both their heavy guns, and now they had no defense as the two remaining Hinds began to strafe the village. Ellis huddled inside his hut, wishing it were not made of mud. The strafing was a softening-up tactic: after a minute or two, as if at a signal, the Russians in the barley field rose from the ground and rushed the bridge.
This is it, Ellis thought; this is the end, one way or another.
The guerrillas in the village fired on the charging troops, but they were inhibited by the air cover and few Russians fell. Almost all the Russians were on their feet now, eighty or ninety men, firing blindly across the river as they ran. They were yelling enthusiastically, encouraged by the thinness of the defense. The guerrillas' shooting became a little more accurate as the Russians reached the bridge, and several more fell, but not enough to halt the charge. Seconds later the first of them had crossed the river and were diving for cover among the houses of the village.
There were about sixty men on or near the bridge when Ellis pulled the handle of the firing device.
The ancient stonework of the bridge blew up like a volcano.
Ellis had laid his charges to kill, not for a neat demolition, and the explosion sprayed lethal chunks of masonry like a burst from a giant machine gun, taking out all the men on the bridge and many still in the barley field. Ellis ducked back into his hut as rubble rained on the village. When it stopped he looked out again.
Where the bridge had been, there was just a low pile of stones and bodies in a grisly melange. Part of the mosque and two village houses had also collapsed. And the Russians were in full retreat.
As he watched, the twenty or thirty men still left alive scrambled into the open doors of the Hips. Ellis did not blame them. If they stayed in the barley field, with no cover, they would be wiped out slowly by the guerrillas in good positions in the village; and if they tried to cross the river they would be picked off in the water like fish in a barrel.
Seconds later, the three surviving Hips took off from the field to join the two Hinds in the air, and then, without a parting shot, the aircraft soared away over the clifftop and disappeared.
As the beat of their rotors faded, he heard another noise. After a moment he realized that it was the sound of men cheering. We won, he thought. Hell, we won. And he started cheering, too.
CHAPTER 13
"AND WHERE have all the guerrillas gone?" Jane asked.
"They scattered," Ellis replied. "This is Masud's technique. He melts away into the hills before the Russians can catch their breath. They may come back with reinforcements—they could even be at Darg now—but they will find nobody to fight. The guerrillas have gone, all but these few."
There were seven wounded men in Jane's clinic. None of them would die. Twelve more had been treated for minor wounds and sent on their way. Only two men had died in the battle, but by a heartbreaking stroke of bad luck one of them was Yussuf. Zahara would be in mourning again—and again it was because of Jean-Pierre.
Jane felt depressed, despite Ellis's euphoria. I must stop brooding, she thought. Jean-Pierre has gone, and he isn't coming back, and there's no point in grieving. I should think positively. I should take an interest in other people's lives.
"What about your conference?" she asked Ellis. "If all the guerrillas have gone away ..."
"They all agreed," Ellis said. "They were so euphoric, after the success of the ambush, that they were ready to say yes to anything. In a way the ambush proved what some of them had doubted: that Masud is a brilliant leader and that by uniting under him they can achieve great victories. It also established my macho credentials, which helped."
"So you've succeeded."
"Yes. I even have a treaty, signed by all the rebel leaders and witnessed by the mullah."
"You must be proud." She reached out and squeezed his arm, then withdrew her hand quickly. She was so glad he was here to keep her from being alone that she felt guilty about having been angry with him for such a long time. But she was afraid she might accidentally give him the mistaken impression that she still cared for him in the old way, which would be awkward.
She turned away from him and looked around the cave. The bandages and syringes were in their boxes and the drugs were in her bag. The wounded guerrillas were comfortable on rugs or blankets. They would stay in the cave all night: it was too difficult to move them all down the hill. They had water and a little bread, and two or three of them were well enough to get up and make tea. Mousa, the one-handed son of Mohammed, was squatting in the mouth of the cave, playing a mysterious game in the dust with the knife his father had given him: he would stay with the wounded men, and in the unlikely event that one of them should need medical attention during the night, the boy would run down the hill and fetch Jane.
Everything was in order. She wished them good night, patted Mousa on the head and went outside. Ellis followed. Jane felt a hint of cold in the evening breeze. It was the first sign of the end of summer. She looked up at the distant mountaintops of the Hindu Kush, from where the winter would come. The snowy peaks were pink with the reflection of the setting sun. This was a beautiful country: that was too easy to forget, especially on busy days. I'm glad I've seen it, she thought, even though I can't wait to go home.
She walked down the hill with Ellis at her side. She glanced at him now and again. The sunset made his face appear bronzed and craggy. She realized that he probably had not slept much the night before. "You look tired," she said.
"It's a long time since I was in a real war," he replied. "Peace makes you soft."
He was very matter-of-fact about it. At least he did not relish the slaughter, as the Afghan men did. He had told her the bare fact that he had blown up the bridge at Darg, but one of the wounded guerrillas had given her the details, explaining how the timing of the explosion had turned the tide of the battle and graphically describing the carnage.
Down in the village of Banda, there was an air of celebration. Men and women stood talking animatedly in groups, instead of retiring to their courtyards. The children were playing noisy war games, ambushing imaginary Russians in imitation of their older brothers. Somewhere a man was singing to the beat of a drum. The thought of spending the evening alone suddenly seemed unbearably dreary to Jane, and on impulse she said to Ellis: "Come and have tea with me—if you don't mind my feeding Chantal."
"I'd like that," he said.
The baby was crying as they entered the house, and as always Jane's body responded: one of her breasts sprang a sudden leak. She said hurriedly: "Sit down, and Fara will bring you some tea,'' then she darted into the other room before Ellis could see the embarrassing stain on her shirt.
She undid her buttons quickly and picked up the baby. There was the usual moment of blind panic as Chantal sought the nipple, then she began to suck, painfully hard at first and then more gently. Jane felt awkward about going back into the other room. Don't be silly, she told herself; you asked him, and he said it was okay, and in any case you spent practically every night in his bed at one time. ... All the same, she felt herself flush slightly as she walked through the door.
Ellis was looking at Jean-Pierre's maps. "This was the cleverest thing," he said. "He knew all the routes because Mohammed always used his maps." He looked up at her, saw her expression and said hastily: "But let's not talk about that. What will you do now?"
She sat on the cushion with her back against the wall, her favorite position for nursing. Ellis did not seem embarrassed by her exposed breast, and she began to feel more comfortable. "I have to wait," she said. "As soon as the route to Pakistan is open and the convoys begin again, I'll go home. What about you?"
"The same. My work here is over. The agreement will have to be supervised, of course, but the Agency has people in Pakistan who can do that."
Fara brought the tea. Jane wondered what Ellis's next job would be: plotting a coup in Nicaragua, or blackmailing a Soviet diplomat in Washington, or perhaps assassinating an African Communist? She had questioned him, when they were lovers, about going to Vietnam, and he had told her that everybody had expected him to dodge the draft, but he was a contrary son of a bitch and so he did me opposite. She was not sure she believed that, but even if it was true it did not explain why he had remained in this violent line of work even after he got out of the army. "So what will you do when you get home?" she asked. "Go back to devising cute ways of killing
