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paint.
    â€œYou’re Gypsy?”
    The man seemed to be trying to focus on Murdock. His glasses were still blood-smeared. “Uh ... ya sam Gypsy,” the man said. “You ... you Nomad?”
    That was the proper recognition code, Gypsy and Nomad, sign and countersign. “I’m Nomad.”
    The man gestured vaguely at the jeep. “Papers, in there.”
    They found what they’d come for on the floor of the jeep, a briefcase bulging with typewritten papers. Not originals; from the look of them, they’d have been stamped secret if they were. They appeared to be carefully compiled lists of troops, regular forces and militias, personnel rosters, TO&E breakdowns, headquarters sites, SAM positions, artillery placements . . . .
    â€œYou use, ne? ” Gypsy said as Murdock carefully clicked the briefcase shut. “You send jets, kill many Christians, kill many Chetnik bastards, da? ”
    Murdock looked back at the monastery and at the bodies littering the ground. “Kill many Christians,” he said, his voice hard. “Da. ”
    â€œHvala. Vrlo ste lyubazni. ”

0342 hours
Checkpoint Orandzasta Southern Bosnia
    The Mi-8 transport helicopter descended toward the clearing, a broad stretch of open and relatively level ground on the otherwise thickly forested mountainside that had been the site of a logging operation several years earlier. Several vehicles had been lined up to either side of the roadway, their headlights illuminating the touchdown point.
    Brigadni Djeneral Vuk Mihajlovic remained in his seat as the helicopter touched down, a crew member slid open the cabin door on the right side, and his aides and bodyguards clambered out into the night. He didn’t like flying, especially at night, and especially as parts shortages and wear and tear claimed more and more of the aging aircraft purchased years ago from the then-Soviet Union. Still, it was the only way a brigade general could maintain personal control of his command, and this time it sounded as though he’d happened upon a special piece of luck.
    JNA helicopters in Bosnia tended to fly only short hops nowadays, sticking to hair-raising, low-level flights through mountain passes and valleys just in case NATO or the Americans decided to enforce their ludicrous and arbitrary no-fly-zone decrees. Mihajlovic had been en route from Kotor to the headquarters of his Third Regiment in the hills outside Dubrovnik when the Mi-8’s pilot had picked up an urgent radio call from Checkpoint Orandzasta. Normally, he would have ordered the pilot to ignore the signal, but the caller had used a code phrase that indicated he was a JNA advisor with the militias. He’d then reported an ambush on Bosnian-Serb forces that he claimed had been launched by American commandos.
    That seemed unlikely. Almost certainly, what the caller had blundered into was a raid by one or another of the anti-Serb militias, probably Croats with the paramilitary HOS, the so-called Croatian Defense Army. There was almost nothing left of the Bosnian Muslin forces, not enough to have caused the slaughter the JNA advisor was screaming about over the radio.
    In any case, since Mihajlovic happened to be in the area, it wouldn’t hurt to stop and find out what was going on. Mihajlovic was a hands-on type of commander, Russian-trained, popular with his troops. It wouldn’t hurt to check on the man’s story, especially if the Croats were up to something unpleasant. A commando raid against the naval base at Kotor was a definite possibility, as were guerrilla-style raids against the Serbian supply lines through the mountains above Dubrovnik.
    Careful not to give the appearance of unseemly haste, he unbuckled from his jump seat and stepped out of the helicopter. With head bent to avoid the still-turning rotors, he walked toward the building nearby, a decrepit-looking shack that had been the office for the lumbering company here and that now served as