by Mike Bond
“They won’t expect us to go that way.”
McPhee took a breath. “What happened with the ambush?”
“We took out two Hinds,” Loxley said. “Blew them right out of the sky.”
“Who’d we lose?”
“One guy. We also got three APCs and a bunch of soldiers.”
“Jesus, Ackerman was right. If we can interdict the Russian air war with our missiles, the Afghanis might beat them on the ground. It could change the whole fuckin war.”
Jack shifted the two rifles on his shoulder. “Wahid wants more missiles. In two weeks we report to Ackerman in Pakistan, so we take one of Wahid’s camel trains over the Kush to Pakistan and maybe bring back more Strelas. We’ll leave you in Rawalpindi till your ankle’s healed.”
“The fuck you will. This’s my mission too. It’s gonna be a whole new war.”
LEO PACED the hospital garden where mortar-shattered fruit trees lay under a fresh dusting of snow. An orange sun was creeping over the Hindu Kush. To the east trucks or oil tanks were burning; from the north came a deepening thunder as MiG 28’s took off from Bagram. Somewhere a child was giggling.
He beckoned an army orderly, a young woman with a wide Ukrainian face. “Where’s the French doctor?”
“She’s in the critical ward doing her rounds.”
“She has no business there!” He ran up the stairs three at a time and stomped into the ward. There she was, bent over a heavily bandaged soldier, a young doctor beside her. “Who said you could come in here?”
She held a finger to her lips. “Wait a few minutes, till I’m done.”
Who was she giving orders? He stood in the entry, slippers sticking in fresh blood.
“You don’t even speak Russian!” he snapped when she came through the double doors. “How can you treat soldiers when you don’t understand them?”
“Doctor Sushlev speaks French better than you. I’m working with him. Doctor Denisov said I could.”
Denisov was the hospital commandant. I’ve been ambushed, Leo realized. But a battle wasn’t a war. “For how long?”
She looked at him oddly. “Let’s go outside.”
He walked back and forth while she sat on a bench, hands in her lap, the sun on her face. “Things are going badly for us,” he said. “So I worry about security.”
“If the Afghanis didn’t have you for enemies they’d just keep killing each other.”
“Religion’s man’s oldest plague, isn’t it?” He pulled a pack of Yavas from his breast pocket and lit one. “If these fundamentalists take over Afghanistan they’ll undermine Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Our empire falls apart. A civilized world falls apart.”
She cocked her head. “You shouldn’t smoke those.”
He took the cigarette from his mouth. “You interfere in everything, don’t you?”
“Empires always fall apart. You’re a soldier – you know that.”
“I’m just here because they sent me.”
“You always do what you’re told? You’ll make some woman a fine husband.”
Again he felt outflanked. “Or would you?” she smiled.
He flicked the cigarette away. “So if we leave?”
“You’re bringing peace? Peace through war – the new slogan of international socialism?”
He ached to take out another cigarette but didn’t. “So we leave, what then?”
“I’m only a doctor, Captain. I go where pain is and try to lessen it.”
“How’s that different from being a soldier?” Why did he keep explaining himself to her?
She pulled herself up on the bench. “Please, Captain, sit beside me. As we’ve seen, life’s very short.”
He sat stiffly. Why did he always do what she said? “Soon as I’m out of here I’m going back to the Panjshir. So it’s good you have this other guy who speaks French.”
“I’m learning Russian: Ya govaryu ochen pa-russki. See?”
“That’s a good accent –”
“You’re gone how long?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Is it dangerous?” She turned away. “That’s a stupid question.”
He took her long fingers in his hand. “Speaking of dangerous – you should go back to Paris.”
“I never do what I don’t want.” She turned over his hand. “How rough your skin is.” She squeezed his fingernail. “See, you need more vitamins. What’s this black?”
“Engine oil. All tank men get that – becomes part of your skin.”
She said nothing, then, “It’s not just saving the women that I stay for. It’s the mystery of life – I’m closer to it here.”
