ASSASSINS

by Mike Bond

  “Can’t from the west, Truelove. No approach.”

  “You have to! Drop them high.”

  “We might hit you –”

  “Do it! Otherwise we’re fucked. Call the choppers!”

  “Hinds on their way.”

  “You’ve got to hit that slope.”

  “Coming down. Keep your kids indoors.”

  Leo yanked an AK from the clips on the turret wall and unsnapped the hatch, tugged on a radio helmet and leaped out into the roar of machine guns, thudding grenades, the horrid whap of an RPG into steel, the scream of tank engines. The first APC had turned and its rear treads hung over the edge. “Tell APC One don’t back up,” he yelled into the radio.

  The road edge behind APC One buckled. He squirmed under it and hammered on the rear door. “Tell APC One open up!” he radioed. Bullets howled past his head. The first MiG roared in, sheered for the bend and screamed for altitude, the air cracked and split apart, the earth writhing with the blast of bombs. The APC settled lower, on his chest.

  Its door opened. “Thought you were duki!” a soldier shouted. Again the earth and sky compressed as the second MiG came down. Its bombs shuddered the canyon and the APC lurched as the road fell away.

  “Get out!” Leo screamed. “Get out! Get out!” Soldiers scrambled past him, one falling as a bullet hit him. The APC tipped up and spun over the cliff, the agonized face of the last soldier framed in its door.

  He dragged the one who’d been hit to the shoulder, bullets spitting along the road. The others had taken up positions firing over the shoulder. “Call APC Two,” he yelled. “I want their Fifty firing straight up the canyon, not to the left.”

  A thud exploded his head and he realized he was dead, felt a fleeting touch of earth beneath his back, heard a howl in his ears wondering how can I think if I’m dead. A kid with a bloody face dragged him to the shoulder. “Medic!” the kid yelled. “Medic!”

  I’m at peace, Leo Gregoriev thought. I’m at peace in this world.

  WHEN THE FIRST MiG screamed into the canyon its napalm pod seemed first tiny then huge, crashing high overhead, flame spouting up the cliffs searing Jack’s face.

  The second MiG banked into the canyon and there was nowhere to hide; it would blow them to shreds. “Shoot ahead of it!” he screamed. One man fired an RPG that darted upward, missed the MiG and fell end over end into the void. The MiG howled for altitude, its bombs hammering the cliffs. Boulders bounded over them, missed the APCs and dove into the canyon.

  The first MiG came back, wingtips nearly scraping the cliffs, the pilot’s courage astonishing him. Its tracers ripped the slope but it couldn’t get low enough – Wahid’s men had chosen this place too well, and his terror switched to fierce exaltation.

  “Stop hiding!” he yelled at Husseini. “Nail that burning APC!”

  Husseini screamed something. In Jack’s ears a huge roar, Husseini’s lips moving but making no sound. “The MiGs come back!” Husseini wailed.

  Jack snatched Husseini’s gun. On the road below an officer was dragging a wounded man toward the safety of the shoulder. Jack squeezed off a round, and the officer dropped, headshot. Another Russian grabbed him and dragged him to the shoulder. “Aim carefully!” Jack yelled, shoved the AK at Husseini. “For Allah!”

  Husseini sprayed bullets. “There. I got one. A medic.”

  The back of Jack’s hand caught fire. He shook off the chunk of hot metal and ran across the slope to two Afghanis whose machine gun had stopped firing. One lay wide-eyed against the cliff, a red hole in his forehead. “It’s jammed,” the other yelled.

  Jack shoved him aside and flipped the gun over. The cartridge belt entered at an angle; he tugged but it wouldn’t come lose. “He pulled the belt backwards,” the Afghani said, “when he was hit. So it’s jammed.”

  Jack yanked at the PK’s cartridge belt but it would not come free. Bullets drummed off the rock. “We’re pulling back,” he called. “Take it with you.”

  The Afghani nodded at the body. “I take him.”

  “He’s dead!”

  “He’s my brother.”

  Jack ran back along the slope, bullets sucking at his head. “Go! Go!” They ran after him, one with his dead brother over his shoulder, another lugging the PK, through a notch between the cliffs up a steep ridge and along a goat trail to a bend where they’d dug spider holes the day before overlooking the road a mile above the ambush. He dashed from man to man checking that each one’s magazine was full and he was hidden from both road and sky.

