Chapter 25. Tunnel
Present day. Guadalajara, Mexico.
Matteo Graciano, the lead scientist on the terrorist team, went back to his lab to study the tissue samples under the microscope. He felt dull and cold. He knew the world would someday call him a monster, but he didn’t care. His soul was dead. It had died a long time ago when he was just a child. His dark resolve was reprieved by a quick happy thought of the days when he was young. Graciano thought of his two brothers and sister, playing in a beautiful vineyard many thousands of miles away.
Three happy boys, laughing, stomped again and again in the wooden cask. Their feet were caked with wet, lime green mush, and grape skins stuck to their calves like leeches. They each wore no shirts, and little khaki shorts. Two of the boys were twins. The other brother was a year older. One of the twins shoved his doppelganger, throwing him into the green mush at the bottom of the cask. The fallen brother laughed, got up and wrestled his twin until he too was covered in juice. Their mother Liliya watched from their front porch, smiling and knitting. Their sister Marastina sat at their mother’s feet, twirling a daisy in her fingers and basking in the sunshine of this beautiful day. She was the little princess, everyone’s favorite, with long, curly black hair, dimples and big, blue eyes. The boys would run through the fields with their sister and play hide-and-go-seek. They would pull wildflowers and daisies and put them in her hair. There was nothing they would not do for her.
Graciano’s resolve tightened again when his thoughts of happier times were interrupted by memories of the cruelty of the Serbian soldiers. He went back to his methodical work in the lab. He had to finish the work on the samples.
1991. Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a communist country established in 1963, was formerly located along the Adriatic Sea just across from the east side of Italy, with Greece to the south and Austria to the north. It was composed of six Socialist Republics, from north to south along the Adriatic coastline: SR Slovenia, SR Croatia, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Montenegro, SR Serbia and SR Macedonia. In 1984, the country's capital city, Sarajevo, was on the world stage as host of the Winter Olympics. But in the years that followed, the country's pre-existing ethnic and religious conflicts came to a boil. The country had three principal ethnic groups, each of which hated the others: the Serbs, who were primarily Orthodox Christian like their Greek neighbors, and lived mainly in the south, the Croats to the north, who were primarily Roman Catholic, and the Bosniaks in the middle, who were primarily Muslim.
In June, 1991, the northernmost province, Slovenia, declared its independence from Yugoslavia, causing a civil war. Shortly thereafter, Croatia, the next province to the south, declared its independence. In the Catholic country of Croatia, Serbs made up about twelve percent of the population. Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader who controlled the Yugoslavian Army, attacked Croatia, ostensibly to "protect" the Serbian minority living within Croatia.
None of this conflict had yet impacted the life of Yuriy Gurdic, a Catholic Croat, who lived with his wife and four children on a small farm in Makarska, a beautiful Croatian coastal town, nestled between the Adriatic Sea and the grand Biokovo Mountains. In 1991, Yuriy lived a peaceful and happy life with his family, growing grapes for a local vineyard. This area of the Mediterranean had warm, humid summers and mild winters. The weather, along with the rich red soil in the shadow of the Biokovo Mountains, was perfect for growing grapes. In fact, Croatia was the original home of the very first Zinfandel. Gurdic's sweet grapes were only used for white wines, and he was excellent at his craft. He taught the skill to his oldest boy, Debit, the twins Gegic and Rkatsiteli, and his daughter, Marastina. His four black-haired, big-eyed children were named after varieties of Croatian grapes.
Yuriy loved to stand out in the fields with his boys, looking at over a mile of wooden stakes and winding vines, with the big mountain rising on the horizon under a bright blue sky. He felt the vines in his hands and rubbed the soil between his fingers. He felt like he knew these plants as if they were family members. When he finished spraying the leaves with water, he would sit down among the plants, watching the pellets of water lingering on the shiny green leaves, waiting to be absorbed into the veins. His boys would love to smash the white grapes under their bare feet, pushing and shoving each other in the wine barrels, falling in the gooey grape mush below. Far away on the porch, his wife Liliya would watch, with Marastina at her feet, knitting socks in her rocking chair.
