Killing Pilgrim (22 page)

He wondered whether this was a Serb ambush. But why hadn’t they given the Hilux the same treatment?

For a long few minutes he squatted at the edge of the cornfield, building up the courage to launch himself into the woods. He breathed deeply and steadily, willing his heart to beat less frantically. He held the Beretta hip-high, gripping two spare magazines in his other hand.

Strumbić was still shooting from somewhere behind him. Ahead and a little to the right was the gunman. Sweat plastered della Torre’s cotton shirt to his skin. He wished he was wearing his sunglasses or a hat. The sun was relentlessly bright and high.

The gunman fired three or four rounds a minute, sometimes in rapid succession and sometimes as if he was waiting. Strumbić fired mostly during those quiet periods. Was the shooter alone? No other gun was heard, but that might not mean much. If he wasn’t alone, how many of them were there? What other weapons did they have? Was the shooter there just as a distraction while his companions stalked them, much as della Torre and Rebecca were trying to do in turn?

He paused to listen. Silence. And then the rifle’s bark.

He ran. Hard, fast, and low, stumbling over the rocks of the nettle-choked strip of no-man’s land. He caught a glimpse in the distance, where the road curved away from him, of a black truck. The Hilux.

A
small-gauge automatic opened fire from the woods. Until then, there’d only been evidence of the big rifle. It meant they’d spotted him.

He heard an angry buzz of bullets whipping through the corn behind him. The run was the longest twenty metres of his life.

Strumbić’s machine gun coughed out its reply. Della Torre didn’t envy him. The corn offered decent cover, but no protection. Strumbić would have been unlucky to catch a bullet from the big rifle, but it was going to be harder to hide from a spray of automatic fire. The light-calibre gun might not be as accurate over that distance, but those scattered bullets could wound or kill just as effectively.

Then again, della Torre wasn’t too happy about his own circumstances either.

Thorny shrubs tore at him before he made it to the safety of a big oak. He wished he had more firepower than the Beretta. He didn’t really know what he ought to be doing. He didn’t want to get too close to the shooters, not least because he didn’t want to risk being hit by Strumbić’s occasional wild salvo. But if he could somehow flank them, he might be able to draw a bead on one of them.

The big gun kept up its regular delivery, always aimed towards Strumbić. The smaller automatic ripped through the foliage, but nothing much seemed to be coming his way. As far as he could tell, all the noise was coming from the same direction. The shooters were sticking together. Whoever had followed them from Zagreb to the wilds of the Dalmatian hinterland seemed to be amateurs at this game.

During a brief break in the firing, della Torre thought he heard a familiar metallic clank in the distance, though he couldn’t be sure. He listened for it again, but it was pointless — Strumbić and the rifleman had gone back to trading volleys.

He edged deeper into the woods, where there were fewer low shrubs. The big beeches and chestnuts kept the ground clear, giving him passage. He noticed plenty of ankle-high blueberry bushes and could smell the forest mushrooms amid the decomposing leaf litter. His arms stung with tiny rips from the thorn shrubs he’d charged through. They’d pricked through his trousers as well. He could feel the heat of the afternoon even in the shade of the trees. At a guess, he figured he was within a hundred metres of the shooters. There was still no sign of them separating.

He scrambled uphill, hugging the profile of the landscape, careful of twigs and loose stones, hoping to make his approach from behind and to the side. He turned towards the sound of the rifle once he got about forty metres into the woods.

He used every skill he could remember from the commandos to move silently, but each one of his steps filled his ears with a dry explosion, a starburst of noise.

He was wary of the smooth rock that frequently broke the surface of the earth here. He moved patiently. High overhead he heard the tearing of leaves and the thud of bullets against branches. Strumbić’s fire.

And then, there they were. At first he could only hear them; they were dressed in camouflage, including their baseball caps.

“Kill him yet?”

“He’s still firing, isn’t he?”

“Well, give me a go, then.”

