'What do you do when the helicopters come?'
'We hide,' Ahmad Khan shouted.
'I can destroy them for you,' Barney shouted back.
'I fight my own war.'
'From the back of caves?'
Ahmad Khan hissed his surprise. 'You take a chance with me. Englishman.'
'You take a chance with the lives of the men that follow you. To be obstinate is to throw away the lives of your men.'
Barney saw the hand loosen from whatever was concealed under Ahmad Khan's coat. Ahmad Khan stood, rising with an easy grace from the squat. Suddenly he smiled, the sweet smile of dismissal. 'I do not know why you are here, and I do not want you.'
'It is for you to decide.'
'I have decided.'
Barney did not argue. He shrugged.
'You can take some food, then you should go back to Pakistan.'
'I thank you for the food, but I will not go back to Pakistan.'
'You go where?'
'I will go ten miles up your valley, perhaps you will see the smoke from the first helicopter.'
Barney looked up at the young guerrilla commander and saw his puzzlement. He felt no hostility towards him. There was an openness about the man that he admired.
Barney had not been open. He had not spoken of the age of Redeye, he had not fairly detailed the limitations of targeting onto the engine exhaust vents. He had not mentioned the potential damage to the electronics from the long overland journey on the backs of the mules. He had not described the evasion techniques available to the pilots of an Mi-24. He had not said that he would leave when the instrumentation was strapped on the mules' backs. He had played an arrogant game, not an honest game. But he had lost nothing, and everything. He stood up.
'How many men do you have?' Barney asked.
'What is it to you?'
'How many men?'
'More than fifty,' a scent of pride from Ahmad Khan. 'In the side valleys there are more.'
'And the valley is important?'
'You know the valley is a route used by the Resistance.'
'If they were to come with tanks and armoured cars…'
'I have machine guns, I have anti-tank rockets.'
'Be ready for them, but they will not have the helicopters.' Barney smiled carelessly.
He held out his hand, took Ahmad Khan's, gripped it.
'Why are you here, Englishman?'
'I think we will meet again.'
Barney walked away, over to the boy. He saw the apprehension in Gul Bahdur's face. He told the boy that the leader had said that they should take food from the camp, and asked the boy to collect it. Barney went back to the tent beside which the two mules were tethered and grazing. In the dimness of the tent interior he bent over the piled parts of the Redeye missile kit. He had made a promise, he had given his word. He thought of Rossiter who had torpedoed his FCO career. He thought of the boy with the bloodied head who had walked back to the frontier with the launcher. He thought of thirteen men who were dead. He thought of a village that he had seen under attack from the hovering helicopters. He thought of a schoolmaster and the fierce pride that had taken him from the city to the valley shadows. Lastly he thought of an old man who was his father who had scuffled with a gunman without thought for his own safety. They were clear, sharp, painful thoughts.
Barney stowed the missiles onto the backs of the mules and lashed tight the ropes.
It was mid morning when they left the camp, Barney holding the bridle close to the jaw of the mule and the boy a few paces behind him. More than a hundred yards along the track stood Ahmad Khan. Barney looked straight ahead, said nothing as he passed Ahmad Khan, who stared over his head, ignored his going. There was the clipping tread of the mules, the stamp of Barney's boots, the shuffle of the boy's sandals. A great hush over the valley, a great quiet and emptiness that was not moved by the steady pace of Barney and the boy and the two mules.
Once clear of the camp, Barney's eyes roved across the valley floor and the bouldered river bed and the uncultivated fields and the fruit trees that were overgrown, unpruned from the previous year. Over the jagged shapes of the rock falls at the base of the cliff walls. Up onto the steep, smoothed slopes where only the hardiest of scrub bushes had taken root. Out into the fissure valleys that groped away to the sides.
Towards the mountain peaks that were distant, pale in the sunshine, deceptively close.
He was hunting for cover, for advantage, for a firing position.
The map was sheeted with a cellophane cover, and marked with chinagraph symbols that positioned Soviet and Afghan Army garrisons and suspected bandit concentrations.
They were crowded into the room, eight pilots for eight Mi-24s. They would fly the following morning, return for their machines to be refuelled, go up again in the afternoon hours. They would fly in four pairs on different patrol routes, and the pattern would be repeated after refuelling. The helicopters were capable of covering great distances, they would quarter many of the deep valleys and rifts of Laghman province during the two patrols.
They were young, early twenties, they wore the common uniform of close cropped hair, tanned faces, keen and aware eyes. Since he had taken command of Eight Nine Two he had not lost one of them. He had earned their trust.
Two helicopters to prowl the wide Kunar river valley from its fork with the Kabul river and upstream to Asadabad.
Two helicopters to trace the river between Qarqai and Ali Shang to the west.
Two helicopters to take their start point at Mehtarlam and then follow the road track north towards Manduwal.
Two helicopters to operate in the vacuum wilderness between Mehtarlam and Mahmud-e Eraqi, the wilderness designated as patrol area Delta.
He stabbed with his pointer at the contour lines of the map. The squadron had been there before, into area Delta. Medev grimaced. There existed in Delta only deep valleys and cliff escarpments and friendless mountains. None of his fliers wanted Delta.
Medev caught the eye of one of the young men who would fly an Mi-24 into area Delta in the morning, the pilot Nikolai. He had been into area Delta before, he was reliable, he was careful. area Delta was in their tasking. area Delta must be covered. A silence had fallen on the briefing room, the pilots waited on him. Silence was an infectious disease at the briefings. They were good pilots, those going into area Delta, as good as he had. They hated area Delta for its wildness, lack of friendly force base camps, for its weather, for the problems of rescue pickups.
'It will be search and destroy, what you search out you destroy. I suggest a ground speed of 70kph. Met report for tomorrow is clear visibility, no cloud, winds strong to severe with a possibility of 50-klick gusts. That's all.'
There were seldom questions. He tried to be exhaustive in his handling of all matters that might prove of concern to his fliers. He did not encourage his fliers to ask questions for the sake of hearing their own voices. There was the shuffling of feet, the scraping of chair legs. Medev smiled warmly, saved an additional warmth for the pilot, Nikolai, who would lead in the morning into area Delta.
Just when the light was failing, Barney found the place. They had travelled five hours since leaving the camp. He had been restless, pushing himself forward, unwilling to talk with the boy. Now he had found the place.
He estimated that the width of the valley floor was a thousand yards. To the north and the south were villages. Between the villages and on either side of the river bed were orchards still with the summer's leaf canopy. At their lowest point the valley walls sloped gradually into the tree line, and above the trees on one side were scrub bushes of thorn,and then heavy boulders that a millennium before had crashed from the upper rock face.