The Reluctant Hero

by Michael Dobbs

  That was Harry’s plan. It inevitably had many weaknesses, but also one potentially catastrophic flaw. Beg would have worked all that out, too.

  Harry stretched, groaned some more, it was time to get on with it. They – he – had already wasted precious hours asleep. He tried to wriggle his toes inside his boots but he couldn’t feel them. A bad sign. They were too cold, and the boots too tight. A perfect recipe for frostbite. So instead he wriggled his fingers. He had no gloves, and during the night, as Martha had used one of his shoulders as a pillow, he had kept his hand warm by lodging it in her armpit. The other, he now discovered to his surprise, had somehow infiltrated its way inside her anorak and was clasped both firmly and warmly to her breast.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he stuttered, a little startled, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  Her wide eyes stilled his feeble protest. ‘You animal,’ she whispered, then smiled.

  ‘Martha, I’m so sorry you got mixed up in all this.’

  ‘I’m not.’ And, reluctantly, she rolled out of his arms.

  Harry clambered awkwardly to his feet and started a series of exercises, stretching his limbs and swinging his arms. ‘Gets the system going,’ he said, looking at Martha, who was looking unimpressed and had retreated to a corner.

  ‘I’d prefer a filter coffee. Maybe some low-fat yoghurt with fresh raspberries on the side,’ she replied.

  ‘We need to generate some heat, but not so much that we start sweating. That’ll soak our clothes, which will freeze. We have to pace ourselves.’

  ‘Preferably in a warm bed. With a great dollop of crème fraiche.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On the raspberries, you fool.’

  She began flapping her arms, yet found these getup-and-go calisthenics genuinely difficult. She was wearing so many layers of clothing that even bending an arm was a challenge. ‘I feel like some medieval knight,’ she protested.

  ‘Be grateful.’ Harry was sitting back down trying to ease off his boots. They were very stubborn, and it was a struggle. When at last the feet appeared, they were unnaturally pale, except at the points where they had been rubbed raw. Martha gasped when she saw them.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said, trying to reassure her. ‘White is fine. Not fun, but fine. It’s when they go black that life becomes a bitch.’ He spent several minutes massaging them, taking considerable care, encouraging the blood to circulate, but along with renewed life came the pain, and it was all he could do to force them back into the boots.

  ‘That must hurt like hell,’ she whispered.

  ‘Reminds me of something Amir Beg said. That pain is life.’

  ‘Did he?’ Martha’s eyes were drawn to the bulge beneath Harry’s woollen hat. ‘The bastard.’

  ‘But he was right. Up here in the mountains there isn’t any comfortable alternative. If it stops hurting and you feel nothing, that’s the time you should start to panic.’

  ‘Are you going to be all right, Harry? Here am I all dressed up like Santa Claus but you . . .’ She cast a critical eye over his assorted items of clothing that were so inadequate they barely covered the skin in places. ‘You’re not exactly dressed for the job, are you?’

  ‘One night sleeping together and already you’re criticizing my wardrobe.’

  ‘A girl’s got to have standards.’

  ‘Just consider this as my underwear,’ he said, and began pulling the shelter apart, gathering together the various lengths of rope and pieces of plastic sheeting. He squatted on the floor and started tearing at the plastic, then reached for the cigarette lighter and began burning through the rope until he had several shorter pieces, unravelling the strands until they were reduced to string. This string he used to tie the plastic around his arms, securely, so they wouldn’t slip too much, but not so tightly that his circulation would be cut. Then he began stuffing straw inside the plastic. She stared at him in bewilderment.

  ‘Not pretty, I grant, but better than freezing,’ he declared. He tore a hole in a larger piece of plastic and placed it over his head to form a poncho, tying it at his waist and once again stuffing the space inside with straw. ‘It helps insulate. Traps the air,’ he said, ‘like a string vest.’

  ‘You look like Worzel Gummidge’s grandfather,’ she declared, shaking her head at the results. ‘It’s difficult to take things seriously with you dressed like that.’

