Sarajevo Rose

By C R S Hay

Sarajevo 1995.
Millions in gold and a top-secret file are stolen from the UN. “Art” Curtis survives the ambush, but a part of him still dies in the snow that night.
Ten years later, a clue leads Curtis back to the glamorous resort of Stari Vuk, perched high up in the Bosnian mountains. In his sights - four suspects and a shadowy ‘fifth’ man.
Danger threatens at every turn as Curtis gets closer to both the truth and the gorgeous but enigmatic Svetlana.
And then an unexpected face shows up from the past....
With the death toll rising and a storm looming Curtis is pushed to the limits of physical endurance in a desperate race against time to recover the secret and save the UN's reputation.

A vivid, compelling roller-coaster of a novel. Gripping from the first page, Sarajevo Rose is a thrilling classic-style adventure from CRS Hay. Excitement, violence and an ingenious plot... the pace never slackens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C R S Hay
• Release date: Jan 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311612755

C R S Hay

Colin spent his early life in the British Army and Special Forces.After 11 years service around the world, having met the future Mrs. Hay, Colin left the military, and completed a Master's degree before starting on a successful career in business.Now 45, he lives in Berkshire with my wife and two young (ish) children.

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PROLOGUE

August 2005.

Corsica. 1am.

Shooting a man in the back is never easy. The sense of unfairness can feel, well, unsavoury. But Curtis didn’t have a moment’s hesitation squaring that in his conscience and as he felt the metal curve of the trigger slowly yield to his forefinger, the dead, the lives ruined and the pain being suffered by countless more all presented themselves to him like the ghostly cast in some terrible play.

The single shot from the rifle was a slap to the face of the soporific peace. If he’d ever heard the noise, the man might have had a moment to realise it’s meaning. But the bullet, faster than the speed of sound, gave R. J. Mallone no such opportunity. It hit him in the back of his bald, tanned head, making a small hole, and exited through his face, taking part of his forehead, nose and R. J Mallone’s notoriously piercing right eye with it. And leaving an altogether much bigger hole. Blood, gore and some of his intelligent but warped brain splattered themselves across the vast canvas print he’d been admiring. The one delivered just that week from Paris.

Did the recent additions add something to it, the bullfight? But Curtis didn’t have time to dwell on Mallone’s artistic bent. Even from a hundred metres away, the falsetto female shriek stabbed Curtis’s ears as he watched Mallone’s body, like the slow-motion frames of a cartoon, first sink to it’s knees, then slowly topple forward and disappear below the window.

Job done. Curtis rolled off the rooftop and was soon running down the stone staircase. Carved through the rock to join the cliff top mansion to the sea cave below, for Curtis it was far from the preferred option. Enclosed, it had no other exits. And two hundred steps. But he’d been over-ruled. Fairburn. And Fairburn was Government. He smelt the salt coming up from the sea below, mixing with the warm fetid air inside the staircase. The sweat was pouring down his back, his shirt glued to his body.

One hundred and ninety…his mind had been counting even if he hadn’t …and then he was in the corridor that ran to the last few steps. He could hear the low growl of the outboard, smell the pungent diesel exhaust. A clean escape? He cleared the last ten steps in two leaps and the cave, twenty metres in diameter and ten high, with one exit out to the sea, opened up before him. His feet were now on the concrete jetty, and he saw Francoise in the dim light kneeling in the boat, her weapon raised and ready to cover him.

Two shots. Crack…crack… Chips of rock whizzing past as the whine of the ricochets echoed around the cave. To stop and return fire, exposed as he was on the jetty? Or keep going the last few metres to the boat? Francoise decided it for him, the expression on her lean face hardening as she stood up and coolly opened fire with her MP5. Curtis kept going.

An almighty kick to his left temple. And in a heartbeat his world disappeared into a retina-searing white light. Everything went silent.

He sensed rather than felt the warm Mediterranean encircle him.

