(1984) In Honour Bound

by Gerald Seymour

  We're' arriving, Barney thought, slowly but finally. His eyes never left Rossiter's face.

  ''We're going to blow out a helicopter, Barney, or two, or three ... I don't know how many. Just as they're flying along, nice and safe, nice and happy, we'll give them a bloody great shock up the arse, up the exhaust. I'd like to think we'd be there to see it when it happens. But, that's too much. I'm the fixer, you're the instructor, but we don't get onto the field. We're strictly on the bench. I find the people we work with, you train them, and off they go over the border and do their stuff. We don't cross the border, Barney, under any circumstances, but with my organisation and your expertise, they go across the border, all the way up the backside of an Mi-24.'

  Rossiter stopped. He saw the astonishment spreading on Barney's face, a cloud over sunlight. He plunged on.

  'So, we're on a double bonus. We've never had a decent look at the modern Mi-24, and that's going to be rectified. I'm not suggesting they load the bloody thing's wreckage on a mule train and bring it over to us, but they'll have cameras, they'll rifle all the paperwork inside, and they'll be briefed on which bits of the electronics we want hand-carried. You can't quite believe it, can you?'

  'I didn't know they had the balls,' Barney said.

  'They can be quite bullish when they set their minds to it, our masters.'

  'What's the missile?'

  'Redeye, American . . .'

  'It's British and American policy not to supply missiles.'

  'Redeye goes to Israel. Israel shipped into Iran when they were scrapping with Iraq.

  Iran is a conduit for the mujahidin . . . there'll be Israeli markings on the kit underneath the last coat of paint, the top coat markings will be Iranian. Pretty?'

  'Very pretty, and you've been here a month?'

  'Finding the men who'll fire Redeye, whom you'll train.'

  'You've found them?'

  Rossiter looked away from Barney, looked out through the window. 'I think so . . .

  it's not easy. Had to be people that we could be reasonably certain wouldn't blab to the world what they had.'

  'And you have these men?'

  'I said that I'd found them, but that's my problem. Your job is to train them.' An edge in Rossiter's voice.

  'I'll train them, Mr Rossiter ... if you've found them. How many missiles?'

  Rossiter had not turned back to Barney. His answer came quickly, offhand.

  'Twelve.'

  'Twelve. . .'Barney echoed the figure in derision.

  "That's what I've got coming in.'

  'And what's twelve going to change?'

  'Who said it had to change anything? It gets us an Mi-24, it gets us a hundred photographs, it gets us the manuals, it gets as target acquisition and locking sensors, low speed data sensor, IFF anenna, Doppler radar, you want the rest? And if we drop a few of them, think of the morale, what it'll do for the mujahiden in their caves, up in their mountains.'

  'Twelve,' spoken softly by Barney, spoken to himself.

  'You're not required to express an opinion.'

  Barney smiled coolly. 'You won't hear an opinion from me, Mr Rossiter.'

  You can call me Ross, I've told you that.'

  I 'd like a Redeye manual, it's a long time since I've seen one.'

  'You trained on it in Germany. I read it in your file.'

  'Oh, yes? Did the file go into the disappearance of the FCO chap on the jaunt in Libya or not? Well, it wouldn't want to upset you, would it, Mr Rossiter?'

  I'll tell you what it does say, Barney. It says "He's a cold bugger". Someone's Commanding Officer wrote that in. Those very words.' The twitch of a smirk on his face.

  'Have you a Redeye manual?'

  'Your bedtime reading.' Rossiter took the bruised, handled manual from his briefcase, gave it to Barney.

  'And the Pakistan government?'

  'If they heard anything we'd be out in five minutes.'

  'British High Commission?'

  'The resident spook's bringing in the hardware. He won't know what's in the package.' Rossiter came close to Barney. 'I hope we can work well together,' he said gruffly.

  'I hope so.'

  ‘I gather your grandfather was in Afghanistan.'

  'He died there.'

  'I read that.'

