He heard the caravan straining, creaking, away from him into the darkness. He felt a man. He believed he had passed a test of initiation into adulthood. He carried the news of a battle, the news of four downed helicopters. There was a light flurry of snow. His blanket was tight on his shoulders, his body sheltered from the winds hard against the flank of the mule.
Maxie Schumack shook Barney's shoulder.
It was light. He had slept through the dawn.
Rain fell, fine and cloying. Barney shivered. His covering blanket gleamed from the sheen of droplets. His stomach growled in hunger. As soon as he was awake, he had seen Schumack bending over him, had assimilated the rock gully in which he had slept, then the painful itches of the lice scabs were alive on his flesh. His stomach growling, and a different noise, a new sound.
'I would have let you sleep, but you ought to see the show,' Schumack said.
The helicopters flew high over the valley in convoy.
'Mi-8s, Hips we used to call them, can carry up to thirty men each.'
He saw the gunships, escorts on the flanks.
'Only one place that lot's going.'
He saw the cascade of flares falling in regular descent from the Mi-24s.
'Babies are learning.'
'Only one place?' Barney asked quietly.
The convoy was at maximum speed, Barney estimated its ceiling was 3000 feet above him. The Redeye launcher had been under his blanket while he slept, but it was damp now, smeared and wet. He wiped it with his sleeve but made no effort to arm it.
'Give me your glass.'
Schumack dug in his shirt front for the spy glass.
'As you say, the babies are learning…they've got baffle tubes on the engine vents. I'll have to be closer, every time bloody closer, more of a bastard…'
'Can you take one?'
'What'll happen to the village?'
Schumack screwed his face. 'They'll dynamite it, they'll burn it.'
'What about the people?'
Schumack shrugged. 'How smart have they been? If they're up high, if they stay in the caves, if they've reached the side valleys, then they won't see much and they won't feel much. Depends what the Soviets want out of it, what sort of lesson they're reckoning to teach. They can be mean bastards when they've the mind for it.'
'Your answer is yes, I can take another one.'
'You're thinking of the lady…'
Barney's glance flashed angrily at Schumack.
'That's crap, Barney. She's made her bed, she can lie on it. What do you want? Do you want us to stand around and try to fight for villages when they're going to put troops in…?' He broke off.
Above the helicopter convoy, above the cloud cover, reverberated the sounds of jet aircraft engines.
'Guerrilla warfare, Barney Crispin, you're supposed to know what that's about. That's about ducking and weaving, and running for a better day. You think the 'Cong pissed about when we were coming in force? They ran. They went for the cracks in the walls. That's the way it happens. And you having a fancy fanny in there doesn't change anything. Got it, hero man?'
'Why don't you piss off, Maxie.'
'You didn't even screw her, did you?'
'I can take a helicopter on my own.'
'Better you're not on your own, Barney.' A soft kindness from Schumack. 'And a broad isn't worth us getting scratchy with each other. Listen here, hero man, if you start getting emotional about fighting, personal, then you're in deep shit, you and all the bag carriers you've collected.'
'If you could get me two RPGs on the east side…'
'You'll climb on the west side?'
'Right.'
'And take them on the way back?'
'Right.'
'Don't get scratchy with me, hero man, and don't put a bit of fanny in the way of whatever you want to do here, whatever that is…because I'm going to be beside you, and if you're crapping about because of a fanny then I'm going to get scalped with you.'
They were both smiling. Schumack had crowbarred his way into Barney's life. He was a stray dog that had come to a kitchen door, and no way would the beggar be turned aside.
'Just get me two RPGs on the east side.'
They had been in the morning to the village of Atinam escorting the troop-carrying birds, they had returned to Jalalabad. In the late afternoon, still spewing their flares, and wearing their fresh painted engine vent baffles, they had come back to Atinam to collect the big Mi-8s.
Behind them now, as they flew south in the valley, was a village where two companies of airborne troops had done a job of work. A violent, bloody job of work.
They had been landed beside the village on the valley's floor, also on the roof of the valley. They had secured the side valleys and the waterfall ravines, they had cleared those caves that were close to the village. A violent, bloody job.
By the end of the day the cloud levels had fallen. The helicopter convoy flew beneath the cloud ceiling on full power. The flares were brilliant on that early evening.
Any light would show up on that early evening, any flash of flame.
They had not been attacked. They had not taken ground fire either at the village or on the way there or on the way back. They were escorting butchers back from a long day's work. There was little for the gunship pilots to feel proud of.
The Reaktivniy Protivotankovyi Granatomet, the RPG-7, is the smallest and most widely used anti-tank launcher utilised by the Soviet armed forces and their satellite allies. Through capture from overwhelmed Soviet and Afghan Army units, this weapon has become standard equipment in the arsenals of the mujahidin. When fired, the RPG-7 emits a fierce flash signalling the rocket's ignition.
On that evening, in the shadow of the valley, in the gloom of the rain clouds, the flash would be white light, easily seen. Glimpsed cursorily through the curved distortion in the wings of the Mi-24's cockpit bulb, the ignition of an RPG-7 could give the appearance of the malfunctioned firing of a Redeye missile.
Schumack had talked with Ahmad Khan. Ahmad Khan now talked with the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who limped when he walked.
'You are our leader, and we tell you as we have the right to tell you, that you give this unbeliever too much,' said the man with the red waistcoat.
'It is as if you have given to him the decision of your tactics, when you strike, how you strike,' said the man who limped when he walked. 'He is a poison in your mind.'
'The one place in the valley where we were assured of food and some safety was the village of Atinam and, because of the unbeliever, Atinam is destroyed.'
'You should never have offered him your hospitality.'
'He should have been food for the eagles.'
'He has not stayed to help us.'
'He has stayed to fornicate with the woman.'
'He will destroy you as he destroyed Atinam,' said the man with the red waistcoat.
'He will destroy us all,' said the man who limped when he walked.
Ahmad Khan had not spoken during the denunciation of Barney Crispin. Now he waved his hand irritably for quiet. He spoke abruptly. 'You will fire the launchers. He said that before he came there were no helicopters killed in my valley. You will fire the launchers on my command. Where I had killed none, he has killed four helicopters in my valley.'
There was no further argument. To have disputed further would have caused the man who wore the red waistcoat and the man who limped when he walked to trek out of the valley to search for a new commander.
On that evening, and where the valley was a little less than eight hundred metres in width, the two RPG-7s were sited on the east side. On the west side, hidden high on a rock bluff, was Barney Crispin.