Kara Kush

  The third man, evidently the Commandant, simply looked as if he had been stunned. He was not wearing a belt and had no gun, and there was no other weapon in sight.

  Inside the command post there was complete silence. The Eagle saw, on the wall beside the Russians, a loudspeaker, a large map of the locality, and a very big poster. It was a hugely enlarged photograph of a fierce-looking bearded and beturbaned tribesman, a dagger gripped in his teeth, with lips drawn back in a snarl. The bright red caption screamed in Russian: Dushman, bandit.

  Zelikov, without any order from Adam, wrenched down a long loop of electric flex which connected several large desk lamps with their wall-sockets, and bound the officers’ wrists and ankles, after making them sit in a neat row on the floor. He then bowed ceremoniously to The Eagle and saluted. ‘All in order, Komandir preents!’

  On the table was a microphone, linked to a field radio, evidently a short-range one for giving orders to the machine-gunners below. Adam saw the Commandant’s eyes turn towards it, but when the Russian saw that The Eagle had noticed, he dropped his gaze and stared directly back at Adam.

  The Eagle assessed the Russian; a tall man, erect, with white hair and very blue eyes in a Slavic face, he had a vaguely unhealthy appearance and was probably not over-intelligent.

  The Russian said, in passable Dari: ‘Who are you, what do you want?’

  ‘We are from the Afghan Forces of Resistance, Battle-Group Kalantut. We have you surrounded. You are prisoners of war. If you obey you will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions of War.’

  The man nearly choked. ‘Shoot me, bandit! I don’t obey orders from scum!’

  ‘Are you the Commandant here?’

  ‘Yes, and you are a filthy swine. Geneva Conventions indeed! We never signed them anyway.’

  ‘Now look, Major …’

  ‘Polkovnik, Colonel, son of an animal!’

  ‘Colonel then. I am now the commander here. You are under my orders. I know why you don’t sign humanitarian treaties. It is because you want to massacre women and children, like those in the village of Kalantut down the road.’

  A vaguely uncomfortable look passed over the Russian’s face. ‘The men are lonely here. They don’t get much mail, the food and water are bad, there are no women, there is no leave. There is insubordination, I admit it. That sort of thing happens in all armies in time of war. I am punishing the offenders tomorrow.’ The Colonel was suddenly on the defensive.

  The Eagle said, ‘Colonel, you will call up your gunners and give the order to cease fire.’

  ‘You know I cannot do that. I would be arrested and shot.’

  ‘You have already been arrested and you will certainly be shot if you do not do as I say, but before I shoot you I’ll have you taken to pieces, tika-tika. You know what that means, don’t you? First a finger-joint, then another, and another, then we move up …’

  The Colonel said nothing. The other two Russians had gone white. They knew about the torture; the Soviets had introduced it to Afghanistan.

  ‘My friend Zelikov here,’ continued The Eagle, ‘will shortly cut off your right index finger. Not too far down, so that we can apply a tourniquet: we don’t want you bleeding to death too soon …’

  All expression had drained from the Colonel’s face. At that moment the radio crackled and a staccato Russian voice spoke from the loudspeaker on the wall. The Eagle looked enquiringly at Zelikov.

  ‘Radio want to know, “Continue fire or not, Officer”.’ Zelikov grinned, evidently pleased with his command of Dari.

  ‘So, Colonel,’ Adam spoke slowly, deliberately, ‘you will order a total cease-fire, and all soldiers are to withdraw to their quarters without clearing up, leaving their guns and other arms where they are. Do it now. If you do not obey …’

  Zelikov had drawn a long knife, and was whetting the edge on the sole of his felt boot. He gestured towards the wall-poster, put the knife between his teeth, and glared menacingly at his former commanding officer in a close imitation of the Afghan dushman.

  The radio repeated its message – not urgently, just as if it were a routine call. The note of enquiry, however, was quite clear.

