In Honour Bound

Chapter 11

The valley was slightly more than thirty miles long, gouged as a deep ditch, running north to south. In places it was as narrow as five hundred metres, at its widest point little more than two thousand. The sides of the valley alternated between cliff precipices and more gradual slopes, but from any place on the floor of the valley the flanking walls seemed to rise high and intimidating. A water course ran the length of the valley, but it was dry, waiting for the rains and the first snow fall. Winding amongst the boulders and stones of the river bed was a track that would be suitable only for a four-wheel-drive lorry or jeep, or for a tank.

Where the valley was widest there had lived until quite recently whole village communities. Now they were gone. They had herded together their sheep and their goats and their mules, and they had trekked over the mountains to Pakistan. The villages they had left abandoned had been bombed, rocketed, devastated. The fields were now caked in stringy dried yellow grass. The valley was a place of ghosts. Into the side walls ran small valleys, fissures in the granite rock, water drains for the change of season that would bring the melted snow down from the high peaks. These small valleys, these fissures, gave access from the valley floor to the upland pastures where the herds were grazed in summer. But the herds had gone, and the shepherds. The flowers remained, growing as weeds in the field squares, sprouting ochre and red and blue where once there had been vetch and lentil and pumpkin plants.

The valley had formerly been prosperous. It lies across a nomads' and caravanners' trail from Pakistan's northern mountains towards the Panjshir of Afghanistan. The trail comes down into the middle of the valley, crosses between three villages and then climbs again westwards. If the valley is not open to the traveller then he must resign himself to the minimum of another week's walking at altitude to skirt this trusted route.

It is a trail trodden with history. The great Alexander brought his army from Europe along this path, through this valley, perhaps the first of the bands of fighting men to find this bypass of the mountain peaks. In this area the people carry the stamp of those former armies, now they are called Nuristanis, before that they were the Kafiristanis — the strangers, known for their pale skins and their fair hair and their blue eyes and their old ways of animism worship. They are a world set apart from the tribespeople of the Pathans and the Uzbeks and the Tajiks and the Hazaras, and they live now in the refugee camps in Pakistan.

The war has fallen with its full ferocity on these villages under the high cliff walls.

Along this trail the mujahidin carry their munitions and weapons before the winter halts the resupply of the mountain fighters, and in the valley's villages they rest and take shelter. The bombers and the helicopter gunships stampeded the people of these villages into exile.

The morning after they had arrived at the southern entrance to the valley, Schumack had gone.

They had shaken hands with a certain formality that was a part of neither of them, and the American had muttered something about joining up with a group further into the mountains to the west. He had gone early and blended away with half a dozen men who were laden down by the weight of mortar bombs and ammunition belts for a DShK 12.7mm machine gun.

The girl went with Schumack because he was going in the direction of the Panjshir. Perhaps he would reach the Panjshir, perhaps not. He would take her towards Panjshir. The girl had thanked Barney as if he was responsible for her moving towards her goal, and she had headed off walking easily at Schumack's side.

Barney felt a sort of loneliness when they had gone, winding away along the river bed and then becoming ant creatures as they started to climb into a side valley. The girl had been with him for two days, the American for five. He thought of them as friends, and they had gone as casually as if they would surely meet before the day's end and, or as if, for their part, they had nothing to share with him or his life.

The camp was a collection of tents pegged out under trees a quarter of a mile from the nearest empty village. Eight tents, all sand-brown and carrying the stencilled markings of Afghan Army and Soviet equipment. Captured weapons, captured ammunition, captured tents. After Schumack and the girl had gone, Barney went back to the tent that he had shared with them and Gul Bahdur. He looked down at where she had slept, separated from himself and Maxie Schumack by the boy whose back had been to her as if she might eat him in the darkness. He saw the place on the rug where her curled body had been.

The boy read him. He had opened the tent flap and pulled a face at Barney. 'The Chief will talk to you.'

A quick grin from Barney. The meeting that was the make or the break.

He followed Gul Bahdur out of the tent.

His name was Ahmad Khan. He was the leader of the mujahidin in the valley. He was his own master and he acknowledged no superior. The Hizbi-i-Islami Central Committee in Peshawar exercised a fragile hold on his activities provided that weapon and ammunition were supplied to him above what he took from his enemy. In his territory his authority was undisputed.

