Total War

Chapter Two

Corporal Ahmed Mahmude Shindi, his voice low, his speech clipped, rasped, "We cannot risk the radio. They may have all our communications channels monitored. You two," he whispered, gesturing to another corporal and a private, "must go back, back to the road. Follow it until you reach an outpost, and report what we have seen. Stop for nothing. Do whatever you must. But it is imperative that you get through."

The clouds which, throughout the day had been dark gray at the lower elevation, were now a black shroud through which the setting sun winked orange. Heavy snow, each flake the size of a large coin, began to fall.

Ahmed brushed the snow from his field glasses and hunched lower toward the barren wet ground as he edged up toward the rim of the gorge. A quick glance back over his left shoulder confirmed that his men were already setting out to alert military headquarters. Looking down into the dry rock bed several hundred yards beneath him, he saw Soviet troops half covered by the canvas shrouds of their stake trucks. And Soviet tanks, armored personnel carriers-all moving along the road below in a rapid single column. He refocused his binoculars back along the way from which the Soviets had come. He could see no end to the convoy.

The wind was gusting. The snow whirled around him like dust devils. Crawling back toward the small cave in the shelter of overhanging rocks under which his seven remaining men huddled, Ahmed's mind raced. Rourke who had taught him more than he had ever learned from anyone else about fighting and survival, had always repeated one admonition-to keep his head; regardless of the task, to do what you knew was the right thing in the right way.

"What," Ahmed asked himself, "is the right way of this?" Against the thousands of troops pouring along the road, down from Afghanistan, what could eight men hope to accomplish? He found himself shaking his head as, shivering with the cold and dampness now, he crawled under the lip of the low rock outcropping and into the small cave beside his men. "What do we do, Corporal?"

It hardly mattered to Ahmed which of his men had asked the question-they all had the question in their minds. He said nothing for a moment-Rourke had been like that. The American had never talked just to talk. He had said little, in fact. But what the American had said when he did speak was always worth remembering.

Slowly, Ahmed formulated the possible actions he could take. "There are thousands of Soviet troops coming down from the Khyber Pass-you have all seen this. We are eight men only. We cannot stop them. But if we withdraw and simply let them proceed, we will be failing our responsibilities as Pakistanis-as men. If we can do something that delays their invasion of our country by even so much as a single moment, we will have done something to help our people. We will have struck a blow. If we stay here, my friends, we will be safe, at least for the moment. If we fight-and we may achieve nothing-we will most surely die. I cannot make the decision for you. But I...I will fight."

Ahmed leaned back against the cold rock of the cave wall and took a cigarette from his tunic. His wife had been telling him that smoking so was bad for him, and he had promised her to try to stop. Now, he had passed a sentence of death on himself. The smoking could no longer hurt him. It almost made him laugh. As he sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, he took a photograph, plastic covered, from his wallet. It almost made him cry.

He stared at the face of his wife, the smile in the eyes of the baby girl she had given him less than a year before. He stared at the photo as if somehow by looking at the picture he was communicating his thoughts to them. "I love you," he shouted but in silence. Not caring what his men saw, he touched his lips to the photo, then replaced it in his wallet.

The cigarette, burnt down to a tiny, glowing butt, became the focus of his attention. Staring at it, he said to his men, his voice cold like his feet, his hands, his back, "Who goes with me to fight?"

Ahmed stared into their faces. One by one, each nodded or gestured with a hand. Already, some of them were looking to their weapons.

"Come then," he said.

"Wait!" It was the young private who had spoken when Ahmed had first returned to the cave. "We should pray before we die."

Ahmed nodded, and the young private began. Ahmed's eyes flickered from one face to the other as each made his own peace. And then the prayer was over. Saying nothing, Ahmed started from the cave. The others followed him back into the swirling snow, the darkness, the wind and the cold.

They moved along the rim of the gorge. In less than an hour of numbing temperature and chill wind, exhaustion and total silence, they cut the road and reached a low rock ledge. Following it down, toward the roadside, Ahmed guessed that they were ten minutes ahead of the lead Soviet truck and the motorcycles just in front of it.

As they reached the road surface, Ahmed smiled-there were no tracks in the snow. The snow-he looked above him toward the clouded sky, watching the swirling mass of white coming downwas a blessing from Allah. The Russians could not use their helicopters or fighter planes this night.

