War Baby (39 page)

Their breath formed thick clouds on the still morning air. They stopped to rest, stamping their feet against the cold. They were alone on the muddy track, the forest around them still dark.

A dirty light tried to pierce a dense mist.

‘How far are we from Travnik?’ Jenny asked him.

‘I don’t know.’

‘We must be close.’

Four soldiers appeared out of the mist on the path ahead of them.

They all wore brimless olive wool Chetnik caps, and their hair and beards were long and unkempt in trademark fashion. They were well armed. Even at this distance Ryan could see they were all carrying Kalashnikovs and had Bowie knives in their belts. One of them had an RPG strapped to his back.

He heard them release the safeties on their weapons.

Irfan and his family were far ahead of them, at the crest of the rise. Irfan was carrying his youngest daughter in his arms; his old father, still in his carpet slippers, was supported by Irfan’s wife. They had abandoned many of their possessions by the road during the night. Now the woman carried just one black plastic bag of clothes, all that was left of their former life.

The three small boys trotted bravely behind.

When he saw the soldiers, Irfan lowered his daughter to the ground, scrambled around in the black plastic bag, took out a white shirt and waved it above his head.

Ryan stopped, breathing hard.

He did not like the look of this.

The Chetniks were silhouetted against a lightening sky. They swaggered across the path in the attitude of bullies in a ghetto street. Ryan felt a chill in his stomach as he watched Irfan and his family trudge towards them. The sixth sense that had served him well all through his life now told him it was time to run.

‘Jump ship,’ he said, and pushed the pram towards the edge of the road. Then he was running down the slope, through the forest of oak and chestnut trees. He could hear Jenny crashing through the undergrowth behind him.

We must look ridiculous, he thought.

He was running too fast, the hill was too steep. The pram tipped. Ryan felt it wrench his wrist and then he was falling too, rolling down the slope. The breath was hammered out of him. He heard Webb scream, a short high-pitched sound like a wounded animal.

Then silence.

He lay on his back. Through a break in the mist he saw the morning star, cold and white. The Chetniks were calling to each other on the track, less than fifty metres away.

Close.

Closer.

Too close ...

Then another shout, from further up the road, and he heard the soldier turn and run back up the road to rejoin his companions. Ryan could imagine the conversation:

They must have run into the woods.

I can’t see them.

Leave them. It doesn’t matter.

And then a short burst of gunfire. He heard a woman screaming, but the sound was cut off by another burst from a Kalashnikov.

You mongrel bastards, Ryan thought. You’ve killed Irfan. May you all rot in hell.

They came back down the road.

They were searching the forest. They’ll see that old perambulator sticking out of the undergrowth, Ryan thought. Unless ...

The sun had not yet risen over the mountains and the gloom was deeper beneath the canopy of the trees. The mist had cut visibility down to a few yards. With the casual violence of rogue soldiers, they might just get tired of the search and move on, forget them as easily as they would soon forget the bodies they had left behind them on the road.

Ryan heard Webb moan.

Shit, shit, shit. Webb was sprawled on his side, unconscious. He moaned again. Ryan put his hand over his mouth.

Shut up, you useless bastard, he thought. I’ll choke you if I have to.

He heard another hurried exchange between the soldiers. They were making up their minds.

Please, Spider, not a sound.

He watched blood leaking through Webb’s fatigue trousers. Webb twitched, and for a moment Ryan thought he was going to spasm. He held him. Fuck you, Spider, you’re always make trouble for me. He held his breath.

Then he heard the soldiers moving away, heard the crunch of their boots on the frozen mud.

He looked around for Jenny, heard her moving through the undergrowth nearby. He hoped she wasn’t hurt. It was still a long walk to Travnik.

* * *

An hour later Ryan picked his way back up the slope. By now the sun had risen over the mountains, but a heavy mist clung to the trees. He reached the track and waited, making sure the Chetniks had gone. In the distance he could hear the distant crump of artillery. Travnik.

The bodies of Irfan and his family lay a hundred yards away, in the tangled and unnatural attitude of the dead. He felt the bitter taste of his bile in the back of his throat. Oh, for God’s sake. He counted the bodies. Irfan, his wife, his father, looking a little surprised to have died in his carpet slippers. The three boys.

The goldfish was dead, too. The plastic bag had burst on the road where the boy had dropped it, and the fish lay on its side, partly frozen.

And where was the girl?

He searched the track. There she was. They had let her run for a while.

He made up his mind that he didn’t want to die like this, his guts spilled all over the road. So what the fuck was he doing in Bosnia? It was the little girl that really upset him. As she was dying she had pawed a hole in the half frozen mud with her fingers, like a small puppy.

He picked up the old plastic bag Irfan’s wife had been carrying and lugged it back up the track. He found Jenny and Webb among the trees.

Jenny’s face had deep scratches where she had run into tree branches during their flight into the forest. She was sitting with her back against a chestnut tree, cradling Webb’s head in her lap. He was conscious again, but his face was grey.

