Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,85

grenade had gone off right by his ear and had scorched that side of his face to leave scaly burns and webs of scarring. Flea, the best sniper in the KLA, was named because of his disproportionally small head. Worm because of his tall and lanky build and the way he crawled across the ground when out in the field. And Spider because of the tattoos on his body. He had two large black-widows inked on his elbows, the webs spreading all the way up his arms.

Wulf had been born in Albania, but had moved to Kosovo as a four year old boy. It was a humble place to grow up - farming country, tough land and cold weather. He had matured early, forced to fend for himself. He remembered the first time he killed a man. The thief was trying to steal some cattle from his grandparent's farm, in the middle of the night. With no time to alert his grandfather, Wulf had taken his .22 rifle, loaded it and shot the man through the forehead from his bedroom window. By the time he was nineteen, he was an integral part of the Black Panthers, the Special Forces team that carried out the toughest of assignments for the KLA. By the time he was twenty two, he was leading them, Spider his second in command. When the war broke out, he and his team had been ordered by the KLA command to bring the fight to the Serbs, to take back what was theirs. They operated in the Drenica valley, mostly at night, roaming in the darkness and shadows as they hunted the Serbs, often not returning to the main KLA camp for weeks at a time. During the war they had inflicted hundreds of fatalities on the enemy, but Wulf had never lost a single man, something he took immense pride in. The only real casualty had been to Bug when that grenade went off. But he had survived. These were his men, his sons, his brothers. He would die in an instant for them, and he knew they would do the exact same for him.

Before long, the war had started to swing in the KLA’s favour. They had support from NATO and they had hammered the Serbs, pushing them back towards Belgrade. Wulf and his team were a big reason why the KLA offensive was so successful, and word had quickly spread, their legend and reputation growing not only on their side but with the enemy. However, Wulf wasn’t a stupid man. He knew the war wouldn’t last forever, that he and his men couldn’t spend the rest of their lives out there on the plains, hunting down Serbs and being paid close to nothing by the army command. Kosovo was not an area of wealth. There was nothing to steal, and no one to bribe, and as their offensive had started pushing the Serbs back, Wulf had wracked his brains trying to think of a way he could ensure his men were sufficiently compensated for all their efforts in the war.

And one day, in December 1998, he had found it.

Or more correctly, it found him.

He and his team had just returned from four days out in the field, performing hit and run raids on Serb outposts and camps, and Wulf had seen the headlights of a car approaching them on the dust track that led to their makeshift camp. He had raised a bazooka to his shoulder, ready to fire if the vehicle came any closer, but the driver had stopped eighty yards away so as not to draw fire. A man in a white doctor’s coat had stepped out then began walking over to the camp, his hands in the air, making a point that he wasn’t a threat. Seven sub-machine guns and a bazooka pointed at him, the small man had moved into their camp and approached Wulf, asking him to take a walk with him.

He had a proposition for him.

Once the man was frisked and checked for weapons, Wulf had lowered the bazooka and grabbing his Kalashnikov, turned and walked with the small man, dwarfing him as they strolled side-by-side away from the camp and out of earshot.

The doctor began the conversation by explaining who he was. A University graduate who had been fired from his job when the war had started, due to being Albanian. He had retreated into Kosovo and been left broke and out of work. With the war breaking