Barney thought of the woman. He thought of the bombers that he had heard overhead above the cloud cover. He thought of the troop carriers that he had seen ferrying the combat troops to an undefended target.
He saw the approach of the returning convoy and their flares. They came above the centre of the valley. They came level in height with the rock where Barney waited. The Redeye launcher rested on his shoulder.
Schumack crouched at his side.
Two spurts of light from the east side of the valley. Almost simultaneous. Two sheets of flame from the east side of the valley floor. Two explosions trailing the picture.
Barney saw the tracer fly from the gunships, heard the snarl as the engine power increased, as the birds manoeuvred, as the Mi-24s bucked away from the east-side firing positions. Redeye on his shoulder. Over the open sight and onto the helicopter that flew wide to the west side of the valley before turning to flail the flash fire positions with the big nose-cone machine gun.
Battery coolant on. Hearing the first whine of the contact.
How would the baffle tube work against the Redeye? Didn't bloody know. He did know that the girl had stayed behind at Atinam with the women and the children and the old men, and Barney Crispin was alive and fighting on another day.
The howl in his ear of the infrared contact. Point blank for Redeye. The squeeze on the launcher trigger.
First flash, second flash…
Barney and Schumack lit up, bonfire kids, illuminated by the second stage ignition. Barney should have been running but he watched the light ball plunge out across the valley. He was captivated by the light power he had created. Schumack was pulling, yelling at him.
One brilliant explosion.
The tension burst from Barney's body. They tumbled together down the valley wall and away from the exposed rock bluff. Schumack sobbed in a cry of pain as his arm stump cracked down onto rock. Sliding and stumbling together.
They found a gully, a damp crevice where a little of the rain water had collected, where they could cover their heads with their blankets, where they could merge into the featureless valley walls.
'Did I kill it?'
'It's still up.' Dead words from Maxie Schumack, a cold message.
'But the explosion?' Barney shouted.
'It's still up.'
The helicopters did not stay to hunt down the fire position. The gunships were on escort. There was a cursory strafing of the area from which the Redeye had been launched. They had wavered towards the first trap, they would not be baited a second time.
When they reached the floor of the valley Ahmad Khan waited for them. He took Barney to the east side. Barney had seen the stone face of the young schoolteacher, set and expressionless. He knew what he was to see.
In death he could recognise the two men who had fired the RPG-7s. Through the nightmare death of a helicopter's machine gun bullets, Barney could remember their features.
'I had a hit,' Barney said bleakly.
'I see no helicopter.'
Ahmad Khan walked away, left Barney to look down on the bodies. Barney saw the man who wore the red waistcoat and his shirt was red also, and his thighs and the skin of his face. And the leg of the man who limped when he walked was two metres from his body, and the brain was splashed further. Barney took a launch tube from Schumack's back and reloaded the Redeye.
The pilot, Vladdy, brought the helicopter gunship back to Jalalabad and the blazing apron lights, and the waiting ambulances, and the fire tenders. One of the twin turbo shafts had been damaged. There was an oil leak. Hard, slow flying on one functioning engine, but the pilot had brought it back.
Medev was on the apron. When Vladdy climbed down from the cockpit, when the rescue services had driven away, when the maintenance crews began to scramble up around the shattered baffle tube, Medev took the pilot in his arms. He held the shaking young man against his chest, hugged him, squeezed him, poured out against him his gratitude that the big bird had not been lost.
'It is the end of his luck,' Medev whispered.
'We got it back, that's all…' the pilot said dully. 'It'll be days before it's operational again.'
'Not important, he fired and he failed. He has all night to think on that. He fired and he failed to destroy you. The first failure is the hardest. What now does he have to look forward to?'
'Will we go back to the valley?'
'Of course.'
'For what?'
'To kill him,' Medev said. 'To kill him now that he is at the end of his luck.'
The pilot broke clear and walked away fast. Once he turned to Medev who followed him.
'You fly with us…' the pilot shouted at Major Pyotr Medev.'Now that he is at the end of his luck, you fly with us, and see what it is like when the missile is fired. Just the one time you come with us to know what it is like to live because of luck.'
Chapter 19
Two long days slipped by, two long nights.
The weather had closed over the valley. Rain and snow flurries, a cloud ceiling down onto the river bed and the orchard trees.
No helicopters were seen. Only once there had been the distant sounds of an Antonov. High beyond the clouds. A caravan came through the valley under cover of that cloud.
They were Jamiat men and wary of crossing Hizbi territory. There were formal greetings and respect was shown to Ahmad Khan by the leaders of the caravan. They took tea together and shared food, and perhaps some of the munitions carried on the backs of the horses and mules had been pilfered. The cloud cover saw this caravan through, not the power of the Redeye launcher that was never more than a yard from Barney's hand day or night. The talk told the Jamiat men of the destruction of the helicopters in the valley and sometimes these travellers hovered close to the Englishman and the American and stared at them. Ahmad Khan made no attempt to bring Barney and Schumack close to the evening gathering when two goats were slaughtered and cooked across open fires. A mullah who went with the Jamiat men once came aggressively forward to divert the attention of a group of the younger men of the caravan who had ranged themselves close to Barney and were pointing to the weapon as if it were a thing of magic.
A wall, slowly built, was erected to shut out the kafirs, the unbelievers, and Barney knew that he was the cause of the barrier, not Schumack.
'Maxie, what happened at the village?'
'I don't know,' Schumack looked away. 'No one told me.'
Barney had thought this a large caravan. Schumack told him another was expected, larger in man power and supplies and heading for the Panjshir. Perhaps that would be the last caravan to come through before the snow blocked the passes.
Summer had fled the valley. The winds clipped the trees of their foliage.
Barney brooded, became an entity of his own.
Schumack was always with him on those two days and nights. He should have sent Schumack away, should have kicked him away as a man will kick at a stray dog.
Barney was a lone man. He took his food outside the main group of fighting men, the same food and drink that was cooked in the same pots and bowls but eaten apart from them. Barney slept apart from them with only Schumack for company, huddled under the thinning valley trees. The first night and the first day after the burial of the men killed by the helicopter he had not noticed the wall that crept up around him. By the second day he had been certain of it. They had come to a deserted village, close to the crash site of the first helicopter that Barney had brought down in the valley. That was an age ago, a summer ago. There were close to a hundred men in Ahmad Khan's group.