They had found the old perambulator. The axle had broken in the wild ride down the hill. It was useless now. If they were going to get Webb to Travnik, Ryan would have to carry him on his shoulders. That would be fun, they’d been picking bits of shrapnel out of his arm a few days ago. There was still fresh blood on the dressings.

‘If we stay on the track we could get picked off by snipers, or run into more Chetnik patrols. If we don’t, we could get lost, or stumble into a minefield.’

‘So what should we do?’ Jenny asked. ‘You’re the expert.’

‘If I was on my own I’d manage all right, no worries.’ He looked down at Webb. ‘Perhaps we’d better leave him behind.’

‘You’re not serious?’

Webb turned his head slightly to look up at him. ‘You leave me here ... you bastard ... and I’ll come back ... and haunt you.’ He laughed.

‘That’s not what they say in the films. Why can’t you be a hero about this, Spider?’

‘We can’t leave him,’ Jenny said.

‘Well then, it looks like we’ll have to take our chances on the track. I can’t walk through this shit. My vote, we wait for tonight. There’s a stream down there, so we’ve got fresh water. I also rescued some dry clothes Irfan’s wife was carrying. They’ll keep us warm and we’ll have a better chance out here dressed as refugees than we will as Presna.’

‘Like Irfan,’ Jenny said.

‘I hope that sun breaks through soon or we’re going to freeze to death. Let’s find some dry ground and try and get some sleep. If I’m going to carry that long streak to Travnik I need some rest.’

They woke soon after dusk, stiff and cold from the damp ground. They had heard intermittent bursts of small-arms fire and mortar duels from Travnik right through the day. They had slept in staccato spells, surfing black waves of exhaustion, starting awake at the slightest noise. Once Ryan had ventured down to the stream at the bottom of the valley to refill their canteens.

Now that it was time to make their way back up to the track he felt too cold, too hungry and too tired to move. He recognized this apathy as the beginning of hypothermia. It would be so easy to curl up and sleep; the night and the ground frost would do the rest.

Jenny’s head lolled against the trunk of the tree, her eyes glassy with fatigue. She staggered getting to her feet, had to support herself against the tree. But she’d make it. She’s a survivor, he thought, like me. It’s in the blood.

Webb looked dead already; his jaw was slack, his skin grey. Poor bloody Spider. He had always admired him for getting out when he did, building a normal life for himself, most of all for doing what he did for Jenny. He still sometimes flirted with the idea of doing the same.

But flirtation was one thing, commitment was another. He’d tried that road once before and it hadn’t worked out.

‘Don’t let him die,’ Jenny said.

‘Spider won’t die while I’m around. He’s too bloody- minded.’ She knelt beside him, checked his pulse and breathing yet again. ‘You really love him, don’t you?’

‘He’s the only father I’ve ever had.’

Ryan thought about that. It surprised him how much that hurt. ‘He was always there for you. I guess that’s what being a father is.’

Their eyes met.

‘Well, at least I can do one thing for you. I can get you out of this.’

She shook her head. ‘I wonder if it was worth it. Jajce, us being there. Are any of my pieces, any of your photographs, going to make any difference?’

‘My photographs,’ he said and gave a short, humorless laugh.

‘Ryan?’

‘I never took any photographs.’

He got to his feet. The cold had come on with sharp and breathtaking ferocity. They had to start moving soon, if they wanted to get off this mountain alive.

‘You didn’t take any photographs?’

He shook his head.

‘None at all?’ When he didn’t answer, she went on: ‘But we were the only Western journalists in Jajce. Everyone is going to want our photographs.’

‘
Your
photographs.’

She stared at him, unable to comprehend. Of course she could not understand. She was young, this was her first war. ‘Then why did you go there?’

Good question; because it was the place no one else wanted to go. But he hadn’t seen anything there that he had not photographed in some other form before. It had all seemed so futile.

‘Sean?’

‘I don’t know. I just forgot, I guess.’ He crouched down next to Spider. ‘Help me sit him up. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

One thing at a time: he had to get his daughter and his best mate back to Travnik, then maybe he’d sit down and think this through. But he didn’t like the way this was going. Once he thought there was a point to what he was doing. Now he didn’t see the point any more, and that was the only thing he had ever come across in a war that truly scared him.

* * *

Shells whistled overhead, tracers lit the mountainside. A heavy machine gun boomed close by. They had to be close to the front line.

They had stumbled for three hours through the darkness, stopping to rest every few minutes, the cold and fear forcing them on again. Ryan could feel Webb’s blood seeping through his shirt and down his neck. Webb slipped in and out of consciousness, babbling incoherently. For a skinny bloke he weighed enough.

He must be in terrible pain, Ryan thought. That’s about the only consolation to all this.

He kept himself going by watching for small landmarks; stagger towards the looming silhouette of a large tree, promise yourself you will stop there and rest, then count a hundred paces, stop again; next time force yourself to go a hundred and ten.

Keep going.

His shoulder was agony, his neck muscles were cramping. See that burned out house? Let’s see if we can make it to there. The rest, then count out another hundred paces.

