CHAPTER 12
Outside the airport, a bitter wind ransacked Grace’s clothes.
When she got to the hotel, she’d have to change into her warmer woolens.
From the edge of a huge berm of fresh dirt, she glimpsed a steady stream of rocket fire jetting off the mountainsides, flaring, trailing smoke, aimed toward what she assumed was downtown Kav?ak.
She swallowed hard. That’s where they were going.
“Ma’am?” The Corporal slid the door open on a white van.
Grace frowned. Despite the giant letters ‘UN’ painted on the van, the side of the vehicle was riddled with bullet holes large enough to stick an index finger through. She got in the back and slid down the bench behind the driver’s seat.
Brenna opened the back door and wedged the camera and the two bags on the floor behind the front passenger seat. She slid the door closed, and rode shotgun, up front.
Pulling out, the young peacekeeper chatted sociably, saying something about being used to the cold because he grew up on a ranch in Alberta. While Brenna listened, Grace tuned out, too astonished by the landscape beyond the window to focus on small talk.
The airport service road ran parallel to a tall perimeter fence that enclosed the airport and runway. Directly across the open road, opposite the facility, lay a row of ruined townhouses. Low-rise apartment buildings sprawled out behind it.
Grace had read that over 300,000 shells and rockets had been launched into the city from the surrounding mountains.
Over 200,000 people of the 500,000 pre-war population had fled.
More than 10,000 civilians had been killed so far—1,500 of them children.
But statistics hadn’t prepared her for the reality.
This was the Apocalypse. Every dwelling was deserted, gutted, burned-out, every window a gaping hole, every roof collapsed.
Reinforcement bars stuck out of concrete slabs like tortured fingers frozen in rigor mortis.
Outer walls spilled onto the ground like eviscerated entrails.
Nothing had escaped the terrible disfigurement of unrelenting assault.
Six centuries of civilization—the city that had once been the jewel of Southeastern Europe—had been reduced to rubble.
The Corporal whizzed past the carcass of a house spray-painted with graffiti.
“Welcome to hell,” it said, in English. Press corps humor.
Pulling the steering wheel to the right, the young driver entered a long curve around the base of a single jutting mountain.
The mountain was clear-cut, nothing left on it but tree stumps.
Grace ducked, peering upward through the glass, trying to see the top.
Too steep for housing, it was one of those mountains that looked deceptively climbable, but took half a day to get up.
Out of the curve and over a bridge, the road widened to a straight-open boulevard running parallel to the black waters of the Kav?ak river.
The Corporal stomped the gas pedal to the floor.
The van hurtled forward, tires squealing as the Corporal swerved from one side of the debris-strewn road to the other without regard to the lane markers.
Fortunately, they were the only vehicle on the road.
Grace glanced over the young driver’s shoulder. The speedometer needle was approaching the 130 kilometer mark. It would be too ironic to travel all this way and die in a car accident. “Um, Corporal?”
“We’re a rolling bull’s-eye,” Brenna cut in, turning in her seat to look back at her.
“And this is Sniper’s Alley.” She pointed across the river to the high-rises on the south shore.
“From there, they use scopes so powerful, they can see the color of your eyes. The faster we go, the harder the shot.”
She stared at the high-rises, wondering if someone knew her eyes were blue.
“They’ll aim for the driver,” Brenna said, as if she had read her mind. “At this speed, if they take him out, they get a three-fer.”
Three for one.
Brenna pointed thirty yards ahead to a row of shambled buildings that sheltered the road from the snipers. “If we make it into those shadows, we’re out of their sight-lines.”
Grace lifted her gaze to where she was pointing.
Three hard thuds thumped the windshield in a tight cluster. A sudden frost raced across the glass and obliterated her view.
Brenna cursed.
The Corporal’s hands flew off the steering wheel and he fell forward. The van caromed wildly out of control. Engine screaming, the vehicle roared into the shadows—out of sniper range, but directly toward the fortifying walls of the Old City.
The right front axle thudded, tripped by a gaping hole in the road.
Brenna was catapulted toward the windshield.
Grace lunged for her.
The van swept out in an arc, fishtailing across the pavement, spinning out of control. She saw flashes of road and river and concrete. And all she could think was: Don’t let go of Brenna.
The rear end swung around and the side of the vehicle smashed into the wall. An instant later, still expending its kinetic force, the van rammed head-first into a second wall. Grace plowed into the back of the driver’s seat with devastating force. Pain shot through her face and shoulder.
A numbing white hiss enveloped her.