In Honour Bound

Chapter 21

Medev had gone to his billet angry and drunk. He blamed it on the return of the agronomist from Kandahar. He had been unable to sleep. He had heard every shout from the sergeant of the perimeter guard as he livened up his sentries. Three times he had heard the rattle of automatic fire, and an accompanying thud of detonating hand grenades as the war came closer to the centre of the capital city.

He cut himself when he shaved because he had brought a new razor to Kabul and the water in the basin tap was cold.

He tried to telephone the Jalalabad base. He was told there were no lines. He shouted that it was a matter of operational necessity for him to speak to the base. He was told that he should make the call on a tactical military exchange if it were a matter of operational necessity. From the billet it was not possible to make the connection, later perhaps.

He took the half-hourly shuttle bus to the airfield. At the airfield he had four hours to wait.

It was his hope that there might be a helicopter or an aircraft seat for an early lift to Jalalabad. The Sukhois were taking off for the first of the day's bombing runs against the Panjshir. Helicopters were warming their engines for the start of operations against the bandits dug into the mountain range to the south of the capital. He saw a file of men, clutching their civilian suitcases, walking to the steps set against the fuselage of an Aeroflot four-engined Ilyushin 11–76. Going home, lucky bastards. He saw another Ilyushin, a turbo-prop and smaller, taxiing across the concrete wasteland towards a knot of parked ambulances away in the far distance, so that the loading of the casualties would not attract attention. Most of the wounded went to Dushanbe, in Tajikstan. If you lasted through the field hospitals in Afghanistan then you'd last through anything. If you lasted through Casualty Reception at Dunshanbe, then you'd been visited by a miracle and you deserved a goddamned medal, that's what Medev's pilots said.

He saw a General jump down from a small Mi-2 transport helicopter, a swaggering little man with a webbing holster at his waist and a lanyard round his neck, and the camouflage tunic of the Airborne, and a scurrying aide at his heels. Come to tell them at the Taj Beg that the war's won? Go and tell the poor bastards who are waiting for a lift to Dushanbe that the war's won, they'd be happy to know that. Tell them it's all been worthwhile. Tell them there's nothing personal in their being flown out of a quiet airfield corner so they won't be seen by all the others, the whole and the healthy who've still got it coming.

He had been allocated a seat at 13.00 hours. The corporal on the Movements desk didn't give a fuck for a major in a hurry if that major had no priority order to travel. What couldn't wait until a 14.00 landing at Jalalabad? One bastard…

Hey, wait a minute, Pyotr Medev, that one bastard's dead. Vladdy said that one bastard was dead.

The caravan had come into the valley in the last hours of darkness.

They would rest under the trees and the scrub bushes, amongst the rocks, until the middle of the day. They would be gone by the early afternoon. The pack animals were taken to the river bed where the rains had made a small stream of clear water. The mules and horses would not be unloaded while they drank and while they scavenged for fodder. There were more than three hundred men accompanying the caravan, and not a woman amongst them. For some the uniform of the mujahidin was the traditional Tajik tribal costume, the flowing trousers, the tented shirts, the loose wound turbans. For some it was the dress of Nuristan, tighter grey blue trousers, puttee-bound shins, closer shirts, the rolled rim of the cap of the district. For some it was the dress of the modern fighter, courtesy of the Soviet Union and the Afghan Army, khaki trousers, heavy serge military tunics, woollen jumpers issued to the enemy for winter service, the close skull-fitting helmets taken from the slaughtered drivers of ambushed APCs.

A sharp bright morning with the dawn frost winkled away by the sunlight.

Barney was a mile down the valley from the main body of men and caravan animals, and their fires, and Ahmad Khan and his lieutenants who took tea with the travellers.

Where the valley side was steepest he had climbed five hundred feet to find for himself an eagle perch, a harrier's roost. The sound of radios carried from the valley's floor, popular songs from the Kabul government station, exhortations from the clandestine Resistance transmitter. He saw the movement of toy figures leading the horses and mules to a small river pool.

The launcher was on the rock beside him. Schumack was with Barney. Down in the valley was Mia Fiori.

