(1984) In Honour Bound

by Gerald Seymour

  'Do you see the pattern?'

  'I just see the bastard flares . . .'

  'They're firing from Very pistols out of the fuselage doors. They fire a kilometre short of the village, and they fire over the village. Look for the pattern, damn you.'

  'All I see is a couple of hookers with their panties down watching rainbow colours.'

  Machine gun shells blasted into a building across the path, the wrench sound of a falling roof, the dust crumble of dry masonry.

  'Maxie, don't you see . . .'

  'I see the mother helicopters.'

  'Shut up and listen.' Barney yelling. 'Take one bird, put all the fire onto the fuselage hatch . . . don't let the bugger put his nose out, blast him if he does. He's not firing behind, he's firing forwards and upwards. Look at him ... He has to lean out on his strap, he has to fire the flare forward or it's gone and dropping too far behind . . .'

  Barney's voice died, obliterated by the roar of a helicopter overhead.

  'You don't have to fire, not each time they come.' A caution from Schumack. 'Live to fight another day, that crap.'

  'They've found something new, they reckon they're the whiskers. Hit them now and they'll be on their knees.'

  'You have to stand up out there, you can't do it off your gut.'

  'I know how to fire.'

  'Please yourself, hero man, it's your ass.'

  'Not the next pair, the pair after that. Every gun in the village on the right flying bird, the one that flies on the right of the pair.'

  'You have to stand out there and face them, you have to be in the open. It's what the mothers want of you. What they're here for, to drag you into the open. Don't you see that?'

  'They'll be on their knees, Maxie.'

  Schumack was gone. Sprinting from the doorway, jumping the open ditch, falling into the doorway opposite. Cocking his ear, then running for the corner. Hesitating on the corner, then gone.

  For what, Barney?

  To kill a helicopter, that's for what.

  What sort of idiot reason is that?

  The only reason . . . because the helicopter is above and smashing a village, pulping it.

  Where does stripping a helicopter for MOD's scientists fit into the game?

  Fits nowhere, a square block in a round hole.

  He saw the huddle of Schumack half around the corner of a building across the path and beyond the drain. Ready for the dash, waiting his time. All right for Schumack. He went where there was fighting, he bought one-way tickets. Anywhere that Sam's backside was kicked was good enough fighting ground for Sergeant Schumack. Lucky sod. You're an arrogant bugger, Crispin. Had to be. Had to be an arrogant bugger to stand out in the open and fire the Redeye at the hot metal engine exhaust of an Mi-24

  battle cruiser.

  Barney felt the warm air panting in his throat, he felt the cold draught in his stomach. His grandfather would have felt the same shiver, the same tremble, the same cold. God, he was scared . . .

  Schumack dived down beside him.

  it's the next one that comes, all the fire on the fuselage hatch, like you want it.'

  Barney pulled himself to his feet. Weak at the knees, unsteady in the hands. He stamped his foot to put a discipline in his body. He held the launcher across his chest.

  He felt the tug of the claw at the sleeve of his shirt. Schumack was pointing away down the path, across the fields, across the orchards of mulberry and walnut trees. He saw the two helicopters approaching. He saw the flame spits of the machine guns. He saw the glory of the flare colours. He read the soundless words at Schumack's mouth.

  'Good luck, hero man.'

  He stood alone in the centre of the path. He raised the Redeye launcher to his shoulder, felt the weight bite down onto the bone. His thumb nudged against, engaged, the battery coolant switch. He heard the low whine of the launcher. He saw the opened door of the fuselage, he saw what he fancied was the figure of the man who would fire the protecting flare to decoy a missile. Ragged rifle fire from the village, perhaps twenty rifles on automatic. Then the steady hammer thud of the two DShK machine guns. Barney saw the tracer reaching for the fuselage.

  They had seen him, the pilot and the gunner.

  The big forward gun wavered towards him as he stood his ground, buffeted, shaken by the explosions around him. They had seen him too late.

  Through the open sight his aim caught the dark hole of the engine exhaust. Three seconds and the whine of the launcher had become a scream at his ears.