  “Now we’ll see,” Husseini panted, “if infidels can predict the future.”

  “They’re coming!” an Afghani called.

  Choppers coming, the flutter of heavy rotors. If there’s more than two... Crazy to survive the MiGs then die from choppers. “Aktoub!” he called. “Bring the RPG!”

  Aktoub ran up with the RPG. “But you have this Strela!” he gasped.

  The first chopper came up the valley four hundred feet above the road. Again Jack felt horror and fear. The Mi-24 was armored; even machine gun bullets bounced off it. He slid his SA-7 into the launching tube.

  “It won’t work!” Husseini moaned. “And we’ll be dead.”

  A second Mi-24 dropped into the valley, sere and deadly.

  “You take the first,” Jack called to Loxley, trying to keep his voice steady. “Me the second.” With a whine Jack’s SA-7 locked on and launched with a peaceable whuff as the missile cleared the launching tube. The rocket motor ignited and the white trails of both missiles accelerated toward the fast-approaching choppers.

  With a great white-black blast the missiles hit the choppers. The first Mi-24 broke apart, tail section spinning upward, the cockpit continuing on as if determined to reach its goal. A man tumbled grabbing at air and bounced along the ground. The other chopper drifted onto its side, its rotor exploding like daisy petals, settled into a steep dive and blew apart as it hit the road. “They worked!” Jack yelled at Husseini. “They worked!”

  A third chopper swung down the valley.

  “Now we’re truly dead,” Husseini screamed.

  “Fire at the rotor!” Jack called, knowing it was useless. He leaped from his hole and grabbed the RPG from Aktoub but the chopper swung away, climbing fast, and he realized it was spooked by the SA-7s, didn’t know they had no more.

  “Pull back!” he called, counting the men as he and Loxley ran after them into the morass of cliffs and hanging valleys where even choppers couldn’t find them.

  Gasping for breath he glanced back at the cliffs and the twin pillars of black smoke rising into the blue sky.

  Again he saw the man fall from the chopper, saw it crash and explode, the Soviet troop carriers, the soldiers pinned down and dying along the road.

  For three years he’d been trained to kill. Now he had.

  He imagined those soldiers’ families back in Moscow or Kiev or somewhere, getting their telegrams.

  It doesn’t bother me at all, he told himself.

  First blood.

  Opium

  “WHEN THAT BULLET hit your helmet,” the field doctor told Leo, “it punched a lot of metal and plastic into your skull. We need to chopper you to Kabul, find a surgeon to dig it out.”

  Alive. Leo felt giddy exuberance. “Fine with me.”

  “But we don’t have a brain surgeon in Kabul. And with all this crap in your head we can’t fly you to Moscow. Only reason you feel good is you’re high on morphine.”

  “Afghani opium no doubt.” He wanted to laugh; ecstasy surged through him. Alive. He had tried to be brave, risked death but had lived anyway. The road ahead was bright and joyous. Why do people fight when they have this mysterious gift, this magic joy, of life?

  Even this field clinic piled with bloody bandages, this morose doctor with nicotined fingers and dead eyes, the stainless steel coffins stacked up the wall – all seemed imbued with sacred immanence. “I can’t keep anything in my head... What happened?”

  “I’m
told it was a great victory. Many ghosts dead, weapons deserted...”

  “How many dead?”

  “Central Command didn’t say.”

  “How many our dead?”

  “Twelve that I’ve seen. And ten wounded, plus three criticals already flown out.”

  His exuberance died. “And matériel?”

  “They say one APC –”

  “I saw three,” he now remembered. “Two burning and one went off the ledge.”

  “– and...” the doctor glanced out the window, “two Hinds.”

  Leo snatched the doctor’s arm. “A disaster, wasn’t it?” The road ahead was no longer joyous; it was narrow and steep and ended in the middle of a cliff.

  He thought of the boys now still alive whose bodies soon would be inside these silver coffins flying in the Black Tulips back to Russia. “We’re killing and dying for nothing.”

  “That’s war.” The doctor held out a cigarette pack. “Have a Yava.”