Twice he had taken Schumack's spy glass and magnified the valley floor, but he could not find her. He had left her early in the morning, before the sun came. He had not seen her face when he had slipped from underneath the blanket that had covered them. She had been sleeping. He had bent low over her, and kissed her, kissed her between the eye and the ear. All through the night, Barney had held her close against his chest, held her tight in his sleep. In the middle of the night when the men who had come with the caravan had slept, and the men of Ahmad Khan had slept, and the pack animals were quiet, when the frost settled on their blanket, she had wriggled against him and pulled the tails of her blouse from her skirt waist and flicked her fingers amongst the buttons of her blouse and pulled it open, and Barney had felt the heat of her breasts and the warmth of her skin against the coarse cloth of his shirt. He had lain with her in his arms, sheltering her, and with her body warm against his, they had slept. In the morning, when he had woken, he had groped in the darkness to where Schumack had slept and found the man awake and sitting hunched against the cold, and they had gone to their eyrie above the valley.

He might die that morning. And if he died on the eagle's eyrie, on the valley walls, then he wouldn't have the memory of her face with him, not her face of that morning.

'You have to take the first one that comes.'

Barney shook away the picture of yesterday's girl and looked at Schumack. 'The first is the most dangerous.'

For answer, Schumack gestured with his claw away down the valley to the south. Barney heard the soft sounds of an aircraft engine.

'If they come and they get in amongst that lot then all your crap game's wasted. The only reason for you to be here is to take out the first one.'

'Then we'll be smashed,' Barney said.

'There's a war going on here, hero man. You're not playing ball in the park.'

There was the growing whine of the Antonov reconnaissance aircraft.

'What's down there, that's what's needed.' Schumack was matter of fact. 'If they don't have what's on the mule packs and the horse packs, then they're stuffed and screwed. You couldn't sit up here and watch that. You couldn't watch it happen while you're waiting for a safe shot. Christ, I couldn't…you couldn't.'

'The first one.'

'It's the way it is. There's no running from here, Captain Crispin, there's no fart face with gold scramble on his arm telling you to run.'

'Why did they light the fires?' Barney said bitterly.

'Because they don't care about dying…sounds crap and it's true. They're not afraid, like we are. They're daft buggers. If they cared about dying, do you think they'd still be going? We're soldiers. They're peasants. They're crap ignorant, and they don't care. Clever bastards like us, we care about getting zapped. We say time to move out, time to run. They're not smart, and that's why they're staying the course. No smart arse takes on a hundred thousand Soviets and the gunships and the Sukhois, that's not for clever bastards. Got the message, Captain?'

'Loud and clear.'

He saw the Antonov bank into a turn. He heard the cough splutter as its engine throttled back.

Schumack grabbed at Barney's hand.

'I hope you make it with the woman,' Schumack whispered. 'Truly I hope you do.'

'We'll take the first bastard that comes,' Barney said.

Alexander Hawthorne, First Secretary of the Information Section, had driven through the night to reach Chitral.

Rossiter had hated the hanging around, the waiting within sight of the Dreamland Hotel. He hurried forward as soon as he saw the Corps Diplomatique plates on the Land Rover and had intercepted the First Secretary as he still sat at the driving wheel. He must have seemed a scarecrow, and the diplomat had gawped at him. The heavy sacking bundle was handed over, a whisper of explanation that there was a letter enclosed, and Rossiter was gone. He had faded from Hawthorne's sight within a few moments, vanished into the daytime crowds of the Shahi Bazaar.

Hawthorne untied the bundle on the passenger seat behind him. Christ Almighty. Davies hadn't told him what he would be collecting, only that it was important to HMG. Bloody aircraft parts, the little bastard. Transporting aircraft parts across Pakistan, that was espionage in Alexander Hawthorne's book. Christ, the spook had a nerve…

The jumble of numeral patterns spilled onto the telex in Century House, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service that was the paymaster of Davies, the spook. A computer translated them into letters and words in a matter of seconds. One copy to the Assistant Secretary, Near East Desk. One copy for file. One copy for the immediate attention of the Director General. One copy to be couriered to the Ministry of Defence, eyes only to Brigadier Fotheringay.

