She was washing her hands after the last of the patients had gone, she had asked for boiled water and they had given her warm water, when she heard the shouting of children outside. Through the opened door she saw the children running down the track alongside the river bed, and pointing. She saw the American go past the doorway, not looking at her, and she thought she might be sick from the memory of the awfulness.
Mia walked out into the open air.
Through the mulberry trees approaching the village was the Englishman and his guide and one mule. Walking slowly, some way apart.
The boy had talked them into Atinam.
Barney had sat on a stone at the edge of the village and the boy had gone forward.
The whole village was there, lined in a pressing half circle behind the man who had broken off from his instruction of the RPG-7, listening as the boy made the request for hospitality and shelter. Once he turned and pointed with his finger towards Barney and then showed with the gestures of his hands the motion of a falling helicopter. Barney thought that the boy would have no need to explain their credentials. The village would know. He saw Schumack in the ranks of the listeners, saw him take no side in the discussion around the boy.
Gul Bahdur turned, waved imperiously for Barney to come forward. Cheeky sod, Barney grinned. He tilted his head, acknowledged the boy, and came forward. The children watched him, and there were women standing in the doorways of the houses and not running from view as the Pathan women of Paktia would have done, and old men, and the fighters. All watching Barney because this was the man who fired the missile that had destroyed two helicopters.
They made an aisle for him, the children, the women, the old men and the fighters, they stepped from his path as he followed Gul Bahdur and the mule into the village. He passed Schumack, winked at him. He passed Mia, and blushed and smiled, and she looked away from him and cut her eyes to the ground.
The fire was of dried goat dung.
The small flames gave a little warmth to Barney's hands and arms and body. The fire was set amongst bricks in the centre of the room and the smoke rose to a hole in the ceiling, He had washed, he had eaten nan and a crumbling white cheese and a scrape of goat's meat on a bone. He sat on a floor rug and Schumack was opposite him, across the fire from him. They had been left alone by the village men and Barney didn't know where the boy had gone; probably he had found somewhere to sleep where he could talk first of the crashing helicopters and then gossip chat into the night.
Barney had eaten with Schumack. The woman could have eaten with them but had said she was not hungry. She was in a room off the main chamber where the fire was lit.
Schumack, amused and playing the older man, said, 'We heard that Ahmad Khan booted you out. News chases you faster than the Revenue in this valley. We heard about the helicopters, they were back this morning collecting the bodies. How many Redeyes for two helicopters?'
'Two,' said Barney, looking into the flame flicker.
'Good thinking or bad flying?'
'We lit a fire in a cave for the first. We tethered a mule for the second…'
'Bright thinking, Captain Crispin. You have six missiles left. And you've showed up here…?'
'To rest up, eat and sleep a bit.'
'When are you going to fire again?'
'When the chance arises, when else?'
'You want some help?'
'Yes,' Barney said simply.
'What sort of help?'
'Twice I've been able to take the rear bird, once from low down, once from the top of the valley. It can't be as easy again. I need fire support.'
'Someone to take the pressure off your arse when you're running, when you've fired.'
'Something like that.'
'We've two DShKs in the village, twelve seven millimetre. It's a hell of a rate of fire they put down, don't hit much, but the tracer puts the shits up the fliers. If they were in support of you…'
'That would be good,' Barney said.
'Ahmad Khan's supposed to be here tomorrow. He flits about, they say he's sometimes here when he's expected. You should talk to him.'
'He might not care to talk.'
'You've two helicopters, he'll talk to you.'
The fire's light played in the brightness of Barney's eyes.
'You want some ideas when you sit down with Ahmad Khan. He's a sharp guy, if he gets involved with you then he has to know he's going to win. Time for sleep…'
Barney leaned forward to whip loose the laces of his boots. Past the fire Schumack lay on his back Barney felt the cold, felt it deep in him because of his tiredness. He wrapped the blanket close round his body, made a pillow for himself with his pack.
Against the wall he could see the pile of the missiles. He flopped back, closed his eyes.
Through the inner door he heard the woman's cough.
Barney saw her image. Barney felt her skin. Barney touched her hair, twined his fingers in the black ringlets. Barney's arms were loose around the neck of the woman.
Again the hacking cough.
'The bitch'll keep going all night,' Schumack growled.
Barney twitched, the pinching of a nerve. He remembered how she had stood at the side of the path as he had entered Atinam.
'She's like a tiger, Barney. I screwed her last night…wrong, she screwed me, humped the balls off me. She came in here, lifted her skirt, dropped down on me. I was piss all use to her. Not a fucking word she said, like an animal, like a tigress. She screwed me, she dropped her skirt, she took off. Not a fucking word. I'm not much good, but she made me think I was worse. Just looked through me in the morning like I didn't exist…'
'Shut up, Maxie,' Barney whispered.
He heard the cough, heard it choking in a slender throat.
'Bitch, all last night she coughed.'
'Shut up,' Barney whispered, louder.
The bodies made up the last cargo to be loaded onto the transport aircraft. Not just the Killed in Actions of Eight Nine Two. There was also the corpse of an infantry trooper who had shown his colleagues how not to fool with an RG-42 HE grenade. There were two Frontal Aviation bomber ground crew conscripts whose mutilated bodies would make a good example for the Education Officer when he preached the dangers of sneaking to the Jalalabad bazaar for hashish.
All of Major Pyotr Medev's fliers were in a crisp line on the tarmac and behind them were the non-commissioned gunners, and behind them the maintenance crews. No bands, no speeches. An impromptu farewell without organised ceremonial. Not even a flag to cover the tin coffins in which the bodybags were laid. Medev had reckoned that the sight would do his pilots no harm, might concentrate their minds. He stood in front of his pilots, but too far back to be able to read the cardboard tags on the coffin handles.
He did not know when the pilot, Viktor, went up the ramp of the transport. Sometimes the bodies went all the way home to the families…as long as the casualties were low then the bodies went home, that's what was said.
The last coffin was carried forward. Medev snapped, as if in afterthought, to a parade ground salute; behind him the pilots, the gunners and maintenance crews followed suit. The ramp creaked up and closed on the tin coffins. Medev heard the quiet crying of a pilot behind him. Nothing wrong in that. He made a sharp left turn. The small parade spluttered away in broken rank. The engines of the aircraft were turning.
He found Rostov in Operations. He would plead the excuse of overseeing the radio and communications. That he hadn't been on the apron was enough to burn at Medev.
'The whole squadron's up tomorrow, including the replacement flier.'
'Where to?' Rostov said easily, as if in the previous few minutes he had not stood and looked from the window.
'Where the Hell do you think?' Medev flared. 'That shite valley in Delta. We're to hit everything, wherever the bastards are…villages, caves, everything. They may have thought themselves smart to have some fuck pig foreigner walking their valley with a Redeye. When the airstrikes have finished with them they'll know how smart they were.'