Prjac, Bosnia, 1992

Earth and glass sifted through a moonless sky. A thick wall of flame some two hundred yards off pinpointed where shell had met target, seconds later a pulse of heat searing its way through an already-sweltering night.

For several moments, everything became strangely quiet. No sound of machine-gun fire, no siren song of incoming rockets, only the sharp taste of gasoline as it began to suffuse the air. A few distant shouts echoed in the open expanse, quickly drowned out by the rising pitch of the blazing school-turned-fuel-depot. It had been an age since children had inhabited the place-six, seven months at least-the entire village reduced to little more than odd mounds of stone. Prjac had never been much of a town to begin with; now it suffered a far more damning fate. Strategic importance, caught between Serbian Banja Luka and Croatian Bosanski Brod. A vital piece of turf.

For the time being.

Ian Pearse stared out into the night. He’d lost ten pounds in the past two months, his six-foot-two frame reduced to taut skin and muscle. Once clean-cropped hair now draped to near shoulder length, pulled back behind his ears, sweat and two weeks without hot water enough to keep the tangled strands in place. Yet his face remained clean-shaven. Somewhere along the way, a shipment of ten thousand safety razors had found its way to the supply dump in Slitna, a substitute for the penicillin they had been begging for. People might be dying, but at least they were well groomed.

“They’re taking the bait.” A whispered voice came from up ahead. “Wait for Josip to draw their fire; then go.”

Prjac’s church-or what was left of it-stood no more than thirty yards from him, its silhouette cast in the glow of flames, two walls, bits and pieces of roof dangling from above. Pearse clutched at the turf under his hands, listening, waiting for the peal of tommy guns. The fuel tank had been a surprise, an added bonus, far more than the diversion they had intended-blow up an old building, draw attention away from the church, away from the three boxes of black-market penicillin they had been told would be inside. A depot, however, required guards, more than they had anticipated. Which meant one or two might still be waiting.

A burst of gunfire, and Pearse leapt out, his torso crouched low as he wove his way toward the church. His legs had grown accustomed to the spongy sod of Bosnian countryside, gelatinous clumps made thick from the summer rains. He did his best to run on tiptoe, every so often his feet slipping out from under him, a quick hand to the ground to steady himself.

No more than fifteen feet from the church, he stumbled again, suddenly face-to-face with two green eyes, the outline of the fire undulating in a pair of lifeless pupils. The man’s neck had been slit. Silent, efficient. Pearse placed his hand on the frozen gaze and shut the eyes. Another wave of gunfire. Somewhere up ahead, two figures darted into the church. Pearse wasted no time racing after them.

Inside, he leaned up against one of the two standing walls, to his left the remnants of Prjac’s lone stained-glass window, pieces jutting out into the night, prismed blues and reds reflecting on the piles of stone scattered about. A second fuel tank ignited in the distance, another wave of stifling air. Instinctively, he pulled back and glanced around the little church; he noticed a few cots against the far wall, blankets, some straw. He wondered how many had taken refuge in the abandoned church, how many had lain here wounded or dying, praying for the trucks to come and cart them off to some imagined hospital, refugee camp-more likely, roadside grave. Muslim and Catholic lying side by side. Waiting.

It was only at moments like these that he let himself see beyond the narrow focus of survival to the real devastation. Thousands upon thousands driven from their homes by their own neighbors, friends, told to take what they could and go. Where? It didn’t matter. Just go. Those lucky enough to get to the border had survived five weeks on foot for a car ride that would have taken less than six hours a month ago-forests, mountains, never the main roads for fear of paramilitaries all too ready to take potshots. And all for the dim hope of cramming themselves into sports halls, warehouses, one blanket per family. Those not so lucky were hunted down, ambushed.

Sometimes in a church.

Pearse tried not to let his mind wander. Instead, he ducked down behind one of the piles of brick and waited. He knew that to grant those thoughts more than a few seconds would have made day-to-day survival impossible; to deny them altogether, though, would have made him numb. And as much as he might still have hoped to reclaim the naive, albeit well-intentioned, convictions that had brought him here, he knew there had to be more to it than that. His faith remained strong. Numb wasn’t a possibility.

Not for someone whose future lay in the church.

His parents had been against it from the start. They were both academics, both good Catholics, but more for the sake of their own parents than for themselves; faith hadn’t really been a part of the calculus.

Except for the rituals. Those, they’d always liked. It’s what he and his two brothers had been brought up on, little in the way of substance, but plenty to fill the calendar. Of course, nothing that might infringe on baseball practice, but there was always something for an altar boy to do, especially for the youngest of three. When he began to notice there wasn’t all that much to it, he hadn’t gotten an argument. “A cultural thing,” Dad had said, “to keep the family together”-which meant, of course, more time with the rituals. When he told them he’d found something even more compelling, again they’d hardly been surprised. After all, the college scouts had made it clear how good he was. Not just at the game, but in the way he played it-with a kind of delight, a wonder. Pearse was at his best when on the field, and everyone knew it. As long as he kept going to church on Sundays, no problem.

When it turned out to be faith, and not baseball, that was inspiring him, his parents had stared, stunned.

“A priest?” his father had said. “Isn’t that a little … too Catholic?”

School had been the first compromise. Notre Dame. He’d gotten the scholarship to play; why not see it through? And, as reluctant as he was to admit it now, the status of gentleman jock had made campus life pretty nice for a while. A few big-league scouts had even come to see him play. Come and gone. Still, everyone had been duly impressed. Especially the young ladies. He hit for power. What could he say?

His major had been the second. He’d originally signed up for theology, but Mom and Dad had convinced him to broaden his horizons. Classics. Now, there was a leap. He’d laughed and acquiesced. But even he had been surprised when he’d begun to show an uncanny facility for Latin and Greek. A special gift, he was told. The folks had been ecstatic. More so when he’d admitted just how much fun he was having in class with a collection of old fragmentary tracts. It was like a game, he said. Filling in the missing pieces of the jigsaw-the words that were never there, the scattered phrases on a parchment that he learned to turn into coherent thoughts. He’d always had a knack for puzzles. Dad had actually laughed.