He stopped by the side of the road and called his men to a halt. "We must go down the road along the side here. In that way, they will not see our tracks. Come." In single file, at some times climbing back up into the rocks, they walked along the roadside, going for perhaps a mile, before they halted once more.

"You four," he said, gesturing with his numbing left hand, "will stay here. The rest of us will move further down, then cross the road and retrace our steps along the opposite side. When the Russians come, open fire on the motorcycles with your submachine guns. Each grenadier will open fire on the nearest truck. The grenadier with me will use his last rounds on the outcroppings of rock above us here. If we can block the road with a rock slide, we will delay the Russians even more. You are good men," Ahmed said finally, then turned and started along the edge of the road. With his three-man unit, he moved on several hundred yards, then hurriedly crossed the road. Doubling back took longer than he had planned; there was little ground between the road and the yawning chasms below. At times he and his men were forced to crawl on their hands and knees through the snow to avoid slipping and failing to their deaths.

They finally stopped, parallel to the other four men, and just opposite them on the protected side of the road. Ahmed checked his watch. As if to confirm that the watch was keeping accurate time, he heard the rumbling of the trucks. Ahmed directed his men to conceal themselves on the edge of the road, behind the slight protection of a small spit of rock jutting out over the void.

Except for the rumbling of the trucks, all else was silence. The snowfall heightened the noise of the trucks. Perhaps the convoy was not so near, he thought. Ahmed glanced over the rock behind which he hid. He could see the headlamps of the slow-moving motorcycles, snow swirling in the probing fingers of light as they wove through the darkness. Ahmed had ridden a motorcycle many times, and for an instant was touched with compassion for the Russians aboard them. The road was icy now, and uneven to begin with. Maneuvering the cycles on such a night, mere inches at times from a thousand-foot drop, would be constant terror.

Ahmed could see the first of the motorcycles clearly now. One man riding, one man in the sidecar, their clothes covered with snow. He watched as the lead cyclist momentarily freed his heavily gloved fingers from the handlebars of the machine and brushed at the goggles covering his eyes.

Ahmed, bracing the H-K submachine gun against his shoulder, screamed, "Open fire!"

With his first burst, he shot the man riding in the sidecar rather than the cyclist.

The H-K 69's were already belching their 40mm high-explosive charges. The first truck was less than a hundred yards away. As the grenade hit, the truck gushed into flame. Soviet troops, their uniforms afire, poured from the back of the vehicle. They fired at the flame-covered troops from each side of the road, gunning them down.

Another truck exploded a moment later, flames from the fireball licking out in the high wind, catching the tarp covering of the center truck. It, too, burst into flames.

Ahmed threw down his submachine gun, the weapon empty, his last magazine shot out. He snatched at the 9-mm pistol on his belt, shot out the first magazine, then reloaded and picked off more of the Russians as they scattered from their burning vehicles.

The ground below him shook, and Ahmed fell back, the pistol, only half empty, flying from his hands. Looking up-his right eye was blurred-he saw the Soviet tank pushing the burning trucks out of its way as it thundered down the road. He started shouting to the grenadier-but the man had already fired. The grenade bounced against the tank's armor and exploded. The Soviet giant was unaffected. "Russian armor," he muttered to himself. "The rocks"' he shouted to his grenadier.

As the grenadier started firing at the rock outcropping on the opposite side of the road, Ahmed reached into his left pocket, his frostbitten fingers touching the butt of the flare pistol which Rourke, had given him. Stiffly, he crammed a cartridge into the chamber and set it to fire.

The rocks across the road were already crumbling under the impact of the grenades. Huge boulders crashed down and blocked the road bed.

The ground shook again, and Ahmed's ears rang. He bounced skyward and came down hard against the road surface. He twisted his head to see with his good eye-the pain almost made him pass out. The grenadier was gone-nowhere to be seen. Ahmed started to cough; thoughts of his wife and daughter merged with the terror of death that was sweeping over him. He looked up. A Soviet soldier was standing above him, a submachine gun in his raw, bare hands.

Ahmed raised Rourke's flare pistol and pulled the trigger just as the first of the Soviet trooper's bullets cut through him.

Ahmed wanted to die with his eyes closed, but he stared sightlessly up at the failing snow.