'It will bloody well not happen again,' the Assistant Secretary bellowed at the astonished young man just down from Jesus, Cambridge. 'Never again will I have those army louts lumbering all over our parish, using us as bloody errand boys.'

'But we've the electronics of a Hind coming in, sir. Isn't that rather special?'

'Wrong. We've not got the electronics of a Hind coming in. MOD'S got it…and that's insufferable.'

He'd soon learn, the innocent little pest, because if he didn't he'd have his arse kicked right down the stairs of Century House and halfway across the bloody Thames.

Take off at noon.

Rostov had made a feeble attempt to delay the mission into area Delta. He had been overruled by the Frontal Aviation commander. His caution had been sneered at by the pilots.

Take off at noon. They would be coming back as Major Medev landed from Kabul. The Frontal Aviation commander had insisted that there was no reason for a delay.

Through Vladdy, the senior pilot, the fliers made it known that they wanted to get into the valley and get some damage done to the bastard caravan sitting on its arse there.

Rostov gave the pre-flight briefing. There had been no apologies for the mess night from the pilots, and no one referred to it.

Met reports were good. High cloud ceiling. Light west south west winds of 10 knots. Minimum of 20 kilometres visibility. Reconnaissance reported the bandit concentration as scattered, but in the open. He gave the map coordinates. Vladdy to lead. Two pairs following at 1000 metre intervals. Very flares to be used at all times.

'What for?' Vladdy.

'Because that is the procedure laid down by Major Medev for flying over area Delta…' the brittle response from Rostov '…and it has not been rescinded.'

'That was when we were up against a missile.'

'You have no confirmation of the kill.'

'You weren't there, Captain Rostov. You don't know what confirmation I had. If you'd been there, you wouldn't be talking about flares. I want to go in fast and low…20, 30 metres. I want to catch them while they're still playing with themselves. I don't want to be stooging and lobbing out flares, telegraphing we're coming…'

'The Antonov will have telegraphed your coming.'

'You want to come with us?' Vladdy smirked at him. He heard the laughter of the pilots around him. He saw Rostov's blush.

'I shall be in Operations, with the Frontal Aviation commander.'

Rostov hated the arrogant bastards. Someone had to be on the ground, in support of them. His head was down as he hurried through the rest of the briefing. He gave the radio frequencies over which the pilots could talk to the Antonov above. He gave the fuel loads and the weapon loads that would be carried. Without looking into their faces he wished the pilots good luck and good hunting. He hated every last one of them.

The Brigadier had waited for an hour outside the office of the Foreign Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary was in conference, had been all morning. There would be a short break in his appointments at eleven o'clock.

The Personal Private Secretary brought the Brigadier a cup of coffee and a plate of biscuits.

There was a rising murmur of voices approaching the door of the Foreign Secretary's secretary's office, the door opening, a stenographer flashing a high skirt at the Ambassador of a Gulf state as she made way for his exit, aides tripping out in his wake. The PPS went forward to catch the ear of his master and gestured back through the open door to the Brigadier. He was waved forward, into the sanctum. He waited for the door to close behind him.

'The news from Pakistan is extraordinarily good, Foreign Secretary.'

'You mean, we've got our man out?'

'No. But on tomorrow morning's Tristar out of Rawalpindi, in the Diplomatic Bag, will be the major parts of the electronics equipment of the Hind Mi-24E gunship helicopter. That is the extraordinarily good news. It's going to require a big bag, a really large one. In addition we have cockpit photographs, notes written by our man, and also the pilot's manuals.'

'What about the man?'

'As to that, Foreign Secretary, there is something I would like to say. My department would wish to put on record our very great appreciation of the freedom you have given us in this exercise. If I might be so bold, very few of your predecessors would have permitted an operation such as this. In the Intelligence field we have scored splendidly.'

'Brigadier, kindly come to heel and tell me about the man.'

'He's delivered, sir. He's broken every rule in the book but he's delivered. You could say he's saved his neck, and that of his controller. It's been a first class coup.'

'Will you give me an answer to a simple question. What has happened to the man?'

'He's a peculiar fellow, that's the least I can say about him. He's taken up residence in a valley in Laghman province. Our last reliable information reported he'd shot down four helicopters.'

