Stephen Coonts - Combat

But what was the angle? What did they hope to achieve? Their leaders were telling every lie imaginable to fend off the NATO airstrikes that had been threatened because of the cease-fire violations. What could they hope to gain by killing Americans? Or kidnapping them?

He knew that not everything had logic here. Or perspective. Perhaps they imagined he was much more important than he was. Or maybe this was just a renegade band with its own lunatic agenda. The attaché had warned him, just after Green signed in at the embassy, that the big warlords could not always control the little warlords, and the little warlords could not always control the militias, and the militias could not control the smugglers, except when they all worked together. And when they were not collaborating with somebody on one of the other sides.

Maybe it was the gravesite. Maybe that was why they had come after him and Crawley. Maybe there was more to it. Maybe he had seen something he did not even realize he had seen. Or maybe they were afraid he might see something and bring down the UN and the NGOs and a major investigation.

What had Crawley said? Something about that. Green could not remember.

He needed to sit down. Just for a minute.

The gunbarrel stabbed his kidneys.

The trees fell away and the trail grew rockier. It made walking difficult. Green stumbled again and again. His legs ached. Then it was so rough for a stretch that he could not think about anything but his footing. He wondered if they would shoot him if he turned his ankle and could not go on. The muzzle kept poking his back.

“Fuck you,” he said finally. But he sounded pathetic to himself. The metal bore rammed him again, and he kept marching.

Toward Crawley’s head. Floating in the darkness. It was there whether his eyes were open or closed.

He saw the knife descending. Chopping. Hacking. Through flesh so recently alive.

It seemed to Green as though there must be a way to reverse time and undo the damage. How could Crawley be dead? So easily?

That was what the textbooks failed to convey. You read the words. And understood nothing.

Just below the crest, with a high wind blanketing the sound of their voices, the raiders stopped for a powwow.

Witch’s sabbath landscape. Rocks pale, the scrub and lichen dark. Blacker clouds in a black sky. And the shrieking wind.

The dark men clustered, masked heads bobbing. Green found himself standing hardly a body length from the woman.

She was looking at him.

This time he was the one who was ashamed, the one who looked away.

He wondered why she didn’t run for it. Perhaps she knew they would kill her if she did. She would know the local rules. And dying was the worst thing for most human beings, no matter what the books said.

He hated his helplessness more than he hated his captors now. When he looked up, the woman was still watching him. He could not make out any of the details of her features. Except for her eyes. They gleamed.

The tall, thin gunman broke from the huddle and strode over to Green. Roughly, he undid the cords binding Green’s wrists. Then he said something.

Green didn’t get it. The dialect.

The man chuckled and tried another word.

He was telling Green to take a piss, if he needed to.

“Stay on the trail,” he said. “Landmines.”

Green tried to guess how long they had been marching, how far they had come. Still no hint of light in the sky. He felt as tired as at the end of a marathon field exercise, as though he had not slept for days. Only his brain was alive, fueled on fear. Eyes wide, body dead.

No. Not dead. Crawley was dead. That was what dead meant.

The man bound Green’s wrists again.

Daniela was squatting with her face in her hands.

“Don’t fly away, little bird,” the gunman told her.

Then the discussion ended. Three of the men headed back down the trail. Rear guard? Green wondered.

The nine who remained shoved and cursed, far more than necessary, to get their prisoners moving again.

They crossed over a saddle between two outcroppings of rock. The footing was even more treacherous going down the eastern side of the ridge. Green fell once, landing on his backside and bound hands. Rock bit his knuckles.

The man behind him kicked him to his feet. Then they entered the treeline again, going deep into more dark, wet pines, and the trail leveled, traversing the side of the mountain. The party followed it into a draw that was shielded from the wind, a natural refuge. It was so overgrown and deep-set that Green missed the outline of the huts at first. It was a partisan camp. Maybe, Green thought, it had been one for centuries. And a smuggler’s lair between wars.

Except for the footfalls and grumbling of the raiders, the world had gone silent.

They gave him another chance to empty himself, an odd courtesy, then tied him, sitting down, to the trunk of a dead tree. The wood was as hard as stone.

“We stay now,” a new voice told him, in English.

“What do you want with me?”

“We stay now,” the man repeated. “One day.” He hitched up his trousers and shadowed off.

The gunmen must have been tired, too. But they were not too tired for the girl. They pulled her toward one of the huts. She fought them now. But only until they beat her to the ground. Then she gave up and let them drag her.

“American, ” she called. She had forgotten his name. “Help me.”

Green closed his eyes.

But his hearing had returned unmercifully. The sounds were worse with his eyes shut, and soon he opened them again. The men felt secure enough to light a small stove in the open and they sat around it, sharing a bottle and waiting their turn. The night was so quiet in the glen that Green could hear the bounce of an old-fashioned bed. Sometimes the girl cried out, begging them to stop, not to do any more. Then she would cry for her mother again. One of the men cursed her, and Green heard the sound of fists. The girl screamed, then whimpered, and finally went quiet. The bed started up again.

Green wept. He did not understand this world.

He remembered her scarred hands.

She had told him she was not religious. But when one of the masked men led her out in the morning light, barely able to walk, bleeding and naked from the waist down, she prayed. First she prayed standing. Then, when they nudged her over to the edge of the rocks, she prayed on her knees. Green made himself watch, in penance for his helplessness. He could not see her face now, only the torn purple sweater not quite covering her rump and the bare, dirty soles of her feet. But he heard her, the mumbled familiar rhythms. She was still praying when one of the men put a pistol to the back of her head and fired.

The raiders untied Green’s hands and offered him a share of their breakfast. Sliced salami, bread, and gruel. He shook his head.

The man with the tin dish in his hand laughed and told his comrades:

“He’s angry. He wanted to fuck her, too.”

“He can still fuck her,” another man answered.

They had not buried her. They only kicked her body off the rocks.

A squat man rose from the cluster around the little stove. He had a businesslike stride. He undid the rest of the cords binding Green. When Green stretched out his legs, it felt so good it made him close his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw the man standing before him, holding out the tin plate. There were stains around the mouth of the man’s commando mask.

“Pojesti.”

Green shook his head again. It was only a slight movement.

“Pojesti.”

“No. Fuck you.”

With the speed of a professional fighter, the man dropped the plate and punched Green just below the eye. It knocked his head back against the tree.