(1984) In Honour Bound

by Gerald Seymour

  When the work was done, Ahmad Khan knelt and took the cheeks of each man's face in his hands and lifted it to kiss the cheeks.

  He took from his belt two RG-42 high explosive fragmentation grenades, and he put them in the hands of the man who had screamed when Mia Fiori had cleaned the stump wound of his leg, and in the hands of the man whose intestine pipes had sagged through his belly wall, and with care he looped the forefingers of their right hands through the metal ring attached to the firing detonator. He was last out of the door, after the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who limped. He closed the heavy wooden door after him, and he leaned against the stone wall and waited for the twin explosions.

  18

  Gul Bahdur left the village before dawn.

  Maxie Schumack had wakened Barney. He had found him curled against the body of the nurse. He had shaken Barney's shoulder roughly as if embarrassed to find him sleeping beside the woman. She had been awake, he was sure of that, but she had kept her eyes shut. Maxie Schumack had noted that the woman was dressed, that Barney was dressed. Strange man ... He could understand a man needing a woman after what Barney had done the previous day. Two helicopters downed, and opting to stay and fight, that deserved a screw. Maxie Schumack had been screwing since he was a kid, started with a daughter of the big black woman upstairs, bony little animal the week before the Greyhound ride to Bragg. Didn't get much of it now, not many that liked the sight of the claw. But he thought he remembered what it was like, certainly wasn't like what Mia Fiori had done to him. And Barney was dressed, and the woman was dressed.

  Barney walked with Gul Bahdur and the mule, Maggie, out from the north end of the village, past the rubbish heap, past the wreckage of the helicopter. He had written a pencil message to Rossiter. The bundle was loaded on the mule's back. They walked in the darkness of two, three hundred yards together.

  'And when you have given it to Mr Rossiter, then you go back to Peshawar.'

  'And you?'

  'I am coming when I have finished the missiles . . . Gul Bahdur, without you nothing would have been possible.'

  'Thank you, Barney. May fortune ride with you.'

  'And with you, Gul Bahdur. We showed them in this valley.'

  The boy reached up, caught his arm around Barney's neck and kissed him on the cheek. And then he was gone with the clatter of the mule's hooves on the path into the half-light before morning.

  An hour later, the village was alive and on the move.

  The armed men of Atinam and the women and the children who were their families gathered together their goat and sheep flocks, marshalled them with the help of the yelping dogs, heaved onto their backs the bundles of their possessions and started out for the ravine side valleys.

  'You can't protect them, hero man,' Maxie Schumack said to Barney. 'If you're staying, you stay with us. It's your problem if you hadn't thought that out. You can't protect the camp followers, not even with your sacred Redeye.'

  As they went, Ahmad Khan and his fighting force began the trek away from the village and down the valley to the south. Barney and Schumack went with them. One of the missiles was now loaded to the launcher and carried on his shoulder, another was strapped to the top of his pack, his AK rifle was slung on his other shoulder. Schumack had roped the other two missile tubes to his back. There had been eight, there were now four. Barney knew that Schumack's arm was hurting because he had learned the signs of the bitten lip, the quiet curse, the wringing movement of the arm as if the pain was surplus water and could be flicked off. He had not spoken to Mia Fiori before they had left the village. She had gone when he had come back to the building after his short walk with Gul Bahdur. She would have been with the women and the children and their few men. Schumack had watched him come into the large room and go to the inner door and look inside, and had seen the disappointment and held his peace.

  A sense of failure crept into Barney as they left the village. He would miss the cheekiness and company of the boy and doubted if he would ever see him again. He would miss the cool, worn beauty of the woman and doubted if he would ever meet her again, but the Redeye was his master. There was work still to be completed away from the homes and fields and orchards of Atinam. Barney was trained in the detailed techniques of counter-subversion. Much of the tasking of the Special Air Service was against the hard core guerrilla - Malaysia, Radfan, Muscat, South Armagh - now he played the part of the guerrilla. He appreciated the reasoning that took Ahmad Khan away from the village, could understand why the village must be left to its fate. He had killed four helicopters, he hoped he would kill four more helicopters, yet he felt a sense of failure and incompleteness as he walked away from Atinam.

