(1984) In Honour Bound

by Gerald Seymour

  Go where my pilots go, pigs. The silent shout from Medev. See how you fucking like it. Fly between the tight arse valley walls and see if you're so sure. Fly through the ground fire cones of shells and smell your shit-heavy pants when you've landed.

  From the de-briefing staff pigs, Medev reckoned he had received the barest of understanding on the problems of flying helicopters inside a confined valley space and against a ground-to-air missile marksman. He had lost four helicopters ... He had lost eight crewmen . . . His pilots were not novices, he was told, they were expected to have assimilated the training received in Warsaw Pact exercises where they flew over simulated Redeye and Stinger and Blowpipe battlefields. But where were the flares he'd requested a clear week earlier? Why weren't the flares sent from Be- gram or Central Equipment Depot? Why did he have to use distress flares . . . ? Because no bastard would get off his arse. None of the pigs were impressed by the engine exhaust baffles.

  The bandits had won a victory, he was told, the losses were insupportable. But the bastard was dead, Medev had shouted back at his interrogators, the bastard was chopped. . .

  Medev was not a celebrity, he was a commander who had taken fierce casualties.

  Still seething, he boarded the shuttle bus between the Taj Beg headquarters and the secure accommodation provided for Staffers and visiting field men. There was an armed guard

  beside the driver, half awake and half asleep, and half dead he'd be if he were on his feet in area Delta.

  He wore his best dress uniform. He wore medal ribbons on his chest. He wore his cap jauntily. He wore a polished leather pistol holster on a polished leather belt.

  The bus dropped him by the entry to the old city's bazaar.

  He waited on the pavement after the bus had gone for a group of his countrymen to form. He would not go into that bastard warren bazaar on his own. There were some off-duty soldiers. He saw the red flash of the Mechanized Infantry, the Army's donkeys.

  Two out of half a dozen were armed. Little more than boys, any of them, about eighteen years old. They led the way into the first of the narrow bazaar streets, and Medev followed a few metres behind. There were three civilians behind him, a hundred metres behind. He felt safe.

  The anger sidled away from him as he walked the bazaar street, threaded his way through the people and the smells and the indifference. In her last letter his wife had sent him a list of items she wanted him to bring back. What did the silly cow think he was going to do? Hire a lorry and drive over the Oxus river bridge at Termez, and take a north west left turn for Tashkent and Orenburg and Kuybyshev and Ryazan and Moscow, two and a half thousand klicks . . . chests, carpets, cotton materials, a refrigerator . . . did she think the squadron commander of Eight Nine Two had a line in looting on the side? Silly cow ... he had stopped beside a stall. It would be a quick purchase. He looked down at three lapis lazuli brooches. He thought he should spend the same on his wife as he had spent the month before on the agronomist's wife. He loved the deep clear blue of the stone, the blue of the early morning skies through the tinted canopy of the helicopter cockpit. He pointed to one brooch. He looked up and saw the backs of the soldiers of Mechanized Infantry merging with the cloaks and blankets and turbans and caps from Nuristan. He heard the price, he reached for his wallet. He looked back down the street and glimpsed the raincoat of one of the civilians. Just once he did not haggle over the purchase price. He paid what he was asked. He could not have explained to himself the sudden edge and suspicion he felt in the pressing bazaar street, with the crowds flowing close around him, with the buildings lowering above him with the flaked paint and the hanging washing. He slapped down the Afghani notes.

  He heard a single shot. He grasped his pistol from its holster. He was wild-eyed, turning, spinning.

  He saw the soldiers from Mechanized Infantry close huddled to each other, and the space growing around them, and the fallen shape beside their black walking-out boots.

  He saw the terror in their faces.

  He started to run.

  He ran away from the soldiers and past the three civilians, frozen on their feet. Only when he was clear of the bazaar and out in the main wide street did he stop running. He realized then that he had dropped the brooch of lapis lazuli.

  He returned his pistol to the holster. His head was shaking, slowly, sadly. Pyotr Medev walked away from the bazaar. He felt no shame that he had run, just the soaring pleasure that he lived and that another had been chosen.

