Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

He rested for a few moments, letting his muscles relax even as his teeth continued to chatter. Feeling a bit stronger, a little warmer, he began to blindly crawl ahead. There would be no exiting the way he had come. Eventually someone might realize where he must have gone and decide to come in after him. The tunnel headed uphill, in a direction that could only mean trouble, he knew. The wrong side of the lines was no farther than a hundred yards or so. But for the moment it seemed there was no such thing as a right side of the city. Now all of Sarajevo was off limits for Vlado. He continued his slow, steady crawl.

Stopping briefly to rest, he remembered his cigarette lighter. It was in his pocket, down by the little soldier. Reaching for it he felt the tiny sword, taking care not to break it. He drew out the lighter. The flint was soaked, but after a dozen or so tries it flickered on. The tunnel snaked onward as far as he could see, well beyond the range of the light.

He took stock of himself. His satchel, although wet, was still zipped shut, perhaps sealed enough to have kept everything inside reasonably dry. He let the light go dead and continued.

He kept crawling for what must have been another half hour, across sticks, a dead rat, and other objects he could only guess at, stopping every few minutes to light his way and catch his breath. Each time the path ahead was nothing but further blackness. He passed a few smaller pipes connecting from either side, but so far each had been too small to allow a detour.

A few moments later he felt something smooth and metallic pass beneath him. It was round, roughly the size of an inverted salad bowl, and almost immediately his face came up against a rough tangle of iron wire smelling strongly of rust. Pulling his face away he felt a sharp snag at his left cheek, followed by the warm ooze of blood, and with a gasp he realized where he must be.

He flicked on the lighter and rolled onto his side, seeing that he had passed across a land mine. By all rights, he should be dead now, but the mine had beaten him to it, overcome by its prolonged exposure to the water. Beyond it was a rusting coil of razor wire, and he spent the next twenty minutes gingerly untangling it and pulling it aside, nicking his hands several times in the process. Slowly he pulled the uncoiled strands past him toward his feet, and when the way was cleared he continued, flicking on his lighter every few minutes to check for further mines. If one side had bothered to mine the tunnel, both sides might have.

But there were no more mines, no more coils of wire. Now he was in enemy territory.

He continued for another half hour, passing another opening on his right. During one stop he heard a vehicle rumbling overhead. Finally he saw a dim shaft of light ahead, reaching it to find a storm grate directly above. There was enough room to rise into a crouch, and he clutched at the iron grid. It was heavy, but movable. He flicked his lighter just below the grating, waiting a full minute for any reaction. When there was none, he forced the grate aside and lifted himself free.

The clouds were breaking, and the moon shone through. Vlado’s watch had somehow made it through the evening, which made him wish he’d held on to his gun. It was just after 11 p.m. He had about an hour before the New Year’s celebration would illuminate the streets, although here, as on the other side of town, people seemed to have already battened down the hatches in anticipation. In windows here and there he could make out the pale glow from candles, lanterns, or meager gas flames, but mostly there was darkness.

The street was vaguely familiar, though Vlado still didn’t know his exact location. But he knew from the heft and heaviness of a black looming hill just ahead that he was far across the river, and well into the Serb neighborhood of Grbavica. And as long as he was here, there was one stop he wanted to make before trying to find his way back. If the wildest of his hunches was correct, he’d find shelter, and perhaps even information.

If he was wrong, there’d be no help at all, only further signs of death, including harbingers of his own.

To be caught on this side of the lines would be fatal, and Vlado knew it. Yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was still very much in his own city, still on familiar streets. It had been more than two years since he’d been in Grbavica, lending a sense of detachment to being there now. As with a young man who returns to a former school or playground, he could recall the innocence of his old walks here, felt their familiarity even now, yet knew the place could never again feel quite the same.

He also felt an odd exhilaration, not unlike what he’d known as a teenager sneaking out of his parents’ house after midnight. It was the same sense of sudden liberation, of being on the loose in forbidden territory-wary of the consequences but jazzed by the audacity of finally having slipped behind the looking glass.

He stood above the sewer grate for a full two minutes, trying to get his bearings for the next move, and the grid of streets hazily took shape in his mind like a worn map. He was facing east to west. Which meant he needed to walk one block south, before a right turn back toward the west again. Then three blocks straight and another left toward the south, and there it would be.

He stopped at the first intersection, listening for footsteps, watching for any movement. An automatic weapon chattered from a hill to the east, overeager celebrants literally jumping the gun on midnight, wasting ammunition. Looking up and down the boulevard, buildings loomed up in the dark like slumbering old friends. Here he had chased a ball down a hill with four friends. There he had run errands to a butcher shop that his mother preferred for special occasions, even though the shop had been a full mile from their home. But even in the dark, closer inspection revealed the symptoms of war’s terminal illness-the chipping, cratering decay of shot and shrapnel, the white plastic hanging limp in window frames, rainwater puddling on smashed cars, and all those special smells of urban survival-an essence of woodsmoke, burned garbage, and food long past its prime.

To hear the people on his side of the city tell it, Grbavica had it made. And it was true that such items as sugar, coffee, eggs, and meat were easier to come by here, and at lower prices. But as far as the war went, Grbavica was very much in the thick of things, not at all spared from the brunt of fighting as were some of the suburbs held by the Serbs. Here, too, were hand-lettered signs that read, Beware, Sniper. Only these were lettered in Cyrillic.

Just up the hill and a few blocks to the east was the edge of the Jewish cemetery, contested ground that had weathered many an assault by the Bosnian army. If an attack ever succeeded it would lay open the neighborhood to firing from three sides. It would become another Dobrinja, with the Serbs pinned against the river. Vlado had watched one of these attacks unfold, as many had on his side of town. They played out on the facing hillside like an outdoor drama in a distant amphitheater, war as a spectator sport. Helmetless men in green darted through tombstones toward a brown slash of mud, which poured smoke and metal back into the cemetery. The rattle of guns echoed across the city while attackers fell to the ground, some to take cover, some to join the assembly of the dead. The bodies of Muslims, Croats, and Serbs fell abundantly atop the buried Jews in a riot of multiethnic promiscuity.

In Grbavica, just as on the other side of the river, U.N. trucks and jeeps rumbled about at all hours, with their cargo of international troops in blue helmets, or with sacks of flour, rice, and beans. That thought momentarily gave Vlado pause, with the idea that Chevard, or whoever had been in the U.N. jeep with Damir a few hours ago, might come looking for him over here. But even the U.N. was easily stymied by the siege boundaries cutting through the city. A crossing would be virtually impossible at night, especially on such short notice. Even at daybreak, some paperwork and smooth talking would be required at any location other than the airport. General Markovic, he supposed, might be able to arrange something in a hurry, but he doubted the smuggling operation would risk a move that would alert so many others-on all sides-to the fact that something extraordinary must be going on.