David Monnery - Bosnian Inferno

Nena was surveying her fellow-passengers. There were about a dozen of them, and they all seemed to be Muslims, ranging in age from the mid-forties to just past puberty. Every one of them appeared to be in a state of semi-shock, as if the worst had already happened but they didn’t yet know what it was.

‘Where are you from?’ Nena asked the woman nearest the front.

‘No talking,’ the driver screamed at her.

The two women’s eyes met in shared resignation, and Nena sat down across the aisle from her.

At least three hours went by before a couple of uniformed soldiers came on board, and the journey began. Nena was growing increasingly conscious of how thirsty she was – one handful of snow in twenty-four hours was nowhere near enough to satisfy anyone. Hunger was less of a problem. She realized that living in Sarajevo for the last few months, she had grown accustomed to life on an empty stomach.

The afternoon dragged on, the bus coughing its way up hills and rattling its way down them. It was growing dark as they finally entered Vogosca. Nena had driven through the small town many times, but couldn’t remember ever stopping. The bus drew up outside the Partisan Sports Hall, and the twelve women and girls were ordered off. A Serb irregular sporting the badge of the White Eagles gestured them in through the front doors, and once inside another man pointed them through a further pair of twin doors.

It was dark inside the room, but as Nena’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom it became apparent that they were in a gymnasium; one, moreover, that was already home to other women. All around the walls they sat or lay, thirty or forty of them, and as yet not one of them had uttered a word.

‘What is this?’ Nena asked, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. As if in response someone started to cry.

‘It’s the shop window of a brothel,’ a dry voice said.

Chris Martinson pulled the jeep into the car park of Hereford Station and looked at his watch. The Dame’s connection from Worcester was not due for another five minutes, which probably meant a twenty-minute wait. A ferocious rain was beating a tattoo on the jeep’s convertible roof, and almost visibly deepening the puddles in the car park, but at least it was relatively warm for the time of year. Chris decided to stay where he was until the train came into view under the bridge.

Sergeant Docherty had called him with the request to pick the Dame up at the station, and though Chris had not had much to do with Docherty during his eight years in the SAS – the older man had left B Squadron for the Training Wing before Chris won his badge – he had managed to piece together an impression of him from what others had said. It would have been hard not to, for Docherty was something of a legend – the man who had almost succumbed to personal tragedy, and then come home the hard way from Argentina during the Falklands War, walking out across the Andes with a new wife.

Chris had a good idea how hard that must have been, having been involved in something similar himself in Colombia. Only he had neglected to bring a wife.

Docherty was not just known for his toughness though. He was supposed to be something close to the old SAS ideal, a thinking soldier. There were many in the Regiment who lamented the shift in selection policy over the last decade, which seemed to put a lower premium on thought and a higher one on physical and emotional strength. Others, of course, said it was just a sign of the times. The Dochertys of this world, like the George Bests, were becoming extinct. Their breeding grounds had been overrun by progress.

It suddenly dawned on Chris why Docherty had sent him to collect the Dame. The Scot had thought it would be a good idea for the two of them to talk before being confronted with whatever it was they were about to be confronted with. To psych each other up. Chris smiled to himself. A thinking soldier indeed.

A two-tone horn announced the arrival of the train, seconds before the diesel’s yellow nose appeared beneath the bridge. Chris jumped down from the jeep and made a run for the ticket hall, his boots sending water flying up from the puddles.

The Dame was one of the last to reach the barrier, his dark face set, as usual, in an almost otherworldly seriousness, as if he was deeply involved in pondering some abstruse philosophical puzzle.

The face broke into a smile when he saw Chris.

‘Your humble chauffeur awaits,’ the latter said.

‘I suppose the birds aren’t flying today,’ the Dame said, eyeing the torrential rain from the station entrance. ‘How many miles away have you parked?’

Chris pointed out the jeep. ‘Do you think you can manage twenty yards?’

The two men dashed madly through the half-flooded car park and scrambled into the jeep.

‘What’s this all about?’ the Dame half-shouted above the din of rain on the roof.

‘No idea,’ Chris said, starting up the engine. ‘But we’re about to find out – the briefing’s due to begin in about twenty-five minutes.’

‘You don’t even know where we’re going?’

‘Nope. They’re playing it really close to the chest. All I know is that it’s a four-man op.’

‘Who are the other two?’

‘Sergeant Docherty and…’

‘I thought he’d retired.’

‘He had. He’s been reinstated, presumably just for this one show.’

‘Christ, he must be about forty-five by now. It can’t be anything too strenuous.’

Chris laughed. ‘I shouldn’t say anything like that when he’s around. He didn’t look too decrepit the last time I saw him.’

‘Maybe. Who’s Number Four?’

‘Sergeant Wilkinson. Training Wing.’

‘I know him. At least, I’ve played football with him. He must be about thirty-five…’

‘Hey, I’ve turned thirty, you know. Someone obviously decided they needed experience for this one, and you were just included to provide some mindless energy.’

‘Probably,’ the Dame said equably. ‘Wilkinson always reminds me a bit of Eddie. London to the bone. A joker. He’s even a Tottenham supporter.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Chris said, and both men were silent for a few moments, thinking of their old comrade, who had died in the village by the jungle river in Colombia. Probably with some witty rejoinder frozen on his lips.

‘How was your Christmas?’ the Dame asked eventually.

‘Fine,’ Chris said, though he’d spent most evenings desperately bored. ‘Yours?’

‘It was great. My sister got married yesterday, and I had to give her away. It was great,’ he said again, as if he was trying to convince himself.

Chris looked at his watch as he turned the jeep in through the gates of the Stirling Lines barracks. ‘Time for a brew,’ he said.

The water-buffalo’s head which reigned over ‘the Kremlin’s’ briefing room – a memento of the Regiment’s Malayan days – seemed to be leaning slightly to one side, as if it was trying to hear some distant mating call. Forget it, Docherty thought, you don’t have a body any more.

He knew the feeling, after the previous night’s evening in the pub with old friends. The good news was that he and Isabel couldn’t be drinking as much as they thought they were – not if his head felt like this after only half a dozen pints and chasers.

‘Bad news,’ Barney Davies said, as he came in through the door. ‘Nena Reeve seems to have gone missing. She’s not been to work at the hospital for the last couple of days. Of course, things being the way they are in Sarajevo, she may just be at home with the flu and unable to phone in. Or she may have been wounded by a sniper, or be looking after a friend who was. They’re trying to find out.’

‘MI6?’