He checked the Redeye launcher. He had checked it three times that morning.
The pilot, Alexei, saw the tethered mule, whooped in excitement into his radio, hovered his helicopter a dozen metres above the river bed, and shouted for his gunner to engage the sleeping figure beside the mule with machine gun fire.
The pilot, Sergei, held his position five hundred metres above and five hundred metres behind.
The pilot, Vladdy, was a thousand metres above the valley floor, a thousand metres further south from the helicopter now blasting the screaming mule and the shape beside the low rock.
The pilot, Viktor, watched through the blue tint of his cockpit dome. He flew level with the top of the valley's walls.
He slackened his speed, felt the wind gusts heave at the bulk of his machine's fuselage.
He was a good flier, had graduated from the Academy with commendations, but a good flier could do little to hold a stable station in these bastard winds and ceiling altitude.
The helicopter dropped, fell in a pocket, was restrained as if by an elastic string. He felt the tightening of the belts that strapped him to his flying seat.
He saw that the fall had taken him below the top rim of the valley walls. He nudged his stick, edged the bird closer to the shelter of the cliffs. Far away below him Alexei darted low over the ground, difficult to detect because of the broken camouflage markings.
Viktor knew nothing of the attack on his helicopter before the thundering impact of the Redeye warhead down through the rotor blades and into the fuselage casing above him. Because the missile, on its downward flight at supersonic speed, had first sheared through one of the five rotor blades, lopping it clear, the pilot's possibility of feathering down onto the river bed was lost.
The pilot and his gunner died as they struck the ground, in the scattering wreckage of the Mi-24, before the flame spread.
The sun was not yet high over area Delta as the black billowing smoke soared up from the valley's floor.
14
He had run with all the strength and speed and power of his body across a hundred metres of open ground and then into the first gully, diving from sight as his mind made images of the helicopters' pilots surging out of the valley depths in their search for the source of the fire that had destroyed their friend. Once in the gully he had splayed out his blanket, tucked two corners under the tight straps of his back pack, between the straps and his shoulders, manoeuvred the blanket out over his body, and began to crawl away. Sometimes the fast leopard crawl of his training, sometimes the wary snail crawl.
He reached the boy. The boy had done what was asked of him. The mule was tied front legs and back legs, had been toppled over and lay on its side under the shelter of a lip overhang of rock. The boy's weight lay across the upper legs of the mule. The back of the mule, with the baggage still fastened, was in the depth of the rock shelter. The boy, too, was covered by the rock overhang. Barney lay beside the boy, also across the legs of the mule. He pulled up his blanket so that it covered his head. No chance yet to reload the Redeye launcher.
They must weather the storm that would break around them. If luck smiled they would survive. If luck turned away they would be machine gunned, rocketed, and wrenched apart by bullets and shrapnel.
It seemed to Barney that the helicopters quartered the ground at the roof of the valley. Dividing, quartering, coordinating, searching. Above their heads was a continuous
thunder rumble, of the engines of the hunting gunships. Above their heads was the bone rattle of the machine gun fire.
To Barney they seemed to winkle every crevice, gouging into each cranny. And then they were above them, hammering blasts first, then the earth-shaking terror of shells hurtling into the gully, prising and ricochetting the rocks around them, deafening, terrifying. Their rock lip protection seemed to dissolve in a splattering mess of stone chips. Into the earth and stone beyond his head and his feet, howling, splintering, flinging rock debris. When the boy screamed in his fear, Barney flung his arm over the slight shoulders and pressed him down further onto the warm, thrashing legs of the mule. Biting into Barney's stomach was the shape of the missile launcher. And then a terrible silence. The silence of the deaf, until very slowly it came to Barney that the attack had moved on, but that there were still helicopters cutting the sky. Gradually his hearing came back. There would have been a target for him if he had been able to discard the spent tube, if he had been able to take another loaded tube from the baggage pack, if he had the room to load the new tube and fasten in place the battery coolant equipment. But he had no room, no time, and to have exposed himself now would have been to wave an idiot's farewell. He whispered to the boy, daft to whisper because he could have shouted against the distant thump of the rotors, he whispered to the boy what words of comfort he could find. He whispered that the helicopters hoped to break their nerve, to make them run. The wind whistled and preyed around their hiding place and sung amongst the rock crests above them. Difficult for the pilots to stay stable, difficult for them to search the rock and stone and shadow beneath them. When the helicopters were close, he was quiet. When they chased other spectres, a thousand, two thousand metres away, then he whispered his encouragement to the boy.
And then there was only the wind. The helicopters had gone.
They stayed under the rock lip more than an hour after the engine sounds had filtered away.
He exchanged the darkness of the blanket's cover for the brightness of the midday sun. He stretched himself. They left the mule and crawled to the edge of the valley wall, they peered down into the middle day haze. Barney could see the spread-out wreckage of the helicopter. He stared down, he bit at his lip, his hand was tight on the bridle rope of the mule. He saw the pall of smoke hanging over the wreckage, sucked up the tunnel of the valley's walls, and the licking of the fire. A second time and nothing to retrieve.
