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thought about it, though, he realized he hadn’t heard any unsuppressed gunfire ... just the harsh thumps of the SEAL H&Ks and M-16s.
    Doc came trotting up as Murdock peeled off the NVDs, now grown intolerably heavy. “Doc, check our boy out.”
    â€œRight, L-T.”
    Murdock and Roselli went to the women next, freeing the one still trapped on the mattress, then using their SEAL diving knives to cut the twine that had been used to bind the wrists of all three. Roselli produced a relatively clean overcoat from somewhere and draped it over the girl’s shivering, bony shoulders. “Silovana sam, ” she said in a low and trembling voice, repeating the words over and over. “Silovana sam. . . .”
    â€œTake charge here, Razor,” Murdock said. “See if any of them speak English, see if you can get sense out of them. Check with Doc if you think they need meds or anything.”
    â€œSure thing, L-T.”
    Murdock wished he had someone in the squad who spoke Serbo-Croatian. Normally they’d have had a linguist along, but this op had been too rushed to cover the fine points. Besides, as Fletcher had happily pointed out, Gypsy spoke English and the SEAL squad would not be interacting with anyone else ashore, civilian or military.
    Yeah, right.

0248 hours
St. Anastasias Chapel Southern Bosnia
    It was sheer chance that they’d missed him. Narednik Andonov Jankovic had been leaning against the wall of the monastery, close beside the southeast corner, when his friends and comrades had begun collapsing left and right, mouths gaping, heads exploding, blood and gore spraying everywhere, all to the almost melodious chuffing ring of sound-suppressed gunfire.
    Jankovic’s rank of narednik was equivalent to that of a senior sergeant, and though he wasn’t in uniform he was still an active-duty member of the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army. Six months ago, he’d been seconded to the Serbian Volunteer Guard as an “advisor,” one of thousands of JNA regulars assigned to keep the pro-Serb militias in line. With decent training and fifteen years’ military experience, he’d acted instinctively when the militia troops started to fall, rolling around the corner of the building, then scrambling for cover as quickly as he could go. Judging by where the fire was coming from, he thought that one of the parked trucks had shielded him from view, but he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t been seen; he’d plunged into a shell hole in the side of the monastery’s chapel, emerging inside the sacristy. By the time he reached the apse, the sounds of the firefight outside had died away.
    The chapel had been torn by shell fire and was open to the sky. The icons, the altar, and most of the furniture had been all carried off, either by the original Dominican brothers when they’d fled, or by looters looking for gold or firewood later on. No place to hide ... no place good enough, anyway. He scrambled through a gap in the north wall, vaulted an ironwork fence outside, and scrambled into the chill shadows beneath the trees beyond. The snow lay in patches ... careful not to leave tracks. Where to go? Where to—
    In the woods! A snowbank! Plunging into the snow behind a tangle of fallen branches, he lay there, panting hard, trying to control the heart-pounding terror that had propelled him into the forest. God, God, God, who were these people? Not Turks, surely . . . as he thought of the Bosnian Muslims. The UN arms blockade still prevented the Muslims from receiving more than a trickle of weapons from outside, and certainly they wouldn’t have silenced guns.
    What was that? Jankovic was sure he’d seen movement, close by the east side of the monastery’s chapel. Holding very still in the snow, scarcely breathing, he watched a patch of darkness moving against darkness. The shape revealed itself against a bare patch of wall dimly illuminated by the glowing sky ...