For what it had gone through the mule deserved a name. Maggie had been half-starved, denied water, tied under a rock and strafed. Maggie deserved better than they could give her.
'Tomorrow we will reach the village.'
'Why have the people stayed, Gul Bahdur, in this one village?'
'It is in a gorge at the furthest top of the valley. The valley sides are very close. It is said that it is difficult for the planes to make their attacks, they cannot easily approach.
I think they have machine guns there, they used to have machine guns. The Soviets cannot attack every village in Afghanistan
'Which group is there?'
'The village is used by the men who follow Ahmad Khan, your friend . . .' The boy could still manage a darting grin at Barney. 'It is Hizbi-i-Islami. It is not important inside Afghanistan to which group the fighters belong. It is important in Peshawar, not here. What is important here is the killing of Soviets.'
'Bravely spoken, Gul Bahdur,' Barney said drily. 'When the Resistance has won they will make you the Minister for Propaganda.'
'What should be more important than killing Soviets?'
'For you, nothing.'
'And for you, Barney?'
'It is not your concern what is important to me.'
The boy wriggled closer to Barney. In the half-light his face was near to Barney's, keen and questioning.
'Why did you come, Barney?'
'It is not your concern why I came.'
'I have the right to know.'
'No rights.'
'Will you tell me? The truth.'
'Talk about something else, Gul Bahdur,' Barney said softly.
'Why do you hide?'
Barney laughed.
The boy persisted. 'You said there was no woman you could tell of this to, when you returned.'
'I said that, yes.'
'Your mother?'
'She was killed a long time ago.' Barney's voice was far away, as remote as the presence of the snow leopard on the escarpment.
'Your father?'
'He's dead. He was shot. There's a man in prison at home, the man who shot him.
My father was trying to stop this man robbing something. That's all that happened.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Why should you be sorry? It's not your concern.'
'You have no brother or sister?'
'There are no brothers, no sisters. There is no one, Gul Bahdur.'
'Is that why you came, Barney, because there is no one?'
Just doing a job, and it seemed the crappiest of reasons for sitting in a rock crack cuddled with a heat-seeker. Better not to look for explanations, better to pray that the next big bird doesn't catch fire on impact, and better to be out and away before the explanations as to what Barney Crispin, Captain, was doing in Afghanistan became too feeble.
'There's no one gives a damn, Gul Bahdur . . .'
The boy moved away. Barney watched him turn his back, wrap himself into his blanket and settle onto the hardness of the rock.
15
At their northern end, the valley's walls made a plunging ravine. Save for the torrent slides in the side valleys the walls were all but vertical and at the foot separated by a few hundred yards of flat ground on either side of the river bed. For much of the day, the floor of the valley at this point lay in shadow.
On large scale maps, the village of Atinam was marked as a black speck inserted between the two coils of contour lines at the valley's extremity. Only on large scale maps. It was too small a community to have exercised any but the most exact of cartographers. With the coming of the fourth year of the war, Atinam was the only inhabited village in an otherwise depopulated valley. Before the Soviet invasion, the valley had been home for some thousands of Nuristanis. Many of them now lived in the camps for refugees across the border. But the villagers of Atinam had stood their ground.
The village that was defensible and often defended when the grandfather of Barney Crispin was still a swaddled baby was equally defensible against the incursion of the bomber and the helicopter close to a century of years later.
The village of Atinam lay as a barrier across the floor of the valley, dominated by the cliff walls. It sprawled from the base of those walls inwards to the river bed bisecting the valley with a bridge of rope and planks linking the halves. The homes of Atinam were not built from the mud bricks found further south in the valley but were constructed from dry stone walls by craftsmen who had their skills handed down from generations past. Some of the houses were of a single storey, more were of two floors and built with the lack of shape and pattern found in an uncompleted game of dominoes. On the right side of the river bed, where the eye witness faced north, was the tower of Atinam's mosque. The mosque was the one building that had been made with concrete, and though the whitewash was now flaking and dirty, it remained the beacon point of the village.
Below the village and on lower ground to the south were fields. Small, mean fields, but sufficient in the past for two maize crops in the summer and for the growing of a few hardy species of vegetables. Some of the fields were now scorched by the flaming petrol jelly dropped from the bombers, some were dried out at this late time of summer because the irrigation water courses had been damaged by the high explosive dumped from the bombers. But a bare sustenance could be drawn from the land for the villagers and fighters. Below the fields, a few hundred yards south of the core of the village, were the mulberry trees with their white and sweet fruit clusters dangling between the rich green of leaf foliage, and these also gave sustenance. And scattered amongst the wild mulberries were walnut trees, the forbidden fruit that should not be picked by the boy passing with the goat herd, nor by the girl who took washing to the river pool, because to do so would offend the rigorous laws of husbandry that were the bedrock of the community's survival. And below the mulberry trees and the walnut trees were the thin grazing grounds for the livestock that provided the white cheese that was staple to the villagers' diet.
There were juniper flowers close to the village, and violets, and sometimes the dropping orbs of the sunflower, and wild roses that were pink and ragged.
The village of Atinam might, in other years, have been a place of peace and beauty.
