CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the time Bob was dragged from the Range Rover, he knew he and Yanni were in real trouble. The guards wore a motley assortment of clothing – Serb Army fatigue jackets over a variety of shirts and sweaters and jeans. Two had military campaign caps; the other two wore blue NATO forces baseball caps. They apparently wore whatever they found or stole. They were nothing but bandits.
“Who’s your leader?” Bob asked in English as the bandits dragged him off to the side of the road.
One of the bandits shouted something that Bob thought might be Serbo-Croatian and the other man released Bob’s arm and jabbed the butt of his rifle into Bob’s side. Bob sagged to the ground and groaned, despite his resolve to not show any weakness to these hoodlums.
The bandits then dragged him along the ground and into the trees. He heard the other two bandits laughing and Yanni crying out. The bandits were obviously beating him.
Bob tried to relax, to breathe normally. He offered no resistance while the two men hauled him into the woods. They stood him up against a tree. One man aimed his rifle at Bob while the other one leaned his rifle against another tree and searched Bob. He found the money belt and stripped it from around Bob’s waist, and then, laughing, waved it at his partner. He tossed the money belt by his rifle and grabbed a length of rope hanging over a branch.
The bandit looped the rope around Bob’s chest and then around the tree, but suddenly stopped when a voice from the road yelled something, and then Bob heard the sound of a car engine.
The man with the rifle looked over a shoulder toward the road. In that instant, Bob leaped forward, jerking the rope from the hands of one bandit, and lashing out with his foot kicking him in the crotch. The Serb bandit screamed and fell, dropping his weapon and holding his private parts. The other guard came around the tree at him, but Bob snatched the first guard’s rifle from the ground and swung the weapon at the second man’s head. Then he used the rifle to club the other one.
Bob snatched up the money belt and stuffed it inside his jacket, and then ran in a crouch back toward the Range Rover. Over the vehicle’s hood, he saw the other two bandits dragging Yanni into heavy brush on the far side of the road. Fifty yards up the road, a car rolled slowly toward the checkpoint.
Bob saw the bandits dump Yanni in the brush and then move back to the barrier blocking the road. They leveled their rifles at the approaching vehicle, which stopped just feet behind the Range Rover, and moved forward, one on each side, as they had before. Suddenly, the sound of automatic weapons firing shattered the night; muzzle flashes lit up the second car’s interior. The bandits were blown backward and fell to the ground.
The occupants of the car got out and quickly inspected the bodies. They fired bursts from their automatic weapons into the bandits. They then emptied the dead men’s pockets and dragged their bodies into the woods.
Bob gripped the bandit’s rifle and felt the comforting weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket. He had the option of melting back into the forest. But he couldn’t abandon Yanni. He stepped out from behind the Range Rover and shouted, “Do you speak English?”
Three men from the second vehicle pointed their weapons at Bob. He dropped the rifle and raised his arms in the air. “Hold it! I’m a Canadian reporter.”
An elderly man with sharp, hawk-like features stepped forward. “Your papers,” he demanded in English tinged with a mild Slavic accent..
Bob slowly lowered one hand, reached inside his jacket for his Greg Davis passport, and handed it over to the man, who scanned the document in the light from the second car’s headlights and looked back at Bob.
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EVIL DEEDS
Mystery / ThrillerEvil Deeds is the first in a 4-book series that follows the Danforth family from the kidnapping of their 2-year-old son in Greece in 1971 to present day. The book (and series) is a roller coaster ride of action and suspense. This book, as with all o...
