In Honour Bound

Chapter 10

He had lit no fire, he preferred to be swathed in his blanket. He was no longer with a column of mujahidin. He was his own master. His own rules did not allow for a fire. The hunger racked him, but he was a trained soldier. He wondered how the boy could sustain himself without food and water. In the morning they would have to come down from the hills to the plains of the Kabul river to find food and water.

The pebble landed in the entrance of the cave, rolled and came to rest against Barney's boots. When he was in the field he would never remove his boots, not even to sleep, if sleep were possible on the floor of the cave with the hunger in his stomach. He had loosened the laces, that was a concession. It was the third pebble.

Barney heard the voice close to the cave's mouth. A voice shredded with impatience.

'You haven't eaten, Barney Crispin. All day you haven't eaten. If a man has no food then he cannot be on his own.'

'Be careful,' the boy whispered.

'I will be careful, Gul Badhur,' Barney said. 'But we have no food…'

He heard the voice call again.

'A man isn't a crapping island, Crispin.'

'What food have you?'

'Some bread, some dried fruit.'

The shadow crossed the mouth of the cave. The moon was lost for a moment as the shadow crossed it. There were the sounds of a man moving on knees and elbows over the dry ground.

'You don't hurry yourself, making up your mind you're hungry.'

Barney heard a hand searching in the darkness, felt fingers touch his boots, reach to his socks. He stretched out in the blackness, took the hand in his fist.

'Thank you,' Barney said. The boy had moved back into the cave and sensed his nervousness at the intrusion. Now he edged forward. They ate fast, eagerly.

Barney pulled his blanket over his knees to catch crumbs of bread. Dry, hard bread, but satisfying for all that. And after that were the raisins that he could gulp down, and beside him the boy ate his share in silence.

'I'll ask a question, it's "yes" or "no" for an answer. If it's "yes" then we talk about it, if it's "no" the questions finish. Is Maxie Schumack a freelancer?'

'He's a freelancer.'

'Tell me.'

His stomach warbled on the food and Barney settled himself back against the missile tubes.

'I was born Maximilian Herbert Schumack, Christ knows where they took the names from, and they're dead so I can't ask. I was born in New York City, fifty-two years ago. There's not much to show for it, where I was born, it's a car park and garage now. So, I'm an old bird, what we call a clover fucker. I took a Greyhound to Bragg when I was seventeen and enlisted. I went up and I went down. I had stripes, I was busted. First place I kept my stripes was Da Nang. Shitty place, shitty bars, shitty expensive girls. My first trip to 'Nam, we hadn't much time for bars and whores, and I'd been fifteen years in the Corps and I was a veteran, and I'd never had a shot fired at me before.

'To stay alive with the god-awful kids they gave me I stayed clear of the bars and the whores. I didn't get clap and I didn't get my arse shot off. You're a fighting man, you know what it was in 'Nam, and you don't need the fucking New York Times war stories from me. Next time I went back was Khe Sanh. They say the Corps doesn't dig. My platoon dug at Khe Sanh. I stood over the bastards till they'd dug. And dug. Didn't do a lot of fighting, just sat in holes with the rain pissing down plus the incoming. Had a bit of time to think there, and I reckoned I'd cracked it. Sam's got himself in a heap of shit here, I reckoned. Weren't many to say Sergeant Schumack got it wrong. I took my platoon out of Khe Sanh with one KIA and three WIA. That was good. Sam gave me a medal, said I was a credit to the fucking Corps. I went back one last time. On the roof of the Embassy chucking slants off the Hueys, that the fat cats wanted for a ride out to the fleet. Sam was deep in the shit by then, up to his ears. Didn't take me to tell Sam that.