  'He died after they'd put his eyes out, cut his testicles off. It took a bayonet charge by a whole platoon to get his body back. He's buried there.'

  'I didn't know.'

  'Third Afghan War, 1919. Why should you have known?' There was a smile at Barney's mouth, a smile without humour. 'Do you like poetry?'

  'I don't know a lot. . .'

  'Try this . . .

  'When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains. Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An'

  go to your Gawd like a soldier. . ."'

  Barney looked Rossiter full in the face, blue gimlet eyes piercing into the discomfort of the older man.

  'He was too badly wounded to turn his own weapon on himself, but they heard him screaming before they went in with the bayonet to get his body back. I don't suppose that was on the file . . . I'll see you at dinner, Mr Rossiter.'

  'I told you to call me Ross.'

  But the door was already closed behind him..

  3

  Rossiter was better with the sleep behind him, almost human and almost interesting to Barney.

  'Look at it this way, Barney, from the point of view of the opposition. There are men like you, your age, your expertise, who command flights of Mi-24s, one flight or two flights, and you're going to let them know there's a different game being played, Redeye's game. For three years and more those bastards have been steaming up and down soaking up the small arms fire like it's a gnat's bite . . . and suddenly, out of bloody nothing, there's a sodding great ball of fire and Ivan's in a dive, and he's yelling and next thing he knows he's dead. They've had it very easy, those bastards, chopping up villages from five hundred feet. T'hey're going to sweat a bit now, and they won't be so bloody happy saddling up in the mornings. Think what that's going to do to the hairies on the ground, too. Going to be bloody shouting and singing, aren't they, the hairies?'

  Barney chewed at his toast, spoke through the mouthful.

  'I want detail on the Hind.'

  'I've got all that.'

  'I want maps and photographs of inside, where it'll be used.'

  'I have that too.'

  'I'll want to feel the ground a bit.'

  'It's the same this side as their's, that's fine.'

  'That's all I need for the moment, but I want it before we meet the group.'

  'We'll clear out of this dump then, get ourselves off to Peshawar.'

  'Peshawar's how far?'

  'Three hours' drive, half a day in our tractor. Peshawar's where the main refugee concentrations are and the base camps of the Resistance, last substantial town before the frontier.'

  'My father was born there. Are you going to wear that suit, Mr Rossiter?'

  'Why not?'

  'Just that you're going to be rather hot.'

  Barney stood up, walked away from the table, left Rossiter to pay.

  Rossiter sat stock still for a moment. Was the man laughing at him? Or just Rossiter's fancy? He got up from the table and his knee caught against the edge. The table shook and his coffee spilled on the white cloth. He caught up with Barney, in the passageway by the boutique.

  'It's going to be good, Barney.'

  'Of course.' Barney was smiling, and the light rippled in his eyes.

  'Really good, I mean.'

  'Or we wouldn't be here.'

  Barney loosened Rossiter's grip on his shirt and made for his room. Rossiter went back to the coffee shop to pay their bill.

  They drove west out of Islamabad at a steady trundle with taxis and cars and lorries chorusing their protest behind them. Rossiter confined himself to shouted insults when he was cut up by passing vehicles, o
therwise was silent.

  Beside him Barney sat with his fingers clamped on a typed Hind treatment to protect it from the gusting draughts spinning through the side windows. When Rossiter spared him a glance he saw only a forehead furrowed in concentration beneath the waves of falling fair hair. They'd said in London that the man would be good, said he was serious and not a bloody cowboy. He was hellish short on human relations, but they hadn't said that.

