Kara’s Game

2

The room was on the first floor of the anonymous block on the left of the main gate of the British headquarters at Split. Half a kilometre away in one direction was the airport servicing this part of the Dalmatian coast, half a kilometre in another were the pebble beaches and what in summer were the clear blue waters of the Adriatic. Now the islands of Brac and Hvar hung like ghosts in the winter fog, and the damp mixed with the cold.

The eight bunks were along one wall, and the television set was in the corner. Finn slumped in an armchair and watched the news coverage of the peace talks in Vienna on the feed from the British Forces Television service, some of the other seven men with whom he shared the room also watching. Finn was early thirties, strong upper body and a little over six feet tall. Like the others he was dressed in camouflage fatigues, their packs and weapons by the bunks. Already that morning they had worked out in the makeshift gym on the ground floor.

According to a UN spokesperson, the ceasefire in Bosnia was holding, the report was saying. The images from the Vienna hotel where the latest talks were being held showed the politicians going in and coming out, and the international negotiators smiling and talking about the possibility of a breakthrough. The images from London were slightly different: the British Foreign Secretary commenting on the possibility of peace but being careful in the way he always was. The reporter was summing up the mood in Vienna that morning, quoting direct from the Bosnian Serb delegates. Where the hell have you been for the past year and a half? Finn thought. The politicos have said the same thing a hundred times before and each time they were lying, so why the hell should we believe them this time?

Fielding came in. He was in his late thirties, with the air of physical fitness and strength which exuded from all of them.

‘We’re on standby.’ The relaxation in the room snapped tight. ‘Briefing in five minutes.’

Fielding’s room was one along. The floor was wood, the walls a dull yellow, and the rumble of a UN transport taking off for Zagreb shook the ceiling slightly. There were two maps on the table: the HQ BritFor current situation map, and the Director General of Military Survey town map of Maglaj and the countryside immediately surrounding.

‘Patrol Orders.’

Fielding followed the standard pattern:

Task, beginning with a summary of the operation.

‘Maglaj. The UNMO team there reports that the town has been under continual bombardment since sixteen hundred yesterday. The UNMO team leader has spoken to The Boss, and warned that he may have to request an air strike in order to protect his people. The UNMO boys can’t move from their shelter. The Boss wants an FAC in tonight to assess the situation in case he decides to go for an air strike.’

He ran through the other items under the task heading: country, politics, method of entry, role or target, approximate timings and durations.

He moved to the second heading.

Ground: description of area, enemy and own locations, boundaries, landmarks, minefields, entry RV and LZ – rendezvous and landing zones.

‘You know the area,’ he told the teams. Because they’d been in Bosnia two months and had familiarized themselves with the terrain. Even so he maintained the standard routine.

Met report: weather, moon phase, first and last light. Situation: the area of the operation, enemy forces and friendly forces. Civilians: restrictions, curfews, food situation.

They went through the details on the maps.

‘The towns of Maglaj and Tesanj, fifteen kilometres to the north-west, are in a pocket surrounded by Serb forces to the west, north and east and by combined Serb and Croat forces to the south. Maglaj is in two halves, the old and new towns, divided by a river.’

They focused on the town map of Maglaj: the sweep of the river and the position of the Serb guns, then Fielding moved to the next heading of the briefing.

‘Mission. To locate and identify any Serb artillery, tanks and armour, and to mark it for air strike.’ He repeated the mission, then moved on to the next heading. Execution: general outline, entry and return; RV and LUP procedures – rendezvous point and lying up position. Exit phase, RVs and passwords.

Finn and Janner and their patrols would fly by helicopter to a forward position at the British Battalion base near Vitez. They would wait there for final briefings, plus the green light for insertion. At last light they would chopper the fifty kilometres to the Maglaj pocket. Both patrols would be dropped at the same time, Finn would then take his patrol to the hills on the west of the town, and Janner would take his to the east. The two groups would establish the positions of the guns or tanks shelling the town, and guide the attack planes in by laser if Thorne requested an air strike and the UN approved it.