For eight year-old Debit, and the seven year-old twins Gegic and Rkatsiteli, life in Makarska was a wonderful adventure. When they weren't helping their father, they liked to run. They would start out early in the morning, just as the sun peaked over the mountain, and run up into the hills. They hoped someday to be on their country's Olympic Marathon team. Debit sometimes ran by himself, because he did not like the other two slowing him down. But running was a lonely sport, and it was nice to have his brothers along. Debit would often pick a seven- mile wooded route, which included a two-mile detour around a sunflower field. His brothers would run the five-mile route, without the detour, and the three would have bets between them as to who could finish first. Unlike most children their age, all three were very healthy eaters, enjoying the fish their father would bring home from the market. In the afternoon, they would help their father in the fields, and at night, they would listen around the fireplace as their mother told stories about Greek heroes. Debit was excited about his Communion ceremony, which was to take place in the fall. He had begun studying the Bible with his mother at night, preparing for the big day. Dinner was always accompanied by a bottle of wine. The boys had begun drinking wine at an early age.
The scientist who came to the fields in June 1991 called it the Grapevine Fanleaf Virus or GFLV. The scientist told Yuriy that GFLV is a virus which attacks grape leaves. It is spread by a small parasitic roundworm called a nematode. Yuriy Gurdic had never heard of this tiny creature or its virus. Years later, he would reflect that it was remarkable that a creature so tiny could be single-handedly responsible for wreaking devastation on his whole family and way of life. In 1991, the virus wiped out his entire crop. Although it was obviously not his fault, Yuriy was fired by the vineyard, and no one else in the town would hire him. Gegic, Rkatsiteli and their younger sister did not understand what it all meant, but Debit knew right away. It meant their family would not be able to eat. Debit was frustrated that there did not seem to be anything he could do to help his father. He had no idea how to cure a plant virus. Each night, he would watch his father's long face and hear his heavy sighs. Debit was distressed. There was nothing he could do to help his father. His mother often cried when she thought no one was looking.
Desperate for work to support his large family, Yuriy sought work in neighboring towns. He was unable to find a decent job until August 1991, when Yuriy's brother told him about a construction company that was hiring in Sarajevo, which was located in the neighboring province of Bosnia-Herzegovenia. Yuriy took the family's pickup truck, and towing a trailer of their worldly goods behind them, made way for Sarajevo. Debit, riding in the back of the pickup with his brothers, his wavy black hair blowing across his forehead, looked with longing at the green hills. Gegic and Rkatsiteli had long faces, too. They would not be able to run the hills anymore. They would have to leave all of their friends. Marastina huddled under a blanket in her mother's lap in the front seat and closed her eyes, afraid of what was ahead. Gegic started to cry, and Debit told him to be quiet. It would all be okay, he assured him.
Yuriy would be taking his Catholic family to a town filled with Muslims. His wife had never met a Muslim before and heard horrible stories from her own mother. But Yuriy assured her that Muslims were no different than anyone else. Yuriy did not fear reprisal from other ethnic groups in Sarajevo because Sarajevo long held the reputation as a center of religious and cultural diversity, and was once called the Jerusalem of the Balkans. If there was anywhere where multiple ethnic groups could live and work in peace, it was Sarajevo.
Yuriy got a two-bedroom apartment in the city, and he got a job as a carpenter. The boys did not like living in the city. There was nowhere good to run. The city streets were paved, and running for long periods on the streets gave them shin splints. The city was smoggy and dirty. They enjoyed the countryside, where they could run and play, and the sea, where they could swim and look for shells. But Marastina, their sister, liked Sarajevo enough, and enjoyed going on long walks through the city with her mother. Yuriy was like his sons. He missed the fresh air in his nostrils, the rich soil in his toes, and the feel of the grape leaves. This job was sheer drudgery. It was also frustrating building other people's homes when Yuriy could not afford a decent home for his own family.
During this time, Debit became convinced that the way to get out of Sarajevo and return back to their home in Makarsa was to solve the problem of the plant virus. He was convinced that if he found a cure for the plant virus, they could simply return home in the spring, spray some kind of insecticide, and then replant new grapes. So he obtained books from the Sarajevo Public Library on biology, viruses, plants, and agriculture. Many nights he stayed up late, reading the books by candlelight, trying to figure out a way to cure the plant virus for the next year's crop. He ran in the mornings, but his stamina was not nearly as good as it used to be. The small family stayed in Sarajevo for seven months until the political landscape drastically changed.
