from the 'Prologue' to The Knives by Richard King

It was midday and five miles further on when Blaylock saw another checkpoint coming into view, markedly different from the last.

Here was a barrier and sentry post, a guard-hut of nailed logs and planks with a clear plastic roof. Earth was banked at one side of the road, the bank of a stream ran opposite, the effect being to narrow the passage ahead.

Blaylock frowned to see significantly more bodies milling around the hut, too, more than a dozen men – surely surplus to requirements? They were dark-skinned, dark-browed, many bearded and with chequered keffiyah wrapped around heads, shrouding faces. Some wore fatigues, camouflage trousers and jackets, others were in loose khaki pants, embroidered waistcoats, banded turbans. Several appeared to be nursing assault rifles, others yet more hefty weaponry.

This was not regular Bosnian army. In wash-ups the liaison officers had spoken of ‘irregular forces’, mercenaries – mujahedin.

Blaylock knew in his gut that he was looking at them now.

‘Bloody hell, boss, Ali Baba and the forty thieves . . .’ Cookie’s vision of the road ahead from his driving seat, magnified ten times by the Warrior’s powerful raven sight, far outran Blaylock’s.

As the Warriors slowed up to stop thirty feet before the checkpoint, one of the guards hefted his weapon to his shoulder.

‘Geezer’s got an armed RPG there, boss.’

Blaylock swallowed, hoisted himself out and clambered down the slope of the Warrior’s glacis plate, trying to execute the move with assurance. Tamara hastened along beside him, her eyes notably wide. They passed a large muscular African man, staring at them from his perch on the grassy bank beside a heavy machine gun on a tripod. He wore a bullet belt draped across his chest, and a machete stood propped against one of his fatigue-clad legs. That knife troub­ led Blaylock – it was a spade-like blade of dull silver, maybe fifteen inches long, surely intended for the slaughter of beasts.

As he drew near, a handful of guardsmen jostled forward in the [7]

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manner of confrontation. One, with prominent teeth, close-cut dark curls and the gaunt mien of East Africa, came furthermost, shouting irately. ‘Kuffar’ was the word burning through the air.

Tamara looked anxious. ‘I can’t . . . what he’s saying?’

Blaylock, keeping eyes front, touched her arm lightly. Another man shouldered forward – bearded, eyes very blue, cheeks pockmarked under an Afghan hat of reddish felt. Blaylock extended a hand. But it only hung there, met by a stare, until he withdrew it.

‘My name is Captain Blaylock. United Nations protection force.’

Tamara began to translate. The Afghan put out a flat peremptory palm in her direction and shook his head at Blaylock.

‘Her, no, she not speak, she go.’

Blaylock looked steadily into his translator’s eyes as he addressed her. ‘Go back to the Warrior, Tamara, it’s okay.’

As Tamara trooped away Blaylock turned again to the Afghan.

‘We have to pass through here, my friend. Get on our way, yes?’

His antagonist again shook his head and took a hand from his rifle to wave it disdainfully at the retreating Tamara. ‘On your way, yes.’

‘You have no right to stop the UN. We’re not part of this conflict, all we do here is observe and carry aid.’

‘All you do. Yes.’ Just as Blaylock began to fear his words would merely be volleyed back at him, the Afghan made a more expansive gesture in the direction of the guard-hut. ‘This, you see? This is ours. You no go as you want. You go back. This is ours.’

‘Yours? You are Bosnians, are you?’

‘We are Muslim.’

Now the Afghan made a beckoning gesture of sorts, clapped his hands, and his fellows began to draw closer. Two who had sat on a mound of earth rose and sauntered over as well. As the Afghan continued to clap Blaylock realised with a start that he was being treated to sarcastic mock applause. And now he was confronted [8]

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by a cordon of men, bristling with bullet belts and knives worn at the waist.

‘Crusaders, uh? Crusaders! They come!’

Blaylock’s pistol was holstered inside his flak jacket. He fought the urge to reach and feel it. ‘Our mission’, he said, ‘is peacekeeping.’

‘No fight?’

‘No, no fight! Peacekeepers!’

‘You too late! Too late!’ The Afghan prodded a finger at Blaylock’s epaulette. ‘You look, you look, uh?’ He mimed the bewildered shaking of a head. ‘Where is peace? Where? You don’t fight, what good are you?’

Blaylock ransacked his brain for some bridge-building language. ‘Why we are here . . . is to deal justly. You will deal justly with us, no? In Islam all men are brothers, right?’

‘You know Islam?’ He gestured sharply between them. ‘You tell me what is Islam? You not my brother. These are my brothers. You, you deal with Croat, with Serb. Killers of Muslim!’

One of the Afghan’s comrades stepped forward suddenly, shouting and gesticulating with a pointed finger to the skies. Blaylock could feel his heartbeat, could sense movement behind him, and wanted not to turn, and yet turned. And so he saw the muscular African man coming at him, machete held loosely at his side. As Blaylock went to reach into his flak jacket the mujahid hefted up the huge knife and thrust it under Blaylock’s chin to within an inch of his Adam’s apple.

He felt an injection of dread, dosing down like melting ice from his scalp to the soles of his feet.

In the same moment he heard a heavy clunk and a hydraulic siren-sound, and saw past the African’s head to where Bravo Zero’s gun turret was traversing with stunning speed into position to fire.

Meeting the African’s gaze as he had been trained, seeing [9]

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nothing there but dispassion, Blaylock was conscious of motion all around, the sounds of rifles being slipped from shoulders and cocked, then the sight of men scampering onto the facing banks on either side of the Warrior.

As the blood hammered in Blaylock’s temples his mind raced to compute, to conjure a proper leadership decision, the correct procedure to rescue a man at sea, the man being himself.

Kill them all, God will know his own.

‘Alright, cut it out, man, cut it out, cool it, yeah?’ A young man was shouting as he came toward Blaylock from the bank, also bearded and turbanned and in camouflage, yet his accent was of the South Pennines, and the hand gesture he was making seemed to signal an end to the skirmish. Glancing to the African, Blaylock could tell the big man had seen something meaningful behind him. His machete was lowered, though his dispassionate gaze stayed in place.

‘Sufficient unto the day . . .’ Blaylock heard himself mutter.

He turned to face the Afghan, who glowered at him. Never give an order that can’t be obeyed, he thought, and stepping back he saluted smartly. ‘Another time. We’ll meet again, I trust.’

Then he turned and felt his feet moving under him, his guts tightly clenched. In motion he gestured to the Warriors to start the business of turning round as best they cumbersomely could. At his back he heard dissent, jeers, and a rising chant, ‘Allāhu Akbar!’

‘Fuck me,’ Trev offered, as they rumbled back down the trail to Vitez. ‘That was a moment, eh, boss?’

‘Yep. Focuses the mind, doesn’t it?’

Blaylock, though, could not quite hear his own voice. He placed a Marlboro absently between his lips, bit into the butt, then removed it and tossed it away. His body’s alarm mode had receded, the panic rush from the adrenals had slowly turned course and been transformed, somehow, to a belated and low-burning rage. [ 10 ]

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He retrieved his notebook and smoothed out his tracing-paper map with an unsteady hand. He extended his pencil lines to Fazlići and there drew a circle; followed, on reflection, by a star; then, encircling it like a safe harbour, a crescent moon.

Then fury surged in him again and he scored it out with hard strokes.

‘Another time . . .’? Yeah right. Fuck me. It had been, he knew, a poor riposte. Were there to come ‘another time’ then, no doubt, he would have to do better.

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