In Honour Bound

Chapter 18

Gul Bahdur left the village before dawn.

Maxie Schumack had wakened Barney. He had found him curled against the body of the nurse. He had shaken Barney's shoulder roughly as if embarrassed to find him sleeping beside the woman. She had been awake, he was sure of that, but she had kept her eyes shut. Maxie Schumack had noted that the woman was dressed, that Barney was dressed. Strange man…but he could understand a man needing a woman after what Barney had done the previous day. Two helicopters downed, and opting to stay and fight, that deserved a screw. Maxie Schumack had been screwing since he was a kid, started with a daughter of the big black woman upstairs, a bony little animal, the week before the Greyhound ride to Bragg. Didn't get much of it now, not many that liked the sight of the claw. But he thought he remembered what it was like, certainly wasn't like what Mia Fiori had done to him. And Barney was dressed, and the woman was dressed.

Barney walked with Gul Bahdur and the mule, Maggie, out from the north end of the village, past the rubbish heap, past the wreckage of the helicopter. He had written a pencil message to Rossiter. The bundle was loaded on the mule's back. They walked in the darkness for two, three hundred yards together.

'And when you have given it to Mr Rossiter, then you go back to Peshawar.'

'And you?'

'I am coming when I have finished the missiles. Gul Bahdur…without you nothing would have been possible.'

'Thank you, Barney. May fortune ride with you.'

'And with you, Gul Bahdur. We showed them in this valley.'

The boy reached up, caught his arm around Barney's neck and kissed him on the cheek. And then he was gone with the clatter of the mule's hooves on the path into the half-light before morning.

An hour later, the village was alive and on the move.

The armed men of Atinam and the women and the children who were their families gathered together their goat and sheep flocks, marshalled them with the help of the yelping dogs, heaved onto their backs the bundles of their possessions and started out for the ravine side valleys.

'You can't protect them, hero man,' Maxie Schumack said to Barney. 'If you're staying, you stay with us. It's your problem if you hadn't thought that out. You can't protect the camp followers, not even with your sacred Redeye.'

As they went, Ahmad Khan and his fighting force began the trek away from the village and down the valley to the south. Barney and Schumack went with them. One of the missiles was now loaded to the launcher and carried on his shoulder, another was strapped to the top of his pack, his AK rifle was slung on his other shoulder. Schumack had roped the other two missile tubes to his back. There had been eight, there were now four. Barney knew that Schumack's arm was hurting because he had learned the signs of the bitten lip, the quiet curse, the wringing movement of the arm as if the pain was surplus water and could be flicked off.

He had not spoken to Mia Fiori before they left the village. She had gone when he had come back to the building after his short walk with Gul Bahdur. She would have been with the women and the children and their few men. Schumack had watched him come into the large room and go to the inner door and look inside, and had seen the disappointment and held his peace.

A sense of failure crept into Barney as they left the village. He would miss the cheekiness and company of the boy and doubted if he would ever see him again. He would miss the cool, worn beauty of the woman and doubted if he would ever meet her again, but the Redeye was his master. There was work still to be completed away from the homes and fields and orchards of Atinam. Barney was trained in the detailed techniques of counter-subversion. Much of the tasking of the Special Air Service was against the hard core guerrilla — Malaysia, Radfan, Muscat, South Armagh — now he played the part of the guerrilla. He appreciated the reasoning that took Ahmad Khan away from the village, could understand why the village must be left to its fate. He had killed four helicopters, he hoped he would kill four more helicopters, yet he felt a sense of failure and incompleteness as he walked away from Atinam.

The column moved in a straggling line along the west edge of the valley wall, keeping in the shadow of the cliff face. There was high, tumbling cloud behind them, wrapping the peaks of the mountains.

Schumack said, a grunt from the side of his mouth, that it would rain, and that if it rained then the first snow would not be long behind. Barney felt the itching of the sores on the flanks of his body and under the hair of his head. The boy was gone, and the woman was gone, and…shit, if it rained he had no poncho.

The senior sergeant in Maintenance Workshops had procured lengths of aluminium tubing that were designed as central heating ducts for the new prefabricated barracks occupied by the 201st Motor Rifle Division. It had cost him a bitter argument with an NCO of Pioneers.