On March 3, 1992, the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovenia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and all hell broke loose. Milosevic, citing the need to "protect" the Serb minority in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province which was 32% Serb, sent his armies throughout Bosnia, on a quest to kill every Croat and Bosniak Muslim who was encountered. One of the first stops of Milosevic's army was Sarajevo. By early March, Serb paramilitaries reporting to Milosevic had established barricades and sniper positions near Sarajevo's parliament building, with the hope of assassinating Bosnian leaders. On April 5, 1992, Yuriy Gurdic, his wife Liliya, and his four children joined a crowd of 75,000 pacifists composed of all ethnic groups, and took to the streets of Sarajevo to protest Milosevic's actions. They waved banners and chanted for freedom and independence. As they got near the parliament building, Milosevic snipers who were perched in a tall building gunned down two of the peace marchers, Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić, in cold blood. The crowd panicked and began dashing everywhere. Debit and Gegic got separated from their parents in the mad crowd. The two boys dove behind some construction barrels and hid for three hours, with the sound of gunshots ringing out over their heads. Yuriy and Liliya found their terrified youngsters just before dark and took them home. From that point on, the children were terrified to leave their apartment, and spent much of their time huddled in their bedrooms.
The international community was outraged by the sniper attack. On April 6, 1992, twelve European nations recognized the sovereign independence of Bosnia-Herzegovenia. The United States followed the next day.
Undeterred by the international coalition of revulsion against him, Milosevic directed his army to press on, and began a siege of the capital city. Members of the Bosnian Army living in Sarajevo who were of Serbian descent abandoned the local military and formed a new army loyal to Milosevic called the Bosnian Serb Army, or VRS, which was placed under the control of a vicious and violent general named General Ratko Mladić. Mladić's forces then captured the Sarajevo airport. On May 2, 1992, the new army established blockades of every entrance to the city of Sarajevo. They cut off roads, interrupted shipments of food and medicine, and shut off all water, electricity, and heat. The initial plan was to invade and conquer the city, but opposing forces inside the city were too great, so Mladić decided instead to wait out the occupants of the city, cutting off their means of support, forcing them to live in deplorable conditions, and shelling the capital city with hundreds of mortar shells each day. No building was safe. Walking in the streets risked slaughter from a mortar shell or a sniper's rifle. Certain streets were known by residents as "sniper alleys." No one could safely go to work, religious services, or school. Citizens were trapped like prisoners in their own homes, uncertain when a random mortar shell would hit their own house or apartment. Signs with the warning, "Pazite, Snaiper!" or "Beware Sniper" began appearing all over the city. One couple who was friends with Yuriy and Liliya Gurdic, Admira Ismić and Boško Brkić, were gunned down in the street by snipers when they attempted to cross barricades to get water.
Yuriy was one of the few people in the city who still came and went to a job. Because he was in the construction business, he was often called upon to work stabilizing buildings which had been attacked by mortar fire. For this hazardous work, the government gave him some limited food, usually some vegetables grown in gardens within the city. So he was able for several months to keep his family from the brink of starvation, but just barely. He could see families dying all around him. The city would not last much longer. His wife was growing increasingly desperate. When he returned home, he found his wife crying and his four children lying on the floor, dirty and exhausted from malnutrition. He had to do something, but he believed it was just too dangerous to leave Sarajevo.
One day in December 1992, Yuriy was working on the eighth floor of a building in the Dobrinja neighborhood, near the airport, on the outskirts of town. He was working aloft on a girder. This entire section of building had been blown apart by a mortar shell. One wrong move and he would fall eight stories below, but Yuriy had grown used to working at heights. The cold wind hit his cheeks. He was an iron stump of a man, solid, well-built, with big arms, buzz cut and a manly nose. Cold winds did not bother him. He reached in his pocket for his only food for the day, a handful of grapes. A soot-filled cloud of smoke enveloped the entire town. What a great city this once was. He could not believe that his own President would attack their capital city. He put his hand on a blown out section of drywall, inspecting the work that needed to be done. As he stood on the beam, he could see all the Serbian tanks perched on the edge of the blockade barrier. As he scanned across the Sarajevo Airport below, he saw at the far end of town the rooftops of the neighboring village of Butmir. The Airport in the last few months had been won back from the Milosevic's Yugoslavian People's Army by the United Nations Protection Force, so the airport was safe, neutral ground. If he could just cross the airfield and get to Butmir, his family would be safe. The only problem was that the only route to the airport was across a large open meadow that was regularly targeted by dozens of Serbian snipers. Yuriy had heard of families trying to cross the field to avoid starvation who were gunned down by snipers, but a few people had made it at night. Ultimately, Yuriy knew he would have to cross that field some night with his family. He did not know how he would cross with a woman and four children and avoid getting shot.