'Four?'

'It is apparently his intention to use up all the missiles he travelled with. That'll go against him but, by delivering, Captain Crispin has gone a long way to saving his neck.'

'If I believed that Captain Crispin were more at risk from you than from the Soviet armed forces, I'd…I'd bust you right out of the army. No, by God, I wouldn't. I'd bust you to Lance Corporal and then I'd stamp on you, fingers, throat and all.'

The Brigadier smiled a cold little smile, 'It was fortunate that on this one occasion your fantasies and our requirements were able to coincide.'

'You don't give a damn about our man.' The Foreign Secretary's voice rose to an angry snarl. 'You don't give a damn whether he comes out or not.'

'Quite wrong, Foreign Secretary. If he doesn't come out I care hugely. I care that if he doesn't come out, he's dead and not captured. If you can get these wild notions of scooping the pot from the Americans out of your head, you should also care he's not captured. If he's captured, it's not just his neck on the block, I fancy it's yours as well.'

'Get out, please. Get out this instant.'

'Good day, Foreign Secretary.'

The Brigadier walked smartly from the room.

Medev had tried to reach the Jalalabad base again by telephone, but had been unsuccessful.

He succumbed to more coffee and some sandwiches of lettuce and tomato, and to conversation with a Mechanised Infantry major. Worse than the coffee and the sandwich was the tedium of the major's war stories from Mazar-i-Sharif. The coffee he could take, and the sandwiches when he poured salt into them, but the war stories of another of the converts to ultimate victory wounded him.

'I tell you, Major Medev — that's your name, yes? — we have these shit-pushers on the run. If we hold the pressure on them for this winter, then it's my belief they'll start to disintegrate. They're just bandits you know, extortionists. From what I've seen we've brought great benefits to this country through Soviet generosity. We've brought schools, roads, education and literacy, and now I think we have a military stability that we can build on to go forward for the final elimination of these gangs…'

'Have you seen action here?'

'Not actual action. At Mazar-i-Sharif I was with Sixteen Motor Division headquarters. I expect I'll see action when I'm at Jalalabad. I often say that Afghanistan is an incredible opportunity for the younger Soviet officer to learn the realities of war, a very useful training ground. But you would know that better than I, Major Medev. You must have learned considerably about combat flying in the months you've served here. You'll be richer…'

'We have all learned something.'

Medev stood up. He dropped his coffee beaker into a rubbish bin and walked away.

He looked at the wall clock. He lit another cigarette. He wanted only to be back in Jalalabad. He looked back at the major of Mechanised Infantry. Go walk in area Delta, you bastard, and you'll find out everything you ever wanted to know.

Barney at peace. Barney waiting and staring down to the southern bend of the valley.

Schumack leaned his shoulder against Barney's back, silent and brooding away the hours.

Beneath them were the distant sounds of the caravan making ready its departure up the side valley to the west.

Thoughts of the woman that he loved, thoughts of Maxie Schumack who was his companion in arms. Thoughts of the woman that he had found on a battlefield, thoughts of an old fighter who would never again turn his back. The woman who slept with the blood-warm breasts against his shirt, the man who sat with the automatic rifle beside him to protect his back. All that he valued now breathed and lived in this valley. The woman who was a mile away, Schumack who was beside him. The prospect of death no longer frightened him. Barney Crispin was at peace.

The Antonov was still patrolling wide circles over the valley. He rarely bothered to look up at it. The launcher was beside him under his blanket. He smelt his own body and wondered how the woman could have slept against him. He ran his fingers through the tangle of his hair. He rubbed at the caked mud on his beard. He felt the louse scabs on his chest.

He looked across the valley. He saw the grey rock face and the fissure lines in the opposite cliff and the tiny fluttering movement of a hawk, and the summit peaks and the snow slopes. He saw the scar of the river bed beneath him, and the green of unused fields, the scrub of lost land, and the caravan forming columns.

Schumack took his arm and stabbed with his claw to the south.

One helicopter. Seen but not yet heard.

'The first one,' Schumack said.