‘This is a hard routine patrol,’ Fielding told them. Therefore there would be no cooking, because cooking might give their positions to the opposition. They would only take food which they could eat cold: tins of stew, beans, sausages, plus Mars bars.

They moved to the last heading.

Logistics and communications: arms and ammunition, dress and equipment, rations, special equipment including LTM – laser target markers – and medical packs.

‘Any questions?’

‘Why two patrols?’ Finn asked.

‘According to the UNMO team not all the firing positions can be observed from one side of the valley.’

‘What are the chances of an air strike?’ Janner this time. Which is to say, what are the odds we’re going to freeze for nothing?

‘Has to be a first sometime,’ Fielding told him noncommittally.

They went into the details of the helicopter drop-offs and the OPs.

In an ideal world the drop would be at least five kilometres from where they would establish themselves, because helicopters could be seen and heard, therefore shouldn’t land anywhere near where they were headed. Therefore the helicopter would drop them in the middle of the pocket, midway between Maglaj and Tesanj.

‘What else do we know about Maglaj?’

‘Ian Morris took a patrol in two months ago, organized some food drops. His sitrep’s already on the way.’ Sitrep – situation report. ‘You’ll have it before you leave Vitez tonight.’

They returned to their own room, the two teams splitting and Finn and Janner going through their own patrol orders, this time in more detail, each man in the patrol asking questions and throwing in ideas as he saw fit.

An hour later the two teams carried their bergens on to the side of the helicopter landing site and crouched as the Sea King pilot ran through his pre-flight checks, then started the engines. The rotor blades were winding up and rain was falling. Each man was armed with his favourite weapons – Sig Sauers, Heckler and Kochs, Remington pump action shotguns, reduced and fitted with folding butts. In the bergens each carried spare ammunition, ration packs – non-essential items or those they didn’t like discarded – and spare winter clothing. Satcom sets, for communication with Thorne and/or Split via Hereford; hand-held ground-to-air sets for communication with the pilots of the fighter team should an air strike be authorized; and mobiles in case the teams needed to talk to each other. Which was unusual, but which Finn and Janner had decided upon. Laser target markers and spares. Each man carrying his own medi-pack, plus two syrettes of morphine, name tag and wristwatch on parachute cord round the neck. Name tags because it wasn’t a deniable operation.

‘Okay,’ the pilot told the load master. ‘Bring them in.’

The load master jerked his thumbs up, and the two teams moved forward, ducking under what the pilot called the disc, the solid metal cutter of the rotor blades. The door was on the right-hand side, seats opposite it and the rest of the interior stripped bare. They climbed up and sat down, bergens in front of them and weapons on their laps. The loadie clanged the door shut, and the pilot lifted the Sea King off the tarmac, running forward to build air speed, then rising and banking slightly. Behind them the bleak grey of the Adriatic disappeared in the mist and the snow of Middle Bosnia beckoned from the hills in front.

It was eleven in the morning. Time to run the gauntlet of the bridge, time to try to reach the food kitchen. Except that today she wouldn’t, because today the shells were still falling. On the hillside above Maglaj, Kara heard the soft boom of the gun and steeled herself in the silence as the shell rose on its trajectory, then she heard the sound of the express train as it descended, and the thump of the explosion somewhere in the new town.

‘Mummy, my tummy’s hurting again.’ Jovan’s eyes looked at her from beneath the bed.

She kissed him and told him that soon they would eat. She should go outside and get wood, she knew, should fetch more water from the well. At least she had the food she hadn’t eaten yesterday, plus the portion she had brought home for her husband. She diced the two halves of the potato and carrot left from the day before, put them into the pan of beans, and put the pan on the stove.

They would eat first then she would go outside, because by then the shelling might have stopped.

The room was cold, despite the stove. She knelt by the boy and stroked his face. At least his cheeks and his forehead were warm – she would remember the moment later. At least he wasn’t as cold as she feared he might be.

The ground below was cold and hard and bleak.

