In Honour Bound

Chapter 15

At their northern end, the valley's walls made a plunging ravine. Save for the torrent slides in the side valleys the walls were all but vertical and at the foot separated by a few hundred yards of flat ground on either side of the river bed. For much of the day, the floor of the valley at this point lay in shadow.

On large scale maps, the village of Atinam was marked as a black speck inserted between the two coils of contour lines at the valley's extremity. Only on large scale maps. It was too small a community to have exercised any but the most exact of cartographers. With the coming of the fourth year of the war, Atinam was the only inhabited village in an otherwise depopulated valley. Before the Soviet invasion, the valley had been home for some thousands of Nuristanis. Many of them now lived in the camps for refugees across the border. But the villagers of Atinam had stood their ground.

The village that was defensible and often defended when the grandfather of Barney Crispin was still a swaddled baby was equally defensible against the incursion of the bomber and the helicopter close to a century of years later.

The village of Atinam lay as a barrier across the floor of the valley, dominated by the cliff walls. It sprawled from the base of those walls inwards to the river bed bisecting the valley with a bridge of rope and planks linking the halves. The homes of Atinam were not built from the mud bricks found further south in the valley but were constructed from dry stone walls by craftsmen who had their skills handed down from generations past. Some of the houses were of a single storey, more were of two floors and built with the lack of shape and pattern found in an uncompleted game of dominoes. On the right side of the river bed, where the eye witness faced north, was the tower of Atinam's mosque. The mosque was the one building that had been made with concrete, and though the whitewash was now flaking and dirty, it remained the beacon point of the village.

Below the village and on lower ground to the south were fields. Small, mean fields, but sufficient in the past for two maize crops in the summer and for the growing of a few hardy species of vegetables. Some of the fields were now scorched by the flaming petrol jelly dropped from the bombers, some were dried out at this late time of summer because the irrigation water courses had been damaged by the high explosive dumped from the bombers. But a bare sustenance could be drawn from the land for the villagers and fighters. Below the fields, a few hundred yards south of the core of the village, were the mulberry trees with their white and sweet fruit clusters dangling between the rich green of leaf foliage, and these also gave sustenance. And scattered amongst the wild mulberries were walnut trees, the forbidden fruit that should not be picked by the boy passing with the goat herd, nor by the girl who took washing to the river pool, because to do so would offend the rigorous laws of husbandry that were the bedrock of the community's survival. And below the mulberry trees and the walnut trees were the thin grazing grounds for the livestock that provided the white cheese that was staple to the villagers' diet.

There were juniper flowers close to the village, and violets, and sometimes the dropping orbs of the sunflower, and wild roses that were pink and ragged. The village of Atinam might, in other years, have been a place of peace and beauty. In the fourth year of the war, Atinam was a fortress.

Whereas other Villages in the valley had proved open to the bomber and helicopter attacks, Atinam's position forced the Sukhois and Mi-24s to fly a low gauntlet up the valley, between the steep cliffs, drop their loads and at once soar upwards to escape impalement on the rock faces. This made for skilful, difficult flying, flying that was frequently ineffective. In the valley walls were caves, some shallow, some deep, providing safe fire positions for the fighters. To reach their target the aircraft must fly through cones of defensive fire, through machine gun fire, through automatic rifle fire. The task was relished neither by the pilots nor by their superiors who were accountable for losses of men and material. After a fashion the village survived.

The men of Atinam recognised a vague allegiance to the Hizbi-i-Islami group in Peshawar, but the man with direct and daily control over their military operations was the stranger schoolteacher from Kabul, Ahmad Khan. The word of Ahmad Khan was the law of the village. He organised the military defences of Atinam, and the training in tactics and weapons, and the teaching of propaganda to the young, and the supply of food. He had taken responsibility for the defence of Atinam. Atinam had become the jewel in Ahmad Khan's valley.