The other NCOs who worked on the Mi-24s were regular, but the men under their direction were conscripts, shipped out for limited service, and next to useless the senior sergeant reckoned. As he watched them work, as he heard the hammering of the flanges and screw holes, and the hiss of the welding rods, and the cracks of the rivet guns, the senior sergeant pondered on this new disease that afflicted Eight Nine Two. From the eight that he serviced, four helicopters were gone. There had never been a casualty rate like it. Two replacements had come, but two revetments empty for the world to see and the conscripts to chatter about. He had not seen a portable ground-to-air missile fired, he could barely imagine it even as he scraped his mind for the image. When the Mi-24 was flown over the ground contours, that was danger for so heavy a bird. When the Mi-24 was lifted to the ceiling of its altimeter that too was dangerous. Danger also when the helicopters flew in the 'bathtub', low in the valleys with the bandits in the hills above them. Danger was not rare, not infrequent…but four pilots lost, that was something more…He knew all the pilots. The senior sergeant prided himself that any of the fliers could come to his shack beside the revetments and talk with him, and share a bottle of beer and talk performance and manoeuvrability. He knew all the pilots, they were the age of his son, he believed he was their friend. The previous day he had watched them out of Jalalabad. Twice he had watched them out, twice he had watched them in. Twice there had been the shortfall.

Usually he was lenient with a conscript who worked bleary-eyed after an evening's hash chewing. Not that morning when they fitted metre lengths of central heating duct tubing to the engine exhaust vents. One conscript, flabbergasted and sullen, he put on an immediate charge, sent him to the Guard Room cells.

The work clattered around him. He fussed over every detail. The senior sergeant had only the vaguest of impressions of a homing missile and a stricken helicopter. Impossible for him to comprehend the vulnerability of the big armour plated birds to a portable ground-to-air missile. And it was said in the NCO's mess that only one man fired the missile. One man only…

The flicker skim of lightning above the valley's walls. A thunder clap over the valley.

The sun gone. The cloud streaming south to overtake the mujahidin column. Echoing blasts of thunder. The flashing of lightning. A shadow over all the valley, as far as the men in the column could see ahead of them. A desolate place of rock and boulder and gully and tree and abandoned field.

Ahmad Khan walked at Barney's side. The man who had been a schoolteacher carried only his automatic rifle. His stride was fluent, beside the heavier steps of Barney who was weighed down by the launcher and the spare missile tube.

Barney broke their silence.

'How long have you been in the valley?'

'I came when they took my father to the Pul-i-Charki prison three years ago…he died there.'

'How long will you stay?'

'Until it is finished. I will go when the Soviets go.'

'They have a hundred thousand men. They have the tanks and the bombers and the helicopters. How can you make them go?'

'By our faith, our faith in Islam.'

'There comes a time when, if you have not won, then you have been defeated.'

'If they have not won either, then perhaps it is they who are defeated.'

'Your people are starving, they can't work the fields, they can't draw in the harvests. That will defeat you.'

'We have the food of Islam. It is nothing to you, it is nothing to the Soviets. To us it is everything. It is a holy war, the jihad sustains us.'

'The Soviets have the towns and the cities, and the main roads of your country. How can they be beaten?'

'We will win, perhaps long after you have gone. After you have forgotten any adventure you enjoyed in our country, we will win.'

'How will you know when you have started to win?'

'I will know we have started to win when I no longer have to look into the sky for their helicopters.'

'I brought only eight missiles…'

'Do not give yourself too much importance, Englishman,' Ahmad Khan said. 'We will win with you, we will win without you. You are a butterfly that crosses our path, you are with us and you are not with us. We will be here long after you have left us…we will have forgotten you.'

'If I have overstayed my welcome…'

'When you have fired the last of your missiles, the day after that you will have overstayed your welcome.'

Ahmad Khan loped away, light-footed, to the front of the column.

'There is concern in Kabul at the level of your casualties…'

'And so there ought to be, sir.'

