Page 83 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

“A new phone every day. Yes, of course.”

“Call me when it’s done.”

Brkic ended the call and tossed the phone into the crackling burn barrel that was keeping the night chill away. The phone popped in the fire, sending a burst of sparks floating up into the dark pine branches above his head, triggering a memory of another forest years ago, when his name was still Rizvan Sadayev.

POLJANICE, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, 1992

Sadayev heard the sputtering twin air-cooled radial piston engines low in the cloudy night sky long before he saw the plane. The twelve hundred feet of narrow dirt road servicing the small village saw double duty tonight as an airstrip for the rugged warhorse, a converted Vietnam-era Douglas C-47, a faded Greek air cargo company logo painted on its bullet-riddled fuselage.

A radio call from the plane was the signal for him and five other vehicles to turn on their headlights to illumine the road, a thin thread of hard-packed dirt wending its way between villages tucked between the thick swaths of forested hills andwide, grassy pasturelands of the Bila Valley. Central Bosnia was still a Muslim stronghold, but was under siege by Serb and Croat forces.

Sadayev was a junior commander in a unit of foreign jihadis in Bosnia—bosanski mudžahidi—fighting independently from the Bosnian Army. The other foreign jihadi fighters in country were organized by the Bosnian government into the El Mudžahid, a unit they kept under their tight control.

Sadayev’s unit wanted no such control.

The plane landed with a heavy bounce and came to a hard-braking stop just short of the tree line. They began unloading the first crates of weapons, food, and ammunition before the engines had feathered to a stop.

The agent bringing the much-needed supplies jumped out of the cargo area and greeted Sadayev with a firm handshake. He identified himself only as “Red Wing,” but his reputation as a fighter and his recommendation by trusted friends were all the credentials he needed. Sadayev introduced him to the other commanders in his unit—two Tunisians, four Saudis, a Libyan, and a fellow Chechen.

“Where are the other planes?” Sadayev asked.

“Delayed.” Red Wing smiled as he pointed at the bullet holes stitched into the aluminum fuselage. “We were lucky to get through.”

“We have an operation that begins in forty-eight hours, and the Serbs have tanks. Our weapons are useless against them.” The Chechen was dismayed. The vintage American plane carried only seventy-five hundred pounds of cargo.

“I brought what you need, for now. The rest will be here within the week.”

“Inshallah,”Sadayev said. “God willing.”

Red Wing smiled. “Yes, of course.”

Sadayev wasn’t ungrateful. The UN arms embargo served only to cripple the Bosniaks’ ability to resist their murderous neighbors. Illegal arms shipments from the Libyans, Saudis, Turks, and others gave their Muslim brothers a fighting chance. Rumors were the German BND supplied embargoed arms to the Croatians, and the Serbs could always count on Serbia and the Russians.

Without men like Red Wing, the Bosniaks were doomed. But Sadayev was under no illusion. Red Wing fought against the Western powers, but Sadayev and his men fought for Allah.

But such is God’s way,he thought. To use unbelievers to accomplish His will.

“We’ll discuss your operational plans later, my friend.” Red Wing clapped Sadayev on his broad shoulder. “I have an idea you might appreciate.”

He turned around and helped unload the next crate out of the door. Sadayev and the others joined in. It would be light in a few hours.

—

Two days later, a four-wheel-drive Bosnian Serb Army BOV-30 armored personnel carrier skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. Its twin-mounted thirty-millimeter guns on its rectangular turret swept the village square in an ominous arc, scanning the small, neat Bosniak houses for resistance.

Nothing.

A moment later, a Serbian sergeant emerged from the cupola and scanned the area with his binoculars.

All clear.

He lowered himself back down and radioed the convoy commander. His ten-ton high-speed scout vehicle did double duty racing ahead of the column, confirming that neither mines nor enemy forces were located on the road or in the village.

They would stay put until the convoy arrived and dismounted infantry cleared the houses. Even if the civilians had fled, the village would have to be razed and the wells poisoned before they moved on to the next Bosniak enclave.

—

The Serb column rumbled down the dirt road, flanked on the left by a thick band of pines fifty meters away, and a wide, grassy meadow on the right, stretching more than a kilometer to the woods.