“You had your go. You barely hit the car.”

“Think they’re all there?”

“Course not. There’s the one who made it to the trees.”

“I told you to let them get closer before you started shooting.”

“I got it, didn’t I?”

“You got the car, dimwit. I didn’t see you hit anyone.”

“Think we hit the redhead?”

“Must have done.”

“Shame.”

“There’s the one in the cornfield still shooting and the one in the woods.”

“What do you think he’s doing in the woods?”

“Taking a piss. How the hell do I know?”

“Think he’s going to try to get to us?”

“With what?”

“He had a gun.”

“I didn’t see a gun. Had a good sight of him and he didn’t have a gun. Nothing serious, anyway.”

“If you had such a good sight of him, why didn’t you get him?”

“’Cause my fucking machine gun jammed.”

“It didn’t jam, you just forgot to take the safety off.”

“Same fucking thing.”

“That’s not a jam.”

“Will you shut up? I can’t think to shoot straight.”

One had a deep voice. The other’s was as high as a woman’s. They both had lugubrious Bosnian accents.

Bosnians . . .

Why was it always Bosnians?

Della Torre finally sighted on them, but he did not have a clear enough line to be sure of hitting them with a pistol at that distance. There was a big fallen tree in the way, which they were using as cover. He estimated he was about sixty metres away. Too far to be reliable with an unfamiliar handgun and precious little practice.

He’d have to get to within thirty metres before risking a shot. He didn’t want to miss. Given the damage it had done to the Mercedes, the rifle could probably shoot through trees. He kept low, moving smoothly.

He was close, almost close enough to be sure of hitting them, when he slipped. He was on slightly higher ground and was heading down when the leaf litter fooled him. It hid one of those flat, smooth white rocks. His leg shot out from under him, dropping him on his back as if he’d stepped on ice wearing hobnailed shoes. He tried to catch himself with his weak left arm but it buckled under him, and all he managed to do was lose the spare magazines he’d been holding, hammering his right elbow in the process. He’d switched the safety off and the impact fired the Beretta, only just missing his own foot.

The Bosnians reacted immediately. The one closest to della Torre turned his machine gun on him, but he aimed too low. The spew of bullets took chunks off the trunk of the mighty fallen oak, sending bits of bark flying.

Della Torre scrambled backwards, desperately trying to get behind a nearby tree, firing the Beretta more in an effort to distract them than out of any hope of hitting anything.

Then he saw the rifleman shift the big gun in his direction. It was long and ugly with its disproportionate telescopic sight. At that distance, the shooter couldn’t miss. Della Torre, despite moving all the while, was mesmerized. The rifleman’s preparatory sequence singed itself into his mind. Bolt pulled back. Released. Hand down towards the trigger. Rifle up, level with the man’s ribs, its bipod legs spread open, hanging in the air. The cavernous barrel aligned with the stock, marking an invisible line straight to della Torre’s midriff.

The other Bosnian, the one with the submachine gun, had stopped to change magazines; della Torre could hear the click as it went in.

The rifleman wore aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap backwards. But what struck della Torre was the man’s satisfied grin. Instinctively, della Torre braced his muscles against the coming impact of the gunshot. He winced in anticipation, though he suspected he wouldn’t feel much for long.

But the muzzle flash never came. Instead, the shooter’s forehead bloomed open like a red and white rose and then disgorged a pale blue-grey mass. The shooter fell forward, smashing face-first into the fallen tree with the hollow sound of a dropped watermelon. And then he disappeared from della Torre’s sight.

The other Bosnian dropped the submachine gun and crouched down to his fallen comrade. “Elvis. Elvis. Shit, holy mother of God and Mohammed’s angels.”

Then the submachine-gunner, small and thin, popped up from under the tree trunk and bolted, full of panic and noise, heading straight at della Torre.

“Gringo.” It was Rebecca, from somewhere in the trees. “Get him. Go.”

But the man shot past della Torre before he could aim the Beretta.