'We'd been seen off by the fucking gooks. I did some time at home after Saigon went, and I got another medal, not that any bastards Stateside wanted to know. On Stateside they reckoned that Sergeant Schumack and half a million others had lost Sam his little war. The old shits, who'd never walked the paddies with the incoming, they reckoned we'd lost a war we should have won. Most didn't but I stayed in. Nowhere to quit to. I burned a bit and I boiled and I stayed in the Corps. I got Kabul in '78, Embassy marine guard. Piss awful place, on the front desk in full dress, spit polish boots and the medal ribbons. And then we lost the Ambassador, "Spike" Dubs. Great guy. Some shite-arses lifted him between the Residence and the Embassy. Sam screwed again. The Soviets, the advisers in the fucking ministry there, told the Afghans what to do, they crapped on all we told them. They busted in where he was holed up and played a shooting gallery.

'"Spike" Dubs died. Sam couldn't help him. I was brought home. Another Stateside garrison town for a super fucking veteran. Then the mothers took our Embassy in Teheran, crapping all over Sam, like everyone was, like it became a habit. They put a force together, a Marine Corps force, and Schumack was on the team. Eight times we were due to go and bust that place open, and seven times Sam hadn't the balls, rubbing his fucking hands together and wondering what the civvie casualties would be. Who gave a fart what they'd be? The eighth time we went. I don't have to tell you what happened, Mr Crispin, the whole bloody world knows what happened. Sam fouled up. I tell you this, the 'Nam wounded my faith in Sam, Kabul butchered it, and Desert One buried it. I quit. Too late but I quit. I took the money and I holed out. I went up to Canada and I bummed. I was putting canoes in the water for smart arse kids, and clearing up their fucking garbage. To the kids I was like something from under a stone.

'Last year I bought a ticket, I paid a oneway airfare to Pakistan. I lost my hand at Desert One for Sam. They said they'd keep me in, as an instructor or a drill pig, but Sam's all shit. Sam's no longer my place. I took a bus ride to Peshawar, and I walked in here a fortnight later. I'm here for keeps, Mr Crispin. I'm staying like we never used to. I'm staying here, and no bastard in the Pentagon tells me I'm aborting. I'm happy as a pig in mud. You understand me?'

'I understand you,' Barney said.

'I talk too much.'

'You don't have a lot of chance to talk.'

'Here? I've shit all chance to talk. My turn, same question — yes or no. Are you a freelancer?'

'No.'

'That means…?'

'That means there are no more questions.'

'What's the load on the mules?'

'No more questions.'

Schumack persisted. 'I had a glass on you. You didn't tie the sacking too well. It's tubes you're carrying.'

'As you said, you talk too much.'

'Tubes is mortars, but you don't carry on two mules a load of mortar bombs that's worth a damn. Tubes could be anti-tank, but they've all they want of those from the Soviets and the Afghan army. Tubes could be ground-to-air…'

Barney could smell Schumack close to him, he could make out the dim shape in front of him.

'Ground-to-air would be rich, Mr Crispin.'

Barney heard the boy wriggle nearer to him, heard the tension of his breathing.

'I tell you straight, you won't have any idea what it's like to be under the helicopters and have no way of hurting the bastards. What makes these guys in the hills crap themselves? The helicopter. What makes Maxie Schumack wet himself? The helicopter. To see a ground-to-air knock the pigs out of the sky, I'd laugh myself sick.'

Barney said nothing.

'I'm going north in the morning,' Schumack said. 'Which way are you going?'

'North,' Barney said.

'Across the river?'

'Into Laghman, north to the mountains.'

'I've something you're short of, Mr Crispin.'

Barney put out his hand. His fingers brushed the smooth wood of a rifle stock, felt the cold metal of a curved magazine and the sharpness of the foresight. He took the Kalashnikov in his hand. He was a man who had been naked and was now clothed. His hands ran the length of the barrel, flickered over the working parts, found the cocking lever and the Safety catch.

'There's two more magazines for you.'

'Thank you. You've given us food, you've given me a weapon. I've nothing to give you.'

'You've plenty.' Schumack laughed. 'You'll give me the happiest moment of my life. You'll hear me cry laughing when you blast a helicopter mother.'

His laughter bubbled in the quiet of the cave and Barney managed a smile and, sitting apart from the two men, Gul Bahdur could not understand their enjoyment of the moment.

In the morning they came down to a village.