Maxie Schumack sat amongst the men who formed a horseshoe around the instructor.

In his pantaloon trousers, in his long-tailed shirt and with the blanket draped on his shoulders, he merged with the men about him. Only the features of his head were different. He had gone to the pool in the early morning and scraped savagely at his face with the old razor that he had carried since he had first come to Afghanistan. He had washed his short-cut hair and combed and quiffed what there was over his scalp. White and grey hair if he had bothered to look in a mirror, and he hadn't. No space for a mirror in Schumack's backpack. If he had looked in a mirror he might have wondered what an old bastard like himself was doing in Laghman province, messing in a village, listening to a lesson in the use of the Soviet-made RPG-7. If he had looked in a mirror he would have seen the wrinkle lines at his mouth, the crow's claws at his eyes, the skin high on his forehead where the hair had long gone.

He did not understand much of what was said, a few words had stuck with him in the months inside Afghanistan, but not enough to know whether he could have done better. It was clear that this was the stop line. Why should he care? One village was like another village. One place to fight was like another place to fight. He watched the instructor. The rocket anti-tank grenade was a great weapon for the valley, played bloody hell with the Soviets when they came lumbering up the track with their T-62 tanks and their armoured personnel. Made them think…scares them shitless, more like. Later, perhaps, he would be asked to contribute, but not before he had proved himself to these men. Nothing bothered him in that. There would be fighting here. All of the village knew there would be fighting, because all the villagers talked of was the story of two helicopters downed in the valley.

They were dealing with the sighting, Schumack tried to hold his mind on the instructor.

Goddam difficult, the sighting. First round usually missed, and that was smoke and a back blast flame, and it was 14 seconds for a good man to fire a second round. He tried to hold his mind on the instructor, and the stump ached. If his mind was not on the instructor, not on the sighting mechanism of the RPG-7, then his mind was on the woman. Shit, that was a disaster, the woman was a bastard disaster. Shouldn't have been like that, not a bastard disaster.

That afternoon Mia took her first clinic in the village.

She had no medicines, she had only the advice she could offer through translated French passed on by a girl who had drifted to the village the previous summer from Jalalabad. When she had come to this village, when she had seen the tailing away at the north end of the ravine, she had known that she had reached the end of her journey.

There had been talk of movement by a Soviet airborne regiment in the mountains between northern Laghman and Panjshir; there had been talk of a new offensive of Soviet armour and aircraft into Panjshir. She knew only that she could go no further than the village that was called Atinam. It was a small thing to her, it was something, that she could identify the ailments. She found some dysentery. She found the coughed-up blood of tuberculosis. She found the rash of measles. She found gangrene in a young girl's arm from a shrapnel wound. At first the men did not come. Their women came and their children. The men waited outside the door fearful that this woman would touch them. She found the psychiatric cases, the numbed young faces of those who turned inside themselves to eliminate the fear of the screaming bombers. She worked swiftly, dismissing her patients with sharp matter-of-fact advice that was handed on to them by the girl from Jalalabad. Of course when she wiped her hands after each examination she seemed to wash those hands of the case history.

She was washing her hands after the last of the patients had gone, she had asked for boiled water and they had given her warm water, when she heard the shouting of children outside. Through the opened door she saw the children running down the track alongside the river bed, and pointing. She saw the American go past the doorway, not looking at her, and she thought she might be sick from the memory of the awfulness.

Mia walked out into the open air.

Through the mulberry trees approaching the village was the Englishman and his guide and one mule. Walking slowly, some way apart.

The boy had talked them into Atinam.

Barney had sat on a stone at the edge of the village and the boy had gone forward.

The whole village was there, lined in a pressing half circle behind the man who had broken off from his instruction of the RPG-7, listening as the boy made the request for hospitality and shelter. Once he turned and pointed with his finger towards Barney and then showed with the gestures of his hands the motion of a falling helicopter. Barney thought that the boy would have no need to explain their credentials. The village would know. He saw Schumack in the ranks of the listeners, saw him take no side in the discussion around the boy.

