The ride continued. It wasnt comfortable. The Bird was elderly: the cabin reeked of engine oil and hydraulic fluid, every metal surface was scuffed with use, and there was actually duct tape holding together splits on the cover of Bisesas inadequately padded bench. And the noise of the rotors, just meters above her head, was shattering, despite her heavily padded helmet. But then, she thought, it had always been the way that governments spent more on war than peace.
When he heard the chopper approach, Moallim knew what he had to do.
Most of the adult villagers ran to ensure their stashes of weaponry and hemp were hidden. But Moallim had different ideas. He picked up his gear, and ran to the foxhole he had dug weeks ago, in preparation for a day like this.
Within seconds he was lying against the wall of the hole with the RPG tube at his shoulder. The hole had taken hours to dig, before it was deep enough for him to get his body out of the way of the back blast, and to get the elevation he needed with the RPG. But when he was in the hole and had pulled a little dirt and loose vegetation over his body, he was really quite well hidden. The grenade launcher was an antique, actually a relic of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but, well maintained and cleaned, it still worked, was still lethal. As long as the chopper came close enough to his position, he would surely succeed.
Moallim was fifteen years old.
He had been just four when he had first encountered the helicopters of the west. They had come at night, a pack of them. They flew very low over your head, black on black, like angry black crows. Their noise hammered at your ears while their wind plucked at you and tore at your clothing. Market stalls were blown over, cattle and goats were terrified, and tin roofs were torn right off the houses. Moallim heard, though he did not see it for himself, that one womans infant was torn right out of her arms and sent whirling up into the air, never to come down again.
And then the shooting had started.
Later, more choppers had come, dropping leaflets that explained the purpose of the raid: there had been an increase in arms smuggling in the area, there was some suspicion of uranium shipments passing through the village, and so on. The necessary strike had been surgical, applying minimum force. The leaflets had been torn up and used to wipe asses. Everybody hated the helicopters, for their remoteness and arrogance. At four, Moallim did not have a word to describe how he felt.
And still the choppers came. The latest UN helicopters were supposed to be here to enforce peace, but everybody knew that this was somebody elses peace, and these surveillance ships carried plenty of weaponry.
These problems had a single solution, so Moallim had been taught.
The elders had trained Moallim to handle the rocket-propelled grenade launcher. It was always hard to hit a moving target. So the detonators had been replaced with timing devices, so that they would explode in midair. As long as you fired close enough, you didnt even need a hit to bring down an aircraftespecially a chopper, and especially if you aimed for the tail rotor, which was its most vulnerable element.
RPG launchers were big and bulky and obvious. They were difficult to handle, awkward to lift and aimand you were finished if you showed yourself aiming one from the open or a rooftop. So you hid away, and let the chopper come to you. If they came this way the chopper crew, trained to avoid buildings for fear of traps, would see nothing more than a bit of pipe sticking out of the ground. Perhaps they would assume it was just a broken drain, from one of the many failed humanitarian schemes imposed on the area over the decades. Flying over open ground they would think they were safe. Moallim smiled.
The sky ahead looked odd to Bisesa. Clouds, thick and black, were boiling up out of nowhere and gathering into a dense band that striped along the horizon, masking the mountains. Even the sky looked somehow washed-out.
Discreetly she dug her phone out of a pocket of her flight suit. Holding it nestling in her hand, she whispered to it, I dont recall storm formations in the weather forecasts.
Neither do I, said the phone. It was tuned to the civilian broadcast nets; now its little screen began to cycle through the hundreds of channels washing invisibly over this bit of the Earth, seeking updated forecasts.
The date was June 8, 2037. Or so Bisesa believed. The chopper flew on.
3. Evil Eye
The first hint Josh White had of the strange events unfolding in the world was a rude awakening: a rough hand on his shoulder, an excitable clamor, a wide face looming over him.
I say, Joshwake up, man! You wont believe itits quite the thingif it isnt the Russians, Ill eat your puttees
It was Ruddy, of course. The young journalists shirt was unbuttoned and he wore no jacket; he looked as if he had just got out of bed himself. But his broad face, dominated by that great brow, was flecked with sweat, and his eyes, made small by his thick gig-lamp spectacles, danced and gleamed.
Josh, blinking, sat up. Sunlight was streaming into the room through the open window. It was late afternoon; he had been napping for an hour. Giggers, what on earth can be so vital it deprives me of my shut-eye? Especially after last night Let me wash my face first!
Ruddy backed off. All right. But ten minutes, Josh. You wont forgive yourself if you miss this. Ten minutes! And he bustled out of the room.
Josh, bowing to the inevitable, pulled himself out of bed and moved sleepily around the room.
Like Ruddy, Josh was a journalist, a special correspondent of the Boston Globe, sent to file color reports from the NorthWest Frontier, this remote corner of the British Empireremote, yes, but possibly crucial for Europes future, and so of interest even in Massachusetts. The room was just a cramped little hole in the corner of the fort, and he had to share it with Ruddy, thanks to whom it was cluttered with clothes, half-emptied trunks, books, papers, and a little foldaway desk on which Ruddy penned his dispatches for the Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer, his newspaper in Lahore. At that, though, Josh knew he was lucky to have a room at all; most of the troops stationed here at Jamrud, European and Indian alike, spent their nights in tents.
Unlike the soldiers Josh had a perfect right to an afternoon nap, if he needed it. But now he could hear that something unusual was indeed afoot: raised voices, running feet. Not a military action, surely, not another raid by the rebellious Pashtuns, or he would have heard gunfire by now. What, then?
Josh found a bowl of clean warm water, with his shaving kit set out beside it. He washed his face and neck, peering at a rather bleary face in the scrap of mirror fixed to the wall. He was small-featured, with what he thought of as a pug nose, and this afternoon the bags under his eyes werent doing his looks any good at all. Actually Joshs head hadnt been too sore this morning, but then to survive the long nights in the Mess hed learned to stick to beer. Ruddy, on the other hand, had indulged his occasional passion for opiumbut the hours Ruddy had spent sucking on the hookah seemed to leave no after-effects on his nineteen-year-old constitution. Josh, feeling like a war veteran at the age of twenty-three, envied him.
The shaving water had been set out unobtrusively by Noor Ali, Ruddys bearer. It was a level of service Bostonian Josh found uncomfortable: when Ruddy was sleeping off his worst binges, Noor Ali was expected to shave him in bed, even asleep! And Josh found it hard to stomach the whippings Ruddy found it necessary to administer from time to time. But Ruddy was an Anglo-Indian, born in Bombay. This was Ruddys country, Josh reminded himself; Josh was here to report, not to judge. And anyhow, he admitted guiltily, it was good to wake up to warm water and a mug or two of hot tea.