FROM MILES AWAY, Dušic could see a column of smoke rising above the hills along the Drina River. The wail of sirens split the morning. With Stefan in the passenger seat, Dušic steered his Lamborghini on a recon mission. Thus far, he liked what he’d seen, what he’d read in the newspapers, and what he’d heard on broadcast reports.
His razvodniks had torched three Orthodox churches in eastern Bosnia. After that, two mosques burned to the ground. Then another church burned. Best of all, Dušic’s men had nothing to do with the last three cases of arson. His strategic communications plan had succeeded beyond his hopes. New tensions between Serbs and Muslims were escalating into a cycle of violence and reprisals, and the trouble began to feed on itself without further action from Dušic’s team. The situation made him think of those American-made “fire-and-forget” self-guiding missiles. Just launch the thing and watch it go.
As he neared the town of Zvornik, not far from Tuzla, Dušic found a full-scale riot in progress. In a square close to the fire—Dušic could not yet see what was burning—officers in helmets, bearing shields and swinging batons, battled with young men. From a road about a hundred meters uphill from the fight, Dušic braked to watch. Lettering across the backs of the officers’ uniforms read POLICIJA.
One of the police raised the barrel of a launcher, fired a canister into the crowd of at least two hundred people. White smoke billowed, and when the wind caught it, Dušic felt the sting of tear gas through the open windows of his car. His eyes watered so much that for a moment he could not see to drive. He closed the windows, turned on the air-conditioning, and drove onto a side street. The gas hurt, but he smiled as he reached for a handkerchief, blew his nose, and wiped his eyes.
“You must be the first man in history happy to get tear gassed,” Stefan said, dabbing at his own eyes.
“I expected our plan to work,” Dušic said, “but I did not think things would spread so quickly.”
“The tinder remained dry,” Stefan said.
“Speaking of tinder, I want to see what is burning up there.”
“We might as well move,” Stefan said. “We sparked that riot, but we do not need to get caught up in it.”
Dušic wiped his eyes once more, pulled out of the side street. When he rounded a curve, the fire came into view, and Dušic found it a beautiful sight. A mosque burned like fury. A single fire truck shot an arc of water into the flames, but it was too late. The whole structure looked a total loss. Flames encircled a minaret, and in Dušic’s professional estimation someone must have poured some type of accelerant down the top of the spire.
“Look at that,” Stefan said.
“That must have been a new mosque.”
During the war, Dušic recalled, all the mosques in this town had been burned or dynamited. The paramilitaries—the Yellow Wasps, the White Eagles, and Arkan’s Tigers—had done some of their best work here. They killed four thousand Turks and drove the rest away. For a few shining years, this land became pure. But then a few Turks trickled back in, unfortunately. At least enough to build a damned mosque. Well, they needn’t have troubled themselves.
Dušic had conducted no operations in Zvornik back in the 1990s, but he remembered well another mission not far from here. The Bosnian Serb Army had forced United Nations observers to surrender and leave the area, and most Muslim resistance in that sector had been crushed. Trucks and buses began carrying away Turk women and small children. Some of the younger women got sent to special interrogation centers, often at abandoned hotels, and Serb troops visited those centers for entertainment. The Muslim women did not wear hijabs or burkas like their Arab kin; they dressed in blouses, slacks, and skirts like other Europeans. But that did not fool Dušic; he knew they all bowed toward Mecca, and that was where they belonged.
The Muslim men presented another problem. If allowed to go free, they could take up arms. Orders about how to solve that problem had come down to Dušic and other junior officers. The job would require decisiveness, firmness of mind: qualities lacking in Western Europe and America, those self-indulgent cultures with no sense of blood and history. Dušic directed his men to gather some of the male Turk prisoners in a bullet-scarred house where General Mladic was expected to visit.
When the general arrived, Dušic stood straight as the great man entered the room. At that moment, Dušic thought of Mladic’s inspiring orders to his officers when the siege of Sarajevo began: “Shell them into madness.” The general wore camouflage fatigues. He removed his commander’s cap with the gold braid across the bill.
Perhaps thirty Muslims sat on the floor. They ranged in age from about twelve to seventy, all men and boys. All wore soiled shirts and wrinkled slacks, probably not changed in days. Just like the women Dušic had seen earlier, these males dressed like any Yugoslavs of their class—no dishdashas or turbans like their towel-head cousins—but again, Dušic wasn’t fooled. Mladic addressed the prisoners.
“Hello, neighbors,” Mladic said. “Do you know who I am?”
Some of the Turks said yes, some nodded, and some remained silent. Dušic found it infuriating that these filth could address this man without bolting to attention, without starting each sentence with “sir.” Mladic unwrapped two morsels of chocolate, handed them to the youngest two prisoners. Dušic liked that bit with the candy. Let them hold on to a shred of hope.
“If you did not know me before,” the general continued, “now you see me. And now you see what your illicit government has done to you: abandoned you. The United Nations cannot protect you. NATO can do nothing. We are not afraid of anyone.”