He detached the used tube from the launcher. He threw it far out into the void beyond the cliff face. He watched it fall, heard it scraping and sliding away beneath him.
The boy untied the legs of the mule and hung to the bridle rope as the animal kicked and lunged and felt its freedom and lifted its head and shouted its call. There seemed a cleanness on the mountain side, a purified and scrubbed down hygiene from the air around Barney's face. He drank it, gulped at its goodness.
He thought they had won. He thought they had won a second time.
'Where do you want to go, Barney?'
'I don't know.'
'You have to tell me, otherwise how can I lead you?'
'Away from here.'
'There is a village at the top of the valley, I think there are people still there.'
'Would they let us sleep in the village?'
'Perhaps they would let us.'
'I have to sleep, Gul Bahdur, somewhere I have to sleep.'
The wind was in his face, buffeting his cheeks, watering his eyes. The wind dragged at his clothes as they went north.
Barney walked alone with the missile resting across his shoulder, and the boy and the mule were away behind him.
He had butchered two helicopters, and six more Redeye missiles remained to be fired. And from two butchered helicopters he had retrieved nothing.
'. . . You are not recruits, you are not cadets. You are trained, you are supposed to be the best,' Medev shouted.
They stood their ground. Their eyes beamed back at him. Before the crash of Viktor's helicopter they would have fidgeted in embarrassment at their squadron commander's onslaught. Before the crash of the second helicopter they might have averted their gaze from his. Not now. They stared him out. Their refusal to ride away from his attack fuelled the Ma jor's aggression.
'You were given instructions that a child could have followed, and you allow yourselves to be picked off, sniped out, wiped and not one of you can locate the source of a missile firing. There is a fucking great flash, you know. There's flash, there's smoke, there's movement. And you saw nothing. I tell you wha
t I think ... I think you're good enough to fly against tribesmen with rifles when you're safe inside an armoured hull, and any shit can do that. I tell you what else I think. I think your attitude to flying against skilful opposition is inadequate.'
Medev had regained control of his voice, an icy quiet. 'What do you think, gentlemen? Do you think you are inadequate?'
'We flew as we were instructed,' said the pilot, Vladdy.
'We were given a formation, we maintained it,' said Sergei.
'When I found the mule . . .' said Alexei.
'When you found the trap, when you sprung it . . .' snarled Medev. 'Yesterday the fire was a trap, today the mule was a trap . . . When Viktor was hit he was flying below the level of the valley top, why?'
'Viktor is not here,' Vladdy said sharply.
'Flying below the level of the valley top, so that his upper fuselage was exposed. So was the hot metal of the engine exhaust vent.'
'A man who is not here to answer for his error, not here because he is dead, should not be criticised in front of his comrades,' said Alexei.
'You want niceties? You want to go home to your parents in bodybags all swaddled in niceties? You want that? You want me to tell you how superior you are? You, who have been tricked, twice by one man?'
'If there is one man, perhaps there are two . . .' said Vladdy.
'Ah, there might be two?' said Medev. 'I tell you, if there were two, two men with Redeyes, then it would not be one helicopter only each day. Not the way you fly . . .
You want to tell me about air currents, about camouflage cover on the ground, you want to tell me that one man can pick the moment of his attack, I tell you . . . listen hard to me
... I tell you, I knew about air currents and turbulence and about camouflage cover and about surprise advantage when the rest of you still needed your mothers to wipe your arses. The way you fly, if there was more than one man with missiles, the whole patrol would be destroyed. You understand me, there is just one man who is disputing with me the territory of a valley in area Delta. Because of one man there are two of our friends out there on the floor of that bastard valley. You tell me they are dead, and I believe you, you tell me they could not have survived the landing, and I believe you.
They will be lying there this afternoon, this evening, this night. Perhaps the bandits will come to these bodies in the evening, in the night. That is why I shout at you. If you think about your friends who lie in that valley tonight then you will understand why I lecture you on the disciplines of formation and procedure.'
'We should go and get them,' blurted the pilot, Sergei.
'We should, and it is forbidden. It is tradition that we get our bodies back, but I have to pay a price for the failure of Viktor to stay in the formation given him. The price is the breaking of tradition. It is something for you to think of, gentlemen.'
Medev turned away from them. Behind his back he heard the door open, he heard the slide of the pilots' boots away into the corridor. The room was refilling. The cypher clerks, the signals men, and Rostov. He gazed up at the map, up at the contour whirls of the mountains and the sharp drawn line of the valley astride area Delta. One man, one bastard man only, and his fist hammered into the palm of his hand.
It was a gamble, it was a chance, he had no option but to play the table.
The money, the close furl of bank notes, blurred between Rossiter's fingers and the Night Manager's hand. It was dark in the alleyway at the side of the Dreamland Hotel.
A moment of mind-bending risk, and Rossiter was vaguely surprised that he was not in tears of laughter. He knew how to treat these people, they could always be bought. If the Night Manager was compromised, then the gamble that no report would be filed at the Police Station in Chitral was justified. A necessary hazard, the buying of the bastard. It would probably be a boy who would come, an Afghan boy. And Rossiter would each evening be in the shadow of the alleyway to hear of the boy's arrival. The Night Manager leered in the half- light at Rossiter. Rossiter grimaced at him, shook his hand as if they were equals. There was a bloody laugh . . .
