It was time to leave the Yugoslav army compound and return to the Grand Hotel in Pristina. An extended unexplained absence from the hotel would draw too much attention from authorities.
On the way back, again travelling in an unmarked white commercial van, the vehicle came under sniper fire from KLA soldiers hidden in the brush. With a cry of "Schiptar!", the Yugoslav soldiers returned a volley of bullets from their Kalashnikovs. It was an unsettling five minutes.
In the war zone that is Kosovo, the line between civilian targets and military targets seems to have vanished. When NATO says its planes are only aiming at military targets, it seems absurd. With soldiers and ammunition ensconced in hotels, schools and shops, how can they know a target is strictly military? Ordinary cars on the road are filled with soldiers. A large Coca Cola truck drives by, its interior filled with soldiers and equipment.
The Yugoslav side maintains that NATO is actually trying to kill civilians. This also seems questionable. But the fact is that, whatever the motives, a large number of civilians are being killed and injured.
Each morning in Kosovo you awake - if you have slept at all after a night of heavy bombing - to learn if the Serb authorities will be providing an escort to the site of the latest bombing that caused civilian casualties. It is strange on some mornings, when you have listened to bombs pounding targets for several hours, seen plumes of smoke rising over the hillsides at dawn, that no tour is offered.
You can only conclude that NATO hit its targets without killing civilians.
But other mornings are like this one. Reporters are to be taken to an area near Urosevac, where we will visit the site of a NATO cluster-bomb attack on a welding factory. The bombs missed, Serb officials said, and instead hit an adjacent Albanian village, destroying 10 homes and injuring seven people.
Indeed that did seem to be the case. The distinctive craters of cluster bombs marked the grounds of the settlement. The round holes pocked a vegetable/herb garden, releasing an incongruous aroma of onions and chives among the debris. Roofs were shattered, and one family showed how the bomb landed in the centre of their living room near the television.
"We saw it coming," an older woman named Isha said. "There were five people in the living room earlier that morning. The cluster bombs rained down. All of the injured have been taken to hospital."
Walking through the houses in the village, most of which are now abandoned, it is clear that at least 10 have been damaged by bombs. The homes do not show the distinctive marks left when Serb authorities force people from their homes. There are no signs of fire or broken glass or overturned and tossed belongings. In one home, a stew is still on the stove. A chicken is thawing inside a refrigerator. These houses are middle-class homes, with books on the shelves and glass crystalware in cabinets. There are oriental rugs, and closets filled with neatly folded clothes. Firewood is carefully stacked in a garage.
No, the people who lived here fled suddenly, with no notice or time to prepare.
Across the road, the welding factory that Serb officials says was the real target, sits idle. Its windows are broken, but officials say the factory has been idle since the bombing began, as there is no call for welded pipes for export.
Why bomb here?
As I wandered away from the Yugoslav escorts, a little boy recognised a Western accent and ran inside a well-kept house to get his father. The man was repairing his roof, but climbed down in a hurry and waved me inside.
In a furtive whisper, gesticulating wildly, pointing to his backyard, and speaking in Albanian with a few words of English, he said that two Yugoslav tanks had been hidden right in the middle of the village. Military police were living in the houses. During the night, soldiers had been firing rockets at the planes, right from the houses, he said. He then wanted to show pictures of his children, set in frames around the house.
His whole family had left for Macedonia. He would join them soon. He could not live like this, pretending to be meek and afraid in front of Serb authorities. When asked, he wrote his name on a piece of paper, along with a few sentences concerning what he had said.
The reporters outside are being rounded up for the trip back to the hotel. One wonders about this thorough integration of military and civilian targets. Is a tank in the middle of a village an appropriate military target? Surely no citizen here, Serb or Albanian, is in a position to tell the authorities to remove themselves from a civilian site.
The price of this war seems awfully high. On the way back to the Grand Hotel, I think about the hotel itself. Two floors are entirely blocked off, and there is speculation that the military occupies those floors. Beneath the hotel is a bunker, its actual use unrevealed.
The hotel lobby and dining room is filled day and night with soldiers. The military police have taken over an office on the first floor formerly occupied by JAT, the Yugoslav airline.
If this place isn't a target, what is?