Pendergood, now known as Commander Painda-Gul, had sent a radio man, disguised as a farmer, into Kandahar, to keep him informed. Since the Russians were planning not only to capture the city but to activate the big power stations at Kajakai and Arghandab to provide electricity for the immense military base planned for the area, Pendergood and Callil – now Commander Khalil – were going to blow up the lot.
They had consulted civil engineers in Pakistan, who gave them little encouragement. No, it was next to impossible to destroy modern dams by guerrilla action. They were too massive. And dams of the kind near Kandahar were situated between mountain gorges, which supported the reinforced concrete. The engineers suggested that they try something easier. Even Professor Mahmud, the Afghan Minister of Water and Power, kidnapped by the guerrillas, knew nothing about any weaknesses in the dams.
Pendergood sent for a copy of the famous Swiss Army guide to guerrilla operations: Major H. von Dach Bern’s Total Resistance. It was full of fascinating material of great value: but it did not encourage the blowing up of dams. Then he spoke to mining engineers and finally to past and current members of Pakistan’s military, sappers who should have had the necessary knowledge. Quite properly, these men refused to discuss such matters with ‘unauthorized persons’. There wasn’t anything useful in encyclopaedias, either. Callil suggested going to America to find the people who had built the dam. Pendergood overruled him. ‘Cal, can you see someone who built things like that, triumphs of engineering, helping to destroy them? Did you know that, during the last war, one of the British pioneers of radar resisted combating German radar, because he had such a pride in the phenomenon itself?’
They became short-tempered, even with each other, as they went about their business of preparing the arming of the great Pashtun army that was Pendergood’s dream.
Sitting in a Peshawar café one day, the two Pashtun leaders broke into English when referring to the technicalities of the operation. Maryam, sitting with them, whom they never consulted about anything, began to get the drift. She was a Dari speaker: her Pashtu was still weak.
‘You want to blow up Arghandab and Kajakai: is that it?’
‘That’s right.’ Pendergood stretched, reluctantly including her in the conversation. ‘But those fool engineers say it can’t be done. You have to know the design, to find the weak points. You also have to know its geology. There’s no hope of finding a geologist and a set of plans of the two dams, either here or even in Kabul. I’m sure.’
‘You never know,’ said Maryam, mysteriously. There was no harm in letting them wait; after all, they had made her wait all those months before discussing things with her.
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Maryam,’ said Callil, automatically. He was annoyed: the more especially because, with his technical knowledge, Pendergood had imagined that he could work out any problem. In fact, he only knew about light engineering. Blowing up dams was something they hadn’t taught at his institute in Australia.
‘Silly, am I?’ Maryam teased him. ‘Not as silly as you imagine. I could do it, you know, as easily as winking.’
Pendergood sat bolt upright, beginning to think that she did know something, after all. He glared at her. ‘All right, then. Tell us.’
‘I’ll tell you, as long as you realize that I’m just as good, just as useful, as either of you. No more male chauvinism.’
They looked at one another.
‘Yes,’ said Pendergood, at last. ‘You’re just as good. I never said you weren’t.’
‘You thought it, though; promise not to think it again?’
‘Promise.’
‘Callil?’
‘Promise, Maryam.’
The two men leant forward.
‘Now,’ said Maryam, savouring her triumph in advance, ‘I am an architect – if you haven’t forgotten – worked in Kabul, trained in Kabul.’
‘Yes.’ Pendergood had forgotten.
‘Can you imagine any architect, in a country which has two of the most important dams in the world, designed to provide power and water for millions of people, to restore fertility to the soil for the first time since the thirteenth century, not being anxious to know everything about such dams, from the technical point of view?’
Callil said, ‘I’ve heard that Kariba, in Africa, is the really big one. It features in all the reference books …’
‘Kariba!’ Maryam skidded the heel of her hand across her forehead. ‘Just listen to this and I’ll give you no more statistics. Kariba Dam has a hundred and thirty thousand acre-feet of water; Arghandab alone has three hundred and fifty thousand. Arghandab cost over a hundred and twenty million dollars, when dollars were really dollars. Call it at least 350 million today. The area which it is due to irrigate was once the most fertile, and one of the largest, gardens in the world. It could be again. And that’s not to mention the enormous kilowattage from thirteen hydropower plants due to be fed into a national grid.’
