Bucheksky fired a cigarette and tried to let the peacefulness of the night relax him. A man felt enveloped by the elements here in the wilderness, he thought, which is as a man should feel.
Then he reprimanded himself for entertaining such useless notions and returned his attention to the problem at hand.
Bucheksky had been in Afghanistan only a month and had yet to see combat. He recognized the queasiness in his stomach as fear. We should have pushed on, he thought for the hundredth time since the gloom of night had descended across this desolate valley less than an hour ago.
Camping here had seemed the right thing to do at the time, in the bright light of day. The only village nearby had never shown signs of antigovernment activity, had seemed friendly as some of the mountain tribes appeared to be; the sensible ones, thought Bucheksky.
The "highway" cutting through the valley toward Kabul, so badly in need of repair, was quite another matter and on further reflection the young officer decided he had made the right decision, especially taking into account the trouble in the capital last night that officers in the field had been notified of: a strike at the very heart of the high command. There were no actual details and it was too soon to tell if the assault had been an isolated incident. The mujahedeen had never struck at the nation's capital before; a suicide fringe could be responsible. Or was this the beginning of an orchestrated counteroffensive by a united Muslim front?
The lieutenant considered himself a man of letters marred by a personality flaw he had yet to overcome; he had the sensibilities of an artist but had not developed a strength of conviction necessary to achieve independence of thought and action and he knew it. Bucheksky's father was a retired general and upon Josef's completing the state-required formal education there had been no question that he would follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps to officers' training school and a career in the military service of Russia. At least Bucheksky had never questioned it and here he was, a man who knew he would one day pen the twentieth-century epic of his people, or so he hoped, and who had for the time being rationalized appeasing his father with the hope that a military career would at some not-too-distant point afford him the financial stability to subsidize such aspirations. Though a loyal soldier of the Soviet Union, Bucheksky remained a man who loved American jazz and detective stories when he could find them. But where was he now? In some desolate, primitive country, learning nothing but fear; facing his own cowardice before a real world that he tied to himself he understood and could write about.
Here stood Lieutenant Josef Bucheksky on his first true mission, though in reality it was nothing but a minor exercise and his superiors knew it, this routine accompanying of the fuel truck through a pacified countryside. But Bucheksky had read all too vividly the hostility in the eyes of every Afghan civilian they passed and the flutter in his stomach would not go away. Nor would the foreboding that he had made a mistake. Sergeant Lamskoy strode over. The noncom had twenty-two years' experience on the lieutenant, yet no conflict had developed between them. The elder soldier had responded to something in Bucheksky and had sort of taken the younger man under his wing, though their exchanges recognized their respective ranks.
Bucheksky felt a sense of security and safety just knowing Lamskoy was here tonight.
"The sentries will be rotating every two hours, sir," the sergeant reported. "That will keep them fresh. Kabul will send out mechanics and parts first thing in the morning."
"But not tonight, eh?
"This area..."
"Yes, I know, Sergeant. Friendly. Then I wonder why Kabul won't send us help tonight?"
"Probably don't want to spare any men after what happened last night," the noncom opined.
"I've got a feeling we're not being told the full story on that. I wonder why..." Bucheksky finished smoking his cigarette and flicked it into the darkness beyond the circle of vehicles. He watched the tiny red dot of the butt arc and for a minute sensed the presence of a breeze but there was no breeze. But the sensation was so momentary he dismissed it as nerves.
"When have we ever been told the whole truth, Sergeant?"
Lamskoy frowned.
"Excuse me for saying so, sir, but talk like that does not become an officer."
"Our civilians wait in endless lines for the barest necessities," Bucheksky went on, "and the only way a man can find security in a steady job is in military service. I sometimes think our country's expansionism has nothing to do with political ideology, Sergeant, but serves to save an economy that, if it fell, would mean many changes in our government at home. Then maybe we would have peace.
"But I suppose it is the soldier who always wants peace the most, is it not, for it is the soldier who is sent to fight and die when war comes.
"Why are we so far from home, Sergeant? Man to man. Why don't we all just march home? What would happen then? Would it be the end of the world?"
Lamskoy rested a hand on the younger man's arm.
"I do not hear your words. Speak no further. You are Russian. We are soldiers. We serve our motherland. It is our duty." At the instant Lamskoy spoke that last word, the world erupted with the fury of hell and Josef Bucheksky instinctively knew that his foreboding had been prophecy.
Explosions shattered reality from three of the vehicles across the encampment, balls of flame igniting the night.
11
Bolan had made a careful study of the Soviet encampment alongside the road and assessed its security as tight, formidable, set up by someone of seasoned field experience.
The outer perimeter consisted of four sentries, positioned a distance of fifty yards from one another outside the small camp, each holding an AK-47 as he patrolled a larger circumference, ten yards out from where the tanker, personnel carrier and two armored cars had been drawn into a circle.
The nightstalker made a third outer circle as he moved unnoticed to thoroughly reconnoiter and plan his one-man penetration of those defenses.
At the open spaces between each vehicle, inside the camp, stood another sentry.
Bolan discerned a Soviet officer who stood smoking a cigarette, staring out into the darkness. The man was unaware that close to sixty pairs of eyes from two separate groups were at that moment trained on him like a specimen under a microscope, from either side of this valley in which the Russians had been forced to spend the night.
Bolan counted sixteen soldiers down there, seven wrapped in sleeping bags on the ground in the center of the circle, no doubt resting up for their turn at standing guard. But Bolan knew the 50-to-16 odds were not overkill because those troopers were Soviet soldiers, among the very toughest in the world.
The thirty or so mujahedeen of Tarik Khan's force waited along the ridges and crests of the western wall of the small valley while twenty ragtag ruffians of the jukiabkr held the high ground to the east. After both sides had been deployed, Bolan had left Tarik Khan's group on a southeasterly approach to the camp on the valley floor. The penetration specialist had suppressed his misgivings about this hit and concentrated on a by the numbers infiltration between two of the outer sentries.
The only thing that mattered now was the success of the mission, which meant doing as much damage as he could and getting away without casualties to his own side.
When Bolan got past the patrolling sentries, he moved first to one of the BTR-40 armored cars.
He held some of the plastic explosive in his hands. He knelt silently before the hulking shadow of the war machine and wedged some death putty against the axle at the front tire.