"Sure thing, L-T."
Murdock wished he had someone in the squad who spoke Serbo-Croatian. Normally they'd have had a linguist along, but this op had been too rushed to cover the fine points. Besides, as Fletcher had happily pointed out, Gypsy spoke English and the SEAL squad would not be interacting with anyone else ashore, civilian or military.
Yeah, right.
It was sheer chance that they'd missed him. Narednik Andonov Jankovic had been leaning against the wall of the monastery, close beside the southeast corner, when his friends and comrades had begun collapsing left and right, mouths gaping, heads exploding, blood and gore spraying everywhere, all to the almost melodious chuffing ring of sound-suppressed gunfire.
Jankovic's rank of narednik was equivalent to that of a senior sergeant, and though he wasn't in uniform he was still an active-duty member of the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army. Six months ago, he'd been seconded to the Serbian Volunteer Guard as an "advisor," one of thousands of JNA regulars assigned to keep the pro-Serb militias in line. With decent training and fifteen years' military experience, he'd acted instinctively when the militia troops started to fall, rolling around the corner of the building, then scrambling for cover as quickly as he could go. Judging by where the fire was coming from, he thought that one of the parked trucks had shielded him from view, but he couldn't be sure he hadn't been seen; he'd plunged into a shell hole in the side of the monastery's chapel, emerging inside the sacristy. By the time he reached the apse, the sounds of the firefight outside had died away.
The chapel had been torn by shell fire and was open to the sky. The icons, the altar, and most of the furniture had been all carried off, either by the original Dominican brothers when they'd fled, or by looters looking for gold or firewood later on. No place to hide… no place good enough, anyway. He scrambled through a gap in the north wall, vaulted an ironwork fence outside, and scrambled into the chill shadows beneath the trees beyond. The snow lay in patches… careful not to leave tracks. Where to go? Where to? In the woods! A snowbank! Plunging into the snow behind a tangle of fallen branches, he lay there, panting hard, trying to control the heart-pounding terror that had propelled him into the forest. God, God, God, who were these people? Not Turks, surely… as he thought of the Bosnian Muslims. The UN arms blockade still prevented the Muslims from receiving more than a trickle of weapons from outside, and certainly they wouldn't have silenced guns.
What was that? Jankovic was sure he'd seen movement, close by the east side of the monastery's chapel. Holding very still in the snow, scarcely breathing, he watched a patch of darkness moving against darkness. The shape revealed itself against a bare patch of wall dimly illuminated by the glowing sky… but only for an instant.
Jankovic tried to digest what he'd just seen. The shape had been… nightmarishly alien, terrifying, with some kind of harness or vest heavy with equipment, with something like goggles or a camera over its face. A second shadow joined the first. They moved so stealthily, so silently, that Jankovic kept losing sight of them. He wanted to run, but he suppressed the urge, knowing that if he so much as moved, they would see him.
Russian Spetsnaz? The only Russians in Yugoslavia, apart from a UN brigade present solely for cosmetic purposes, were advisors secretly helping the JNA. Americans, then?
Everything he'd been told about the Americans said that they were cowards, afraid to fight save from behind the screen of their near-magical technology. Jankovic's superiors warned almost daily of the danger of American air strikes, impressing on the men the need to capture any downed pilots alive. But ground troops? It seemed impossible.
But as Jankovic lay in the snow, watching the two shadows quartering the grounds behind the monastery, he became convinced that they must be Americans, possibly even their legendary Delta Force. They had so much expensive equipment — personal radios, night-vision goggles, silenced submachine guns — they must be Americans, because only Americans could afford that kind of lavish, high-tech gadgetry.
Did their gadgetry include infrared goggles? Could they see him beneath his blanket of snow? Jankovic had worked with Russian IR equipment and knew that his body heat must be glowing as brightly as a bonfire against the cold ground. Even starlight optics allowed some vision at infrared wavelengths. If they saw him…
But no, the shadows moved within ten meters of his hiding place, giving no evidence of having seen him. Silently, the shadows passed him by, circled the west end of the monastery, and vanished.
Even so, it was several minutes before Jankovic could force trembling legs to support him. He didn't dare head for the road, not when more of the invaders could have an ambush posted there. Instead, he started climbing the mountain behind the monastery. The road angled back across the face of the mountain, perhaps five hundred meters up the slope, and from there it was another three kilometers to a local militia outpost.
There was a radio there, and he'd be able to call for help. This was definitely a job for the JNA, and they would have to work fast to trap these high-tech shadows, before they could make their escape.
Magic and Professor showed up a few minutes later, silently materializing out of the darkness like wraiths. "No trace of that runner, L-T," Magic said. "He must've decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge."
"Shit, that son of a bitch's feet won't touch the ground twice before he hits the Bulgarian border," Doc said, coming up on Murdock from behind. "Skipper? Our spook friend checks out okay. I gave him a one-grain tab of phenobarb to kind of quiet him down, like."
"Okay, Doc. See to the women, will you?"
Doc's painted face split in a toothy grin. "Hey, my pleasure, Skipper."
"Cut the crap, Doc. They've just been through hell and they don't need any shit from you."
The smile vanished. "Aye, aye, sir."
Damn, he hadn't meant to snap at Doc. The guy had a wild rep with the ladies on liberty, but on duty he was always strictly professional, except for his sometimes quirky sense of humor. The aftereffects of the firefight, and the fact that one of the bad guys had escaped, had Murdock on edge. He hurried over to where Mac was sitting on the ground with the CIA man. Squatting next to him, Murdock tried to give a reassuring smile, an expression that he knew well could not be all that reassuring delivered through all of this camo face paint. "You're Gypsy?"
The man seemed to be trying to focus on Murdock. His glasses were still blood-smeared. "Uh… ya sam Gypsy," the man said. "You… you Nomad?"
That was the proper recognition code, Gypsy and Nomad, sign and countersign. "I'm Nomad."
The man gestured vaguely at the jeep. "Papers, in there."
They found what they'd come for on the floor of the jeep, a briefcase bulging with typewritten papers. Not originals; from the look of them, they'd have been stamped secret if they were. They appeared to be carefully compiled lists of troops, regular forces and militias, personnel rosters, TOE breakdowns, headquarters sites, SAM positions, artillery placements.
"You use, ne?" Gypsy said as Murdock carefully clicked the briefcase shut. "You send jets, kill many Christians, kill many Chetnik bastards, da?"
Murdock looked back at the monastery and at the bodies littering the ground. "Kill many Christians," he said, his voice hard. "Da."
"Hvala. Vrlo ste lyubazni."
The Mi-8 transport helicopter descended toward the clearing, a broad stretch of open and relatively level ground on the otherwise thickly forested Mountainside that had been the site of a logging operation several years earlier. Several vehicles had been lined up to either side of the roadway, their headlights illuminating the touchdown point.