Della Torre got up, the pain of his fall deadened by adrenaline, and chased after the Bosnian through the undergrowth. The Bosnian was small and skinny and fast, quickly pulling away from della Torre, who gulped air into his tobacco-dulled lungs, his thighs aching as he climbed the hill.

The ground underneath became rougher and harder, and the trees ended in a low, rough cliff of white stone. The shooter had started to climb but hadn’t gotten far. Della Torre couldn’t have asked for a clearer target. The sun was reflecting on the stone around the man so that he looked nothing more than an insect on white paper. He’d lost his hat, and his brown hair was almost as long as a girl’s. He struggled to find handholds, clawing the stone in desperation. He was unarmed.

Della Torre chambered a bullet, raised the Beretta, and took a shooting stance, as he’d been taught all those years ago. With his thumb he ensured the safety was off.

“Halt,” he called out.

The Bosnian kept trying to climb but turned to look down at della Torre. It wasn’t a man he was chasing. It was a boy. He had a little fuzz on his top lip, and eyes like a deer’s, full of fear, self-pity, horror.

“Halt,” della Torre shouted again. But the boy continued to scramble like a drowning man struggling for air.

Della Torre fired. Once. Twice. Scoring the stone above the boy’s head.

“I said halt.”

The boy finally stopped. He was shaking, tears streaking his face.

Della Torre stared at him. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. “Why were you shooting at us?”

“I don’t know.” The boy spoke in that drawling, undulating accent of the deep Bosnian valleys.

“Tell me now or I’ll shoot you off that rock.”

“I don’t know,” came the panicked voice, high-pitched with fear. “Elvis got the job. He said we were after a cop. Dad just drove. I wasn’t shooting, I swear. I was just there to hand them the ammunition. I swear I wasn’t shooting. Ask Dad, he’s at the car. Ask him.”

“What cop? Who paid Elvis?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Were you in Zagreb waiting for us?”

“Yes, but I don’t know anything.”

“Whose car was it?”

“I don’t know, Dad got it. Dad gets cars. Please don’t shoot me. Please don’t shoot me.”

He didn’t doubt that the boy knew nothing.

Maybe Elvis knew something. Had known something. But he’d looked pretty dead when della Torre saw him last.

Somebody’d paid the Bosnians to follow them and to shoot them. They’d even fixed them up with a nice car.

A gloom settled on della Torre. What to do with the boy?

They couldn’t take him to the police station back in Gospić. It’d be difficult to cover up the gunfight, and once it got out that an American woman had been involved, he knew the pandemonium it would cause.

“What’s the name of the cop you’re after?” della Torre asked again. “Who’s the cop? Why did you want to shoot him?”

“I don’t know.” The boy was frightened, tearful. “Elvis’s cousins paid him because the cop owed them money and caused problems. Dad knows them. Ask him. He’ll tell you. He’ll tell you who they are.”

“Get down here,” della Torre said. “Quick, if you want to live.”

The boy scrambled down. He was even more pitiable on close inspection. His camouflage gear hung loosely on his thin frame; his pimpled face was blotchy with tears.

“Boy, I’ll tell you this once, and then I’m not responsible for you. You run in that direction; follow the cliff, don’t try to go up it. When you find a track, follow it to a village. Tell them what you like, but don’t tell them about this.”

“What about Dad?”

“Forget about Dad. Dad’s going to jail,” della Torre lied. “You find a bus to take you to Zadar and you call your people to fetch you. You understand?”

The boy nodded, though he might just have been trembling.

“You got money?”

The boy shook his head.

Della Torre pulled a couple of notes out of his wallet and handed them over.

“You tell nobody nothing, understand? Anybody asks, you don’t know, because that’s the truth. Go. I’m going to fire a couple of shots after you. Don’t stop and don’t turn around, because if you do, boy, you’re dead.”

The boy nodded. And then he ran, sobbing, while Della Torre fired twice into the trees.