In Honour Bound

Chapter 17

Brilliant colours cascading from the late afternoon skies.

A display of dancing, falling lights as if it was a gala, not the battlefield at Atinam.

From the mouths of the caves the fighters watched the flares, from deeper in the recesses the women and the children saw the blues and greens and reds, floating down from the helicopters.

Barney and Schumack had taken a place in a squat stone-built granary built against the cliff to the west of the valley. Barney did not know where Ahmad Khan had positioned himself, but Schumack would know. Schumack had taken it upon himself to be the coordinator for the firing of the Redeyes. When Barney wanted the covering fire of the DShKs then Schumack would pass the message. Schumack, veteran of Khe Sanh and Desert One, had found a new officer to care for.

They watched the flares climb to a fire zenith before subsiding.

'Not with those bastards, you can't fire,' Schumack hissed.

'They had to learn something…' Barney said.

Around the village from the caves there was the flimsy rattle of automatic rifle fire, answered and dominated by the ripple of the heavy machine guns of the Mi-24s, and their rockets.

'With the flares we're screwed, they'll strafe the village to nothing.'

'What's the pattern of the flares?'

They lay on their backs in the doorway of the granary. Each had covered his body and face with a blanket, leaving free only the eyes. They lay still and close to each other in the small doorway. At Maxie Schumack's side was his rifle, at Barney's side was the loaded launcher.

'You can't fire into the flares, it'll go rogue and destruct.'

'There's a pattern,' Barney said.

Three, four kilometres from the village, the helicopters seemed to queue in their pairs for the run in onto Atinam. They came in fast and low. Barney wondered at the miracle that there was anything remaining in the village left to burn, but new fires had started.

'Do you see the pattern?'

'I just see the bastard flares…'

'They're firing from Very pistols out of the fuselage doors. They fire a kilometre short of the village, and they fire over the village. Look for the pattern, damn you.'

'All I see is a couple of hookers with their panties down watching rainbow colours.'

Machine gun shells blasted into a building across the path, the wrench sound of a falling roof, the dust crumble of dry masonry.

'Maxie, don't you see…'

'I see the mother helicopters.'

'Shut up and listen.' Barney yelling. 'Take one bird, put all the fire onto the fuselage hatch…don't let the bugger put his nose out, blast him if he does. He's not firing behind, he's firing forwards and upwards. Look at him…he has to lean out on his strap, he has to fire the flare forward or it's gone and dropping too far behind…'

Barney's voice died, obliterated by the roar of a helicopter overhead.

'You don't have to fire, not each time they come.' A caution from Schumack. 'Live to fight another day, that crap.'

'They've found something new, they reckon they're the whiskers. Hit them now and they'll be on their knees.'

'You have to stand up out there, you can't do it off your gut.'

'I know how to fire.'

'Please yourself, hero man — it's your ass.'

'Not the next pair, the pair after that. Every gun in the village on the right flying bird, the one that flies on the right of the pair.'

'You have to stand out there and face them, you have to be in the open. It's what the mothers want of you. What they're here for, to drag you into the open. Don't you see that?'

'They'll be on their knees, Maxie.'

Schumack was gone. Sprinting from the doorway, jumping the open ditch, falling into the doorway opposite. Cocking his ear, then running for the corner. Hesitating on the corner, then gone.

For what, Barney? To kill a helicopter, that's for what.

What sort of idiot reason is that? The only reason…because the helicopter is above and smashing a village, pulping it.

Where does stripping a helicopter for MOD's scientists fit into the game? Fits nowhere, a square block in a round hole.

He saw the huddle of Schumack half around the corner of a building across the path and beyond the drain. Ready for the dash, waiting his time. All right for Schumack. He went where there was fighting, he bought oneway tickets. Anywhere that Sam's backside was kicked was good enough fighting ground for Sergeant Schumack. Lucky sod. You're an arrogant bugger, Crispin. Had to be. Had to be an arrogant bugger to stand out in the open and fire the Redeye at the hot metal engine exhaust of an Mi-24 battle cruiser.

