Standing now amongst those rocks he looked across the valley to the cave entrance opposite him. Near to the mouth of the cave, a lateral slit, he could see the movements of the boy who worked to collect dried grass and small branches for the fire that would be lit in the cave the next morning.
He was satisfied. Barney came down over the rocks, dropped through the cracks and gullies and into the twilight of the orchard where the mules were hobbled.
Before the light had gone, by the time that the boy had returned from collecting the materials for the fire, Barney had assembled the Redeye missile
Chapter 12
The boy was quiet, quieter than at any time since he had carried the launcher into the bungalow at Peshawar. Barney remembered the talk of killing a hundred Soviets. None of the crap and bubble from the boy now, and no cheek. This was real, on the valley's wall and above the valley's floor, the time for boasting past. When they had first woken, the boy had gone a few yards from Barney and sunk down to his knees and elbows in prayer; he had not prayed before, not when it had just been the two of them together. Gul Bahdur was to go into combat in the company of a foreigner, he was to fight alongside an unbeliever, he was to stand back to back with a man who could not speak his first language. Barney understood why the boy was quiet, why he had ripped at the food and not cared to gather the crumbs.
A bird came, a finch of brilliant yellow feathers, and hopped and skipped near to them and revelled in the unexpected feast. Barney saw the freedom of the bird when it fled from him and perched out of reach on a branch before diving back with courage reassembled to the ground beside him. He wondered whether he could lure it into his hand, but the bread was finished.
The grey light was spreading down the far wall of the valley. The Redeye missile, launch tube attached to the launch mechanism, rested on a rock beside Barney. Time for the boy to go.
The boy knew. There was fear in his face that he could not hide. 'If you fire at the helicopter and you do not kill it…'
'I will kill it, Gul Bahdur.'
'You can promise you will kill it?'
'Watch me, Gul Bahdur.'
The boy smiled back, thinly, without certainty, and was gone, down into the first line of the trees in the orchard.
Barney started to climb up the west side of the valley. He took with him a second tube.
He hoped if the helicopters came that day that they would come early, before the sun straddled the centre of the valley in the white midday heat. He hoped that the simple lure he had baited for the helicopter would draw it to within his firing range. He hoped the helicopters would be cruising gently as a dragonfly in flight…
Cut the bloody hoping, Barney.
He reached a rock boulder, lichen covered, and balanced some one hundred and fifty feet above the orchard's trees. The boulder was fifteen feet high, twenty feet from front to back and, behind it, and accentuating the precariousness of its grip on the slope, was a narrow gully wide enough for a man to pass. It was a firing position. Whether the helicopters came from the north or from the south he would have the cover of the boulder until they had passed. Barney set down the missile and the spare tube. He took his one handkerchief from his pocket and ripped a tear in it with his teeth, and then pulled it to narrow shreds with his hands and screwed up two pieces and plugged them in his ears, and was satisfied, and took them out and laid them on the stone beside the missile. Next he loaded the battery system into the body of the launch unit.
The sunlight was clearing the haze of early morning, sharpening the greens of the valley floor, and the greys and brown tints of the valley walls. He could see more than two miles each way down the valley.
Across the valley a spiral of smoke drifted up from the dark entrance of the cave that was below the height at which Barney now sat. He saw the boy bend over the fire at the mouth of the cave, and a further billow of smoke as green wood replaced the kindling of dried branches.
…Remember that at all times the missile must see the engine exhaust vent that is set port and starboard on the upper side fuselage, behind the pilot, below the rotor blade transmission.
…Remember that the engine exhaust is the only target for Redeye.
…Remember the helicopter must be in steady flight for all of the missile's journey time.
…Remember to aim forward, to aim high.
Barney looked down as the sun winked on the transparent disc at the forward end of the launch tube, and behind the disc onto the infrared seeker optics and sensor element.
The time for waiting.
And as he watched the rise of the smoke from the cave slit he thought of the instruction he had given to the thirteen men who had died with the Redeye. No bloody way they could have mastered the principle of 'fire and forget' ground-to-air missiles, launcher acquisition electronics, the azimuth angle of target aiming. And because they were dead, Barney Crispin now crouched beside the boulder and strained with his ears for the sound of a helicopter in the valley.
The smoke from the cave crept up the rock face.
He crouched down beside the boulder, his shoulders covered by the blanket, his hand close to the Redeye launcher. And waited.
They would fly in formation from the Jalalabad base and when they were north of the Kabul river they would split to their pairs and their assigned patrol sectors.
Medev bent his body away from the thrash of the rotor blades as the engines were readied for take off. Rostov was sunk behind the Major, using his body shamelessly as a wind break. Some of the ground crew had come to stand in the sunshine and watch the departure of the heavy-laden gunships. A deafening howl of engine power, a film of scampering dry dust that slitted Medev's eyes. Through the haze of the storm he could see the rocket pods on the stumpy down-slung wings. Ugly beasts, and they always brought a grim smile to Medev's face. Ugly as sin. Sand and green-brown broken camouflage on the bodies of the beasts, and underneath a grey paint hull. Two bulging domes forward of tinted bullet proof glass for the gunner and pilot. Above the pilots' canopies were the gaping circular intake orifices for the TV-2-117 Isotov powerhouse engines. Ugly as shit, and he loved them. Loved their clumsy stamping roll as they shuddered on their wheels, weighed down by a carcase of armour plate, a stomach sack of fuel, fists and teeth of machine guns and rocket pods. The helicopters, in line, lifted off. The grit flew at Medev's face. He watched them climb above the dust storm, then saw the noses dip as they turned towards the perimeter fence, towards the foothills beyond the Kabul river. He watched until they were specks in the azure sky, and until he could no longer see them.
Medev spun on his heel. He walked to Operations, the shed in which were the radio sets that would attempt constant communication with the patrolling helicopters. Other than when the patrols were masked by a mountain mass, usually when deep in the hinterland valleys, contact would be a free flow.
Two helicopters to follow the Kunar river valley north east to Asadabad.
Two helicopters to trace the river bed between Qarqai and Ali Shang to the north west.
Two helicopters to skim the ground traversing the mountain passes from Mehtarlam to Manduwal.
Two helicopters over the wastes of area Delta.
The quiet slipped again to the apron. Those who had watched the departure of the eight Mi-24s went back to their desks and their maintenance hangars.
Barney saw the boy heap more wood and leaves onto the fire. In a moment the smoke soared again, and above the cave it was caught by the wind and blown out across the valley and spread as a milk skim above the trees and above the dry river bed.
He looked at his watch. He wondered if they would come that morning, or in the afternoon, or the following day. If they were to come that morning then they would come soon. And, if they came, would he have the opportunity to fire? The first shot must be a killing shot. Better not to fire, if the first shot was not certain to kill.