Retribution

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The girl slithered over the wire like a silver fish, her thin cotton dress plastered to her body by the driving rain. Globules of water shook loose from the mesh as she climbed, plummeting to the earth around her, a contrasting flicker of tiny jewels against the mud, gravel and coarse grass.

Thirty metres behind her lay a dense treeline of spiky conifers. Beyond that, high in the hills, her brother was in hiding, close to death after a severe beating by a drunken Serb militiaman. She didn’t dare approach the hospital for help, didn’t trust the international military mission called KFOR that was supposed to be keeping the peace, or any of the local residents.

All she could do was come down here and climb the fence, to see what she could find to help make his last few days bearable.

She crouched, scanning the compound. It was lit by a tall gantry mounted with six floodlights, the glare pushing back the encircling gloom and highlighting the curtain of solid rain that had been falling relentlessly for over an hour. To one side stood a clump of low, interconnected huts, dimly lit. Across the way a clutch of shipping containers formed a tall barrier against the cold, barren hills half a mile away. Mitrovica, the nearest town, was out of sight, a forbidding place of whispers and certain danger.

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