‘Whew!’ Callil wiped his face, and not only because the temperature was 112 degrees in the shade. ‘We never heard about all that in Australia.’
‘Or in England,’ said Pendergood. ‘But you do realize, don’t you, that we’ve been planning to destroy Afghanistan’s greatest asset, which could give life to the barren land?’
‘Life? With a million dead civilians in under four years?’ Callil exploded. ‘The Russians would use the power to destroy the rest of the people, and the Helmand river valley to feed their own. Apart from the military base they’re already building. There’s only a small generator working there now. We could wreck that, and black out Kandahar, but the people won’t mind …’
‘Yes, all right. Let’s get back to Maryam.’ He turned to her. ‘Okay, Maryam Jan. You are the expert here. What’s the information, and where is it?’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘For seven years of my life I studied, ate, slept, almost worshipped, Kajakai and Arghandab. I have every detail, including strengths and weaknesses, all here.’
She tapped her forehead.
‘And can the dams be blown up, either of them?’ Callil wanted to know.
‘Either or both. All you need is explosives and access. I can show you, Commanders.’ She emphasized the last word. ‘And, I think, in future you’d better call me “Commander”, too.’
That conversation in Peshawar seemed a world away now as, four hundred miles nearer their objective, the three commanders, one of them a woman, sat in the desert twilight, waiting for news. If none came by tonight, they would strike deep into Afghan national territory and establish a battle base within easy reach of the two great dams. They would need all their men to capture and hold the dams before they blew them up.
It was cool in the desert twilight, and the waiting made for reflection, memories. Maryam’s thoughts went back to the scenes at the refugee camps in Pakistan, now far behind them. Soon, perhaps, she would meet, in battle, the men who, in the name of an idealistic creed, had put the people there. She remembered the babies horribly burnt by napalm, jellied petrol, the sightless women, the men without arms and legs. All without land, homes, clothes, food, sympathy …
Once she, like many other young people, had been attracted to the idealism of that same philosophy, whose leaders had ordained this; had read its books, had learnt its songs. Now she had seen its actions.
As she watched the lines of hunted, staggering people, some even crawling on hands and knees, going into the miserable camps, the words of that rousing anthem, the Internationale, ran through her head.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation …
Yes, they were starving, all right. Ragged, miserable, stumbling and lying where they fell. Many had been eating grass.
Arise, ye wretched of the earth …
It described them, perfectly. When she looked into their eyes, she saw no hope of redress for the crimes which had been committed on them. How did the next line go?
For justice thunders condemnation … Justice!
It was
only then that she finally stopped feeling sorry for herself, swore to help bring succour, even if it meant her own death. Aloud, she shouted the final, triumphant phrase:
‘A better world’s in birth!’
Pendergood and Callil looked at her, nervously.
‘It’s very hot on the frontier in this season, especially before three in the afternoon,’ Pendergood said. ‘I’ll take you where we can get a long, cool drink and a rest, away from this awful place.’
Maryam was suddenly jolted back to here and now. The battle. The two radio men, Daud and Zakaria from the communications truck, came running, shouting.
‘Commanders, it’s starting, we’d better alert the men!’
At the beat of the rallying drum, the men mustered before their clan chiefs. With long ringlets, hawk-faced, broad sword-belts, desert sandals on their feet, each was the epitome of Pashtun valour. Men of the Suleman mountains, thirsting for battle. Young men in their twenties, typical of the Sons of Qais, of King David of the Bani-Israil.
Pendergood and Callil listened to Zakaria as Maryam got out the large-scale ordnance maps.
