In Honour Bound

'What happened? In God's name what happened?' The piping voice of Rossiter.

'Sit down, Gul Bahdur,' Barney said gently. He guided the boy to his own chair.

'What the bloody hell happened?'

'Have you eaten anything?'

The boy looked from the face of Rossiter that rippled in anxiety to the calm of Barney's. He found a haven with Barney, his arms dropped loose into his lap, his neck bent, his chin fell to his chest.

'Will somebody tell me what happened?' Rossiter shrill and frightened.

'You should have something to eat, Gul Bahdur.'

The boy shook his head.

'I've some coke, would you like that?'

Again the boy shook his head, and his eyes closed for a moment and seemed to open only with effort.

'Hey, kiddie, did you get another hundred? Did you kill another hundred Soviets?' Barney said softly, with the smile of a friend.

'It's been a shambles, hasn't it?' Rossiter shouted.

Barney turned, as if reluctantly, away from the boy towards Rossiter. His voice was low. 'Will you be quiet, Mr Rossiter, please…How bad, Gul Bahdur?'

The boy was shaking, as if in pain.

'Awful?'

The boy did not have to answer. Barney squatted in front of him and looked into his eyes. 'Worse than awful?'

The boy nodded.

'Tell me.'

Rossiter pulled his chair across the room, scraping the legs on the tiles, and sat over it back to front. Barney crouched close to the boy so that he would be Gul Bahdur's target.

'Two days after we had crossed from Parachinar we were on a path over a valley, we were near to the village of Sazi. We were fourteen men and four mules. There had been a great argument amongst the older men as to where we should go to find the helicopter for the Redeye. Only two of the men knew this path. Because so few men knew it, they were all frightened when they heard a helicopter. If all the men had known the path they would not have been so frightened, we all heard the helicopter, but we could not see it, it was on the far side of the mountain. Some wanted to go back, some wanted to go forward. We were in the open on this path, it was very narrow, if the helicopter had seen us then we would all have been killed. There were two mules roped together at the front, and two mules at the back. The men were pulling at the harnesses of the front mules, pulling the harnesses two ways. One man fell. The path there was not wider than a man's stride. He was hanging to the harness of a mule. He pulled the mule from the path. His weight and that of the mule, that was enough to pull over the second that was roped. They fell all the way to the valley. Do you understand me, Barney?…On the back of the second mule we had tied two Redeyes…'

'Bloody shambles,' Rossiter sighed.

Barney bit at his lip. 'The other two, Gul Bahdur, tell me.'

'We went from Paktia into Logar province. There is a river that runs south from Kabul through the town of Baraki, they told us in a village that the helicopters often use that river as a marker when they are flying to Gardez or Ghazni. We thought that we could find a helicopter there. We had walked for a day and a half and then we found the river, we came upon it by surprise because this was not a place we were familiar with, we are all from the north of Logar, you understand me, Barney? There was a helicopter, flying fast, very low over the river, almost beneath us. The men were arguing about who should fire the Redeye. One man had the launch part and he took the missile tube from another man's back. He showed his knife to get the missile tube from the other man's back. I think we were not ready to know what you told us, Barney. I tried to tell them, Barney…they would not listen. The Redeye was fired after the helicopter, it went one hundred metres, it exploded in the ground, the helicopter was more than a thousand metres away…'

'What time of the day was it?' Barney asked without anger.

'In the afternoon.'

'Geothermal heat from the ground,' Barney said quietly.

'You told us that, I tried to shout it to them. They would not listen.'

'Pig stupid bastards.' A whine from Rossiter.

'I'm not blaming you, Gul Bahdur.'

'I told them. I promise that I told them.'

'It is very difficult to hit a low flying aircraft, I know that.'

'And the fourth missile, how did you screw that up?' The sneer from Rossiter.

'Tell me, Gul Bahdur.'

'All that night there was an argument as to who should fire the last missile. There were three men who said they were the best. By the morning it was decided that the man who was the brother of the wife of our leader in Peshawar, that he should be the man. He is not a young man…he would fire it. In the morning we walked north towards Agha valley. It is very dangerous there because they know the people feed the mujahidin from their crops. We were near to the village when we heard the helicopters. There were four, two and two. I think he remembered what you had said, the man who had the Redeye, he remembered that you had said we should not fire at the first of the helicopters. As the last went overhead, he fired…'

'Overhead?' Barney closed his eyes, no longer prepared to disguise his anguish. 'When the sun was overhead?'

'The Redeye went for the sun…you told us that is what would happen.'

'It missed?'

'It went for the sun, it exploded very high.'

The voice of the boy tailed away. The silence suffocated the room. There was a tear at the boy's eye.

Rossiter's chair scraped the quiet. He stood up. 'You all need bloody kicking, each last one of you bastards.'

The boy stared into Rossiter's shadowed face.

'The helicopter was aware of something, perhaps he saw the flash of the missile. Everyone was standing up to see better the hitting of the helicopter. We were seen. The helicopters came with rockets and machine guns. Eight were killed there, in the open. We were all in the open. Five more were wounded. I don't know how I lived, why I was saved. When the helicopters had gone I went to the village, and the people came and carried back to the mullah's house those who still lived, and buried those who had died. There was a nurse, a European, who came through the village, she could not help them. I am the only one who lived, Barney.'

'Easy, boy…' Barney's hand settled on Gul Bahdur's shoulder.

'For four days I was alone, until I came to Parachinar. I did not stop for sleep or to eat.'

'Thank you.'

The boy was sobbing, tears gurgling in his throat and snuffling in his nose. Barney picked him up and carried him into his room and laid him on the bed and drew the curtain tight and left the boy in the darkness and shut the door behind him.

'That's the end,' Rossiter said. 'Whether you were right, whether I was right.'

Barney stared back at him.

'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. That's the end. They've wrecked it. Do you laugh or do you cry, Barney bloody Crispin?'

Barney gazed out through the window. From the verandah's light he watched a fly thrash in a spider's web amongst the leaves of a creeper on the outside wall.

Rossiter was pacing, hand behind his back and hunched. 'It's the finish. All that work and for nothing. It's pathetic.'

'What are you going to do, Mr Rossiter?'

'I'm going to drive myself to Islamabad; I'm going to avail myself of secure communications at the High Commission; I'm going to call London; I'm going to tell them it's down the drain. Have you a better idea?'

'You're in charge, Mr Rossiter,' Barney said crisply. 'You'll do what you think best.'

'That's not helpful.' A flash of uncertainty from Rossiter.

'I'm not being helpful nor unhelpful. You're in charge.'

Rossiter showed his pique, found the Land Rover keys. He went to the verandah door. 'It's not that either of us is to blame, Barney. It just didn't work out.'

'Not to blame for failing to bring down a Hind, or not to blame for sending thirteen men to their deaths?'