The helicopter scudded over the valley floor. Coming fast, coming at more than a hundred kilometres an hour. Hugging the ribbon track of the river bed. A camouflaged shadow skimming towards Barney.

'Two pairs coming after, same height, same sort of speed.'

Barney was on his feet. He faced away from the helicopters, back up towards the north of the valley for the rear hemisphere firing.

'You've got the mother.'

'How have I got it?'

Schumack had his spy glass to his eye. He pressed against Barney's side.

'The mothers aren't using flares.'

'No flares?'

'Don't argue with the mothers, they've fired no flares.'

He could not comprehend why there were no flares.

It would be a down shot, down through the rotors, it would be a five hundred metres shot, it would be a shot against which the baffles of the engine exhaust would be helpless.

'Battery coolant, switch it.' Schumack's calm nasal instruction.

He heard the first whine of the engagement of the battery coolant. The freezing of the argon gas around the missile's seeker of infrared optics. He heard the whine and his mind was blank except for the words he had read far back in the manual.

…IR seeker optics and sensor element plus headcoil and cryostat cooling element mounted inside a sealed atmosphere of dry hydrogen. He heard the thrust of the helicopter engines.

…Seeker operates on conical scan reticle principle.

Barney swung to face the valley wall opposite him. Bugger the seeker optics and sensor element. The hammer din of the rotors in his ears.

…Screw the conical scan reticle principle.

Steady on his feet, and the launcher was steady on his shoulder. One hand tight on the grip stock, one hand steadying the launcher sight.

'Coming now…' Schumack shouting in Barney's ear, and his ear was flooded with the noises of the helicopter engines and the first crisp crackle of the machine gun fire.

He saw the helicopter.

The whine from the launcher cried in his ear. The sight found the engine exhaust, found the baffle. The whine piercing his ear, shrieking for action. He aimed high, he aimed ahead.

He fired.

It was the seventh Redeye missile he had fired in the valley. Still there was no anticipating the first burn flash, and the missile drawling out of the tube, the smoke wreath, then the brilliant explosion. The hot gale wind whipped over Barney as he ducked his head. The heat stung his eyes, seemed to singe at the beard on his jaws and cheeks. And the light was gone, careering away from him, winging for the helicopter.

He could not move.

He heard the voice of Schumack howling close to him. He watched the scrubbed pure light home in on the dirt dull camouflage of the gunship.

A crashing impact.

It was the perfect shot. It was the shot down through the spinning circle of the rotor blades. A rotor blade slicing at the tube of the missile and splintering in the fraction of a moment before the warhead detonated. It was the damage to the rotor blade that killed the helicopter, not the spread of the warhead's shrapnel around the baffle.

Barney surrendered to Schumack. They went down the cliff together in a small avalanche of stones and dirt dust.

Once Barney looked up, he saw the helicopter had risen, had struggled for altitude away from the valley floor. He saw the shuddering motion of the bird, as if a rotor blade was fractured. That was death, a broken rotor blade was the death of a helicopter. He plunged on down the valley's wall, onto the more gradual slope below, on towards the gaping mouth of the cave. He heard Schumack behind him. He carried the launcher with the spent tube in his hand, he had the last tube strapped to his back pack. He sprinted for the mouth of the cave. He heard the machine gun fire thrash closer to him.

He heard the devil roar of the helicopter behind him. He saw the rock gouged in front of him. He dived for the cave mouth, fell rolling and tumbling into it.

On his stomach, panting great gulps of air, Barney saw the stricken helicopter come down. The big bird coming to rest. A gull flopping to a refuse tip. Across a quarter of a mile he heard the metal scrape tear as the undercarriage tore across the stone boulders.

A helicopter swarmed above him and past the entrance to the cave, and all of his vision was clouded by the dust storm of machine gun shells, and his ears sang with the whistle cry of the ricochets from the rocket splinters.

God…Oh God…where was Schumack?

Barney had run, and Barney had saved himself…where was Schumack? The storm film cleared, and the valley appeared, and the rock rubble in front of him, and the rims of the cave mouth beside him, and he saw Schumack. He saw the blood soaking the ripped trouser leg. He saw Schumack using his rifle as a support stick, and saw the pain lined on his face.

