Indicted

  Indicted

  Tom Saric

  Copyright © 2019 by Tom Saric.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Severn River Publishing.

  Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part 2

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part 3

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Thanks for Reading

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For A.G.

  Part 1

  The Making of a War Criminal

  1

  Border of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina

  Natalia did the only thing she could: she prayed.

  In her mind she groped for the words Mama had patiently taught her two weeks ago, but she couldn’t remember them, so the prayer turned into an incomprehensible mumble. But she didn’t dare stop. Anything to distract from the sounds outside.

  Her knees ached against the wood. Her sore muscles begged her to adjust from her crouching position. Her body vibrated. But she didn’t flinch. Mama had squeezed her, her panicked tears wetting Natalia’s cheek, and whispered that The Bad Man wouldn’t find her here.

  Dead silence encased the pitch-black bathroom. No more gunshots. No one pleading for mercy.

  Was there anyone left to beg?

  She raised her hand and pushed the vanity door open. She poked her head out and scanned the empty bathroom. Mama and Tata must have gotten away. The Bad Man couldn’t hurt them, Mama swore it. The quiet meant The Bad Man was gone. She just had to stay put under the sink and they would come back for her. Mama promised. She promised.

  For a full minute she knelt, staring at the door in the darkness, waiting. Footsteps scratched along the concrete floor. She held her breath as the steps thumped louder. The line of light underneath the bathroom door disappeared. He was standing outside. She closed the vanity door and squeezed Pipa so hard she thought the doll’s stuffing would burst.

  The bathroom door opened.

  Sergeant Luka Pavić floored the gas and thought only about the yellow house on the outer edge of the village.

  “This is impossible. There’s no way there’s enough time,” his passenger, Private Ante Čapan, said.

  Luka glanced at his watch: 06:17. Eighteen minutes until the offensive. The violet sky would be ablaze, torrents of shells pounding from both sides. Luka kept his eyes on the dirt road. “There’s time.”

  Čapan grabbed a box of Marlboros from his breast pocket and brought a trembling cigarette to his mouth.

  “Put that away,” Luka said without looking over. It was best to ignore pussies, but he couldn’t help himself. “If you’re too chickenshit you can jump out here on the hillside and I’ll get you on the way back.”

  Čapan rolled his eyes and flicked the cigarette out of the Jeep. “We’ve warned them. No point in us risking our lives if they want to be stupid.”

  “Well that’s the difference between soldiers and civvies, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re expendable.”

  Yesterday, Luka had ordered the evacuation. He had knocked on doors, peered through windows, taped leaflets to the front gates of the twenty-two concrete houses painted canary yellow or stark white and capped with orange clay roofs built in two twisting rows along the banks of a brook. He had marched through olive and fig groves that connected the homes. He stopped and spoke with an old woman wearing a black babushka and supporting herself with a flimsy cane, ambling up a hillside path surrounded by a flock of sheep. She couldn’t leave, she explained; yes, she understood what was happening, but her husband was too ill in bed—the flu, she assumed—and she wouldn’t go anywhere. She’d lived her whole life here and she would die here. But if Luka arranged transport for both of them? She could never leave her sheep! Luka pleaded with her until she agreed to leave for forty-eight hours. He strode up rocky foothills to two homes on the outskirts and stood enchanted, briefly, at the stillness of the village nestled in the valley.

  Little would be left of it in a couple of hours.

  Just before daybreak, while reviewing plans with his artillery gunmen a half-mile up the mountainside, he noticed the subtlest of movements inside the house: the green shutters on the window drawing closed. A civvie was in there.

  Čapan was right: they could reasonably ignore it. They’d done their due diligence.

  But Luka knew that rationalizations like that meant little when faced with a dead civilian.

  Never again.

  He parked in front of the one-story house beside a rusted VW Minibus, underneath a vine-strangled pergola.

  Čapan hopped out and slung an M70 over his shoulder. He made for the door.

  Luka stepped in front of him. “Put that back.”

  “My weapon?”

  “You’re planning on walking into someone’s home holding an assault rifle? You’ll end up giving some old lady a heart attack.”

  “This is war, last time I checked.”

  “And you’re going to fight it in here?” Luka grabbed the machine gun and heaved it back into the Jeep. He pointed at the pistol holstered on Čapan’s belt. “You have that.”

  Luka knew that all of Čapan’s eyebrow-raising and head-shaking had more to do with their closeness in age than Luka’s decision-making. The fact remained that Luka had toiled to reach the rank of sergeant at the age of twenty-five. Čapan hadn’t.

