In Honour Bound

'You hear the helicopter coming, when you actually see it you have to stand, you track the helicopter through the sight, you fasten on the engine exhaust…'

His right eye was up against the back marker of the sight, his vision wavered across the hillsides and came to rest on a hovering hawk. He tracked the hawk, lingering with its flight.

'You switch on the battery coolant. You take your time and don't hurry. The heat of the engine exhaust talks to the guidance system — you have to listen for the buzzer that tells you Redeye has found the target of the engine exhaust — and when the buzzer is at its peak then you fire. If you've done everything I've told you, then the missile is locked on the engine exhaust and that helicopter's dead…'

The sight fell from the hawk's flight, traversed back over the far hillside, over the stones of the river bed at the base of the valley to where a stork bird stood. Barney passed Redeye towards the clutch of hands that stretched out to receive it.

'Remember, it can curve a bit and bend a little, but it's not an acrobat. It flies faster than the helicopter flies. You fire it after the helicopter, not into its path, and you don't fire straight up, not in the day. You remember that, don't you?'

He paused. No point in continuing now that they had their hands on the launcher.

He remembered the general weapons instructors at Sandhurst military academy ten years before, and the specialised weapons instructors in Hereford. One and all they'd have been tipping towards coronaries if they'd had this lot for cadets. Redeye was tugged from one set of hands to another. One tribesman wriggled on his haunches a few feet from the group so that he could savour in greater isolation the feel of the launcher on his shoulder before it was wrenched from him.

'Do they understand the camera?' Barney said to the boy.

'Of course.'

'And they know what they have to try to bring me back?'

The boy rifled in the breast pocket of his shirt, produced a new notebook.

'Underneath the gunner's seat, behind armoured doors, is the fixed pod containing stabilised optics for target acquisition and tracking. Beside that is the radio command guidance antenna…' The boy read carefully from the notebook. 'Above the gunner's position is the low speed air data sensor, that you want as well. From inside the cockpit of the pilot you want photographs of all the dials…'

'Do you have to read it?'

'I know it by heart,' the boy said.

'If you didn't have a notebook could you remember it?'

'I know everything you have said…'

Barney snatched the notebook from Gul Bahdur's hand. He read the clear copper plate writing. He flipped the pages, then tore out all those that covered the shopping list of the helicopter's instrumentation. He ripped the paper to small pieces, scattered them on the ground.

'Why did you do that?' Shrill anger from the boy.

'In case you're captured, that's why.'

Barney stood up, his face was twisted away from the boy. He started to walk, a lizard that was sand-coloured and perfect in camouflage scrabbled clear of his feet. The boy caught up with him and, like a father, Barney put his arm around Gul Bahdur's shoulder.

'When are you going?'

'Tomorrow.'

'And you will be gone…?'

'A week, not more. Only into Paktia province, across the border. There are many helicopters in Paktia.'

'You go carefully,' Barney said.

The boy looked up into Barney's face. 'We are fighting the jihad, that is the holy war. What have I to fear? If I die in the jihad, what have I lost?'

'I just said you were to go carefully.'

'If I die I am a martyr.'

'If you are captured you are a disaster.'

Barney walked on towards the Volkswagen. The boy followed him, and after him the men, and amongst them and hidden from Barney's sight was the Redeye missile.

Barney came up the bungalow steps. From the verandah he could hear Rossiter singing '…and did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green…' supported by the echo chamber of the bathroom.

All the way back to the bungalow the doubt had eaten at him. Barney sat at the table in the living room, he was dirty and dust-strewn, and he listened to the singing and the splashing of water, and the hiss of the underarm spray.

Rossiter came out of the bathroom. He had a towel round his waist, and was buttoning a clean white shirt over his chest. Barney felt the filth in his hair and the warm wetness and the chafe of his trousers at his groin. Barney's head dropped into his hands. He closed his eyes. He felt a great tiredness. He heard the suck of exasperation from Rossiter.

'You're not coming?'

'Coming to what?'

'Don't play the bloody ass — to the party.'

'I told you what I thought about us chucking ourselves around town.'

'Your funeral…for me, I'm going to be bright and busy and in good time for the festivities. You want the sackcloth, laddie, your problem…' Rossiter was moving to the door of his bedroom. 'And get the stuff ready, please, Barney. As soon as I'm decent, we'll drop Mr Redeye off at the camp. After that if you want to sit here like a bleeding abbot…'

He disappeared into his room.

'They're not ready to go,' Barney said quietly.

'…If you want to sit here on your bum and play with yourself…'

'I said, they're not ready to go.'

Rossiter reappeared. He seemed to play the senior officer, the man who had the Brigadier's letter of introduction, and his uniform was an unbuttoned shirt and a damp towel. 'The schedule gave you a fortnight, and that's what you've had.'

'I didn't draw up the schedule, and I'm telling you that they're not ready.'

Rossiter smiled coldly. 'You're telling me that in two weeks you've failed to prepare them, that it?'

'I'm not on a bloody promotion course, Rossiter, and I don't have to and I won't take that shit. I'm telling you that they're not good enough.'

Perhaps Rossiter thought the towel would fall. He grasped the knot tightly. 'What do you want me to do, Barney?'

'I want a stop put on it, I want another week. I told you before — this isn't an easy weapon. If I had British infantry kiddies, I'd want more than a fortnight.'

'Don't give them all the missiles at one go. Keep some back.'

'Where does that get us?'

Rossiter sighed. 'It gets us that if this crowd screw up, then we find someone else to have another go.'

Barney flared up out of his chair. 'Very bloody bright, and wrong for two reasons. Wrong because if they screw up they'll lose the launcher of which we have one, so nobody gets a second chance. And second, because if they screw up they're all dead.'

'I'll think about it,' Rossiter said, and disappeared into his bedroom.

'There's nothing to think about. I've told you they're not ready.'

'I'll think about it.'

'How long are you going to think about it?'

'I am going to a party. Not your bloody doubts, nor your bloody wild horses, will not keep me from that party. While I am at that party I will think about it. When I come back I will have made my decision. Got it, Barney? My decision…'

Barney stormed out of the front door, heard it slam behind him and then fly open.

He was opening the door of the Land Rover when he heard the shout from Rossiter's bedroom. 'I need the bloody transport tonight. You know I need it.'

Barney turned the key in the ignition. 'Get yourself a taxi,' Barney said to himself. Rossiter couldn't have heard, because the engine had coughed to life. '

He drove west towards the foothills of the mountains that were the frontier with Afghanistan. When the dark steep shadows crowded close to the road, he had parked and locked the Land Rover on the hard shoulder.