Tom Cain - No survivors

"Red!" shouted Vermulen. Drawing the pistol that was holstered around his waist, he ran to his friend's aid.

"Sorry, man… screwed up," Reddin gasped.

Vermulen could hear footsteps scurrying down the basement corridor. Without looking back at Riva, he shouted, "Take cover!" Then he grasped his pistol in both hands, held it up to his face, and stood in the shelter of the door frame, steeling himself for the moment when he would have to step into the corridor and start firing.

But Vermulen never took that step. Not when there was a gun in his back and an Italian voice in his ear saying, "Drop your weapon, General."

One hundred and twenty miles to the west, a helicopter landed on a patch of open ground near the Croatian village of Molunat. A small group of people was waiting for it. While the engines still ran, they hurried toward the chopper, instinctively bending over, even though the rotor blades were well above their heads. In the midst of the men there was a smaller, slighter figure, a woman whose blond hair was whipped around her face by the wind from the rotors. She was in the grip of two men, who had grabbed her upper arms. Her hands had been tied behind her back, and she stumbled as they dragged her up to the helicopter and bundled her through the open side door. After she was in, one of the men reached up toward the open door, holding a thin cardboard file. An unseen figure from within the cabin took the file and slid the door closed, and the helicopter rose again into the cloudy night sky.

"Welcome to Rock City, ma'am." Kady Jones had been flown directly from Washington to Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany. She'd been briefed on the way. There was reason to believe that another one of the Russian bombs had been uncovered in Kosovo. She would be making a determination as to whether it was genuine or not. The tone of the briefings had been urgent, but routine: nothing to worry about. After they were over, she'd received another message, requesting details on her height, body measurements, and shoe size. The moment the cabin door had opened, she'd been led straight to a military transport, already laden with a full army explosive-ordnance-disposal team and its equipment. Another dozen men sat silently and impassively in futuristic black uniforms. Before she'd even strapped on her belt, the wheels were already rolling. Once they were in the air, one of the men in black came over.

"Major Dave Gretsch," he said. "Just wanted to introduce myself, let you know my men and I will be securing the area for you tonight. There's a chance we may be seeing some action, but just do what we ask, and we'll make sure you're fine. Meantime, anything you need to know, just ask."

"Who are you guys?" Kady asked.

Gretsch gave an apologetic smile.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you. But we're the best, is all you need to know."

"Oh… Well, where are we going, exactly?"

"Can't say that, either. They haven't told me yet. Fact, I was kinda hoping you might know."

"So I can ask, but you can't answer…"

"Sure looks that way, but that's the army for you."

Now it was ten at night and she'd just arrived at the Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia. As the soldiers got to work unloading their weapons and equipment, she'd been greeted by an air-force corporal, a woman, who was leading her toward a waiting Humvee.

"We call it Rock City 'cause of all the crushed rock everywhere-place was like a sea of mud till they laid that down," she explained. "Any-ways, they got a room set aside for you in the officers' quarters, though I don't guess you'll be getting much sleep."

Kady was led to her room, little more than a cubicle with a camp bed, inside a basic, prefabricated structure. The corporal politely instructed her to get changed and wait for further instructions. On the bed were arranged a set of combat fatigues, a T-shirt, a flak jacket, a pair of boots, and a helmet. Now she knew why they'd wanted to check her size.

But what kind of battlefield was she heading into?

In the rest of Yugoslavia, the civil wars had been fought on a large scale: a conflict of armies, air forces, and artillery barrages, with towns besieged, territories conquered, populations deported, raped, and slaughtered. So far, Kosovo had been different. Resistance to the Serbs had been peaceful for so long that most people, on both sides, were taken by surprise when hostilities began. The attacks were random and sporadic: guerrilla assaults on one-off targets, rather than organized military campaigns. As he drove northward, deeper into Kosovo, Carver saw occasional signs of fighting-a burning building in the distance, a truck filled with soldiers almost knocking him off the narrow two-lane road as it thundered by.

He was miles from anywhere, in open countryside, when the phone rang. It was Grantham.

"Change of plan," he said. "Forget Trepca. You're being rerouted to Pristina airport, which is actually located at a place called Slatina, about twenty kilometers east of Pristina city. We have new information. I'm just going to hand you over to Ted Jaworski. He's an American colleague, heading up a task force looking at this issue from the Washington end."

"Good evening, Mr. Carver…"

Carver did not reply. His headlights had just picked out a roadblock a few hundred yards down the road. A couple of armed Serbian paramilitaries, in the same blue uniforms as the men at the border post, were standing by a crude barrier made of planks and oil drums, lit by spotlights shining down into the road. Their truck was parked behind the barrier, across the road, just to underline the idea that no one was getting by.

"Mr. Carver…?"

"Yeah, I can hear you."

"Okay, you need to know the way this situation is developing. We believe that Vermulen's backer, a man named Waylon McCabe-"

"I know who he is."

The men by the roadblock were waving at Carver, indicating that he should stop.

"Well, McCabe may be planning a double cross."

"Sounds about right."

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm saying I agree-that's what I'd expect him to do. Hold on, I've got company…"

Carver put the phone down on the passenger seat as one of the paramilitaries appeared at his window, rotating his finger in the air to indicate that he should wind it down. As Jaworski's disembodied voice crackled from the phone, "Carver? Are you there?" and Grantham barked, "Stop pissing around," the paramilitary started jabbering in Serbian.

"Sorry," said Carver, playing the dumb foreigner. "Don't understand."

He was wearing a hunting vest, with external pockets at chest and hip level. Slowly, he reached into one of the chest pockets and pulled out his BBC press card.

"Journalist," he said, pointing at himself. "BBC… British, yes?"

The man turned back toward his mate and waved at him to come over. That gave Carver the opportunity to pick up the phone.

"Sorry about that. I'm at a roadblock. Be right with you."

He put the phone down again as the second paramilitary came up and in heavily accented English said, "Road close. You no go. Close. Yes?"

"I understand, yes," Carver said. "But I must go. BBC."

Before the argument could go any further, the Serbs were distracted by the arrival of another car, a decrepit Skoda, which pulled up behind Carver. It had a big bundle on its roof wrapped in plastic, which made him think it must have crossed the border just behind him.

One of the Serbs pointed at the pennant fluttering from the radio aerial. It bore a black double-headed eagle against a red background, the national symbol of Albania. He walked up to the car, ripped off the pennant, threw it to the ground, and spat on it before grinding it into the dirt with his boot heel. Then, while his partner pointed his gun at the car, the paramilitary ripped open the driver's door and dragged out an unshaven black-haired man in his thirties, wearing an Adidas track-suit over a red-and-black-striped AC Milan soccer shirt. The man was pleading, pointing back to the car as he staggered forward a few paces before being thrown to the ground.