.

The new horde came from Serbia, wreaked havoc in Croatia, then crossed the border to Bosnia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina nothing that stood in their way was sacred. Prijedor, Sanski Most, the Sana valley, further along to the west and south and east to Banja Luka, Srebrenica, Mostar and Sarajevo. They convinced one another that the problem was an ethnic one, always had been. They had long memories, and they never forgot old injuries, which they were now intent on redressing. Ruthlessly they advanced, with their tattoos and guns and cannons, and nothing would ever be the same again.

When the sun rose over the hills during this blood-drenched time, the early morning light bathed the pastoral landscape in a fresh rosy glow, calling to mind the blood of the men, women and children that had been spilled there.

* * *

In the mountains around Sarajevo, eight battalions of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps were strangling the life out of the city and its residents with snipers’ bullets and shells. Buildings, many of them historic, had been reduced to rubble: Ottoman structures from the fourteenth century, Austro-Hungarian façades more than two centuries old.

Very few areas in the city were left unscathed, and when the shelling abated, dark, sooty clouds hung over the bomb craters and rubble. The air was filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder, fire and charred remains, and echoed with the cries of the wounded and maimed. In the streets and on the pavements the dead were left lying, because only the foolhardy, or those with a death wish, would brave the bullets to try and reclaim their loved ones’ bodies.

At a military base in the hills around Glasinačko Polje, Vlatko Galić and Zoran Dragnić had been trained as snipers. Then Vlatko, with his Zastava M76, and Zoran, with his AK47, were unleashed to do what they did best: sow terror and spill the blood of unarmed men, women and children in the city of Sarajevo. They squatted in a deserted building in the Serbian neighbourhood of Kovăcići, south of the great Miljacka River, which slices through the length of Sarajevo like a knife. The seventy-fourth snipers’ nest in the beleaguered city.

In an empty apartment on the seventh floor, Vlatko had taken a hammer and chisel on the day of their arrival and knocked a vertical hole in the outside wall of the living room: not big, a slit just large enough to accommodate the barrel and scope of his rifle. The Zastava M76 was a Yugoslavian sniper rifle, a replica of the Russian Dragunov, but using more effective 7.92 x 57mm Mauser bullets. Like the Dragunov, it had a flash suppressor at the end of the barrel to conceal the ignition of gas when a shot was fired, thus concealing the location of the shooter. The M76 fired its bullets at a muzzle velocity of seven hundred and thirty metres per second. Normally, the effective striking distance of a man-sized target is eight hundred metres; in other words, it took a mere second for the bullet to find its mark.

He lay on his stomach on the floor, the barrel pushed through the slit in the wall. Through the scope he had a bird’s eye view of the city centre. The Marijin Dvor building, the National Museum, the Houses of Parliament and parts of Tito Street were visible between the rooftops. If he swung the barrel to the right, he could see the Skenderija Centre, home to a youth club and cultural centre, a shopping mall, restaurants and the courts of the KK Bosna basketball club. He could also see the razor wire surrounding the large complex of UNPROFOR’s French contingents. When he lowered the barrel, he had the Vrbanja bridge over the Miljacka in his sights – so close, it seemed he could touch it if only his hand could fit through the narrow slit as well.

Vlatko raised the barrel and trained his sights on a scrambling pedestrian who was trying to cross Tito Street to reach the Holiday Inn on the opposite side. In Sarajevo, no one crossed a street slowly. If you wanted to survive, you scrambled like a rat from one doorway to the next. Vlatko’s finger lay on the trigger, the muscles of his forearms tense.

“Bang!”

The word burst softly from his lips. He grinned as he relaxed his finger and lowered the stock from his shoulder to the floor. I am God, he thought. I decide who lives and who dies. Today I grant that woman her life.

With his trigger finger he rubbed his neck where a bead of sweat had rolled out of his dirty bleached hair. The drop hovered over the open jaws of a wolf, the tattoo by no means delicate. The tattoo artist in Vukovar had used blunt needles and botched the job. The shading was rough, with little definition. Vlatko had actually wanted the head of a tiger.

En route to the new killing fields south of the Croatian border, he’d acquired another tattoo: the soft flesh on the inside of his left arm flaunted the words ARKANOVI TIGROVI. And so, wearing his warrior tattoos like insignia, Vlatko had crossed the Una River to Bosnia with Zoran Dragnić and the troops of Arkan’s Tigers.

Vlatko liked the phrase “ethnic cleansing”: they were doing their best to clean up wherever they went. First Croatia, now Bosnia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, they were told, their prey was not only the treacherous Croats, but also the Bosniaks.

Vlatko did not care about fine political nuance. Politics as an excuse to kill was fine by him. He didn’t care who formulated the excuses, who gave the orders. The fun was in their exploits, in hunting down the Croats and Bosniaks. In spilling their tainted blood.

He withdrew the barrel from the slit and collected the cartridges. He sat down at the table and began to clean his weapon with an oily rag. His shift was over.

Neither of them yet thirty, Vlatko and Zoran’s actions had always been motivated by violence. Since childhood. It was in their blood. They’d learned as children to assert and defend themselves in summary and violent manners; the meek and humble didn’t survive the mean backstreets of Belgrade. Later, as members of soccer gangs, spilling their opponents’ drunken blood with fists, rocks, knives and chains had become as much a sport as the matches of their beloved Red Star Belgrade FC. As soccer hooligans they were scorned. But their abusers were silenced when they became the chosen ones, when they were recruited for Arkan’s Tigers and donned the uniform of the Srpska Dobrovoljačka Garda, the Serb Volunteer Guard.

Arkan was the embodiment of an untainted Serbian bloodline. He was their hero.