He looked out at the smoky Kabul morning, half-hearing the chatter of helicopters in the distance, the keening of jets, a rumble of APCs heading north on Karaya Boulevard. “I got bored with dull mornings in Leningrad, training exercises without purpose, social dinners with Army brass... At least here I’m doing something.”
“We’re symbiotic, aren’t we, Captain? You kill people, I heal them.”
“Did it ever occur to you that some men become soldiers to try to lessen killing, not increase it?”
“That’s like making people sick to heal them –”
“Isn’t that inoculation? How we develop immunities, my dear.”
“You know it’s not the same.”
“I try to understand where we’re going,” he said after a while. “Why we do what we do. War’s how humans progress. Even space travel uses the technologies of war – all based on Nazi V2 rockets.” He took out another cigarette but didn’t light it. “Humans are a teeming mass devouring and destroying everything. The only excuse is,” and he looked away, trying to understand his thought, “is if we expand to other worlds. When I think of humans on this earth I think of maggots on a corpse. How they pick it clean. Then they turn into flies and fly to the next one.”
“You’ve been badly injured. You should go home. You don’t have to fight any more.”
“Then what?”
“Will you be in Kabul,” she said suddenly, “when you return from the Panjshir?” She seemed softer, nearly afraid, as if he’d say no.
“When I thought I was dead, you were there, speaking to me. You brought me back.” He kissed her, gently then hard, tasted her tongue and gums and teeth, feeling her electric angularity, the power of her body. A bell rang and she jumped up and ran back inside. He wandered the garden feeling useless and angry, thought of the poem by Attar of Nishapur, killed when an old man by the invading Mongols,
If you love her do not ask about existence and non-existence...
Don’t talk about the beginning and do not ask about the end.
But I hardly know her, he reminded himself.
II
Pakistan
Bandit
April 1983
“I‘D WALK A MILE for a camel,” Loxley sang off-key as they followed Wahid’s camels up the stony trail through the mountains toward Pakistan.
“In the true religion,” Hassan Husseini said, trotting to catch up, “the camel is seen as an example of God’s wisdom. De la sagesse de Dieu.”
“Yes.” Jack watched the rear of the camel before him rise and fall with each step of its elongated, double-jointed rear legs. “It surely is.”
“The Koran tells how the prophet Salih gave the people of Thamud a she-camel as a gift from God, but they killed the camel and so God brought down an earthquake upon them.”
Jack stepped around a steaming manure pile. “Served them right.”
“It’s good to hear that even among infidels there is respect for camels.”
They came to a stream with a cluster of mud houses with shell-holed walls and charred beams, a shattered granary where crows flew away cawing. Wind had scattered barley the crows were eating. Wahid’s men began to gather up the barley and feed it to the camels.
Jack scouted the ruins hoping for a chicken to kill. A growl stopped him. He peered into the gloom of a shed. “Loxley!” he cal
led. “Bring a light.”
Loxley came stepping around places that looked mined. “It’s a dog.”
“I can see that.”
The dog backed away from the light, straining at a chain, yellow eyes wild. “Somebody’s mined him,” Loxley said. “Go any closer and you’ll blow yourself to kingdom come.”
Jack knelt, extended a hand. “Here, puppy.” The dog bared huge teeth.
“If that’s a puppy I’m a fuckin dromedary.”
McPhee limped over watching the ground for trigger wires. “That’s a beautiful dog.”
“I guaran-fuckin-tee you,” Loxley said, “the front of this shed’s mined.”
“Yeah,” McPhee agreed. “Guaranteed.”
“Dog don’t like it,” Loxley said. “He knows.”
McPhee unshouldered his rifle. “Best to put him down.”
“No.” Jack raised his hand. “I’m going around the back, see if I can free him that way.”
“You’re gonna step on something and get your testicles all mixed up with your eyeballs.”
Jack unsnapped his bayonet and moved along the shed, probing the earth with its tip. The wall of the shed stank of burnt mud and dung. He heard the dog panting inside. He moved around the back, still probing. His bayonet clicked on something solid. He backed away, stepping in exactly the same places. “Found one!” he called.
“Goddammit get out of there!” McPhee yelled.