Barney felt the warm air panting in his throat, he felt the cold draught in his stomach. His grandfather would have felt the same shiver, the same tremble, the same cold. God, he was scared…

Schumack dived down beside him. 'It's the next one that comes, all the fire on the fuselage hatch, like you want it.'

Barney pulled himself to his feet. Weak at the knees, unsteady in the hands. He stamped his foot to put a discipline in his body. He held the launcher across his chest.

He felt the tug of the claw at the sleeve of his shirt. Schumack was pointing away down the path, across the fields, across the orchards of mulberry and walnut trees. He saw the two helicopters approaching. He saw the flame spits of the machine guns. He saw the glory of the flare colours. He read the soundless words at Schumack's mouth.

'Good luck, hero man.'

He stood alone in the centre of the path. He raised the Redeye launcher to his shoulder, felt the weight bite down onto the bone. His thumb nudged against, engaged, the battery coolant switch. He heard the low whine of the launcher. He saw the opened door of the fuselage, he saw what he fancied was the figure of the man who would fire the protecting flare to decoy a missile. Ragged rifle fire from the village, perhaps twenty rifles on automatic. Then the steady hammer thud of the two DShK machine guns. Barney saw the tracer reaching for the fuselage.

They had seen him, the pilot and the gunner.

The big forward gun wavered towards him as he stood his ground, buffeted, shaken by the explosions around him. They had seen him too late.

Through the open sight his aim caught the dark hole of the engine exhaust. Three seconds and the whine of the launcher had become a scream at his ears.

Barney fired.

A different flare of light in the sky, a streak of light, clean and pure against grey stone and grey valley walls. A purging angel light sweeping up and away from the distant slow descent of the Very flares in their many colours.

No flare had been fired from the right side of the helicopter.

The missile winged at the helicopter seven hundred feet above in a blur of white brilliance.

'Go, you…' Barney's scream was cut short by the detonation.

In the moments between the time that the pilot would have seen the lone man with the launcher and the time he could have reacted at the controls of the Mi-24, the missile struck. The helicopter was turning away, but the altitude of the valley determined that its movement would be lethargic in the thinned-out atmosphere. Too slow to hide the exhaust vent from the shrieking speed of the missile. Schumack was heaving at the trouser cloth around his ankles, trying to drag Barney back into the darkness of the granary, and Barney was riveted to the helicopter and the impact point. The final lurch on the helicopter's flight path had confused the missile electronics sufficiently for the hit to be against the tinted glass of the pilot's canopy.

He heard the shouting, the squealed excitement of the mujahidin who were invisible to him, scattered in the warren of the village. He saw in his mind the gaping hole of the cockpit canopy, and the glass shivers that had slashed and speared the pilot. Perhaps it was because the pilot's hands had locked the control stick in a particular position, but the helicopter seemed to slide down in a gentle arc towards the river bed on the far north side of Atinam. It came down as if the pilot was determined that the landing should be smooth. He saw in his mind a glazed stare on a young pilot's face. He saw a body stripped naked and bloodied and lying on the rubbish heap of the village, where the dogs came, where the vulture birds came.

They wriggled out through the back window of the granary a few tight seconds before the building crashed under a rain cloud of rocket fire.

As they ran, weaving, hugging the stone walls, Barney heard the scrape metal crash of the helicopter's landing, heard the spinning whistle of the rotors that the pilot could not stop.

Barney undipped the empty launch tube, discarded it behind him, let it roll to a drain. Schumack led. Schumack had plotted the ground, chosen the next refuge.

'Another hundred feet and he'd have beaten you,' Schumack shouted. 'That was good luck for you, hero man. I'm not pissing on your ego. You were lucky…'

As he was dragged along, Barney wondered why he had been chosen to be lucky, how it was decided that he deserved luck.

There were loudspeakers rigged in Eight Nine Two's Operations Room.

Those who listened to the helicopter assault on the village of Atinam received little indication of the pilots' excitement as they flew up the valley towards their target, of their nerves as they came over the ground fire, of their elation as they surged up to safety. The communication with the operations room was linked through the laconic and short-worded Captain of Frontal Aviation circling high above the valley in the Antonov Colt, a swimmer treading water. The listeners were Major Pyotr Medev, the Frontal Aviation commander of the Jalalabad base, the Colonel of Intelligence, Rostov and two signal technicians.