ONE

Ten years earlier.

December 1995.

The snow lay deep across Bosnia. It had already been falling for several weeks and early December saw over ten centimeters in the streets of Sarajevo while higher up in the mountains it lay much deeper. And there would be more, winter’s icy fingers were only just beginning to secure their grip on the war-torn country.

Between the towns of Pale and Rogatica, the landscape was steep, harsh and unforgiving. The road wound its solitary way mile after laborious mile over the heavily forested mountains and along innumerable gorges. The gorges, they were all the same, a sheer wall of rock on one side and a precipitous drop on the other that fell away over the limestone boulders down to a frothing, raging torrent far below. On a sunny autumn day it was a beautiful, welcoming landscape, full of bright floral greens, golds and reds. Today it was a monochrome of grey, the only variation being the lighter grey in the sky or the slightly darker grey of the forest, but each of them were just as unwelcoming as the other. Everywhere and everything was bleak, cold and hostile. The blanket of endless cloud lay very low, only a few metres higher than the antennae of the two vehicles, and it kept the temperature below freezing, the damp locked in. The tedious hum of the Land Rover tyres on the tarmac was muted by the snow, the slush and the potholes. There was no wind, just the endless, freezing blanket of damp, grey cloud.

Captain Arthur ‘Art’ Curtis rolled his shoulders to stem a shiver, wiped away the condensation from the side window and turned his head to peer out at what little of the passing pastoral landscape he could make out. It was already getting dark, so not much was the answer, but only one more hour and he could enjoy the comparative colour of Sarajevo. In one weeks time his team would be out, off home, their tour of duty over and looking forward to some well-earned holiday, likely somewhere with sunshine. A few days after he would follow, except that this time he wouldn’t be travelling alone. This time he’d be leaving with her. After months of bureaucracy, a small mountain of paperwork and more than a few favours, in only a few days she would finally get her British citizenship, and shortly after that she would change her name to Mrs. Curtis in a quaint English country church. He owed many people for their help in making it all happen, but none more so than his boss, General Lambett.

‘You look lost in another world. Either you didn’t know when to say stop or I suspect you’re not finding our newfound hearts-and-minds job particularly stimulating?’ Sergeant Smith was tired and bored after a very long day as he deftly controlled the slide of the v8 Land Rover through yet another snowdrift. Like sand and mud, snowdrifts weren’t a reason to slow down, not to a veteran like Smith.

‘Huh, what can you mean? This outbreak of peace that has us driving around all these intriguingly named places talking to all these interestingly named people. It’s the very definition of professional stimulation.’ The war was all but over, a tentative peace prevailed and, if the ongoing peace negotiations were successful, there would be nothing left for Curtis and his team to worry about. If you discounted the alcohol.

Ouch. So young, but the cynicism of age. Curtis hadn’t always found Smith’s perspicacity easy to live with.

The result of four years with you. I’ve aged a lifetime. Several.

And lived long enough to do so. Thanks to your tutor here.

Curtis arched an eyebrow and smiled. You and I both, Mr. Smith. Respect ran both ways.

At five eight, lean, with wavy light brown hair, sideburns and a thin, pencil moustache, Smith was far from the macho image of the invincible warrior. But Smith’s disarming appearance hid a tough and ruthless professional, with more scars and close shaves than all of his peers added together. He just didn’t wear his experience overtly. If Curtis was the bridge of the ship, Smith was the engine room. On their own they were dangerous, together formidable. Which explained why they’d been given the job in Sarajevo, not the one up-country.

‘Turn the radio on, your choice of music’ll soon perk you up.’

‘From the man who’s last music purchase came with 45 rpm written on the cover.’ Curtis grinned and leant around to adjust the old car radio rigged up behind the seats, hoping they would be coming within range of one of the new commercial radio stations broadcasting from Sarajevo. He worked his way through various tones of static and squeaking before he tuned into something audible.