He was not from these mountains. He was a man of the city, from Kabul. He was twenty-five years old. Barney found a slight, spare man with moustache, with full lips and a jutting clean-shaven chin. He wore a black turban, wound loosely and with the end hanging like a tail on his shoulder. His dress was a grey check sports jacket without front buttons, torn at the right elbow, cotton jeans, a pair of jogging shoes bright blue and white. He sat on the ground a little way from the tents and alone.

Barney came to him, sat crosslegged in front of him.

'I speak English, I was taught English at the Lycee Istiqual in Kabul. Later I worked with an Englishman, an engineer. Before I came here I had begun to be a schoolmaster. My English is good?'

'Excellent,' Barney said. He waved Gul Bahdur away, saw the boy hesitate and then drift back from them, out of earshot and disappointed.

'Who are you?' The eyes were unwavering.

'I am Barney Crispin…'

'And who is Barney Crispin? His name tells me nothing.'

He had known since Parachinar that the question would be asked, but he had never been clear what would be his answer. The eyes stared into him.

'I am British.'

'Who pays you?' A soft singing voice that demanded an answer.

'I am Barney Crispin, I am British, and I have the weapons to shoot down eight helicopters.'

'You were sent here by the government of Britain?'

Barney offered no reply.

'Why does the government of Britain wish to help us shoot down eight helicopters?'

Barney gazed into his face, saw the clear lines of white teeth, saw the flies that haloed his head.

'You do not have to know, I do not have to know. If you allow me to stay, then the helicopters will have their power over your valley destroyed. At the moment the helicopters are safe from you. With the missiles that I have, the safety of the helicopters is ended. Why I am here is not important to you.'

'I decide what is important to me.'

Barney recognised the twist of anger.

'What is important to you is that I destroy eight helicopters, that I change the pattern for flying of all the helicopters that come to this valley.'

'What is important to me, I decide that. Why should I not take your missiles and send you away?'

'Because you are not trained to use the missile. You might hit one, if you were very lucky. You are not competent to hit eight. That is why you won't send me away.'

'What is the missile?'

'It is the American Redeye missile. It is satisfactory but not modern. If the missiles have not been destroyed by the journey here, if there is no malfunction, then the missile is effective.'

'What is the principle of the missile?'

'Heat-seeker. It targets onto the engine exhaust vent. Do you understand that?'

'I was trained to be a schoolmaster. I am not ignorant.'

'It is necessary to pick with great care the moment of firing.'

'Eight helicopters only?'

'How many have you shot down this year?'

It was Ahmad Khan's turn to peer into Barney's face, and not reply.

'Not even one?'

The drone of the flies, the flutter of a single bird, the tumble fall of a distant stone on the valley's walls.

'If you have not shot down one helicopter how can you refuse the opportunity to shoot down eight helicopters?'

'You guarantee eight?'

'I guarantee my best efforts, eight times.'

'Can the helicopter avoid the missile?'

'If the pilot is cleverer than I am, then he has that chance. If he is not cleverer his helicopter is dead. You want to know what is in it for me? I want the opportunity to strip the first helicopter, not for its weapons, for its electronics. That is all that I ask in exchange for the opportunity to travel with you.'

'I tell you what I think…you are a military trained man, you are sent here by your government…'

'That's not the point…'

'Hear me out.' A blaze in the eyes. 'The little of the truth you have told me is that you wish to strip the first helicopter that is not destroyed on crashing. Not all of the truth is that you say you will stay until you have fired eight missiles. I believe you at the first, I do not believe you at the second. If you are a soldier then you will have an order, when you have achieved that order you will run away with your prize.'

'You have my promise.'

'Why should I value your promise? You come to kill a helicopter, to take its working parts. The knowledge will not help me, nor my people. That knowledge is for you, for your own people.'

'You can have my word, my hand.'

'Last year from a village north of here a helicopter was shot down, from above, perhaps it was a lucky shot, the Soviets came the next day with their airborne troops. They caught a dozen of the men of the village, they chained them together, they put petrol over them, they set fire to them.'

'Try me,' Barney said, as if he had not heard.

'What do I have to do, to try you?'

'You have to bring the helicopters to your valley.'