The loudspeakers were crudely tuned. The voice of the Captain in the Antonov was magnified and coarse, but his words were clear. Each man in the room heard each word the Captain spoke.

There was no shout, there was no cry of alarm. It was a factual, drab report that chattered from the speakers to their ears.

'XJ SUNRAY reports hit… XJ SUNRAY radio distort… XJ SUNRAY radio break up… XJ SUNRAY losing height, speed… XJ ROGER clear of target… XJ KILO, XJ LIMA engaging missile launch position… XJ SUNRAY down… repeat XJ SUNRAY down…'

The moment when a hammer seemed to strike Medev. The moment when the breath wheezed from the throat of the Frontal Aviation commander. The moment of the fist belting into the palm of the hand of the Colonel of Intelligence. The moment when Rostov squared his back against the plywood wall as if to hide himself. The moment that two technicians stared at the floor's linoleum.

Medev had the microphone in his hand. He gripped it, white-fingered. Almost a strangle hand at his throat as he spoke.

'Confirm XJ SUNRAY down.'

'XJ SUNRAY down, confirmed, visual sighting…XJ SUNRAY down one hundred metres north from village perimeter, down into river bed…'

'Is XJ SUNRAY destroyed on landing?'

'Negative…no fire, no disintegration on landing.'

'What is the state of ground fire?'

'Pilots report slackening of ground fire, no longer engaged by tracer from machine guns.'

'He's outthought you, Medev.' The snap of contempt from the Colonel of Intelligence.

'They use the machine guns for a single purpose, then silence them. They are more interested in the protection of the weapons than the protection of the village.' The astonishment of the Frontal Aviation commander.

'Have you learned nothing? The machine guns are important to them, and the missile. The village is irrelevant. The destruction of our helicopter is important to them.' Still the sneer of the Colonel of Intelligence.

'Then the village will be destroyed.' Bridling anger from the Frontal Aviation commander.

'Who gives a shit about the village? The attack was on one man armed with a missile launcher. Two air strikes, two helicopter strikes, in one day. And we lost two helicopters for it, for one man. Don't talk about destroying a fucking village.'

'Would you be quiet, gentlemen,' Medev said softly.

There was something of steel in Medev's voice, something of diamond in his eyes. Still the pale skin clench of his fist on the microphone.

'What is the possibility of rescue?' Medev asked of the microphone.

'XJ KILO, XJ LIMA report ground movement in the area of the village closest to XJ SUNRAY'S position. They are making frequent use of flares on speed passes over XJ SUNRAY…they report that it is not now possible to locate the heavy machine guns.'

'Repeat, what is the possibility of rescue?' An icy shiver in Medev's voice.

'I am instructed by the pilots to relay that they will attempt a rescue which will involve XJ ROGER landing beside XJ SUNRAY. The pilots wish you to authorise a rescue.'

'It has to be a landing?'

'XJ ROGER reports he believes that the pilot of XJ SUNRAY would have been injured in the missile detonation. XJ ROGER believes he has seen movement in the cockpit, he cannot be certain.'

'Repeat, it has to be a landing?'

'Confirmed.'

'Repeat, the heavy machine guns have not been located?'

'Confirmed.'

'Repeat, it is believed the pilot of XJ SUNRAY may be injured, the condition of the gunner is not known?'

'Confirmed.'

Medev looked to no man in the room for approval. The skin trembled at his cheeks. He was gazing at the map on the wall, at the chinagraph symbols marking the location of area Delta and the village of Atinam.

A clear instruction from Medev.

'Without hazarding the safety of any other helicopter, XJ SUNRAY is to be destroyed on the ground by rocket fire. That is immediate, that is an order. Following the destruction of XJ SUNRAY the mission is completed.'

Medev stared out of the window of the operations room, out towards the east, away towards the setting of the afternoon sun. He turned back, looked now into the face of the Colonel of Intelligence and saw the dropped eyes and the twisted head. He turned again, faced the Frontal Aviation commander, he thought the man might cry.

He heard the voice of the Captain in the Antonov spotter, a distant sabotaged voice. 'The pilot of XJ ROGER requests to be patched through to you direct…'

'Refused.'