'Don't interrupt me, Major Medev…' The rasping reprimand from the Frontal Aviation commander. 'In Kabul they are confused by the markings on the missile tube they were sent. American made, but with Israeli and Iranian markings overpainted, yet the missile came from Pakistan and it seems it is fired by a Caucasian white, a European or an American. The evaluation in Kabul is that the missile was intended to be used by the Afghan bandits, but is now operated by this mercenary. Kabul believes the missile was introduced to bring down an Mi-24 for equipment stripping. It would be a prize of exceptional value. Last evening's helicopter did not catch fire, it could be presumed that the opportunity to strip the helicopter has been taken and that the purpose of the mercenary's mission has been satisfied.'

'That he has no more reason to be in the valley?'

'It is a presumption…as I said. In Kabul there is concern at your casualties. Four helicopters in one week…'

'Four pilots in one week,' Medev said grimly.

'The casualties in area Delta have emasculated our patrol programme. I cannot permit a situation where day after day area Delta takes priority over all other flying. Your present strength is…?'

'Six. Six helicopters.'

'Coming in from Kandahar is a full strength squadron, sixteen gunships.'

'I want area Delta.'

'And the new squadron?'

'Where you like — anywhere else, any other valley.'

'Is your squadron, what remains of it, capable of maintaining a presence over area Delta?'

A hoarse snap in Medev's voice. 'Very capable, sir.'

'Are you capable yourself, Major Medev?'

If it had not been the Frontal Aviation commander, his direct superior, Medev thought he would have kicked the shit out of him.

'I am capable.'

'I have heard of something close to mutiny in your mess.'

'It's a lie…'

'Careful, Major.'

'I put it to you, we have business in that valley.'

'Revenge is a dangerous business for expensively trained pilots, for expensive helicopters. Tomorrow morning a paratroop regiment will be lifted to the northern end of the valley, to Atinam…'

'For what?'

'To punish a village where two helicopters have been destroyed.' A cut of sarcasm from the Frontal Aviation commander. 'There is a wider war, Medev, than your personal war of pride.'

They told him that their names were Amanda and Katie.

He told them that his name was Howard Rossiter, that his friends called him Ross.

He shouldn't, of course, have struck up a conversation in a public place, least of all in the shop where he purchased his groceries. They were ahead of him as he waited to pay for three tins and a loaf and toothpaste and a throwaway razor. They were young enough to have been his daughters. Pretty little things, with tanned faces, and streaky hair hanging on their shoulders. English girls roughing it in northern Pakistan. At home he would have called them 'hippies', and if he had been with his own children when he saw them he would have issued a critical analysis of the younger generation's lack of standards and discipline. But Howard Rossiter was in Chitral and lonely.

He wasn't doing too well himself on standards and discipline. There was stubble on his face and his hair was too long and uncombed. His trousers had lost their creases. His shoes were grubby. They had a nice way with them, Rossiter thought. He liked the way they pecked in the purse for coins for their two loaves, he liked the long flowing skirts and the peeping painted toe nails. He liked the scarves that were slung around their shoulders. He liked the blouses they wore, and the pimples on the bulges that told him what they didn't wear…Steady on, Rossiter.

They would have looked over him, they would have wondered where this cuckoo had fallen from. Bit past it for the youngster's trail, wasn't he? Bit past the hash hippy trail to Kathmandu. He'd said 'good afternoon' in his best Whitehall clip and with a smile on his face, and they'd collapsed in giggles. But they waited on the rutted pavement for him to pay his money and follow out after them.

Curiosity, he supposed.

They were Amanda and Katie. He was Howard Rossiter and his friends called him Ross.

They were at the end of six months that had seen them through Nepal and Kashmir and now illegally into Pakistan. Ross was doing some research, that's what he called it.

'You're very young to be here.'

'We've finished school,' said Amanda.

'Done your "A" Levels?'

'Christ, not that sort of school,' said Katie.

Rossiter knew the accent. He knew the sort of girl. Sometimes an official of his level at FCO was hauled out at a weekend to take a brief down to the home of a Deputy Under Secretary, down to the countryside of Hampshire or Sussex or Gloucestershire. They all had daughters who drawled that accent.

'Where are you staying?'

'Tenting at the moment.'

'In this weather?'

'Have you a better idea?'

For the next ten minutes Howard Rossiter of Foreign and Commonwealth Office chatted up two eighteen-year-olds. But then everything about his behaviour would have shocked those of his employers who had previously held up his name as a watchword in reliability.

