Kara Kush

  Adam slapped him on the back. ‘Well done!’

  ‘Now,’ said Miskiny, ‘perhaps we should maintain the fiction for a little longer.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I can radio my general that we’re pinned down but holding the ruins, and perhaps find out what his plans are. The general did not tell me anything at the briefing.’

  ‘Great. Let’s do some suitable firing and then you report.’

  A great barrage went up in the air as the guerrillas ‘engaged’ Miskiny’s men. Then Miskiny radioed his headquarters.

  General Zagarov himself came on.

  ‘What’s the situation, Miskiny?’

  ‘Pinned down but holding the ruins, Comrade General.’

  ‘Good man! Can you enfilade the enemy?’

  ‘No, sir. But we can hold on here for a time, to link up with your attack or synchronize with it. Our location is map reference BB/765/4588, point K.’

  ‘Good. Now, Miskiny, hear me. We will attack from the north, with massed tanks, along the flat, at 1430 hours. That’s three hours away. We are bringing up massed multiple rocket-launchers to decimate the enemy before the tanks move in. Three green flares mean “rocket attack”. Two red flares mean “end rocket attack”. On the latter signal, go in and kill the bandits. I don’t want them grenading our tanks.’

  ‘Understood, gospodin General.’

  ‘Good luck, Miskiny, Commander out.’

  Within the military zone of the airport, eight immense Hind helicopters, unknown to the guerrillas, had been made ready for action. Shindand, near Herat, was too far for effective intervention, as the commanding general there was now adamant. Military command, at Bagram, near Kabul, had, in any case, radioed that the fixed-wing craft at Shindand were not to be risked further, so the second wave never got off the ground. After the first panic at Kandahar Airport, Bagram, by threatening court martial, had got the ground support force there to realize that salvation lay in more helicopter strikes, in spite of the Pashtuns’ success in shooting the Mi-24s down.

  After all, they had the men, the aircraft, the munitions.

  Foolishly, as it turned out, Kandahar Airport Helicopter Command, after loading the machine-guns and fixing the air-to-surface missiles, decided to test the engines. Great clouds of sand and dust rose in the afternoon heat, as the down draft whirled the deposit from the recent sandstorm around the landing pads.

  Pendergood came running to Adam’s bunker.

  ‘Eagle, they’re going to attack, long before 1430 – helicopters!’

  Adam ran outside. Beyond the barbed wire and sandbag emplacements where the Russian defenders crouched, he could see the shapes of the great birds. They were within rifle range: but there was nothing that a carbine could do to the Mi-24s. Neither could the AA guns: the ground was far too open to set them up in safety.

  Then the wind started again. He shielded his eyes and looked to the south. ‘Painda-Gul, if the wind really gets up, and keeps blowing for a bit, they’ll not be able to take off.’

  ‘Right.’ Pendergood screwed up his eyes. ‘But I don’t think we’re due for a strong wind yet awhile. We’ll have to think of something else. I’ll go and see the Kandaharis.’

  The wind was rising slightly, but Adam thought that Pendergood was probably right. Once those helicopters got into the air, they would be able to strafe the guerrillas almost at leisure. Whether there was any liaison with General Zagarov, he didn’t know; but even on their own the helicopters were a murderous threat.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Engine testing must be complete. Then, as he watched, one after another, the great machines rose into the air, the four-barrelled machine-guns in the undernose turrets, and the thirty-two rockets under the stubby wings, clearly visible. The Russians had got all eight of them off the ground.

  There was a limit to the degree of dispersal possible for the several thousand guerrillas tightly encircling the airport’s perimeter. Taking advantage of the ground cover – such as it was – many of them were packed behind rocks and dunes. Others had dug in as best they could, behind shrubs and the roots of leafless trees. The vehicles stood unprotected, inviting attack.

  The wind, though still rising, had little effect on the three thousand horsepower of the mighty double Isotov turbo-shafts as each craft soared, half careened, and came in for the kill.

