34.

WITHIN FIVE MINUTES, Irena, Jackie, Jacobo, and Molly had jammed themselves into the congested confines of an old white brewery Lada, with the idea that any vehicle marked with the brewery’s emblem was familiar to the Blue Helmets stationed near the airport and would draw no suspicion.

Molly drove with deliberate but unremarkable speed. Irena sat next to him. She was the tallest; the group had an investment in the soundness of her legs. Jackie squeezed herself into half of the small backseat. Jacobo, despite his status as guest and the group’s elder eminence, had to put his head between his knees in the other half of the seat. Irena offered to hold his blazer on her lap, carefully folded and preserved from stress. Most of the ride was spent in apprehensive silence, until Irena noticed the deep green silk lining of Jacobo’s blazer and ran her fingers over its smoothness.

“This is really lovely,” she turned back to tell Jacobo.

“Thank you.”

“British?”

“Italian.”

“Show me, show me,” Jackie demanded.

Irena turned up one of the lapels, lined in the same sumptuous green.

“That’s really beautiful,” said Jackie. “I wish I could have a dress in that material.”

“I’ll see to it myself,” said Jacobo. “When all of this is over.”

“Men make so many promises like that these days,” Jackie sighed.

“Am I free or condemned?” Irena asked.

“Neither,” Molly and Jacobo rushed to assure her in patently shocked tones.

“Both, of course,” Jackie amended.

By the time Molly had steered the Lada to a halt outside the runway hedges, the group was fighting to subdue their laughter.

         

IRENA MADE A point of falling into step beside Molly and his rangy, veldt-stalking strides.

“You on your own here, Molls? I mean, utterly?”

Molly was already scouring the runway. With his slender neck rising and his red tail hanging, there was something as isolated and elegant as a giraffe in his impassiveness. “There’s a lad inside the bushes, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “He has an M-14 oiled and ready. If that’s what you mean.”

“Just because?”

“Because we can never tell what may transpire,” said Molly, finally turning around but speaking into Irena’s shoulder. “We don’t want to be caught without—whatever.”

Irena brought her mouth over Molly’s left shoulder. His horse’s tail was freshly gathered into place with the red band from a beer-packing crate.

“Does she even get a chance, Molls?” she asked. “Or am I just the cube of cheese in your trap? Do you just wait until you can see her blond curls dancing and bring her down like the abandoned baby wildebeest—is that what you mean?”

“No such orders, love,” he said evenly. “No such intentions.”

“But then—” said Irena, “would you even tell me?”

Irena could hear Jacobo’s extravagantly soled shoes grinding into the gravel and twigs just outside the hedges, and Jackie’s voice going on about his silken green blazer lining as she parted a bough of branches to look out on the field.

“I don’t know,” said Molly. “It’s just a suppose. As I say, no such orders.”

         

JACKIE HAD IRENA step through a section of the hedges like a curtain. She had on her old gray West German army jacket from Grbavica, and her Air Jordans. When she heard Jackie’s beautifully modulated urgings from behind—“Unzip it now, dear. Just give a tug”—she gave the zipper a yank and the jacket billowed and parted. Her red basketball jersey flapped below, snapping like a signal flag in the wind along the runway.

“I have a fix on your friend,” Molly called out from the hedges. “Our friend.”

Irena paced out steps, five to the right, five to the left, taking care that her red jersey was visible with each turn.

“Hair down. As you prophesied,” Jackie called out next. “Damn blondes usually do.”

Irena began to pace a longer tread, ten steps right, ten steps left, turning her trunk so that her red jersey shone from her knees to her neck.

“Bird to the east,” Molly called out from his hedge after Irena had taken half a dozen such tours.

“What the hell does that mean?” she barked back. “Don’t speak in song lyrics.”

Molly’s voice came through the branches and flutter of leaves with a laugh. “Plane coming in, love. To your right.”

         

IT WAS A white-winged U.N. plane with a black beak and a silver belly, its whine rising as it rolled closer, almost sluggishly, on fat black wheels. Four or five Blue Helmets bobbed against the flat slice of orange sun sliding down toward the far end of the field. Irena could begin to make out the blue emblem on the tail of the plane, abstract fingers stretched across wreaths and stalks.

Amela had leaped out early. Irena, Jackie, Molly—they had all missed it. Irena saw her corn-silk curls flouncing above one of the tires; she seemed to be running in a crouch, with the same strolling pace as the plane.

Irena didn’t shout out to Molly, Jackie, or the lad who had brought the rifle into the hedges. But when she froze in her treads, it was as good as painting an arrow from her gaze onto the field. To her left, Irena heard the heels of Blue Helmets begin to stamp and crackle across the runway. She saw Amela hunched behind the nearest tire. As the tire turned, Amela set herself into a fast-break crouch, and took a step to her left, then a quick, compact stride forward. She sprang up to run, and sawed off two, three strong steps and then fell forward. The plane rolled on. Amela lay still.