Gul Bahdur turned, waved imperiously for Barney to come forward. Cheeky sod, Barney grinned. He tilted his head, acknowledged the boy, and came forward. The children watched him, and there were women standing in the doorways of the houses and not running from view as the Pathan women of Paktia would have done, and old men, and the fighters. All watching Barney because this was the man who fired the missile that had destroyed two helicopters.

They made an aisle for him, the children, the women, the old men and the fighters, they stepped from his path as he followed Gul Bahdur and the mule into the village. He passed Schumack, winked at him. He passed Mia, and blushed and smiled, and she looked away from him and cut her eyes to the ground.

The fire was of dried goat dung.

The small flames gave a little warmth to Barney's hands and arms and body. The fire was set amongst bricks in the centre of the room and the smoke rose to a hole in the ceiling, He had washed, he had eaten nan and a crumbling white cheese and a scrape of goat's meat on a bone. He sat on a floor rug and Schumack was opposite him, across the fire from him. They had been left alone by the village men and Barney didn't know where the boy had gone; probably he had found somewhere to sleep where he could talk first of the crashing helicopters and then gossip chat into the night.

Barney had eaten with Schumack. The woman could have eaten with them but had said she was not hungry. She was in a room off the main chamber where the fire was lit.

Schumack, amused and playing the older man, said, 'We heard that Ahmad Khan booted you out. News chases you faster than the Revenue in this valley. We heard about the helicopters, they were back this morning collecting the bodies. How many Redeyes for two helicopters?'

'Two,' said Barney, looking into the flame flicker.

'Good thinking or bad flying?'

'We lit a fire in a cave for the first. We tethered a mule for the second…'

'Bright thinking, Captain Crispin. You have six missiles left. And you've showed up here…?'

'To rest up, eat and sleep a bit.'

'When are you going to fire again?'

'When the chance arises, when else?'

'You want some help?'

'Yes,' Barney said simply.

'What sort of help?'

'Twice I've been able to take the rear bird, once from low down, once from the top of the valley. It can't be as easy again. I need fire support.'

'Someone to take the pressure off your arse when you're running, when you've fired.'

'Something like that.'

'We've two DShKs in the village, twelve seven millimetre. It's a hell of a rate of fire they put down, don't hit much, but the tracer puts the shits up the fliers. If they were in support of you…'

'That would be good,' Barney said.

'Ahmad Khan's supposed to be here tomorrow. He flits about, they say he's sometimes here when he's expected. You should talk to him.'

'He might not care to talk.'

'You've two helicopters, he'll talk to you.'

The fire's light played in the brightness of Barney's eyes.

'You want some ideas when you sit down with Ahmad Khan. He's a sharp guy, if he gets involved with you then he has to know he's going to win. Time for sleep…'

Barney leaned forward to whip loose the laces of his boots. Past the fire Schumack lay on his back Barney felt the cold, felt it deep in him because of his tiredness. He wrapped the blanket close round his body, made a pillow for himself with his pack.

Against the wall he could see the pile of the missiles. He flopped back, closed his eyes.

Through the inner door he heard the woman's cough.

Barney saw her image. Barney felt her skin. Barney touched her hair, twined his fingers in the black ringlets. Barney's arms were loose around the neck of the woman.

Again the hacking cough.

'The bitch'll keep going all night,' Schumack growled.

Barney twitched, the pinching of a nerve. He remembered how she had stood at the side of the path as he had entered Atinam.

'She's like a tiger, Barney. I screwed her last night…wrong, she screwed me, humped the balls off me. She came in here, lifted her skirt, dropped down on me. I was piss all use to her. Not a fucking word she said, like an animal, like a tigress. She screwed me, she dropped her skirt, she took off. Not a fucking word. I'm not much good, but she made me think I was worse. Just looked through me in the morning like I didn't exist…'

'Shut up, Maxie,' Barney whispered.

