was afraid and vulnerable. Four armoured vehicles — two missile launchers and two heavy cannon mounted on the BMPs, two machine guns on the scout cars, sixteen to twenty Kalashnikov AKMs inside the four vehicles, perhaps four or five handguns, grenades, perhaps one or two machine guns like the PK or the RPK…
The catalogue meant nothing. It could not prevent those Russian conscripts from being afraid every moment they crouched behind their armour, jogging and bucking back to Kabul. Thirty Pathans with old rifles and stolen Russian arms and American or British or Czech or Russian grenades posed a far more potent threat. The terrain and the fanaticism both belonged to them.
The leading scout car began to slow, well down the road from the small, deliberate landslide. At that moment, the officer in command of the scout car would be operating on assumptions. In that situation, and with his nerves, he would assume that the landslide was deliberate and that it was intended as part of an ambush. Perhaps less than a minute to decide, to report over the radio—?
The scout car turned awkwardly on the highway and headed back towards the two BMPs. The trailing scout car also turned, making for the bend in the road. Hyde imagined that the patrol had already summoned a helicopter from Kabul, less than thirty miles west of their position; perhaps ten or fifteen minutes flying time for a MiL-24 gunship.
The two BMPs began to turn very slowly, shunting back and forth on their caterpillar tracks, the stationary scout car near them like a sheepdog. Nothing else appeared to move on or near the highway. Hyde heard a distant rumble that might have been thunder or the echoes of a shot. Presumably, the second landslide. His hand involuntarily jumped with nerves as it rested on the chilly plastic stock of his stolen Kalashnikov. The remains of a sticker — he hadn't noticed it before, but it was lighter now — was still affixed to the gun. It was yellow, had been round, and displayed the torn remains of a smiling cartoon face. The Cyrillic command to smile had been partially torn away. The image disturbed Hyde, adding to the spurious but intense nerves he experienced as a spectator of the almost innocent scene below.
A figure moving, crawling in the roadside ditch—? He could not be certain. The second scout car, the one that had headed back down the highway, now seemed to flee back into sight, a spray of slush rising at the side of the road as it cornered at speed. Hyde's hand covered the torn, smiling sticker and he leaned slightly forward, drawn to the opening scene of the drama which was as inevitable as a previously witnessed tragedy. He saw from the corner of his eye that Miandad's body had adopted the same posture. He had no doubts. He's been told the ending of this play.
A figure, yes—
A brown-robed Pathan slipped on all fours onto the grey ribbon of the road, rolled something, then ducked back into the drainage ditch. Hyde held his breath. He was captive and captivated. Four seconds, then the grenade exploded beneath the scout car. Flame billowed around its flanks and wheels, but died almost at once. The scout car appeared undamaged, apart from scorch-marks on its olive-drab paintwork. Hyde lowered his binoculars in disappointment. Miandad nudged him, and pointed.
Dandelion clocks. He focused his glasses. Dandelion clocks. They floated, orderly, delicate, innocent, down from the lowest rocks towards the vehicles on the road. One BMP had turned, the other straddled the highway while undoubted and furious radio contact continued between all four vehicles. The trap was dawning upon them. The grenade had been some kind of signal—? Perhaps just a piece of bravado.
The dandelion clocks—
Suddenly, he knew what they were. Soviet RKG anti-tank grenades, hand-thrown and capable of penetrating five inches of armour. The BMP armour was 14mm thick, that of the scout cars 10mm. The white patches which had reminded him of dandelion clocks were the small stabilising drogue parachutes which ensured that after the grenade was thrown, its shaped charge struck nose-first.
One of the BMPs launched a Sagger missile with a bright, spilling flame. Rock and snow and dust flew away from the suddenly obscured hillside above the road; above the Pathans, too. Boulders began to roll towards the lower slopes. The echoes of the noise deafened Hyde.