He put down the microphone. His hand was numb. He massaged his fingers to regain their feeling. He saw in his mind the pilot, Alexei. He reached out to grip the edge of the table in front of him. He saw in his mind the young face of the pilot who had taken the helicopter XJ SUNRAY from the Jalalabad base that afternoon.

After darkness, Barney went to the wreckage of the gunship.

There were no battery-powered torches in the village, the light was from tallow fat and cloth-tipped staves, and by old hurricane oil lamps.

Ahmad Khan had given Barney an hour to work on the helicopter. After an hour his own men would come to strip the fallen bird of all that might be useful to them. Barney had brought the Polaroid camera from his backpack with a clasp of a dozen flash bulbs.

Two men from the village and Gul Bahdur carried the flare staves. Schumack held the rusty lamp.

There was something blasphemous about what he was doing, Barney thought, as he climbed inside the twisted airframe of the helicopter. He was like a man who disturbs a freshly filled grave, as he crawled into the flickering shadow of the pilot's cockpit.

Three times he photographed the cockpit controls, then another photograph of the radio equipment built in beside the pilot's legs. A stink of aviation fuel, it was extraordinary there had been no fire, and those buggers better keep back with the staves. The boffins would go ape when this lot reached the Farnborough research laboratories.

What he took from the cockpit, he first photographed. A circular radar display panel, a flying manual that was bullet ripped, a radio communications pamphlet, a flying map from under the cellophane cover on the pilot's knee. There was a stiffness about the pilot's body, because of the night cold, awkward to shift in the cramped bent cockpit.

He remembered the instructions he had given to the boy, way back, outside Peshawar, when he had trained the thirteen men who had died…

Underneath the gunner's seat, behind armoured doors, is the fixed pod containing stabilised optics for target acquisition and tracking. Beside that is the radio command guidance antenna. Above the gunner's seat is the low speed air data sensor. He'd had a bloody nerve, talking that gibberish to them.

He could go down past the pilot's boots to the gunner's cockpit, half buried and compacted. Harder to work there. He had had no comprehension of what he asked the tribesmen when he relayed Farnborough's requests. No way the poor buggers could have coped with the electronic intricacies in darkness, in lamplight, in a ruined airframe.

Meticulously he removed, broke away, unscrewed, prised clear the pieces of equipment, handed them with their trails of multicoloured wiring to Schumack who passed them on to the boy.

He had been at the north end of the village when the helicopter had swooped to attack its downed comrade. Schumack had been beside him and as they lay together. Schumack had passed him, without comment, the single-eye spy glass that was tethered to his neck. He had focused on the pilot, he had seen his head tilt upwards at the first ranging bursts. The bastard had known. The bastard had understood that death came at the hands of his own messmates. Barney knew why, Schumack knew why. It was a dimension of war that Barney Crispin had not previously known. Hadn't known it because he had not walked in the battle lull to the rubbish heap of the village and seen the stripped naked body of a previous pilot, a previous casualty. Something terrifying, when a friend found it kinder to strafe his own man rather than let him fall alive into the hands of the allies of Barney Crispin.

Barney came out of the helicopter, climbed onto the upper fuselage to take a last photograph of the rotor mounting.

There were a dozen photographs, there was the ID card of a dead pilot, there were five pages of technical notes, there was a blanket filled with equipment. He saw the waiting men who would strip clear the main armament machine gun, and the rockets, who would siphon off the remaining fuel. It was what he had been sent to do. He took the corners of the blanket, knotted them together. He supposed he ought to have felt a degree of satisfaction. He had fulfilled his mission.

Schumack went with him, the boy behind. They went over the rough and loose stones back to the village. A great blackness around them in the absence of the moon.

'Will you quit now?' Schumack asked.

'I've done what I was sent to do.'

'So you'll walk out.'

'I have what I came here for.'

'You have four more of the Redeyes.'

'They go out with me,' Barney said.

'I could use the Redeyes.'

'They're going with me.' Barney felt Schumack's arm brush against his. He could not see him, only sense him, smell him, hear him, and picture the war-torn face at his shoulder.

'I couldn't have your boots?'