  The column moved in a straggling line along the west edge of the valley wall, keeping in the shadow of the cliff face.

  There was high, tumbling cloud behind them, wrapping the peaks of the mountains.

  Schumack said, a grunt from the side of his mouth, that it would rain, and that if it rained then the first snow would not be long behind. Barney felt the itching of the sores on the flanks of his body and under the hair of his head. The boy was gone, and the woman was gone, and . . . shit, if it rained he had no poncho.

  The senior sergeant in Maintenance Workshops had procured lengths of aluminium tubing that were designed as central heating ducts for the new prefabricated barracks occupied by the 201st Motor Rifle Division. It had cost him a bitter argument with an NCO of Pioneers.

  The other NCOs who worked on the Mi-24s were regular, but the men under their direction were conscripts, shipped out for limited service, and next to useless the senior sergeant reckoned. As he watched them work, as he heard the hammering of the flanges and screw holes, and the hiss of the welding rods, and the cracks of the rivet guns, the senior sergeant pondered on this new disease that afflicted Eight Nine Two. From the eight that he serviced, four helicopters were gone. There had never been a casualty rate like it. Two replacements had come, but two revetments empty for the world to see and the conscripts to chatter about. He had not seen a portable ground-to-air missile fired, he could barely imagine it even as he scraped his mind for the image. When the Mi-24

  was flown over the ground contours, that was danger for so heavy a bird. When the Mi-24 was lifted to the ceiling of its altimeter that too was dangerous. Danger also when the helicopters flew in the 'bathtub', low in the valleys with the bandits in the hills above them. Danger was not rare, not infrequent . . . but four pilots lost, that was something more ... He knew all the pilots. The senior sergeant prided himself that any of the fliers could come to his shack beside the revetments and talk with him, and share a bottle of beer and talk performance and manoeuvrability. He knew all the pilots, they were the age of his son, he believed he was their friend. The previous day he had watched them out of Jalalabad. Twice he had watched them out, twice he had watched them in. Twice there had been the shortfall.

  Usually he was lenient with a conscript who worked bleary-eyed after an evening's hash chewing. Not that morning when they fitted metre lengths of central heating duct tubing to the engine exhaust vents. One conscript, flabbergasted and sullen, he put on an immediate charge, sent to the Guard Room cells.

  The work clattered around him. He fussed over every detail. The senior sergeant had only the vaguest of impressions of a homing missile and a stricken helicopter.

  Impossible for him to comprehend the vulnerability of the big armour plated birds to a portable ground-to-air missile. And it was said in the NCO's mess that only one man fired the missile. One man only . . .

  The flicker skim of lightning above the valley's walls. A thunder clap over the valley.

  The sun gone. The cloud streaming south to overtake the mujahidin column. Echoing blasts of thunder. The flashing of lightning. A shadow over all the valley, as far as the men in the column could see ahead of them. A desolate place of rock and boulder and gully and tree and abandoned field.

  Ahmad Khan walked at Barney's side. The man who had be
en a schoolteacher carried only his automatic rifle. His stride was fluent, beside the heavier steps of Barney who was weighed down by the launcher and the spare missiie tube.

  Barney broke their silence.

  'How long have you been in the valley?'

  'I came when they took my father to the Pul-i-Charki prison three years ago ... he died there.'

  'How long will you stay?'

  'Until it is finished. I will go when the Soviets will go-'

  'They have a hundred thousand men, they have the tanks and the bombers and the helicopters. How can you make them go?'

  'By our faith, our faith in Islam.'

  'There comes a time when, if you have not won, then you have been defeated.'

  'They have not won. Perhaps it is they who are defeated.'

  'Your people are starving, they can't work the fields, they can't draw in the harvests.

