One woman limped, another helped a matriarch, two were burdened by knotted bundles that rested awkwardly on their upper backs, and there was Mia Fiori. She walked at the front and the children trailed around her, and the women were behind her, and the old men hung at their heels like dogs. She walked straight, she walked tall-backed, she walked as though the ground was smoothed in front of her. She walked as if she were dreaming. Barney could not see her face, could not see it when she was close to the emptied stone houses where he and the mujahidin had spent the night, because the head of the child that she carried obscured her face. He wanted to reach out, to push aside the head and the face of the child so that he could see her.
In front of Mia Fiori and the children and the women and the old men, where before there had been only the desolation of boulders and scrub bushes, there was now movement. The men appeared from their hiding place and stood and waited for the column to come closer. Hard men, fighting men, and they stood and waited for the women and the children and the old men.
Barney's hand left the Redeye launcher, left it with care alongside Schumack. He rose to his feet. He ran away from Maxie Schumack down the slope to the valley's floor. He ran through the scrub bushes where the thorns grappled against his trousers, he ran over the rock boulders and the stones to the path. He ran towards her, past the fighting men who stood and waited close to the DShK machine guns and the mortars and the RPGs.
She seemed not to see him. She seemed to gaze only ahead of her.
He was running with the hunger ache in his stomach and with the louse sores on his body and with the cloy of damp in his boots and with the dirt on his cheeks.
He reached her and his arms fell around her neck and he gathered her against him, and the child that she carried gurgled against the beard on his face, and the child whose hand she held was pressed close to his leg. He saw the tears in her red, swelled eyes, he saw the river run of the tears through the mud on her face. He kissed her eyes, he kissed her tears. The children went on past him with the women and the old men. Barney clung to Mia Fiori and to the one child she carried and to the child that hugged his leg.
He kissed her forehead, he kissed her cheek.
She looked up at Barney into his eyes. She had woken from a dream. She looked into his eyes and the weakness took her, and he held her against him as she cried, and the child she carried chortled happily between them.
In a whispered small voice, she told him:
'After you had gone, after we had left the village and tried to climb into the side valleys and find caves to hide in, they came in the helicopters. The village had been bombed again, and then the helicopters machine gunned the village and the side walls. Then bigger helicopters came and they landed the soldiers at each end of the village, and also on the roof of the valley. Those on the roof of the valley moved down, quite slowly so that they would not miss a hiding place, and those at the bottom of the valley covered them with machine guns.
'They could not find all the caves, but they found enough of the caves. We had gone further than most, I don't know why, but we were further and outside the cordon that they had set. We lay in a cave with the children pressed against us because they tried to cry in their fear of the explosions and the shooting, and we buried their crying under our bodies. Into the caves where they found people they threw grenade bombs, Barney. The people were screaming, perhaps we did not have to bury the children that were with us against our bodies, their crying could not have been heard above the screaming when they were throwing the bombs into the caves.
'They took some men they had captured down to the village, and they took them to the mosque building and put them inside and they set fire to the mosque. They had a gun aimed at the door and when the men tried to run from the fire they shot them with the guns, and all the time they fired at the windows of the mosque. Nobody came out of the mosque, only the screaming came out. After that they burned all the grain stores of the village, the people cannot live in the village in the winter without the food store. They burned all their food for the winter. In the afternoon they left. When they had finished, the helicopters came again for them and lifted them away.
'I am not strong, Barney, not strong enough for what we saw. There were wounded people there, and I had nothing to give them — nothing, nothing. I came here to help these people, and I could not. I had nothing to offer them. I was as frightened as these people. I was crying with these people. They have scattered now, those that are alive. They have gone high into the mountains, but there is snow in the mountains. Barney, where was your bastard missile?'
A whispered, small voice that died on the valley's floor.
He took onto his own shoulder the child that she had carried. He took the hand of the child she had led.
'I have to have a plan, I have to have your help with a plan.'
'Three days ago I saw your plan and I buried two men because of your plan.'
Barney Crispin and Ahmad Khan were standing beside the old sewer ditch of the deserted village.
'I have to have the help so that the fire positions are coordinated.'
'You want the help so that other men cover your life with their lives.'
'That's bloody rubbish.'
'Always you demand a diversion fire that puts at risk my men, my friends. Always my brothers must stand as a shield for you so that you can fire and you can escape. Find your own plan.'
'If you want to kill the helicopters, if you want to clear the valley, you have to help me with a plan.'
Ahmad Khan stiffened, tight veins at his throat. 'I have to do nothing.'
'Don't you want the valley cleared of them?'
'I have a valley to defend, I do not have just one man to defend. I see more than one man. I see the time before you were with us, I see the time that will be after you have left us. You ask my brothers to give their lives to keep safe your plaything that you will not even let us hold.'
'Because you don't bloody know how to use it!' The spittle of Barney's anger fell on Ahmad Khan's nose and cheeks and was wiped away with the sleeve of his jacket.
'You may stay with us until the missiles are fired, but I will give no man's life to protect you. You will take your chance as we take our chance, we in the sight of Allah, and you wherever you can find chance.'
Ahmad Khan walked away. Schumack came to Barney's side. His head was shaking, his mouth was squeezed wide and together in sadness. 'They're proud, and you piss on that pride with your Redeye. One day you'll learn, hero man.'
'What do I do?'
'You stay a mile from them, always south of them so the birds come over you, and you hope that if the poor bastards are zapped that you'll get one launch away.'
'Where will you be?'
'Where I always am. Stop playing like you're God to these people. They've got Allah, they don't need you.'
'If I take three more helicopters…'
'They'll have forgotten you before you've time to fart. You're not doing it for them anyway. It's private and personal to you, whatever you're doing. Everyone can see that.'
Away from them, sitting in the shelter of a compound wall was Mia. She was more than a hundred yards from them. She squatted on her haunches and had found a blanket that was over her shoulders. She was with a group of children. She was absorbed and attentive to them. Barney could smell the scent breath of her mouth that he had kissed, and the salt taint of her tears. He saw her in the darkness of a cave covering the body of a child as the rockets and grenades and machine gun fire burst over the valley. He watched her. He slung the Redeye launcher onto his shoulder.
'Don't come with me, Maxie…watch her for me, please.'