As the war progressed and the Serbian army left Kosovo, forced out by NATO, the dark heart of the Albanian psyche showed itself. Pockets of Serb civilians such as farmers remained, some of whom stubbornly maintained their right to stay while others were unable to escape because they didn’t have transport or were too old, too young or too feeble to make the long journey to Serbia and then reestablish themselves there. The Albanian hatred for them was totally relentless. What had begun as an amicable partnership between NATO and the KLA to oust the Serbian army from Kosovo turned into an internal security situation where the UN and NATO-led K-For were the police and the KLA became the delinquents. On more than one occasion Stratton had crossed swords with them and blood had been spilled but always the KLA – they were not sufficiently well trained or equipped to take on the British military and were certainly not skilled enough to take on special forces.
Stratton had seen the results of Serbian and Albanian atrocities
and he reckoned that there was not much to choose between the two as far as brutality was concerned. But due to the area he operated in it had been the ruthlessness and savagery of the Albanians, the KLA, that he had witnessed more often. Looking at Cano reminded him of so many KLA members he had seen: that same brooding, sometimes vacant but usually hate-filled look.
‘What am I doing here?’ Stratton asked, glancing at Klodi who was staring ahead between them and breathing heavily in the way that overweight people sometimes do.
Cano studied Stratton, looking as if he could not make his mind up about something. ‘Where you from?’ he asked. ‘You don’t sound American.’
‘I’m English.’
‘Ah, English,’ Cano said, an unmistakable sneer twisting his face as his thoughts transported him to another very different time and place that was still so much a part of his every living fibre. ‘You’re the first Englishman I’ve spoken to in a long time.’
Stratton could see the contempt in Cano’s eyes and wondered if it was reserved just for Englishmen. According to Seaton’s file Cano had been a mid-ranking officer of the KLA, heavily involved in ‘cleansing’ Kosovo of Serbians. Graphic images of mutilated men, women and children flashed across Stratton’s memory and he wondered how many of those atrocities had been ordered or even carried out by this man.
Despite the many horrors of war that Stratton had seen in his lifetime the sight of women and children butchered by hand had always filled him with immeasurable disgust and hatred for those who did it. Many of the scenes he had witnessed in Kosovo bore evidence that the perpetrators had not just executed but had had fun doing it. A method he had often come across, one he had first seen in Afghanistan and peculiar (so he’d thought) to the Hazara tribe, was the driving of a large nail into a person’s brain, often through the centre of the forehead so that the killer could
look the victim in the eye as the spike was hammered home.
In one particular village in the south of Kosovo that Stratton and his team had happened across, not a living soul remained, a common enough occurrence. But on this occasion all the village’s men and women, old and young alike, were found dead in a barn, shot through the head or with their throats slit. An even more sickening sight was that of the babies, a dozen or so, nailed through their heads to the barn door.
Stratton had been consumed with an urge to kill those responsible if he ever learned who they were. Now that he was sitting opposite a man wanted for such atrocities there was a rekindling of that loathing and repugnance, though he tried not to let it show. Strangely, as he stared into Cano’s eyes, they seemed to mirror his own.
Cano had not been to England but he hated the English more than any other nationality outside the Balkans – though that had not always been the case. His was a private hate, one of many. He had been brought up on hate and a lust for revenge. Hate had been a staple part of his educational diet from the day he could understand the concept: as he grew to manhood it had grown with him.
Cano had been born into a vicious conflict that went back hundreds of years. His teachers, neighbours, friends and family made sure that he and all the other youngsters in the commun -ity understood why they should fight and kill for their heritage. The Serbians’ historic entitlement to Kosovo went as far back as the fourteenth century but the Albanians claimed to be descendants of an ancient tribe that had occupied the land before the time of Christ.
The Muslim Albanians profited from a 500-year Turkish occupation insofar as the Ottomans kicked the Christian Serbs out, but just before the First World War the Balkan states united to
drive the invaders away and the Serbian army marched back into Kosovo. During the Great War the Albanians managed to kick them out again, only to be reoccupied by the end of it.
The Second World War saw Kosovo taken over by the Axis powers and the Serbs driven out once again. When Tito came along with plans to unite the Balkans, in order to enlist Albanian support he promised them Kosovo. But that had been a lie and once again the Kosovar Albanians found themselves fighting to govern their homeland.
Two decades later Cano was born. During his youth the Albanian struggle to retain Kosovo had been conducted mostly by political means and at one point had looked like succeeding. Then one Slobodan Milosevic arrived on the scene and practically overnight had stripped the Kosovar Albanians of their autonomy.
The Albanian leadership tried to conduct a peaceful resistance against Milosevic but Cano, now a young man full of strength and vigour, along with many others sought to oppose him with violence. Thus was born the Kosovo Liberation Army in which Cano built his reputation for bloody and merciless cruelty. When the West became involved he welcomed their political and material support: for the first time in his life he truly believed that the day might come when the Kosovar Albanians would see their land returned fully to their control. But when the Serbian army was driven from Kosovo Cano and his colleagues became suspicious about the true intentions of the West.
When NATO began bussing back into Kosovo Serbians who could prove their rightful claims to land the Kosovar Albanians reacted violently. Acting on orders from on high, Cano had been one of many young leaders encouraged to organise operations designed to dissuade the Serbs from returning, a task he embraced with unnatural enthusiasm. His lust for blood was insatiable and no Serb, no matter what their age, gender or political leaning, was safe while they remained in Kosovo.
Cano gained experience in the use of explosives. It became his preferred method of attacking his enemy, and it was after one such deadly ambush that he ran foul of a small group of British SAS troopers. This encounter left him with scars both mental and physi cal, and another private hate for him to nurture.