'I might see you about,' Rossiter said.

'If you wanted a smoke.'

'If you ever get lonely.'

'If I want a smoke and if I'm feeling lonely,' Rossiter said.

'What are you researching, Ross,' Amanda asked.

'Bits and pieces.'

They'd go like bloody rattlesnakes, the pair of them. Any good looking girl from the privileged classes went like a rattlesnake in Rossiter's mind. That was the bloody trouble, it was all in the bloody mind. Except for the nurse in Peshawar…that hadn't been in the mind, that had been on his lap on his bed until Barney Crispin had made a famous entrance. He hadn't thought of Barney for half a day. Shadows falling, time for the night manager to come on duty at the Dreamland. Time to think of Captain Crispin.

'Christ, he's probably a spy,' Katie said, and they all laughed.

'I'll see you about,' Rossiter said.

'You look as though you could do with a smoke.'

'You look lonely enough.'

'Perhaps another time…'and he hurried on his way.

One thing to think about it, another to do it. Thinking about it, lovely little tits, sweet little backsides, would see him through a couple of days, waiting on word of Barney. Shadows falling on the streets of Chitral. The lights of Toyota jeeps cutting the gloom. A little rain and the clouds promising more. He bumped into a tribesman, an old man in white floppy trousers and an embroidered waistcoat, with spectacles perched on his nose. He tried to make an apology. The old man stared at him as if the Englishness in Rossiter's voice fitted no other part of him. He'd screwed himself, hadn't he? He'd chucked up the pension and the Pay As You Earn taxed salary. And all for Barney Crispin who was away behind the lines with a Redeye launcher. Try telling Pearl and the kids and the neighbours and Personnel at FCO.

He wondered what a smoke would be like. He wondered how Amanda and Katie would cope with his loneliness.

There was no message for him at the Dreamland Hotel.

The black car and the chauffeur were enough to cause a ripple of curtain lace in Larchwood Avenue. There hadn't been a death and there wasn't about to be a wedding at the Rossiters that any of the neighbours knew of. The street lights were on, they threw enough light for the watchers to see the Brigadier head from his car for the front wicket gate of No. 97. The Brigadier wore a three-piece pin stripe, and below his pressed trouser turn-ups, his black shoes were brilliantly polished. He was looking at the front door for a light, and so did not see the dog mess in his path. There was a glimmer of light in the depths beyond the frosted glass. There was an overgrown flowerbed on one side of the path, and on the other a square of unmown grass bright with dandelions…and the woodwork needed a spruce of paint. He rang the bell, heard the chime, and wondered what Rossiter earned in a year.

The door opened and a teenage boy confronted the Brigadier. The boy's hair was short and spiked up like a dandy brush. The boy looked him up and down.

'Who are you?'

'Fotheringay, Brigadier Fotheringay.' He smiled sweetly. 'Is your mother at home — Mrs Rossiter?'

'Mum…there's a man here,' the boy shouted to the back of the hall, and then ducked into the front room and closed the door. He stood alone. He looked down at his feet. Bugger, and the dog mess had smeared the carpet and up the heel of his shoe.

He was back outside, wiping the sole and heel on the grass when he saw she had come to the door.

'Yes.'

'Mrs Rossiter?'

'I'm Mrs Rossiter.'

He didn't really know what he had expected to find when he had made the decision to drive down to see her. She was a small, tired-looking woman, wearing carpet slippers and an apron. She was carrying rubber gloves. Her hair was grey-streaked. The Brigadier surprised himself: he felt a moment of sympathy for this woman.

'Can I come back in?'

They stood in the hall together. She invited him no further. She looked at him as suspiciously as if he had come to check the television licence.

'It's about your husband, Mrs Rossiter.'

'What's he done?'

'I am sure you know your husband has been away on assignment for Foreign and Commonwealth. He's gone missing, Mrs Rossiter,' the Brigadier blurted it out. 'We don't know where he is.'

'How should I know where he is?'

'I wondered if you'd had any postcards,' the Brigadier said lamely.

'From him? When did we ever have postcards?'

'If you'd had any communication with him, if he'd given any indication of his thinking…'

'Be a fine time for him to start.' And then: 'Is Ross all right?'

