Except to him. To him, the square was red. Dull red, like the last of a fire, through which a dark shape composed of wheels, hatches, machine guns, approached. His target. Forty yards away now.
He squeezed the resisting trigger of the RPG-7 launcher. The tube on his shoulder bucked, noise enveloped him. Through the nightsight, he saw the projectile ignite its own internal rocket, then watched the spit of flame moving on its brief, flat, accurate trajectory towards the bulk of the BTR-60.
The HEAT shell struck the personnel carrier just below the slightly open viewing hatches, penetrating the 10mm armour immediately upon impact. The flare of the explosion was like watching a backward-run film of a gunshot. The flame from the projectile was swallowed by the bulk of the carrier which, at the same moment, buckled, swelled like a green, squat toad, and then erupted — two, three, four times its size, then no more than wheels bouncing away, flanks disintegrating into sheets of torn metal, turret opening like flesh sliced with a sharp knife. Smoke, the thunder of detonation, the first tinkling and crashing of windows and falling pieces. Something like a dummy, arms akimbo, was thrown perhaps a hundred feet without its lower torso. Two more dummy-things were flung out of the viewing hatches like jacks-in-the-box. Exploding ammunition filled the square with panic-making firepower.
Miandad loaded a second projectile onto the end of the hot tube of the RPG-7. He glanced up at Hyde. An alarm was beginning to sound in the embassy compound. Incredibly, someone was screaming in the shattered maelstrom of flames. Miandad shuddered, then adjusted his body to comfort in his crouch. He focused the nightsight. The pale concrete of the guard bunker outside the embassy gates was perhaps a little over one hundred yards from where they hid in the alleyway.
"Begin," Miandad told Hyde. Two Russian soldiers had emerged, dazed and horrified, from the refuge of the guard bunker. Miandad could see their surprised, desperate, fearful faces, very pale even though reddened by the nightsight. They seemed very young, like Azimov. Farmboys or factory-hands, not professional soldiers. "Good luck," the Pakistani added.
Hyde tapped his free shoulder and then began running down the alleyway to enter the square at a point nearer the embassy gates. Miandad adjusted the sight. The rubber eyepiece was damp with sweat. Mohammed Jan stood by him, immobile, as if despising the modernity of their attack. The old Lee Enfield was cradled in his arms.
Miandad shifted the balance of the launcher on his shoulder. An officer was ordering soldiers towards the burnt-out personnel carrier. They seemed reluctant to the point of disobedience. All of them were still close enough to be killed by the impact. He squeezed the trigger.
Ignition, the spit of flame traveling straight and flat. One hundred yards, one third of a second, slowed down by the perspective of the nightsight and the flow of adrenalin. Then, impact. The concrete above the sandbags swallowed the flame, and the roof flew off the bunker in a rain of concrete boulders. The walls collapsed outward, burying those who had left the bunker. Dust rose to disguise the violence and the murders. Patiently, swiftly, expertly, Miandad fitted the third projectile. He scorched his wrist against the hot barrel of the RPG-7, sucked it for a moment, then pressed home the folded umbrella of the projectile. He adjusted the sights, felt the sweat on his forehead, soaking into the untidy folds of his turban, felt his back tight with reaction to what he was doing — killing so many, so easily — and then he hefted the tube of the launcher on his shoulder so that it was comfortable once more.
As the dust began to settle, the embassy lights came out like huge stars. The concrete bunker was still half-standing amid its own shipwreck. Bodies on the floor, one or two staggering away, parts of them evidently missing. It was, he admitted, a vision of the infernal in the dull fire-glow of the nightsight. Screaming, punctuated by exploding ammunition. The hard-lit stadium was a battlefield.
Now.
He squeezed. Ignition, one third of a second, impact. It had been faster because he was tired. The adrenalin was running out, just as Hyde needed his. He watched for long enough through the nightsight to see that the gates hung drunkenly on their hinges, almost twisted off their supports, the huge red star broken into crazed paving. Then he passed the RPG-7 to one side, and a Pathan took it from him with a chuckle of pleasure and admiration. Miandad listened to the first Kalashnikov fire and the wail of a siren crying above the noises of other alarms, then stood up. Hyde was now on his own. He had precisely fifteen and a half minutes from the breaching of the gates.
Already, less than fifteen minutes remained.
Hyde's hand gripped the railing. He steadied himself, flinching against the burst of random, dangerous fire from exploding ammunition in the ruined bunker. There were two men staring at it helplessly. The red and white barrier had been flung off its hinges. The smoke and dust made him cough. He looked down at his boots — a size too big, stuffed with rags — and saw with satisfaction that they were coated with dust that had settled on them while he made his way along the railings. He touched the leather holster at his hip which contained the Makarov 9mm PM pistol. Then he stooped to pick up a crumbling fragment of concrete, paused for a moment, then rubbed it viciously across his forehead and down his left cheek. He winced and hunched into himself with the pain and the stinging it left behind. He touched his forehead and cheek with his fingertips, casting the lump of concrete away from him. Blood, when he looked. Blood and dust and sweaty dirt. He adopted a limp, and shuffled the last fifteen yards to the shattered gates of the embassy compound.
The concrete guard bunker was an opened, ruined flower, the smoke rising from it obscuring much of the hard white light from the square beyond. Bodies. Some men still upright, but concussed or shocked. Wounded, too. Alarms, sirens, the roar of vehicles, exploding ammunition. The self-inflicted wounds stung intolerably.
He reached the gates. He could just hear, already, the noise of a helicopter in the distance, the whine and beat of the main rotors carried on the cold night air. Evacuation. Support, defence, evacuation; the order of things. Hyde looked at his watch. Fourteen minutes thirty before the Pathans abandoned the square and retreated to the bazaar before making their dawn exit from Kabul.
A soldier blundered into him. His jaw was missing, and his eyes begged. Hyde rested him like a plank against the railings and slipped through the gates. No one challenged him. He was clean-shaven beneath the dust and blood, armed and wearing the full uniform of a lieutenant in the Red Army. Ahead of him, the lights in the embassy extension blazed like the lights of an approaching liner. A heavily armoured BMP rumbled on its tracks around the side of the main embassy building, increasing speed along the gravel path, squeaking and crunching its way towards him. Its cannon and Sagger missile mounting were clearly outlined against the facade of the building. Hyde began running.
There were other men running; confused, frightened, challenged men who felt they were too few and in an alien country. His boots crunched on the gravel, his shadow raced ahead of him, thrown long by the lights in the square and the burning bunker. Then a shadow began stretching behind him like a warning to turn back as he entered the field of light of the KGB block. The BMP howled past him, cannon swinging like a pedagogue's eyes looking for someone small to punish first, and he stumbled into the doorway of the glass and concrete block which reminded him of, of—?
It was suddenly important, like reorientation, like disguise and bluff, as a guard rammed his body against him in the doorway.