Stoner cleared the mag, slammed in a fresh one, and fired in what seemed to be one motion, one moment. The cold of the night intensified, freezing his breath in his lungs as the shouts and screams crescendoed.
His rifle once more empty, Stoner stomped his right foot down and threw himself to the left, spinning amid the gravestones.
He lay on his back, reloading. Stoner heard a rocket-propelled grenade whistle over his head; the sound was more a hush than a whistle, and the explosion a dull thud against the wall of the church.
A second grenade flew past, even closer. But there was no explosion this time; the missile was a dud.
Meanwhile, the squad that had been pinned down rallied to fight the guerrillas near the hedge. The next ninety seconds were a tumult of explosions and gunfire, tracers flashing back and forth, the darkness turning darker. The mortar began firing again, the thud-pump, thud-pump of its shells rocking the ground.
Cries of the wounded rose above the din. Finally, a pair of soldiers ran forward from Stoner's left — Romanians, rushing the last guerrillas. Three more followed. A man ran up to Stoner and dropped next to him, putting his gun down across his body, obviously thinking he was dead.
"Hey, I'm OK," Stoner said.
The Romanian jumped.
"It's OK," said Stoner. "It's the American. I'm all right."
The soldier said something in Romanian, then got up and followed the others surging into the other yard. Stoner rose slowly. When he saw that the soldiers wouldn't need his help, he turned toward the church.
The trucks had finally arrived, and soldiers were now swarming into the area. The church had been secured; soldiers climbed up the stairs, boxes of documents in their arms. Two guerrillas, bound and blindfolded, sat cross-legged a few feet from the basement entrance. The Romanian soldier behind them raised his rifle toward Stoner as he approached, then recognized him and lowered it.
Stoner pulled his small flashlight from his pocket and shone it into the men's faces, which were bruised and swollen; both looked dazed.
"You speak English?" he asked them, kneeling so his face was level with theirs. "What are your names?"
Neither man said anything.
"English?" Stoner asked again. "Tell me your names." Nothing.
"I can get a message to your families that you're OK," Stoner said. "If I knew who you were."
Their blank stares made it impossible to tell if they were being stubborn or just didn't understand what he was saying.
Stoner switched to Russian, but there was no recognition. The men were Romanian.
"It would probably be better for you if people knew you were alive," he said in English. "There'd be less chance of accidents."
But the men remained silent.
Two other prisoners had been taken, both of them superficially wounded. Neither wanted to talk. At least thirty guerrillas were dead. The Romanians had lost only three men.
With the church and the immediate ground secured, squads of soldiers worked their way through the nearby houses, searching for rebels or anything they might have left behind. Stoner watched them move down the nearby street, surrounding a house, then rousting the inhabitants. Meanwhile, the papers and a computer that had been found in the church basement were loaded into a truck, to be transported to the helicopters and then flown back to Romania.
"Ah, Mr. Stoner," said Brasov when the colonel found him at the front of the church. "Good information, yes. Good job, American."
"What are you going to do with the dead guerrillas?" asked Stoner.
"They come back with us," replied the colonel. "Evidence. If needed."
"Good. Any of these guys look Russian?" "You want them to be Russian?" "Not if they're Romanian." The colonel shrugged.
"I have you to thank. I was not always trusting you," said the colonel, his English breaking down either because of his fatigue or perhaps his excitement. The operation would make him look very good with the general. "I will not forget."
The colonel went off to check with his platoon leaders, urging them to move quickly. The phone lines in and out of the hamlet had been cut, and a pair of cell phone blockers had been set up near the church at the start of the assault, but there was no way to guarantee that word of the operation wouldn't get out. The troops were to muster on the road in ten minutes; they would ride and march back to the helicopters.
Stoner went back over to the dead men, looking at their shoes. To a man they were battered and old; most wore cheap sneakers. He took a few photos with his digital camera, then went down the steps into the church basement to see what the troops had found. The steps opened into a meeting room about thirty by twenty, punctuated by cement columns that held the ceiling up. A small kitchenette sat at the back. There were a few metal chairs scattered to one side, along with a pair of tables propped against the wall. The place looked like a bingo hall between meetings.
Things were different behind the cheap wood panel wall at the back of the kitchenette. A steel door, pockmarked with bullets, had been pushed down off its hinges to reveal a room stacked with bunk beds. At the far end, tables set up as desks with computers and other office gear had been stripped bare by the soldiers. Paper was strewn everywhere; there were stacks of cardboard boxes in the corner. A pair of AK-47s and three crates filled with ammo lay nearby. Two steel footlockers were being guarded by a soldier. Stoner guessed they contained weapons; the letters on the top were Cyrillic.
Russian, though that didn't prove much. He took photos anyway.
Quite a bit of blood had been splattered on the floor and walls.
By the time he came back outside, the soldiers were wrapping up, getting ready to leave. Colonel Brasov saw him and walked over, extending his hand.
"Now I hear from my men you are a hero," said the colonel.
"How's that?"
"You stopped an ambush." The colonel pointed toward the back of the churchyard, where Stoner had cut off the guerrillas. "They had a second barracks in that house. You surprised them when they came to surprise my men."
"Yeah, I guess I did."
Brasov slapped him on the back. "You are a funny American. You kill two dozen men, you take no credit." "I don't think it was two dozen."
"Come on," Brasov told him. "Time for us all to leave. I'll buy you drinks when we are back. Come, come."
Stoner fell in with one of the groups leaving on foot, walking back through the village. The houses were dark. He suspected that the villagers were watching now from behind the curtains and closed doors. Surely they'd known what was going on here. Maybe they were glad to be rid of the guerrillas, or maybe they sympathized with their cause. They were pawns in any event, bystanders whose deaths would not have mattered to either side.
Most of the helicopters had already taken off. The trucks were departing. It was a dangerous time. The operation wasn't over, but it felt like it was, and the adrenaline that had pushed everyone had dissipated. Officers yelled at their men, trying to remind them of that, trying to get them to move quickly, to look alive. But they were slacking too, and the brief but intense fight had left their voices hoarse.
There were less people here than Sorina had predicted. But maybe the evidence he wanted would be in the papers, or on the computer.
Stoner pulled his jacket tighter, suddenly feeling the chill of the night.
Brasov began yelling. The lieutenants started waving their arms, urging the men to board the helicopters immediately.
"What's going on?" Stoner asked the colonel.
"The border stations have been alerted. We have to move quickly."