Omega Sanction

Chapter Three

Fadeyushka pulled his left leg out of the swampy mud and found his boot had not come up with his foot. He cursed and fell to his knees in the dank, cold water, his fingers frantically tearing into the ooze, searching for the boot.

He looked over his shoulder, through the dead trees and stunted growth, in the direction he had come. Nothing. He felt worn leather then and pulled. The boot came loose grudgingly, with a sucking noise, water pouring out of it. He took a moment to catch his breath.

He was on the north bank of the Sava, the river dividing Croatia from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The terrain was flat, wet, and crossed by innumerable streams coming from the hills to the north. Stunted pine trees covered the few dots of land that were above water. It was totally inhospitable terrain.

Most of the bridges over the Sava had been destroyed in the last five years of fighting. Fadeyushka had swum the river the previous evening under the cover of darkness, almost being swept away by the strong current. Once on the Croatian side he had stolen an old bike from a shack and ridden west, following the river.

Sarajevo lay a hundred and fifty kilometers to the south. It had taken Fadeyushka five days to walk the distance, hiding during the day, traveling only at night. Weaving his way through the hodgepodge of sectors controlled by warring factions and avoiding the UN IFOR — Implementation Force — roadblocks that tried to keep those factions from each other's throats.

Fadeyushka's eyes darted about, searching as he remembered the history of the past few years that had brought him to this place, events that he had had nothing to do with, but which had swept him up in their own inexorable tide.

He had been a schoolteacher when it all began. April 1992. The sixth. Fadeyushka knew the date as everyone in this part of the world because it was the moment when his life changed even though he didn't know it at the time. On that date, Serb gunmen opened fire on peace demonstrators in Sarajevo, killing five and wounding over thirty. The once-proud city, host of the Winter Olympics in 1988, fell into a four-year-long siege. By the end of June 1992, the UN Protective Force, UNPROFOR, took over the Sarajevo Airport trying to keep the city alive via an airlift of essential supplies as the Serbs blockaded all ground routes in and out.

The Serbs — and the Croatians, Fadeyushka had to admit— had picked their time to act with shrewdness. The world had been focused on the Persian Gulf War and reaction was very slow. The UN had expanded its efforts in putting the force into the Middle East to counter Saddam Hussein. Ethnic fighting in the Balkans had been far from the headlines and thus the world's interest. It took years of atrocities for the UN and NATO to respond in ever-increasing increments, but never strong enough to achieve any sort of lasting peace.

Even the presence of UN peacekeepers did little to stop the mayhem. In January 1993 the deputy prime minister of Bosnia was pulled out of a UN car and shot to death by Serb militia. Fadeyushka knew these dates by heart, having watched his countrymen die. In 1994, a mortar attack on a marketplace in Sarajevo killed sixty-eight and wounded over two hundred. Footage of this attack briefly made the lead story around the world and NATO issued its strongest warning ever, demanding that the Serbs pull their heavy weapons back from Sarajevo.

While those highly publicized attacks were going on, a more insidious action was taking place. Ethnic cleansing, a rather neat term in Fadeyushka's opinion for murder on a large scale. Muslim versus Christian. Serb versus Croat. The borders in this part of the world had been drawn by outsiders after the First World War and then again after the Second World War, with little regard to culture or the people who actually lived there.

The Soviet Bloc had kept things under relative control until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. For three years a tenuous peace had been maintained until 1992. For years, fierce fighting swept back and forth across the rough terrain of the Balkans. Even Fadeyushka had been sucked into the war, being drafted into a local militia unit and marched south to help protect his brethren in one of the many small, unprotected towns outside Sarajevo.

Finally, in 1995, even NATO had had enough and surgical air strikes against Serb sites were conducted. Force was what it took to bring the Serbs to the peace talks. On the fourteenth of December, 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords were signed. Over sixty thousand NATO troops under a UN mandate moved into the area to enforce the Accords. The IFOR, Implementation Force, separated the area into three regions and maintained a tenuous peace.

At least a couple of years. Four months ago, things had begun to unravel. As NATO and the UN went through a period of self-questioning about whether to keep the IFOR in place, Serbian Muslims infiltrated Croat Christian havens on hit-and-run strikes, trying to achieve through terror what they hadn't been able to by direct force of arms. Ethnic Albanians used the opportunity to try to break away in Kosovo to the east and the Serbs turned their wrath on them. The entire situation deteriorated rapidly.