  Harney read. Hare, then Hound, and ultimately Hip begat Hind. Hind version A introduced to the 16th Tactical Air Army in East Germany in 1974. Exceeded expectations as a battlefield helicopter. Big bugger, loaded total weight of ten tons, 56

  feet main rotor diameter. Powerful bugger, two

  I 1500-shp Isotov TV-2 turboshafts. Barney scanned the dia- grams that showed the extent of the titanium armour plating guarding the gunner's and the pilot's cockpits and the engines, fuel tanks, gearbox, hydraulics and electrical systems.

  maximum ground speed and maximum altitude, 200 mph

  and 18,000M feet. Armaments: 32 X 57mm S5 rockets and Swatter or Spiral guided missiles and traversable four- barrelled 12.7mm machine gun with drums of 1000

  armour- piercing of HE incendiary rounds. But in the design of the II Hind there was no infra-red signature suppression. The engine exhausts that are the target for a homing ground-to- air missile were considered ill-positioned by the Western evaluation Safe against everything but the Redeye family. Barney drew quick strokes across the diagrams to measure for himself pilot and gunner visibility. He calculated speeds of descent and rates of climb. Finally he read that the defensive powers of the Hind lay in its own attacking and counter-attacking capacity. Anyone firing at a Hind had better be sure of knocking it right out. Anything less than a fata!

  blow would invite a lethal counter-punch.

  Barney stuffed the file back into Rossiter's briefcase.

  'It's a rather good weapon.'

  ' "Rather good" is a bit of an understatement,' Rossiter said drily.

  'And in the

  European theatre, it looks after our tanks.'

  'Our tanks, and our helicopters that are looking after their tanks.'

  'Even with a Redeye it's not just straightforward.'

  'What's not

  straightforward?'

  'You don't just aim Redeye into the sky when there's a helicopter above and blast away. There's a bit more to it.'

  'You're going to teach the hairies that little bit more,' said Rossiter sharply.

  'I'm going to try to teach them.'

  'You're going to teach them. That's what you're here for.'

  'There are decoy flares that draw off a missile. There are all sorts of procedures. The pilots will be trained for European conditions, they'll know their anti-missile flying.'

  'You'll tell the hairies all that.'

  'I'm saying it won't be easy,' Barney said quietly.

  'I didn't say it would be easy.'

  At Attock they crossed the spread of the Indus river, at Nowshera they passed the camps of the Pakistan tank brigades. Rossiter took the new road, half completed and bone shaking, driving into a storm of dust from the lorry in front.

  First as a pencil line, then as a crayon stripe, Barney saw the mountains that are west of Peshawar. They lay like a distant wall stretching right and left until they blurred into the haze. Behind them was Afghanistan.

  The father of Barney's father had made this journey. More than sixty years before he had come by train with his battalion and travelled on the line that still ran beside the new road, and seen those mountains, and seen the buffalo beside the tracks, and seen the baked mud walls of the villages, and seen the women dive from sight, and seen the children run beside the carriages as they now ran beside the loaded lorries. His father's mother had come this way, and returned, returned with a baby and without a husband.

  They had reached Peshawar.

  They passed the towering sloped ramparts of brick that walled the Bala Hissar fort, they nudged into a confusion of scooter taxis and horse carts and brightly painted buses and laden-down lorries. Rossiter's finger was perpetually on the horn button, his face a furious scarlet as he took issue with one obstacle after the other.

  'Where are we going?' Barney asked.

  I've hired a bungalow. Chappie from one of the refugee charities, gone home on leave. It's out of the way.'

  At last Rossiter swung the land-rover off the main road, onto a dirt strip. They drove between small bungalows and look one turning and then another.

  'It's not quite Eaton Place for the charity people,' Rossiter said from the side of his mouth.

  He had to talk, Barney recognised that, and the older man craved for an answer. It would have been simple for Barney to engage in small talk, price of beer, bloody awful government, Pakistan going to the knackers, anything. It wasn't his way.

  Barney gazed out at the bungalow as Rossiter braked. There was a small concreted yard in lieu of a garage and beyond it a squat building behind a raised verandah. Half hidden was a brickbox for a servant near to the kitchen door. There were untidy flower beds around the verandah from which the bougainvillea reached up to the tired white plaster walls.

  'What do you think of it?'

  'Fine,' Barney said.

  'What would you do if I kicked you in the arse?'

  'I'd break the bones in your arm,' Barney said.

  'Just wondering if you were alive, that's all.' Rossiter laughed, loud and bleating.

