The column of four off-roads contained twelve men, including the leader, who joined us at the last minute. Only then did I learn he was Zoran Zilic, of whom I had vaguely heard, who had a fearsome but shadowy reputation. We drove for two days, north through Republika Serpska and into Central Bosnia. We arrived at Banja Luka and that became our base, notably the Bosna Hotel where we took rooms and ate and drank.
We made three patrols north, east and west of Banja Luka but found no enemy or threatened Serbian villages. On 14 May we drove south into the Vlasic range of mountains. We knew that beyond the range lay Travnik and Vitez, both enemy territory for us Serbs.
In the late afternoon we were driving along a track in the woods when we came across two little girls in front of us. Zilic got out and talked to them. He was smiling. I thought he was being nice to them. One told him her name was Laila. I did not understand. It was a Muslim name. She had signed her own death warrant and that of her village.
Zilic took the girls aboard the leading jeep and they pointed out where they lived. It was a hamlet in a valley in the woods: nothing much, about twenty adults and a dozen children, seven cottages, some barns and railed paddocks. When I saw the crescent above the tiny mosque I realized they were Muslims, but they clearly posed no threat.
The others poured out of the jeeps and rounded up everyone in the hamlet. I suspected nothing when they began to search the cottages. I had heard of Muslim fanatics, Mujahedin from the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia, who also marauded through Bosnia and would kill any Serb on sight. Perhaps there were some hiding there, I thought.
When the search was over Zilic walked back to the lead vehicle and took position behind the machine gun mounted on a swivel behind the front seats. He shouted to his men to scatter and opened fire on the peasants huddled in the rail-fence cattle pen.
It happened almost before I could believe it had happened. The peasants began to jump and dance as the heavy bullets hit them. The other soldiers opened up with their sub-machine guns. Some of the peasants tried to save their children, throwing their bodies over them. A few of the smaller children got away in this manner, darting between the adults and reaching the trees before the bullets took them. Later I learned there were six who had escaped.
I felt violently sick. There was a stench of blood and entrails in the air – you never get the stench in films from Hollywood. I had never seen people die before, but these were not even soldiers or partisans. One old shotgun, perhaps for killing rabbits and crows, had been found.
When it was over, most of the shooters were disappointed. There had been no alcohol found, nor anything of value. So they torched the houses and the barns and we left them burning.
We spent the night in the forest. The men had brought their own slivovitz and most got drunk on it. I tried to drink, but brought it all back up. In my sleeping bag I realized I had made a terrible mistake. These were not patriots around me, but gangsters who killed because they enjoyed it.
The next morning, we began to drive down a series of mountain tracks, mainly along the face of the range, back towards the col that would lead us over the mountains to Banja Luka. That was when we found the farmhouse. It was alone in another small valley amid the woods. I saw Zilic in the first jeep rise from his seat and hold up his hand in a ‘stop’ signal. He gesticulated that we should cut our engines. The drivers did that, and there was silence. Then we heard voices.
Very quietly we got down from the jeeps, took guns and crept to the edge of the clearing. About a hundred yards away were two grown males leading six children out of a barn. The men were not armed and not in uniform. Behind them was a fire-gutted farmhouse, and to one side a new, black Toyota Land Cruiser with the words ‘Loaves ‘n’ Fishes’ on the door panel. Both turned and stared when they saw us. The oldest of the children, a little girl of about ten, began to cry. I recognized her by her headscarf. It was Laila.
Zilic advanced towards the group with his gun raised, but neither made any attempt to fight. The rest of us fanned out and formed a horseshoe round the captives when we arrived close to them. The taller of the men spoke and I recognized American. So did Zilic. None of the others spoke a word of English. The American said, ‘Who are you guys?’
Zilic did not answer. He strolled over to examine the brand new Land Cruiser. At that moment the child Laila tried to make a run for it. One of the men grabbed but missed. Zilic turned from the off-road, drew his pistol, aimed, fired and blew the back of her head away. He was very proud of his marksmanship with a pistol.
The American was ten feet from Zilic. He took two strides, swung a fist with all his power and caught Zilic on the side of the mouth. If he had any chance of survival, that finished it. Zilic was caught by surprise, as he might have been, because no one in all Yugoslavia would have dared do that.
There were two seconds of complete disbelief as Zilic went down, blood pouring from his split lip. Then six of his men were on the American with boots, fists, gun butts. They beat him to a bloody pulp. I think they would have finished him off, but Zilic intervened. He was back up, dabbing the blood off his mouth. He told them to stop the beating.
The American was alive, shirt ripped open, torso red from kicking, face already swelling and cut. The open shirt revealed a broad money belt at his waist. Zilic gestured with one hand and one of his men ripped it off. It was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, at least ten of them, it turned out. Zilic examined the man who had dared hit him.
‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘so much blood. You need a cold bath, my friend, something to freshen you up.’ He turned to his men. They were bewildered at his apparent concern for the American. But Zilic had seen something else in the clearing. The cesspit was brimming full, partly from animal slurry but also from human waste. It had once served both purposes. If the passing years had solidified the mixture, the recent rains had reliquefied it. On Zilic’s orders the American was thrown into it.
The shock of the cold must have brought him to his senses. His feet found the bottom of the pit and he began to struggle. There was a cattle pen nearby with post and rail fencing. It was old and broken but some of the long poles were still whole. The men grabbed several and began to poke the American under the surface of the slime.
He began to scream for mercy each time his face appeared above the slime. He was begging for his life. About the sixth time, maybe it was seven, Zilic grabbed a pole and rammed the end into the gaping mouth, smashing most of the teeth. Then he pushed downwards and kept pushing until the young man was dead.
I walked away to the trees and vomited up the sausage and black bread I had eaten for breakfast. I wanted to kill them all, but they were too many and I was too afraid. While I was being sick I heard several volleys. They had killed the other five children and the Bosnian aid worker who had brought the American to that spot. All the bodies were thrown into the slime pit. One of the men found that the words ‘Loaves ‘n’ Fishes’ on each front door of the Land Cruiser were simply a decal with adhesive backing. They peeled off quite easily.
When we drove away there was no sign, except the startlingly bright splashes of red, the children’s blood on the grass, and the twinkling of a few brass cartridges. That evening Zoran Zilic divided up the dollars. He gave a hundred dollars to each man. I refused to take them, but he insisted that I took a minimum of one note to remain ‘one of the boys’.
I tried to get rid of it in the bar that evening, but he saw me and really lost his temper. The next day I told him I was g
oing home, back to Belgrade. He threatened me that if I ever spoke one word of what I had seen, he would find me, mutilate and then kill me.
As I have long known, I am not a brave man and it was my fear of him that kept me silent all these years, even when the Englishman came asking questions in the summer of 1995. But now I have made my peace, and am prepared to testify in any court in Holland or America, so long as God Almighty gives me the strength to stay alive.
I swear by Him that all I have said is the truth and nothing but the truth.
Given under my hand, Senjak District, Belgrade, this 7th day of April 2001.
Milan Rajak.
That night the Tracker sent a long message to Stephen Edmond in Windsor, Ontario, and the instructions that came back were unequivocal:
‘Go wherever you must, do whatever it takes, find my grandson or whatever is left of him and bring him home to Georgetown, USA.’