Barney smiled, couldn't help himself. 'There are two sets of flying boots up there, if you're in luck one'll be a ten.'

'Your ass is still together, it's the right time for you to quit. If I didn't care what was happening I'd probably walk out myself.'

'Maxie, I am a soldier, I was sent here for a specific purpose, I don't have to listen to that shit.'

'When are you going?'

'When Maggie's loaded, soonest after that…'

The claw of Schumack's hand caught at the loose shirt material on Barney's arm. He said urgently, 'Quit fast, hero man, walk out like you're in a hurry, this'll be a bad place tomorrow for someone who doesn't care.'

Barney shrugged him off. He let Schumack walk on alone back towards the village.

He heard a shrill scream in the night, a scream of pain that was muffled by a closed door. He let Gul Bahdur catch up with him, and whispered his instructions for the loading of the mule with the parts of the Mi-24 and the three spare Redeye tubes. He heard the scream again. He knew what he would find, and he was drawn to the source of the cry. He was a soldier, he was a professional, a regular in the Special Air Service, he was going home because he had done what he was sent to do, going home to face the whole orchestra. He came to the house. There were holes in the roof tin, and from the holes came the light flickers, and the pain scream was mingled with a lower growl of moaning.

He could not have guessed the extent of what he would find. He opened the door. In the light of the hurricane lamp he saw a mediaeval slaughterhouse. It was a carnage place.

Mia Fiori was the only woman. Her bared hair and her long skirt and her bloodied blouse all identified her to Barney immediately. He thought there were five, six men in the room, splayed out on the floor on the carpets and the blankets. As he came through the door Barney saw the man who screamed. His leg was severed at the join of the right ankle. He screamed because Mia Fiori dabbed at the meat-red soft stump with a cloth, and he struggled against the strength of the four men who pinioned him, and he screamed because he had spat from his mouth the piece of wood that should have acted as a gag.

There was a man who moaned and who was snow pale at his cheeks and whose scalp was pierced by a dark pencil hole wound. There was a man who cried, a little whimper cry, and whose arms were folded across his stomach because that way he held in place the cloths that were laid over the opened wound of his belly, and that heaved and tossed in the surges of his agony.

Barney saw two more men with stomach wounds, and one of them had not yet been reached by Mia Fiori and his intestines still protruded from the gash amongst the dark hair of his belly. Barney saw a man whose arm hung loose, useless, fastened to his elbow with a muscle thread. Barney was a soldier, he was a professional, but he had never before seen what he saw in Mia Fiori's casualty station.

Ahmad Khan watched the nurse at her work, expressionless, impassive. The one who wore the red waistcoat stood at his side, and beside him was the man who would walk with a limp if he moved. They watched the one woman in the room as she worked, as she cried silently and without an attempt to hide the tears dribbling on her cheeks, as she reached out without looking behind her for more cloths to be given her, as she tossed aside bloodied rags. The sounds of the screams were a bell singing in Barney's mind.

'You have what you came to collect, you are going now?' Ahmad Khan spoke across the room, over the bodies of the fallen fighters. The man who wore the red waistcoat spat noisily onto the floor, the man who walked with a limp stared in open contempt into Barney's face.

Barney spoke stiffly. 'I have the pieces that I came for. It is better I should go in darkness.'

'A price has been paid for your success.'

'There are four helicopters in the valley,' Barney said. 'Four more than before I came.'

'I did not hear myself complain.'

He was dismissed by Ahmad Khan; the schoolteacher turned away from him.

The girl stood, eased herself fluently onto the soles of her feet. Her face blazed at Barney, the tears streamed on her face.

'You have come to see what you had achieved?'

Barney's face was tight. 'I have three morphine syringes, I came to leave them for you, and a few other things…' He had swung his pack off his shoulders, was groping in the depths of the pack.

'What would a spy want with morphine?' She flung the words back at him.

'I have three syringes. If you want them, you can have them.'

'And you are going now, so you can be safe away from here tomorrow. You know what happens tomorrow?'

'I have done what I came to do.' He had spoken the words before he had thought out their meaning.

Mia Fiori stepped across the man whose arm was all but severed from his elbow.