Rossiter wore slacks and a white shirt that was open at the neck, and a light pullover. He had grown a thin beard at his chin and around his throat. The suit was discarded, and he believed with the touching faith of all fugitives that he had altered his appearance beyond recognition. Rossiter stifled the impulse to wipe his hand on the seat of his trousers. Afterwards, when he was alone.
He had not hurried to make the liaison with the Night Manager. Three nights he had loitered in the darkness outside the old, paint-stripped facade and watched the faces of those working the evening shift behind the front desk. He learned from what he saw through the glass doorway, that was his training, it was the sort of occupation that commended itself to Rossiter. He could judge a man like the Night Manager, he had no doubt of that; he was well practised in judging the type of man that he could buy.
From what he believed to be a successful transaction with the Night Manager, Howard Rossiter went shopping. He moved quickly into an open-fronted store, to scoop up tins and the last of the day's bread, and a packet of imported tea, and a jar of coffee.
He paid smartly, standing impatiently over the man who added the item's costs, and faded into the night.
He walked away from the central street lights of Chitral, off up the side road to the remote bungalow he had made his home. Turbaned and robed men floated past him on the dimly lit road. There were the smells of the chai-khana houses where the old men sat with their ankles hidden under their haunches and sipped their sweet green tea. There were the scents of the cooking spices. There was the barking of the dogs. There was the yelp of a cyclo-taxi horn. He held the paper bag against his body, thought of the supper he could manufacture from it, pulled a long and droll smile. He had made a judgement.
His judgement told him that a hill community such as Chitral was not a place for police informers. If he was discreet he could survive in this place for three or four weeks. The Night Manager of the Dreamland was the first man with whom he had taken the risk of conversation since he had driven into Chitral. He had found his bungalow, he had broken a window, made his entry, he had set up his base. He had forced the garage door and hidden the land- rover. He had emerged from his refuge only at dusk. Of course it could not last, not for ever. It could last three or four weeks, and after that, stuff it ... As he stumbled between the pot holes, left the chai-khanas and the eating houses and the shanty homes behind him, he was happier than he could remember. Howard Rossiter was returning to his operational headquarters. The source of that dream sense of happiness was the scale of the outrage that he had inflicted upon his employers and his family. Sod them. By now he would have been posted as 'missing' ... A man from FCO
never went 'missing' without permission. His family would know that he had disappeared in Pakistan. His happiness was knowing that for once they'd be scratching their bums in FCO, wondering what in Christ's name old Rossiter was up to. Happiness was knowing that his woman, Pearl, and those bloody awful children would be crouched on the front room settee with the bloody telly turned down and wringing their hands and wondering where the hell the old dog's body had lost himself.
He climbed easily over the wooden gate that blocked off the winding drive up to the bungalow from the side road. It would be a rotten supper. He hadn't trusted himself to light the stove. Supper would be cold and eaten in the light of one shaded candle. His bed was a mattress on the kitchen floor, he would be on it by eight, nothing else to do .
. . but it was worth it. Worth it just to think of FCO, and Pearl and the children on the front room sofa.
The kitchen door opened easily. He slid into the shadow, into his safe house. He laid his paper bag on the table. He wondered where Barney Crispin would sleep that night, what he would eat. A funny bugger, that Barney. Once he could have killed Barney, always he could have accepted his friendship. He thought about Barney in those distant mountains.
For the second
day they kept to the high grounds above the valley.
It was a land of desolation, of beauty, of their feet falling on the small petal violet and white flowers, of limitless cloudless skies, of staggering views far into a fantasy land of summits and crags.
Once the boy whistled from behind Barney, and Barney froze and turned and looked to the boy who pointed away with his arm to a rock escarpment near to their trail, and after a hesitation of identification Barney saw the creature.
A snow leopard, a cat of infinite and still majesty, astride a rock.
Barney had passed it, not noticed it. The cat would have watched his coming, his going. Alone, self-sufficient. The ears of the cat flicked back, flattened on the sleekness of its head. It rose in an easy lithe movement and was gone. Barney looked for it beyond the escarpment, but didn't see it again. The cat had brought a smile to his face, he waved his thanks to the boy and trudged on.
He was a wild sight, a sore sight. He was filthy, he smelled the smell of his own body, the hair under his cap was matted and tight, his trousers were torn from the times he had run and tumbled for cover amongst sharp stones.
They would not reach the village at the top of the valley that night.
They would sleep once more in the open, they would find a fissure to drop into. The food had been husbanded but was not finished. They would sleep again on the roof of the valley, shivering, coughing, enduring.
When they stopped, when the boy had caught up with him, Barney cupped the palms of his hands together and told the boy to pour water from his bottle into his hands, and he let the mule drink. Twice the boy filled the bowl of his hands, and he felt the rough mouth of the beast and the slurping tongue against his fingers. Afterwards Barney patted the neck of the mule. He called the mule Maggie. He thought the mule had a Maggie personality. He could mutter sweet things into Maggie's long soft ears.
(1984) In Honour Bound Page 18