Fifth installment

He completely ignored me, sat down and spoke to one of the other people and he drank a cup of coffee, this was my first meeting with Ron, he was one of the people that I would get to know very well over the coming months. The door opened and in walked a young woman fairly attractive in her uniform and to make her more interesting to me she spoke perfect english. She introduced herself and then Ron as her commander, she asked me a few questions like what experience I had and where I was from, what I wanted and how I came to Osijek, I explained everything to her and she translated, she turned back to me that Ron was going to take me to another place where I was able to join up with an international unit that was based just outside Osijek, a couple of kilometers from the front line right into the firing line, after all that was what I wanted. Everything was now falling into place and I hoped nothing would get in my way now. We got up and the woman told me to follow Ron to his car, I hoped that he was not going to bring his dogs with him, I would be safer walking, as it happened he put in the room next door,"thank God for that, I would rather be shot than savaged to death by them" I thought to myself, this was the beginning of a hate relationship between the hell hounds and me. We walked towards a green Lada which was a typical communist car, cheap and nasty, I got in and waited for Ron, he got in and off we went, at least it was better than walking. We drove off and turned right until we came to traffic lights that were not working just like a lot of other things in Osijek, everywhere the buildings were damaged in some way. There was a large white building ahead on our left, we turned into the courtyard and stopped, a guard checked Ron's I.d. card and we continued and stopped alongside a different building. There was broken glass everywhere, the whole of the first floor was sandbagged which led me to think that this was an important place because of the way it was defended. There was also telecommunications tower next to it, perhaps this was the communication center, I didn't know I was just guessing but I would find out shortly. Inside we went me just following like a lost dog, we went behind the sandbags and into the building where I was told to put my bergan down and wait. The woman and Ron went off and after a few minutes came back and told me that they had been in contact with the commander of the international unit and he would arrive shortly and I would just have to be patient, I didn't care as long as I was accepted into the unit. It was beginning to get boring so I looked at the newspapers on the table beside me, of course I couldn't read them but the pictures were interesting. When I finished I started to walk around like a prostitute waiting for the next client. Then the door opened and in walked two shortish men, they both had headbands on and looked like they needed a bath and shave. The first man everybody seemed to know and the other carried a sawn off shot gun with brown tape wrapped around it, was this the commander of the unit I was supposed to join, what had I left myself in for, he spoke to the guard while looking at me and I knew that they were talking about me,

"what you see is what you get" I muttered to myself.