'I have the hate. First there was excitement, then there was pride.
After the pride came the hate.'
'Explain to me.'
'When I went to Landi Khotal with my friends, everything was strange, was colour, was new. I was tested, then I was chosen. I had never known, where I came from, that excitement. I passed through the training camps, I was accepted into the 055 Brigade, I was made a squad leader. Of course there was pride – I had never been trained or accepted, had never led before. In the camps, X-Ray and Delta, there were two choices, two roads. I could have surrendered, as many have done, and submitted, or I could have fought them and hated them.'
'Where you come from, is there no love of that place?'
'None. All my love is for the family that I go back to at the end of this journey.'
The chuckle was low, choking, beside him. 'Bravely said. What would be your future if you had not gone to the wedding at Landi Khotal?'
'I would never have known excitement, pride and hate,' Caleb said simply, and quietly. 'I would be dead, and without love. I would have nothing. I would be choked to death by boredom… That I am alive is because I believe in the love of the family – you and Fahd, even Tommy, and the love of the people who helped me to reach you, and the love of those who wait for us.'
'Great trust is put in you, and what you can achieve.'
Caleb said, 'I hope not to fail that trust.'
'Tell me, those who were your friends, back at your old home, if you have achieved what we ask of you, what will they say of you?'
'They would not understand – they live without living, without love.'
'If they were to spit on your name?'
'They are forgotten, they are dead. I would not care.'
He felt the thin, bony hand touch his thigh. It seemed to crawl up it, then found his fist on the reins. It was held tight, as in a vice. This was his friend, not the boys from school or the kids on the canal towpath or the men in the garage. This was his family, not his mother. He lifted his fist. He kissed Hosni's hand.
Chapter Fourteen
'It is wrong,' Caleb said. 'We have to change.'
He challenged the guide.
Through the dawn, the thought had formed in his mind, as they had started out again, and in the morning's first hours. When the sun was high, convinced that Rashid was wrong, he had pushed the exhausted Beautiful One forward, faster. They had been in a long line, the guide far in front and the boy far to the back. He had come to the guide's shoulder. The Beautiful One stumbled from the effort.
'It is wrong because we make too big a target. We have to change.'
He spoke in the language he had learned from the Arabs in the 055
Brigade – what he had learned when they laughed and when they shouted in anger and when they cried in fear. He had been with them in good times, and in the hell when the bombers had been over them.
'We have to believe that it fired, then was recalled because of the wind. The wind has gone. We have to believe it will return to search for us.'
He could not have counted how many days it was since the great storm and the girl, and since Tommy had gone down into the sand.
In all of those days it was the first time he had ridden at the head of the caravan, been beside the guide.
'If we are so spread out we make it easier for them, for the camera, to see one man or one camel, than to see us all.'
The desert had changed, the formations were now small hills of reddened sand. Some were twice his height as he rode the Beautiful One. Here, the wind had made perfect circles of the hills, and between them were the flat areas where sand had been scraped away.
But the formation of the caravan had concerned him. In all the days, uncounted, he had not thought to challenge the guide.
'We have to close up, be tight together. We have to make the smallest target possible. We have to make it hard for them.'
Now the guide turned. He had not spoken, had not used his rein to slow his camel. His face was a loose, uncut beard, thin lips that were dried and cracked, a strong, jutted nose, narrowed eyes that gleamed, and the deep cuts of the lines at his forehead. He was a man to fear. At his waist was the curved sheath and the dulled worn handle of his knife. Close to his hands, which held the camel reins, fastened to his saddle, was the rifle. The brightness shone in his eyes.
'If they go over us, they have five chances of seeing us, or six. We should make it one chance only.'
Caleb had spoken quietly, with patience. But his mind was made up, the decision was taken. He had led a section of the 055 Brigade.
The decision was as clear to him as when he had squatted in the cages of X-Ray and Delta and had promised himself that he would fight. The Chechen, with the dead eye behind the patch, had seen the quality of a leader – the interrogators, guards and escorts had not. If he had needed it, the proof of his ability to think on his feet was on his wrist: the plastic bracelet with the reference number: US8AF-000593DR He did not discuss, did not talk it through with the guide, did not ask the guide's opinion. He spoke it as if he were giving an Older, but did so with politeness. He would not argue, he would lead.
'You will say that if we are close and they find us that one missile lulls us all. I say if we are close the chance of them finding us is . mailer. I respect you as my brother, but please do it.'
Caleb showed his patience. He dropped back and for half an hour he rode alongside the leading bull camel. He could read the batch number of the manufacturer, the stencilled name of the factory from which it had come, and the designation of the weapon, in the language he had thought he had lost, on the wooden crate it carried.
In half an hour, the guide rose on his saddle and waved for Hosni to come forward, for his son too, for them to bring the camels close.
They were together. The heat burned them. The sun's light, reflected up from the sands, was cruel in their eyes. The shadows were tiny beneath the lumbering hoofs. Caleb did not look up. To search the skies would have brought a weakening of his determination. Each could touch the other. He was strong.
Bart spoke and Wroughton listened.
'The pilots are all right, that's what he's saying. The pilots are fine, very professional, but they're not trusted. They know it and resent it.
Of course they know it, and it hurts. Morale is poor throughout the Air Force, he says, but especially so among the pilots. He was told – one of them spilled it all out for him – that the lack of trust stems from their training. They go to California or Arizona, they're off to the land of the free where they get their introduction to what I think is called 'fast jets'. They live among Americans and that marks them down, in the regime's eyes, as potential for contamination. They are beyond the reach of the great theocratic state during the training, are exposed to influences. Good pilots, yes – but how reliable? Is this useful?'
Wroughton nodded, but Bart thought his attention was far away.
They were on familiar territory, on the low seats behind the palms in the corner of the hotel lobby. Normally Wroughton varied their meeting-place, did not create a pattern, and it had puzzled Bart when this location was named. It was the first time Bart had ever reported on the Air Force and he'd expected a keener reaction… it was the first time that Bart had seen Wroughton appear haggard – tired, drawn, his tie not over his collar button, and his shoes not immaculately polished.
'Useful, but I think we've heard all this before.'
'Have you now? Well, what about this? Armaments. I suppose it follows on from what I told you I'd had from the National Guard man – you remember, the chap training them in riot control, yes? If they do practice bomb runs, then they fly up north. Up north, they load the bombs, but they have fuel restrictions. They don't carry enough fuel