  Nobody moved. Then Zelikov went up to one of the officers. Pulling back his head by the hair, with a gesture of mock artistry he cut a shallow groove in the form of a crescent across his throat, following the jaw-line from ear to ear. Blood started to ooze slowly, and the cut looked quite dramatic. The victim closed his eyes as if he were going to faint. Zelikov held the man’s tunic open at the neck, displaying his work like a barber proud of a fine shave. The knife, in Zelikov’s hand, was only an inch or two from the officer’s jugular vein. In his right hand was the pistol that The Eagle had given him, the safety catch visibly off.

  ‘Give me the microphone, Commander.’ The Colonel was now a beaten man.

  The Eagle handed it to him. The outcome of this whole mad enterprise hung on the next sixty seconds. ‘Remember,’ Adam said, ‘if you try to trick us, all three of you will certainly be dead before any help can get to you.’

  ‘I’ll not trick you.’ The Colonel’s voice was barely audible. He took a small microphone on its long lead and pressed the transmitting button. What he said sounded to The Eagle like a standard phrase, repeated twice. A voice acknowledged the message and the radio went dead.

  Zelikov was grinning even more widely. ‘Fire Command to gunners. All fire stop, leave guns, go to bed’ was his version of the message. ‘And guns say, “Humbly obey, Officer”.’

  ‘Thank you, Zelikov.’ The Eagle took the microphone back.

  Zelikov saluted. ‘At your orders, Komandir preents.’

  A moment later all firing had ceased. Peering through an observation slit The Eagle could see the men below leaving their posts as ordered, slouching towards their barrack huts in a haze of gunsmoke. The radio squawked again.

  ‘My second-in-command, on Fire Control,’ said the Colonel, speaking very slowly as if the life was going out of him.

  The Eagle looked at him, staring him down with contempt. ‘Commander,’ added the Colonel.

  ‘Tell him to come here, at once.’ Adam handed the microphone once more to the Russian.

  Two minutes later, hearing sounds on the ladder, Zelikov opened the door, concealing himself behind it as he did so. A very worried-looking major stepped into the cabin and straightaway felt Zelikov’s knife in his ribs. He took the situation in quickly enough. After one glance round the room he unbuckled his gun-belt and handed it to the Russian private. Red-faced, short, bald and middle-aged with huge pointed ears, he looked weary, his face streaked with black machine-gun lubricant, his uniform dusty. Evidently an officer who believed in taking part in the action in spite of his age. Perhaps he had been trying to impress his colonel. Wasn’t it strange how unsoldierly a beaten man could look?

  ‘You speak Dari?’ he asked The Eagle.

  ‘Yes.’

  As Zelikov was securing his hands and feet the major let out a long breath and then started to pant. ‘I was afraid that your forces would mortar us. Those exposed stacks of shells, mines, ammunition, right in the centre of the compound …’ He gave the impression of a man more concerned with practical matters than military etiquette – or even personal indignity. At a glance he had accepted The Eagle on the same terms. ‘Frankly, I was scared.’

  ‘Scared?’ Adam said. ‘We were told you were Socialist Heroes. Don’t say it’s all propaganda? Maybe you should use smelling salts before you go out and kill any more women and children. Sons of Mother Russia! When you people decay, you’ll not even make decent manure! You became heroes in the past by fighting amateurs or frozen armies, that’s all!’

  The major was shaking badly now. He nodded his head, slowly and then fast, but said nothing.

  Zelikov dumped the major out of the chair he was sitting on with exaggerated glee.

  ‘You’ll never get away, Commander.’ The Russian Colonel looked at The Eagle with protruding eyes realizin
g, even as he spoke, the implication of what he had said. If The Eagle and his men did not escape; he was a dead man himself.

  ‘That’s what the villains always say in Hollywood movies, Colonel, but you ought to know that the hero always gets away. But of course you are not allowed to see capitalist films.’ He turned to Zelikov. ‘How far is the gateway, the main gate, guardhouse, from the bottom of the ladder of this place?’

  ‘From the bottom of steps, maybe twenty metres.’

  ‘Right. I’m going to take a walk now. You, Zelikov, stay here with the prisoners. If I am not back in fifteen minutes, or if anybody fires, you shoot the Colonel quick, and kill him. You understand?’

  ‘I understand. Understand and I want to kill, I want to do it!’ He looked, The Eagle thought, like a weasel.

  ‘You may want to, but only if and when … you have your orders, understand?’