  ‘It’s because I take things seriously that I’ve got to do this.’ He folded up the larger remaining sheets of plastic and bound them with more rope, slinging the bundle over his shoulder. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Wish I knew.’

  The old hut around them was now in a state of far greater decay than even they had found it. It got worse as Harry began dragging out branches and large sticks that had been used to prop up the walls. He selected two that were stout and reasonably straight. ‘Walking sticks,’ he announced, handing her the smaller one.

  They stepped outside, the plywood board that had passed for a door falling flat in front of them, causing an explosion of snow. Despite the decrepit nature of the shelter, they knew it had served its purpose, for as much as they had suffered inside, out here the air was cold enough to chew.

  It was then she remembered her present. She dug deep inside her clothing until she found the appropriate pocket. ‘Oh, I got you this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She handed across the Red Army medal commemorating the Battle of Berlin.

  ‘A medal? Just for sleeping with you? You give every man a medal? Points out of ten I’ve heard of, but – a medal?’ They were still testing each other, sorting out the pecking order, neither willing to give ground.

  ‘You’re a pig, Harry Jones.’

  ‘And you, Martha Riley . . .’ His look said it all, everything she wanted to know. He took her in his arms, brushed his warming finger across her cheek. They held each other, sharing everything they had, not only their body heat but also their feelings, which included their unspoken fears.

  ‘Oh, and something for you,’ he announced, his fingers digging beneath the plastic coverings and into his pocket. They came out clutching the chess piece. ‘For you. For luck.’

  She looked at it, and shook her head. ‘You keep it for me, Harry. Save it, for when we get home.’

  ‘It’s not the only thing I’m saving for when we get home.’

  ‘Come on,’ Martha said, sighing as she pushed him away, ‘last one to Afghanistan buys the drinks.’

  They set off, walking away from the morning sun that was beginning to set fire to the mountain peaks ahead of them, which appeared like the jagged teeth of some snow beast, waiting for them.

  Their progress was slow. The snow was covered with a crust of ice, but they couldn’t tell how thick it was. Every step they took was a gamble, a stride into the unknown as their feet crunched through the crust. They had no way of telling if the snow beneath them was secure, or whether they were stepping onto a roof of fragile ice that was about to collapse and hurl them into a chasm beneath. The snow tugged at their heels, held them back, sometimes sucking them in up to their knees. And when the sun hit the ice, it began to melt, and they slipped.

  Despite the difficulties, there was an intense, austere beauty to this place. The morning air had the quality of finest crystal, enabling them to see for miles. Snow eagles hovered above their heads, the wind picked up snow from the mountaintops and sent it spinning off in wisps of ice that sparkled in the sun like a firestorm. Cascades of blue ice several hundred feet high marked where waterfalls had been caught even as they fell to earth and turned to stunning, twisting sculptures.

  They walked for two hours, stopped to rest, and for Harry to readjust his straw jacket, then walked another two. It was their pattern for the day. Harry showed Martha how to squeeze snow into a hard ball which would then slowly melt in the hand, providing a trickle of water to slake their thirst. The air was dry up here as well as cold, stinging their noses and mouths as they
breathed, and nothing made them breathe more heavily than their struggle with the treacherous snow. They both began sweating; they would pay for that later.

  Bektour had said the road he had put them on led through a valley that would take them all the way to the border. The road petered out into a stony track, but if they could follow it, it would lead them to where they wanted to be. It sounded simple, but the track and everything surrounding it were buried beneath many feet of snow, so during the afternoon they climbed the valley’s north side to make the most of the sun and to gain a vantage point for their way ahead. Yet when Harry looked back he groaned. Laid out behind them along the floor of the valley was a trail of footsteps. It looked as though a dying fish had been thrashing its way through water. It could be seen for miles.

  ‘A problem?’

  ‘We have to assume they’ll be looking for us soon. Once Amir Beg has ransacked the city and found no trace of your cute nose or my bloodied ear, he’ll turn his attentions further afield. He’s not a fool, he knows this is the shortest route to safety. He won’t be far behind.’

  ‘So it’s a race,’ Martha said, panting, still recovering her breath from the last stretch of their climb. ‘How long did these hikes take when you were in the Scouts? Or was it the SAS?’

