decided to shift our direction to the east.”
“Did you discuss that with anyone in the team?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Is that a definite no?”
“I can’t remember every detail I said to everyone. We were being stalked by a large Serbian unit. Things were happening fast.”
“A large Serbian unit? I’m sure you said it was a small surveillance team. How did it suddenly become large?”
“I made a reasonable assumption. We knew we’d been detected, and it just seemed logical that the Serbs would’ve thrown more men into hunting us down.”
“Why?”
“Because the Serbs would’ve loved to kill or capture an American A-team. The whole focus of America’s strategy in this thing is to avoid losing any men. Everybody knows that. The Serbs sure as hell know it. The American people have a very low interest in what’s happening here. Casualties would wreck everything. Look what happened in Somalia.”
I couldn’t argue against that. “How far behind you was the Serbian unit?” I asked.
“How would I know? They were behind us, that’s all I knew.”
“But you said several trip flares went off. If the flares went up into the sky, you must’ve been able to judge the distance they were behind you.”
He looked at me a moment before he answered. Like most folks, he wasn’t used to being interrogated and obviously wasn’t enjoying the experience.
“I didn’t see them go off.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. I was busy leading the unit. I was reading the map and compass and watching ahead.”
“Then how did you learn the warning flares went off?”
“Someone told me.”
“Who told you?”
“I don’t remember.”
Now it was my turn to stare at him. I worked my face into as much disbelief as I could summon and stayed silent. He stared back until he grew uncomfortable.
He finally said, “Look, the word was passed up the file, I guess. I don’t remember exactly who told me.”
I stayed quiet another moment, but he decided not to embellish any further. “Okay,” I said, “what did you do then?”
“We walked the rest of the day, zigzagging so our route wasn’t predictable. We could see dust columns over the treetops, and occasionally we heard the sounds of vehicles off in the distance.”
“And what did you interpret that to mean?” I asked.
“The Serbs were moving mobile forces around to try to trap us.”
“Did you discuss that with any team members?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I remember discussing it with Chief Persico, my team deputy.”
“But you still didn’t make any radio reports back to Tenth Group headquarters?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We were moving fast. Things were happening quickly. Besides, what could they do about it?”
“Provided an aerial recon to let you know your situation. Offered you air cover. Maybe even mounted an aerial extraction to get you out of there.”
He had not expected me to answer that question so spontaneously and appeared nettled for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Look, I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking that clearly at the moment. I was just trying to get my team out alive.”
“Maybe,” I said back, just to let him know I wasn’t buying it.
“Besides, I was worried about the Serbs intercepting a radio transmission. They would’ve vectored in and known exactly where we were.”
“I thought they already knew exactly where you were. You were being followed, right?”
“No, I said I assumed they knew where we were. I was told trip flares had gone off, but that didn’t mean they knew exactly where we were.”
The expression on Sanchez’s face was becoming flustered. All of these questions about flares were obviously beginning to unhinge him. Which was exactly what I wanted. If I could divert him away from the canard he and his team had obviously prepared, and force him to start ad-libbing, we’d have our opening.
“Okay, go on,” I told him.
He took a moment to compose himself, then said, “We kept running all day. I hoped that after it grew dark we could turn south again and try and head for the border. Around midnight we drew into a perimeter. We could still hear vehicles moving on the roads around us, so we knew the Serbs were intensifying their search. Then, at around two, another trip flare went off, about a mile away. That’s when I decided.”
“Decided what?” I asked him.
“We had to ambush a Serb column.”
“And why did you decide that?”
“Because we had to get the Serbs’ attention. We couldn’t outrun them. They were building a noose around us. We had to force them to be as cautious as they were forcing us to be. Do you understand that?”
“No,” I said. “Please explain it more clearly.”
“Look, this was their territory. They felt safe. They were moving around at full speed, chasing us on foot, trying to block us with men in vehicles. If I didn’t find some way to make them slow down, they were going to get us.”
“And you figured what? An ambush would make that happen?”
“Sure. They had to know we were dangerous. If they kept acting sloppy, we’d make them pay for it.”
“Didn’t your orders say you were only allowed to kill in self-defense?”
“This was self-defense,” he insisted, like it was indisputable.
“So you set an ambush?”
“Right. I decided to hit them at first light. I used the map to pick a spot on the road where there was a double curve with hills on both sides. We moved for about another hour and were in position by around four in the morning. Then we set up the ambush and waited. Every now and again a vehicle passed by, but we let them go through. Then, around six-thirty, a column with about six vehicles came into the killzone and we unleashed.”
“Why did you pick that particular column?”
“Because it was larger. I wanted the Serbs to think we were bigger than an A-team. I wanted them to think there were maybe thirty or forty of us. If we only hit a single vehicle, they might have realized they were only dealing with a small team.”
“But if they’d already spotted you, and they were following you, don’t you think they already had some idea of the size of your unit?”
“That’s exactly the point. I believed they did, and I wanted to make them question that. They had no way of knowing if there was one team or three dozen teams operating in our sector. I figured that if we took on a large column, they might think there were more of us than they’d originally thought.”
“And how long did the ambush take?”
“I don’t know for sure… maybe five minutes, maybe a little longer.”
“Describe it.”
“It was just a standard L-shaped ambush. We planted two command-detonated anti-armor mines in the road to blow the lead vehicle and stop the column. We set up a daisy chain of claymore mines along the opposite side of the road that we blew after the troops emptied out of the trucks and were taking cover behind their vehicles. Then we raked the column with M16s and machine guns for a few minutes. Then we left.”
That answered why so many of the corpses back in Belgrade had their backs shredded with claymore pellets.