‘The radioman signals that all telephones in Kandahar have gone dead,’ Daud gasped. ‘This always happens when an attack on the city is imminent. Also, he learnt that the communications system for the allied Afghan-Soviet Armies in the south is now centralized at Kandahar International Airport. He suggests we knock it out. Kandahar Radio, on 864 kilohertz, has just gone off the air.’ He and Zakaria were still out of breath.
Pendergood looked at the map. ‘The airport is eighteen miles from the city, on a tarmac road. It’s now seven-forty p.m. If we strike north-west from here, we should get there in two hours at the latest. Let’s try to cripple their communications, destroy as many planes as possible, and then help fight off the attack on the city. Agreed?’ The others nodded. The Arghandab and Kajakai dams would have to wait.
At that moment, called by the siren of the radio truck, the chiefs of the Pashtun battle groups lined up in front of the commanders. There were ten of them, each the chief or a son of a chief of the tribe to which his men belonged. Every ghund of six hundred men was composed of twenty smaller units, fighting teams, and those into small, dastas, handfuls. Collectively or otherwise, these men were something to be reckoned with.
‘Tigers!’ said Pendergood, ‘the plan is this: we drive across the country, following the hard sand tracks of the nomads, keeping off the Kandahar-Quetta arterial road, which is usually patrolled. Make sure that the ghunds are dispersed so that they don’t get bogged down in sand dunes, stopped by minefields or decimated by air attack. Light no fires, show no lights. No smoking. So far the enemy hasn’t seen us. Let’s keep it like that.’
‘When do we attack, Painda-Gul?’ asked Talib Khan, a six-foot-six, barrel-chested ancient, the chief of the Isa-Khel contingent.
Pendergood raised his finger in warning. ‘You’ll be told when. No attack without a command, orange flag by day, green flare by night. We are going for the airport, this side of Kandahar.’
He went on briefing the chiefs, describing the roles of the various contingents. Half an hour later the lashkar set off, without lights, heading into the territory of the Afghan Democratic Republic, known to the Pashtuns as Dar al-Harb, the Abode of War.
2 The Russians are coming
The Eagle’s force
North of Kandahar City
2100 hours
The Russian attack came, as Adam had thought it would, from the north. Kandahar lies just above the point where the Arghandab and Tarnak rivers meet, and south of it is the Registan desert, the Land of Sand. To come that way would mean the Soviets using bridging equipment where the Arghandab forms a U-bend with its sister river. To the north, however, is the spur road branching from the Kabul highway, along which the tanks and troops could pour more easily, as they had done so many times before.
The Eagle’s band, now numbering some three hundred fighters, had already moved across country from the Kajakai area towards Kandahar when Azambai started to pick up greatly increased radio traffic on his stolen Russian receiver. As the trucks raced eastwards he took off his earphones and told Adam, sitting beside him in the Afghan Army transport, ‘They’re shaping up for a night raid on Kandahar.’
‘Any details?’ Adam shouted, as he bounced between the seat and the roof.
‘I am listening.’ He went back to the receiver. Then: ‘Yes. They always attacked in daylight in the past. Now they think that a night assault, using infra-red searchlights and masses of tanks, will do the job. Of course they have an advantage there, as we’re blind at night, though there are problems, I hear, with the infra-red.’
Adam shrugged. ‘Can’t be helped. Anything about where and how soon, and their strength?’
‘Strength we can’t say. But the tanks will rendezvous with the armour’s despatcher a mile north of the city, at Shorab, at eleven p.m. local time – that’s in just under two hours. Wait.’ He listened again. ‘Yes. About opposition. They do not expect any until they reach the Kabul gate, at the city boundary. That means they don’t know about us or any other guerrillas in the vicinity.’
‘Right. Let’s keep going then. There’s a gully I know, half a mile north of the assembly-point. Let’s head for it and let them have it with all we’ve got.’
Adam shouted to the sergeant who was driving to go faster, while Zelikov started to sharpen his knife for the third time that day. ‘Zelikov, if you keep that thing in your boot like that, it’ll cut your toes one of these days!’
‘Da, preents. I don’t mind.’ Although he was no hero, the tiny Russian was game.
