'What happened?' Rostov called plaintively into the face microphone of his helmet.
'While you were shitting yourself?' The dry quiet reply in Rostov's ears. 'He fired, he had no target, the missile destroyed itself.'
'Why did he fire?'
'To show he was not what you called him, not a coward.'
'I heard the rockets.'
'He is wounded, I think. I don't think he is dead. A woman is with him, she has surrendered for them.'
Excitement surging in Rostov. 'Well done, Major, well done…a prisoner, that's a triumph…'
'Perhaps, Captain Rostov.'
The pain was an open river in his shoulder. With his head bent he could see the rent hole in the blanket where the rocket shrapnel had passed, he could see the torn thread of his shirt, and the pink mush flesh of the wound.
The dust was in his eyes, the spurting grit was in his face and in the wound at his shoulder. Fifty yards from Barney the helicopter landed. Beside his face were Mia Fiori's sandals and bare ankles and skirt hem. He saw the bareness of her back, goosed by the wind, he saw her hair blowing on her shoulders, he saw the blouse high above her head and outstretched by the gale gusts. He lay on his rifle, he had no chance to manoeuvre, to aim it. In front of Barney the roar of the rotors sagged in a spent force.
He saw the mightiness of the big bird, saw its power and weight and grandeur. Protruding from the fuselage hatch was a white owl face with pebble spectacles, rimmed by a flying helmet, and in front of the face was an aimed Very pistol. His mind clouded and was confused because the helicopter carried no forward machine gunner, the gun compartment was empty. The helicopter sat squat on its wheels. The cockpit hatch opened, swung away, broke the lines of camouflage painting. He saw the pilot pull off his helmet and then appear in the hatch, and jump down and land loosely and easily on the ground. He carried no weapon.
A stocky blond man, with sharp military cut hair and a browned face, walking with the confidence that no threat existed. Barney saw the markings on the shoulder flags of the flying suit, saw the man's ranking.
The pilot walked briskly to Barney and the girl and when he had reached them he bent down and picked up the girl's blanket and smacked it with his hand to clear it of dust, and without speaking he held it up and then wrapped it over the shoulders of Mia Fiori, covering her. He smiled, a curt small and sad smile at her. He knelt beside Barney. He took Barney's right hand. Right hand on right hand. He gazed into Barney's face, as if by the meeting of their eyes he might find an answer.
'Pyotr Medev…' The pilot pointed to his chest.
'Barney Crispin.'
'One…?' He struggled for the simple word in English.
They had no language. They met on the roof of the world, they could not speak to each other. It was a strong face that Barney stared into, made weak only by the lack of the common language.
'I was alone, I was one man.' Barney raised a single finger.
It seemed the answer Pyotr Medev had expected. He looked from Barney's face to Barney's wound, his face was caught in a grimace, something of sympathy.
The pilot stood and then walked quickly back to the helicopter, and all the time the owl face with the Very pistol covered Barney and Mia Fiori. The pilot climbed to his hatch and reached inside.
The pilot, Pyotr Medev, returned carrying a brown cloth field dressing and a roll of bandages. He gave them into the hands of Mia Fiori.
Again he held Barney's hand, a terrible glimpse of anguish on his face. Barney peered back into the torment of the eyes. He thought he understood. Barney's hand was dropped, fell back to the ground. The Major nodded to Mia Fiori as if his control was regained. He went to the discarded Redeye launcher. Again the sad smile. He picked it up. He carried the Redeye launcher under his arm as he walked back to the gunship.
When the helicopter took off Mia Fiori covered Barney and his wound with her body, saving him from the dirt storm.
A hundred feet above them the helicopter's nose dipped as if in salute and Barney struggled to his feet, stood like a soldier and waved a farewell.
Later, when it was gone, when it was no longer a throbbing speck going west over the plateau, she started to dress Barney's wound.
Later, when the ringing of the helicopter's engines was no longer in their ears, she supported him as they went, snail pace, towards the mountain break to the east, towards a blowing blizzard of snow.
All the pilots of Pyotr Medev's squadron had gathered to watch their Major land at the Jalalabad base. They had distanced themselves from the Frontal Aviation commander and the Political Officer who was at his side, and the MilPol jeep with the idling engine.
To give an estimated landing time he had broken his radio silence just the once. All the pilots were there, hushed since the first sighting of the Mi-24, coming high and fast and silhouetted against the mountains that were across the Kabul river. The pilots watched as the helicopter was brought down surely, carefully, without bravado or exhibition.
The engines were cut. They saw Rostov at the fuselage hatch, hesitating, unwilling to take the responsibility of being the first to drop his boots onto the concrete apron.
Medev climbed down from the pilot's cockpit hatch. He carried something in his hand, a piece of brown painted equipment, he climbed with the heaviness of a man gripped by exhaustion. He looked around him. He looked into the face of the Frontal Aviation commander.
He walked to the Frontal Aviation commander, handed him the launcher and optical sight of the Redeye missile system. He bobbed his head in respect. He walked past the commander, and the Political Officer, and the pilots of his squadron, walked towards the prefabricated block, which housed his quarters and his bed.
Two days after he was wounded, in a storm flurry of snow, they heard the cry of his name. A sharp clear desperate voice calling to them.
On the beaten path, shadows in the driven snow, were Gul Bahdur and the mule that Barney called Maggie.
When the boy found them they were sitting, they were frozen cold and wrapped together for warmth.
Chapter 23
It was a routine meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries at Foreign Minister level, and hosted by the West Germans in one of those Wagnerian castles in Bavaria. Fake history, the Foreign Secretary thought it.
Because the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was attending, the Foreign Secretary had added to his entourage the name of Brigadier Henry Fotheringay, MBE DSO, who would travel with a well-filled briefcase.
They had gathered in mid-afternoon and gone immediately into full session, politicians and advisers, all present bar the Italians, fogbound at Ciampino. They had broken for drinks, and then repaired to the theatre for the lights out classroom session of the Director. As the Director droned on, a young man with cropped hair and large spectacles stabbed with a pointer at the projected maps and statistics in rhythm with the speech. The Foreign Secretary wondered whether they had rehearsed the act on the aircraft over.
At the end of the Director's presentation, the representatives of some of the minor NATO powers actually applauded. The Director flushed with pleasure.
The Foreign Secretary recalled the bitter exchange at the American Embassy in London, months ago. Remembered as if it had been the previous day. He recalled also the visit of the Brigadier to his office in Whitehall six days before, where their earlier acrimony had been glossed over, where the Brigadier had made the introductions. He hadn't had long, he was to leave in a few minutes for Questions in the House, but he would not quickly forget those that he had met that afternoon. A young man who carried his right arm in a sling and whose face was gaunt and thinned-out and white where a beard had recently been shaved, and who quietly told a story of the combat between a missile-launcher and a helicopter squadron, and of the warfare for a valley, and of a Soviet flier who he said was too proud for the barbarity of revenge. The young woman who held the hand of the young man, and who had said shyly that she was pleased to meet him, and nothing else. The older man, Major Rossiter, who was going to get a Colonel's pension, by heavens, and whose contribution had been to drink three whiskies in twelve minutes, and who had the glint in his eye of someone who has recently discovered religion or sin or something. He remembered the notes and photographs of the Hind attack-helicopter that the Brigadier had brought with him, and that he had pored over before his rushed, running-late drive to the Commons.