  In the half an hour that he took to reach the Mikroyan residential complex his hand never left the opened flap of his holster.

  His knees had steadied now, the tight fear in his belly was behind him.

  He was saluted by the sentries at the main checkpoint barrier of the complex that was the home of the majority of Soviet citizens working in the Kabul government ministries and on the Fraternal Air programme. A different world behind these perimeter wire-topped walls. A world of women gossiping about home in faraway Kiev or Gorki or Volgograd or Saratov, of brightly dressed and blond haired children falling from slides and climbing into swing seats . . .

  A world where his shirt would be slid from his chest, his trousers from his thighs. A world of warmth, and a bottle of beer, and a sausage sandwich, and the sweet taste of a woman. And the waking in the arms, against the body of a woman in the second floor flat of the Mikroyan residential complex.

  Medev smiled at the children who ran past him. He backed away to allow a girl with a bag full of shopping from the Commissariat to go up the stairs of the building ahead of him. Second floor, he could have sleep-walked to that door.

  As he pressed the bell button, he was grinning to himself.

  He had never seen the man who stood in the door.

  A thin, gaunt, tanned man. An unclipped beard, bleached sparse hair on the crown of his head, a yellow athlete's vest, a pair of baggy fawn trousers gathered at the waist by a thin belt.

  The grin fled from the face of Major Pyotr Medev.

  The man in the doorway looked at him, waited on him.

  Medev felt the chill damp under the peak of his cap. He saw the agronomist's wife at the back of the small hallway. He saw the unbuttoned fall of her blouse. He saw the shrug of her shoulders. He saw the brooch of blue stone pinned to the breast of her blouse.

  The bastard was home from his ditch in Kandahar.

  'I'm sorry, stupid of me, I must have come to the wrong door.' Medev ducked his head, the gesture of casual apology. The door was closed in his face. He turned swiftly away and went down the tile steps of the staircase.

  'When is Major Medev back?'

  'He only went this morning. . .'

  'I know when he went, when is he back?'

  'We received a message from Kabul Movements that he was trying to get on a flight back this evening, but we heard later there was no available flight. Normally he stays overnight, I don't know why he wanted to come back.'

  'Goddamit, Rostov,' bellowed the Frontal Aviation commander. 'Cut out all the background crap and just tell me when he is due here.'

  'Tomorrow afternoon, sir, fourteen hundred . . .'

  'Reconnaissance reports a considerable column moving through area Delta.

  Intelligence believe this column will have reached your Major's valley by tomorrow morning.'

  'What do you want me to do, sir?'

  'Attack i t . . . what else, serve it with tea?'

  'Can this not wait for Major Medev's return?'

  it cannot wait. There will be another Antonov flight at first light. The decision will then be made on the tasking of Eight Nine T w o . . . I am assuming Major Medev would not wish another squadron to fly into area Delta . . .'

  'Major Medev would prefer that the pilots familiar with area Delta should continue to fly there.'

  'Your pilots should be ready to fly as soon as the report is evaluated.'

  Rostov made his way out of the offices. Shit, the squadron to fly and Medev in Kabul. Medev had told him of the agrono
mist's wife and her flat in the Mikroyan, told him when they were drunk together. And the message had come through that Medev had tried to get back that evening. Must be her period, or the clap . . . and Medev would be foul- tempered if he was back and found the squadron airborne.

  Rostov went to the mess to find Vladdy. Only a few days ago he would have been looking for Nikolai, or Viktor, or Alexei, or Sergei. But Nikolai and Viktor and Alexei and Sergei had all gone back to the Motherland, in the bodybags. And after what the bastard Vladdy had done to him in the mess, done to his pyjamas, to his dignity, he didn't mind hoping that if there had to be another bodybag it would be Vladdy's.

  21

  Medev had gone to his billet angry and drunk. He blamed it on the return of the agronomist from Kandahar. He had been unable to sleep. He had heard every shout from the sergeant of the perimeter guard as he livened up his sentries. Three times he had heard the rattle of automatic fire, and an accompanying thud of detonating hand grenades as the war came closer to the centre of the capital city.