  Barney carried the bags into the bungalow. Rossiter muttered something about the cook having gone back to his village for the charity man's leave, that they'd have to fend for themselves, and took for himself the bedroom with the air conditioning. Barney was next door, an iron-framed bed, a wardrobe that didn't shut because the doors had warped. He stamped on a darting cockroach, sliming the tile floor. The water came hesitantly from a cold tap at the basin, he gathered enough in his cupped hands to wash the dust out of his face.

  Rossiter stood in the doorway.

  'What's for the rest of today?'

  'We take delivery tonight, but there's something I'd like you to see first. It's a short drive, won't take long.' Something of a grin on Rossiter's face.

  Fifteen minutes in the land-rover.

  They stopped outside a compound and walked through the open gates, between the high walls. From a central flagpole flew the red cross on white. A European nurse in snow white floated across the compound dirt, as if blind to the surroundings. She saw Rossiter and inclined her head in a formal greeting. A slope-shouldered orderly, grey-bearded, sad of face, manoeuvred a wheelchair down a wooden ramp, the man in the wheelchair sneezed but could not lift his hand to wipe away the mess. There were two huts inside the compound, long and low and single storied. Barney knew what was required of him. He walked to the wide central door of the nearest hut, paused to allow his eyes to assimilate the grey interior. He counted fifteen beds for paraplegic and quadriplegic patients. He saw the head clamps that kept the skull completely still, he saw the beds of others tilted so that their bodies would be moved and the bed sores would be less acute. They were all men, in both of the huts. Every one with passive eyes, the same dropped mouths of helplessness. He willed himself to walk past each bed, past each wheelchair, and for each man he tried to smile some comfort.

  He walked out into the sunlight, into the live world. He strode to face Rossiter.

  'Very clever,' Barney hissed.

  'I thought there was a chance that you didn't quite understand what it was all about,'

  Rossiter said affably. 'The

  helicopters did most of them. Spinal lesions caused by rocket shrapnel, or by being under buildings that the gunships have knocked downPretty grim thought, isn't it, if the only treatment is days aay on the back of a mule. Only a few get here, they're the ones done near the border. Bringing you here was my way of kicking your arse without getting my arm broken.'

  After dark, after an awful meal out of tins organised by
Rossiter, they drove out of Peshawarar on the Kohat road.

  There was no street lighting. Animals and people loomed late from the blackness into the glare of the land-rover's headlights, Rossiter was quiet, but his face was satisfied as if he has won something of a victory at the International Red Cross reabilitation clinic, and taken pleasure from the success. Barney tried to put the sights behind him, could not. Impossible to ignore, the paralysed bodies and the devastated features of the men who had come from the war across the mountains. A moon was creeping up, a thin sickle that threw only a small light on the fields and homes that lay below the causeway road. From the darkness, from the few pinprick lights, there was a bubble of noise, of voices, of animal sounds, of running water in the canal dykes, of chanting songs on the radios.

  They drove for nearly an hour until they came to a junction where Rossiter pulled off the road and bumped the land-rover over the dirt before switching off the engine and the lights. The night was around them, and the mosquitoes. Barney waited for Rossiter to speak, Rossiter kept his peace. Sometimes the lights of an oncoming truck lit the interior of the land-rover's cab and then Barney could see the anticipation rise on Rossiter's face, and then fade with the vehicle's passing.

  It was a Japanese pick-up truck that finally groped into position beside the land-rover.

  A man stepped down from the cabin. Quite young, Barney's age, dressed in the white man's uniform of knee socks, pressed shorts, and an open-neck shirt festooned with pockets.

  'He thinks it's radio stuff, thinks you're a communications wizard, thinks we're setting up a listening post,' Rossiter whispered.

  The truck's lights were shut down, Barney heard a door closed carefully. There was the shadow of a face at Rossiter's window.

  'You can give me a hand, old chap. Christ knows what you've got in there, weighs half a bloody ton, you'll be able to hear them picking their noses in Kabul with that lot.