Irena could see a pale spill of curls sprawled across the ground. She shouted, “Bastards! Bastards!” into the hedges behind her and shot forward onto the field, her black-and-red shoes scoring and grazing the gravel, her shoulders floating and blood boiling in her ears.

         

IRENA FELL ONTO her knees above Amela. The left shoulder of Amela’s jacket bulged with blood, dark as plum jam. Amela’s head had come down on her chin—Irena could see the scraping—but she had turned her head to the side and was blinking dirt from her blue eyes to look up at Irena.

“Bastards! Bastards!” Irena hissed. She put a hand lightly over Amela’s enormous wet blue eyes.

“It came from behind,” said Amela. “My bastards.”

Amela twisted around to look up at Irena, who had brought her hand gently against the curls cushioning her right cheek.

“They’ve been watching me,” said Amela. “Yesterday, they captured me as soon as I crossed back. They said they already had my parents.”

Amela gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, then seemed to will them open again. “I bargained. I told them what I knew about the play. I’m sorry. I figured what I was told must be wrong anyway. The man who whispered it to me—he was only trying to impress me. They said, ‘Okay, Amela, if you’re so sure, we’ll put your own pretty little ass on that perch tonight.’ ”

Irena put her hand lightly against Amela’s chin, as if she were touching a wound.

“They have been waiting. For a year.” Amela blinked and took in a breath. “For an excuse. They forced themselves on me. Two at a time. They kept saying, ‘So you want to be a Muslim girl.’ ”

Irena held Amela’s face with both hands now, carefully, as if she were picking up a fragile old flower bowl. “Last night,” she asked. “You were one of the shooters?”

“Three of us. Two to watch me. But I didn’t shoot at anyone. You aim at a spot.”

“I know.”

“A spot, a target. I shot into a blue curtain.”

“Three people died,” said Irena.

“I’m sorry. So have my parents—I’m sure.”

“So you made a bargain with those bastards for nothing.”

Amela’s legs twitched slightly. She looked down, startled to see her legs move without her so willing them. She clenched her eyes shut again. “Got me here,” she said.

Irena rolled onto her knees and put one hand under Amela’s chest, the other below her hips. She had just leaned back to lift Amela into her arms when a flat, sick thud struck her chest and began to soak her red jersey.

         

THE BLUE HELMETS, having overseen the safe passage of the U.N. plane from one end of the runway to the other, were fifty yards away and clomping quickly over the fine-gauge grit and gravel. But Jackie had leaped out first. She had kicked off her shoes and was tearing holes into her black hose and pulling her black jersey dress above her knees with her one good hand to race across the flat, scratchy field to beat the Frenchies to where the girls lay. Molly had thrown down his gun. He had vaulted through a break in the hedges and run over a bristly bush, and his knees were speckled with small green needles as he pumped his arms and legs across the field.

Two Frenchies, red-faced and huffing, faced Jackie across the girls’ still bodies.

“Let us have them,” she said in English—sharply, like a command.

“One is still breathing,” said a pink young face from under a blue helmet. “We have to bring her to the hospital.”

“We’ll bring them to our hospital,” said Jackie. “You have to pass through a Serb checkpoint. They will make you wait until she bleeds to death. You know that.”

The young soldier looked down at the girls. Irena had fallen back with her right arm still under Amela’s chest. They must have reminded the boy of two children scrambling in a sandbox.

“We didn’t shoot them,” he said.

“I know.”

“We have orders.”

Jacobo, his feathery shoes scuffing in the dust and grit, pulled up, puffing, just behind Jackie, who held the Frenchies back with a snap in her voice.

“They have died to be together. Let them.” The young soldier who had spoken turned around to look back at the rest of the runway. Five or six Blue Helmets were lashing down the wheels of the U.N. plane, and a couple had their rifles raised on alert while the plane’s silver tail yawned open and bodies clambered on board for boxes and sacks. The young Frenchman turned back to Jackie, waggling the black snout of his rifle under her chin.

“Quick as you can,” he said quietly. “Get them out of here.”

The two soldiers turned their backs and brought their rifles up into their arms. Molly bent down and carefully unstuck Irena from her embrace and held her against his chest, trying to stanch the bleeding by clinching her body close. Jacobo put his arms under Amela from the other side and brought her body across his shoulders, her face slumbering on a soft blue Italian lapel. The men began to run off the field, Jackie trailing in her stocking feet. She heard a young voice behind her, one of the Blue Helmets calling over her quick, sharp footsteps.

“God give them peace,” he said.