  He cut himself when he shaved because he had brought a new razor to Kabul and the water in the basin tap was cold.

  He tried to telephone the Jalalabad base. He was told there were no lines. He shouted that it was a matter of operational necessity for him to speak to the base. He was told that he should make the call on a tactical military exchange if it were a matter of operational necessity. From the billet it was not possible to make the connection, later perhaps.

  He took the half hourly shuttle bus to the airfield.

  At the airfield he had four hours to wait.

  It was his hope that there might be a helicopter or an aircraft seat for an early lift to Jalalabad. The Sukhois were taking off for the first of the day's bombing runs against the Panjshir. Helicopters were warming their engines for the start of operations against the bandits dug into the mountain range to the south of the capital. He saw a file of men, clutching their civilian suitcases, walking to the steps set against the fuselage of an Aeroflot four-engined Ilyushin 11-76. Going home, lucky bastards. He saw another Ilyushin,

  a turbo-prop and smaller, taxiing across the concrete wasteland towards a knot of parked ambulances away in the far distance, so that the loading of the casualties would not attract attention. Most of the wounded went to Dushanbe, in Tajikstan. If you lasted through the field hospitals in Afghanistan then you'd last through anything. If you lasted through Casualty Reception at Dunshanbe, then you'd been visited by a miracle and you deserved a goddam medal, that's what Medev's pilots said. He saw a General jump down from a small Mi-2 transport helicopter, a swaggering little man with a webbing holster at his waist and a lanyard round his neck, and the camouflage tunic of the Airborne, and a scurrying aide at his heels. Come to tell them at the Taj Beg that the war's won? Go and tell the poor bastards who are waiting for a lift to Dushanbe that the war's won, they'd be happy to know that. Tell them it's all been worthwhile. Tell them there's nothing personal in their being flown out of a quiet airfield corner so they won't be seen by all the others, the whole and the healthy who've still got it coming.

  He had been allocated a seat at 13.00 hours.

  The corporal on the Movements desk didn't give a fuck for a major in a hurry if that major had no priority order to travel. What couldn't wait until a 14.00 landing at Jalalabad?

  One bastard . . .

  Hey, wait a minute, Pyotr Medev, that one bastard's dead. Vladdy said that one bastard was dead.

  The caravan had come into the valley in the last hours of darkness.

  They would rest under the trees and the scrub bushes, amongst the rocks, until the middle of the day. They would be gone by the early afternoon. The pack animals were taken to the river bed where the rains had made a small stream of clear water. The mules and horses would not be unloaded while they drank and while they scavenged for fodder. There

  were more than three hundred men accompanying the caravan, and not a woman amongst them. For some the uniform of the mujahidin was the traditional Tajik tribal costume, the flowing trousers, the tented shirts, the loose wound turbans. For some it was the dress of Nuristan, tighter grey blue trousers, puttee-bound shins, closer shirts, the rolled rim of the cap of the district. For some it was the dress of the modern fighter, courtesy of the Soviet Union and the Afghan Army, khaki trousers, heavy serge military tunics, woollen jumpers issued to the enemy for winter service, the close skull-fitting helmets taken from the slaughtered drivers of ambushed APCs.

  A sharp bright morning with the dawn frost winkled away by the sunlight.

  Barney was a mile down the valley from the main body of men and caravan animals, and their fires, and Ahmad Khan and his lieutenants who took tea with the travellers.

  Where the valley side was steepest he had climbed five hundred feet * to find for himself an eagle perch, a harrier's roost. The sound of radios carried from the valley's floor, popular songs from the Kabul government station, exhortations from the clan-destine Resistance transmitter. He saw the movement of toy figures leading the horses and mules to a small river pool.

  The launcher was on the rock beside him. Schumack was with Barney.