Terror. Fadeyushka now knew the meaning of that word well. He emptied the water and mud out of his boot and tugged it on. What caused him to hurry was the person who had shot the front tire of his commandeered bicycle as he'd made his way down a winding dirt road a few miles to the east twenty minutes ago. The round had blown out the tire and knocked Fadeyushka off the bike. He'd grabbed his AK-47 and scrambled to his feet, only to have another round hit the stock of the gun, smashing it from his hands.

A strangely accented voice had called out in Russian, ordering him to run. He'd paused and a bullet had hit him in the left shoulder, spinning him completely about. Like the previous two, Fadeyushka never heard the shot. The voice again ordered him to run.

And he had. He hadn't stopped until now. He hoped whoever had shot at him had been left behind, but he couldn't count on it. He got the boot on and, breath regained, he once more began to run at a steady pace.

Before, every time he had tried to turn left or right, a bullet had hit a tree or splashed into the water in front of him, corralling him back in the direction his unseen pursuer wanted him to go in, following the swampy bank of the Sava River into even more desolate territory. As he'd run, he'd wrapped a makeshift bandage around his shoulder, but the cloth was soaked through now and Fadeyushka felt faint from the loss of blood.

Who could it be? And this far to the north? At first he thought one of the many snipers who prowled the country on each of the many sides of this conflict, but then why the order to run? Why not simply a bullet through the brain and be done with it? Why this game?

Fadeyushka had been on his way home, the war over for him. He was tired of the killing and the fighting. The IFOR sat and did nothing as men, women and children were killed in front of them. Their UN safe havens had in many cases turned into holding pens where Serbs attacked and scooped up large numbers of prisoners, the IFOR unwilling or unable — Fadeyushka knew not which — to put their own lives on the line to actually protect those they had promised to protect.

Old hatreds were boiling to the surface once more and exploding in orgies of killing, raping and maiming. But it wasn't just the Serbs. Everyone was descending into madness and Fadeyushka could not be part of it anymore.

After watching his militia unit kill twenty unarmed Serb prisoners in retaliation for the death of two of their own men to Serb snipers the day before, Fadeyushka had had enough. Several of the Serbs had been children, not even in their teens. Large enough to carry a rifle but not old enough to have a clue why they carried the gun or to understand why they were being gunned down. This was not the way war should be fought. But whoever was trailing him apparently hadn't had enough.

A small stream cut across his path. He splashed into it. Higher, dry ground beckoned on the far side and he scrambled up the slope, pushing through a line of bushes on the bank, then he froze in horror.

Six men were tied to wooden crosses in the clearing in front of him. Their feet were on the ground and their arms had been tied at the wrists to the crossbeams. A piece of chain went around each man's chest.

At least the arms had once been tied, Fadeyushka amended as he stared. Someone had ripped each man's hands off. Fadeyushka staggered to his feet and slowly walked over to examine the closest body. The wrist had been torn apart by some terrible force. Looking at the wood behind the limb, Fadeyushka knew what had done it. Someone had fired a large-caliber bullet and hit the wrist. He looked down and saw the severed hands lying on the pine-needle-covered forest floor like withered white spiders. Fadeyushka was surprised to see that the dirty camouflage fatigues the man in front of him wore were Polish army issue. One of the IFOR peacekeepers. Even the Serbs did not kill IFOR.

The man's eyes snapped open and Fadeyushka staggered back in shock.

"Please," the man begged in bad Russian, "kill me."

Fadeyushka spun as another voice spoke up behind him.

"Go ahead, kill him. I will give you five extra minutes if you do it with your bare hands."

A man was standing on the bank Fadeyushka had just crawled up, a large-caliber sniper rifle resting in his powerful hands. The man had sand-colored hair and he spoke fluent Russian, with that same strange accent that had told Fadeyushka to begin running. He was over six feet tall and very solidly built. Fadeyushka had no doubt the rifle in his hands was the one the man had used to keep him coming in this direction and to rip off these poor unfortunates' hands. The man wore unmarked green fatigues and a large revolver in a leather shoulder holster. There was no telling who he was or what country he was from. Of course, that meant little here, where each soldier outfitted himself with whatever he could scrape together and uniforms were few and far between.