  Barney fired.

  A different flare of light in the sky, a streak light, clean and pure against grey stone and grey valley walls. A purging angel light sweeping up and away from the distant slow descent of the Very flares in their many colours.

  No flare had been fired from the right side of the helicopter.

  The missile winged at the helicopter seven hundred feet above in a blur of white brilliance.

  'Go, you . . .' Barney's scream was cut short by the detonation.

  In the moments between the time that the pilot would have seen the lone man with the launcher and the time he could have reacted at the controls of the Mi-24, the missile struck. The helicopter was turning away, but the altitude of the valley determined that its movement would be lethargic in the thinned-out atmosphere. Too slow to hide the exhaust vent from the shrieking speed of the missile. Schumack was heaving at the trouser cloth around his ankles, trying to drag Barney back into the darkness of the granary, and Barney was riveted to the helicopter and the impact point. The final lurch on the helicopter's flight path had confused the missile electronics sufficiently for the hit to be against the tinted glass of the pilot's canopy. He heard the shouting, the squealed excitement of the mujahidin who were invisible to him, scattered in the warren of the village. He saw in his mind the gaping hole of the cockpit canopy, and the glass shivers that had slashed and speared the pilot. Perhaps it was because the pilot's hands had locked the control stick in a particular position, but the helicopter seemed to slide down in a gentle arc towards the river bed on the far north side of Atinam. It came down as if the pilot was determined that the landing should be smooth. He saw in his mind a glazed stare on a young pilot's face. He saw a body stripped naked and bloodied and lying on the rubbish heap of the village, where the dogs came, where the vulture birds came.

  They wriggled out through the back window of the granary a few tight seconds before the building crashed under a rain cloud of rocket fire.

  As they ran, weaving, hugging the stone walls, Barney heard the scrape metal crash of the helicopter's landing, heard the spinning whistle of the rotors that the pilot could not stop.

  Barney undipped the empty launch tube, discarded it behind him, let it roll to a drain. Schumack led. Schumack had plotted the ground, chosen the next refuge.

  'Another hundred feet and he'd have beaten you,' Schumack shouted. 'That was good luck for you, hero man. I'm not pissing on your ego, but you were lucky . . .'

  As he was dragged along, Barney wondered why he had been chosen to be lucky, how it was decided that he deserved luck.

  There were loudspeakers rigged in Eight Nine Two's Operations Room.

  Those who listened to the helicopter assault on the village of Atinam received little indication of the pilots' excitement as they flew up the valley towards their target, of their nerves as they came over the ground fire, of their elation as they surged up to safety. The communication with the operations room was linked through the laconic and short-worded Captain of Frontal Aviation circling high above the valley in the Antonov Colt, a swimmer treading water. The listeners were Major Pyotr Medev, the Frontal Aviation commander of the Jalalabad base, the Colonel of Intelligence, Rostov and two signal technicians.

  The loudspeakers were crudely tuned. The voice of the Captain in the Antonov was magnified and coarse, but his words were clear. Each man in the room heard each word the Captain spoke.

  There was no shout, there was no cry of alarm. It was a factual, drab
report that carried from'the speakers to their ears.

  'XJ SUNRAY reports hit . . . XJ SUNRAY radio distort . . . XJ SUNRAY radio break up . . . XJ SUNRAY losing height, speed . . .,XJ ROGER clear of target . . . XJ KILO, XJ

  LIMA engaging missile launch position . . . XJ SUNRAY down . . . repeat xj SUNRAY

  down . . .'

  The moment when a hammer seemed to strike Medev. The moment when the breath wheezed from the throat of the Frontal Aviation commander. The moment of the fist belting into the palm of the hand of the Colonel of Intelligence. The moment when Rostov squared his back against the plywood wall as if to hide himself. The moment that two technicians stared at the floor's linoleum.

  Medev had the microphone in his hand. He gripped it, white-fingered. Almost a strangle hand at his throat as he spoke.

  'Confirm XJ SUNRAY down.'