The two men and the mules stayed back from the mud brick buildings marooned in the cultivated fields. There was no chance of a secret approach to the village, the dogs howled a warning of their coming. The boy went forward.

Barney and Schumack said little to each other as they waited. They had not spoken when Barney had loaded the mules at the cave's mouth, and Schumack had not pressed forward to see the markings on the tubes. Between such men understanding came fast.

When they had started out Schumack had led, not because he tried to assume control, but because it was better that a man not leading a mule be on point a hundred metres ahead.

The boy returned with a bucket of brackish water for the mules, and with bread for the men.

After they had left the village they were all the time descending, following the shepherds' paths that headed for the ribbon of villages beside the river. The boy had pointed out to Barney the grey and white scar of Jalalabad cut into the green beside the river. The line they took would bring them to the river some eight or nine miles short of the town.

As they walked, there was no scent of war. Finches darting in the scrub bushes, butterflies hovering on their path, the far away chime of a goat's bell. Mid morning, a high sun, small shadows under their feet, and Gul Bahdur had come level with Barney's shoulder.

The boy looked into Barney's face. 'Why do you give yourself to this man?'

Barney blinked back at the boy. 'What do you mean?'

'He is of no use to you.'

'Who is of use to me?'

'The mujahidin, my people, they are of use to you. This man is unimportant to you. Without the mujahidin, the fighters of the Resistance, you can do nothing.'

'That is true.'

'When we climb into the mountains of Laghman you will meet the real fighting people of the mujahidin, not the people in Peshawar who play at the fighting, you will meet the real warriors of the Revolution.'

'What are you telling me?'

'I am warning you that the fighters in Laghman will be careful of you. Do not expect them to fall on their knees just because you bring them eight Redeyes.'

'I know that.'

'You are a foreigner and an unbeliever. To some of the fighters you will seem like an adventurer, to others you will be an exploiter. You must win the respect of the fighters.'

'And Schumack?'

'It is good that he has fed us, and it is good that he has armed you, but he cannot help you to win the respect of the fighters. Do you know why you must have the respect of the fighters, Barney?'

'You're going to tell me, Gul Bahdur.'

Gul Bahdur ploughed on, ignoring the interruption. 'When you fire the Redeye and you kill a helicopter, then the Soviets will bomb the nearest village. When you kill another helicopter then they will bomb another village. For each helicopter, another village. The men whose respect you must win are the men from those villages. Because of your Redeye the bombs will fall on their families, their homes, their animals.'

'I know that.'

'That man cannot help you to win the respect you must have. You are not angry with me for saying this?'

The boy looked keenly up at Barney. Barney slapped his hand onto Gul Bahdur's shoulder. There was relief on the boy's face.

'Barney, you,are going to kill one helicopter, take the pieces from it, then go?'

'Yes.'

'Barney, why did you bring eight Redeyes, for one helicopter?'

Barney walked on without replying. They were dropping down over the hill slopes towards the Kabul river.

Abruptly the mule that Gul Bahdur led came to a stop.

The boy pulled at the rope attached to the bridle, the mule eased its weight back and braced its rear legs against the pressure. The boy tugged hard, viciously, and the mule was immovable. Its eyes were fierce, obstinate in their refusal. Barney had halted, turned to watch. He saw the way the mule had taken the strain from its front right leg as if to shelter the hoof. The boy picked up a handful of stones and started to throw them at the rear legs of the mule. The teeth were bared at the boy, but the mule moved neither forward nor back. Barney whistled twice, sharp and clear, and ahead of them Schumack stopped on the track. Barney felt their vulnerability. The boy slapped the haunches of the mule with his fist, but the animal would not move. Barney cursed. He gave the rope of his own mule to the boy and bent to examine the right foreleg of the animal. The hoof flashed in a kick close to his head.

'It'll be a stone,' Schumack said from behind him. 'It'll be tender. Let it rest a bit, then we'll get it out.'

Barney looked up into the clear blue of the skies. He saw a hawk circling, up in the wind swirls. The hawk gave him the thought of the helicopter. A dozen yards from the path there was a shallow cliff and a slight rock overhang and a tree grew against the cliff. He led the way to this shelter.

