Kara’s Game. Gordon Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes were large and staring. ‘My tummy’s hurting again.’

      ‘Where?’ She held him in her arms and felt his forehead. The skin was warm and slightly clammy, not cold as it should have been. She pressed his stomach carefully and gently, and felt the relief when he did not jerk in pain. Probably stomach cramp because he was hungry, she thought. She moved her hand slightly, to the right of his stomach and slightly down, and pressed again, felt him recoil in pain. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him, told herself. ‘It’ll be all right after I’ve made us something to eat.’ In the sky above she heard the next shell.

      

      ‘Location confirmed?’ Finn asked Steve.

      ‘Confirmed.’

      Christ it was cold, but they wouldn’t be here long. And they’d got themselves a good position. Hadn’t been able to dig in, of course, but they hadn’t expected to. Instead they’d found themselves an OP under the lower branches of some trees, which gave them at least some protection from the weather, plus having direct line of sight to the gun positions at the head of the valley and on the other side. Two of them up front and two at the rear covering them.

      ‘Zero, this is Charlie Two One. Over.’

      ‘Charlie Two One, this is Zero. Roger. Over.’

      Finn spoke the details of his report and the grid references of the targets into the mike of the radio, then pressed the activate button. The computerized set scrambled the message and transmitted it on burst – fifteen seconds of report condensed into a micro-second, no possibility of it being intercepted, and no indication they were there.

      ‘Zero. Roger. Out.’

      

      His position could have been better, Janner was aware. They’d made it in easily enough, established the grid references of the gun emplacements and confirmed they were in direct line of vision for the lasers. But that was the problem: the ground on his side of the valley didn’t allow for a base and a good OP. So the base was in a small indentation along a contour, from which he couldn’t see the opposition but where the opposition couldn’t see him, and the OP was fifty metres further forward on a slight lip, the two men in it lying motionless and the two behind covering them. The men in the forward position not able to move, but that was standard, except the ground behind the opposition emplacements was marginally higher than the OP, so the opposition was looking down on it and therefore able to see it. But only if they were looking, and they wouldn’t be, because there was no reason to. The only time the opposition would know would be after the air strike, then the guns would be dealt with anyway. So there were no problems.

      He contacted base, sent his report, then opened a can of cold beans and began to eat. Hard routine patrol, Fielding had said. Bloody right, Janner thought. Only six hours of light left, though, then he and Max could creep back and join Geordie John and Kev.

      Poor bastards, he thought as another round struck the town in the valley below. The barrage was virtually nonstop now. Rather be here than there.

      

      The call to MacFarlane was on the secure net.

      ‘Update?’ Thorne asked him.

      ‘Ceasefire violations continuing at a rate of one round every two to three minutes, all incoming.’ MacFarlane was also deliberately official.

      ‘State of UNMO team?’ Thorne asked.

      ‘UNMO team in serious danger. Four shells have landed near UNMO position in past hour.’ Four among the many that were still falling. ‘There is a possibility that UNMO team is being targeted. If no response has been received from yesterday’s approach to Bosnian Serbs, I formally request an air strike to protect lives of United Nations Military Observers.’

      ‘Request being lodged immediately.’

      So in two and a half hours, the time it took to process the request, the jets could be airborne from their bases in Italy. Thirty minutes’ flying time, forty maximum; so by one-thirty, two at the latest, the jets could be over Maglaj and silencing the guns.

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Confirm you are visual with targets,’ Thorne requested Finn and Janner via Hereford.

      Confirmed, they both told him.

      ‘Request for air strike being lodged now. Aircraft on RS 10’ – a readiness state of ten minutes, which meant that the aircraft could be airborne within ten minutes of being scrambled. ‘Aircraft call sign Thunder One.’

      Assuming the UN sanction the action.

      

      Jovan was slightly hotter. Kara wiped his forehead and talked to him about what they would do when the summer came and how he and she and his father would walk in the hills and pick the berries and the apples.

      The shells and the mortars were still coming in. ‘Roof of UNMO building has just received a direct hit,’ MacFarlane reported on the secure net.

      ‘Serbian authorities have been informed of request for air strike,’ he was informed. ‘UN procedures in operation. Thunder One on cockpit readiness.’ The pilot in the cockpit and the engines running.

      Perhaps he had become accustomed to the sound of the shelling, Janner thought, perhaps it was the temperature. The air cut through his lungs and the cold crept into his body. Two hours to go, he told himself, two hours before the Jaguar zipped over the valley and bombed the shit out of the bastards shelling the town. Two hours before he and Max could crawl out of the OP and join the others in the base position. Not that the base was any warmer than the OP, not that they would risk heating any food there.

      It was all a game, of course. The Serbs were calling the UN bluff by not responding to the request to stop the shelling, and in just under two hours now the UN would call the Serbian bluff by taking out the guns in the hills.

      The sky was a thin blue and the temperature was plummeting. God how he wanted something hot, Finn thought. Ninety minutes to go before the air strike. The Boss would have talked to both the UN and NATO by now, and the wheels would be rumbling, the pilots already briefed.

      Jovan was going to vomit. Kara knew by the way he was holding his stomach and clenching his jaw. She held him in her lap, the bowl in her hand. Probably the food, she told herself, probably because she had put too much potato and carrot in, and he wasn’t used to it. The jet of liquid shot from his mouth. ‘It’s all right, my little one.’ She wiped the saliva from his lips. ‘Now you’ll feel better.’

      The air strike was sixty minutes away, assuming the UN procedure took two and a half hours. ‘Another round near UNMO HQ,’ MacFarlane reported. ‘Constant incoming, no cessation.’

      ‘AWACS in position.’ The Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft sitting high above them. ‘Thunder One on sling shot.’ The Jaguar waiting at the end of the runway.

      The sky and the air had the awesome clarity of winter. ‘Forty-five minutes,’ Janner whispered, half to himself and half to Max. ‘Wonder whether Belgrade’s told the bastards on the guns.’

      Jovan’s temperature was rising, the sweat was breaking on his forehead and his breathing was slightly shallow. ‘Where’s it hurting?’ Kara asked him. She undid his СКАЧАТЬ