He wore an expression that betrayed his true feelings, and Marko knew that the young Serb felt the same way that he did about the situation. They were both equally relieved to have been assigned to a deserted stretch of road, even if three hundred meters of separation didn’t provide them with any absolution for their presence in the valley. Sava’s radio crackled, and their respite from the madness was over. They had been recalled to the village center.
He slicked his thick, matted brown hair back with his left hand and wiped the sweat onto his camouflage pants. Sava looked terrified for the first time since they had piled into green, tarp-covered trucks in Belgrade. He patted the kid on the back and nodded.
“Let’s get going.”
The two of them started to jog down the road, careful not to twist an ankle in the shallow crater created by one of the mortar impacts. He spotted several AUZ jeeps in a clearing to the north of the village. All of the doors in the village had been left open, which gave the village a frightening aura. Almost like it had been abandoned. The first thing he heard was the crying, and it nearly stopped him in his tracks. He searched for the source and saw a group of women and children huddled under a tree, guarded by a soldier. As the scene started to unfold in front of him, he sensed that Sava had stopped altogether.
“Keep moving, or you’ll end up in one of those trenches,” Marko said, wondering if that was where they might end up anyway.
They were blocked by a group of Panthers and told to leave their weapons stacked against one of the vehicles. He saw several assault rifles leaned against a mud-covered chassis and walked over to the jeep to add his weapon to the collection. One his way, Marko scanned the scene to assess the situation. A shallow pit was visible, just beyond a dozen or so Panthers, who were staring down into it. A few of them shook their heads, while others spit at the earth. As he placed his sniper rifle against the jeep’s rear tire, Sava joined him.
“Fucking burial duty. Wonderful,” Sava said.
“It’s typical for new guys,” Marko lied.
He hadn’t seen shovels among the men standing in front of the long pit. His stomach tensed, and he fought to remain calm. This would probably be his defining “critical point,” as the Black Flag psychologists termed it. They had prepared him for these moments, characterizing the different types and their potential significance. This one looked like his “terminal critical point.” He would either survive and emerge as a trusted member of the Panthers, or he would die in the pit along with the rest of the villagers. No aspect of General Sanderson’s training program could truly prepare him for what would transpire in the next few moments. He had a choice to make.
If he lined up with the rest of the men, he would have to trust his chances to a gamble he had taken a few weeks ago. A little insurance policy that might save his life. His other option was to put his training to work and fight his way out of here. He might even be able to kill all of them. Half of the group was unarmed, standing unarmed like sheep, in front of their own grave. The twelve remaining men? He had several loaded assault rifles sitting right in front of him. He could sling two of them over his shoulder and start cutting down the armed Panthers with a third. The odds were in his favor, given his capabilities. It might even be blamed on KLA guerillas.
He glanced up at one of the men that had ordered him put his weapon against the jeep. The man’s greasepaint camouflage had been recently reapplied, neutralizing his expression, but his eyes gave Marko pause. They were cold and alert. He would have to make his decision within the next fraction of a second. Taking his hand off the sniper rifle, he decided to gamble with his life. The payoff would secure his status among the Panthers, which was the ultimate purpose of his training as a Black Flag operative. He swallowed shallowly and followed Sava around the jeep, never taking his eyes off the hardened soldier escorting them.
As he approached the pit, a buzzing sound hit his ears, causing him to stop.
“Get with the rest of them,” someone barked from behind, and he continued forward.
A few of the dirty soldiers ahead of him laughed and pointed down into the trench, which demonstrated exactly how clueless some of the new recruits could be, when confronted with the obvious.
Marko caught his first look into the shallow trench and fought the urge to gag. He betrayed no emotion as the full scope of the atrocity appeared before him. He no longer wondered about the buzzing sound. Thousands of flies swarmed over the freshly slaughtered corpses; fighting to land in bright red pools of blood, drawn to the stench of involuntarily voided bowels. As the smell started to overwhelm him, he decided to stop and turn around.
He faced the members of the same firing squad that had put all of the village’s men into a hastily dug mass grave. A few of the executioners mingled with him in the doomed group, some complaining about being put on burial duty, others bragging about the accurate shots they had fired into the “terrorists.” One of the loudest newbies called out to the platoon commander, who was talking into a radio headset.
“Hey, Nenad! How about the guys with the easy jobs guarding the road bury this garbage?” he said, pointing toward Marko and Sava.
“How about you shut the fuck up!” said a stocky Serb crouched near one of the jeeps.
The man’s bravado instantly disappeared, and he started to melt back into the dozen or so men standing around in front of the trench. Marko took in the scene. Nobody was pointing weapons in their direction, but he could see the looks passing surreptitiously back and forth.
He located some shovels nearby, which were caked with dirt and had probably been recently used by the slaughtered Kosovars to dig their own grave. Nobody else glanced at the shovels. This was not a work detail. This was either some kind of sick initiation that might involve the surviving women and children, or something entirely different. Either way, he wondered if he had made a mistake.
His eyes found the nearest M-90 assault rifle, and he did the calculations, casually looking around. He could put a knife through the owner’s throat and get the rifle, but his chances beyond that were now non-existent.
The sound of vehicles broke his concentration. Two black Range Rovers sped down the road from the east, kicking up a storm of dust behind them. The armed Panthers straightened up, and some of them even attempted to brush off some of the dirt and mud, in a futile effort.
Nenad Sojic and his radio operator, Goran, jogged to the road to meet the occupants. He recognized the SUVs, and suddenly it all made sense. He might survive the day, but only if Radovan Grahovac, Hadzic’s security chief, decided to indulge in his patented sadism for a few minutes, before putting them all into the ditch. He was optimistic. The self-indulgent security chief didn’t like to stray too far from Belgrade, without the promise of entertainment.
The Range Rover doors opened simultaneously, disgorging the Panther VIPs. Serious, brutal-looking men, dressed in pressed camouflage uniforms, formed a loose perimeter around the man who had emerged from the front passenger door of the lead vehicle. Radovan Grahovac stood in the middle of the heavily armed men, surveying the destroyed village and nodding in agreement with Nenad Sojic, who gestured toward the mass grave at Marko’s feet.
Marko scoured Grahovac’s face, looking for any indication he might survive what lie ahead in the next few minutes. As Radovan’s group walked toward the pit, his heart sank, and he thought about the closest assault rifle. Maybe with this distraction he could pull it off. If he could get the rifle and find cover within a few seconds, he might be able to survive long enough to channel these overconfident simpletons into a few fatal funnels, which would give him easy targets until he developed a plan to escape.