She caught at the fullness of Barney's shirt. 'All this is yours, you brought it to this village…and in the morning when you are gone, they will come back with their helicopters. You are a great hero, Barney Crispin — you are a brave fighting man. Christ, I admire your courage. If you were what I thought you were…'

'Do you want the morphine?'

'If you were what I thought you were, you could never leave this place, not when the helicopters will come back in the morning.'

Barney put the syringes in her hand. She turned away from him. She knelt beside the man with the intestines bulging from his stomach. He saw the gentle, narrow outline of her shoulders. He turned and went out of the house.

Schumack stood in the darkness beside the closed door.

'You're on your way?'

'No,' Barney said.

'Listen, hero man. You've had luck you don't know about. You caught the buggers when they were soft, when they were sloppy. It's their turn to learn smart. You're snuffed when they get smart. Staying behind to fire four Redeyes, that's immoral for a young guy. You're not a Maxie Schumack, an old shite-hawk. There's more to you than giving a helping hand to these mothers.'

'Perhaps there isn't.'

'That's pathetic. What are you doing with that junk?'

'The boy's going to take it back,' Barney said.

'With the mule?' Schumack asked, a shrewd concern in his voice.

'The boy's going back with Maggie…'

'You've one loaded, you've three to carry. You won't go far carrying three tubes.'

'I stay until I have fired all the missiles.'

'You'll need me watching your back, you goddamn fool.'

'If that's what you want, then it's your pleasure to watch it,' Barney said.

The boy caught up with Barney. He had slipped his arm into the crook of Barney's elbow. There was no argument, there was no disputing Barney's decision. They talked of how long it would take the boy to cross the mountains and reach the Pakistan frontier, three days. How long it would then take him to reach Chitral, perhaps another day. He remembered the name of the man he must meet in Chitral, Howard Rossiter.

He remembered where he should ask for him, the Dreamland Hotel. And afterwards the boy was to go back to Peshawar. After Chitral and the Dreamland the part of the boy was finished. Barney could not see his face, could not read his expression as he talked of Gul Bahdur going back to the refugee camps.

He asked when the first snow would fall on the high passes over which the boy must travel to reach Pakistan by the northern route. Two weeks, perhaps, three weeks, not more before the first snow.

There was no wheedling in the boy's voice, no sense of resentment that he was being sent from the valley with the equipment from the helicopter. The boy would go before dawn. Barney would remain in the valley with four Redeye missiles, and with Maxie Schumack to watch his bum.

'I'm hungry,' Maxie Schumack said.

It was twenty-three hours since Barney had last eaten.

Outside the door of the mess Rostov caught his Major. Rostov had been running all the way from the maintenance workshops beside the helicopter parking revetments. He had run to catch Medev before he entered the public forum of the mess. Because he had run, he was panting and able only to blurt out his statement.

'I have just been at the workshops…we have to fix a baffle on the helicopters, a baffle that will reduce the hot air content when it is released from the engine vent…they say in the workshops that the designers of the Mi-24 ignored the threat of missile attack, not like the Americans and the British and the French, that's what they say.'

Calmer now. 'At the moment the exhaust protrudes by less than 300 millimetres from the fuselage, the air is hot, the metal around it is hot, and we are taking the hits. We have to suppress the quality of the hot air. In the workshops they have been talking about making a baffle for the hot air. The senior sergeant in the workshops says that the American and British and French helicopters all have their engine's exhausts set at the rear and the top of the fuselage, we have ours at the side where everyone can see it. To fire at a Western helicopter you have a quarter of a chance less with Redeye than you have with our bird. In the workshops they are designing an extension to the exhaust vent, a metre long, but you have to get clearance from the top.

'There would be two effects. When the air emerges from the vent it will have travelled a greater distance through the baffle vent and will therefore have cooled more, that's one effect. The second effect, the Redeye explodes on contact, the warhead is only a kilo of HE — if the explosion is one metre from the fuselage side as against being right up to it, then the damage is proportionally much less. That is the idea in the workshops…what do you think of their idea?'

'You know what I did this afternoon?'

'I know, Major.'

'I would do anything not to repeat what I did.'

