Schumack leaned his shoulder against Barney's back, silent and brooding away the hours.
Beneath them were the distant sounds of the caravan making ready its departure up the side valley to the west.
Thoughts of the woman that he loved, thoughts of Maxie Schumack who was his companion in arms. Thoughts of the woman that he had found on a battlefield, thoughts of an old fighter who would never again turn his back. The woman who slept with the blood-warm breasts against his shirt, the man who sat with the automatic rifle beside him to protect his back. All that he valued now breathed and lived in this valley. The woman who was a mile away, Schumack who was beside him. The prospect of death no longer frightened him. Barney Crispin was at peace.
The Antonov was still patrolling wide circles over the valley. He rarely bothered to look up at it. The launcher was beside him under his blanket. He smelt his own body and wondered how the woman could have slept against him. He ran his fingers through the tangle of his hair. He rubbed at the caked mud on his beard. He felt the louse scabs on his chest.
He looked across the valley. He saw the grey rock face and the fissure lines in the opposite cliff and the tiny fluttering movement of a hawk, and the summit peaks and the snow slopes. He saw the scar of the river bed beneath him, and the green of unused fields, the scrub of lost land, and the caravan forming columns.
Schumack took his arm and stabbed with his claw to the south.
One helicopter. Seen but not yet heard.
'The first one,' Schumack said.
The helicopter scudded over the valley floor. Coming fast, coming at more than a hundred kilometres an hour. Hugging the ribbon track of the river bed. A camouflaged shadow skimming towards Barney.
'Two pairs coming after, same height, same sort of speed.'
Barney was on his feet. He faced away from the helicopters, back up towards the north of the valley for the rear hemisphere firing.
'You've got the mother.'
'How have I got it?'
Schumack had his spy glass to his eye. He pressed against Barney's side.
'The mothers aren't using flares.'
'No flares?'
'Don't argue with the mothers, they've fired no flares.'
He could not comprehend why there were no flares.
It would be a down shot, down through the rotors, it would be a five hundred metres shot, it would be a shot against which the baffles of the engine exhaust would be helpless.
'Battery coolant, switch it.' Schumack's calm nasal instruction.
He heard the first whine of the engagement of the battery coolant. The freezing of the argon gas around the missile's seeker of infrared optics. He heard the whine and his mind was blank except for the words he had read far back in the manual.
…IR seeker optics and sensor element plus headcoil and cryostat cooling element mounted inside a sealed atmosphere of dry hydrogen. He heard the thrust of the helicopter engines.
…Seeker operates on conical scan reticle principle.
Barney swung to face the valley wall opposite him. Bugger the seeker optics and sensor element. The hammer din of the rotors in his ears.
…Screw the conical scan reticle principle.
Steady on his feet, and the launcher was steady on his shoulder. One hand tight on the grip stock, one hand steadying the launcher sight.
'Coming now…' Schumack shouting in Barney's ear, and his ear was flooded with the noises of the helicopter engines and the first crisp crackle of the machine gun fire.
He saw the helicopter.
The whine from the launcher cried in his ear. The sight found the engine exhaust, found the baffle. The whine piercing his ear, shrieking for action. He aimed high, he aimed ahead.
He fired.
It was the seventh Redeye missile he had fired in the valley. Still there was no anticipating the first burn flash, and the missile drawling out of the tube, the smoke wreath, then the brilliant explosion. The hot gale wind whipped over Barney as he ducked his head. The heat stung his eyes, seemed to singe at the beard on his jaws and cheeks. And the light was gone, careering away from him, winging for the helicopter.
He could not move.
He heard the voice of Schumack howling close to him. He watched the scrubbed pure light home in on the dirt dull camouflage of the gunship.
A crashing impact.
It was the perfect shot. It was the shot down through the spinning circle of the rotor blades. A rotor blade slicing at the tube of the missile and splintering in the fraction of a moment before the warhead detonated. It was the damage to the rotor blade that killed the helicopter, not the spread of the warhead's shrapnel around the baffle.
Barney surrendered to Schumack. They went down the cliff together in a small avalanche of stones and dirt dust.
Once Barney looked up, he saw the helicopter had risen, had struggled for altitude away from the valley floor. He saw the shuddering motion of the bird, as if a rotor blade was fractured. That was death, a broken rotor blade was the death of a helicopter. He plunged on down the valley's wall, onto the more gradual slope below, on towards the gaping mouth of the cave. He heard Schumack behind him. He carried the launcher with the spent tube in his hand, he had the last tube strapped to his back pack. He sprinted for the mouth of the cave. He heard the machine gun fire thrash closer to him.
He heard the devil roar of the helicopter behind him. He saw the rock gouged in front of him. He dived for the cave mouth, fell rolling and tumbling into it.
On his stomach, panting great gulps of air, Barney saw the stricken helicopter come down. The big bird coming to rest. A gull flopping to a refuse tip. Across a quarter of a mile he heard the metal scrape tear as the undercarriage tore across the stone boulders.
A helicopter swarmed above him and past the entrance to the cave, and all of his vision was clouded by the dust storm of machine gun shells, and his ears sang with the whistle cry of the ricochets from the rocket splinters.
God…Oh God…where was Schumack?
Barney had run, and Barney had saved himself…where was Schumack? The storm film cleared, and the valley appeared, and the rock rubble in front of him, and the rims of the cave mouth beside him, and he saw Schumack. He saw the blood soaking the ripped trouser leg. He saw Schumack using his rifle as a support stick, and saw the pain lined on his face.
He saw the helicopter's tracer reach down towards him and gather him into red streaks and lift him and throw him and destroy him.
He saw the death of the man for whom he had not waited.
Barney lay on his face and cried his tears into the stones at the mouth of the cave.
The pilot, Vladdy, ran from the helicopter. He ran as an automaton, because the terror of being fire-trapped overwhelmed him. If he had calculated his best hope, his one hope, he would have stayed beside the helicopter. But his mind was turned by fear. He ran towards the side of the valley.
He ran until he saw the movement in the rocks in front of him, the glimpse of a ducking turbaned head, the flash of a rifle muzzle, the flicker of a shadow between boulders.
He froze still.
He lifted his head, he filled his lungs, he screamed to the helicopters above. He screamed for their help, and his voice choked in terror. The single shots pecked close to him, around him.
The pilot, Vladdy, saw the helicopter approaching him. A brother flew alongside with the spits of fire pouring from the nose canopy machine gun. There was tracer rising towards the helicopters, the heavy green tracer of the DShKs. Vladdy knew those bastards. Who flies steady when the big tracer of the DShKs is coming up?
Please…please…you bastards, my brothers, fly steady.
The gunner of the approaching helicopter had worked his way back through the pilot's cockpit, into the fuselage hold, ripped open the fuselage hatch. A thin rope ladder snaked down from the hatch, it brushed against the rock surface, it jumped towards Vladdy. Crying his thanks, he reached for the rope of the ladder. Close enough for him to see the heavy machine gun fire striking the belly of the helicopter and the canopies and the fuselage. Fly steady, you bastard, please…please. He grabbed for the rope. He caught it with his fingers, fastened on the light steel of the ladder's rungs, stumbled over a boulder and lost his hold. He was running after the rope ladder, groping behind it. He caught it again, snatched his raw fingers onto the steel rung. He felt the wrench in his arm sockets as he was lifted above the rocks, as his feet cannoned off a boulder. He swung wildly, desperately arching for a foothold, but he could not hold his grip.