  Suddenly, all around the perimeter of the airport, men in floppy Kandahari robes stood upright, threw things into the air, tugged and pulled, staggered and fell, then stood up again. They looked like clowns in some ludicrous ballet. For a moment, Adam thought that some of the Afghans had gone mad.

  Then he saw what they were doing. Each man had thrown into the air, and guided upwards, a badbadak, a huge, crude kite. As the flimsy constructs soared, the men paid out twine from huge balls, and anchored the kites at three or four thousand feet, forming a line, like hawks hovering in the sky, facing the mass of rotor-craft making their first pass over the guerrilla lines.

  Then each kite moved, as its owner manoeuvred it towards one of the Mi-24s, which were edging closer. Pendergood and Callil came running up to Adam.

  The three commanders watched as the helicopters, swaying and clattering, rode the air straight to the kites. Their pilots knew that even if the strings became entangled with the rotors, all would be well. Helicopters of this giant size had even flown into flocks of the great grey geese which migrated south from Russia, many times, without being harmed.

  The two Pashtuns, however, clutched Adam’s shoulders in excitement as they waited for the moment of impact.

  Three seconds later, all eight of the Hinds, with enough ammunition on board to destroy the rebel force several times over, were either down or crippled, as the deadly bunches of grenades tied to the kites exploded.

  Three helicopters crashed in flames, killing the crews outright and wounding a dozen guerrillas when they hit the ground. Two more went out of control, and vanished in the direction of Kandahar city, to plough into the desert two miles to the south. The remaining three, one on fire, one with a crippled main rotor, the last with a huge gash torn into its side, struggled back to land within the airport’s military zone.

  Adam was stupefied by the success of the secret weapon.

  ‘The Kandaharis had been making these kites for weeks,’ Pendergood explained to The Eagle when the excitement was over. ‘They’d never tried them out with explosives, but perhaps you’d forgotten that the Afghans are among the most skilled kite-flyers in the world.’

  Of course. Adam remembered that there were great kite championships held throughout the land every year. This time, instead of attaching knives to the kites, to cut the strings of their opponents, the Kandaharis had used the powerful Russian RKG grenades, designed to kill a tank on impact.

  ‘Whatever made them think of bringing the kites along to the attack on the airport?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Well, they were preparing them for the helicopters which would descend on Kandahar; and they didn’t have anything else in the way of weapons, so they thought they might come in handy, when they were called to the airport.’

  Adam looked at his watch. It was 12.40 hours.

  The tank onslaught was only two hours away.

  2 Kandahar Airport

  1200–1300 hours

  The Eagle held a battle-council with his commanders. General Zagarov’s forces, mainly the defenders of Arghandab and other hastily assembled units, comprised three regiments of tanks, totalling some three hundred M-62s of the 40th Army, which had tried to get into Kandahar the previous year and had since been re-equipped after heavy losses. There were now no serviceable helicopter gunships left at the airport at Kandahar, but, on previous occasions, the Russians had shown that they were capable of deploying, from the base near Ghazni, as many as 240 of the great Hinds to attack at a time.

  The multiple rocket-launchers, which could deliver four and a half tons of high-explosive shells in thirty seconds, were a real example of overkill. Alt
hough they were being used against a relatively small guerrilla army, these weapons were more suitable for a major war. Either the Russians were testing some of their most advanced weapons here in Afghanistan, or else they had found that the Afghan Resistance was so tough that only the most powerful punishment had any real effect.

  ‘Finally, there were the Frogfoot ground-support aircraft. These were so new, and so secret, that Western intelligence knew next to nothing about them. They were due to come into service in the USSR in 1983 or 1984, but by 1982 they had actually been used, in squadron strength both at Herat and against Kandahar. This Sukhoi-25 had strafed the guerrillas, raking them with gunfire and dropping thousand-pound bombs containing a myriad of steel needles, the bomb-casings themselves fragmenting to lacerate and kill. It had been reported that there were SU-25s at a secret new airfield within striking distance of Kandahar Airport.