  ‘Understand, gospodin.’

  The Eagle took the major’s pistol and checked it. It was loaded. He slipped the safety catch off and jabbed the muzzle in the man’s ribs.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Major Tarov, Igor.’

  ‘Right, Tarov. I am Kara Kush, Commander of the partisan Battle-Group Kalantut. You will go in front of me and do what I say. If you do not obey you will be shot, dead, with no further warning. I’ll do it, however, as painfully as I can. In the kidneys.’

  ‘I’ll do as you say.’ The man’s bald head was beaded with sweat, and The Eagle could smell the stench of fear. He was, perhaps, forty years old. But he was now stooped, like a very old man. Adam bent down and untied the major’s ankles and after a moment, thinking of the trip down the ladder, his wrists as well.

  ‘Right, let’s go.’

  They moved down the metal ladder, along the now empty compound towards the gate. As they neared it the single guard, reading the major’s rank from his epaulettes, snapped to attention. Then he saw The Eagle and took in, as if in slow motion, his Afghan shirt and baggy trousers. His gaze moved from The Eagle to the major, then to the gun stuck in his back. His eyes stayed fixed on the pistol, as if waiting for the shot.

  ‘Tell him to open the gate and to keep silent.’

  This was the major’s chance to become a hero of the Soviet Union. But Tarov was already stammering. It took him what seemed like an age to get the words out, but he gave the order.

  The guard, catching some of the officer’s fear, rushed to obey, clutching at the iron bar on his side of the barbed wire as he tried to release the bolt. Eventually the gate swung open.

  The Eagle took charge of the sentry’s weapons and motioned both him and the major into the guardhouse, making them put their hands on their heads.

  Then he fired his Verey pistol in the air. Hardly had the red light died in the sky, with the imprint of the curving star shell still on his retina, than The Eagle saw his Paghman horde, their bugles dangling, come running up; sixty men in sandals, shirts and baggy trousers, their turbans at rakish angles and not a weapon among them. ‘Not a single casualty on our side,’ reported their leader, Zafir Khan. They stood around in groups, chuckling and slapping one another on the back.

  The Eagle counted quickly. Thirty machine-guns were positioned round the perimeter, intended for firing outwards. They could be swung round for firing into the camp. He ordered Zafir Khan to allocate a gunner and loader to each and to take over the guns without delay. When the RPKs had been turned 180 degrees they faced inwards and their field of fire covered almost the entire compound of the camp.

  In ten minutes, called by the loudspeakers, a mass of Russian soldiers poured from their huts and were lined up on the parade-ground, hands on heads.

  Zelikov, seeing the surrender from the vantage of the command post, brought his three captives to join the bewildered Russians below. He had to untie them to get them down the ladder but felt no danger. The Russians were beaten men even before they saw the scene below. He herded them gleefully into the defeated ranks.

  Adam was trying to assess the overall position. These Russians, a large proportion of them officers and NCOs, could, once they recovered from their shock, be a considerable problem even if they were unarmed.

  He looked round and saw that the mercurial Zelikov had anticipated that difficulty. He had found a drum of electric cable and was unrolling it across the parade-ground. Zafir Khan had understood what Zelikov was doing. He had found a pair of metal clippers and was following behind his new-found collaborator, cutting the flex into four-foot lengths.

  One by one, the Russians, covered from all angles by their own machine-guns, stepped forward to have their wrists tied behind their backs with the flex. The Eagle, hitherto a good deal less euphoric than his band of buglers, began to feel that he had, against all the odds, got the situation in hand.

  The Eagle was about to give the order to move the prisoners off when, to his left, his eye caught a movement beside the water-tower. Suddenly a score or more Russian soldiers poured screaming from a barrack hut, some throwing grenades, some firing Kalashnikovs from the hip.

  Several of the Muhjahidin went down and most of the trumpeter-machine-gunners had to hold fire, for fear of killing their own men. But the two guerrilla gunners nearest to the Russians had a safer angle of fire and opened up, the rattle of their guns mingling with the whoops of the attacking Russians.