A snort of derision from Ahmad Khan. 'The helicopters come. I do not have to bring them. When the mujahidin are in the high valleys the helicopters cannot reach them, but the mujahidin must come down into my valley, and when the helicopters come they do not come at my bidding.'

'I tell you this, Ahmad Khan, before the snow falls, if you will trust me, the helicopters will not fly with impunity to this valley.'

'We have been fighting for four years. We shall fight on here after you have gone. In our struggle for liberation you mean nothing to us.'

'A helicopter destroyed is more than you have managed.'

'You take a freedom with me.' A flaring anger, loud at his mouth, bright in his eyes. 'We did not ask you to come here. We do not need the sacrifices that the help you offer will demand of us.'

'That is the talk of an obstinate man,' Barney said.

Ahmad Khan stiffened his back straight. His hand clasped at something through the thickness of his jacket, perhaps a pistol, perhaps a knife. Barney felt a strange confidence.

'You dare to call me obstinate?' Ahmad Khan spat the question at Barney.

'If you send me away then I call you an obstinate fool.'

'To us you are an unbeliever. You do not have the faith of Islam, you have no commitment to our freedom. You seek only to help yourself.'

'In helping myself I help you,' Barney said evenly. 'How often do the helicopters come?'

'Every two days, every three days, every day, it changes, but I do not want your help.'

'What do you do when the helicopters come?'

'We hide,' Ahmad Khan shouted.

'I can destroy them for you,' Barney shouted back.

'I fight my own war.'

'From the back of caves?'

Ahmad Khan hissed his surprise. 'You take a chance with me. Englishman.'

'You take a chance with the lives of the men that follow you. To be obstinate is to throw away the lives of your men.'

Barney saw the hand loosen from whatever was concealed under Ahmad Khan's coat. Ahmad Khan stood, rising with an easy grace from the squat. Suddenly he smiled, the sweet smile of dismissal. 'I do not know why you are here, and I do not want you.'

'It is for you to decide.'

'I have decided.'

Barney did not argue. He shrugged.

'You can take some food, then you should go back to Pakistan.'

'I thank you for the food, but I will not go back to Pakistan.'

'You go where?'

'I will go ten miles up your valley, perhaps you will see the smoke from the first helicopter.'

Barney looked up at the young guerrilla commander and saw his puzzlement. He felt no hostility towards him. There was an openness about the man that he admired.

Barney had not been open. He had not spoken of the age of Redeye, he had not fairly detailed the limitations of targeting onto the engine exhaust vents. He had not mentioned the potential damage to the electronics from the long overland journey on the backs of the mules. He had not described the evasion techniques available to the pilots of an Mi-24. He had not said that he would leave when the instrumentation was strapped on the mules' backs. He had played an arrogant game, not an honest game. But he had lost nothing, and everything. He stood up.

'How many men do you have?' Barney asked.

'What is it to you?'

'How many men?'

'More than fifty,' a scent of pride from Ahmad Khan. 'In the side valleys there are more.'

'And the valley is important?'

'You know the valley is a route used by the Resistance.'

'If they were to come with tanks and armoured cars…'

'I have machine guns, I have anti-tank rockets.'

'Be ready for them, but they will not have the helicopters.' Barney smiled carelessly.

He held out his hand, took Ahmad Khan's, gripped it.

'Why are you here, Englishman?'

'I think we will meet again.'

Barney walked away, over to the boy. He saw the apprehension in Gul Bahdur's face. He told the boy that the leader had said that they should take food from the camp, and asked the boy to collect it. Barney went back to the tent beside which the two mules were tethered and grazing. In the dimness of the tent interior he bent over the piled parts of the Redeye missile kit. He had made a promise, he had given his word. He thought of Rossiter who had torpedoed his FCO career. He thought of the boy with the bloodied head who had walked back to the frontier with the launcher. He thought of thirteen men who were dead. He thought of a village that he had seen under attack from the hovering helicopters. He thought of a schoolmaster and the fierce pride that had taken him from the city to the valley shadows. Lastly he thought of an old man who was his father who had scuffled with a gunman without thought for his own safety. They were clear, sharp, painful thoughts.

Barney stowed the missiles onto the backs of the mules and lashed tight the ropes.

