The Threat

Past the roadblock they waited for a long time as a column of trucks ground by, very slowly, with enormous noise and choking diesel smoke. The trucks hogged the road and there was no way past till they were gone. They were stenciled with the red cross. The canvas covers were snugged tight so he couldn’t see what they carried. Then the night was empty again. The little car’s motor whined. Something in the transmission knocked wildly whenever they went over thirty-five, but Jovo pushed it along a road that looked like the ones where Dan had grown up, except there were no guardrails, no center lines or white lines or reflectors. But the creeks down in the hollows were the same, and the trees too. Even the little towns they went through looked like Pennsylvania seventy years ago: little wooden and brick stores, little houses, dirt tracks leading off the highway instead of paved streets.

He saw only one signpost that whole way. It said Srebrenica, but someone had scrawled over it CMPT.

“What’s CMPT?” he asked Zlata, thinking it was an acronym for some military force or political party.

She said tightly, “That’s Cyrillic. Smrt means ‘death.’”

* * *

He was jerked awake by a burring growl from under the chassis. Which he recognized, but apparently his companions didn’t. They were arguing. Finally Jovo took his foot off the gas and coasted to the roadside.

Dan threw the blanket back. “It’s tanks,” he told them.

“Tanks?” Zlata sounded worried.

He explained that unless the treads were fitted with rubber pads, heavy armor made waffles out of asphalt roads. That was what they were hearing.

“Hmm, tanks,” she repeated. Then she and the Serb fell to arguing again. Maybe over whether they should turn back. Dan didn’t get into it. They knew how dangerous this was better than he did. Meanwhile Jovo started up again. They kept going downhill, through heavy pine woods. He told himself that if tanks had rolled down this road, at least they’d be safe from mines.

Then the woods opened out to fields. A smell like burning and rot sucked into the car. The stink of war.

“Srebrenica?” he said.

“Not much farther,” Jovo said. His voice was high. The pitch of a frightened man.

“I remember this town,” the girl said. “The Muslims here were doing well. The fields were good. There was a factory that made screws.”

Dan could hardly tell it had been a town. Not one house stood. At the crossroads each shattered concrete-block wall was scarred with bullets. Below a daubed cross with C’s on either side more scrawls flashed in their passing lights. JNA.

“What’s the cross mean?”

“The C’s are Cyrillic S’s. ‘Samo sloga Srbina spasava’—Only solidarity will save the Serbs. First they shell a village. The tanks blast down any walls still standing. Then they throw hand grenades into any places they think people might be hiding.”

Dan didn’t ask where those people were now. He was afraid he knew. But then — where were the bodies?

* * *

They left the valley and twisted along hills, through hairpin switchbacks that left him nauseated. The smell came back as they passed burned homes, wrecked vehicles pushed or blown to the side of the road. Aside from that the blackness was total. No lights. No movement. Anything left living had hidden. Meanwhile Zlata was telling him about the rape camps. He could not believe what she said. It had to be propaganda, atrocity stories. Even the Nazis had not thought of such things.

They managed five more miles, he guessed, before Jovo slowed again. This time the headlight showed civilian trucks. A group around a fire. Dan ducked again as they unslung weapons, moved toward the car.

He listened to a palaver that didn’t take long and ended with shouting. Then the Ficho began backing up. Fast.

“They said there’s fighting ahead,” Zlata explained. “And not to come back or they’ll take us for a walk in the woods. These are Mladic’s extremists. The Tigers. The Dragons. Psychos, killers out of the prisons. Not people we want to discuss things with, okay? Jovica says we’re not getting any farther.”

“I’m getting that feeling too,” Dan said. In the middle of a war zone, unarmed, he was ready to admit it. This hadn’t been a good idea.

“If you run, you hit the bullet. If you walk, the bullet hits you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means there’s no place we’re going to be safe. Not in Bosnia. Out here, back in Sarajevo — same thing.”

While he was thinking about that she said, “One more thing we can try. Backtrack a couple of kilometers and check out the road to Brloznik. Jovie thinks he knows a way to get from there back to Zedanisko. That’d get us inside the Srebrenica enclave. If that doesn’t work, we’ll give up.”

But five minutes later headlights came over the hill behind them, moving fast.

* * *