‘Let’s go,’ he said in Arabic to his guide. The boy tried to rise but could not. Then Martin saw the smudge of blood on the side of his thigh. Without a word he put down the reusable Blowpipe launch tube, went for his Bergen and brought it back.
He used his K-Bar knife to slit the trouser leg of the shalwar kameez. The hole was neat and small but it looked deep. If it came from one of the cannon shells, then it was only a fragment of casing, or maybe a splinter of rock, but he did not know how near the femoral artery it might be. He had trained at Hereford Accident and Emergency ward and his first-aid knowledge was good; but the side of an Afghan mountain with the Russians coming was no place for complex surgery.
‘Are we going to die, Angleez?’ asked the boy.
‘Inshallah, not today, Izmat Khan. Not today,’ he said. He faced a bad quandary. He needed his Bergen and everything in it. He could either carry the Bergen or the boy, but not both.
‘Do you know this mountain?’ he asked as he rummaged for shell dressings.
‘Of course,’ said the Afghan.
‘Then I must come back with another guide. You must tell him where to come. I will bury the bag and the rockets.’
He opened a flat steel box and took out a hypodermic syringe. The white-faced boy watched him.
So be it, thought Izmat Khan. If the infidel wishes to torture me, let him. I will utter no sound.
The Angleez pushed the needle into his thigh. Izmat Khan made no sound. Seconds later, as the morphine took effect, the agony in his thigh began to diminish. Encouraged, he tried to rise. The Englishman had produced a small, foldable trenching tool and was digging a furrow in the shale among the rocks. When he had done he covered his Bergen and the two rocket tubes with stones until nothing could be seen. But he had memorized the shape of the cairn. If he could only be brought back to this mountainside he could recover all his kit.
The boy protested that he could walk, but Martin simply hoisted him over one shoulder and began to march. Being all skin and bone, muscle and sinew, the Afghan weighed no more than the Bergen at about a hundred pounds. Still, heading upwards into ever thinner air and against gravity was not an option. Martin followed a course sideways across the scree and slowly downwards to the valley. It turned out to be a wise choice.
Downed Soviet aircraft always attracted Pashtun eager to strip the wreck for whatever might be of use or value. The plume of smoke had not yet been spotted by the Soviets, and Simonov’s last transmission had been a final scream on which no one could get a bearing. But the smoke had attracted a small party of Muj from another valley. They saw each other a thousand feet above the valley floor.
Izmat Khan explained what had happened. The mountain men broke into delighted grins and started slapping the SAS man on the back. He insisted his guide needed help and not just a bowl of tea in some chai-khana in the hills. He needed transportation and a surgical hospital. One of the Muj knew a man with a mule, only two valleys away. He went to get him. It took until nightfall. Martin administered a second shot of morphine.
With a fresh guide and Izmat Khan on a mule at last they marched through the night, just three of them, until in the dawn they came to the southern side of the Spin Ghar and the guide stopped. He pointed ahead.
‘Jaji,’ he said. ‘Arabs.’
He also wanted his mule back. Martin carried the boy the last two miles. Jaji was a complex of five hundred caves and the so-called Afghan–Arabs had been working on them for three years, broadening, deepening, excavating, and equipping them into a major guerrilla base. Though Martin did not know it, inside the complex were barracks, a mosque, a library of religious texts, kitchens, stores and a fully equipped surgical hospital.
As he approached Martin was intercepted by the outer ring of guards. It was clear what he was doing; he had a wounded man on his back. The guards discussed among themselves what to do with the pair and Martin recognized the Arabic of North Africa. They were interrupted by the arrival of a senior man who spoke like a Saudi. Martin understood everything but thought it unwise to utter a word. With sign language he indicated his friend needed emergency surgery. The Saudi nodded, beckoned and led the way.
Izmat Khan was operated on within an hour. A vicious fragment of cannon casing was extracted from the leg.
Martin waited until the lad woke up. He squatted, local-style, in the shadows at the corner of the ward and no one took him for anything other than a Pashtun mountain man who had brought in his friend.
An hour later two men entered the ward. One was very tall, youthful, bearded. He wore a camouflage combat jacket over Arab robes and a white headdress. The other was short, tubby, also no more than mid-thirties, with a button nose and round glasses perched on the end of it. He wore a surgical smock. After examining two of their own number the pair came to the Afghan. The tall man spoke in Saudi Arabic.
‘And how is our young Afghan fighter feeling?’
‘Inshallah, I am much better, Sheikh.’ Izmat spoke back in Arabic and gave the older man a title of reverence. The tall man was pleased. He smiled.
‘Ah, you speak Arabic, and still so young.’
‘I was seven years in a madrassah at Peshawar. I returned last year to fight.’
‘And whom do you fight for, my son?’
‘I fight for Afghanistan,’ said the boy. Something like a cloud passed across the features of the Saudi. The Afghan realized he might not have said what was wanted.
‘And I also fight for Allah, Sheikh,’ he added.
The cloud cleared and the gentle smile came back. The Saudi leaned forward and patted the youth on the shoulder.
‘The day will come when Afghanistan will no longer have need of you, but the all-merciful Allah will always have need of a warrior like you. Now, how is our young friend’s
wound healing?’ He addressed the question to the Pickwickian doctor.