In Honour Bound by Gerald Seymour

Author:Gerald Seymour [Seymour, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-04-18T23:00:00+00:00

'No woman would want the things I know of. I know how to break a man's neck with the edge of my hand. I know how to lie in bracken and watch the back door of a farmhouse for three days without moving, in my own country. I know how to walk twenty miles with sixty pounds on my back and then take an assault course. I know how to put down mortar fire so that six have gone before the first lands. I know how to administer morphine and fit a saline drip when a man's in shock with his guts in the mud. I have nothing to give a woman, not any woman that I have met.'

'Did you try?'

'Go to sleep, boy.'

'What do we do in the morning?'

'I tell you, and then you don't talk any more.'

'I won't talk any more.'

Barney rolled on his back. He smelt the stench of his own body, he felt the dirt in his feet. He was canopied by the stars. His voice was a whisper.

'They will sweep the valley tomorrow. They must come back to the valley because they have been challenged. They have to find and remove the missile. They will try to fly in a formation that will flush us out. They will accept that one of their helicopters will always be vulnerable, but they will reckon I won't fire on the low flying bird and give my position. One helicopter will fly high, above the roof of the valley, probably to the rear of all the others. That helicopter, the high fly bird, is mine for tomorrow. That helicopter cannot be seen by those that fly in front and below. In the morning we have to find a hiding place for the mule and for you, and somewhere that I can reach quickly after I have fired. The helicopters will come from the south because that is the direction of Jalalabad. I want to be a mile or so further south than the mule we've left. I want to be behind the highest flying helicopter when they find the mule . . . That's the plan.'

Barney heard the rhythmic snores of the boy.

Even in the gully, the cold of the night wind tugged at his blanket, ate at his bones.

In the first grey sheen of morning the mujahidin knelt in prayer.

A ragged gathering of old and young, educated and illiterate, from the cities and from the villages. They knelt on their hands and elbows and squashed their foreheads into the dirt in the centre of their camp. They were in two rows, straight lines, and in front of each man was his weapon, close to his hand even when he was in obeisance to far away Mecca. Alone, out in front of his men, was Ahmad Khan with the loaded Kalashnikov beside his thighs. He led the men militarily and spiritually. He called now in the high pitched singing voice of prayer to the God of Islam. He called for victory, he cried for revenge.

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