'I've no reason to think he isn't…he's just gone missing. I can tell you in strictest confidence, Mrs Rossiter, that he's gone missing in rather odd circumstances. That is to say in flagrant disregard of the most clear instruction to return home.'

'Ross has gone missing…?'

He saw she was crumbling, he saw the wobble in her throat, and the biting at her lip. He was a fool to have come. 'But you've heard nothing from him?'

'We never hear, not when he's away. He'd never talk to us about his work, not even when he's at home, never has. He's all right, you're sure…?'

The Brigadier smiled emptily. 'I'm sure he's all right. I'm sure there's nothing for you to worry about. There'll be an explanation. As soon as I have word, you'll be told. That's a promise.' He was backing for the door. 'I'm very sorry to have troubled you.'

He let himself out. He heard her sob through the frosted glass, and made his way circumspectly back to his car.

Rossiter was the Brigadier's man, and the Brigadier knew nothing of him. He'd have bet his best horse that Rossiter would have obeyed every bloody instruction given him. Either Rossiter was dead or he would have lost the horse that he loved.

The boy had been walking for a day, he would walk through most of the night. Without the mules he could not have attempted the forced march into the high passes and plateaus that would lead him between the villages of Weigal to the south and Kamdesh to the north. Ascent, and descent, climb and fall, valley and cliff face. Now that the sun had slipped away and the light had faded there was only the occasional grey glimmer of the path in front of him when the cloud broke to make a window for the moon. Instinct and memory kept him on the path.

Hours after the darkness had come there was a confirmation for Gul Bahdur that he had taken the correct track, the one that would steer him between the outposts of habitation in this wilderness. A caravan of men and mules and horses and munitions came towards him. Eerie ghost voices at first, and the scrape of hooves, and no faces and no beasts to marry with the sounds until he was upon them. Gul Bahdur was given bread to chew and some dried fruit, and he spoke of the destruction of four helicopters, and he said that aerial patrols were scarce in the valley ahead and that when the helicopters came it was in squadron force.

He heard the caravan straining, creaking, away from him into the darkness. He felt a man. He believed he had passed a test of initiation into adulthood. He carried the news of a battle, the news of four downed helicopters. There was a light flurry of snow. His blanket was tight on his shoulders, his body sheltered from the winds hard against the flank of the mule.

Maxie Schumack shook Barney's shoulder.

It was light. He had slept through the dawn.

Rain fell, fine and cloying. Barney shivered. His covering blanket gleamed from the sheen of droplets. His stomach growled in hunger. As soon as he was awake, he had seen Schumack bending over him, had assimilated the rock gully in which he had slept, then the painful itches of the lice scabs were alive on his flesh. His stomach growling, and a different noise, a new sound.

'I would have let you sleep, but you ought to see the show,' Schumack said.

The helicopters flew high over the valley in convoy.

'Mi-8s, Hips we used to call them, can carry up to thirty men each.'

He saw the gunships, escorts on the flanks.

'Only one place that lot's going.'

He saw the cascade of flares falling in regular descent from the Mi-24s.

'Babies are learning.'

'Only one place?' Barney asked quietly.

The convoy was at maximum speed, Barney estimated its ceiling was 3000 feet above him. The Redeye launcher had been under his blanket while he slept, but it was damp now, smeared and wet. He wiped it with his sleeve but made no effort to arm it.

'Give me your glass.'

Schumack dug in his shirt front for the spy glass.

'As you say, the babies are learning…they've got baffle tubes on the engine vents. I'll have to be closer, every time bloody closer, more of a bastard…'

'Can you take one?'

'What'll happen to the village?'

Schumack screwed his face. 'They'll dynamite it, they'll burn it.'

'What about the people?'

Schumack shrugged. 'How smart have they been? If they're up high, if they stay in the caves, if they've reached the side valleys, then they won't see much and they won't feel much. Depends what the Soviets want out of it, what sort of lesson they're reckoning to teach. They can be mean bastards when they've the mind for it.'

'Your answer is yes, I can take another one.'

'You're thinking of the lady…'

Barney's glance flashed angrily at Schumack.

'That's crap, Barney. She's made her bed, she can lie on it. What do you want? Do you want us to stand around and try to fight for villages when they're going to put troops in…?' He broke off.