Fadeyushka had fought for the past year and a half and faced death many ways. From artillery fire, to IFOR jets screaming overhead, to snipers picking off members of his unit one by one. He felt fear, but he could manage it now that he saw his pursuer. He stood straight, "Five more minutes for what?"

The man gestured with the barrel of the rifle past the clearing, to the other side where the terrain sloped down and Fadeyushka could see stagnant water and dank vegetation as far his eyes could penetrate.

"As of now you get a two-minute head start into the swamp. For two miles due west there is nothing but swamp along the river. Then you will strike the railroad embankment. If you reach the embankment, you have won and you will live. If I catch you before the embankment…" the man pointed at the men tied to the crosses. "Those are the ones I wound and bring back. There are twice that number out there in the swamp who I killed outright. But some have managed to make it and escape." The man smiled. "Do you want the extra five minutes?"

"Who are you?"

"You have five seconds to decide."

Fadeyushka turned and looked at the dying man, blood slowly oozing from the stumps of his wrists. Fadeyushka wrapped his hands around the man's throat and squeezed, feeling the very slight pulse of the man's dying heart under his fingers.

"Very good," the man with the rifle said.

Forty minutes later, Fadeyushka was still running hard. He had been on the track team in secondary school, a distance runner. The man couldn't have known that, Fadeyushka exulted as he saw the railroad embankment ahead. He splashed through the water, ignoring the searing pain from blisters inside his boots and the scream of air out of his lungs. The bleeding in his shoulder had stopped awhile back. Whether the wound had sealed or he was simply so low on blood by now, he didn't know.

Fadeyushka scrambled up the side of the embankment, tearing fingers on the gravel until he was on top. He'd made it! Fadeyushka looked back. The man had never even gotten close enough to fire a shot this time. The extra five minutes, that was what had done it, Fadeyushka thought as he began walking. He knew that the rail bridge to the south over the Sava, was most likely destroyed, which explained the rust on the rail lines. But there would be a town somewhere ahead to the north. Of that he was sure. He felt exultant and light-headed as the railroad ties and gravel crunched under his wet boots.

He raised his hand to wipe his brow and it was as if a giant beast had suddenly snatched hold of the wrist and jerked him backward. He spun and fell, pain exploding up his arm in torrents. He gasped when he looked down. There was no hand, just a stump, pulsing his blood out onto the gravel. He stared at the flow, realizing that the leakage from the severed appendage was so slow because he had little blood left in his system. He scrambled about in the gravel, searching, the fingers of his remaining hand closing on the severed appendage.

Fadeyushka knew he had to do something. He blinked, trying to remember what it was. His vision blurred and he had to blink several times. He slumped back, closing his eyes. Then he saw his wife and their baby. He forced himself back up with his good hand, dropping the dead flesh.

Using his remaining hand, Fadeyushka quickly pulled his belt off and tied a tourniquet onto his right forearm. He looked up when he was done. A long way down the tracks, a figure, rifle in hand, was walking toward him. The line was perfectly straight as far as he could see in either direction and the man had to be at least a half mile away. Fadeyushka could not believe such a shot. He didn't bother to waste any more time marveling over it, though, as he got to his feet and stumbled away along the tracks in the opposite direction. Even with the pain he knew he couldn't go into the swamp again. His only chance was to outrun this man and get to a doctor.

Fadeyushka began to run, churning his legs, aware even as he did it that the blood, forced by his straining heart, was seeping out past the tourniquet. He felt as if he were moving in slow motion. One leg, then the other, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Fadeyushka's left leg flew out from under him. He wasn't surprised to rise up on his left elbow and see the torn muscle where the bullet had ripped through his thigh from back to front. Fadeyushka allowed his head to slump back on a railroad tie.

He thought of his wife and child, a hundred miles away, working the farm in his absence. They had not known he was coming home. His unit had not known he had left. No one would ever know that here, in the middle of this godforsaken swamp, it had all ended. He wondered how his wife would feel when he never came back. He wondered if his unit would wreak vengeance on his family for his desertion.

The stupid war. That was what made Fadeyushka the angriest. Not the man whose footsteps coming closer he could hear, but the damn politicians and radicals who'd screamed words that had made people take up guns against each other. Neighbor against neighbor. Fadeyushka didn't hate anymore. The last half a year had seen to that. He just wanted to go home and work the land.