‘Ironic, but appropriate.’ Smith’s laconic introduction was never more apt as the lyrics of ‘Crazy’ resounded around the inside of the Land Rover. As songs go, it was almost written as an anthem for the Bosnian conflict - it seemed to perfect capture the unfathomable madness that defined the three-years of brutal murder and civil war.

The two vehicles were about five lengths apart, driving at speed along a narrow plateau between two high mountains. Beside the road ran a lake, its dark obsidian waters, still and calm, filled the bottom of the plateau and provided the first vestige of variety to the suffocating greyness. About one kilometer long it was no more than two hundred metres at its widest. Pine trees covered the southern mountainside and extended all the way down to the edge of the lake. On the north side, a narrow strip of ground separated the lake from the road, and, just as on the southern side, forest covered the entire mountain, which rose steeply from the roadside and soon disappeared into the grey clouds. At the end of the plateau the road dropped downhill, following the twists and turns of the river course, firstly through a narrow forested ravine, then along a rolling valley before the land opened out into farmland near Pale. Pale, a quaint country town nestling in the lee of the mountains, but also the home of the Bosnian Serb government, hence why it was referred to as the heart of hell by those not of the Orthodox religion. Whatever it was known as, or may have been, for Curtis it meant one thing above all else - thirty minutes of easy driving to Sarajevo.

‘Pity about the weather, another day, another life and it would be nice to go skiing up there.’ Smith crooked his head to the left, referring to the old ski resort, Stari Vuk, nestling high up in the mountains above the lake. Curtis squinted out his window and could just make out a roofline vaguely visible in the murky distance, sandwiched between the dark grey forest and the lighter grey cloud. Since the start of the war back in 1992, Stari Vuk had been forced to forego its lucrative skiing clientele and had become one of the main headquarters for the Bosnian Serb army. Long since bombed by NATO warplanes, the glamorous old resort was dilapidated and forlorn, a bombed-out, blackened sad derelict. Just like thousands of others thought Curtis.

Like Smith, for Curtis skiing was a passion, the ideal sport to offset his newfound interest in kitesurfing. ‘It’s cheap these days for sure, and I hear it has great slopes. But the après-ski is well, ever since their last guests were there, they left a right mess and the reviews, put simply, they just aren’t great reading,’ He’d read the after-action reports and seen the photos, so he knew exactly what a mess the place was now in. ‘Lost some of its appeal and previous style. No, it’s the Alps for me my friend, gluhwein, roaring log fires, and fondues.’ The view of Stari Vuk, and his memory of the damage he’d seen inflicted on it by the bombing, prompted in Curtis a pang of melancholy, not helped by the song on the radio or the sterile landscape through which they were travelling. A landscape whose best days it seemed were, however hard you looked, firmly in the past. For now at least.

As the end of the lake finally drew itself out of the grey murk, Curtis’s mind wandered. Nina was in her early twenties, a girl from Sarajevo. With natural athleticism she was a striking beauty, her raven black hair ran down to her shoulders and her big almond eyes held a piercing vitality. They also had an unerring confidence that implied she knew of some secret, about life or perhaps the universe, that everyone else was yet to discover. And that maybe, just maybe one day she’d let you in on it. High cheekbones and a straight nose helped to highlight her full, sensuous lips, and the dark complexion of her skin hinted at some of her ancestry. Her father had been a professor of music at Sarajevo University but had been killed in the first weeks of the war, the victim of an undiscerning sniper’s bullet. Nina’s mother, hollowed out by his death, had tried her best to carry on but had succumbed less than one year later, at the height of the siege. Not to bullet or bomb, but to grief, despair and, despite Nina’s being close at hand, loneliness. Or to put it another way, a broken heart.

