'When you have cleared the valley of helicopter flights then I will tell you what has been worthwhile.'
Ahmad Khan walked away from Barney. A group of men had waited for him. They were out in the open, in the view of the circling Antonov. They knelt in prayer.
Barney watched, then turned and beckoned to Schumack and the boy, and led the way into the village.
'They killed him with their hands and with rocks.' She spat the words at him.
Mia Fiori standing, her hands on her hips, her legs wide apart and sturdy, and the disgust twisting at her mouth.
Barney was sitting against the wall of a stone house with the Redeye launcher across his lap.
'They wouldn't even kill a goat the way they killed that man.'
Barney saw the livid anger on her cheeks.
'You come here with your conceit…you're no better than a primitive. If you are a part of this people's war then you are a savage. They stoned him to death! Christ, he looked at me, he looked to me to save him.'
'He flew a helicopter gunship', Barney said.
'You know where he is now?'
'I don't need to know where he is now.'
'He's where their rubbish is…he's in with their filth. You know what their rubbish is. It's afterbirth, it's shit…it's where the maggots and the disease are. Don't you have a code? Doesn't a pretty little European soldier have a code for his prisoner? Don't you get him a drink, and make him comfortable, and see that he's fed? Don't you protect him from animals? Christ, he was your prisoner! You brought him down. Where were you, you bastard, when the women pulled the balls off him? They didn't cut them, they pulled them off him. You shot him down, you were responsible. And where were you? A mile away on your stomach in a cave. You make me sick.'
Barney stood up. He took Mia by the shoulders. She did not pull away. Her anger was done.
'They'll come back this afternoon,' Barney said. 'Go back to the caves.'
He let her go. She turned from him, and ran, sobbing, away.
Schumack had watched and listened.
'Stupid bitch…where does she think she is?'
'Piss off,' Barney said.
Chapter 17
Brilliant colours cascading from the late afternoon skies.
A display of dancing, falling lights as if it was a gala, not the battlefield at Atinam.
From the mouths of the caves the fighters watched the flares, from deeper in the recesses the women and the children saw the blues and greens and reds, floating down from the helicopters.
Barney and Schumack had taken a place in a squat stone-built granary built against the cliff to the west of the valley. Barney did not know where Ahmad Khan had positioned himself, but Schumack would know. Schumack had taken it upon himself to be the coordinator for the firing of the Redeyes. When Barney wanted the covering fire of the DShKs then Schumack would pass the message. Schumack, veteran of Khe Sanh and Desert One, had found a new officer to care for.
They watched the flares climb to a fire zenith before subsiding.
'Not with those bastards, you can't fire,' Schumack hissed.
'They had to learn something…' Barney said.
Around the village from the caves there was the flimsy rattle of automatic rifle fire, answered and dominated by the ripple of the heavy machine guns of the Mi-24s, and their rockets.
'With the flares we're screwed, they'll strafe the village to nothing.'
'What's the pattern of the flares?'
They lay on their backs in the doorway of the granary. Each had covered his body and face with a blanket, leaving free only the eyes. They lay still and close to each other in the small doorway. At Maxie Schumack's side was his rifle, at Barney's side was the loaded launcher.
'You can't fire into the flares, it'll go rogue and destruct.'
'There's a pattern,' Barney said.
Three, four kilometres from the village, the helicopters seemed to queue in their pairs for the run in onto Atinam. They came in fast and low. Barney wondered at the miracle that there was anything remaining in the village left to burn, but new fires had started.
'Do you see the pattern?'
'I just see the bastard flares…'
'They're firing from Very pistols out of the fuselage doors. They fire a kilometre short of the village, and they fire over the village. Look for the pattern, damn you.'
'All I see is a couple of hookers with their panties down watching rainbow colours.'
Machine gun shells blasted into a building across the path, the wrench sound of a falling roof, the dust crumble of dry masonry.
'Maxie, don't you see…'
'I see the mother helicopters.'
'Shut up and listen.' Barney yelling. 'Take one bird, put all the fire onto the fuselage hatch…don't let the bugger put his nose out, blast him if he does. He's not firing behind, he's firing forwards and upwards. Look at him…he has to lean out on his strap, he has to fire the flare forward or it's gone and dropping too far behind…'
Barney's voice died, obliterated by the roar of a helicopter overhead.
'You don't have to fire, not each time they come.' A caution from Schumack. 'Live to fight another day, that crap.'
'They've found something new, they reckon they're the whiskers. Hit them now and they'll be on their knees.'
'You have to stand up out there, you can't do it off your gut.'
'I know how to fire.'
'Please yourself, hero man — it's your ass.'
'Not the next pair, the pair after that. Every gun in the village on the right flying bird, the one that flies on the right of the pair.'
'You have to stand out there and face them, you have to be in the open. It's what the mothers want of you. What they're here for, to drag you into the open. Don't you see that?'
'They'll be on their knees, Maxie.'
Schumack was gone. Sprinting from the doorway, jumping the open ditch, falling into the doorway opposite. Cocking his ear, then running for the corner. Hesitating on the corner, then gone.
For what, Barney? To kill a helicopter, that's for what.
What sort of idiot reason is that? The only reason…because the helicopter is above and smashing a village, pulping it.
Where does stripping a helicopter for MOD's scientists fit into the game? Fits nowhere, a square block in a round hole.
He saw the huddle of Schumack half around the corner of a building across the path and beyond the drain. Ready for the dash, waiting his time. All right for Schumack. He went where there was fighting, he bought oneway tickets. Anywhere that Sam's backside was kicked was good enough fighting ground for Sergeant Schumack. Lucky sod. You're an arrogant bugger, Crispin. Had to be. Had to be an arrogant bugger to stand out in the open and fire the Redeye at the hot metal engine exhaust of an Mi-24 battle cruiser.
Barney felt the warm air panting in his throat, he felt the cold draught in his stomach. His grandfather would have felt the same shiver, the same tremble, the same cold. God, he was scared…
Schumack dived down beside him. 'It's the next one that comes, all the fire on the fuselage hatch, like you want it.'
Barney pulled himself to his feet. Weak at the knees, unsteady in the hands. He stamped his foot to put a discipline in his body. He held the launcher across his chest.
He felt the tug of the claw at the sleeve of his shirt. Schumack was pointing away down the path, across the fields, across the orchards of mulberry and walnut trees. He saw the two helicopters approaching. He saw the flame spits of the machine guns. He saw the glory of the flare colours. He read the soundless words at Schumack's mouth.
'Good luck, hero man.'
He stood alone in the centre of the path. He raised the Redeye launcher to his shoulder, felt the weight bite down onto the bone. His thumb nudged against, engaged, the battery coolant switch. He heard the low whine of the launcher. He saw the opened door of the fuselage, he saw what he fancied was the figure of the man who would fire the protecting flare to decoy a missile. Ragged rifle fire from the village, perhaps twenty rifles on automatic. Then the steady hammer thud of the two DShK machine guns. Barney saw the tracer reaching for the fuselage.