He put the sour grapes in his mouth. They were terrible, nothing like his grapes. He thought of the warm, red soil in his home town, of tilling the earth with his plow. No wonder these grapes were bad. The soil here was probably terrible. Yuriy looked at the open meadow below, trying to figure out how to cross it safely. Then a synapse triggered. The soil. Digging the soil. What if they could build a tunnel under the field to the airport? What if he tunneled under the field and the airport runway all the way to Butmir? It couldn't be that far, could it? Yuriy was used to measuring distances, both from his work in construction and his experience in the vineyards. He gazed out across the runway again from his eight-story perch. Hell, it wasn't even a mile. Maybe three thousand feet from the edge of the field to the back side of the runway. Yuriy did some mental math. If they could get enough volunteers, the digging would probably take six months, tops. And if they could get some friends on the Butmir side to dig from there, it might only take four months. Where could they go in? Yuriy looked down. There, near the edge of the field, was a small two-story apartment building at the end of a dirt road. If they put the entrance to the tunnel in his garage, no one would see them working. They could bring out the dirt in wheelbarrows, just like The Great Escape, one of Yuriy's favorite movies. He could be Charles Bronson, the Tunnel King!
Excited, Yuriy ran down the steps of the damaged building, out the entrance and down the street to his apartment building. Grabbing out some butcher block paper, he began to sketch plans for the tunnel's construction. Debit asked him what he was doing, and Yuriy explained his idea to his son, showing him the penciled-in plan for the tunnel's construction. Debit looked at the two entrances to the tunnel, one on their side of the meadow and the other on the far edge of the airport runway. Yuriy had drawn a straight line between the two points. Debit thought about the map for a moment and bit his lip. He was a very bright boy, and loved a good puzzle.
"I don't think you should have the tunnel go in a straight line like that," said Debit.
"Why not?" asked Yuriy, frowning. He was very excited about his idea. What did his son know about construction?
"Well, what if the Serbs find out about the entrances to the tunnel?” asked Debit. "Won't they figure the tunnel runs in a straight line, and then bomb along here to cave in the tunnel?" Debit took the pencil and drew X's along the line. "What if you built it like this?" Debit drew an L-shape, with the line going out wide from the first entrance at a 45 degree angle, and then back to the far entrance.
Yuriy looked at his drawing again. If they did not build the tunnel in a straight line, it would take much longer to build. But Debit had a point. The Serbs were bound to find out about the tunnel sooner or later. Yuriy took his pencil and erased the line he had drawn before. He rubbed his son's head of black hair and smiled at him.
"You are so smart! I like your idea! This is what we will call it. Debit's Tunnel!"
Debit glowed with pride at his father's praise. It was one of the happiest moments of his life. Yuriy finished the sketches and then turned in for the night.
Two nights later, in the kitchen of a small home near the airport, there was an important meeting. Tito Rahmanovic, Colonel of the Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine, or Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovenia (AbiH), liked Yuriy Gurdic's plan. He looked at the large map spread out across the wooden table. Wearing green army fatigues, a light blue shoulder patch with crossed swords, and a black beret, the white-haired colonel pointed to a spot on the map on the far side of the runway.
"This is Bajro Kolar's house." He marked the spot with an X. "It is the closest house to the airfield. He has a wine cellar which is very big. That will be a perfect entry point from the far side. Three of our troops snuck across the field last night and spoke to Mr. Kolar and his eighteen year-old son. They are quite enthusiastic about the idea. It seems they have friends in the city, too. The ABiH can collect the wood and steel you need. Our soldiers have all agreed to work in eight-hour shifts, around the clock, to get this job done."
Alija Izetbegovic, the President of the new Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovenia, was seated at the table in his wheelchair. He liked the idea, too. But would the tunnel fit a wheelchair?
"We need to make sure the tunnel is wide enough. You have a height of 1.5 meters. I think that should be sufficient. But your width is only 0.75 meters. That will certainly not fit a wheelchair. Some of our citizens are disabled. How will we get them out? And if we could fit the tunnel with wooden or metal rails, that would help. If we are going to ship supplies back through the tunnels, we will need to roll them on carts. If we have a rail system, it will make transport of supplies through the tunnel easier."