  Luka stepped up to the front door. He raised his fist to knock but paused. An Orthodox cross hung on the middle of the door. A Serbian home. He heard Čapan huff behind him.

  Before Čapan could comment, Luka pounded on the door, shouting for someone to open it. They waited for a moment. More shells rumbled, closer this time. Čapan stepped in front of Luka and slapped the door. “Open up right now; we have to get you out of here!”

  No answer.

  Luka pressed the handle, but it was locked. They circled the house, checking for an open window, but they were all sealed tight and the shutters were closed. They climbed the back terrace and Luka looked through the patio window but couldn’t make anything out. No lights on.

  “It’s empty. Let’s get back,” Čapan said.

  “Someone’s here. I saw them.”

  Luka removed a small case fr
om his breast pocket and took out a lock pick and torsion wrench. He crouched at the front door and inserted the pick, gently pushing it forward, feeling his way through the lock. He took his time, concentrating on the task at hand, ignoring the vibrations of bombs falling and Čapan’s panicked breathing. When he felt the spring release he used the torsion wrench to turn the lock. The door creaked open.

  The entry was dark. Hints of mildew and diesel.

  As he looked around, he realized that someone had recently been there. The place was ransacked. A table was smashed, drawers were pulled out of a chest and the contents dumped on the floor, pillows were torn open. The kitchen cabinets were all opened and emptied of their plates, mugs, and bowls. Except for the crunch under Luka’s boots as he stepped on fragments of vases and glassware, the place was silent.

  “Looters?” Čapan whispered, surveying the place.

  Luka shook his head and brought his index finger to his lips. He pointed at the large flat screen that sat untouched in the living room. That would have been first on the list. Someone had been looking for something.

  He gripped his Browning, flicking off the safety and motioning for Čapan to do the same. They moved into the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Luka provided cover as Čapan went through the three bedrooms, emerging from each one shaking his head.

  Someone had been inside. They hadn’t left, at least not through the front door. Then there was the basement. People had been building bunkers, some with tunnels joining houses so that they could escape like gophers underground. When did people decide to hide instead of fight for what was theirs?

  Fear made people crazy.

  Luka wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He moved to the bathroom while Čapan walked into the final bedroom. Luka stood in front of the door and took a breath. In a fluid motion he twisted the handle, swung the door open, flicked on the light, and scanned the bathroom. It was pristine: towels left hanging on the racks, soap in the dish, and sparkling white tiles.

  He stepped to the sink and splashed a handful of cold water on his face. He stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes looked droopy. He hadn’t slept more than three hours a night in a week.

  A squeak beneath him. He turned the water off and stared at the sink vanity.

  Luka raised his weapon and with his left hand opened the vanity door.

  Curled up inside he saw a young girl of about six clutching a doll. Her hair was done in two French braids. She wore a pink flowered dress. Eyes big. Blue.

  Luka holstered his gun and lifted her stiff, shaking body out of the vanity by her arms. He drew her in and held her. She didn’t make a sound, but she didn’t resist. She was in shock. No point questioning her now about where her family had gone.

  “Luka, come here!” he heard Čapan say, his voice breaking. Then even louder, gasping, “Now!”

  Luka lifted the girl onto his hip and moved to the staircase that led to the basement. A rectangle of grey morning light filtering through a far window illuminated an otherwise dark room. Diesel fumes burned his nostrils. At the bottom of the stairs, Čapan stood motionless, the color drained from his face. Luka followed Čapan’s stunned gaze to the orange tarp stretched along the concrete floor. He twisted his flashlight on. The light scanned the tarp, moving along bump after bump. He felt his heartbeat in his throat. The beam kept moving towards the tarp’s edge, where something was poking out, something that Luka initially convinced himself was yellow hay. But no, it was too wavy, too smooth. Too shiny.

  Luka put the girl down, his hands shaking. He took her by the hand and walked her to the stairs, then crouched in front of her.

  “I want you to sit here for a moment.” He attempted a reassuring smile. “You can’t move. It will be like hide-and-seek; you like that game?”

  The girl nodded stiffly.

  “So you have to close your eyes and count to fifty. Okay?” He smiled at her again as she nodded and covered her eyes. “No peeking allowed.”

  He walked down the stairs towards the tarp, then turned around and faced the wall, running his fingers through his hair, working up the courage to look underneath. He glanced at Čapan, and from the cringe on his face, it was clear that the private wasn’t taking the lead. Luka took a stuttered breath and peeled the tarp back.

