The Skinner's Revenge. Chris Karsten
Though there was no traffic nor were there any other pedestrians in the street or on the bridge, Milo knew that many eyes from many windows would be following his father’s halting progress.
When Tomislav reached the middle of the bridge, Milo thought everything was going to be okay. His eyes were riveted on his father’s back, the right hand with the white handkerchief raised. In his other hand, the book. He walked slowly, not looking around. His eyes fixed on the road’s surface.
Suddenly Milo heard the sharp whizz of a bullet and a thud as it struck the bridge, ripping out a chunk of concrete. He hadn’t heard the crack of a shot being fired, but he instinctively recognised the sound of a sniper’s bullet. He saw his father stop, the white handkerchief fluttering in his hand.
Then the sound of a second bullet striking the bridge.
Milo knew about flash suppressors, but he searched for the flash from the barrel of the sniper’s rifle. Was that a puff of smoke high up against the wall of the Visoki Predstavnik building?
His anxious eyes returned to his father’s petrified figure on the bridge, both arms now raised high in the air: in one hand, the book, in the other, the handkerchief.
They’re just trying to unnerve him, Milo thought. They wouldn’t shoot him – he had permission to cross the bridge. The Serb commanders were expecting him.
His gaze shifted again from his father to the building where he thought he’d noticed a puff of smoke. Then he saw another puff and simultaneously heard the buzzing sound like an angry bee, and the dull thud.
Milo counted the windows. Seventh floor. The smoke was not coming from a window but he knew about the slits for the snipers’ rifles. This rifle had no flash suppressor.
Don’t move, Tata, Milo prayed softly.
Three shots had been fired. Something was wrong. These weren’t just warning shots. Not three. In the late afternoon sun he saw the shadow of the rifle’s barrel on the wall of the building.
“Tata!” he shouted. “Come back!”
His father turned his head, looked in his direction and took a few backward steps.
“Run, Tata!”
Tomislav turned, stumbled.
Zing!
Milo began to count as his father broke into a shuffling lope back to the safety of the sandbags, the book and handkerchief in his outstretched hands.
Zing!
Eighteen counts between shots.
Suddenly Tomislav stumbled and spun in a half-circle. He lowered his arms and slowly slid down on his haunches as if he was tired and needed to catch his breath. But then he got up, took a few staggering steps, slid down again.
“Tata!” Milo screamed. He could no longer see him from his hiding place behind the sandbags, and he guessed his father was now sitting or lying down.
“Come, Tata! You’re almost here!”
Zing!
Milo began to count again: fifteen counts, to be on the safe side. His legs were numb, his muscles paralysed, there was no air in his lungs, his brain rattling in his skull.
Three … four …
He got to his feet.
Six … seven … Out from behind the sandbags, a plain target for the sniper’s rifle.
Nine … ten … Running up the incline to where the bridge began. His father wasn’t sitting, he was lying.
Twelve … thirteen … His father turned his face to Milo, his cheek caked with dust. “Back, Milo … Go back.” His voice was hoarse.
Fifteen … sixteen … Milo scurried back like a cat, dove for cover behind the sandbags.
Zing!
This one had been meant for him. The sniper had found his position.
Milo hoped his father would stay where he was. Tomislav was a clear target for the sniper on the seventh floor, but the sniper’s attention had been diverted now. If his father didn’t move, the sniper would focus on Milo. He would wait for a chance, a movement, a glimpse of a body part.
And it would turn into a waiting game. It was still hours before sunset, before Milo and his father could try to escape under the cover of darkness.
“Tata! Can you hear me?” he called towards the bridge.
He listened. Nothing.
Louder: “Tata!”
No reply.
Milo felt a rising panic constrict his throat, set his heart pounding. Perhaps his father was wounded. Perhaps he was bleeding to death on the bridge. But he didn’t dare leave the cover of the sandbags and the wall. If he came out, he was dead, that much he knew. And he was his father’s only hope.
Milo was thin but tough. All the children of Sarajevo were. Experts at survival. If he was going to save his father, Milo couldn’t wait for darkness to fall. He tugged at a bag filled with sand and rolled it down onto the wooden bed of his water cart. The planks creaked. He didn’t know how strong the axle was, how many sandbags the trailer could take before it broke. He rolled a second bag on top of the first one, heard the creaking sound again, more menacing now. He decided not to take a chance with a third one.
He pushed the cart out from behind the wall, his eyes on the seventh storey. He saw the puff of smoke, heard the dull thud as the bullet slammed into one of the sandbags on his cart.
Taking shelter behind the two sandbags, Milo crawled, pushing the heavy water cart along the bridge, his progress agonisingly slow. Between shots, he counted. The tempo was quicker now, the bullets less accurately placed, as if the sniper’s patience was wearing thin.
When he reached his father, he noticed the blood.
“Tata … ”
His father was gazing up at the twilit sky, eyes half closed. Through his slightly parted lips a white tooth glinted wetly. Without his glasses, his father’s eyes looked strangely pale. The glasses lay under his head, one of the lenses shattered. A corner of the white handkerchief was still between his fingers but the book had slipped from his other hand. On the cover his long fingers had left red smears.
“No … ” sobbed Milo, lifting his father’s head in his hands.
From under the cart he peered at the façade of the building where the invisible sniper was hiding. Then he lay down next to his father. His body was still warm, as if he was just sleeping.
For a long time Milo lay by his father’s side. The bullets thudding into the sandbags were dim sounds from another time, another world.
Then it was quiet, and the silence wrenched him from his stupor. He pushed himself up on his arm and peered over the sandbags at the building. He sat cross-legged as he folded the arms of his father’s spectacles and put them into his jacket pocket. Then he reached for the white handkerchief and wiped the blood from his father’s forehead and hair.
Milo turned his face to the west. In the last light of the setting sun the mountains of Bjelašnica and Igman were deep in shadow. The hazy sky was changing colour, like blood poured into water.
He stretched his legs and lay back down. Placing his hand on his father’s cheek, he felt the beard stubble against his palm. He didn’t close his eyes, but lay watching as the light faded and the sky over the bridge and city became darker.
While Milo was waiting for the night, a seed germinated amid the chaos in his mind. His mother had been right, he thought: no one could be trusted. In the dirty street, on the bridge where his father’s blood was congealing in the sand and dust, he knew that everything had changed. Henceforth their lives would be irrevocably different: his own, and the lives of his mother