  Leo waved it away. “I’m giving up smoking.”

  AT DUSK Jack and Loxley descended the canyon of the Little Kowkcheh and crossed the River above Edeni. Loxley turned upstream toward Sayed’s uncle’s farm to check on McPhee, and Jack climbed the path into the mountains to Wahid’s base.

  He ducked under the Russian Army blanket into the smoky fetid cave. The men cooking a sheep by the fire moved to make him a place. Wahid lay on sheepskins with his head against a Russian blanket roll. “Now you have faith in Strelas?” Jack said.

  “Whatever good a man does comes from God – you know that.”

  “Then we’ll take our Strelas elsewhere. To Hekmatyar, perhaps?”

  “He’s nearby I hear. But you have no more Strelas.”

  With his combat knife Jack sliced off a chunk of mutton. “More Strelas can be bought in Pakistan, for they are also made in China. But how to get them over the Hindu Kush?”

  “Why not across the same mountains the opium goes out? One camel carries a hundred fifty kilos of opium. How much weighs one Strela?”

  “Eleven kilos for the launcher, nine for each missile.”

  “So seven to a camel...”

  “You need more missiles than launchers.”

  Wahid sat back, finger-combing his beard, watching Jack down his long nose. “And these Strelas, who pays?”

  “I’m not here to give them. Just to help you find them.”

  “So why do other Americans working with Pakistan give guns to Hekmatyar?”

  “Perhaps he will be Eagle of the Hindu Kush? He has more of Afghanistan than you.”

  “The Pakistanis own him.” Wahid unclipped his bayonet and cut a chunk of mutton. “No one owns me.”

  Jack glanced at the rings of a burning branch in the fire, imagined the tree that had clung to the mountain for so many years. “Probably no one wants to.”

  Wahid grinned. “For having killed so many Russians you are not happy?”

  Jack glanced at a man in the corner sharpening a knife on a stone, another playing a flute, those dozing round the fire or sleeping on willow mats. “I don’t need to kill to be happy.”

  “You’re a coward then.” Wahid chewed the mutton off the end of his bayonet, blood dribbling into his beard. “These Strelas, when America buys them –”

  “America has no part in this. You buy them. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “I am a philanthropist? I do this for pleasure?”

  “You do this to kill Russians.”

  “You are fucking the wrong dog, my friend –”

  “I leave that to you. And I’m not your friend.”

  “Your blood brother is my brother –”

  “You are not my brother.”

  “You love Hekmatyar? He’s a whore’s cunt. A hundred fifty-four mules and camels of opium I sent last year over the Kush to Pakistan. Hekmatyar didn’t even send seventy.”

  “I don’t give a shit about opium –”

  “Since Pakistan won’t share their American weapons with me as they do with Hekmatyar, you think they’ll trade Chinese Strelas for my opium?”

  “My job was bring those two Strelas. To see if you could use them.”

  “And so I did.” Wahid waved a hand at the cave entrance. “I have ten camels leaving for Pakistan next month. So go with them, bring back as many missiles as you can?”

  “I thought you didn’t need infidel weapons.”

  “The Koran says to use infidels any time we want, your souls don’t matter... So, ten camels of Strelas, perhaps, are worth one camel of opium?”

  Jack stood, slung his rifle. “I’ll talk to my infidel friends.” He stepped through the Army blanket into frozen night and turned down the trail toward Sayed’s uncle’s farm. A step hissed the snow behind him and he spun round aiming his gun.

  “You mustn’t fear me,” Aktoub said.

  “I fear everything. That’s how one stays alive in this place.”

  “Please, Jyek, do not bear him ill will. He’s proud.”

  “A commander should love his men more than himself.”

  Aktoub raised his hands, a gesture of helplessness. “We thank Allah for your help.”

  Jack felt a rush of affection. “Thank the American people.” He turned and started down the mountain, walking fast and steadily, for in the falling snow he needn’t fear Soviet patrols, would leave no tracks. The cold thin air tasted wonderful after the putrid cave.

  In the ambush he’d been so alive, aware in slow motion, seeing everything – the white Cyrillic letters on an APC’s gray door, a green fatigue cap tumbling, a man’s surprised face as he was hit, a spent round spinning in the dust, the chopper’s spiraling death.