Above the helicopter convoy, above the cloud cover, reverberated the sounds of jet aircraft engines.

'Guerrilla warfare, Barney Crispin, you're supposed to know what that's about. That's about ducking and weaving, and running for a better day. You think the 'Cong pissed about when we were coming in force? They ran. They went for the cracks in the walls. That's the way it happens. And you having a fancy fanny in there doesn't change anything. Got it, hero man?'

'Why don't you piss off, Maxie.'

'You didn't even screw her, did you?'

'I can take a helicopter on my own.'

'Better you're not on your own, Barney.' A soft kindness from Schumack. 'And a broad isn't worth us getting scratchy with each other. Listen here, hero man, if you start getting emotional about fighting, personal, then you're in deep shit, you and all the bag carriers you've collected.'

'If you could get me two RPGs on the east side…'

'You'll climb on the west side?'

'Right.'

'And take them on the way back?'

'Right.'

'Don't get scratchy with me, hero man, and don't put a bit of fanny in the way of whatever you want to do here, whatever that is…because I'm going to be beside you, and if you're crapping about because of a fanny then I'm going to get scalped with you.'

They were both smiling. Schumack had crowbarred his way into Barney's life. He was a stray dog that had come to a kitchen door, and no way would the beggar be turned aside.

'Just get me two RPGs on the east side.'

They had been in the morning to the village of Atinam escorting the troop-carrying birds, they had returned to Jalalabad. In the late afternoon, still spewing their flares, and wearing their fresh painted engine vent baffles, they had come back to Atinam to collect the big Mi-8s.

Behind them now, as they flew south in the valley, was a village where two companies of airborne troops had done a job of work. A violent, bloody job of work.

They had been landed beside the village on the valley's floor, also on the roof of the valley. They had secured the side valleys and the waterfall ravines, they had cleared those caves that were close to the village. A violent, bloody job.

By the end of the day the cloud levels had fallen. The helicopter convoy flew beneath the cloud ceiling on full power. The flares were brilliant on that early evening.

Any light would show up on that early evening, any flash of flame.

They had not been attacked. They had not taken ground fire either at the village or on the way there or on the way back. They were escorting butchers back from a long day's work. There was little for the gunship pilots to feel proud of.

The Reaktivniy Protivotankovyi Granatomet, the RPG-7, is the smallest and most widely used anti-tank launcher utilised by the Soviet armed forces and their satellite allies. Through capture from overwhelmed Soviet and Afghan Army units, this weapon has become standard equipment in the arsenals of the mujahidin. When fired, the RPG-7 emits a fierce flash signalling the rocket's ignition.

On that evening, in the shadow of the valley, in the gloom of the rain clouds, the flash would be white light, easily seen. Glimpsed cursorily through the curved distortion in the wings of the Mi-24's cockpit bulb, the ignition of an RPG-7 could give the appearance of the malfunctioned firing of a Redeye missile.

Schumack had talked with Ahmad Khan. Ahmad Khan now talked with the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who limped when he walked.

'You are our leader, and we tell you as we have the right to tell you, that you give this unbeliever too much,' said the man with the red waistcoat.

'It is as if you have given to him the decision of your tactics, when you strike, how you strike,' said the man who limped when he walked. 'He is a poison in your mind.'

'The one place in the valley where we were assured of food and some safety was the village of Atinam and, because of the unbeliever, Atinam is destroyed.'

'You should never have offered him your hospitality.'

'He should have been food for the eagles.'

'He has not stayed to help us.'

'He has stayed to fornicate with the woman.'

'He will destroy you as he destroyed Atinam,' said the man with the red waistcoat.

'He will destroy us all,' said the man who limped when he walked.

Ahmad Khan had not spoken during the denunciation of Barney Crispin. Now he waved his hand irritably for quiet. He spoke abruptly. 'You will fire the launchers. He said that before he came there were no helicopters killed in my valley. You will fire the launchers on my command. Where I had killed none, he has killed four helicopters in my valley.'

There was no further argument. To have disputed further would have caused the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who limped when he walked to trek out of the valley to search for a new commander.