Schumack said, 'If we rest him half an hour he'll be calm, we can handle him after that.'

Together they urged the mule off the path. Barney sank down, closed his eyes, pulled his cap down over his forehead. He heard the whirr of the flies close to his skin, felt the brush of the legs around his mouth. It was a drowsy warm heat without the breezes of the upper hillsides. Barney's head was nodding. Schumack lay full length on his back, perhaps asleep, perhaps awake, unmoving.

It was the boy who heard the footfall. His hand caught at Barney's arm. Schumack had seen the boy's movement, sat upright with his rifle held across his thighs.

The footsteps came fast, the figure came into Barney's view. Barney remembered the idiot with the shambling limbs and the spittle smile and the wide eyes. Now the same clothes and the same features, but a fast and wary stride and the head bent low to follow the mule trail and a heavy pack on his back. The man stopped where the mules' hoofmarks had left the path. His head spun to seek the answer. He saw the tethered mules beside the cliff face, he saw Barney and Schumack and the boy. A cracked sound broke from his throat, anger and astonishment and fear. For a second he was rooted, then he turned and started to run back up the path the way that he had come.

Schumack was cat fast. Off the ground, onto the path, the left arm raised as a bridge for the rifle barrel, the snap of the Safety, the aim, the single shot.

The man who had played an idiot fell, sledge-hammered in full stride — smashed down onto the dirt path.

The shot blitzed the quiet from the trees.

In the pack they found a Soviet army radio transmitter. Schumack put his heel into it. Sewn into an inner pocket and close to the bloodied exit wound, they found a Parcham Faction Youth cadre card. Schumack ripped it to small pieces. The pack was earth dirty as if it had been buried. A chill recognition for Barney that the idiot had seen him, a European, had followed him, would have reported that he would reach a certain village, would have broadcast his knowledge. He remembered the vantage point from which he had watched the attack on the village, and the tears of the boy. His estimated time of arrival in that village had dictated the hour of the strike. Schumack spoke of the idiot. Barney sucked the air into his lungs. And, Christ…Schumack had been fast — faster than him.

Barney and Schumack held the mule. The boy lifted its front right leg, gouged with a knife, a sharp edged flint stone fell to the path.

They set off on the path again.

After a few hundred yards the boy, without explanation, gave Barney his mule's rope and skipped back along the track.

Within five minutes he was again at Barney's side.

'When the Soviets find the body of their traitor, they will have something to think of.'

Barney caught at the shirt of the boy. 'You horrible little bastard. Don't ever do that again, not when you're with me.'

'You do not own our war, Captain Barney,' the boy shouted back, and pulled himself free of Barney's grip. 'You do not own us because you have eight Redeyes.'

Further up the track Schumack had stopped, listened. He called back, 'Oh boy, Captain Crispin, eh? And his Redeyes. Redeye, Jesus, that went out with the Ark…only eight, shit…'

Schumack spat on the ground, shook his head, started to walk again.

Twice during the flight the pilot of the helicopter had complained to his Jalalabad control that he was unable to make contact with the ground signal. Twice he had complained that the search was impossible if he could not be guided onto his target. He was careful. One helicopter only had been assigned. They should have flown in pairs, that was the standard procedure, but the excuse had been given that all of the squadron's machines were to undergo extensive servicing maintenance, that an exception would be made of one Mi-24. He had the wavelength open, for more than an hour, tuned for the message that would tell him where his quarry could be found. He flew over villages, over orchards, over the small cultivated fields that were outlined by irrigation ditches.

Without the ground transmission it was hopeless, wasted time and wasted fuel. The second time he had spoken to Jalalabad control they had patched him through to his squadron commander. Major Medev was adamant, Intelligence swore that the source was good.

The helicopter drifted above the flat roofs of the village homes, above the minaret towers, above the goats, above the women who had been taking in the summer's second harvest and who now ran in their full skirts to the compounds.