Rostov's face was composed now, the jelly shake was controlled. 'What do you think, Major?'

'You want to fly with chimney stacks on the vents. It is an excellent idea. I have one regret.'

'Which is?'

'My regret is that before we thought of this I have lost four helicopters.'

'In the workshops they said that no one had been there to ask their opinion.' A rare candour from Rostov.

Medev went into the mess. The orderly came to his elbow, and offered the familiar brandy. Medev stood with his back to the stove. Some of the pilots were sitting, some stood. There was an atmosphere of hatred and misery in the mess. Every pilot stared at Medev. In front of him was the long table laid for dinner. Two candles burned on the table, floating shadows across two places set with knives and forks and spoons and glasses. Their hostility beat at Medev. He bit at his lip, jutted out his chin. Their misery circled him. He drained his glass, he felt the wash of the brandy in his throat. He stared them out, each in turn, young face to young face. Which one had the courage to answer him? Which of them? Did they think it was easier for him because he had not been high over the grounded XJ SUNRAY? Did they think it was easier to have been distanced by one hundred kilometres from area Delta than to have been there as a witness?

Young face to young face. On to the young face of the pilot, Vladdy. Eyes meeting, eyes challenging.

'You are a murderer, Major Medev.' Said quietly, said with a soft emphasis.

A collective gasp in the mess, a little murmur of movement.

'If you didn't hear me, I'll say it again — you are a murderer, Major Medev.'

'Come here and say that.'

Vladdy pushed himself up from his chair, laid his magazine down where he had sat, walked to Medev. His face was a few inches from that of his commanding officer.

'I said you were a murderer, Major…'

Medev hit him, hard and with a clenched fist, on the side of the jaw. The pilot reeled away, half fell, staggered, held his balance. His skin was livid where Medev had struck him.

'Do you want the MilPol?' Rostov at Medev's side.

'I'll not have any fucking Military Police in my mess,' Medev hissed.

As if a signal had been given, the pilots started to move towards the door. They affected a casualness; they did not look at Medev, they shuffled towards the door.

'Get to your places at the table,' Medev shouted. 'Sit in your fucking places!' His voice was a pistol shot. His order was a whip crack.

One pilot hesitated, they all stopped.

One pilot turned, they all turned.

One sat, they all sat. Vladdy went to his place at the table, eased into his chair. One of the candles burned beside Vladdy's place.

Medev stood at the end of the table.

'Would you let one man destroy you — destroy Eight Nine Two? One man alone? You are here to fight a war, you are not conscripted troopers — you are elite trained pilots. You have been entrusted by the leadership of our nation with a task. We are helicopter pilots, not High Command strategists, not Foreign Ministry strategists. We fly helicopters, and we will continue to do that, to go where we are sent. I make one point, gentlemen…hear me carefully…if a pony breaks a leg it is destroyed, it is kinder, it lessens the certainty of pain. If one of you is down and cannot be reached, cannot be rescued, then I will order you destroyed, because it is kinder, because it lessens the certainty of pain. If any of you are so ignorant of the conditions in Afghanistan that you do not understand the certainty of pain should you be downed and alive and abandoned, then you should go in the morning to Intelligence and consult with them and they will willingly tell you what is the fate of Soviet military who are captured by the bandits. Questions?'

There were none. They ate the meal. By midnight most of the men around the table were drunk in a fraud of forgetfulness.

They had eaten hunks of two-day-old nan, they had drunk green tea that was thin and sweet, they had chewed the half cooked flesh of a goat that had been decapitated by a bomb splinter. The boy was not invited to eat with the dozen men who took their food with Ahmad Khan, but he sat behind Barney and Maxie Schumack and unobtrusively whispered a translation. They talked of their fighting, of their heroism under fire, they boasted of the helicopters that had been hit with rifle bullets. They did not talk of the Redeye, nor of the half of the village of Atinam that had been destroyed. Nor was it discussed that Ahmad Khan and the men who formed his permanent fighting cadre would move on south down the valley in the morning.

