“So what’s with the girl?” asked Powder. “Tried to shoot your head off?”
“Something like that.”
“Like that girl is Bosnia, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Danny, who hadn’t even thought about that incident.
Oh, he realized.
Oh!
“Spooky replay, huh?”
Danny put his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the rain. Powder had been with him in Bosnia.
“You know, I hadn’t even thought about it,” he told the sergeant. “I didn’t even remember that.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Danny laughed.
“Really, Cap? You blocked the whole sucker out?”
More or less. It had probably poked at him when he realized the person he’d grabbed was a woman, but he hadn’t really remembered, or thought about it, maybe because he was too focused on doing his job. Or maybe the memory was just too much.
The other woman was a Muslim too.
“Shit,” said Danny.
“Captain?”
“Let’s go get some coffee,” he told Powder. “Assuming these Navy guys know how to make it.”
He’d been in Italy as part of a Special Tactics Squadron, and through a series of related and unrelated developments, wound up being assigned with two of his men to accompany a UN negotiating team. The UN people were to meet with government officials at a police station in an obscure hillside town. The day before Danny, Powder, and another STS sergeant named Dave Chafetz went into the town with two plainclothes Yugoslavian policemen to familiarize themselves with the area. The policemen were scared shitless about something, even though they were in ostensibly friendly territory.
Scouting the ingress and egress routes went quickly. The police station was located near the town’s biggest intersection, which, despite the Yug’s assurance, was highly problematic. Danny and his team members took mental notes of several evacuation points, including the police station roof. They planned to have a pair of Blackhawks and some scout helicopters no more than two minutes away, and a ground unit with armored vehicles within striking distance. With Danny taking pains not to tip off his assessments to his Yugoslav escorts, it took about four hours to scout the whole place. Danny’s efforts were more professional than practical; it wouldn’t take a genius to know roughly where an emergency rendezvous or pickup would be planned.
The policemen kept asking nervously if he’d seen enough, hinting almost to the point of insistence that it was time for them to return to their UN base. Finally, Powder suggested they look at the building next to the police station; it was a grocery-type store, though from the window and door facing the street, the shelves looked pretty bare.
The policemen argued it was time to leave. Danny exchanged glances with his two men, then told the Yugs they were going in.
“Fine,” said one of the policemen. “We’ll wait out here.”
More than likely, they were just being paranoid, but you could never tell. The building had to be inspected and it had to be inspected now.
Danny and his men were dressed in fatigues with armored vests, but weren’t carrying rifles. They could and would call on air support if things got crazy, probably cancel the meeting tomorrow, and set the process back considerably.
He left his Beretta in its holster, trying to play it as innocently as possible. The door squeaked on its jamb as he pushed inside, and a bell at the corner of the frame rang, but there was no one in sight. He walked in, boots creaking against the old floorboards—there was a basement; they’d have to investigate.
Danny had memorized a set of cumbersome phrases in Serbo-Croatian, meant more to show he was friendly than to really communicate. He rehearsed one—“Vrlo mi je drago što vas vidim,” or roughly, “pleased to meet you”—as he walked toward a glass display counter about three quarters of the way back in the room. The display was empty, as were the shelves nearby. The place had a slightly sweet smell to it, the sort of scent that might come from cooking cabbage. The faint odor mixed with something more like dirt or mud.
Something moved on his right. He spun, his hands down near his belt and gun.
A figure came from behind a tattered curtain, a thin shadow. He thought it was a boy at first, then realized it was a girl, a young woman really. Maybe five-one, barely ninety pounds. Her hair was very short, unusual for the area.
“Vrlo mi” he started, faltering almost immediately with the pronunciation. He had memorized a phrase for “are you the owner?”—“da li ste sopstvenik?” which was intended to apply to the taxi drivers. He tried to remember it, but before he could, the girl held her hands in front of her, then backed away.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, putting up his own hand.
The girl stopped. The store was unlit, making it difficult to see her face well, but Danny thought she had understood what he said.
“We’re just Americans. Yanks,” he told her. “United States. U.S. We just, uh, looking around. Do you have anything to sell?”
It was lame, but it was all he could think of. Powder, who was a few feet behind him, said they were looking for coffee.
“Powder,” said Danny. “This isn’t a deli.”
“Hey, Cap, you never know. I could go for a good hit of joe right now.”