Because they had been ordered to fly at 400 metres, the gunner in the nose bubble of the Mi-24 was able to see the wheel and the hover of the first vultures. Specks in a clear sky, falling fast, then hovering, then dropping down amongst the sparse trees on the last slopes before the river plain. Through his mouthpiece radio, the gunner alerted the pilot.

What else to look at? The helicopter settled high over a track, clearly visible between the trees. The gunner could see the birds below, in a clutch quarrelling over a bundle of blanket. The pilot disobeyed his standard procedures, he eased the helicopter down towards the tree tops. The vultures scattered. Hovering just above the path the gunner saw the smashed radio set. Close to it was a man on his back. The gunner saw the trousers at the man's knees, the raw blood mess in the man's groin, the bulge of blood at the man's mouth.

The gunner retched, across his knees, his boots, onto the floor space between his feet.

The pilot radioed again to Jalalabad control, and the dust driven up from the path by the rotor blades settled back onto the flies and later the vultures made a feast of the bloodied corpse of a man who had chosen to collaborate.

They waded and swam the Kabul river at dusk.

Low water with summer near spent, and the autumn rains not yet falling on the low ground, and the winter snows not yet cascading onto the mountains of the Hindu Kush that lay as a grim barrier ahead. The mules were fearful of the water, had to be bullied into the centre stream depths, coaxed into a frantic swimming stroke. The river bed mud oozed into Barney's boots, and when they came to the rocks on the north side, on the Laghman side, his grip slipped under water and twice he was ducked to his nostrils.

They had seen a helicopter once, quartering the far bank and the villages to the south, and then turning to the east and Jalalabad.

The boy had said that the river could not be crossed at this place at any time other than late summer. Only when the water was at its lowest could the crossing be attempted, and all the bridges were guarded by Afghan army units. If it had been earlier in the year they would have had to trek away to the west, towards Kabul.

On the Laghman side of the river they came to an orchard of apple trees, and stripped off their clothes and wrung the dark water from them, and lay on the cool grass. When Barney went to help Schumack get the water from his shirt and trousers, he was waved brusquely away. The boy dressed first, crawled into his sodden shirt and trousers in the last light of the day to walk to the village whose lights they could see, to beg for food.

After the boy had gone, after the light wind had caught coldly at Barney's skin, he stood to take his clothes down from the branches where they were hooked alongside the ripening apples.

'You did well, Maxie.'

'If you don't do well, you're dead.'

'I'd never thought we could be tracked, hadn't thought of it.'

'The Soviets aren't playing games. They play hard, if it's dirty why should they give a shit?'

'You have to be dirty to win, right?'

'Up to your arse in shit to win.'

'I had a grandfather here, he died here. In 1919. Third Afghan War. His hands would have been pretty clean.'

'And he didn't win. Where did he die?'

'A place called Dakka.'

'Near the border, about forty miles from here.' There was an edge in Schumack's voice as if to stifle any sentiment. 'I hope he died well, your grandfather.'

'They'd made a camp at Dakka. Six infantry battalions, artillery, even some cavalry — that dates it — they were out on flat ground, no shade, not a lot of water. The Afghans had the high ground, had guns there. Usual British answer, send in the infantry to get the guns. They used the old county regiments from England, Somerset Light Infantry and North Staffs, exhausted before they even started because they'd legged it from the garrisons in India. They went up the hillsides with bayonets fixed. They cleared the guns but too late for my grandfather. When I was a boy I read some of my grandmother's papers, some nasty things were done to him. I don't know whether my grandfather died well, I'm pretty sure he died screaming.'

'Not an easy place to die well in, Afghanistan,' Schumack said.

The boy was coming through the trees. Before he reached them they could smell the fresh baked bread that was wrapped in muslin cloth.

For two days Barney and the boy and Schumack and the two mules plodded north from the plains of the Kabul river up into the dry brown hills, on towards the grey mountain sides of Laghman.