Barney had eaten fast, as fast as any of them, tearing the bread, swilling the tea, gnawing at the goat bone he had taken from the pot. Redeye could not make Barney Crispin a part of these men. That night the villagers of Atinam slept where they could find a secure roof, where they were out of the mountain winds. Barney's building had survived, after a fashion, survived enough to be slept in. There was no fire, but as if from a previous ritual Barney and Maxie Schumack laid out their blankets on either side of the dead embers.

He heard the girl cough.

He thought of her face and her eyes and her hands.

Across the heap of charred wood Maxie Schumack watched, balefully. He heard the girl cough again. He sat up. 'She'll eat you, eat you and spit you bloody out,' he said.

Barney rose to his feet, looked down for a moment at Maxie Schumack, then went to the closed inner door. He paused by the door.

'Give her one from me,' Schumack called.

Barney went through the door, closed it behind him. A blackness in the room. He bent his body, stretched an arm in front of himself, had his hand low and close to the dirt floor of the room as an antenna. She caught his wrist. A gentle pressure to pull him down to her side. Her voice was a whisper, her breath was a ripple on his face.

'Why did you come?'

'To talk.'

'Why with me?'

'I wanted to talk with you.'

'You have your man friend, you have your boy friend, you have your guerrilla friend …why with me?'

'I want to talk with you because you are not the man and the boy and the guerrilla.'

Barney heard the narrow brittle laugh. 'Do you want to fuck me?'

'No. No…I don't.'

'Why not? Because I slept with him, out there?'

'Because I killed two pilots today…'

'You want to cry against my shoulder, and cry to their mothers that there was nothing personal?'

'I wanted to talk to you, to someone…' Barney said simply.

'While you are crying, tell me what you achieved for the village today. There are seven hundred people who live in this village. They have malnutrition, they have measles, they have tuberculosis, the women and the children are in shock from the bombing. But you do not want to talk about that. And you do not want to talk about the men I have tried to keep alive tonight.'

'I wanted to talk to you.'

'Because you have no one else to speak to?'

Her fingers were loose now on his wrist, relaxed, twined gently on him.

'No one.'

'Why should I be the one person you can talk to?'

'Because you don't have to be here.'

'Why are you here?'

'I thought it was helping.'

'And now, what do you think now?'

'When I saw the helicopters killed then I thought I was helping. When I saw what had happened to the village then I didn't know.'

'I was told that you have collected the instruments from the helicopter you killed this afternoon, with that you could go back.'

'You have no medicine here, because you have no medicine you could go back.'

'And that would be abandoning these people.'

'Running away,' Barney said.

'Showing them our fear.'

'Telling them of the emptiness of our promises.'

'What do you want of me tonight?' Her voice was close in Barney's ear.

'To sleep beside you, to sleep against your warmth, I want that.'

'And in the morning?'

'In the morning we go south down the valley.'

'And what happens to the village?'

'I know what happens to the village,' Barney said.

Barney started to sit up, started to crook his legs under him so that he could stand. Her grip tightened on his wrist. She urged him back down, beside her. He felt the glow heat of her body through the muslin cotton of her blouse, he felt the shape of her legs against his thighs. He lay on the bend of her arm and all the time she held his wrist.

He slept a dreamless sleep, a dead sleep.

Ahmad Khan and the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man with the limp from the damaged leg worked together. They lifted the wounded who had been treated by the nurse so that their bodies formed a close large mass together in the centre of the room, and as they carried them they whispered to them of the Garden of God, and the glory of the jihad. They made their promises of victory, far away but certain victory, and they told of how the names of the martyrs would be remembered and handed down from the old fighters to the young. They were sad moist eyes that gazed up at Ahmad Khan and the man in the red waistcoat and the man with the limp, calm patient eyes as they were gently lifted.

When the work was done, Ahmad Khan knelt and took the cheeks of each man's face in his hands and lifted it to kiss the cheeks.

He took from his belt two RG-42 high explosive fragmentation grenades, and he put them in the hands of the man who had screamed when Mia Fiori had cleaned the stump wound of his leg, and in the hands of the man whose intestine pipes had sagged through his belly wall, and with care he looped the forefingers of their right hands through the metal ring attached to the firing detonator. He was last out of the door, after the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who limped.

He closed the heavy wooden door after him, and he leaned against the stone wall and waited for the twin explosions.