In the middle of a city under bombardment and siege, with a dwindling circle of friends, her world being destroyed by degrees with each passing day, and with little money, Nina had soon been forced to sell the family home for a pittance. Looking back, she said that had been the trigger, the moment when she had finally given up any pretensions of sustaining normality, all hope of keeping the conflict as something she just had to endure as an unwilling spectator. She determined there and then to get involved, and the next day she walked up to the gates of the United Nations headquarters in Sarajevo. It didn’t take them long. Her qualifications, her intelligence and her considerable linguistic skills were desperately needed. It was in that bustling headquarters in what had formerly been Tito’s Sarajevo residency, that Curtis had first met her. Her physical beauty had of course first caught his eye, that was inevitable, along with about every other red-blooded male in the building. Her beauty had triggered the attraction but it was what lay behind the intense almond eyes that captivated him and kept him entranced. The intelligence, the independence, her fierce survival instinct and, despite all the tragedy that she had endured, or perhaps because of it, the noble dignity. She was shrewd, she was great fun and a hundred and one other qualities, and for the first time in his life, Curtis had found himself wondering what life might be like outside of the military.

‘Eyes front, looks like someone’s out collecting holly for Christmas.’ Despite the humour, there was an edge to Smith’s voice that instantly snapped Curtis back to the present. They had now passed the end of the lake, dropped down from the plateau and were winding through the narrow gorge, the road flanked on either side by thick forest. Curtis peered through the windscreen, the darkness was almost total and in marked contrast to the winter-wonderland scene lit up by the powerful double headlights. The forest, the road, everything was smothered under a deep layer of pristine snow, and a tranquil stillness hung in the freezing air. The only thing that marred the perfect scene were the four Range Rovers parked smack in the middle of the road, not two hundred metres ahead.

‘Harris, Davidson this is Smith, we’ve got three, no four white vehicles, static in the road ahead, about two hundred metres, it’s time to wake up.’ All trace of humour had now evaporated, Smith’s voice was a hundred percent professional as he alerted the second Land Rover. Scrutinising the scene ahead, Curtis felt himself being pushed gently forward in his seat by the inertia as Smith went down from third to second gear, the vehicle slowing and edging closer to the left of the road.

‘Check with base,’ Smith’s mind was lucid and swift ’see if there are any other vehicles due out this way. There was nothing mentioned in the briefing.’

Curtis’s thumb was already on the send button of his radio.

TWO

December 1995.

‘Base, this is one alpha, we’re....’ but Curtis never finished the message. As the first words left his mouth his attention was magnetised by the multiple orange flashes winking from the edge of the forest. Instantly his mind registered the meaning, the threat, and was already issuing instructions to his body, but the millisecond it took for his trained mind to send the message to his mouth was not quite fast enough to beat what was coming the other way. But he didn’t need to worry, the message was communicated all too clearly, just in another way, as the windscreen turned into a pastiche of silver, spidery threads and shattered in a thousand pieces, the high velocity bullets narrowly missing both Curtis and Smith, passing just inches away with a tremendous, ear-splitting…crack, crack… like a circus whip. Certainly no one with a pair of working ears could fail to misinterpret that message.

‘Contact…Wait out!’ Curtis heard his voice shout into the radio, and instinctively screwing his neck as low as he could, he flung open the door of the Land Rover and propelled himself out and down into the ditch. As he hit the snow, he fired a burst from his M4 assault rifle…whack, whack, whack….and felt the kick from the recoil in his shoulder. Wriggling lower into the snow he saw more orange flashes from the forest and followed the lazy progress of the red dots accelerating towards him until they zipped past….crack, crack, crack….over his head and over the top of the Land Rover. Then there were more orange flashes and this time the incoming red dots stopped with a violent crash of metal and glass in the front grilles of both Land Rovers, knocking out the lights and sending up a hiss of steam as the radiators were riddled full of holes. It was now pitch black, made even blacker by the fact that Curtis’s eyes had been used to the bright headlights.

