Kara’s Game. Gordon Stevens

stew had warmed her. The quarter segment of the moon was above them, the trees ghostly round them and the ground phantom-green with snow and ice. Behind them, and to their right, the sounds of the guns and mortars faded in the dark. At least the road to Tesanj was in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket, she thought, at least they didn’t have to go through the lines. Just pray that the gunners are asleep or happy on slivovic.

      They had been going thirty minutes and she was tiring more than she could have imagined. Two kilometres gone, she told herself, perhaps three. Oh God, the night was running out, oh God, they weren’t going to make it in time. She should have listened to them, shouldn’t have insisted she go with them. Her lungs seared every time she breathed and there was no longer any feeling in her feet.

      ‘You’re slowing us down,’ she was only half-aware what Finn was telling her. ‘Steve and I will go ahead with Jovan, Ken and Jim will stay with you.’

      She tried to reply but they had already left, the two of them running, bergens on their backs and guns held in front of them.

      ‘Doing well,’ Jim told her. ‘Let’s go.’

      The cold was killing her. The road was undulating, dropping then climbing, occasionally they slipped off it and hid in the bushes when someone came the other way, just in case they were Chetniks. She was no longer thinking in terms of hours or minutes or seconds, was thinking only if Finn and Steve would make it to Tesanj in time, was thinking only in terms of putting one foot before the other, making herself go on, making herself stop crying with pain and desperation. Soon it would be getting light, soon they would have to stop because soon the Chetniks in the hills would be able to see them. She was on Ken’s shoulders, not even aware how or when it had happened, Jim carrying Ken’s bergen as well as his own, and the two men still moving quickly. Not running, but not walking, something between. One man moving and the other covering him, then the second moving and the first covering him. Guns at the ready, guns across the chest, and the butt in the shoulder position.

      In the distance – not too far in the distance – she heard the sounds of the guns pounding Tesanj. Perhaps they had been there all night and she had been unable to hear them because of the pounding in her ears. Jim was carrying her now, the black gone, fading into grey, and the grey soon mixing into the cold sharp light of a winter morning. They took off the PNGs and came out of the trees, dropped into the edge of the town, Finn and Steve suddenly with them – she wasn’t sure where they had come from. Finn lifted her from Jim’s shoulders and ran with her into the cover of the buildings, took her into the basement of the hospital.

      ‘Where’s Jovan?’ she asked.

      ‘In the operating theatre.’

      They sat on a bench in one of the corridors and waited.

      The hospital was grey concrete and multistorey, though because of the shelling the top floors had been cleared. The corridor was dark and gloomy, the hospital running on an emergency generator, so lighting was restricted to key areas. A doctor hesitated by them, then passed on. In the town outside the streets were empty and the shells and mortars rained down on the buildings.

      Another doctor stopped. He was old before his time, his shoulders drooped with fatigue and his eyes were haunted.

      ‘You’re Jovan’s mother?’

      ‘Yes.’ She stood up, fists clenched in fear.

      ‘Jovan’s fine, he’s going to be okay. He was lucky. Another half-hour and he wouldn’t have made it.’

      ‘Thank you.’ It was all she could say. ‘May I see him?’

      ‘He’s not come round yet, but of course you can.’

      He led her along the corridor and into what now served as a ward. The beds were pushed tight together and the room was packed, a limited amount of lighting. She saw Jovan immediately, saw the others. Oh God, she almost wept. The children were wrapped in bandages, some had legs or parts of legs missing, some arms or parts of arms where their limbs had been blown off by shrapnel or snipers’ bullets. Others had their faces and eyes covered, or their bodies or abdomens bandaged. Some were crying softly, others still frozen in pain or shock or fear. My poor dear Jovan, she thought, yet you were lucky. She knelt by his bedside and held his hand, sensed Finn crouching beside her.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said.

      He shook his head and left her, walked along the rows of tightly-packed beds and looked at the other children. When she looked five minutes later he was still in the ward, still standing as if transfixed, still looking at a girl with the sweetest smile in the world and no legs.

      For most of that morning she stayed with Jovan. At noon – sometime round noon, she could not be sure – she left the ward and sat hunched with the four men, shared their food with them and the other parents who sat equally anxiously in the corridor. Outside the ice was solid on the streets and the shells continued to fall. What about you, Adin – her husband was never far from her mind – where are you and how are you?

      ‘Are the others okay?’ she asked.

      ‘Janner and Max should make it.’ Finn was to her left, both of them sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall. The others were somewhere else in the hospital.

      ‘What about the men who did the food drops?’ Because I assume you’re the same as they were, though I don’t know what that means.

      ‘They’re all right. You interpreted for them?’

      ‘Yes.’

      They sat in silence.

      ‘Remember me to them.’

      ‘Of course.’

      The conversation was almost formal. Any moment she’d offer him coffee, Kara thought, any moment she’d grind the beans and put the coffee on the stove to boil, any moment now she’d pour them each the creamy froth at the top, but still give him the first cup, in the local tradition, because he was her guest.

      ‘What were you doing in Maglaj?’ she asked. The question was unexpected. Because you weren’t dropping aid – the implication was clear.

      ‘There was a possibility of an air strike. We came in to locate the guns in the hills and direct the aircraft on to them.’

      ‘I thought I heard planes.’ Sometime yesterday afternoon, though yesterday was already a lifetime away. ‘So the air strike was to stop the Chetniks shelling the people.’ Perhaps there was hope after all, she remembered she had thought, perhaps there really was a ceasefire.

      ‘Sort of.’ Finn shifted slightly.

      ‘But there weren’t any air strikes.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So there will be today?’ Except there can’t be, because you were supposed to locate the positions of the guns in the hills, and you’re here in Tesanj, not Maglaj, even though Tesanj is also being shelled. Even though, officially at least, there’s a ceasefire.

      ‘No,’ Finn told her. ‘There won’t be.’

      ‘Why not, if it was to stop the Chetniks shelling the people? They’re still doing it.’

      Because it wasn’t to stop the people being killed, Finn didn’t know how to tell her. It was to save UN personnel, even though those personnel might have called in the air strike to save the town.

      ‘Because the United Nations decided against it.’ He stared at the far wall and thought of Jovan, of the girl with the smile and no legs. ‘Don’t ask me why.’ He hadn’t meant to say it. ‘Because I don’t know why.’ All I know is that we were in position, the Jaguar came in, pulled out of the first run, then was told to abort.

      ‘My country right or wrong?’ she asked him.

      ‘I’m just a soldier,’ he told her.

      Perhaps he felt guilt, perhaps not.

      She left him and went back to Jovan.