  '. . . XJ SUNRAY down, confirmed, visual sighting . . . XJ SUNRAY down one hundred metres north from village perimeter, down into river bed . . .'

  is XJ SUNRAY destroyed on landing?'

  'Negative ... no fire, no disintegration on landing . . .'

  'What is the state of ground fire?'

  '. . . pilots report slackening of ground fire, no longer engaged by tracer from machine guns . . .'

  'He's out-thought you, Medev.' The snap of contempt from the Colonel of Intelligence.

  'They use the machine guns for a single purpose, then silence them. They are more interested in the protection of the weapons than the protection of the village.'The astonishment of the Frontal Aviation commander.

  'Have you learned nothing? The machine guns are important to them, and the missile. The village is irrelevant. The destruction of our helicopter is important to them.' Still the sneer of the Colonel of Intelligence.

  'Then the village will be destroyed.' Bridling anger from the Frontal Aviation commander.

  'Who gives a shit about the village? The attack was on one man armed with a missile launcher. Two air strikes, two helicopter strikes, in one day. And we lost two helicopters for it, for one man. Don't talk about destroying a fucking village.'

  'Would you be quiet, gentlemen,' Medev said softly.

  There was something of steel in Medev's voice, something of diamond in his eyes.

  Still the pale skin clench of his fist on the microphone.

  'What is the possibility of rescue?' Medev asked of the microphone.

  'XJ KILO, XJ LIMA report ground movement in the area of the village closest to XJ

  SUNRAY'S position . . . They are making frequent use of flares on speed passes over XJ

  SUNRAY . . . they report that it is not now possible to locate the heavy machine guns . .

  .'

  'Repeat, what is the possibility of rescue?' An icy shiver in Medev's voice.

  '. . . I am instructed by the pilots to relay that they will attempt a rescue which will involve XJ ROGER landing beside XJ SUNRAY . . . the pilots wish you to authorise a rescue . . .'

  'It has to be a landing?'

  '. . . XJ ROGER reports he believes that the pilot of XJ SUNRAY would have been injured in the missile detonation . . . XJ ROGER believes he has seen movement in the cockpit, he cannot be certain . . .'

  'Repeat, it has to be a landing?

  '. . . confirmed . . .'

  'Repeat, the heavy machine guns have not been located?'

  '. . . confirmed . . .'

  'Repeat, it is believed the pilot of XJ SUNRAY may be injured, the condition of the gunner is not known?'

  '. . . confirmed . . .'

  Medev looked to no man in the room for approval. The skin trembled at his cheeks.

  He was gazing at the map on the wall, at the chinagraph symbols marking the location of area Delta and the village of Atinam.

  A clear instruction from Medev.

  'Without hazarding the safety of any other helicopter, XJ SUNRAY is to be destroyed on the ground by rocket fire. That is immediate, that is an order. Following the destruction of XJ SUNRAY the mission is completed.'

  Medev stared out of the window of the operations room, out towards the east, away towards the setting of the afternoon sun. He turned back, looked now into the face of the Colonel of Intelligence and saw the dropped eyes and the twisted head. He turned again, faced the Frontal Aviation commander, he thought the man might cry.

  He heard the voice of the Captain in the Antonov spotter, a distant sabotaged voice.

  '. . . the pilot of XJ ROGER requests to be patched through to you direct. . .'

  'Refused.'

  He put down the microphone. His hand was numb. He massaged his fingers to regain their feeling.

  He saw in his mind the pilot, Alexei. He reached out to grip the edge of the table in front of him. He saw in his mind the young face of the pilot who had taken the helicopter XJ SUNRAY from the Jalalabad base that afternoon.

  After darkness, Barney went to the wreckage of the gunship.

  There were no battery-powered torches in the village, the light was from tallow fat and cloth-tipped staves, and by old hurricane oil lamps.

  Ahmad Khan had given Barney an hour to work on the helicopter. After an hour his own men would come to strip the fallen bird of all that might be useful to them. Barney had brought the Polaroid camera from his back pack with a clasp of a dozen flash bulbs.

  Two men from the village and Gul Bahdur carried the flare staves. Schumack held the rusty lamp.