Taking control of his breath, Curtis estimated where he’d last seen the orange flashes and let loose four well aimed shots, hearing a little hiss as each hot case was ejected into the snow beside him. At the same time, he heard the staccato beat of the Minimi and then the deeper bark of Smith’s G3, the tremendous noise of all the gunfire echoing around the enclosed gorge and accentuated by the still, damp air. They’d all trained for this a hundred times, so everyone knew exactly what to do without any screaming or shouting. With covering fire from Harris and Davidson, Smith was already up and running and Curtis heard his feet scurrying up into the forest behind him. There was a brief pause and then he heard the deep bark from the G3 up to his left and he joined in, squeezing off another ten rounds. Which was the cue for Harris and Davidson who wasted no time and sprinted up into the forest to join Smith. All three were now effectively out of the killing zone and in good cover and proceeded to open up with a withering concentration of fire. The noise was tremendous - the bark of the G3, the lower, faster staccato of the Minimi and then Davidsons’s M4. Curtis pulled out a High Explosive round, slid forward the cold tube, inserted the round and heard the satisfying metallic click as the grenade launcher locked. With his hand around the magazine and his finger on the trigger for the grenade launcher he adjusted the elevation for range as best he could and squeezed. He felt the soft kick, heard the quiet metallic ‘plop’ as the round left the barrel and counted…one...two....three....and was rewarded with a white flash followed by a dull crump as the grenade found its mark. There was no return fire. No sooner had the grenade hit its mark than Curtis crawled backwards and was on his feet, he sprinted up the slope into the forest and jumped down alongside Smith. Now that all four of them were out of the ambush zone, they reduced their rate of their fire to only two guns at a time, allowing the other two to insert fresh magazines of bullets. Curtis leant in towards Smith and keeping his voice low shared his first thoughts.

’Unless we’re about to have the most terrible shock, this must be the worst ambush ever. There’s only one point of fire, and that’s up ahead of us. What do you think?’ Curtis was still gasping for breath from the shock, the sudden adrenalin rush and his sprint up the hill. There was a loud bark as Smith let off another round and then he shuffled back down closer to Curtis. His voice, slow and measured, was the epitome of the seasoned professional.

‘Well, if it had been a proper ambush, we really shouldn’t be talking now, rather we should be leaking our precious red liquid out into the snow.’ Smith paused as another burst of gunfire from Harris ripped up the evening air. ‘I think we’ve stumbled into someone’s private party at the wrong moment. And they don’t like gatecrashers.’

Davidson and Harris now dropped down beside them and lay flat.

‘I’d swear the crack of that incoming isn’t AK,’ it was comforting for Curtis to hear that Davidson, the obsessive triathlete, was also out of breath ’it’s really distinctive. This sounds, sounds more like our kind of weapons.’ Davidson finished his remark in a tone that begged a response, an explanation of the worrying implication - that they were being fired on by their own side.

‘This is Serb country, why would Serbs be using,’ and Smith paused as if he’d just found the answer to his own question ‘maybe stolen or captured weapons. Well, never mind, there’ll be plenty time for analysis later. Right now we need to get our asses out of this fire.’ Smith flicked open a pouch and quickly put a fresh magazine of 7.62 bullets into his G3.

Curtis peered out into the jet black of the forest, his mind quickly assessing the situation and sizing up the right way to do what they needed to do. Given the darkness his plan would have to be simple and they’d have to do it soon.

‘Agreed, okay, in this darkness we need to keep it simple, so let’s move forward line abreast until we make contact, then standard drills to clear the ground. If they haven’t gone already. Then we secure the area and get back to check those vehicles. Agreed?’

‘Listen…’ it was Harris and he was pointing out into the dark void beyond.

Everyone froze, straining to listen. There was no doubt, none at all, the heavy damp air made it unmistakable. The high-pitched whine of an engine, the sound of a helicopter starting up, and it was coming from somewhere not far beyond the end of the forest.

‘A bloody chopper, they’re scarpering!’ Harris’s voice was no longer a whisper, it was stoked with excitement and anticipation, begging to get going.

