There was a man who moaned and who was snow pale at his cheeks and whose scalp was pierced by a dark pencil hole wound. There was a man who cried, a little whimper cry, and whose arms were folded across his stomach because that way he held in place the cloths that were laid over the opened wound of his belly, and that heaved and tossed in the surges of his agony.
Barney saw two more men with stomach wounds, and one of them had not yet been reached by Mia Fiori and his intestines still protruded from the gash amongst the dark hair of his belly. Barney saw a man whose arm hung loose, useless, fastened to his elbow with a muscle thread. Barney was a soldier, he was a professional, but he had never before seen what he saw in Mia Fiori's casualty station.
Ahmad Khan watched the nurse at her work, expressionless, impassive. The one who wore the red waistcoat stood at his side, and beside him was the man who would walk with a limp if he moved. They watched the one woman in the room as she worked, as she cried silently and without an attempt to hide the tears dribbling on her cheeks, as she reached out without looking behind her for more cloths to be given her, as she tossed aside bloodied rags. The sounds of the screams were a bell singing in Barney's mind.
'You have what you came to collect, you are going now?' Ahmad Khan spoke across the room, over the bodies of the fallen fighters. The man who wore the red waistcoat spat noisily onto the floor, the man who walked with a limp stared in open contempt into Barney's face.
Barney spoke stiffly. 'I have the pieces that I came for. It is better I should go in darkness.'
'A price has been paid for your success.'
'There are four helicopters in the valley,' Barney said. 'Four more than before I came.'
'I did not hear myself complain.'
He was dismissed by Ahmad Khan; the schoolteacher turned away from him.
The girl stood, eased herself fluently onto the soles of her feet. Her face blazed at Barney, the tears streamed on her face.
'You have come to see what you had achieved?'
Barney's face was tight. 'I have three morphine syringes, I came to leave them for you, and a few other things…' He had swung his pack off his shoulders, was groping in the depths of the pack.
'What would a spy want with morphine?' She flung the words back at him.
'I have three syringes. If you want them, you can have them.'
'And you are going now, so you can be safe away from here tomorrow. You know what happens tomorrow?'
'I have done what I came to do.' He had spoken the words before he had thought out their meaning.
Mia Fiori stepped across the man whose arm was all but severed from his elbow.
She caught at the fullness of Barney's shirt. 'All this is yours, you brought it to this village…and in the morning when you are gone, they will come back with their helicopters. You are a great hero, Barney Crispin — you are a brave fighting man. Christ, I admire your courage. If you were what I thought you were…'
'Do you want the morphine?'
'If you were what I thought you were, you could never leave this place, not when the helicopters will come back in the morning.'
Barney put the syringes in her hand. She turned away from him. She knelt beside the man with the intestines bulging from his stomach. He saw the gentle, narrow outline of her shoulders. He turned and went out of the house.
Schumack stood in the darkness beside the closed door.
'You're on your way?'
'No,' Barney said.
'Listen, hero man. You've had luck you don't know about. You caught the buggers when they were soft, when they were sloppy. It's their turn to learn smart. You're snuffed when they get smart. Staying behind to fire four Redeyes, that's immoral for a young guy. You're not a Maxie Schumack, an old shite-hawk. There's more to you than giving a helping hand to these mothers.'
'Perhaps there isn't.'
'That's pathetic. What are you doing with that junk?'
'The boy's going to take it back,' Barney said.
'With the mule?' Schumack asked, a shrewd concern in his voice.
'The boy's going back with Maggie…'
'You've one loaded, you've three to carry. You won't go far carrying three tubes.'
'I stay until I have fired all the missiles.'
'You'll need me watching your back, you goddamn fool.'
'If that's what you want, then it's your pleasure to watch it,' Barney said.
The boy caught up with Barney. He had slipped his arm into the crook of Barney's elbow. There was no argument, there was no disputing Barney's decision. They talked of how long it would take the boy to cross the mountains and reach the Pakistan frontier, three days. How long it would then take him to reach Chitral, perhaps another day. He remembered the name of the man he must meet in Chitral, Howard Rossiter.
He remembered where he should ask for him, the Dreamland Hotel. And afterwards the boy was to go back to Peshawar. After Chitral and the Dreamland the part of the boy was finished. Barney could not see his face, could not read his expression as he talked of Gul Bahdur going back to the refugee camps.
He asked when the first snow would fall on the high passes over which the boy must travel to reach Pakistan by the northern route. Two weeks, perhaps, three weeks, not more before the first snow.
There was no wheedling in the boy's voice, no sense of resentment that he was being sent from the valley with the equipment from the helicopter. The boy would go before dawn. Barney would remain in the valley with four Redeye missiles, and with Maxie Schumack to watch his bum.
'I'm hungry,' Maxie Schumack said.
It was twenty-three hours since Barney had last eaten.
Outside the door of the mess Rostov caught his Major. Rostov had been running all the way from the maintenance workshops beside the helicopter parking revetments. He had run to catch Medev before he entered the public forum of the mess. Because he had run, he was panting and able only to blurt out his statement.
'I have just been at the workshops…we have to fix a baffle on the helicopters, a baffle that will reduce the hot air content when it is released from the engine vent…they say in the workshops that the designers of the Mi-24 ignored the threat of missile attack, not like the Americans and the British and the French, that's what they say.'
Calmer now. 'At the moment the exhaust protrudes by less than 300 millimetres from the fuselage, the air is hot, the metal around it is hot, and we are taking the hits. We have to suppress the quality of the hot air. In the workshops they have been talking about making a baffle for the hot air. The senior sergeant in the workshops says that the American and British and French helicopters all have their engine's exhausts set at the rear and the top of the fuselage, we have ours at the side where everyone can see it. To fire at a Western helicopter you have a quarter of a chance less with Redeye than you have with our bird. In the workshops they are designing an extension to the exhaust vent, a metre long, but you have to get clearance from the top.
'There would be two effects. When the air emerges from the vent it will have travelled a greater distance through the baffle vent and will therefore have cooled more, that's one effect. The second effect, the Redeye explodes on contact, the warhead is only a kilo of HE — if the explosion is one metre from the fuselage side as against being right up to it, then the damage is proportionally much less. That is the idea in the workshops…what do you think of their idea?'
'You know what I did this afternoon?'
'I know, Major.'
'I would do anything not to repeat what I did.'
Rostov's face was composed now, the jelly shake was controlled. 'What do you think, Major?'
'You want to fly with chimney stacks on the vents. It is an excellent idea. I have one regret.'