The Turks fell silent. The odor of their sweat filled the room, and the smell disgusted Dušic. He found it hard not to smirk as Mladic spoke truth to these traitors. Dušic admired the man even more when he considered how the general continued serving his people after such an awful personal loss. The year before, Mladic’s daughter had been found dead of a gunshot wound. Western propaganda mills reported that she had taken her own life after reading foreign news reports of how her father savaged Sarajevo. But Dušic had no doubt the beautiful young woman had been murdered by Muslims. Some called Mladic crazy with grief. But Dušic felt grief merely focused Mladic, made him stronger.
The general turned to Dušic and said, “Carry on.” Then he strode from the house, boots clomping. Dušic took his mentor’s actions as a great compliment: no further instructions, no guidance, no admonitions. Mladic trusted him to complete his own small part in the orders of the day.
At nightfall, Dušic rounded up a few of his young razvodniks. He ordered them to tie the prisoners’ hands and march the Turks onto a waiting bus. Stefan and the other sergeants would have handled this task better than the razvodniks. Dušic had even recommended Stefan for a battlefield commission. But Stefan and the rest of the NCOs were supervising similar tasks at nearby sites. Officers and sergeants were spread thin that night because so much had to get done, and quickly. That left Dušic with his newest, dumbest troops. No matter. The razvodniks would not need to use their minds, only their trigger fingers.
As the bound prisoners filed onto the bus, some of them began to murmur questions and protests. This insolence would not do. Dušic drew his CZ 99. Pointed the pistol at arm’s length. Fired over the heads of the Turks. They flinched at the blast.
“Silence!” Dušic shouted. “All your questions will find answers soon enough.”
On the bus, the three razvodniks guarded the prisoners. The privates held their Zastava rifles, seemed unsure what to do next. Dušic pointed to one of them.
“You,” he said, “drive the bus. Follow my truck.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the boy said.
Dušic stomped from the bus, took his seat on the passenger side of the army truck. His driver waited behind the wheel.
“To the field,” Dušic ordered.
After the truck rolled through a few miles of dark turns and twists, bright lights shone up ahead. As the truck drew nearer, Dušic saw the lights were the lamps of a backhoe. The backhoe idled at the end of a twenty-meter ditch.
Dušic opened his door, swung himself down from the truck as the bus pulled up behind it. Fresh mud clogged the treads of his boots. He walked around to the back of the truck and retrieved a cardboard box filled with rags. He dropped the box in front of the bus. When the door of the bus levered open, he called to the three soldiers inside.
“Line them up,” Dušic said. “Blindfold them.”
The razvodniks peered outside the bus windows, looked at each other as if they did not understand. Dušic had not briefed them on tonight’s operation for fear of a security breach. But now their task should have become obvious.
Morons. Minds filled with teenage mush, the products of idle hours spent listening to Madonna or, God forbid, those American Negro rappers.
“Now!” Dušic shouted.
The soldiers hefted their weapons, issued instructions in tones that sounded more like requests than orders. Still, the Turks rose, shuffled down the steps and onto the wet ground. When they saw the blindfolds and the ditch, some began to moan and cry out.
One of them turned to Dušic and said, “What wrong have we done to you?”
Who did this impudent Muslim think he was? In a flash of anger, Dušic pulled his handgun. Swung it like throwing a roundhouse punch. Smacked the barrel against the Turk’s face. In the glare of headlamps, the man dropped.
“Get up,” Dušic said. Dušic kicked the man until he staggered to his feet, blood streaming from his nose.
In a few minutes, all the Turks stood blindfolded at the edge of the ditch. All remained silent. Dušic gave another order to the razvodniks.
“Are you waiting for Saint Sava’s Day?” Dušic said. “Fire!”
A trembling private stared as if he didn’t understand Serbo-Croatian. “Sir,” he said, voice quavering, “is this proper?” The other troops looked at Dušic and the private. Blank expressions all around.
Weaklings. Sentimental fools. When Stefan and I were laying waste to Sarajevo, Dušic thought, these pups were playing computer games and watching television. Had their parents not taught them what Muslims were like?
Dušic snatched the Zastava from the boy’s hands. Snapped the fire selector to J, for jedinacna. Single rounds, semiautomatic. Pointed it one-handed at the back of the first Turk’s head. Squeezed the trigger.
Booming report of the rifle. Glimmer of tumbling brass. Spray of blood and bone. The Muslim collapsed into the ditch. Burned gunpowder salted the air.
Dušic shoved the rifle back into the razvodnik’s arms with enough force to push the soldier back two steps.
“You fire this weapon,” Dušic hissed through gritted teeth, “or I will put you in the line with them.”
The privates raised their Zastavas. Flame spat from the muzzles. Bodies tumbled into the ditch like sacks of laundry. Echoes of the shots reverberated through the night. In the stark glare and shadows thrown by headlights, a few limbs wriggled in the mud. Rifle smoke drifted across the enclave of Srebrenica.