A clear instruction from Medev.
'Without hazarding the safety of any other helicopter, XJ SUNRAY is to be destroyed on the ground by rocket fire. That is immediate, that is an order. Following the destruction of XJ SUNRAY the mission is completed.'
Medev stared out of the window of the operations room, out towards the east, away towards the setting of the afternoon sun. He turned back, looked now into the face of the Colonel of Intelligence and saw the dropped eyes and the twisted head. He turned again, faced the Frontal Aviation commander, he thought the man might cry.
He heard the voice of the Captain in the Antonov spotter, a distant sabotaged voice. 'The pilot of XJ ROGER requests to be patched through to you direct…'
'Refused.'
He put down the microphone. His hand was numb. He massaged his fingers to regain their feeling. He saw in his mind the pilot, Alexei. He reached out to grip the edge of the table in front of him. He saw in his mind the young face of the pilot who had taken the helicopter XJ SUNRAY from the Jalalabad base that afternoon.
After darkness, Barney went to the wreckage of the gunship.
There were no battery-powered torches in the village, the light was from tallow fat and cloth-tipped staves, and by old hurricane oil lamps.
Ahmad Khan had given Barney an hour to work on the helicopter. After an hour his own men would come to strip the fallen bird of all that might be useful to them. Barney had brought the Polaroid camera from his backpack with a clasp of a dozen flash bulbs.
Two men from the village and Gul Bahdur carried the flare staves. Schumack held the rusty lamp.
There was something blasphemous about what he was doing, Barney thought, as he climbed inside the twisted airframe of the helicopter. He was like a man who disturbs a freshly filled grave, as he crawled into the flickering shadow of the pilot's cockpit.
Three times he photographed the cockpit controls, then another photograph of the radio equipment built in beside the pilot's legs. A stink of aviation fuel, it was extraordinary there had been no fire, and those buggers better keep back with the staves. The boffins would go ape when this lot reached the Farnborough research laboratories.
What he took from the cockpit, he first photographed. A circular radar display panel, a flying manual that was bullet ripped, a radio communications pamphlet, a flying map from under the cellophane cover on the pilot's knee. There was a stiffness about the pilot's body, because of the night cold, awkward to shift in the cramped bent cockpit.
He remembered the instructions he had given to the boy, way back, outside Peshawar, when he had trained the thirteen men who had died…
Underneath the gunner's seat, behind armoured doors, is the fixed pod containing stabilised optics for target acquisition and tracking. Beside that is the radio command guidance antenna. Above the gunner's seat is the low speed air data sensor. He'd had a bloody nerve, talking that gibberish to them.
He could go down past the pilot's boots to the gunner's cockpit, half buried and compacted. Harder to work there. He had had no comprehension of what he asked the tribesmen when he relayed Farnborough's requests. No way the poor buggers could have coped with the electronic intricacies in darkness, in lamplight, in a ruined airframe.
Meticulously he removed, broke away, unscrewed, prised clear the pieces of equipment, handed them with their trails of multicoloured wiring to Schumack who passed them on to the boy.
He had been at the north end of the village when the helicopter had swooped to attack its downed comrade. Schumack had been beside him and as they lay together. Schumack had passed him, without comment, the single-eye spy glass that was tethered to his neck. He had focused on the pilot, he had seen his head tilt upwards at the first ranging bursts. The bastard had known. The bastard had understood that death came at the hands of his own messmates. Barney knew why, Schumack knew why. It was a dimension of war that Barney Crispin had not previously known. Hadn't known it because he had not walked in the battle lull to the rubbish heap of the village and seen the stripped naked body of a previous pilot, a previous casualty. Something terrifying, when a friend found it kinder to strafe his own man rather than let him fall alive into the hands of the allies of Barney Crispin.
Barney came out of the helicopter, climbed onto the upper fuselage to take a last photograph of the rotor mounting.
There were a dozen photographs, there was the ID card of a dead pilot, there were five pages of technical notes, there was a blanket filled with equipment. He saw the waiting men who would strip clear the main armament machine gun, and the rockets, who would siphon off the remaining fuel. It was what he had been sent to do. He took the corners of the blanket, knotted them together. He supposed he ought to have felt a degree of satisfaction. He had fulfilled his mission.
Schumack went with him, the boy behind. They went over the rough and loose stones back to the village. A great blackness around them in the absence of the moon.
'Will you quit now?' Schumack asked.
'I've done what I was sent to do.'
'So you'll walk out.'
'I have what I came here for.'
'You have four more of the Redeyes.'
'They go out with me,' Barney said.
'I could use the Redeyes.'
'They're going with me.' Barney felt Schumack's arm brush against his. He could not see him, only sense him, smell him, hear him, and picture the war-torn face at his shoulder.
'I couldn't have your boots?'
Barney smiled, couldn't help himself. 'There are two sets of flying boots up there, if you're in luck one'll be a ten.'
'Your ass is still together, it's the right time for you to quit. If I didn't care what was happening I'd probably walk out myself.'
'Maxie, I am a soldier, I was sent here for a specific purpose, I don't have to listen to that shit.'
'When are you going?'
'When Maggie's loaded, soonest after that…'
The claw of Schumack's hand caught at the loose shirt material on Barney's arm. He said urgently, 'Quit fast, hero man, walk out like you're in a hurry, this'll be a bad place tomorrow for someone who doesn't care.'
Barney shrugged him off. He let Schumack walk on alone back towards the village.
He heard a shrill scream in the night, a scream of pain that was muffled by a closed door. He let Gul Bahdur catch up with him, and whispered his instructions for the loading of the mule with the parts of the Mi-24 and the three spare Redeye tubes. He heard the scream again. He knew what he would find, and he was drawn to the source of the cry. He was a soldier, he was a professional, a regular in the Special Air Service, he was going home because he had done what he was sent to do, going home to face the whole orchestra. He came to the house. There were holes in the roof tin, and from the holes came the light flickers, and the pain scream was mingled with a lower growl of moaning.
He could not have guessed the extent of what he would find. He opened the door. In the light of the hurricane lamp he saw a mediaeval slaughterhouse. It was a carnage place.
Mia Fiori was the only woman. Her bared hair and her long skirt and her bloodied blouse all identified her to Barney immediately. He thought there were five, six men in the room, splayed out on the floor on the carpets and the blankets. As he came through the door Barney saw the man who screamed. His leg was severed at the join of the right ankle. He screamed because Mia Fiori dabbed at the meat-red soft stump with a cloth, and he struggled against the strength of the four men who pinioned him, and he screamed because he had spat from his mouth the piece of wood that should have acted as a gag.