He saw the helicopter's tracer reach down towards him and gather him into red streaks and lift him and throw him and destroy him.

He saw the death of the man for whom he had not waited.

Barney lay on his face and cried his tears into the stones at the mouth of the cave.

The pilot, Vladdy, ran from the helicopter. He ran as an automaton, because the terror of being fire-trapped overwhelmed him. If he had calculated his best hope, his one hope, he would have stayed beside the helicopter. But his mind was turned by fear. He ran towards the side of the valley.

He ran until he saw the movement in the rocks in front of him, the glimpse of a ducking turbaned head, the flash of a rifle muzzle, the flicker of a shadow between boulders.

He froze still.

He lifted his head, he filled his lungs, he screamed to the helicopters above. He screamed for their help, and his voice choked in terror. The single shots pecked close to him, around him.

The pilot, Vladdy, saw the helicopter approaching him. A brother flew alongside with the spits of fire pouring from the nose canopy machine gun. There was tracer rising towards the helicopters, the heavy green tracer of the DShKs. Vladdy knew those bastards. Who flies steady when the big tracer of the DShKs is coming up?

Please…please…you bastards, my brothers, fly steady.

The gunner of the approaching helicopter had worked his way back through the pilot's cockpit, into the fuselage hold, ripped open the fuselage hatch. A thin rope ladder snaked down from the hatch, it brushed against the rock surface, it jumped towards Vladdy. Crying his thanks, he reached for the rope of the ladder. Close enough for him to see the heavy machine gun fire striking the belly of the helicopter and the canopies and the fuselage. Fly steady, you bastard, please…please. He grabbed for the rope. He caught it with his fingers, fastened on the light steel of the ladder's rungs, stumbled over a boulder and lost his hold. He was running after the rope ladder, groping behind it. He caught it again, snatched his raw fingers onto the steel rung. He felt the wrench in his arm sockets as he was lifted above the rocks, as his feet cannoned off a boulder. He swung wildly, desperately arching for a foothold, but he could not hold his grip.

Vladdy fell fifteen swinging feet onto the rock-strewn ground.

Two helicopters made a run at him, fast and with their machine guns firing. They stripped the life from him as he lay oblivious of the pain from a broken shoulder, and cried for their help.

When they had killed the pilot, Vladdy, the helicopters strafed his big bird with rockets. The gunner had been told never to leave a downed helicopter, to wait for rescue. He died inside his nose canopy.

The helicopters rose, flinging their last vengeance at the caves in the valley walls, at the scattered caravan, and flew back to Jalalabad.

Major Medev landed at two o'clock.

As he came down the wheeled steps from the aircraft, Rostov was waiting for him. Medev saw the red rimmed eyes, heard the shocked quaver of the Captain's voice. Medev followed Rostov's gesture. He looked across to the helicopter revetments.

He saw the ground crew scrambling over four helicopters. He saw four.

For a moment Medev seemed to stumble, but he caught himself, and it was the briefest indiscretion. He looked Rostov in the eye. 'Tell me what happened…' Medev said calmly.

In the afternoon, after the sun had dipped behind a rain cloud and the valley lay in shadow, long after the caravan had disappeared up the side valley in the west, Barney walked from his cave.

He walked across the open ground in the middle of the valley carrying the body of Maxie Schumack. He had loaded the last of the missiles and tied the launcher to his back pack. On one shoulder was slung his own rifle, on the other was the American's Kalashnikov. Barney's forearms were out in front of him and made a cradle for Schumack's body.

He walked past the body of the pilot, and past the helicopter. He walked through an orchard where the trees' leaf cover had been stripped to the ground. He skirted an old 500kg bomb crater.

He walked to where Ahmad Khan stood, his men in a half crescent around him.

He said nothing. He laid the body on the ground close to Ahmad Khan's feet, and put the rifle beside it. He knelt and kissed the white cheeks of Maxie Schumack. He wiped a blood stain from his hand onto his trousers.

Mia stood alone, apart from the men.

Barney took her hand lightly in his own. He saw the dribble of tears in the dust on her face.

'We will go in the morning. We have to go before the snow closes the passes,' he said.