  Adam, thanks to the Russian general’s message to Miskiny, had been able to locate the Soviet start-points, where their infantry, tanks and rockets were massing, only three miles north of the guerrilla positions.

  His scouts had also found eight immense rocket-launchers, the deadly ‘Sobbing Sisters’, direct descendants of the fearsome Stalin Organs of World War II, drawn up behind the tanks and infantry. They had a range of just under ten miles, and they could, each firing forty rounds in salvo or ripple, so saturate the rebel positions that virtually nothing would be left.

  The rockets were obviously the first target. The Eagle decided to select teams, made up of Russian and Afghan soldiers who had seen or worked with these weapons, to take care of them.

  It seemed practically a suicide mission. Each team would have to work its way past the massed Soviet army, past the guards on the launchers, deal with the crews, and destroy the launchers, on their massive Ural-375 trucks, with nothing more than hand-grenades.

  When the first two hundred men were lined up and the problem had been explained to them, Adam said, ‘We need volunteers to take out the eight 122-millimetre BM-21 launchers. Eight parties with three grenade-throwers and three grenade-carriers to destroy each launcher. Forty-eight men. Volunteers one pace forward.’

  Every man stepped forward.

  ‘Captain,’ said Adam to the Russian Miskiny, ‘select the men and handle it, will you? You’ll be under Captain Tarik.’

  ‘Right, komondon. Sergeants Yakubov, Abbasov, Zakaria. Close in on me …’

  That was that.

  ‘Now for the tanks. Three hundred, in close formation means we need at least a thousand men to deal with them, three or four to a tank.

  ‘Anti-aircraft guns, lowered to tank-killing trajectory, and Dashka heavy machine-guns in the centre: aim for tracks and other soft spots. They may have vulnerable ammunition boxes or fuel tanks at the sides. Grenades have a range of twenty-two yards and will penetrate six inches of armour. Always throw yourself flat to escape blast after throwing: they have impact fuses.

  ‘Finally, the infantry. This is hand-to-hand work. There may be no time to reload, so use the folded bayonets on the Kalashnikovs and, if you like, knives. Those who have no weapons must accompany a fighter so that if he falls or kills a Russian, the weapon which is then available can be seized and used.’

  The battle groups dispersed to their tasks.

  It was now only ninety minutes to the time fixed for the Russian attack. Adam thought of the men creeping towards the rocket-launchers, could see them edging forward, attacking …If they did not succeed, the whole partisan force would be wiped out.

  In the bunker, where a communications man sat drinking tea and smoking a captured Russian ‘Java’ cigarette, Adam found a newcomer.

  He was a Russian helicopter pilot, Viktor Stepanov, whose craft had crashed in the river to the south of the airport. He was short and stubby, with an intelligent face and a cut over his left eye. When Adam came in and the radio-man stood up, the pilot rose to his feet and saluted.

  ‘Stepanov, Viktor, Captain, prisoner-of-war, reporting, Commander,’ he said.

  ‘Why aren’t you tied up?’ Adam asked.

  ‘I have given my word of honour not to attempt escape.’

  ‘All right, sit down, Captain.’

  Stepanov sat, for a time, looking at the hissing butane gas lamp. Then he said, ‘Komandir: may I speak?’

  ‘Yes, speak.’

  ‘I had no idea, until today, that you Afghans were people, too!’

  Adam looked at him, thought of the million massacred civilians, and could not find anything to say.

  The pilot’s face began to twitch, and he passed his hand across his eyes. ‘Afganski tovarish: How long will it be before the blood of the innocent is off our Russian hands?’

  He bowed his head, and began to sob.

  Adam closed his eyes, and willed victory for the attack-group against the rocket batteries.

  ‘There will be plenty more blood shed before tonight, Captain,’ he said.

  1301–1430 hours

  The rockets were there all right. The guerrillas, crawling on their bellies, passed around an outcrop of rocks in the sandy valley where the huge cross-country trucks were drawn up, with the launchers mounted on top. Each battery was manned by four men, with a guard, bayonet fixed, standing in front of it in his long greatcoat, though the temperature was 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Captain Tarik, of the former Royal Afghan Army, signalled to his grenade teams to withdraw for a conference. He could see that there was no hope of attacking the rockets across the thirty yards of open ground in front of them without being wiped out as they approached.

