Salkic had much the same expression as he wrapped a grenade in each of his hands and pulled out the pins. Then he scooped her into his arms. Leaning back to take her weight, he began to stagger towards the daylight.
We watched him all the way to the end of the cave, where he took a couple of steps to his right and disappeared.
84
We all froze. Would they drop him on sight?
Maybe ten seconds later we knew the answer. The first of the grenades kicked off, then the second. I was up and running before the echoes had stopped. I could only hope Nasir was close behind. Fuck knows what I was going to do if I found myself alone when I got out into the open. I’d just have to make the best of the confusion and take on whoever was left moving.
There was no time for anything fancy: just butt into the shoulder, a deep breath and out into the grey light.
I swung right and immediately saw movers – two, three, I couldn’t be sure. Smoke hung low around the impact points.
I double-tapped into centre mass of a crawling flat top. A burst from behind me knocked another off his feet. Nasir was with me.
There was more firing behind us and to the right. Single shots, 9mm. Jerry was taking on the scabbed-up 4x4. The body at the wheel jerked and slumped. It was Goatee, the blood-drenched Motorola still in his hand.
I ran past Salkic. He was lying next to his sister: he must have dropped her and thrown the grenades at the wagon, then got dropped himself. He looked as though he might still be alive, but I didn’t check: there was a runner down in the low ground beyond the 4x4, maybe a hundred and fifty metres away. I sat with my back against a wheel, brought my legs up, shoved my elbows into the sides of my knees to make a platform for the weapon, rammed it into my shoulder and took aim.
My first shot missed. Nasir knelt alongside me as I took aim again. His first round went high. The guy was nearly two hundred metres away now, following the line of the valley. I took two big breaths to oxygenate myself, squeezed first pressure and held the foresight about three body-widths behind him. One more breath, let it out, hold . . . I moved the foresight past him to the left until it was one body-width in front, then took up second pressure. The butt kicked back into my shoulder and this time he went down. His screams took a while to reach us. I watched for a moment as his legs thrashed on the ground. I could have given him one more but, fuck it, I might need the round.
Nasir raised his head suddenly and searched the sky. I heard it too: the throbbing of rotor blades.
I checked for Jerry. He was kneeling by Salkic, and it looked like the two of them were having some kind of profound moment. There wasn’t time for that shit. He’d been sliced up by strands of steel-wire shrapnel from the grenades. He was in a bad way, but he was alive.
‘Jerry, go and get Benzil!’
He looked up and shook his head. ‘Wait.’
‘No, now – no time! The fucking heli – go get him out!’
I shoved him out of the way and took hold of Salkic’s head, making sure I got eye-to-eye.
Jerry stood up, pumping his arms as he started to run back towards the cave. The Daewoo was still clutched in his hand.
‘Put the fucking safety catch on!’
He stopped, fumbled with the weapon, then disappeared into the cave mouth.
‘Ramzi, listen to me. We’re going to go and hide until SFOR have lifted you, OK? Ramzi, you hear me?’
I shook Salkic’s head gently, trying to get him to listen. ‘You take Benzil and Nasir with you, all right? Jerry and I will take cover until you’ve gone. You understand?’
He did his best to nod. I went and picked up one of the flat-tops’ AKs and took off the magazine. He had no spares either. ‘Nasir, Nasir!’ I pulled him over to me. ‘Ramzi, tell him what’s going on.’
The helicopter was still hidden by cloud, but getting closer. If the cave was well known from the war, they’d be heading straight for us on GPS.
Salkic muttered some more stuff to Nasir and I ran back up the hill, my body wet with sweat.
Benzil was slumped just inside the cave, with Jerry doing his best to keep him going. ‘Benzil, SFOR are coming. You go back with Salkic and Nasir, OK?’
He shook his head. ‘No, no, I must see—’
‘No time. You’ll slow us down. Go back to the city, get sorted out, just lie your arse off about what’s happened. We’ll come for you after we’ve met him. If he wants to see you now, he’ll still want to see you in a few days.’
The rotor blades were getting lower.
Benzil muttered something I couldn’t make out above the din. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Flecks of my saliva splashed on to his cheek. ‘Listen to me! Make up a story. We’ll get back to the city and we’ll find you. Just don’t tell them we’re here, got it?’ I pushed him out towards the entrance. ‘And make sure you square the story with Salkic.’
He didn’t have time to answer. Nasir appeared and started to drag him out. I wanted to thank him for firing at the runner and not me, but there was no time for nods or handshakes. It wasn’t as if we’d become best mates or were now in some sort of brotherhood thing.
I grabbed Jerry and shoved him to the back of the cave to give him the facts of life.
We lay curled up as small as we could behind the rock pile and listened as the heli came into a hover just outside.
85
A second helicopter appeared about half an hour after the first, probably to ferry in more troops and pick up the bodies. The pilot landed about a hundred metres from the cave but didn’t close down. The wind had picked up, hurling rain in all directions; he’d keep the rotor blades turning in case the thing didn’t restart.
We listened to it for at least twenty minutes while the clearing party was at work. They were German, by the sound of it. One or two yodelled into the cave just to hear the echo. A couple ventured further inside, but nowhere like all the way to the back. Maybe they didn’t like the dark; maybe they didn’t like the idea of stepping on any mines or booby traps. About the only bit of luck we’d had in the last twenty-four hours was not tripping any of that shit ourselves.
I gave Jerry a shake the moment the heli had lifted off. ‘Better go and get that wagon while we still have the chance.’
When we got to the cave mouth, I had to laugh. The 4x4 had been cordoned off with blue and white scene-of-crime tape; it was practically gift-wrapped in the stuff. Some of the empty shell cases even had little flags stuck into the mud beside them.
The smile soon wiped itself off my face as we left the efficient German crime scene behind us. According to Salkic, the vehicle he’d have used to take us to Nuhanovic was parked in the biggest of the barns at the ambush site. The wind was bitterly cold and sliced into every millimetre of my exposed wet skin. I kept my arms tight against my sides and pulled up the collar of my coat to conserve as much warmth as I could. If I had to move my head I’d turn my whole body. I didn’t want the slightest bit of wind or freezing rain down my neck.
We’d been going no more than twenty when I turned to check on Jerry and my foot slipped. I went down, and as my knees hit the rock they felt like they were on fire. I hoped I hadn’t smashed a kneecap, but there was fuck all I could do about it. Black cloud cover was more or less total now. No wonder the heli pilot hadn’t wanted to hang around.
Twenty more, and the wind was driving freezing rain straight into our faces. My eyes were streaming. All we could do was keep our heads down.
I stopped for Jerry. He shuffled up alongside me and stood so close that his breath merged with mine as it got whipped away by the wind.