  ‘Oh, that depended,’ he answered evasively. He’d probably have managed four miles an hour, for many hours, and be done by nightfall, but then he would have had proper equipment, a clear idea of where he was headed, and an instructor screaming in his ear. He wouldn’t have had a woman in tow. They’d been walking six hours, and had probably covered only as many miles. Martha was undoubtedly slowing them down, but he would never say so.

  Yet perhaps she picked up on his thoughts. ‘It’ll get easier, the higher we go,’ she said, sitting on a rock, nibbling at a few of the remaining nuts.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I know. When I first got myself elected, I was on another parliamentary delegation, to Dharamsala in India. It’s pretty much a community of refugees, those who have fled across the border from Tibet so they can be near the Dalai Lama. It’s his headquarters. We had tea with him.’

  ‘Noble of you. Most of our parliamentary colleagues would have preferred a rum and Coke, preferably in the Seychelles.’

  ‘Yes, I began to wonder about that myself. I don’t seem to have learned this game very well, do I? That trip was in the middle of winter, too, but I was thinking – India. That’s T-shirt and jeans territory, right? I totally overlooked the fact that Dharamsala is in the foothills of the Himalayas. We arrived late one evening in a blizzard. Froze everything I had until the shops opened the following morning. Gave the brass monkeys a run for their money.’

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ he muttered, blowing on his fingers to restore their feeling.

  ‘While I was there I met two nuns. They’d just arrived from Tibet. Walked out of the Himalayas, just to be near the Dalai Lama, in a pair of trainers and cheap Chinese clothing. Seemed incredible to me. It had taken them three weeks, yet somehow they survived, so I asked them why they’d done it in the middle of winter, and not waited until summer. And they said it was because of the snow. When it froze solid it was firmer, they could trust it, made it easier to walk, while in summer they’d disappear up to their waists. And that’s what we’ll find as we go higher, Harry. We’re lucky, really we are.’

  She was playing the game, too. Attitude was everything, in the mountains, and Martha Riley had plenty of it. What she failed to mention to Harry was that the two nuns had been part of a group of ten, that three hadn’t survived, and the rest had been taken straight to hospital suffering from frostbite and malnutrition. Neither did Harry think this was the moment to remind her that she was talking about Tibetans, who lived on a plateau at fourteen thousand feet and who had spent a hundred generations acclimatizing to the cold. They both knew they had to remain positive, for the mountains took raw pessimism and beat it into despair. Yes, attitude was everything.

  Harry glanced back once more to the trail of broken snow that had followed them all the way from the hut. ‘You’re right, it’ll be better when the snow gets firmer,’ he said. And to hell with the cold. It was beautiful up here, on their own.

  It was as he was glancing back in the crystal air that he saw two specks in the sky, at a great distance. Hawks, perhaps, hovering, catching the updraughts that came with the sun. It was several seconds before he realized that it couldn’t be, for hawks didn’t hover at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  The Mil Mi-24, known in the West as a Hind, was a helicopter gunship that had been in operation for more than thirty years. It was a Soviet-era creation and became the backbone of Moscow’s military effort during the war in Afghanistan, but like so much of the hardware of that era, it continued to be employed long after the original idea had begun to creak and rust. The Ta’argi air force had only four of these machines, two of which were grounded, waiting for spares. The remaining pair was heading straight up the valley towards Harry and Martha.

  As they drew closer, Martha cried out in alarm. The Hinds were odd, even ugly, with two cockpit pods in tandem. It gave them a curious bug-eyed appearance, like monstrous flying insects. Killing machines. In Afghanistan those on the receiving end knew them as Satan’s Chariots. The sound of their whirling rotors went before them, creating a wall of harsh noise that pounded up the valley, bouncing off the walls like a barrage of artillery. Instinctively Harry and Martha tried to scramble away, but it was pointless, there was nowhere to go. They were on the side of a mountain, it was difficult enough to walk, impossible to run. Martha slipped, fell flat on her face, lay half-buried in the snow. The Hinds came on, thud-thud-thud-thud, following their track. Every sound was magnified in the valley, noise echoing from the walls until it pounded inside Harry’s skull and rattled his senses. His wounded ear was agony.