From Split the Sea King flew east then north-east over the coastal area of Croatia, more or less following the aid supply route codenamed Circle at an altitude of four thousand feet, then picking up Route Triangle, crossing the front line into the Muslim-held area of Bosnia, and skirting the Croat-held pocket defined by the three towns of Novi Travnik, Vitez and Busovaca.

Fifty minutes after leaving the coast, the Sea King dropped on to the LZ, the helicopter landing zone, on the edge of the British Battalion camp near Vitez, the roar of the rotors drowning the sniper fire from the Muslim forces in the ring of hills round the camp and the Croats in the village.

The camp was some two hundred metres square, circled by a perimeter fence of razor wire and dissected by an internal road running north – south. To the south was the parking area for the white-painted APCs; to the north, protected by sangars and clustered tightly round the two-storey former school which now served as the Operations Centre, were the kitchens, dining block and sleeping units. The ground was a sea of mud, the ridges at the sides of the road and walkways frozen hard, and the camp seemed empty; the only movement was at the main gate as a pair of Warriors turned off the road.

Snow was falling and the temperature was below freezing. Welcome to Middle Bosnia, Finn thought. The loadie opened the door, the two patrols grabbed their weapons and bergens and followed the captain who had been waiting for them into the Operations Centre.

The building sounded hollow, footsteps in the gloom and voices echoing. The room they had been assigned was on the first floor. It was just after midday. They locked the equipment in the room then the others went to the cookhouse while Finn was taken to meet the base’s commanding officer.

‘Welcome to BritBat.’ The Coldstream commander had done similar liaison jobs in Northern Ireland. ‘Gather you’re just using us for bed and breakfast. Anything you need …’

Finn thanked him and went to the cookhouse. The room was large, serving hatches on the right, and filled with tables, one area partitioned off for officers. Even here the men – and occasional woman – carried their personal weapons, mostly SA-80s, though some officers wore Brownings, either on their belts or in shoulder holsters. On the right of the door was a table, manned by a private, with a book for visitors and guests. Finn ignored it, picked up an aluminium food dish and plastic cutlery, joined the line at the hatches, and helped himself to a large portion of roast chicken and vegetables. It would be the last hot meal for some time; in the OPs they would eat cold, not even the smallest spark of a flame or heater to alert anyone to their presence. The hall was busy and the tables crowded. He joined the others, ate without speaking, then returned to the room in the Operations Centre.

For the next hour they pored over the map of Maglaj, confirming the drop points with the helicopter team, then working out the grid references of the locations where they would site their OPs. For the hour after that they checked and re-checked their equipment: radios and radio frequencies; spare batteries; laser equipment and PNGs – passive night goggles. Emergency plans in and out if either group ran into trouble.

Fielding flew in at three-thirty. The last briefing began in the room in the Operations Centre ten minutes later. Outside the light was fading fast and the snow was still falling.

‘It’s on,’ he told them. ‘You go at seventeen hundred hours.’ They hunched round the table, coffee in plastic cups. ‘The Boss will wait for your sitreps before he decides whether or not to request an air strike.’

‘Latest UNMO report?’ Janner asked.

‘Maglaj is still under constant shelling. By constant they mean a shell every two to three minutes.’

‘You said Ian Morris took a patrol in in November?’

‘A ground team to laser in aid drops.’ Fielding took the file from his day sack. ‘Nothing much to help you.’ He gave them the report anyway. Outside the snow had stopped and the sky had begun to clear.

Finn skimmed the report and handed it to Janner. ‘The local interpreter, any way we can use her?’

‘Probably not. With any luck you won’t need to go anywhere near the town.’

It was four-thirty, the dark suddenly closing in outside. They checked the equipment again, and confirmed again the radio frequencies on which they would be transmitting. It was fifteen minutes to five. On the LZ on the edge of the camp the Sea King pilot began his pre-flight checks. In low and fast tonight, himself and the other crew wearing night viewing gear, get the hell out as quickly as they could. The load master was outside, looking at him. He held up one finger – engine one starting. Two fingers – engine two. Both engines running. He ran through his cockpit checks then swivelled his fingers at the loadie, saw the thumbs up – all clear left and right. He released the rotor brake and the blades began to turn. In the shadows at the edge of the LZ the eight men appeared, bergens on their backs and weapons in their hands, thin white suits over their combat clothes – not pure white, because pure white stood out in the snow, but off-white and smudged with paint, tape round their weapons to break the shapes.