In the fourth year of the war, Atinam was a fortress.
Whereas other Villages in the valley had proved open to the bomber and helicopter attacks, Atinam's position forced the Sukhois and Mi-24s to fly a low gauntlet up the valley, between the steep cliffs, drop their loads and at once soar upwards to escape impalement on the rock faces. This made for skilful, difficult flying, flying that was frequently ineffective. In the valley walls were caves, some shallow, some deep, providing safe fire positions for the fighters. To reach their target the aircraft must fly through cones of defensive fire, through machine gun fire, through automatic rifle fire. The task was relished neither by the pilots nor by their superiors who were accountable for losses of men and material. After a fashion the village survived.
The men of Atinam recognised a vague allegiance to the Hizbi-i-Islami group in Peshawar, but the man with direct and daily control over their military operations was the stranger schoolteacher from Kabul, Ahmad Khan. The word of Ahmad Khan was the law of the village. He organised the military defences of Atinam, and the training in tactics and weapons, and the teaching of propaganda to the young, and the supply of food. He had taken reponsibility for the defence of Atinam. Atinam had become the jewel in Ahmad Khan's valley.
Maxie Schumack sat amongst the men who formed a horseshoe around the instructor.
In his pantaloon trousers, in his long-tailed shirt and with the blanket draped on his shoulders, he merged with the men about him. Only the features of his head were different. He had gone to the pool in the early morning and scraped savagely at his face with the old razor that he had carried since he had first come to Afghanistan. He had washed his short-cut hair and combed and quiffed what there was over his scalp. White and grey hair if he had bot
hered to look in a mirror, and he hadn't. No space for a mirror in Schumack's back pack. If he had looked in a mirror he might have wondered what an old bastard like himself was doing in Laghman province, messing in a village, listening to a lesson in the use of the Soviet-made RPG-7. If he had looked in a mirror he would have seen the wrinkle lines at his mouth, the crow's claws at his eyes, the skin high on his forehead where the hair had long gone. He did not understand much of what was said, a few words had stuck with him in the months inside Afghanistan, but not enough to know whether he could have done better. It was clear that this was the stop line. Why should he care? One village was like another village. One place to fight was like another place to fight. He watched the instructor. The rocket anti-tank grenade was a great weapon for the valley, played bloody hell with the Soviets when they came lumbering up the track with their T-62 tanks and their armoured personnels. Made them think . . . scares them shitless, more like. Later, perhaps, he would be asked to contribute, but not before he had proved himself to these men. Nothing bothered him in that. There would be fighting here. All of the village knew there would be fighting, because all the villagers talked of was the story of two helicopters downed in the valley.
They were dealing with the sighting, Schumack tried to hold his mind on the instructor.
Goddam difficult, the sighting. First round usually missed, and that was smoke and a back blast flame, and it was 14 seconds for a good man to fire a second round. He tried to hold his mind on the instructor, and the stump ached. If his mind was not on the instructor, not on the sighting mechanism of the RPG-7, then his mind was on the woman. Shit, that was a disaster, the woman was a bastard disaster. Shouldn't have been like that, not a bastard disaster.
That afternoon Mia took her first clinic in the village.
She had no medicines, she had only the advice she could offer through translated French passed on by a girl who had drifted to the village the previous summer from Jalalabad. When she had come to this village, when she had seen the tailing away at the north end of the ravine, she had known that she had reached the end of her journey.
There had been talk of movement by a Soviet airborne regiment in the mountains between northern Laghman and Panjshir; there had been talk of a new offensive of Soviet armour and aircraft into Panjshir. She knew only that she could go no further than the village that was called Atinam. It was a small thing to her, it was something, that she could identify the ailments. She found some dysentery. She found the coughed-up blood of tuberculosis. She found the rash of measles. She found gangrene in a young girl's arm from a shrapnel wound. At first the men did not come. Their women came and their children. The men waited outside the door fearful that this woman would touch them. She found the psychiatric cases, the numbed young faces of those who turned inside themselves to eliminate the fear of the screaming bombers. She worked swiftly, dismissing her patients with sharp matter-of- fact advice that was handed on to them by the girl from Jalalabad. Of course when she wiped her hands after each examination she seemed to wash those hands of the case history.
She was washing her hands after the last of the patients had gone, she had asked for boiled water and they had given her warm water, when she heard the shouting of children outside. Through the opened door she saw the children running down the track alongside the river bed, and pointing. She saw the American go past the doorway, not looking at her, and she thought she might be sick from the memory of the awfulness.
Mia walked out into the open air.
Through the mulberry trees approaching the village was the Englishman and his guide and one mule. Walking slowly, some way apart.
The boy had talked them into Atinam.
Barney had sat on a stone at the edge of the village and the boy had gone forward.
The whole village was there, lined in a pressing half circle behind the man who had broken off from his instruction of the RPG-7, listening as the boy made the request for hospitality and shelter. Once he turned and pointed with his finger towards Barney and then showed with the gestures of his hands the motion of a falling helicopter. Barney thought that the boy would have no need to explain their credentials. The village would know. He saw Schumack in the ranks of the listeners, saw him take no side in the discussion around the boy.