“Moving around the side. Going to get him this way.” Jack dug out a brick with his bayonet, widened a hole at the bottom, reached inside and grabbed the dog’s leather collar.
The dog came out quickly, trying to pull away. He was huge and wolflike, black with a white blaze on his chest. As Jack tugged him closer the dog snarled and nipped his hand, so gently Jack did not let go. “Hey, puppy,” Jack said. “Stop that.”
“Russian shepherd,” McPhee said. “The Afghanis tied him in there, hoping some Russian’d come along and try to free him, get blown away.”
“What’s that written on his collar?” Loxley said.
Jack looked down at the words in Cyrillic: Бандит. “Bandit.” The dog cocked his head. “Same in Russian as English.” He tied a camel halter to the dog’s collar and took him down to the stream where he lay down and drank.
The Afghanis were spreading prayer rugs beside the camels. Bandit growled at them, his back fur raised. Jack gave him a bowl of rice and mutton.
“In the Koran,” Husseini said,” dogs are false messengers. Enemies of God.”
“In the Koran,” Jack said, “everything’s an enemy of God.”
When the dog had finished eating he sat on his haunches beside Jack watching Husseini and the mujihadeen, his tall pointed ears cocked forward, as Jack finger-combed his fur tugging out burrs and tangles. Bandit’s what the Russians call Afghanis, he remembered, wondered who Bandit’s master had been – a Russian officer perhaps – and what had happened to him.
With the camel halter tied to Bandit’s collar he wandered down the trail. Soon the dog no longer shied away from him, and when Jack sat cross-legged on a boulder still warm from the sun Bandit sat next to him, nuzzled his arm and then reached up and licked his face. “Hey Big Ears,” Jack laughed, “stop that.”
He untied the halter from his collar. Bandit put a great paw on Jack’s knee and looked into his face. For an instant Jack felt fear – this huge dog with his inch-long canines could rip his neck open in a second – but the look in Bandit’s golden-brown eyes was warm and thankful – I know what you did for me.
He held the dog’s paw in his hand, feeling the supple tendons and rough pads, the hard claws. “I once lost a friend like you,” he said, feeling not at all weird talking to a strange dog in the wilds of the Hindu Kush. “I’ve never had a lot of friends... maybe I’m too hard to know, don’t like attachments...”
The kindness in the dog’s lustrous eyes with their strong black pupils seemed to accept everything Jack said, made talk unnecessary. He ran his fingers through the fur of Bandit’s neck, undid the leather collar and massaged the thick muscles. “You’re free,” he smiled. “If you want to be with me, I want to be with you.”
THAT NIGHT they led the camels over the ridge into Pakistan and down the Darband valley and in the morning tied them in a pine grove near a dirt road. Aktoub and another of Wahid’s men walked down the road toward a distant village and came back in a Toyota pickup mounted with a machine gun.
“I want you out first,” Jack told McPhee. “Go to our Embassy in Islamabad, the military section. Tell them you’ve come from Cleveland looking for a job. That’s code to send you to Ackerman, who will be somewhere in Rawalpindi. The Pakis have the Embassy wired, so watch what you say. Soon as you see Ackerman, have them take care of that leg.”
McPhee left in the Toyota pickup and returned two days later wearing clean civilian clothes, bringing cold roast beef, apples, and three cans of dog food. “You girls look like shit,” he commented.
“And you smell like a Texas whore,” Loxley said.
“That’s shampoo, darling. First shower in months. You girls could sure use one.”
“What about Gus?” Jack said, killing the mood.
“Nothing from the Soviets – don’t know what they thought...” McPhee stared at the Afghanis, the hills. “Ackerman says we’re fucking heroes. That we can turn this war around.”
Jack shook his head. “It isn’t worth Gus.”
“Bastards at Islamic Jihad just bombed our Beirut Embassy. Sixty dead and hundreds wounded.”
“What?” Loxley yelled. “What they hit us for?”
“Don’t like Americans, apparently... Had an extra truck of Semtex.”
Jack glanced at the Arabs squatting with the Afghanis in a close circle by the camels. “And we’re breeding these assholes?”