  At that short range, some of the Russians were cut in two by the heavy bullets, but the others came on. Adam found Qasim at his elbow holding a shallow box of Russian RKG-3M stick grenades, anti-tank weapons, capable of penetrating six and a half inches of armour-plating. Far too powerful for hand-to-hand fighting: but there was nothing else to use. The Eagle and Qasim snatched up the little bombs by their stubby wooden handles and hurled them, with all their strength, straight at the oncoming Russians, now only some twenty yards away. With a dreadful roar and a hellish burst of flame, the two grenades exploded.

  Their half-kilo high-explosive charges gouged a great double hole from the ground, and the shockwave blew the two guerrillas to the ground. When they raised their heads, most of the attackers had vanished, blown to fragments which now began to spatter from the sky, together with bits of belt buckle, rags from uniforms, and metal from shattered guns.

  A moment’s silence; then the few remaining attackers came on again, skirting the grenade holes, and screaming Ura Pobeyda! In the glare of the floodlights they seemed to number under a dozen, and the gunners, ripping into them with their lead and tracer bullets, stopped five. The others came on again – apparently out of ammunition but resolved on a bayonet charge.

  The Eagle ran towards the first of them. Attack was his only option if he was to live. Ducking sideways as he reached him, he dealt the Russian the most effective karate blow he knew: low behind the right shoulder and to the left. The man dropped, killed outright. In almost the same movement, Adam turned and snatched up the Russian’s gun. Now another man was upon him, bayonet at the ready. But Adam had a longer reach. Kicking the Kalashnikov aside, he slashed with his own, using it like a scythe, aiming straight for the Russian’s neck. The man’s face, contorted with hate and tension, slackened as he felt the blade cut to the bone and muscle. But he was not finished yet. Blood spurting from his mouth, he lunged again, ripping The Eagle’s water-bottle and ammunition-pouch clean in half. But the lunge had thrown him off-balance and he spun, trying to regain his centre of gravity. Adam put the bayonet deep into his side as he fell.

  The Eagle raised his leg, stiff and parallel to the ground, planted it in the Russian’s side, against the hipbone, and tugged. The bayonet came free. He had never imagined he could kill like this.

  As he looked around, Adam saw that Qasim was fending off the three remaining soldiers. He had somehow disarmed one of them, who was now circling round him, waiting for a chance to pull him down. The other two, evidently out of ammunition, were stabbing and thrusting, trying to get through his guard, in a strange parody of ballet and fencing movements.

  Adam went
for the unarmed man. Taking the forepart of his gun in a double-handed grip, he swung the heavy wooden stock hard against the man’s face, like a cricketer damping down the ball. The impact jarred his arm, right up to the shoulder and the Russian dropped, unconscious.

  The Eagle swivelled his gun and was only just in time to parry a thrust from the second Russian, who had leapt in, bayonet in line. Adam saw death a split second away, realized he was off-balance and had no response. But Qasim, almost contemptuously throwing off his last adversary, clubbed Adam’s attacker from behind with his rifle butt and then turned, swivelling his rifle and driving his bayonet through the leather jacket of the last Russian. The revolt was over.

  Time was now pressing. The Eagle planned to plunder the supply depot of all the useful arms and supplies which could be packed into the thirteen trucks they had found parked behind the ablutions block.

  What he couldn’t take, or didn’t want, he would blow up. His own dead and wounded were loaded first and set off on one of the trucks. The prisoners, still hand-tied, went next, packed into three trucks. Feverishly, Adam’s sixty-odd men laboured to load the looted Russian supplies into the remaining lorries; Qasim, Zafir Khan and The Eagle making snap decisions as to what was most valuable and what could be left. When the trucks were loaded there was room for only a handful of the Muhajid Battle-Group Kalantut. The rest were ordered to disperse and find their way on foot to the Caves.

  Explosive charges with timers were placed inside all the buildings and beside the stockpiles of arms. With a last look round, The Eagle gave a mock salute to the Field Armoury of the Afghan Eighth Infantry and piled into the last truck with Khizrhayat, Tirandaz, Qasim and Zafir Khan. When they were halfway home the night was suddenly lit with a firestorm: the shockwave from the arms dump exploding was so enormous that it almost sent his lorry lurching off the road.