It was mid morning when they left the camp, Barney holding the bridle close to the jaw of the mule and the boy a few paces behind him. More than a hundred yards along the track stood Ahmad Khan. Barney looked straight ahead, said nothing as he passed Ahmad Khan, who stared over his head, ignored his going. There was the clipping tread of the mules, the stamp of Barney's boots, the shuffle of the boy's sandals. A great hush over the valley, a great quiet and emptiness that was not moved by the steady pace of Barney and the boy and the two mules.

Once clear of the camp, Barney's eyes roved across the valley floor and the bouldered river bed and the uncultivated fields and the fruit trees that were overgrown, unpruned from the previous year. Over the jagged shapes of the rock falls at the base of the cliff walls. Up onto the steep, smoothed slopes where only the hardiest of scrub bushes had taken root. Out into the fissure valleys that groped away to the sides.

Towards the mountain peaks that were distant, pale in the sunshine, deceptively close.

He was hunting for cover, for advantage, for a firing position.

The map was sheeted with a cellophane cover, and marked with chinagraph symbols that positioned Soviet and Afghan Army garrisons and suspected bandit concentrations.

They were crowded into the room, eight pilots for eight Mi-24s. They would fly the following morning, return for their machines to be refuelled, go up again in the afternoon hours. They would fly in four pairs on different patrol routes, and the pattern would be repeated after refuelling. The helicopters were capable of covering great distances, they would quarter many of the deep valleys and rifts of Laghman province during the two patrols.

They were young, early twenties, they wore the common uniform of close cropped hair, tanned faces, keen and aware eyes. Since he had taken command of Eight Nine Two he had not lost one of them. He had earned their trust.

Two helicopters to prowl the wide Kunar river valley from its fork with the Kabul river and upstream to Asadabad.

Two helicopters to trace the river between Qarqai and Ali Shang to the west.

Two helicopters to take their start point at Mehtarlam and then follow the road track north towards Manduwal.

Two helicopters to operate in the vacuum wilderness between Mehtarlam and Mahmud-e Eraqi, the wilderness designated as patrol area Delta.

He stabbed with his pointer at the contour lines of the map. The squadron had been there before, into area Delta. Medev grimaced. There existed in Delta only deep valleys and cliff escarpments and friendless mountains. None of his fliers wanted Delta.

Medev caught the eye of one of the young men who would fly an Mi-24 into area Delta in the morning, the pilot Nikolai. He had been into area Delta before, he was reliable, he was careful. area Delta was in their tasking. area Delta must be covered. A silence had fallen on the briefing room, the pilots waited on him. Silence was an infectious disease at the briefings. They were good pilots, those going into area Delta, as good as he had. They hated area Delta for its wildness, lack of friendly force base camps, for its weather, for the problems of rescue pickups.

'It will be search and destroy, what you search out you destroy. I suggest a ground speed of 70kph. Met report for tomorrow is clear visibility, no cloud, winds strong to severe with a possibility of 50-klick gusts. That's all.'

There were seldom questions. He tried to be exhaustive in his handling of all matters that might prove of concern to his fliers. He did not encourage his fliers to ask questions for the sake of hearing their own voices. There was the shuffling of feet, the scraping of chair legs. Medev smiled warmly, saved an additional warmth for the pilot, Nikolai, who would lead in the morning into area Delta.

Just when the light was failing, Barney found the place. They had travelled five hours since leaving the camp. He had been restless, pushing himself forward, unwilling to talk with the boy. Now he had found the place.

He estimated that the width of the valley floor was a thousand yards. To the north and the south were villages. Between the villages and on either side of the river bed were orchards still with the summer's leaf canopy. At their lowest point the valley walls sloped gradually into the tree line, and above the trees on one side were scrub bushes of thorn,and then heavy boulders that a millennium before had crashed from the upper rock face.

Standing now amongst those rocks he looked across the valley to the cave entrance opposite him. Near to the mouth of the cave, a lateral slit, he could see the movements of the boy who worked to collect dried grass and small branches for the fire that would be lit in the cave the next morning.

He was satisfied. Barney came down over the rocks, dropped through the cracks and gullies and into the twilight of the orchard where the mules were hobbled.

Before the light had gone, by the time that the boy had returned from collecting the materials for the fire, Barney had assembled the Redeye missile