Remote, barren countryside. Small villages set close against escarpments for protection against the winter's weather. Handkerchief fields that had been scraped for stones and that were withered for lack of water. Lonely shepherds who sat away from the tracks and who watched their passing without greeting. An exhausting, dangerous countryside, devoid of hospitality. Once Schumack had shown Barney a butterfly anti-personnel innocent on the path in its camouflage brown paint, scattered from the sky. And when they were past the range of its effectiveness he had detonated it with a single shot.

They needed to eat, they needed to sleep well, they needed shelter from the growing winds that flew into their faces from the wastes of the Hindu Kush.

Barney would sniff with his nostrils up into those winds and seem to sense that this was the place he had come to find. When they stopped, the regular five minutes in each hour, Barney would stand straight and gaze forward at the mountains and slip off his cap and let the wind into his hair. His place, the killing ground for the helicopters. But he must eat and he must sleep, and his body was filthy, and the lice had started to work over his skin, and his beard was an uncomfortable stubble.

The second night they sought out a village, walked in the late afternoon up the stamped earth path towards the tight corral of houses with the dogs raucous around them and snapping at their legs and running from the kicks of the mules. The men who watched their approach were armed. Barney saw the Kalashnikovs and the Lee Enfields and one rifle that he recognized from pictures he had seen as the SVD Dragunov, the standard Soviet sniper weapon. Men with cold faces.

He felt the nervousness of the boy. 'These are not the people of Peshawar…'

'We have to eat, we have to sleep. I know these are the fighting men.'

The boy went forward. Barney and Schumack stood back, holding the bridles of the mules. Fifty metres in front of them the boy spoke to a man who wore a close bound turban of blue upon his head, with a night-dark beard uncut and hanging against his chest, and a Soviet assault rifle loose in his hand. No smile, no welcome. The boy talking fast and the man listening.

'It's all down to the boy,' Schumack said from the side of his mouth.

'Yes.'

'If he says the wrong thing they could chop us and take the mules.'

'Just shut up, Maxie.'

'So as you know.'

'I know,' Barney said tightly. His finger was on the Safety of his Kalashnikov, his eyes never left Gul Bahdur's back.

The man shrugged, assumed indifference, gestured back over his shoulder into the village.

The boy turned to Barney, his face alive with relief. Barney felt the tremble in his knees. They walked into the village. There were rocket craters, there were shrapnel scars, there were the pattern lines on the walls of machine gun fire, and there were roof beams rising jagged and charred from the buildings.

They went up the steps of a once white washed concrete-faced building with a flat roof.

'They are going into the mountains tomorrow,' Gul Bahdur said. 'They are of the Hizbi-i-Islami group. Their leader is one day and a half's walk away. It is what you wanted, Barney?'

'It is.'

After dark they sat on the floor of the house that had once been a school. A dozen men and Barney and Schumack, under a paraffin lamp hanging from a ceiling hook.

While they sat, while they drank tea, the loads from the mules were carried in and placed under the supervision of Gul Bahdur against the far wall. At the sight of the uncovered missile tubes Schumack screwed his face up to stare at Barney, and Barney looked through him. Later they were given goat bones to chew. There was bread. There was a gummy rice that stuck behind Barney's teeth. By the door were heaped the weapons of the mujahidin. He was amongst the world's most feared guerrilla force. He felt a desperate elation.

A girl stood in the doorway.

Barney shook his head, unbelieving.

"I am Mia Fiori…'

He heard the words, the soft-accented English of the Mediterranean. He rose to make her welcome. Schumack didn't move.

'I am a nurse with Aide Medicale Internationale…'

He saw the dark ringlets of her hair, and the buttoned blouse, and the long skirt that was gathered at her waist and fell free to her ankles.

'They say you are going north in the morning. Will you take me with you, take me to where I can be of use…?'

He watched the shimmer of the skin of her cheeks, and the way she held her hands and clasped and unclasped her fingers. To Barney she was beautiful, a mirage in this place. He shook his head.

'These people won't take me. To them I am only a woman.'

All the room watched Barney.

'My name is Crispin. I'm a collector of strays.'

Gul Bahdur flashed him a look of pure hatred and Schumack waved once to her with his iron claw, grinning.

'I'll take you, but it will be early that we leave.'