When he went back, south down the valley, he abandoned the circle coil pattern. He flew straight, over the river line with Rostov blasting the flares forward and above, and all the time he nudged the stick right and left so that the helicopter's motion was that of a pitching boat in a cross swell. The flares guarded his upper hemisphere, the regular fast tilt of the undercarriage would prevent a clear sight of the engine exhaust vents needed by a missile marksman.
Come out, you bastard.
Not a shot was fired at him. He gazed until his eyes ached down into the shadow gullies and the ravines and the deserted villages and the autumn orchards. He saw a single shepherd who sat proud on a rock beneath him near to a grazing herd. He saw dogs that ran wild. He came to the southern end of the valley.
Rostov yelled into Medev's headset. 'You've done enough, Major. You don't have to do any more…'
'Keep the flares going.'
He banked the helicopter, turned north again. He pulled the stick back to the warmth of his groin, flew the helicopter up and up and up towards the roof of the valley.
'He is too much of a coward to show himself.'
'The man who has killed five pilots, five helicopters, he is not a coward.'
The winds bundled against them, the helicopter sagged in the thin air, dropped and fell, yawed back to its station. As if a sledgehammer beat against the walls and canopy of his cockpit.
'They'll flay us when we get back.'
'If you don't keep the flares going, you won't get back. From where did he kill Viktor? From the top of the valley. Keep the flares going.'
And Rostov had sunk back to silence. A flare of brilliant green arched up forward of his vision. He was above the valley and he nudged the helicopter away from the chisel cut below and took a course on the east side of the valley and a kilometre from the cliff edge. Again he flew north. With his left hand he hung to the stick, feeling the pull strength of the winds, with his right hand he made the pencil calculations of speed and minutes and fuel capacity and range from the north end of the valley back to the music at Jalalabad. It was a chance. At this altitude, in this gale wind, the engines gulped the fuel. He had not flown that morning from the base at Jalalabad to ignore any chance. He flew one hundred metres over the bare, weather-savaged ground that bordered the valley's cliff walls.
Another flare burst in a cascade of yellow light ahead of him. So tired, his eyes. So tired, the wrist that held the flying stick. Another flare, and another…and the fuel gauge needle sliding on the dial, and the ache in his eyes and the pain in his wrist.
Rostov saw them, Rostov made the sighting. A shrill voice in Medev's ear.
'Starboard, out there, two of them…'
The helicopter swung right, banked, hovered. In front of Medev was a wide plateau reaching to a mountain break. His gaze swept the smoothed flat surface. A rain squall, snow flurry, splashed on the screen of his canopy. He snapped down with his finger onto the wiper switch. The arm passed over the screen, cleaned it. He saw them. He saw the outline of the missile. They were in the open, past low cloud, short of low cloud. He had wanted a battle, and they were without cover. He flew the helicopter forward, low down over the floor of the plateau.
'Listen very carefully to me, Rostov, no flares until I say, nothing until I say…'
He estimated they were a little more than 3,500 metres ahead of him, and they had no place to hide from his rockets, not while they were short of the low cloud belt that was ahead of them, across their path.
Only the sounds of the wind and the strike of their footfall on the stones and the pounding of their breathing.
He felt the grip of her fingers tighten. He felt the nails of her fingers cut into his hand. She stopped, he pulled. She had stopped, she would not move.
'We can't rest, we can't stop…'
Again Barney pulled at her. His eyes were watering from the wind's cold. He saw ahead of him a tooth gap in the mountains, the end of the plateau.
As if she were anchored she took the force of his pull. He turned to her. Her arm was outstretched and pointing back along their trail. There was despair, there was an agony. He followed her arm, he wiped his eyes.
For Barney there was a first instinctive moment for preservation. His head spun, fast, the full circle. He saw the expanse of the plateau, he saw the shallow fall of the sides of the plateau. There was nowhere to run. He had no cover. It was a knife thrust in his side. There was no place of safety from the helicopter. The wind purged his back, stumbled him a yard forward and into Mia Fiori. He had thought he had achieved something, he had achieved nothing. He had achieved a place on a killing ground of open plateau, without cover, without the possibility of defence.
The helicopter hovered a kilometre from Barney and Mia Fiori. It was low and he could see the dust arc under its belly. It had no need to advance and to be hazarded. He saw the dim shape of the rocket pods under the stub wings. Mia Fiori clung to him.
'What are you going to do?'
'He is different to all of the others. He knows I can do nothing.'
'You have to do something.'
'To fire I must see the engine exhaust vents, I can't see them.'
'Then we are going to die here, you have to do something…'
What was the point of a gesture?
Taking the Redeye into Afghanistan had been a gesture…killing the helicopters in the valley had been a gesture…and the support of Howard Rossiter had been a gesture…and the journey of Gul Bahdur who had walked back with the launcher to Peshawar after thirteen men had died, that had been a gesture.
He prised Mia Fiori from his arm. He set the Redeye on his shoulder. He aimed a little above the helicopter. He waited for the flash spurts of the rockets. He saw the helicopter hovering above the dirt cloud. It was only a bastard gesture.
Why doesn't he fire his rockets, why doesn't he finish it? He engaged the battery coolant. A low whine in his ear. Just the low whine because there was no target.
Barney fired the Redeye.
The last firing of eight Redeyes. No longer fire and forget. No longer the running stampede in the moment after the second flash flame of ignition. Nowhere to run, nothing to forget. For a fraction of time the missile seemed to run true to its aim, then it careered away to the left, a joking ball of brilliance that climbed and then fell and then curved in a death throe, that died on the hard stone scree of the plateau.
He dropped the launcher and the empty missile tube to the ground. He pressed Mia Fiori down to her knees. His rifle was at his shoulder…another gesture.
He saw the light spits as the first rockets were fired.
Nowhere to run to, nowhere to turn to.
The howl of the rockets hitting the ground around him. He stooped to cover Mia Fiori. He felt the scream of pain in his shoulder. He was tossed and moving and falling. He fell on his side, on his wound. He felt the blood wet on his hand when his fingers reached for his shoulder. He heard the thunder of the rocket strike close to him.
She crouched now above him, she threw her blanket away from her shoulders. She wrenched for the buttons of her blouse. She was crying, croaking her tears. She heaved her blouse over her head.
She stood. She waved the blouse high above her. A grey white blouse, a grey white surrender flag.
He had been as far inside the hold of the helicopter as the strap clipped to his waist would permit. Rostov had knelt against the armoured bulkhead behind the pilot's cockpit from the moment he had seen the man standing with the missile launcher at his shoulder.