Too much chatter on the radio, because combat time was closing in on them. Shouts from the more senior fliers for concentration on the briefing detail. And the shouts ignored, and all the pilots talking, and the rockets going, and the machine guns. Rockets and machine guns blasting the damaged homes of the village. Rockets and machine guns hammering at the cave mouths in the shallow slopes of the lower valley walls.
Sergei felt the tremors of rifle fire beating on the titanium-armoured hull of the fuselage. Bullshit against the plate defences of the helicopter. A machine gun had started up. Green tracer rounds shafting their light across the valley. A fucking target, something to bite at that was not a stone built house, or the black hole of a cave, or the green emptiness of tree foliage.
There was a moment when the attention of three pilots was diverted to a cave entrance, the source of the green tracer.
There was a moment when the far side of the valley was not covered by another bird.
There was a moment when a flame streak shone brilliantly against the far side grey valley wall…when the shout of the observer in the Antonov high above bounced into the pilots' headsets…when a missile homed onto the hot metal of the engine exhaust of the helicopter piloted by young Sergei.
There was a moment before the blast of the high explosive detonated above and behind the cockpit canopy.
The big bird fluttered down. Not a direct fall, but an indecisive stagger towards the rocks below. All the rifles were aimed at the helicopter. Smudges formed on the cockpit glass as the bullets were deflected away. The tapping of drum sticks on the armour of the fuselage. The rending of metal when they struck the upper body work above the armour.
The houses swept up to meet his fall, and the river bed, and a rope bridge. Sergei felt the wrenching impact of his landing and the jarring of his spine, and the heaving on his harness, and the helicopter came down nose first. He did not know whether his gunner would have survived. Rifle fire loud on the superstructure around him. Through the canopy he saw the helicopters swerving as disturbed wasps in pursuit of a target…
Fuck them, screw them, they were the living, he was the dead. A rain of gunfire spattering on the fuselage and canopy glass…
Trapped like a fucking rat, and fire followed a crash…
He unfastened his harness. He heaved open the cockpit door. Around him was the steady clamour of the rifle fire, of machine guns, rockets. He had no memory of taking his pistol from the holster beside his knee, but it was in his hand as he dropped from the door to the ground. There were the wretched dry stone walls of a house a dozen metres away. He ran to it. Anything to escape the bullet patter on the helicopter. He ran low and clumsy in his flying suit. He reached an open doorway, sobbing, shouting his fear into the gaping doorway. Behind him the helicopter caught fire, was bloated with flame and exploding ammunition. He threw himself into the darkened room. His face brushed against the hard dry dirt of the floor, and dry dirt was on his tongue. His elbows and knees and forehead scraped the dry dirt.
He saw his life as fast flash, framed pictures. Pictures of the street in Kiev in which lived his mother and his father. Pictures of the girl that it was planned he should marry, her face, her breasts, her laughing. Pictures of the briefing room at Jalalabad, of the anger of Medev when the question of anti-missile flares was raised. Pictures of the hurtling movement of the cockpit dials in the second after the missile strike. He was sobbing because he was afraid, he was afraid because he knew that he would die.
His fingers groped forward and caught against material, pushed on and fell against the hardness of flesh that was tight against bone. He looked up. He knelt against the leg of an old woman. The light seemed to grow around him. He stared into the face above that was a myriad of age lines, into the bright eyes that were precious stones. She screamed, a high-pitched, clear scream. He heard the battering of the helicopters above, and the gunfire and the explosions. The helicopters were out of reach. He was below, he was dead. And an old woman's scream betrayed him.
It was the women and the girls who came in answer to the scream. Sergei heard their answering calls, he heard the murder of the gunfire above him, fired by the living.
He heard the slither of the first footfall to reach the doorway. A shadow fell into the room, and then another. Hands reaching out to him, dragging at his flying suit, tearing at him, wheeling him to his feet, skipping him across the dirt floor. Nails on the skin of his face, scratching at the cheek flesh beside the flaps of his flying helmet. A fist between his legs, from behind and catching at his genitals, and slavering breathing close to his nose.
When he opened his eyes he was outside the house and cocooned amongst a bundle of robes and dresses and blankets and head scarves. The hand still on his genitals and the pain took his breath away. Crying his quiet terror, Sergei was hustled from the house. He fell, was half pushed, half stumbled, into the sewer ditch that ran beside the path between the houses. The stench was in his lungs, the slime dripped on his face.
He could hear the helicopters, he could not know whether the brother pilots could see him. The face of a grandmother was in front of him, a gap-tooth mouth. The face of a girl, spitting in his eye. The hand at his genitals squeezed, pulled, squeezed, turned. Hands at the zips of his flying suit, and then a knife tearing at the thin material. All the time the pistol that he had carried was in his fist, forgotten in his terror.
It fell from his hand. The cotton fine hope that might have sustained him was snapped.
Soaring towards his face was a rock held between raw brown fingers, into his face, onto his forehead. He felt the pain, he smelled the warm dribble of his blood and choked. A stone cracked into the back of his skull.
Sergei, on his knees now, saw a woman in the crowd around him, a woman staring at him wide-eyed and in shock, and apart from those who clawed and beat him and hung to his genitals. A lovely, pretty woman. A grey white blouse and a full long skirt.
Her mouth was open, as if to scream when she could not.
A knife skewered his hamstring. He collapsed. He would never stand again. The life of the young flier was battered out by pounding stones and flashing knives on the path beside the open sewer.
The helicopters left behind them the cloud of black fuel smoke from Sergei's Mi-24.
After the helicopters had gone the Sukhois returned and the fires in the village were given urgent new life with the blasting of high explosive bombs and the scattering billows of white phosphorus.
And after the bombers had made their last deafening assault the valley was quiet, except for the distant drone of the Antonov spotter.
'We have five who are dead, seven who are injured,' Ahmad Khan said.
'And you have one helicopter,' Barney said.
'They must come again, this evening, after what we have done to them…'
'After what they have done to you.'
'One man, three women, one child dead, that is little enough to us. A rocket went into a cave, that was some, others came out from hiding when they heard a Soviet was alive in the village, they would have walked through walls to find him. The bombers will come again this evening.'
They had walked to the rope bridge in the centre of the village. The ropes were torn but holding. Either side of the bridge were crushed homes, crazily bent roofing, rubble piles, all the debris of war.
'Where would you wish to be?' Ahmad Khan said abruptly.
'I want to be in the village. Where I can move after I have fired, where I am not trapped as I was in the cave. I want the heavy machine guns, one on each side of the valley…' Barney paused, gazed into Ahmad Khan's face. 'Are you better with me than without me? The one helicopter, was that worth what happened to the village?'