  Impossible that he was alive and the men he’d killed were dead.

  If he’d stayed with Susie they’d have kids now. He’d be coming home at night from some job, fixing up the house on weekends. But she’d fucked another guy and got knocked up and now what they’d had they didn’t have any more.

  If Home Office wanted him and Loxley and McPhee to start this Third Force, one not run through Islamabad or by the Saudis, then Wahid was right: how would the mujihadeen pay for it except with opium? Had Home Office known all along and never said?

  What would his father think of trading opium for guns? Didn’t we do that in Nam, tons and tons of opium and hash flown out by the CIA’s Air America, keeping Americans high while our bombs obliterated Indochina?

  Ahead on the trail a dark spot coming. Jack dove into the boulders aiming at it. If it was a patrol they’d see his tracks. If it was just a few Russians maybe he could get them all. But the Russians never patrolled with just a few. Asshole, he swore silently at himself. You’re going to die.

  The dark spot grew, a man coming fast. Afghani maybe. On whose side?

  Shoot him before he gets you.

  A tall man, rifle slung, jogging uphill through the deep powder. Jack tightened his finger on the trigger. “Who are you?” he yelled in Pashto.

  The man stopped, raised his hands. “I seek Wahid,” he said, in bad Pashto.

  “You asshole!” Jack yelled. “I almost shot you!”

  “Jack, hurry,” Loxley said. “We’ve got to go down!”

  “You missed dinner. Chez Wahid.”

  “McPhee’s not there. At Sayed’s uncle’s.”

  “Not there?”

  “Gone.” Hands on knees Loxley caught his breath. “Fuckin place. Empty.”

  City of the Blind

  LEO DREAMED of running along a street in Ekaterinburg rolling a willow hoop with a stick, the childish joy in such a simple game. Now, awakening, the elation slid away and he looked up into a young woman’s face, beautiful but drawn, her green surgeon’s mask pulled up over glistening auburn hair.

  “Xorosho?” she asked. A strange accent.

  “Yes, good,” he answered. “Fantastic. Who are you?”

  “She doesn’t speak Russian,” an orderly said. “She just operated on your skull.”

  “Where’s
our doctors?”

  “Our hospital got hit.”

  Leo shook his head in frustration and the woman spoke angrily. He’d understood what she’d said, he realized slowly. “Vous êtes française?”

  Her eyes widened. “You speak French?”

  He tried to remember why. “I was an attaché. Paris. Why are you here?”

  “I’m in Doctors Without Borders – the French medical group. Why are you here?”

  “Soldiers do what they’re told.”

  “Who told you to come destroy Afghanistan?”

  “The heart has its reasons,” he started to say, making a joke of Pascal, but her eyes hardened and he stopped. “I don’t know,” he said, and drifted away.

  JACK AND LOXLEY RAN along the tracks of Sayed’s uncle and his family and one larger unevenly treading boot that might be McPhee’s. After descending the Little Kowkcheh toward Edeni the tracks split, the women and old man continuing downriver and the three men – perhaps the brothers – and McPhee climbing the switchbacks above the Panjshir River.

  Jack brushed snow from his hair, pulled a chunk of bread from his pack and gave half to Loxley. First he’d lost Gus and now maybe McPhee. What was he doing wrong? How many men had his father lost at Ia Drang before he died? What does it feel like, seeing your men go down? Fury and despair.

  The snow fell harder. “Now we’ll lose their trail,” Loxley said matter-of-factly.

  Jack ate some snow. “Maybe they’ll keep climbing. Above the clouds there’ll be no new snow.”

  The snow eased; stars slid past gaps in the clouds. The tracks led up an icefall on one side of a steep scarp. Chunks of snow came scooting down from Loxley’s feet into Jack’s face. How did McPhee make this? Jack kept thinking. Maybe it isn’t him.

  They reached a ridge between two ice-clad peaks, the scarp below them now. Dawn clouds filled the east. “We can’t get caught up here!” Jack yelled over the wind. He pointed up at the pyramid of black rock and ice above them. “That’s Bandakur. The other side of those mountains was our DZ.”

  “Month ago.” Loxley took a breath. “Another life.”