He heard the rustle of a dragonfly's wings, but he was too far from water. He heard the drone of a searching bee, but there were no flowers on the rock slope close to him. Slowly, deliberately, Barney stood up. His head was back, pricking at the wind to identify the source of the rustle and the drone. The noise welled in the air around him.
He heard the approach of the helicopters. He waited motionless to identify the direction of the advance as the sounds grew in his ears.
He bent and picked up the cloth wads that he had made for his ears. His ears could no longer help him, the helicopters were coming from the north. He stuffed the shreds of cloth into his ears, pressing them hard. He took the Redeye, lifted it lightly onto his shoulder, and ducked through the gap behind the boulder to cover himself from the approach of the helicopters. There would be very little time when the helicopters came, thirty seconds, he thought, not more. Thirty seconds to engage the battery coolant, sight the Redeye, find the target, fire. And through all the sighting and the finding and the firing he must have a clean view for the missile head of the hot metal of the engine exhaust vent. Not a view of the nose, not a view of the underbelly, not a view of the sloped wing set into the fuselage behind and below the engine's vent.
The first helicopter he saw was lower than he had expected, meandering over the dried-out river bed, as a shark will that is in shallow water, ebbing and varying its tack. He hugged close to the boulder. The helicopter hovered five hundred metres from Barney, five hundred metres from the smoke that drifted from the cave slit.
Barney's thumb slipped over the battery switch beside his ear. They always flew in pairs, he could hear but not see the second helicopter, above and behind, masked from Barney's view by the boulder, close enough to pierce the ear wads. To kill the first helicopter was to kill himself. To destroy the lower helicopter was to invite the retaliation of the escort above, all-seeing the moment the missile was launched. You wait, Barney, you wait and you don't fire.
The second helicopter was above him, more frantic and busy than its lower partner, faster and higher, manoeuvring because its work was that of a watchman.
The smoke was as blood in the water to a shark.
The lower helicopter dipped to face the cave. There was a tumult of rocket fire, the crash of smoke and stone and shrapnel. There would be tribesmen in the cave, helpless fools who had lit a fire.
The second helicopter came down, level with Barney, and made a fast run south to north up the valley before banking sharply and turning. Barney had seen the pilot's face, jutting from the front of his flying cap. He had seen the gunner in the forward turret.
Again there was the bellow of the rockets exploding around the cave's mouth.
The second helicopter came past Barney. It was the escort, the sentry, the one that should have been flying high as guard, the one that now came to join the game of rocketing the arse-shits who were fool enough to have lit a fire in the cave in which they rested.
The second helicopter swung back again up the valley, level with Barney's eyeline, without caution. The lower helicopter presented its tail rotor to him. He heard the crack of machine gun fire aimed at the cave.
He took a great gulp of air into his lungs. The launcher was steady on his shoulder, held firm with the right hand, manipulated with the left. Right thumb on the battery coolant switch. The second helicopter flew back across Barney's line of sight. Right thumb down. He could see the yawning hole of the engine exhaust vent above the wing, below the swirl of the rotor circle. Through the crossed wires of the sight he watched the second helicopter, watched the engine exhaust vent. No more trembling, only a great calmness. The launcher was vibrating, homing and the howl of the buzzer was in his ears. His right index finger slowly squeezed the trigger stick.
Aim ahead, aim for elevation.
Fire.
Go, you bastard. Go.
The missile limped from the launcher. Strangely slow and pathetic, the first movement. Then the flash, the blast. Twenty feet in front of Barney, the main ignition.
The heat snapped into his face. A fire ball streaking across the valley's space, in pursuit of the second helicopter.
Barney heard the impact, the thunder of collision, and saw the sheet of flame and the lifting, slow motion, of shrapnel metal.
He bent to lift the spare missile tube, and ran down the hillside with the wind stripping his hair, towards the cover of the trees.
Neither man had a warning, however brief, of the catastrophe speeding towards them.
At the short range of eight hundred metres and because the helicopter was utilising no anti-missile procedures, the effect of the impact of the high explosive war head was fatal. By the time that the pilot had recovered from the pile-hammer blow above and behind him, his helicopter was careering towards the stone of the river bed. The pilot heard the scream of his gunner as the helicopter fell nose first. At that height the pilot did not have the chance to flutter down on the free run of his rotors. Loaded with fuel and ammunition, weighing close to nine tons, the big machine's plummet ended in a scraping collapse of metal on rock in the river bed.
Then the fire.
The helicopter that had been firing into the cave, its tail facing the launch position of Redeye, veered hard to starboard in answer to the single shouted exclamation of a brother pilot. He scudded fast along the valley floor, down with the loose and rounded stones, using his skill to extricate himself from danger while the gunner, craning back, yelled over the internal radio a description of their burning partner.
From the depths of the valley the pilot could not report to the Jalalabad operations room. He climbed for altitude, for safety, for vision, for communication.
Below him, climbing more slowly, was the dense column of oil black smoke.
He could not know what their reaction would be.
He was under the cover of the trees. He lay in the lee of a rock that stood half a dozen feet high between the trunks of the orchard trees. He discarded the used missile tube, looked down at the Hebrew and Parsee stencil stamps on the fibreglass tube. He loaded the second missile. He doubted he would fire, he would not look for a second opportunity, not while the blood was still hot in him, not while his chest still heaved in elation at the kill, but he would be ready.
The mules were hobbled a dozen yards from him, tight against two trees that had grown up against each other and provided a double thickness of leaf roof. The boy was across the river from him, separated by the open ground of the river bed.
Between gaps in the foliage, he could see the smoke streaming up against the sky, and he heard the report of exploding ammunition, and his nostrils filled with the smell of ignited aviation fuel.
He could not know what their reaction would be. Whether the undamaged helicopter would stay on station, whether a force of infantry would be flown in to sweep that part of the valley, whether an air strike by fighter bombers would be called down. It was morning, and he needed darkness before he could move again in real safety with his mules, before he could call the boy back from across the river bed.
Barney took the cloth wads from his ears. There was a new depth of sounds, from the ammunition, from the beat of the helicopter's engines above him. The elation had been fast coming, it slipped away now, a discarded skin. He believed he had killed two men. Minutes before he could have stood on his feet, screamed his triumph, waved a clenched fist salute above his head. The exhilaration, a passing luxury, was spat from his mind.