“Tell it to Ackerman,” McPhee said. “He’s in the back of New Asia Paradise Heavy Tools Import-Export. I’ll tell you how to get there –”
At dusk Jack and Loxley reached Rawalpindi. The racket of motorbikes and clatter of trucks and buses spewing diesel exhaust, the canned mullah loudspeakers wailing, the sewage in chunks and rivulets in the gutters, the thronging scrawny men in rags and headwraps, the women in yashmaks and slippers tiptoeing through the muck, the odors of death and decay, the constant din and filthy air, and the crushing presence of far too many impoverished people driven together by hunger, despair, and Islam’s fanatic renunciation – all made him desperate to regain the empty vast mountains with their knife-edge air and blue-white vistas. If Rawalpindi was life, then fuck it the Hindu Kush was better.
New Asia Paradise Heavy Tools was a warehouse in a back lot in an industrial area where the long-distance trucks left for Karachi and Lahore. Stacks of steel pipe, coils of heavy plaited wire, rolls of sheet metal, and bundles of PVC pipe wrapped in white plastic were piled to the ceiling. In the back were offices, and a stairway up to a closed steel door.
“Took you long enough,” Levi Ackerman said. “I been here, what, five days?”
“Probably good for you, Sir,” Jack said. “Got you out of Sin City.”
Ackerman glanced at Bandit. “That’s a beautiful dog. He kill people?”
“Maybe.”
Ackerman tugged a pencil from behind his left ear and spun it on his fingertips. “Your Dad would be proud of you.”
Jack flinched. “Yes, Sir.”
“We get Wahid enough missiles maybe he can retake the Panjshir.” Ackerman tilted back his chair, dropped forward. “Thanks to what you’ve done, the stakes have gone up a notch. We’ve got a new Home Office guy flying in, Timothy Cormac. To look at the bigger picture. Strategy guy, not military.” Ackerman shrugged. “You want to grow your career, get close to him.”
Jack bent to scratch Bandit behind the ears. “I told Wahid we’re independents, don’t have a Home Office pipeline to give him SA-7s. So he’s paying with opium. Did you know?”
Ackerman tipped back again, making Jack fear he’d
go over. “We’ve been through all this. What Home Office does with the Pakis –”
“You mean the weapons for Hekmatyar –”
“− is not our business. Our business is you guys building a third force to counter the Soviets without the Pakis or Saudis. Or Hekmatyar, or this new guy Massoud –”
“The one who signed the truce with the Russians?”
Ackerman rubbed the stump of his missing forearm. Jack wondered did it still hurt, after all these years? Does all pain endure like that, long after you think it will be gone?
“If that Goddamn truce spreads it’ll kill our whole deal,” Ackerman said. “We need the Soviets tied down in Afghanistan. So we need this Massoud dealt with.”
“We help Wahid get his SA-7s, but he has to kill Massoud?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ackerman said. “They going to win, these mujihadeen of yours?”
“Depends how many weapons we give them.”
“And if they do?”
“The insane ones like Wahid and Hekmatyar will take control. When the Soviets leave they’ll go for each other’s throats.”
“We’re sending ten more holy warriors back with you. From Saudi, Yemen, and Algeria. Ask them about the Beirut Embassy bombing, see what you learn.”
“I don’t want them.”
“Jack, this war has to seem a pan-Islamic thing: Muslims versus Soviets. So we import holy warriors from wherever. Good pay, learn how to kill, maybe die for Allah.”
“Like I said, we shouldn’t be training these assholes –”
“You let Home Office worry about that.” Ackerman stood looking out the office window. “Tomorrow we’ll decide how many SA-7s and launchers you need.” Ackerman opened a side drawer of the desk and reached inside to sharpen his pencil with an electric sharpener. “On the admin side, you want any changes in survivor notification and benefits, that kind of thing?”
“Just my mother, like before.”
“A few house rules for while you’re here. We’re private citizens, not representatives of any government. Carry your sidearm at all times but keep it concealed. Always let Sergeant Malkowich know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. There’s a pussy shop down the street but I’m told the ones in Ketta Jalaya are better –”