He heard the cough, heard it choking in a slender throat.

'Bitch, all last night she coughed.'

'Shut up,' Barney whispered, louder.

The bodies made up the last cargo to be loaded onto the transport aircraft. Not just the Killed in Actions of Eight Nine Two. There was also the corpse of an infantry trooper who had shown his colleagues how not to fool with an RG-42 HE grenade. There were two Frontal Aviation bomber ground crew conscripts whose mutilated bodies would make a good example for the Education Officer when he preached the dangers of sneaking to the Jalalabad bazaar for hashish.

All of Major Pyotr Medev's fliers were in a crisp line on the tarmac and behind them were the non-commissioned gunners, and behind them the maintenance crews. No bands, no speeches. An impromptu farewell without organised ceremonial. Not even a flag to cover the tin coffins in which the bodybags were laid. Medev had reckoned that the sight would do his pilots no harm, might concentrate their minds. He stood in front of his pilots, but too far back to be able to read the cardboard tags on the coffin handles.

He did not know when the pilot, Viktor, went up the ramp of the transport. Sometimes the bodies went all the way home to the families…as long as the casualties were low then the bodies went home, that's what was said.

The last coffin was carried forward. Medev snapped, as if in afterthought, to a parade ground salute; behind him the pilots, the gunners and maintenance crews followed suit. The ramp creaked up and closed on the tin coffins. Medev heard the quiet crying of a pilot behind him. Nothing wrong in that. He made a sharp left turn. The small parade spluttered away in broken rank. The engines of the aircraft were turning.

He found Rostov in Operations. He would plead the excuse of overseeing the radio and communications. That he hadn't been on the apron was enough to burn at Medev.

'The whole squadron's up tomorrow, including the replacement flier.'

'Where to?' Rostov said easily, as if in the previous few minutes he had not stood and looked from the window.

'Where the Hell do you think?' Medev flared. 'That shite valley in Delta. We're to hit everything, wherever the bastards are…villages, caves, everything. They may have thought themselves smart to have some fuck pig foreigner walking their valley with a Redeye. When the airstrikes have finished with them they'll know how smart they were.'

Rostov shrugged. 'There are no decoy flares on the base. I've requisitioned Kabul for them, I don't know how long they'll be in coming.'

'After tomorrow we won't need decoy flares.'

Medev strode out.

Barney and Ahmad Khan walked away from the village, beyond the fields and into the groves of mulberry and walnut.

They sat in the shade. It was colder that late afternoon. The sun was already beyond the valley wall. Barney's blanket was on his back with the corners gathered at his chest.

He had slept, he had eaten, he had washed again and rinsed an old foulness from his mouth. He was fresh. The chill meant the and of the summer. The coming of winter meant snow on the high passes that were the trail to Pakistan.

Ahmad Khan spat the last of the mulberry fruit from his mouth, wiped his lips with the sleeve of his jacket.

'In the years they have been here, the Soviets have learned the pattern of our weather, and of our movement of weapons and ammunition. They know that through this valley we transport much of what we will need when the winter comes. So, they will try to prevent the caravans coming through the valley, of course.' A slow, serious smile from Ahmad Khan. 'And now you have come here with your missile and you have made me a problem.'

Barney gazed into the deep mahogany of his eyes.

'Because of the missile launcher, will the Soviets counterattack with such force that the route for the caravans is blocked? Or because of the launcher will the skies be empty of Soviet helicopters? This is my problem, to know which is the truth.'

'You have to find that truth for yourself, Ahmad Khan.'

'You will not tell me that your missile will destroy the helicopters when they come?'

Barney spoke softly. 'There are two helicopters in the valley. Before I came there were none.'

'You will not claim that without your missile we cannot hold the valley?'

'I make no claim. You alone can decide.'