The first dandelion clock struck, then the second. One detonated on the surface of the road, the other on the trailing scout car's back. The armour erupted like a boil, then split as if the vehicle had been unzipped. Something staggered from the ruin, ablaze, and fell to a whisper of rifle fire. Hyde could not hear screaming at his safe height. Other grenades struck one of the BMPs. Flame, noise, the tearing of armour. Hyde had never realised the hideousness of the noise of splitting armour-plating. It seemed to cry out on behalf of the occupants of the troop carrier.
Another Sagger was launched by the undamaged BMP. The cannon atop the first troop carrier also opened fire. Rock and hillside boiled and shattered. The narrow gorge filled with smoke and raging noise. The surface of the grey river was pattered into distress by falling rock and metal. Uniformed men running — others lying still, sprawled down the sides of vehicles or by the caterpillar tracks or on the slush and grey tar of the highway. Hyde could hear, though he could no longer distinguish, the firing of both 73mm cannons from the BMPs. Flame lit the smoke and dust cloud from within — flickering flames from the shooting, steadier flame from one of the scout cars, burning.
The roar of the hillside being torn by another missile, the chatter of a machine gun. Then the noise of only one of the two cannons and a newer, brighter source of light within the cloud of smoke and dust.
Miandad nudged him, leaning his head towards him. 'It is time for us to make a move!' he yelled. 'Otherwise, there will be no one left alive to question!'
Hyde blanched as he looked down into the boiling, dense cloud garishly lit by flame. He could not, for a moment, shake off the distance between himself and the action below. Then he nodded. Together, they scrambled down the loose-surfaced slope, entering the cloud of smoke and dust. Hyde wound his scarf around his face, coughing violently, his eyes watering. He could see Miandad only as a shadow beside him.
'Where?' he shouted, inhaling a mouthful of acrid smoke. He could smell burning petrol, cordite, and flesh. He clambered out of the ditch — he could hear the screaming now — blundered against a Pathan tribesman, and then he was on the road, crunching over the rubble of metal and rock.
'This way!' Miandad grabbed his arm and pulled him to his left. Hyde followed the Pakistani. A gout of flame shot up somewhere ahead of them and he felt its heat against his skin. Other Pathans slipped past them, a uniform blundered near, but it was alight and Hyde ignored it. Only minutes, and he began to think it was already too late. 'The other side of the road, yes?' Miandad shouted against his ear. Hyde nodded.
The leading scout car was wrecked and on its side. A body spilled out of its forward trapdoor like a leakage of fuel. Miandad bent by the meaningless form, then looked up. Hyde could see his eyes gleaming, their whites intense.
'What—?' he yelled.
'Some got out — some must have got out!'
'Where?'
A burst of machine-gun fire from close to them whined off the overturned body of the scout car.
'There!' Miandad yelled.
A deep, rumbling explosion, followed by the clatter of hot fragments and slivers of metal on the road around them. One piece sliced and burned Hyde's sheepskin jacket, another scorched his hand. One of the BMPs had exploded. There couldn't be many left now. A turbanned Pathan staggered against the scout car and fell on top of Miandad. The Pakistani almost fastidiously pushed the body away. In a moment of silence, Hyde heard someone screaming like a rabbit. Then the machine gun opened up again, raking the road away to their left. Evidently, the officer who commanded it had decided that anyone still likely to come out of the maelstrom of smoke and dust would be an enemy. And if not, better to take no chances just for the sake of one or two raw conscripts.
'Come!'
Miandad moved away to the right and Hyde followed him in an awkward crouch, moving as swiftly as he could. The edge of the road appeared, grey changing to earthen brown sand and filthy slush. Then they were in the wet ditch, the snow soaking through Hyde's baggy trousers and sleeves.
To his left, Hyde could see — in the moment when he heard its renewed chatter — the flickering flame at the muzzle of the light machine gun. There was little other firing now. Sufficient lack of concussive noise to make movement audible; screaming audible, too.
Dying men everywhere—
Close.