The load master jumped back in, waited for the pilot’s order, then gave a thumbs up to the group to come forward. The sky above was clear, the first stars showing, though it was still too early for the quarter moon. The two patrols came forward, moving quickly, climbed in and sat on the seats opposite the door, bergens on their backs, weapons across their laps, and PNGs on their heads. The loadie gave Finn a helmet with built-in communications so he could hear the conversations between pilot and crew. Finn pulled off the PNG and put it on. The Sea King was in darkness, no interior or exterior lights. The loadie closed the door, and the Sea King rose from the ice and disappeared into the black. Flying south, away from the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket, then turning west then east on a deception course.

Land on or near the gravel road between Maglaj and Tesanj – Finn rehearsed the procedure again. Door already open. Land, then out fast, the cab hardly touching the ground, the pilot pulling away the second the last man was out. Maintain position, see what the opposition was up to, then separate, his patrol moving off first, then Janner’s. Patrol order, guns carried in the ready position and with safeties off, and the countryside varying shades of green in the night viewing goggles.

They had been airborne thirty minutes, were flying low now, the sides of the valleys above them.

‘Two minutes,’ the pilot told the load master.

Two minutes – the loadie held two fingers up. Finn took off the helmet and put the PNG back on. In the cockpit the pilot and navigator were leaning forward, eyes straining for the changes in terrain. Behind them the loadie pulled open the door and leaned out, also checking.

‘Radio mast one thousand metres at two o’clock.’ The navigator to the pilot.

‘Factory chimney two hundred metres at nine o’clock.’ The loadie.

‘Give them the one minute,’ the pilot told the load master. The loadie swung back in and held up one finger.

‘Confirm location,’ the pilot asked the navigator.

‘Location confirmed.’ The navigator was still staring ahead.

‘Thirty seconds,’ the pilot told them. The rotors were thudding and the wind was gusting through the open door.

‘Tail clear,’ the loadie told the pilot.

The Sea King descended fast and hard.

Stand by – the loadie swung half in and mouthed the words at them.

The wheels hit the ground. ‘Out,’ the pilot told the load master. The loadie turned. Go – he mouthed at them. Go – his thumbs up told them. They were already moving past him, Finn’s team first, then Janner’s. Fanning to the sides of the Sea King in an all-round defence and looking for the enemy, looking for the trap. The blades were screaming above them and the snow was swirling round them. The Sea King lifted off into the blackness. Good cab, Finn thought, good driver. He rose, Ken and Steve and Jim rising with him, nodded to Janner, and began the walk in.

Two of his team were beginning to crack and MacFarlane’s own nerves were stretched beyond what he had ever before experienced. If this is what the shelling was doing to them, then God only knew what it was doing to the civilians who weren’t supposed to be used to this sort of thing.

The UNMO team were still in their base, crouched over coffee and cigarettes.

At around three in the morning there had been a slight lull in the express trains of the artillery shells and the spiralling screaming of the mortars. At six the intensity had picked up again, at seven he had filed his latest situation report via the HF channel through the radio net at Vitez. At eight, as the new day mixed from black to grey to the cold light of winter, he had spoken on the secure line to General Thorne, informing him of the situation, reporting that his team were under severe pressure, and asking whether there had been any Serbian response to the United Nations request of the previous day.

There had been no response, he was informed. FAC teams were in position, however. Thorne was waiting for their assessment, plus confirmation that the offending gun positions had been identified. Once this was received, and if the bombardment had not stopped or the Serbs had not responded, then an air strike request would be formally submitted.

Jovan was still asleep. Kara checked that he was as warm as he could be, and crawled from beneath the bed. Her head thumped with pain and she felt sick and exhausted. In the sky over Maglaj she heard the sound of another express train. Please God, may it end today, please God, may Adin come home. Please may she and her son and her husband come through all this alive and together.