Cano was very particular about his explosive ambushes: he went to great lengths to calculate the maximum death and destruction that he could inflict. His preferred locations were busy roads with earth banks in which large holes could be dug and filled with ordnance such as artillery shells and mines. There were plenty of those in Kosovo. An electrical deton ator was then attached to a camouflaged command wire that trailed to a point of concealment where Cano and his men could safely hide while simultaneously observing the ambush location. All they needed to do then was wait for a convoy to pass by. Cano tried to avoid hitting NATO vehicles – not that he cared about killing their soldiers. However, some NATO outfits made an effort to find the perpetrators of such ambushes whereas killing just Serbs seemed to provoke little reaction.
One particular afternoon, on seeing a convoy of NATO-protected cars, lorries, tractors and vans winding its way along a valley road towards his ambush spot, Cano selected for destruction several tarp-covered old military trucks in the centre of the column. They were, of course, filled with civilians.
The detonation ripped through the vehicles, shredding their canvas coverings and the occupants. On paper the action did not appear uncommonly spectacular since the report simply described an explosion that killed seven, including two children, and wounded twenty-four. For the survivors who had to deal with the carnage it was horrifying beyond belief. More than a dozen of the wounded died within days of the report, and though none of the NATO escort had been physically hurt, several were later sent home suffering from psychological trauma.
Most of the seriously injured were women and children – faces torn off, burst eyes, numerous ampu tations – and then there were those who had lost their minds. Few sights are more disturbing than a mother holding the shattered body of her child, so utterly bereft that her life has lost all meaning.
Six men from G Squadron 22 SAS, all carrying heavy backpacks and webbing laden with ordnance and equipment, happened to be in the area and arrived at the scene twenty minutes after hearing the explosion. They quickly set about helping the wounded while the team commander, a sergeant, made a security sweep.
It was not long before he found the detonation wire and traced it to the command site in a clump of bushes on the crest of a hill a couple of hundred metres away. The troop’s operational directive was to set up an observation position by dawn the following day in an area several miles away. Since they had ample time, and to a man were appalled by the attack, they agreed to spend the daylight they had left carrying out a follow-up on the off chance of finding the killers.
The tracks from the command post headed across soft, moist ground towards a wood on a crest that overlooked the next valley. It was estimated that there were no more than seven or eight different sets of boot prints. Shortly before last light the team emerged from a wood on the flat valley floor to see the tracks leading towards a small hamlet of half a dozen assorted brick and wooden buildings a quarter of a mile away. The ground was open for several miles beyond, with no sign of life. Having calculated that the team was little more than ten minutes or so behind their quarry, the SAS men thought it was fair to assume the ambushers had stopped in the hamlet.
The SAS troopers spread out as they crossed the open field, weapons ready in their hands, fingers on the guns’ trigger guards, safety catches off. NATO troops had been ambushed in the past by KLA units – wrongly identified as such, according to the
Albanians afterwards – and the troopers were not about to get caught unawares. They traversed a fence and a ditch before closing in again on one of the nearest buildings, a dilapidated breeze-block structure. They went to ground to listen and observe, the first pro cedure on arrival at a target, and remained still, as if they were part of the landscape, not making a sound.
Five minutes later a man walked out of the largest building in the centre of the hamlet, a barn or warehouse with a rotting wooden roof, and stood in the open to urinate. He glanced around as he did his business but not with any great interest, unaware that several pairs of eyes were watching him through telescopic rifle sights. The man’s military fatigues were old and in need of a wash and the shoulder flashes immediately gave him away as a member of the KLA. He was joined by a similarly dressed man from the other side of the hamlet who was carrying firewood. As they went back into the barn-style building the SAS sergeant signalled his team to close in on the structure from two sides. As they reached the corners of the wall where the door through which the men had entered was situated they could hear voices coming from inside.
There was no sentry outside, indicating the group’s lack of professionalism as well as their confidence that they had not been followed. The door was the only entrance to the building: there was no other escape route except for a window at the rear which was high in the wall and more of a vent and source of light than anything else. No one would have time to get through it, anyway.
The troopers removed their large packs, left them in two piles back from the building’s corners, moved forward to gather either side of the door and, after a brief test to check that it was unlocked, on the sergeant’s nod pushed the door open and walked in. They quickly cleared the doorway so as not to be silhouetted in it and spread out along the interior wall their mixture of M203
(M16s with under-slung grenade launchers) and M3 assault rifles levelled as the last man turned to cover the outside just in case an unexpected visitor arrived.
The KLA fighters, seven of them, all men, were sitting around in various states of relaxation and undress, most with their boots off, obviously planning on staying the night, while a couple were lighting a fire in the centre of the dirt floor. Cano was in a far corner, leaning back against a bare breeze-block wall and lighting a slender cheroot when his dark-eyed gaze shot towards the door as it opened.
The Albanians faced the unwelcome intruders, a couple of the KLA men reaching automatically for their weapons. Then they suddenly froze as they realised that these soldiers were NATO – and not run-of-the-mill squaddies, either. This group had a battle-honed maturity about them and a confidence to match. More dangerous even than that, something about their postures and expressions conveyed a willingness to open fire at the slightest provocation.
‘Go ahead,’ said the tall, powerfully built red-headed sergeant, a man whose experience in SAS matters spanned some fifteen years, from Central and South America in the late 1980s and the first Gulf War in the early 1990s to various minor operations since in the Middle East and Africa. ‘This sodding country may be lawless but that works both ways – and no one’s gonna miss you fuckers for a second.’
The Albanians stayed still. Although only a couple of them understood what the English north-countryman with his strong accent had said they all seemed to have got the gist of it.