Gul Bahdur turned, waved imperiously for Barney to come forward. Cheeky sod, Barney grinned. He tilted his head, acknowledged the boy, and came forward. The children watched him, and there were women standing in the doorways of the houses and not running from view as the Pathan women of Paktia would have done, and old men, and the fighters. All watching Barney because this was the man who fired the missile that had destroyed two helicopters.
They made an aisle for him, the children, the women, the old men and the fighters, they stepped from his path as he followed Gul Bahdur and the mule into the village. He passed Schumack, winked at him. He passed Mia, and blushed and smiled, and she looked away from him and cut her eyes to the ground.
The fire was of dried goat dung.
The small flames gave a little warmth to Barney's hands and arms and body. The fire was set amongst bricks in the centre of the room and the smoke rose to a hole in the ceiling, He had washed, he had eaten nan and a crumbling white cheese and a scrape of goat's meat on a bone. He sat on a floor rug and Schumack was opposite him, across the fire from him. They had been left alone by the village men and Barney didn't know where the boy had gone; probably he had found somewhere to sleep where he could talk first of the crashing helicopters and then gossip chat into the night.
Barney had eaten with Schumack. The woman could have eaten with them but had said she was not hungry. She was in a room off the main chamber where the fire was lit.
Schumack, amused and playing the older man, said, 'We heard that Ahmad Khan booted you out. News chases you faster than the Revenue in this valley. We heard about the helicopters, they were back this morning collecting the bodies. How many Redeyes for two helicopters?'
'Two,' said Barney, looking into the flame flicker.
'Good thinking or bad flying?'
'We lit a fire in a cave for the first. We tethered a mule for the second. . .'
'Bright thinking, Captain Crispin. You have six missiles left. And you've showed up here . . .?'
'To rest up, eat and sleep a bit.'
'When are you going to fire again?'
'When the chance arises, when else?'
'You want some help?'
'Yes,' Barney said simply.
'What sort of help?'
'Twice I've been able to take the rear bird, once from low down, once from the top of the valley. It can't be as easy again. I need fire support.'
'Someone to take the pressure off your arse when you're running, when you've fired.'
'Something like that.'
'We've two DShKs in the village, twelve seven millimetre. It's a hell of a rate of fire they put down, don't hit much, but the tracer puts the shits up the fliers. If they were in support of you . . .'
'That would be good,' Barney said.
'Ahmad Khan's supposed to be here tomorrow. He flits about, they say he's sometimes here when he's expected. You should talk to him.'
'He might not care to talk.'
'You've two helicopters, he'll talk to you.'
The fire's light played in the brightness of Barney's eyes.
'You want some ideas when you sit down with Ahmad Khan. He's a sharp guy, if he gets involved with you then he has to know he's going to win. Time for sleep . . .'
Barney leaned forward to whip loose the laces of his boots. Past the fire Schumack lay on his back Barney felt the cold, felt it deep in him because of his tiredness. He wrapped the blanket close round his body, made a pillow for himself with his pack.
Against the wall he could see the pile of the missiles. He flopped back, closed his eyes.
Through the inner door he heard the woman's cough.
Barney saw her image. Barney felt her skin. Barney touched her hair
, twined his fingers in the black ringlets. Barney's arms were loose around the neck of the woman.
Again the hacking cough.
'The bitch'll keep going all night,' Schumack growled.
Barney twitched, the pinching of a nerve. He remembered how she had stood at the side of the path as he had entered Atinam.
'She's like a tiger, Barney. I screwed her last night . . . wrong, she screwed me, humped the balls off me . . . She came in here, lifted her skirt, dropped down on me. I was piss all use to her. Not a fucking word she said, like an animal, like a tigress. She screwed me, she dropped her skirt, she took off. Not a fucking word. I'm not much good, but she made me think I was worse. Just looked through me in the morning like I didn't exist . . .'
'Shut up, Maxie,' Barney whispered.
He heard the cough, heard it choking in a slender throat.
'Bitch, all last night she coughed.'
'Shut up,' Barney whispered, louder.
The bodies made up the last cargo to be loaded onto the transport aircraft.
Not just the Killed in Actions of Eight Nine Two. There was also the corpse of an infantry trooper who had shown his colleagues how not to fool with an RG-42 HE
grenade. There were two Frontal Aviation bomber ground crew conscripts whose mutilated bodies would make a good example for the Education Officer when he preached the dangers of sneaking to the Jalalabad bazaar for hashish.
All of Major Pyotr Medev's fliers were in a crisp line on the tarmac and behind them were the non-commisioned gunners, and behind them the maintenance crews. No bands, no speeches. An impromptu farewell without organised ceremonial. Not even a flag to cover the tin coffins in which the bodybags were laid. Medev had reckoned that the sight would do his pilots no harm, might concentrate their minds. He stood in front of his pilots, but too far back to be able to read the cardboard tags on the coffin handles.
He did not know when the pilot, Viktor, went up the ramp of the transport. Sometimes the bodies went all the way home to the families ... as long as the casualties were low then the bodies went home, that's what was said.
(1984) In Honour Bound Page 19