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seconds at the first sketch. Luka couldn't see it from where he was, kneeling on the floor, but he knew it so well by memory, he could have recreated every line, every shadow of the fantastical landscape, the impossible joining of Mount Erciyes and the Akhurian river—in reality, on opposite sides of the country—a clutch of cottages with thatched roofs huddled in the protective embrace of that lovingly corrupted landscape, the shadow of a vast cloud chewing at the edge of the golden glow of the sunny valley. At first glance, the cloud heralded nothing more sinister than a lasting downpour; peering closely, though, the viewer might discern that the nimbus was no raincloud, but a swarm of tiny, grotesque creatures, all gaping jaws, sharp teeth and clawed wings descending on the sleepy village to devour their happiness. The symbolism had meant one thing to Luka when he'd drawn it two years earlier. Now, it seemed like it was about something else, as if he'd divined a future when he'd be on his knees before Pero and his rifle.
    A dry, rasping shriek. Pero ripped the page from the book and handed it to Luka. Then he handed him his lighter.
    “Burn it. Careful to keep it over the can. Don't want the whole place burning down. It would be a hardship for Željko.”
    Luka heard. He understood. But he asked, “What?” It was the only sound he could make. Making that sound was the only thing he could make his body do.
    “Hurry up. I don't have all night, and there's a lot of garbage here to dispose of.” He shoved at the pile of sketchbooks with the dirty sole of his combat boot, and Luka noticed a rusty red crust along the toe and side of the right one. Was that dried blood?
    The cigarette had burned up all the oxygen in the room. No air in his lungs. A dark iridescent veil materialized in front of his eyes, dimming Pero and the rest of the room, making all the molecules dance around him.
    Pero shifted in the chair, and now Luka was looking into the black, empty eye of his gun. With the pad of his index finger, Pero slowly stroked the trigger. “Burn it, pervert.”
    His body was an automaton enslaved to the voice of the platinum Übermensch who'd once been the heroic boy of the football field; the perfection of beauty, equal parts grace and force. Trapped somewhere inside that kneeling body, Luka watched those trembling fingers, broken and mostly healed and about to be shattered again, as they ignited the lighter and brought the flame, quivering in the gale of his rapid, shallow breaths, to the corner of the drawing he'd labored over for hours, night after night, going to bed too late and feeling wretched when he rose at six the next morning for work. When the flame singed his fingers, pinching the very corner, holding on until the last possible second, the burning page drifted down into the can, fire swallowing the last centimeters of sunlit roofs.
    When his cigarette burned out, Pero plucked another from his pack, and leaned forward. Luka lit it for him. For the next half hour, one by one, Pero ripped Luka's sketches and laboriously rendered drawings from the blue sketch book, then the brown sketch book, then the red one, and finally the two black ones, and one by one, the broken hand that had lovingly made each image set them alight and dropped them into the smoldering trash can.
    When there was nothing left but the stiff, worn covers, dangling alone and futile from their spiraled wire spines, Pero stood and grinned. Suddenly Luka was back in his trembling body, a sledge hammer battering his chest. An echo of the agony of his snapping bones shot up his arm. Once Pero had broken both his hands, would he still be afraid of the gun? Or would he want that sudden end to his pain and terror?
    “Leave Sovići. Leave tonight. We'll be back in the morning, and if you're here, you're dead.”

 
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE: Moving Into Oblivion
     
    March – The Ingusheta Refugee Camp, Bokana Region, Xukrasna
     
     
     
    The enemy is