They were about three miles from their target. In twenty minutes they had left the trucks and were climbing the rocky outcrop, which commanded the road along which the Russians were due to pass. Exactly an hour after they had moved into position, the clanking of the T-62 main battle tanks could be heard distinctly. Soon they could pick up the thump of the seven-hundred-horsepower diesels, and then the crunching of asphalt as the thirty-seven-ton monsters chewed up the surface of the road.
3
Pendergood’s Army
approaching the Airport
18 kms from Kandahar
2140 hours
Helicopter patrols were out, clattering busily around Kandahar International Airport as the Pashtun lashkar approached. It had made record time but with the loss of two vehicles bogged down in the sand. These were the only ones whose drivers had disobeyed Pendergood’s orders to deflate their tyres slightly to increase traction where the sand was soft. If the Russians were using infra-red spotting, it was ineffective. They had obviously not seen the guerrillas approach.
There was no sign of Russian ground patrols anywhere, the Pashtun scouts reported: but Pendergood and Callil had been reluctant to use the excellent surface of one of Asia’s best highways, the metalled road from Pakistan. Surely it would have a Russian checkpoint on it, somewhere?
They were twenty-five miles into the Afghan national territory of Yaghistan, Land of the Turbulent, when a boy, no more than twelve years old, with Pashtun shoulder-length ringlets, hopped onto the running board of Callil’s truck.
‘If you’re going for the airport, why not take the highway? It leads straight to the bridge, and you’ve got to cross the river anyway. There’s no Rouss anywhere on it.’
‘How do you know, O great man of wisdom?’ Callil called out.
‘Smell. You can smell them for three or four kilometres. Smoke, tabak, dirt – and sharab, drink. Anyway, I’m the king of this whole area.’
The smell of Russia. People had reported it for centuries.
‘King, eh? And who are your subjects?’
The lad brandished his pan-pipes and gestured into the darkness.
‘Goats. We have every kind of goat, and I am their king. Go on, you may use my road. It’s the Kinar-Wayt Road.’
‘The what?’ Maryam asked.
‘The Kinar-Wayt. The Kinar-Wayt Company, of
Danwar, Colorado. They built it.’
‘Oh …’ She translated for the others. ‘He means the Ken R. White Company, a well-known construction firm, of Denver.’
‘Yes. Kinar-Wayt. I got it from them. One of their chiefs said I could have it, when they left. Are you afraid? Maybe you only look like soldiers?’
He jumped down onto the sand, and disappeared, as if he gave directions to attacking armies every day of the week.
Callil signalled Pendergood and they struck north along the blessedly smooth broad tarmac, and their vehicles rolled across the Arghastan River bridge unchallenged. The lashkar stopped.
The airport itself, now only a mile and a half away, was brilliantly lit. Pendergood, Callil and Maryam focused their night-glasses on the control tower, its tall steel pylons bright with lights to warn approaching aircraft. Three groups of guerrillas were busily setting up the M-1937 mortars, Soviet-made ones, bought on the international market, spoils sold by the winners of an earlier war. A useful weapon, weighing only 121 pounds, the M-1937 could hurl a shell packed with over seven pounds of high-explosive for a distance of nearly two miles. It was also extremely accurate.
Hamza Khan was in charge of the battery, and loved it. He had taught Pendergood the necessary commands. In return he claimed the job of fire-master.
‘Mortars in place.’ Pendergood could almost feel Hamza’s grin in the darkness. He had served in the Iranian army as a mercenary during the long Oman counter-insurgency campaign. He had plenty of experience with captured Russian guns, which the Oman rebels had obtained from the USSR via South Yemen.
‘How many mortars operational, Hamza?’
‘Five assembled, set up and awaiting your orders,’ said the Pashtun. His voice betrayed that he was itching for action.
‘What’s the range, from here to the control tower and radio masts?’
‘Rangefinders show tower lights to be 2,371 metres distant. Maximum effective range of mortars is 3,069 metres. Targets well within accurate range.’