A boot came down on either side of his head. Fadeyushka noted that neither had any mud on them. The man had not even tried to follow him through the swamp. He'd probably driven down a road around the swamp to the railroad tracks and waited.

The muzzle of the gun came from the top of Fadeyushka's vision and centered between his eyes.

"It was quite a shot, was it not?" The man asked. "The railroad line gives me the best long-range field of fire in this area. I tried getting the first couple of men to stay on the line, but they always ran into the swamp, so I turned it around. I started them into the swamp and made them think the rail line was their salvation. That way I could get the shot I wanted. Excellent."

Fadeyushka wasn't listening. He was praying, preparing to meet his God.

"You thought I told the truth when I said some had made it. That was necessary," the man continued. "Hope is fuel and you needed it to make it here. But none have ever escaped me. There would be no point to that."

The man heard the whispered prayer and strangely, given his actions so far today, waited until Fadeyushka had finished.

"Are you ready?" the man asked.

Fadeyushka nodded, his eyes still closed.

The man studied Fadeyushka's torn fatigues, looking for any marking. "Muslim or Christian?"

Fadeyushka opened his eyes, hope flickering. "Does it matter?"

The man smiled. "It might."

Fadeyushka figured he had a fifty-fifty chance, but that brief flicker of hope went out with the pain from his wounds. The man had already shot him several times. He had lost too much blood. It would not matter now if the man let him go. "Christian."

The man nodded. "Muslim would have been better, but Christian will work."

"For what?"

The flame from the tip of the suppressor singed the entry wound the bullet made as it went into Fadeyushka's skull. The back of the head made quite a mess on the tracks as the bullet exited.

The man pulled a small SATPhone out of his pocket, a most sophisticated and expensive device, and punched in memory 1. It was answered immediately and he could hear the whine of a turbine engine in the background and the stutter of helicopter blades.

"I am ready," he said in French, one of half a dozen languages he spoke. There was a very slight chance the satellite communication might get intercepted, and French would confuse anyone listening.

After getting an acknowledgment, he put the phone back in his pocket. He pulled two harnesses out of his backpack. One he buckled around the body, making sure it was secure. The second he buckled around himself. Then he squatted, rifle across his thighs, and waited, motionless. He stared at the body, looking into the lifeless eyes. Soon the sound of the helicopter echoed across the countryside.

He looked up as a Bell Jet Ranger, painted with IFOR markings, came in low over the rails. He put his hand over his eyes as the chopper came to a hover overhead. He reached up, grabbing the rope that was hooked to the lift on the left skid. There was a plastic case attached to the end of the rope, along with a large snap link. He pushed the snap link through the snap on the front of his harness, then the one on the front of the harness on the body. Making sure both were secure, he grabbed the small controller attached to the rope just above the snap link. He pressed a button, notifying the pilot he was ready.

The helicopter lifted, the rope unreeling from the lift until fifty feet were played out, then the man hit the stop. He was jerked off the ground, the body of Fadeyushka slamming against him. They went straight up for thirty feet, then the chopper pulled them to the east.

The man didn't flinch as Fadeyushka's body pressed up against his. He stared into the dead eyes with mild interest, feeling the other man's blood soak into his own clothes. There was the smell of feces and urine that even the wind rushing by couldn't completely get rid of. The man had killed enough to know that the body voided itself upon death, the autonomic nervous system no longer functioning. The man not only had killed often, he had made a study of death, so that he knew about it not only from the practical side, but also the theoretical.

The helicopter came to a hover over the small hillock where the bodies tied to the tree were. Slowly the pilot descended until the man's feet touched the ground. He quickly unhooked himself, the plastic case and Fadeyushka's body from the rig, hitting the wind button. The rope quickly wound up onto the lift. The chopper moved to the east and landed in a small clearing, blades turning, waiting.

The man threw Fadeyushka over his shoulder. With his free hand he picked up the plastic case. He carried the body to the center of the clearing. Then he threw the body down, dead eyes staring up to the clear sky. He opened the plastic case and pulled out the sniper rifle inside. It was the one he had used on the bodies tied to the trees about the clearing, a twin to the one he had carried. He laid the rifle across Fadeyushka's chest.

The man stood there for several seconds, loath to leave the gun. It was a standard Soviet Bloc SVD sniper rifle, one of many thousands circulating around the area, but this one he had worked on for a long time, fine-tuning.

With one last glance, he walked away toward the sound of the waiting chopper.