At the first explosion Khalifa shrieked something incoherent. Her face was visible and, normally, it had its attractions, kindness not least among them. Her children froze at the shriek and at the look of stark terror on their mother's face. She grabbed the nearest of them, then ran a few steps and grabbed the other by one arm. Children half-carried and half-dragged, Khalifa sprinted for something, anything, that would shelter her and—more importantly—them from the blasts. Khalifa felt like she and her children were targets already, though actually the artillery was directed at possible and likely sites for the defenders to have posted men with guided anti-aircraft weapons or—unlikely but possible, given the hasty and difficult flight of the last few days—heavy machine guns capable of engaging aircraft.
Those first shells lifted after a few disconcerting volleys. In the main, they had done their work well. Half a dozen light surface to air missile launchers had been posted on likely high ground. The artillery smashed them, turning the men who carried them into bloody pulp. Likewise did one heavy machine gun—it was tripod mounted but the low tripod rendered it unsuitable for anti-aircraft work—go up in fire and smoke.
The Pashtun mercenaries were clever, skilled, and persistent. Little had escaped their notice.
The artillery was followed within seconds by the malevolent whine of a dozen assault aircraft, in two waves of six, hugging the eastern ridge as they crossed it before plunging down to spit death and flame among the denizens of the camp. Rockets, cannon and machine gun fire raked out with hundreds—and in the case of the aerial machine guns, thousands—of rounds.
If the artillery had induced fear, the aerial attack created instantaneous bedlam. People ran confused in all direction. Women screamed, children cried, and men called to the Almighty for aid. Those same men, stumbling and cursing, fumbled for weapons even as the first six aircraft began their passes, harvesting before them the broken bodies of many score.
Once over the eastern side of the camp the first six attack planes released a dozen canisters of napalm, two each, one from each wing. These tumbled down from hardpoints put on the heavily modified crop dusters. The canisters hit the ground then split, broke open, and ignited. Long tongues of fierce orange flame licked for hundreds of yards through the camp, scouring their paths free of life. The pilots aimed, insofar as they could, for groups of armed men. Still, the target area was confusing and the aircraft moved fast. Warriors died, yes, but along with them women and children twisted and shrieked and were turned to writhing human torches before being reduced to charcoal and ash.
The morning smells suddenly changed from savory to sickening as cooked human meat added its contribution to the air.
The first wave split off into two "vics" of three, one veering north, one south, to come around for another pass each from those directions. The Turbo-Finches, the modified crop dusters, could turn on a drachma.
The camp now alerted, the second wave took some fire as it made its strafe. No matter, the aircraft were armored against small arms and even had a chance against heavy machine gun fire. They were also less vulnerable to shoulder fired anti-aircraft rockets than either helicopters or high performance jets. Carrying a lethal load, they were flown by men in whose hearts hate battled for dominance with the desire to be done, to finish this, to go home. These fresh, rearing warhorses had many times proven their worth in the brutal and bitter campaign.
This the second wave demonstrated as they swooped across at a higher level than the first. Not bothering to use their machine guns, cannon or rockets, they each released an aerodynamic cylinder from underneath before giving their engines full throttle and racing away. The cylinders fell a distance then, with a pop, broke open and kicked out three smaller cylinders and a number of glowing sparklers.
The smaller cylinders burst at a predetermined height, spreading an inflammable aerosol.
* * *
The searing tongues of napalm flame heating her face, Khalifa twisted her head and body searching frantically for the sign of a refuge. The two children now in her arms screamed and cried. Like mindless animals they twisted, trying to escape her grasp. She held them all the tighter; so tight the children could feel her own heart beating frantically beneath her breast.
Which way to turn? Which way to turn? Already Khalifa could hear the steady whop-whop-whop of the helicopters fast approaching. This was the merciless enemy who hunted without either giving rest or, apparently, taking it. She did not know what they would do to her in the event she was captured. The ignorance was worse than knowledge might have been. She had to escape somehow; her and the children.
And then Khalifa heard a faint series of tiny explosions overhead. She looked upward and to the east . . .
* * *
Proximity fused, the thermobaric cylinders fell to a preset distance above the ground before splitting and then detonating. Their aerosol clouds spread outward rapidly, mixing with the air and growing to touch upon each other. In a short time, a moment, one finger of one cloud touched a sparkler.
* * *
Khalifa was not one of the lucky ones, those directly under the blast. They died quickly, having barely a chance to voice an unheard scream before the near-nuclear explosion obliterated them.
Instead, she and her children stood at the periphery. She felt her children torn from her grasp as she and they were picked up and thrown. Khalifa could not see them because the intense heat had burned away her face and eyes along with most of the skin on the front side of her body.
High pressure air pounded her internal organs and, forcing its way into her lungs, expanded and tore them.
Briefly Khalifa flew through the air on the leading edge of the blast wave, a human tracer trailing flame. A violent stop against a large rock broke her spine—a small mercy as at least the pain from her lower body went away with the break. Then again, with ruptured organs and lungs, and a body flash-burned, the mercy was small indeed.
Then the vacuum struck as the air rushed back in to fill the space it had occupied before the blast. Khalifa felt it ripping the air through her mouth. She felt her lungs loosen away from the inside of her chest. She, along with others who had survived so far, was pulled inward even faster than she had been thrown away.
* * *
Racing back to the encampment, Abdul Aziz caught sight of the first half dozen Shturmoviks—some of the mujahadin still used the term they had picked up during the Volgan occupation of two decades before— sweeping across. Uselessly and fruitlessly, he fired his rifle at them as they passed overhead. Looking desperately between the swaths of flame left in their wake, Aziz caught sight of his family, still standing safe between flaming strips.
Even as he watched helplessly, his family was blasted to ruin by the second wave.
He mouthed a soundless, "Nooo."
Then Abdul Aziz ibn Kalb turned and ran.
* * *
Above and at a distance from the perimeter of the camp's smoking ruins helicopters rotored in and landed. From their bellies they began discharging troops. Some dropped off sling loads of artillery and ammunition. Some dropped off other loads of supplies.