Combat Machines. Don Pendleton

       Extract

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Prologue

      Mostar, Herzegovina

      July 6, 1992

      The distant, steady whistle and crumpf of artillery shells landing in the city scarcely bothered Andreja Tomić anymore. When the siege had first begun three months ago, she’d spent many exhausted, sleepless nights waiting for the next shell to land on the building she was living in. Now, however, the barrage’s constant din and its incipient danger had been relegated to the back of her mind, acknowledged, but not dwelled on. Not when she had so much work to do. Now, she was mostly just exhausted.

      Mostar had been the scene of a pitched battle for control of the city and the surrounding area since that spring. The Yugoslav People’s Army, or JNA, had invaded in early April and seized control of a large portion of the city. A sustained counteroffensive by the Croatian Defense Council, or HVO, had pushed the JNA forces out of the town, but they had retaliated with their ongoing artillery barrage, which the HVO was replying to in kind.

      At first, Andreja had feared for those under her care, but the JNA had seemed to be directing their fire on more valuable targets, at least in their minds. She had her doubts about that. In the past few weeks, the seemingly endless rain of munitions had claimed a Franciscan monastery, the Catholic cathedral and bishop’s palace. The destruction wasn’t all carried out by the JNA. After retaking the city, the HVO had demolished the Serbian Orthodox Monastery, as well as the Orthodox Cathedral Church that dated back to the mid-nineteenth century.

      But the Kriva Cuprija, the Sloping Bridge, one of Mostar’s oldest man-made landmarks, still stood, spanning the Neretva River as it had for the past four hundred years. Every morning, when Andreja awoke, she looked out through the smoke and dust of the previous night’s bombardment to see if the white stone arch still stood, and every day when she saw it, she breathed a little easier. In a way, the old bridge was a symbol of the town—as long as it stood, then so would Mostar.

      When she was little, Andreja’s grandmother, Marica, had told her stories of the destruction that had ravaged their nation during World War II, when the Ustaše, the Croatian Revolutionary Movement, had carried out a genocidal war against the Serbian population as well as Jews and the Romani in their attempt to create a “pure” Croat nation. Andreja remembered the nightmares she’d had from hearing those stories, and the fierce arguments between her grandmother and her mother. The older woman had stated that the next generations had to be prepared for the violence that was sure to return, while Andreja’s mother had shaken her head and dismissed her own mother’s claims, preferring to look ahead instead of back to the past.

      As a child, Andreja hadn’t believed her grandmother. Now, however, she found it hard to remember any peaceful time. If the devastation inflicted on the city was anything close to what her grandmother had endured, Andreja didn’t know how anyone had survived it.

      Now she was enduring it, as well. The worst parts were the intermittent utilities and constant food worries. With the city cut off from foreign aid and supply convoys, electricity, working sewer systems, food and water were in short supply. So far, they had been hanging on, but with the siege showing little sign of ending anytime soon, Andreja dreaded the day they would eventually run out, and she would have to begin making the next series of hard choices in a life that had already been filled with so many.

      But for now, she had to begin taking care of her charges, and do whatever she could to see them through a new day.

      She used a scant half liter of her allotted water ration to wash her face and hands, and had to be content with that for now—a bath or even a brief shower was a luxury she could not afford. She dressed in her uniform of a dove-gray, ankle-length dress with a yellowed apron over that, and twisted her long hair into a tight bun and tucked it under her white cap. Then she left her small house on the hill and walked down the path toward the main building, keeping her head down and her shoulders hunched over in anticipation of an errant shell landing nearby. When she reached the corner of the building with no harm done, she relaxed a bit and looked up—only for her mouth to fall open in shock.

      A truck was parked in the driveway, a relatively new one, with a driver sitting behind the wheel. She didn’t know to whom it belonged, or what its occupants were doing here, but she intended to find out.

      She entered the building’s foyer to find her two assistants anxiously awaiting her. Luka and Nenad were barely out of their teens, and had been pressed into service here when their families had been either captured or killed in the fighting. Andreja had taken them in and trained them to handle some of the crushing workload she had been managing alone until then.

      Upon seeing her, the two young women hurried over. “Thank goodness you are here, Andreja!” Luka said, her words echoing around the bare room.

      “Keep your voice down!” Nenad scolded. “You’ll wake them!”

      “All right, calm down, both of you,” Andreja said, raising her hands for peace. “Who are our visitors? We have no one scheduled until the end of the week.” That was when, supposedly, more supplies were supposed to arrive from the HVO. They made it through about 50 percent of the time.

      “He said his name is Dr. Rostislav Utkin, and that he is a scientist from the Soviet Union,” Luka said.

      “You mean Russia,” Andreja replied. Although the USSR had broken apart almost three years ago, old habits died hard in the areas surrounding the former empire.

      “Yes, she does,” Nenad said with an exasperated huff. “He said he wishes to inspect the children.”

      Andreja’s dark brown eyes narrowed at that. “To what end? Are you saying that he wishes to adopt?”

      Luka threw up her hands in confusion. “All he said was that he wished to inspect the children, and that he would wait for your arrival.”

      Andreja glanced at her closed office door. “Well, then, let me go in and meet this Dr. Utkin, and find out what he has to say for himself. You two go and make the children as ready as you can. If all seems in order, we will join you shortly.”

      The two young women nodded and crossed to a pair of large double doors on the other side of the room. Opening them just wide enough to slip through, they disappeared into the room beyond.

      Taking a deep breath, Andreja squared her shoulders as she strode to her office door and opened it.

      The room on the other side was small, just large enough for her compact desk, wheeled, creaky office chair, and two others in front of the desk. A dusty, battered file cabinet sat in one corner, its top drawer open. A man sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, reading a file.

      “What do you think you are doing?” she asked as she swept around the desk and snatched the limp manila folder from his hand. “These files are private. You have no right to read them.”

      The seated man regarded her from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His light blue eyes appraised her, taking in everything from her simple dress to her drawn, pale face and the shadows under her eyes.

      He spread his hands in a vaguely penitent manner. “Please excuse my intrusion,” he said in passable Bosnian. “I did not know how long I would have to wait, and well, I am afraid that my eagerness got the better of me.” He smiled, his thin, bloodless lips curving up and somehow softening the otherwise severe planes of his face. His white-blond hair was cut short enough that she could see his scalp through it.

      “That is no excuse for barging in here and looking through whatever you wish.” She put the folder back in the cabinet and pushed the drawer closed, then walked around to stand behind her desk. “Now, why are you here, Dr. Utkin?”