  “Jesus, fuck.”

  He crouched down and stared. The smell of diesel was so strong he had to turn away to take a breath. Waves of nausea circulated between his head and stomach as his eyes shifted along the lineup of corpses, taking inventory. Fourteen. He counted fourteen bodies. Eleven women. Were they even old enough to be women? Three men. Each one of them with a maroon hole in their forehead. He looked at Čapan, who seemed to be asking the same question: was someone planning on torching the place?

  Luka stayed on one knee, trying to focus on how to get fourteen bodies out of the basement without thinking about why eleven girls had been executed. Torn from their families. And with that thought, tears trickled down his face.

  “Sarge, you okay?”

  Before Luka could answer, before he could turn and look at Čapan with scorn, before he could pick him up by the throat and say, “Should I be okay with fourteen dead innocents?” he was interrupted. First, his eye caught the flicker of white light coming through the basement window. Then a sunburst of white cracks radiated across it, pierced at the center by a hole the size of a dime. The second and third shots shattered it entirely, sending shards raining onto the concrete floor. The three shots in quick succession thudded into craters against the concrete wall.

  Before the second series of shots roared through the open window, Luka was on all fours, moving towards the stairs. He heard the four bullets pffft into the wall above him, showering him in a cloud of concrete dust.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the girl was doubled over, whimpering and frozen in the chaos. Luka lifted her onto his waist as another series of shots peppered the basement. He dove and crawled with her behind an old dresser. Luka gripped his weapon. The shots had come from the backyard, and there were several windows on the main floor facing the woods. This meant that the shooter must have seen them coming, then waited to see if they discovered the bodies. When they made it to the basement, he had a clear sight line to ambush them. Only one weapon was fired. One assassin. Hopefully.

  Luka poked his head above the dresser. Čapan took cover in an alcove fifteen feet away, his back to the broken window. Luka raised his index finger, indicating to Čapan that he believed there was a lone gunman. As Čapan nodded, a wine bottle spraying blue and orange flames flew through the window. It smashed against the back wall, spreading liquid fire all over the floor.

  The room was instantly engulfed in flames. The newspaper covering the bodies curled and turned orange. Tarry smoke billowed through the basement. Luka coughed and wheezed, staying low, trying to suck in the last bit of oxygen in the room.

  The little girl wiggled out from behind the dresser and ran up the stairs, clutching her doll. Luka reached for her, but his fingers slipped off the edge of her ankle. He saw her reach the staircase and then evaporate into the smoke.

  The girl had good instinct—best to get out before they all suffocated in that death chamber. But whoever was outside wasn’t going to let her run out of the building. Through the smoke, he saw the bottom stair and estimated its distance from him to be four meters. He held his breath and jumped up with his eyes squeezed shut to keep the corrosive air from burning them. More shots hammered the wall behind him like a snare drum.

  Luka dropped onto his back. The fire raged. He inhaled more smoke and the sickening smell of burning flesh. The edges of his vision blackened.

  He saw his pistol lying on the floor a few feet from the bodies. If he was going to have any chance against the assassin outside, he needed it. Čapan was still crouched in the alcove, eyes red from the smoke, covering his mouth with his collar and clutching his gun. Luka made eye contact and then held up three fingers, counting one, two, three. Čapan fired at the w
indow. Luka pounced, sliding across the floor and grabbing his gun. A barrage of bullets from the assassin reduced the dresser behind them to splinters.

  Then the shots stopped.

  The basement fell silent except for the sizzling and popping of the fire. If the shots stopped, the shooter might be moving. And the girl was missing. Every second he spent in the basement was a second the shooter had to find her. Luka army-crawled to the stairs and dragged himself up on all fours, coughing and gasping. His lungs felt like they were filled with acid.

  At the top of the stairs, Luka crouched and scanned the hallway. The little girl was nowhere to be seen. Čapan emerged from the basement. The main floor contained three bedrooms and a kitchen. Four possible exits. The shooter could cover three at most, if he was working alone. Less than a fifty-fifty chance of getting out unscathed.

  “You go out the back,” Luka gasped to Čapan, barely able to get the words out, “and I’ll take the front door. There’s only one shooter, I think.”

  “Or we can both go out the back and cover each other.”

  As he weighed the options, Luka heard a squeak ahead of him. He stared at the front door. The handle was slowly turning. Luka pointed his gun. The handle moved down and the door opened a crack.