  There was something blasphemous about what he was doing, Barney thought, as he climbed inside the twisted airframe of the helicopter. He was like a man who disturbs a freshly filled grave, as he crawled into the flickering shadow of the pilot's cockpit.

  Three times he photographed the cockpit controls, then another photograph of the radio equipment built in beside the pilot's legs. A stink of aviation fuel, it was extraordinary there had been no fire, and those buggers better keep back with the staves . . . The boffins would go ape when this lot reached the Farnborough research laboratories.

  What he took from the cockpit, he first photographed. A circular radar display panel, a flying manual that was bullet ripped, a radio communications pamphlet, a flying map from under the cellophane cover on the pilot's knee. There was a stiffness about the pilot's body, because of the night cold, awkward to shift in the cramped bent cockpit.

  He remembered the instructions he had given to the boy, way back, outside Peshawar, when he had trained the thirteen men who had died . . .

  Underneath the gunner's seat, behind armoured doors, is the fixed pod containing stabilised optics for target acquisition and tracking. Beside that is the radio command guidance antenna. Above the gunner's seat is the low speed air data sensor.

  . . . He'd had a bloody nerve, talking that gibberish to them.

  He could go down past the pilot's boots to the gunner's cockpit, half buried and compacted. Harder to work there. He had had no comprehension of what he asked the tribes-

  men when he relayed Farnborough's requests. No way the poor buggers could have coped with the electronic intricacies in darkness, in lamplight, in a ruined airframe.

  Meticulously he removed, broke away, unscrewed, prised clear the pieces of equipment, handed them with their trails of multi-coloured wiring to Schumack who passed them on to the boy.

  He had been at the north end of the village when the helicopter had swooped to attack its downed comrade. Schumack had been beside him and as they lay together Schumack had passed him, without comment, the single-eye spy glass that was tethered to his neck. He had focused on the pilot, he had seen his head tilt upwards at the first ranging bursts. The bastard had known. The bastard had understood that death came at the hands of his own messmates. Barney knew why, Schumack knew why. It was a dimension of war that Barney Crispin had not previously known. Hadn't known it because he had not walked in the battle lull to the rubbish heap of the village and seen the stripped naked body of a previous pilot, a previous casualty. Something terrifying, when a friend found it kinder to strafe his own m
an rather than let him fall alive into the hands of the allies of Barney Crispin.

  Barney came out of the helicopter, climbed onto the upper fuselage to take a last photograph of the rotor mounting.

  There were a dozen photographs, there was the ID card of a dead pilot, there were five pages of technical notes, there was a blanket filled with equipment. He saw the waiting men who would strip clear the main armament machine gun, and the rockets, who would siphon off the remaining fuel. It was what he had been sent to do. He took the corners of the blanket, knotted them together. He supposed he ought to have felt a degree of satisfaction. He had fulfilled his mission.

  Schumack went with him, the boy behind. They went over the rough and loose stones back to the village. A great blackness around them in the absence of the moon.

  'Will you quit?' Schumack asked.

  'I've done what I was sent to do.'

  'So you'll walk out.'

  'I have what I came here for.'

  'You have four more of the Redeyes.'

  'Th6y go out with me,' Barney said.

  'I could use the Redeyes.'

  'They're going with me.' Barney felt Schumack's arm brush against his. He could not see him, only sense him, smell him, hear him, and picture the war-torn face at his shoulder.

  'I couldn't have your boots?'

  Barney smiled, couldn't help himself. 'There are two sets of flying boots up there, if you're in luck one'll be a ten.'

  'Your ass is still together, it's the right time for you to quit. If I didn't care what was happening I'd probably walk out myself.'

  'Maxie, I am a soldier, I was sent here for a specific purpose, I don't have to listen to that shit.'

  'When are you going?'

  'When Maggie's loaded, soonest after that. . .'

  The claw of Schumack's hand caught at the loose shirt material on Barney's arm. He said urgently, 'Quit fast, hero man, walk out like you're in a hurry, this'll be a bad place tomorrow for someone who doesn't care.'