To others he was still just Željko Ražnatović, common street thug, regular prison inmate. But no one said it openly, not to Arkan’s face, nor to the faces of his followers. Because the logo of the Tigers and their motto inspired fear.

Just after three, Vlatko heard the sound of boot heels on concrete. Zoran pushed open the door, sat down opposite him and slammed down a half-empty brandy bottle on the table.

Vlatko could smell Slivovitz on Zoran’s breath, the almondy smell of the stones of the damson plum.

“You’re late.”

“How many?” Zoran asked.

Vlatko pointed at the cartridges. “Thirteen.”

Of the thirteen shots, only two had hit their mark, and he didn’t think they’d been fatal. He’d seen one victim scurrying for the shelter of a parked car, and another entering an office building, limping. It had not been a good day.

“When are you expecting the librarian?” Zoran asked.

“They said five,” said Vlatko.

Zoran got up, holding on to the table for balance. He took the brandy bottle by the neck and crossed to the wall with his AK, crouching and pushing the barrel through the slit. “Five o’clock on the bridge?”

Vlatko got up as well, swung his rifle over his shoulder. “He’ll have a white rag in his right hand. That’s the sign. When you see a man with a white rag in his hand, don’t kill the librarian!”

He watched Zoran struggle to get comfortable on the floor. The same tattoo on the inside of his arm. And the knuckles of both their right hands displayed the letters SDG, for Srpska Dobrovoljačka Garda.

Zoran pressed the stock into his shoulder to adjust the sight. The AK was not as accurate as the M76, and the range was shorter, but the Vrbanja bridge was scarcely three hundred metres away. Zoran did not need a telescope; he could hit a target on the bridge with closed eyes, thought Vlatko.

“Why is he coming?” asked Zoran. “The librarian?”

Vlatko shrugged. “Word is he has permission to speak to the commanders at Lukavica.”

The road to the Romanija commanders led through the Serbian line south of the river, through the Serbian neighbourhoods. In order to cross the river safely, using any of the bridges, a message had to be relayed to the snipers’ nests that permission had been granted to a civilian – today, a librarian – to run the gauntlet at Vrbanja. On the Serbian side he would be collected and taken to Lukavica to state his case.

“Fucking spy for the Bosniaks, if you ask me,” said Zoran.

“Or a traitor. Maybe he’s bringing news in exchange for his family’s safe departure from the city.” Vlatko watched as Zoran drank from the bottle again.

In the back of the FAP trucks they had also guzzled Slivovitz, travelling in convoy into Bosnia, pulling the howitzers behind them, on their way to clean up the Sana valley. The Arkan Tigers had been drunk when they’d arrived at the Hotel Prijedor.

The strategy for the military onslaught was simple yet effective. First, the civilian enemy – the heathen Bosniak Muslims and the Catholic Croatian Ustaše – were blasted with heavy artillery, their houses, mosques and churches reduced to rubble. After the initial assault, infantry platoons were sent in from the Hotel Prijedor to clean up, quell opposition, smell out and detain resistance fighters.

It had been exciting. By day, the orgies of murder and rape, by night, liquor and song, bottles of Slivovitz, plates of ćevapčići with onions and a thick sauce of sweet chilli, brinjal and garlic, mixed with kajmak cream.

“I won’t kill him, but I can whack him in the thigh,” said Zoran over the sight of his AK. “To welcome him onto the bridge.”

“Or in the side,” said Vlatko, “if your aim is good.”

“Or the arm.”

“A librarian needs his arm.”

“The leg or side, then.”

“Not with the AK. Take my rifle.”

“What’s wrong with the AK?”

“It shoots all over the place, you know that. Especially if the shooter is full of brandy. Take the M76 if you’re aiming for a flesh wound and not to kill.”

“You think I can’t aim for a flesh wound with the AK?”

“I know you can aim,” said Vlatko. “But I think when you pull the trigger, it won’t be a flesh wound. You’re either going to miss completely, or you’re going to kill him. Take the M76 with the scope.”

“Fuck your M76,” said Zoran. “I’ll whack him with the AK. That cat over there. See it? Just let me get my eye in.”

Vlakto saw the cat on the bridge, scavenging for food. If, despite the brandy, Zoran could hit the cat, he’d be satisfied. Then there was hope that the librarian might just suffer a flesh wound, welcoming him and reminding him of the thin line between life and death.

Zoran fired; the cat jumped. Vlatko saw the bullet rip out a chunk of concrete on the bridge. In four, five leaps, the cat disappeared under the bridge.

“Fuck!” Zoran lowered the AK.

“You still have time to practise, to adjust your eye and sights,” said Vlatko, laughing as he left with his rifle over his shoulder.

When they’d dealt with the Sana valley, they’d packed up to move on. Same enemy, new battlefield. Behind them lay the bodies. Among the wild flowers in the fields, in the orchards and vegetable patches, in the cow pastures and pigsties, in the burnt ruins of the little sleepy hamlets of Hambarine, Carakovo and Rizvanovići, Biscani and Zecovi, the bodies of hundreds of men, women and children lay for days. Some in shallow mass graves, where Vlatko and Zoran and their comrades had done their cleansing.

In Banja Luka, Vlatko and Zoran had deserted and joined the 1st Krajina Corps. Ten days later the municipal police had begun to make enquiries into the murder of a man, his wife and their twin daughters. The same night Vlatko and Zoran had hitched a ride in a panel van belonging to the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps on their way to Sarajevo. They’d actually wanted to go to Mostar, but they’d got stuck in Sarajevo. Vlatko was not sorry. He liked Sarajevo and enjoyed the work he and Zoran were doing there.

The bottle was down to the last quarter. At five, when the librarian appeared on the bridge, the chances of a mere flesh wound would be slim.