‘Okay, let’s get on with it. Line abreast, we clear to the wood line, agreed? ERV is here.’ Curtis kept it really simple, they all knew the tactics they’d use; he didn’t need to go into any more detail. Three quiet ‘yup’s’ confirmed that they were all committed. They spread out again, stood up as one and set off at a fast walk through the forest, their direction set by the noise of the helicopter. Thankfully the forest had been recently stripped in preparation for being logged and there were few branches sticking out and only a little snow had managed to penetrate the thick pine canopy, leaving the ground relatively clear and the going underfoot easy. But the higher canopy of pine branches layered with snow, together with the low cloud meant that it was like moving in a black void, the only datum points they had were the feel of each footstep and the sound of the engine. If Curtis hadn’t been convinced that it wasn’t an ambush, he would never have moved the team all at once or so quickly. The noise of the helicopter grew louder and louder and then they could smell the first pungent whiff of exhaust fumes. Slowly, the end of the forest crept into perspective, the trees faintly silhouetted against the open ground beyond. Then the pitch of the engine grew sharper and there was the accompanying beat of the rotors thumping the thick air - it wasn’t long from taking off.

All four men now broke into a run, dodging trees and jumping over branches and tussocks in a rush to get to the target. Harris was the first to come to where the hillside dropped downhill and saw the winking white and red lights of the helicopter no more than fifty metres away. But the forest was still too thick for him to get a clear shot, so he ran forward again. Curtis could now see the winking lights, and put on an extra burst of energy, praying he wasn’t going to run full pelt into a branch. Suddenly, as if fate had an ironic humour, he instead found himself on a footpath that led directly to where all the noise was coming from. He heard the staccato drum of the Minimi from his left and saw the red tracer zipping past the helicopter, which he could see clearly now, and then more tracer going back the other way into the trees where Harris was. And then there was a series of bright white flashes, like huge flashbulbs going off which lit up the whole outline of the helicopter and were accompanied by a series of ear-splitting booms that drowned the noise of the engine and all the gunfire - a heavy machine-gun, being fired from inside the helicopter. Dropping to his knee, Curtis loaded another high explosive grenade into the launcher, but in the darkness trying to aim was more art than science, so he angled the weapon as he judged best and squeezed the trigger. There was a small kick, a ‘plop’ and the grenade was gone. One...two...there was a flash and a crump, but the sound from the helicopter didn’t change, nor did the boom from the machine-gun or the accompanying white flashes. The grenade must have gone through the open door of the helicopter and straight out the other side, by some miracle missing the three people in the back. The three people whose attention he’d now just drawn and who began to turn the heavy machine gun round onto him.

The boom of the bullets leaving the barrel and the crack as they shot over his head were virtually simultaneous and Curtis felt a shower of snow and twigs landing on him as he lay hugging the earth, wishing to god that he could burrow down into it. The gun paused and then just as quickly started up again, the huge red dots now coming lower to the ground, straight at him, like angry hornets. All the could do was pray and hug mother earth tighter as he felt the whish of the air as the heavy bullets scythed overhead at supersonic speed and then he was deluged by more snow, twigs and then whole branches and big splinters of wood as the heavy bullets shredded the trees around him. Thankfully the big gun paused again and he could make out the comparatively meeker bark of Smith’s G3 along with Harris’s Minimi and Davidson’s M4 - all three of them were pouring fire at the helicopter. With no incoming bullets, Curtis leapt to his feet and zigzagged forward, firing as he went. A couple of small red dots zipped past him and he heard the whizz where others hit the ground around his feet and he felt loose snow and mud hitting his legs. He stopped behind a tree, knelt for a better aim and emptied his magazine at the rising black shape, convinced he saw some sparks from several hits on the airframe. But he was too late, they were all too late, the helicopter was up and away, and with a last series of booms and white flashes from the side