'And what do you want in Atinam?'

'The opportunity to kill helicopters.'

'Will the missile protect us, or will it bring upon us a retribution we cannot survive? You make another problem for me.'

'For you to answer.'

'What will you do when you have exhausted your missiles?'

'Go back to my home.' His head jerked up to face Ahmad Khan. 'When I have fired them, there is nothing more I can do here.'

'Most men would tell me of their commitment to the Afghan Resistance.'

'I am not most men.'

'If I do not help you, what will you do?'

'Go back down the valley, and fire the missiles until I have a helicopter I can strip,' Barney said.

'And if I expel you from the valley?'

'Then you give life to the helicopters.'

There was spittle in Ahmad Khan's mouth as he laughed, a grating laugh. Their hands met, gripped and held. There was not friendship. Only a contract, an understanding.

They talked until it was dark, and on after the shadows had vanished in the night fall. They planned the battle. They talked of the siting of two DShK machine guns that could fire eighty rounds a minute, of ball and tracer. They talked of the concentration of automatic rifle fire.

As they walked back to the village, Ahmad Khan took Barney's hand. It was without embarrassment, without affectation. 'I asked a question which you did not answer. Will the missile protect us or will it bring disaster?'

'Wait till the helicopters come,' Barney said. 'And listen to them scream.'

'And after you have brought down one helicopter that is not destroyed, you will leave us?'

'You won't be crying when I do.'

Late into the night Barney sat with Schumack. Behind the closed inner door there was the woman. Barney had not spoken to her that evening. She had gone to her cell of a room before he had finished the meal he had taken with Ahmad Khan and his lieutenants. More refinements now for the defence of the village, more specific positioning for the heavy machine guns. Schumack had much to offer, a bedrock of experience that reached far beyond Barney's. Once Gul Bahdur came to the door of their house and peered in and saw the American and the Englishman close to the fire and bent over a diagram, and closed the door without sound and went away, and Barney had not seen the unhappiness on the boy's face, the child who believes his friendship has been usurped.

'I'll be beside you when they come,' Schumack said, and yawned. 'Without me you'll get your arse kicked.'

'Probably,' Barney said.

For an hour the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who had the limp from the bullet scar behind his kneecap were huddled on either side of Ahmad Khan and in front of the slow guttering fire.

He was a stranger, he was an unbeliever, he was an adventurer — a foreigner who offered nothing to the long-term defence of the valley. He was the parasite on the sheep's neck. The American was different, the American asked for only bread and bullets and the American was the known enemy of the Soviets. The woman was different because she gave her help to the children and the women, and if there were to be a battle she would treat the wounded amongst the fighters. The foreigner they set apart from the American and the woman.

'He has no feeling for the struggle of the Resistance, only for the mission that is his own.'

'You cannot know whether his missile will protect us, or devastate us.'

Ahmad Khan heard them through. The man in the red waistcoat and the man with the limp were allowed their say until their argument had run its course. They lapsed to silence. When Ahmad Khan gave his decision they would not dispute it.

'He said there were two killed helicopters in the valley, when before there had been none. He said that when the helicopters came back to the valley that I would hear their screams. He will stay.'

Barney washed in the pool below the bridge as the sun sidled on the rim of the valley's west wall. He had slept well. He had heaved his shirt off his shoulders and knelt beside the ice cold water to cup the wetness over his body, over his face, over his hair. The cockerel, the pride of the village, had wakened him. The water dripped from his hair, ran round his ears, fell from his face, dribbled on his chest. The pool ripples fled away from him as he scooped and scooped again at the water. His chest was white except for the patches of the scarlet louse sores. He was a disciplined man and had not scratched them. Bloody near impossible to ignore them.

There was a great beauty in the stillness of that morning, the haze of the sun between the jagged upper crags of the rock face, the droplets of water in the first frosts of autumn, the shadows drawn out amongst the trees.

