Deep Black - Andy McNab [5]
My view was blocked for a second by the arrival of the 4x4, an unusually shiny Land-cruiser. The door opened, and out of it came a slight figure with a flowing beard, not very tall, who walked calmly towards the mother and son.
The man seemed to float across the mud. The Serbs couldn’t take their eyes off him. There was no begging, no arm-waving, the newcomer just held his hands in front of him and talked. I studied him through my binos. He was in his early to mid-twenties, and wore a Russian-style fur hat and a heavy greenish coat. His body language was confident. The bottle-washers seemed almost subservient to him. They stopped kicking the woman. She stayed on her knees in the mud, clutching her child to her chest.
The bottle-washers looked like they’d been told off at school. I couldn’t help feeling that the boy’s reprieve would be short-lived.
Beardilocks helped them to their feet and took them back to the group of women. The Serb guards even parted ranks to let him through.
Then there was a shot, a stunned silence, and another shot. Two of the male prisoners crumpled to the ground.
As the truth dawned, the women and children began to wail and scream.
There were two or three more shots. Slow. Rhythmic. Methodical.
More cries. Just tens of metres away, husbands, sons, uncles, brothers were getting it in the head.
I got my head back down into the hide, mentally numb now, as well as physically. You had to be able to throw that switch or you’d be barking at the moon.
5
For the next ten minutes, all I could hear were screams and the rhythmic tap of single shots. Then I heard the sound of vehicles, gradually getting louder. I slowly raised my head, and pointed the binos down the road.
A convoy of seven this time, all civilian Toyota 4x4s, two with flat beds and .50 cal machine-guns mounted over the cabs, was moving fast up the valley. The vehicles were new, too good for squaddies to be messing around in, and they bristled with whip antennae. This looked like a command group.
As they swung into the compound, I checked each one, but the windows and windscreens were too splattered with mud to make anyone out. The only people I could see were the heavily wrapped-up gunners on the .50 cals, who were being thrown around on the back, but trying to look cool.
The convoy pulled up outside the office block. Soldiers and bottle-washers ran towards them and fell in at attention. This was looking promising. I felt warmer already.
Mladic got out of the second vehicle, dressed in American camouflage BDU [Battle Dress Uniform] and a Serbian pillbox hat. He was just like his pictures; fifty years ago he could have been Hermann Goering’s double.
After a quick fuck-off salute, he was bonding big-time with the local commander. As he stood over the bodies, chatting to his junior officers, I turned on the beacon to get the platform stood to. It had only one frequency, constantly monitored by an American AWACS aircraft, circling the country some forty thousand feet above me.
I hit the send button. This close to the target, I couldn’t risk speech.
I kept on hitting it, maybe six or seven times, before a soft American female voice came through the earpiece. That was a pleasant change: last time it had been a hard-nosed guy with the kind of East Coast accent that took no prisoners.
‘Blue Shark Echo? Radio check.’
I hit the pressle twice. She would get squelch into her headphones.
She came back on, very quiet, very slow. ‘That’s OK, strength five, Blue Shark Echo. Do you have a target?’
I hit the pressle twice.
‘Roger, Blue Shark Echo. Stand by.’
AWACS would be telling Sarajevo I had the principal. The whole detect, decide, destroy system was being bypassed because the decision to destroy had already been taken. All Sarajevo had to do was authorize the aircraft to stand to.
Because this job was known only to about a dozen people, there was no way the