  It was impossible to think, there was only instinct left, and his instinct was to save Martha. He struggled to reach her in the snow, stumbling, the air around him shaking, trying to push him over, and he was on his knees, struggling to lift her, hugging her to him. Her eyes stared into his, filled with fright. They grew wider still when they looked over his shoulder. Less than forty yards away, hovering, hammering at them, was the first of the Hinds.

  The nose dipped, an almost graceful movement, in the manner of a duellist acknowledging his foe. The two pilots in their separate pods were looking directly at Harry, and close enough for him to see that one had a moustache beneath the Ray-Bans. Then the craft rotated, slowly in the thin air, and the rear cabin door slid open. Inside were six men, in winter gear. Harry recognized one of them. Sydykov. The Ta’argi raised a gloved hand, then pointed a finger, claiming his victory.

  It was only as he waited for the first shot, that Harry remembered the prison guard’s pistol strapped to his waist. It was an old version of the ubiquitous Makarov, shortrange, not accurate beyond twenty feet, and with only three rounds in the magazine. A pea-shooter, when he needed a cannon. The 9mm bullets would bounce off the Hind’s windscreen, wouldn’t touch the rotors, and he needed a miracle to wipe the cold smile off Sydykov’s face, but he had to try. Anything but kneeling in the snow, waiting. He sprang to his feet, scrabbled desperately beneath his plastic poncho, but his hands were frozen, he had no feeling in his fingers. He sensed he had the weapon in his grasp, but even as he dragged it from its holster his numbed, clumsy fingers betrayed him. The pistol tumbled into the snow. Harry threw himself forward, desperate to retrieve it, only to see it slip beyond his reach, down into the valley below. As it disappeared, it took with it Harry’s last flickering hope.

  The Hind was held stationary beneath its thudding rotors, blasting out noise. Harry looked up, his eyes filled with ice, saw Sydykov’s imperturbable face split by a thin smile of triumph. Beside him in the cargo compartment, a soldier crouched with an assault rifle, taking aim.

  Martha saw that too. ‘Harry?’ She called out, very afraid.

  He stret
ched out his hand, took hers, tried to hold on. A final touch.

  ‘Don’t you go giving me this goodbye crap, Harry Jones,’ she cried above the hammering air. ‘Damn it, we only just got together!’

  Her eyes spoke of love, of fear, of a desire to stay alive that burrowed deep to her core. It reminded him of another time, on the side of a mountain, when he’d been able to say goodbye with nothing more than a glance.

  Julia.

  In his mind everything had been white, even though inside the torrent of snow and rock that had swept them both away there must have been almost complete darkness. His senses had been overwhelmed, they couldn’t be trusted, and perhaps that was why he remembered it as an entirely silent experience, despite the noise of the mountainside crashing around him. There had been just one word – Julia. Then nothing, until he had woken in a hospital bed, and she was gone.

  There had been another recollection that he carried with him afterwards, no more than an impression, and perhaps false. Of how it had started. The first sensation, of the earth moving, the snow slipping, the merest fraction. That first sign had been so insignificant, no more than the beat of a butterfly’s wing, yet it had destroyed his world, had swept it away.

  Now Harry’s memory was playing tricks with him again. He could feel that butterfly once more, its wings trembling against the ground, and his world slipping away. He couldn’t hear the helicopters any longer, or see Martha. There was nothing, except whiteness, which became darkness, until Harry was entirely alone.

  The snow on which Harry and Martha were lying was fresh, and thick, and had neither melted nor had the time to freeze tight. It lay on top of a thick slab of old snow that had been compacted and formed a solid base, yet old and new snows were not fully attached. The bond between them was weak – too weak to resist the explosive pounding of the helicopters. Even as Sydykov stared, his victory vanished in front of him. The earth moved, just a fraction, but then more, much more, and the avalanche swept down the side of the mountain until it smashed to pieces on the valley floor, finishing up amongst the conifers that hugged the far side.