On that evening, and where the valley was a little less than eight hundred metres in width, the two RPG-7s were sited on the east side. On the west side, hidden high on a rock bluff, was Barney Crispin.

Barney thought of the woman. He thought of the bombers that he had heard overhead above the cloud cover. He thought of the troop carriers that he had seen ferrying the combat troops to an undefended target.

He saw the approach of the returning convoy and their flares. They came above the centre of the valley. They came level in height with the rock where Barney waited. The Redeye launcher rested on his shoulder.

Schumack crouched at his side.

Two spurts of light from the east side of the valley. Almost simultaneous. Two sheets of flame from the east side of the valley floor. Two explosions trailing the picture.

Barney saw the tracer fly from the gunships, heard the snarl as the engine power increased, as the birds manoeuvred, as the Mi-24s bucked away from the east-side firing positions. Redeye on his shoulder. Over the open sight and onto the helicopter that flew wide to the west side of the valley before turning to flail the flash fire positions with the big nose-cone machine gun.

Battery coolant on. Hearing the first whine of the contact.

How would the baffle tube work against the Redeye? Didn't bloody know. He did know that the girl had stayed behind at Atinam with the women and the children and the old men, and Barney Crispin was alive and fighting on another day.

The howl in his ear of the infrared contact. Point blank for Redeye. The squeeze on the launcher trigger.

First flash, second flash…

Barney and Schumack lit up, bonfire kids, illuminated by the second stage ignition. Barney should have been running but he watched the light ball plunge out across the valley. He was captivated by the light power he had created. Schumack was pulling, yelling at him.

One brilliant explosion.

The tension burst from Barney's body. They tumbled together down the valley wall and away from the exposed rock bluff. Schumack sobbed in a cry of pain as his arm stump cracked down onto rock. Sliding and stumbling together.

They found a gully, a damp crevice where a little of the rain water had collected, where they could cover their heads with their blankets, where they could merge into the featureless valley walls.

'Did I kill it?'

'It's still up.' Dead words from Maxie Schumack, a cold message.

'But the explosion?' Barney shouted.

'It's still up.'

The helicopters did not stay to hunt down the fire position. The gunships were on escort. There was a cursory strafing of the area from which the Redeye had been launched. They had wavered towards the first trap, they would not be baited a second time.

When they reached the floor of the valley Ahmad Khan waited for them. He took Barney to the east side. Barney had seen the stone face of the young schoolteacher, set and expressionless. He knew what he was to see.

In death he could recognise the two men who had fired the RPG-7s. Through the nightmare death of a helicopter's machine gun bullets, Barney could remember their features.

'I had a hit,' Barney said bleakly.

'I see no helicopter.'

Ahmad Khan walked away, left Barney to look down on the bodies. Barney saw the man who wore the red waistcoat and his shirt was red also, and his thighs and the skin of his face. And the leg of the man who limped when he walked was two metres from his body, and the brain was splashed further. Barney took a launch tube from Schumack's back and reloaded the Redeye.

The pilot, Vladdy, brought the helicopter gunship back to Jalalabad and the blazing apron lights, and the waiting ambulances, and the fire tenders. One of the twin turbo shafts had been damaged. There was an oil leak. Hard, slow flying on one functioning engine, but the pilot had brought it back.

Medev was on the apron. When Vladdy climbed down from the cockpit, when the rescue services had driven away, when the maintenance crews began to scramble up around the shattered baffle tube, Medev took the pilot in his arms. He held the shaking young man against his chest, hugged him, squeezed him, poured out against him his gratitude that the big bird had not been lost.

'It is the end of his luck,' Medev whispered.

'We got it back, that's all…' the pilot said dully. 'It'll be days before it's operational again.'

'Not important, he fired and he failed. He has all night to think on that. He fired and he failed to destroy you. The first failure is the hardest. What now does he have to look forward to?'

'Will we go back to the valley?'

'Of course.'

'For what?'

'To kill him,' Medev said. 'To kill him now that he is at the end of his luck.'

The pilot broke clear and walked away fast. Once he turned to Medev who followed him.

'You fly with us…' the pilot shouted at Major Pyotr Medev.'Now that he is at the end of his luck, you fly with us, and see what it is like when the missile is fired. Just the one time you come with us to know what it is like to live because of luck.'