  That will defeat you.'

  'We have the food of Islam. It is nothing to you, it is nothing to the Soviets. To us it is everything. It is a holy war, the jihad sustains us.'

  'The Soviets have the towns and the cities, and the main roads of your country. How can they be beaten?'

  'We will win, perhaps long after you have gone. After you have forgotten any adventure you enjoyed in our country, we will win.'

  'How will you know when you have started to win?

  'I will know we have started to win when I no longer have to look into the sky for their helicopters.'

  'I brought only eight missiles . . .'

  'Do not give yourself too much importance, Englishman,' Ahmad Khan said. 'We will win with you, we will win without you. You are a butterfly that crosses our path, you are with us and you are not with us. We will be here long after you have left us . . .

  We will have forgotten you.'

  if I have overstayed my welcome . . .'

  'When you have fired the last of your missiles, the day after that you will have overstayed your welcome.'

  Ahmad Khan loped away, light-footed, to the front of the column.

  'There is concern in Kabul at the level of your casualties . . .'

  'And so there ought to be, sir.'

  'Don't interrupt me, Major Medev . . .' The rasping reprimand from the Frontal Aviation commander. '. . . In Kabul they are confused by the markings on the missile tube they were sent. American made, but with Israeli and Iranian markings overpainted, yet the missile came from Pakistan and it seems it is fired by a Caucasian white, a European or an American. The evaluation in Kabul is that the missile was intended to be used by the Afghan bandits, but is now operated by this mercenary. Kabul believes the missile was introduced to bring down an Mi-24 for equipment stripping. It would be a prize of exceptional value. Last evening's helicopter did not catch fire, it could be presumed that the opportunity to strip the helicopter has been taken and that the purpose of the mercenary's mission has been satisfied.'

  'That he has no more reason to be in the valley?'

  it is presumption ... as I said, in Kabul there is concern at your casualties. Four helicopters in one week . . .'

  'Four pilots in one week,'

  Medev said grimly.

  'The casualties in area Delta have emasculated our patrol programme. I cannot permit a situation where day

  after day area Delta takes priority over all other flying.

  Your present strength is . . .?'

  'Six, six helicopters.'

  'Coming in from Kandahar is a full strength squadron, sixteen gunships.'

  'I want area Delta.'

  'And the new squadron?'

  'Where you like, everywhere else, any other valley.'

  is your squadron, what remains of it, capable of maintaining a presence over area Delta?'

  A hoarse snap in Medev's voice. 'Very capable, sir.'

  'Are you capable yourself, Major Medev?'

  If it had not been the Frontal Aviation commander, his direct superior, Medev thought he would have kicked the shit out of him.

  'I am capable.'

  'I have heard of something close to mutiny in your mess.'

  it's a lie . . .'

  'Careful, Major.'

  'I put it to you, we have business in that valley.'

  'Revenge is a dangerous business for expensively trained pilots, for expensive helicopters. Tomorrow morning a para- troop regiment will be lifted to the northern end of the valley, to Atinam . . .'

  'For what?'

  'To punish a village where two helicopters have been destroyed.' A cut of sarcasm from the Frontal Aviation commander,. 'There is a wider war, Medev, than your personal war of pride.'

  They told him that their names were Amanda and Katie.

  He told them that his name was Howard Rossiter, that his friends called him Ross.

  He shouldn't, of course, have struck up a conversation in a public place, least of all in the shop where he purchased his groceries. They were ahead of him as he waited to pay for three tins and a loaf and toothpaste and a throwaway razor. They were young enough to have been his daughters. Pretty little things, with tanned faces, and streaky hair hanging on their shoulders. English girls roughing it in northern Pakistan. At home he would have called them 'hippies', and if he had been with his own children when he saw them he would have issued a critical analysis of the younger generation's lack of standards and discipline. But Howard Rossiter was in Chitral and lonely.