‘We can do it,’ Jenny whispered, somewhere behind him. He felt her stumble against him.

He was too exhausted to answer her. What was he doing here? A young man’s game this. I should be in a bar somewhere, telling war stories and whore stories and drinking Bushmills. Go on talk shows like Spider.

Tracers arced through the night sky somewhere behind them, a poisonous green. He half turned to look at them, stumbled on the edge of the track. Jenny rushed forward to take Webb’s weight, but she was too late and he toppled sideways. Webb shrieked as they crashed to the ground.

Ryan lay on his stomach, exhausted. Everything was a screaming agony: his back, his knees, his neck muscles. The wound in his shoulder felt like it had split open like a ripe plum.

‘Need something white,’ he mumbled.

He heard Jenny unscrew the cap of her water bottle, roll him over, hold it to his lips. ‘Need something white,’ he repeated.

‘What?’

‘So they can see us.’

She helped him sit up. After a few moments he got his breath back, recovered a little. He knew he couldn’t lie here too long or his muscles would cramp up and he wouldn’t be able to get up again. It was all about the will. He forced himself to his knees, steadied his weight against her and got back to his feet.

‘This is the tough part,’ he said. ‘We’re walking towards the defenders now. They’ll be jumpy. Nothing friendly about friendly fire.’

‘I don’t have anything white. Wait a minute. My underwear.’

‘Now is no time to be modest,’ he grunted. ‘Besides, we’re all family here.’

They were Gortex thermals, waist to ankle. Jenny tied them to a tree branch.

‘There I was thinking they’d be flimsy, lacy things,’ Ryan said. ‘Spider’s been a bad influence on you.’

‘Now I’m really cold.’

What a sight we must look, he thought, in our ragtag of Western and Moslem clothes. We might not look like Bosnians but at least we sure as hell don’t look like Chetniks. He handed her his pencil light. ‘Shine it on your little flag there, Jenny, and walk in front.’

‘Are we going to make it?’

‘Of course we will. I’ve always been lucky. Trust me.’

The end, when it came, was an anticlimax. Ryan was concentrating on the next one hundred steps, had counted to sixty three, was focused only on staying on his feet. Suddenly a young man in a vintage combat helmet, the fleur-de-lys emblem of Bosnia on his shoulder flash, came towards them out of the darkness, waving a torch, his Kalashnikov on a strap over his left shoulder.

He greeted them in his own language and was astonished to hear them reply in English.

‘Presna?’ he said.

‘BBC, Lonn-donn!’ Ryan said.

The
armija
was impressed. He gave them cigarettes and offered them a drink from his hip flask. Lorza brandy. Ryan felt it bum all the way down and smiled.

‘Christ,’ he murmured. ‘We did it.’

The soldier told them, in halting English, that they had not been expecting any refugees along this particular track. They had heard it was crawling with Chetniks. He was sorry but he could not help them more. He and the rest of his squad were on patrol. But he would radio back to the next guardpost and warn the HVO sentries not to shoot at them. It was not much further. About two miles.

‘Two miles!’ Ryan repeated.

Just over that hill and you’ll be in the town, the soldier said. You’re safe now.

Welcome to Travnik!

Ryan lowered Webb gently to the ground. Somehow, now they were back in friendly territory, he seemed much lighter. They refilled their canteens from a cattle trough, after breaking a thin skin of ice.

Jenny held Webb’s head, helped him drink some of the water from her canteen. ‘Almost there,’ she whispered.

Webb’s eyes blinked open but he was in too much pain to answer her.

Ryan’s shirt was soaked from Webb’s blood and his own. ‘Blood brothers now, Spider,’ he said.

‘Almost there,’ Jenny repeated. An artillery round further down the valley lit the road for a moment, and the farmland either side. She saw a stone farmhouse and a low walled courtyard, the minarets and domes of Travnik in the distance.

‘It’s beautiful in a strange kind of way, isn’t it?’ Ryan said. ‘You can see why people love wars. Everything else is kind of dull by comparison.’

‘Tell me about that tomorrow. Right now I just want to get out of this.’

‘Don’t worry. We’re okay now. I told you I was lucky, didn’t I?’

* * *

There was a short burst of automatic weapons fire. Jenny threw herself face down on the road.

‘Americanski!’ she screamed, in shock and outrage. They were through the lines, they were supposed to be safe! ‘Americanski!’

There was a brief silence, then she heard heavy boots running down the road towards them. Someone shone a torch in her face. Croat militia.

‘Presna?' he asked.

‘Presna, presna,’ she repeated.

‘We think you are Chetnik!’

‘They said they’d warned you on the radio!’ Her fear evaporated and now she was just angry. She turned around to look for Ryan and Webb.

Ryan lay on his side ten paces behind her. In the harsh light of the torch she saw the neat holes in the front of his fisherman’s warmer.

She just stared; couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t believe it.

‘I am sorry,’ the Croat soldier said. ‘It was a mistake. I will call on the radio for an ambulance.’