'What area do you want?' The question from the corporal in the Meteorological section.
'The north of Laghman province, area Delta.'
He scribbled down into his notebook the information he was given. Wind speeds were strong, temperature was dropping, forecast of rain showers in the valleys and snow falls on the mountains.
He went to the operations room. Rostov stood there, awkward and comical in his overall trousers and anorak, he wore a fur hat on his head, he was wiping the condensation from his spectacles. Medev ignored him.
'XJ LIMA, what state?' He asked the question of the night operations clerk.
'Fuelled and armed.'
Medev gestured with his head for Rostov to follow. Medev walked ahead dissuading conversation. Twice Rostov had managed to reach his shoulder, twice he had seen the bleak face of the Major, and had dropped back. They went to the munitions depot. Medev shook some life into a sleeping man, half spinning him from his chair.
'I want distress flares and a Very launcher pistol.'
'They come in tens, the flares, packs.'
'Ten packs.'
They carried the flares between them, and the Very pistol, to the helicopter revetments. The courage to ask came slowly to Rostov. It came finally.
'Where are we going?' A timid voice.
'To find him.' A cold and grudging reply.
'But the squadron's grounded…'
'Then I am disobeying the order, and regretfully you will be a party to that disobedience.'
'What am I to do? I'm not a flier…' Fear in Rostov, but the greater fear was of challenging his major.
'You'll fire the flares.'
'Then there is no one for the machine gun.'
'The rockets will be sufficient.'
Rostov thought he saw a madness in Medev's eyes. He did not possess the courage to refuse and walk away.
Medev looked up at the gunship, XJ LIMA. He saw the bruises in the paintwork from previous ground fire hits. He saw the smears on the cockpit canopy where bullets had been deflected. He hunted one man. He was sorry he had to take Rostov, but without flares the combat was unequal. It should have been Medev alone against this one man, but Rostov did not outweigh the balance, Rostov equalled the scales. He saw in his mind the vague outline shape of a man who carried a missile launcher on his shoulder, the vague outline shape from a magnified photograph.
It was his only thought as he opened the cockpit hatch of the helicopter XJ LIMA.
They shook Barney's hand with a limp correctness, as if they had seen such a gesture of formality on an old American film and regarded it as the proper usage of manners. He walked down the line of the mujahidin of Ahmad Khan and took each hand that was outstretched and murmured a word of farewell. Behind the men were piled the baggage pieces that they would soon load on their backs and carry away. He would go north and east towards the passes, they would go south down the length of the valley. By the time the snows came to the valley's floor, they would have moved to the villages at the mouth of the valley where they could survive the winter. The destruction of five helicopters in their valley had won for Barney no display of overt affection. He wondered if, when they came back to the valley in the spring and they found the helicopter wreckage that had been snow-covered and was now revealed again, whether they would then remember him.
He came to where Ahmad Khan stood, a little distanced from the line of his men.
Close to Ahmad Khan was the cairn of stones that marked the resting place of Maxie Schumack…New Yorker far from home, veteran of Khe Sanh and Kabul and Desert One and buried where there's no running from. Thanks for the memory, kiddo, thanks for the memory of the humble grave of a mighty man. Barney shook the hand of Ahmad Khan.
The mocking sweet smile of Ahmad Khan. 'Did you achieve in our valley what you came to achieve? Or are you like all the foreigners that have come to Afghanistan? Perhaps you have stamped your foot on rock. Perhaps you have left no imprint.'
Barney looked into the cavern-brown eyes of the schoolteacher. He saw what he believed was a nobility. He saw the clear gaze of the eyes, he saw their certainty.
'I have learned something that is my own. Perhaps that is my achievement. Goodbye, Ahmad Khan.'
'Goodbye, Barney Crispin.'
He walked away from Ahmad Khan, away from Maxie Schumack's grave, away from the line of men.
When he reached Mia Fiori he took her hand.
They went together, away along the dirt path in the slow growing light of the morning. The rifle hung from Barney's shoulder and the Redeye launcher with the last of the missile tubes rested beside his neck. As they walked Mia Fiori twice looked back, turned her head to stare behind her into the depths of the valley.
Barney never looked back, he had said in his arrogance that he would never look back on the valley where he had killed five helicopters.
He set a fierce hard speed up the water gullies of the side valley. It was as if his sole goal was to be clear of the valley and the memories of the valley. She did not complain, she did not ask to be allowed to rest or to drink from the water that he carried. They climbed towards the snow peaks at the side of the valley, they scrambled on the rocks and the smooth stones where the first ice sheen had formed. When he heard her breath behind him, sagging, panting, he took her hand tight in his own and dragged her after him. In his mind were the instructions that Ahmad Khan had given him for the route to the passes that would take him to Pakistan.
He never looked back. When they had reached the roof of the valley, when they had flopped gasping for the rare air, he did not turn to look back and down into the valley, to search for one last time to find the wreckage specks of the helicopters he had killed.
'Did you find nothing there that you valued?'
For answer he reached to her and took her head in his hands and kissed the wetness of the rain and snow spray from her lips, and buried his head against her, and held her head and kissed her again.
'Did you find nothing else that you valued?'
He stood up, he took her hand tight in his own. He saw ahead of him the scape of the plateau stretching eastwards between the mountain summits. He felt the winds buffet against him, felt her stagger against the blast force of the wind. He held her hand, led her forward onto the plateau where snow patches had formed, away from the valley.
Rossiter awoke. He rubbed at his face, cleared the sleep haze from his eyes. He looked at the mattress across the floor from him. The boy had not come back in the night. It was the second night since he had found the boy gone. He had given the little bugger food and water, even some rupees, and that was the thanks. The creature had scarpered when Rossiter had taken the bundle down to the Dreamland. Left nothing of an explanation. In your pocket and dependent one moment, gone the next and leaving you to whistle for a reason. The boy had been allowed to edge too close to Barney Crispin, that was Howard Rossiter's opinion, that's what made him so bloody cocky. Only a bed of bloody nails for your pains when these people were allowed to edge too close.
He had little to look forward to. Another day alone in the bungalow. At dusk he would go into Chitral for his shopping and the contact with the night manager of the Dreamland. It was raining against the windows above his mattress.
He wondered when Barney Crispin would come, if he would come. He felt a greater sense of despair than he had ever known before. A piss wet day waited for him, and not even the wretched boy to talk with. And he must wait. That was the fate of Howard Rossiter and his kind, to sit with their hands under their arses and to wait.
He flew due north. He climbed to clear the mountains ahead of him. With his tanks fully loaded he possessed a flying range of 475 kilometres. He would not waste fuel by skirting the direct route to area Delta and flying the winding river beds. The calculations he made on his knee told him that he would have an hour over the valley, an hour to find his one man.