  He wasn't doing too well himself on standards and discipline. There was stubble on his face and his hair was too long and uncombed. His trousers had lost their creases. His shoes were grubby. They had a nice way with them, Rossiter thought. He liked the way they pecked in the purse for coins for their two loaves, he liked the long flowing skirts and the peeping painted toe nails. He liked the scarves that were slung around their shoulders. He liked the blouses they wore, and the pimples on the bulges that told him what they didn't wear. . . Steady on, Rossiter.

  They would have looked over him, they would have wondered where this cuckoo had fallen from. Bit past it for the youngster's trail, wasn't he? Bit past the hash hippy trail to Kathmandu. He'd said 'good afternoon' in his best Whitehall clip and with a smile on his face, and they'd collapsed in giggles. But they waited on the rutted pavement for him to pay his money and follow out after them.

  Curiosity, he supposed.

  They were Amanda and Katie.

  He was Howard Rossiter and his friends called him Ross.

  They were at the end of six months that had seen them through Nepal and Kashmir and now illegally into Pakistan.

  Ross was doing some research, that's what he called it.

  'You're very young to be here.'

  'We've finished school,' said Amanda.

  'Done your "A" Levels?'

  'Christ, not that sort of school,' said Katie.

  Rossiter knew the accent. He knew the sort of girl. Sometimes an official of his level at FCO was hauled out at a weekend to take a brief down to the home of a Deputy Under Secretary, down to the countryside of Hampshire or Sussex or Gloucestershire.

  They all had daughters who drawled that accent.

  'Where are you staying?

  'Tenting at the moment.'

  'In this weather?'

  'Have you a better idea?'

  For the next ten minutes Howard Rossiter of Foreign and Commonwealth Office chatted up two eighteen-year-olds. But then everything about his behaviour would have shocked those of his employers who had previously held up his name as a watchword in reliability.

  'I might see you about,' Rossiter said.

  'If you wanted a smoke.'

  'If you ever get lonely.'

  'if I want a smoke and if I'm feeling lonely,' Rossiter said.

  'What are you researching, Ross,' Amanda asked.

  'Bits and pieces.'

  They'd go like bloody rattlesnakes, the pair of them. Any good looking girl from the privileged classes went like a rattlesnake in Rossiter's mind. That was the bloody trouble,

/>   it was all in the bloody mind. Except for the nurse in Peshawar. . . that hadn't been in the mind, that had been on his lap on his bed until Barney Crispin had made a famous entrance. He hadn't thought of Barney for half a day . . . Shadows falling, time for the Night Manager to come on duty at the Dreamland. Time to think of Captain Crispin.

  'Christ, he's probably a spy,' Katie said, and they all laughed.

  'I'll see you about,' Rossiter said.

  'You look as though you could do with a smoke.'

  'You look lonely enough.'

  'Perhaps another time . . .'and he hurried on his way.

  One thing to think about it, another to do it. Thinking about it, lovely little tits, sweet little backsides, would see him through a couple of days, waiting on word of Barney. Shadows falling on the streets of Chitral. The lights of Toyota jeeps cutting the gloom. A little rain and the clouds promising more. He bumped into a tribesman, an old man in white floppy trousers and an embroidered waistcoat, with spectacles perched on his nose. He tried to make an apology. The old man stared at him as if the Englishness in Rossiter's voice fitted no other part of him. He'd screwed himself, hadn't he? He'd chucked up the pension and the Pay As You Earn taxed salary. And all for Barney Crispin who was away behind the lines with a Redeye launcher. Try telling Pearl and the kids and the neighbours and Personnel at FCO.

  He wondered what a smoke would be like. He wondered how Amanda and Katie would cope with his loneliness.

  There was no message for him at the Dreamland Hotel.

  The black car and the chauffeur were enough to cause a ripple of curtain lace in Larchwood Avenue. There hadn't been a death and there wasn't about to be a wedding at the Rossiters that any of the neighbours knew of. The street lights were on, they threw enough light for the watchers to