  He looked at his fifty men. Twenty of them were wearing Afghan or Russian uniforms. A ruse was the only hope. That was the only way. He quoted them the Pashtu proverb ‘Presence of danger tests presence of mind’, and explained his plan.

  Leaving thirty of his force under Miskiny, to provide covering fire, Tarik marched the remainder of them, carrying their satchels of grenades, Kalashnikovs slung casually across their shoulders, straight up to the mobile command post where a Russian colonel was sitting, talking into a microphone.

  Motioning to his motley band to stand at ease, Tarik approached the colonel and saluted.

  ‘Captain Ahmed Husain, Afghan Democratic Army, and special scratch unit, reporting, sir!’

  The colonel turned his beefy head towards him and said, uncertainly, ‘Well, man, report!’

  ‘Captain Husain reports, with the colonel’s permission, the special guard force against marauders is present and in order, sir!’

  ‘What’s all this about, Captain? Where are your orders?’

  ‘Verbal orders, sir! Passed down from Artillery Command HQ. Special unit to guard the rockets against bandits, reported in the locality. Your single guard on each battery is not considered sufficient, sir!’

  ‘All right, Captain. But why are your men in such a disgusting condition, covered in dust, their uniforms incomplete? They are a disgrace!’

  ‘Just out of the battle-line forward, sir! Beg to report we have been in action with no time to refurbish!’

  ‘Oh, very well. But get yourselves smartened up.’

  The gunners were standing by their launchers, and the guards, a few steps behind them, showed no suspicion.

  Captain Tarik saluted smartly, performed a perfect about-turn, and ordered his men, two to each rocket, to position themselves.

  The colonel had pulled down the canvas flap on his personnel-carrier command post, and was lying back with his eyes closed. He had just checked in to General Zagarov’s communications centre to report that all was well. It was half an hour to barrage time, and he would be roused in fifteen minutes.

  Tarik observed that one gunner in each battery was an NCO, and the rest, including the guards, were privates. That meant that he, notionally at least, out-ranked them all.

  Time for a further bluff.

  ‘Sergeant Zakaria, tell the eight guards that they are relieved. The Special Unit will take over security from now. You men
may disperse to the rest area.’

  Good. The delighted guards, long overcoats flapping, ran to the shelter of a tent, a hundred yards off, to snatch a smoke.

  Tarik looked at his watch. Twenty-seven minutes. After five minutes he gave the signal, and his ‘guards’ threw themselves to the ground.

  First the Muhjahidin riddled the Russian rocket gunners with AK fire at close range. Every man went down, without any chance of unslinging his own rifle. Then, crouching ready to lie flat, the men threw bomb after bomb – the terrible tank-killers – into the cabs of the trucks, under the swivel-mounts of the rocket-carriers, and at their sighting mechanisms.

  As the trucks collapsed and the swivels crumpled, with a roar and a scream of tortured metal, the eight batteries each slewed around, and the horrific power of the rockets themselves was unleashed.

  Thirty-two thousand pounds of high-explosive crashed and howled. Some of the rockets burst singly, on the ground; some entire batteries went up, together, torn from their wildly careering mounts, swooshed through the air like lopsided, demonic catherine wheels. Three hundred and twenty rockets, utterly wasted.

  In the five minutes between the rebels’ appearance and the moment they struck, there had been no rest for the Russian colonel. His radio screeched, and General Zagarov’s voice came through.

  ‘Rocketry! It is now doubly important that you fulfil your task to perfection, pulverizing the bandits before the tanks and infantry go in. There has been a serious problem. A large column of reinforcements, tanks and infantry from Ghazni has been ambushed by irregulars at Moqur, two hundred and forty kilometres north-east of here, on the Kabul highway. The convoy is destroyed, with the loss of many men and tanks. They were due here by now, as our fall-back reserve.’