The Colonel considered the request. "I think what you are saying makes sense, Mr. President. Dado, what do you think?"
The tall, skinny engineer with wire-rimmed glasses looked at the cross-sectional drawing of the tunnel. "Yes, of course, we can widen it to one meter, that will be fine. But there is a reason I made it only 0.75 meters. Just before you get to the half-way mark of the field, there is a live electric wire with tens of thousands of volts running through it. And on the other side is an oil pipeline. We do not want to get our people electrocuted or have the tunnel flooded with oil."
The Colonel considered the problem. "Is there a way we could shield those without sacrificing the full one meter?"
"No, not really." said the engineer. "We can put up a thin sheet of plywood barricading the cable, but it is still going to be very dangerous."
"Any other place to go?" asked the Colonel?
"No, that's it," said the engineer.
"OK. We will just have to put huge warning signs there for people," said the Colonel. "I have a tactical question," said the Colonel. "You have the tunnel going to the left here and then cutting back to the right. Why don't we have a straight line from the apartment complex to Kolar's house? It will take more time to build it your way."
Yuriy spoke up. "Here is why I drew it that way. We are going to keep a lid on this thing for as long as we can. But eventually, the JNA is going to figure out we have a tunnel. They are going to assume, as you just did, that we have a straight line from point A to point B. So they will shell the field at every point along that line, in the hopes of caving in the tunnel. If we go out to an angle like this, they will miss the tunnel."
The Colonel nodded his head. "I like it."
The men continued to talk about specifics of tunnel construction.
For the next four months, Yuriy, members of his construction crew, volunteers from the ABiH, and other strong, male volunteers from the town worked in eight-hour shifts digging the Sarajevo Tunnel, installing metal supports, shoring the sides with wooden timbers, and installing the metal rails along the floor boards. Gasoline lanterns hung on posts through the tunnel. Work on the far side proceeded at a slower pace, because volunteers intending to work on the tunnel from the Kolar cellar could only cross the field and the airstrip at night. The volunteers would dash about twenty feet and then hit the dirt, as beacons of light shined over their heads. Then they would dash another twenty feet and hit the dirt again. On two occasions during the four months that followed, volunteers were spotted with the lights crossing the field and shot with machine gun fire.
One night in early April 1993, Yuriy was working on the tunnel from the Dobrinja side, hacking away with his pick axe, when he heard a scraping noise. He stopped for a moment and looked at the wall of black earth in front of him. Suddenly the tip of a shovel thrust its way through the dirt towards him. Yuriy jumped back, astonished. He saw a small hole and heard noise from the other side. He yelled, "Is that you?"
"Yes!" the voice from the other side shouted. Furiously, the two men began scraping away the thin wall of dirt that separated them. Within twenty minutes, Yuriy was staring at another man with a shovel, covered in dirt. They gave each other a huge bear hug in the small space.
"Comrade, I have never been happier to see anyone in my whole life!" smiled Yuriy.
"And I you!" said the other man, laughing.
The two men shored up the remaining space with timbers. Yuriy then exited the tunnel on the Butmir side and walked all the way into the wine cellar. As he came out of the entry into the wine cellar, Bajro Kolar handed him a glass of white wine.
"Welcome to Butmir!" Kolar grinned. Yuriy tasted the white wine, which was far inferior to any wine he had ever made in his home town, but no wine ever tasted better than the wine he drank that night in Bajro Kolar's cellar. Yuriy made small talk with Kolar for a few minutes and then walked back for an hour through the tunnel to the Dobrinja side. Excited that the tunnel was finished, he headed home to see his wife and children.
Present day. Guadalajara, Mexico.
Terrorist Matteo Graciano looked up from his microscope and smiled, as he remembered proudly his father’s work on the Sarajevo Tunnel and his brother’s hand in the design. Graciano was a better person then, he thought, a more moral person. He thought about his First Communion ceremony which had never come to fruition. He had never gotten to take the host in his mouth. Graciano thought of Jesus--healer, preacher, protector of the innocent. Innocent. Graciano thought about the word “innocent” as he went back to his work. The thoughts of guilt returned, but he pushed them back into a far corner of his brain.