'Will you fight today, with your missile?'

Barney started up, the water tumbling from his hands. She stood on the path above the pool. She carried a handful of clothing. She wore the blouse of yesterday, unbuttoned at the throat, and the long sweeping skirt that flicked at the buckles of her sandals. She pushed the hair from across her eyes. There was a mockery in her question, there was the tease that fighting was the game of boys not yet grown to adulthood.

'If the helicopters come, yes.'

'You have come across the world to find a place to fight?' A half-laughing voice, a face that showed no amusement.

'As have you come, half across the world.'

'I came to help people, not to interfere.'

'Perhaps they'll pin a medal on you, when you go home,' Barney said.

She came past him, down to the water. At the edge of the pool she dropped the clothing she had brought. A brassiere, a pair of sparse pants, woollen socks. She hitched up her skirt and squatted and started to scrub with her hands at the garments.

In the air, whispering high above the valley, was the sound of an aircraft engine.

'I have no medicines, I have nothing.'

'I know that.'

It was not possible for Barney to believe what Schumack had told him. Not a woman of this loveliness. Not a woman who squatted beside the river pool at dawn and washed her clothes, and whose long free hair tumbled over her cheeks.

'There is nothing I can do for those who are hurt in your fight.'

'I know that.'

'I have no morphine, I have no steriliser, I have no disinfectant.'

'You should cut some dressings.' Barney could barely recognise the coldness in his voice.

She smiled him a pale smile.

'It is just that you fighting men should know of the havoc for those who have to clear up after you.'

He heard the whine approach of a slow-moving aircraft.

'I am sorry about your medicines, truly sorry.'

She snorted as a reply, she flung back her head and her hair waved away onto her neck. He saw her swan throat, he saw the flash of white teeth and coral soft lips. Away to the south he saw an aircraft. A biplane, single-engined, a silhouette clear against the upper cirrus haze.

'Your sorrow will not help the people who are wounded in the fighting, the fighting you have travelled a long road to provoke.'

Barney threw his shirt back over his head, 'I can't say more than I'm sorry.'

'You have come to shoot down one helicopter so that you can take home with the parts.'

'Yes.'

'For these people your missile is a disaster, and when you have made the disaster you will not be here to gather up the bloody body parts.'

Barney was stung. 'I don't make a habit of bleeding my principles round the place.'

'You're a spy,' she spat the words. 'You are dirtied…'

'You're not a spy? You don't talk with your bloody Consul when you get to Peshawar? You don't get debriefed? You don't talk to Aerospatiale and Dassault about every Soviet aircraft that goes over your bloody little head?'

'I said you were dirtied — you are filthied. You cannot believe anyone has a motive above yours. You cannot believe in anyone who does not creep behind the coat of their government.'

'You should cut some bandages.'

He hated himself. He tried to see into her eyes, to win some softening. She twisted her head away from him. He saw the cherry flush on her cheeks.

He walked away.

Gul Bahdur was running breathless to meet him.

Gul Bahdur had caught Barney's arm, was hurrying him back to the village, chattering at him. Barney turned once. The woman still squatted at the side of the pool.

Above was an Antonov Colt. It was the aircraft that Frontal Aviation used for high-level reconnaissance. The aircraft from which the cameras pinpointed the targets for the strike aircraft and the gunships.When the reconnaissance aircraft came over early in the morning then the aerial bombardment would follow. Night on day, certainty.

The Antonov Colt had roused the village. There were men running with rifles in their hands, others pulling behind them the wheeled frames of the two DShK machine guns. There were mothers screaming for the children to begin the climb to the caves in the valley walls.

Barney and Schumack and the boy, between them, carried the launcher and the five spare missile tubes towards the position that had been agreed south of the village, beyond the fields and the groves of mulberry and walnut.

They passed Mia on the path. She was cartwheeling her arm, as if to dry the brassiere and the pants and the woollen socks in the cool air.