  Down in the valley was Mia Fiori. Twice he had taken Schumack's spy glass and magnified the valley floor, but he could not find her. He had left her early in the morning, before the sun came. He had not seen her face when he had slipped from underneath the blanket that had covered them. She had been sleeping. He had bent low over her, and kissed her, kissed her between the eye and the ear. All through the night, Barney had held her close against his chest, held her tight in his sleep. In the middle of the night when the men who had come with the caravan had slept, and the men of Ahmad Khan had slept, and the pack animals were quiet, when the frost settled on their blanket, she had wriggled against him and pulled the tails of her blouse from her skirt waist and flicked her fingers amongst the buttons of her blouse and pulled it open, and Barney had felt the heat of her breasts and the warmth of her skin against the coarse cloth of his shirt. He had lain with her in his arms, sheltering her, and with her body warm against his, and they had slept. In the morning, when he had woken, he had groped in the darkness to where Schumack had slept and found the man awake and sitting hunched against the cold, and they had gone to their eyrie above the valley.

  He might die that morning. And if he died on the eagle's eyrie, on the valley walls, then he wouldn't have the memory of her face with him, not her face of that morning.

  'You have to take the first one that comes.'

  Barney shook away the picture of yesterday's girl and looked at Schumack.

  'The first is the most dangerous.'

  For answer, Schumack gestured with his claw away down the valley to the south. Barney heard the soft sounds of an aircraft engine.

  if they come and they get in amongst that lot then all your crap game's wasted. The only reason for you to be here is to take out the first one.'

  'Then we'll be smashed,' Barney said.

  'There's a war going on here, hero man. You're not playing ball in the park.'

  There was the growing whine of the Antonov reconnaissance aircraft.

  'What's down there, that's what's needed. . .'Schumack was matter of fact, if they don't have what's on the mule packs and the horse packs, then they're stuffed and screwed. You couldn't sit up here and watch that.

  You couldn't watch

  it happen while you're waiting for a safe shot. Christ, I couldn't. . . you couldn't.'

  'The first one.'

  'It's the way it is. There's no running from here, Captain Crispin, there's no fart face with gold scramble on his arm telling you to run . . .'

  'Why did they light the fires?' Barney said bitterly.

  'Because they don't care about dying. . . sounds crap and it's true. They're not afraid, like we are. They're daft buggers. If they cared about dying, do you think they'd still be going? We're soldiers. They're peasants, they're crap ignorant, and they don't care.

  Cle
ver bastards like us, we care about getting zapped. We say, time to move out, time to run. They're not smart, and that's why they're staying the course. No smart arse takes on a hundred thousand Soviets and the gunships and the Sukhois, that's not for clever bastards . . . Got the message, Captain?'

  'Loud and clear.'

  He saw the Antonov bank into a turn. He heard the cough splutter as its engine throttled back.

  Schumack grabbed at Barney's hand.

  'I hope you make it with the woman,' Schumack whispered. 'Truly I hope you do.'

  'We'll take the first bastard that comes,' Barney said.

  Alexander Hawthorne, First Secretary of the Information Section, had driven through the night to reach Chitral.

  Rossiter had hated the hanging around, the waiting within sight of the Dreamland Hotel. He hurried forward as soon as he saw the Corps Diplomatique plates on the land-rover and had intercepted the First Secretary as he still sat at the driving wheel. He must have seemed a scarecrow, and the diplomat had gawped at him. The heavy sacking bundle was handed over, a whisper of explanation that there was a letter enclosed, and Rossiter was gone. He had faded from Hawthorne's sight within a few moments, vanished into the daytime crowds of the Shahi Bazaar.

  Hawthorne untied the bundle on the passenger seat behind him. Christ Almighty.

  Davies hadn't told him what he would be collecting, only that it was important to HMG.

  Bloody aircraft parts, the little bastard. Transporting aircraft parts across Pakistan, that was espionage in Alexander Hawthorne's book. Christ, the spook had a nerve . . .

  The jumble of numeral patterns spilled onto the telex in Century House, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service that was the paymaster of Davies, the spook. A computer translated them into letters and words in a matter of seconds. One copy to the Assistant Secretary, Near East Desk. One copy for file. One copy for the immediate attention of the Director General. One copy to be couriered to the Ministry of Defence, eyes only to Brigadier Fotheringay.