The Afghan

Prologue

Prologue

Saturday, January 2, 1988

Khost-Gardez Pass, southeastern Afghanistan

Javed Hasrat heard them before he saw them. The muffled and distant clattering of the Russian helicopter gunship engines echoed across the valley. The sound bounced off the semi-vertical boulder-strewn slopes rising more than three hundred meters on either side of the river that twisted along like a white ribbon to his left.

Then came the distant, pulsing rat-at-tat-tat of machine gun fire, accompanied by the whoosh of rockets. A few seconds later there was an explosion and from out of sight, behind an outcrop that jutted out toward the river and the dirt road next to it, rose a cloud of gray smoke.

“Bastards, they’ve hit Wazrar,” Javed said in his native Pashto, his voice suddenly cracked and reedy. He tugged at his long black beard and stared east, but from his current vantage point, he was unable to see the village and its collection of mud-brown houses, where he knew his family and others would now be cowered, probably under tables or anything else that might offer protection. “Baz, get it ready, in case they head this way.”

Baz, one of the three men standing next to Javed, shook his head. “They won’t. They’ll head back to Gardez.”

“Get it ready anyway,” Javed said. He knew that Baz was probably right. The Russians were currently in a phase of hit-and-run activity that involved them swooping in, destroying as much of a village as they could from the air, then exiting swiftly to avoid casualties from mujahideen fire.

The attacks had been going on for weeks, ever since the Soviets launched Operation Magistral to gain control of the pass, in the southern part of the Hindu Kush mountain range. It was a vital supply artery that connected Kabul to the north with Khost, to the southeast, where there was a large Russian military base. Beyond that, the pass was a link to Pakistan and India.

Javed felt proud that the mujahideen had controlled the pass since the Soviet invasion of 1979. But during December, the Soviet 40th Army, coming in from Gardez in the north, had used thousands of troops and sheer brute force to regain control of it and finally opened up the route to Khost.

Now the Russians were launching periodic forays, both airborne and on the ground, against mujahideen bases and villages to ensure that the pass remained open and they retained control.

Baz, wiry and with forearms that seemed to be hewn from lengths of steel rope, bent and picked up the one-and-a-half-meter matte green missile that lay next to him in the snow, then handed it to Javed.

Javed raised the Stinger so it rested on his right shoulder, its long tube stretched out behind him. He applied his eye to the chunky sight mounted on the front and swung the weapon toward the right side of the outcrop of rock, behind which the attack on the village had taken place.

Really, the arrival of the Stingers, supplied seemingly out of nowhere by the Americans, had been a gift from Allah in their battle against the Russians, he thought.

Then the four men waited.

Baz was wrong. Twenty seconds later three wasp-like Mil Mi-24 attack helicopters—Hinds, as the Americans called them—flying in a V formation, rounded the rock outcrop. Their outlines, with twin rocket launchers hanging beneath their stub wings, were clearly visible against the snow-covered backdrop of the stark mountainside behind them.

Javed stared at the helicopters. Rather than heading back to base in Gardez, the choppers were flying in the opposite direction—which based on previous experience, could mean only one thing: they were intending to take out the next village along the valley too.

“I’m going to have them,” Javed said.

The helicopters moved steadily toward them, now more clearly visible against a clear blue sky. They tracked up the river and the tortuously winding rough dirt road of the Khost-Gardez Pass that ran alongside it.

Javed began the now well-grooved process of preparing his beloved Stinger for firing. He bent down and picked up the small, round battery coolant unit—a thermal battery that provided power for the infrared tracking device and argon gas to keep it cool. He screwed it into the base of the gripstock, then returned the weapon to its position on his shoulder.

He placed his right index finger on the trigger, his left hand underneath the front of the FIM-92 Stinger. Behind him, one of the other men, Sandjar Hassani, checked that the weapon was aligned correctly.

Javed lined up the leading Mi-24 in his sight, lifted the device and activated it against the blue sky by pressing the safety and actuator switch, then realigned it with the chopper. There was an audible tone as the Stinger’s infrared mechanism locked onto its target, and Javed pressed the uncage button at the front of his weapon, which allowed it to automatically track the helicopter.

Then, using the sight, he elevated the tube a little to compensate for the effect of gravity and slowly pulled back the trigger. After another couple of seconds there was an explosion as the launch motor ignited, ejecting the missile from its launch tube several meters out in front of Javed before the main flight motor kicked in with a deafening whoosh.

“Allahu akbar!” Javed shouted. “Allahu akbar!”

The four men watched, almost mesmerized, as the Stinger, trailing a white line of gases across the blue sky, curved toward the lead Hind at more than seven hundred meters per second, its infrared detector locked onto its target’s engine and exhaust heat.

The Hind burst into an orange and yellow fireball, throwing off chunks of debris, then hung in the sky momentarily, as if defying gravity, before plunging almost vertically into the river below with a huge explosion that threw up a cloud of black smoke.

Javed saw immediately that one of the other two helicopters was also in deep trouble. Maybe it had been hit by debris from the first. It fell sharply, spinning a little, and then the pilot appeared to regain control, bringing it to perhaps twenty meters above the ground before it plunged onto the highway with a loud crash and the squeal of tortured metal. However, the aircraft didn’t explode.

“Dakh-rā zoya!” Baz said. “Son of a donkey.”

Javed’s face remained grim, in stark contrast to his usual reaction upon hearing his friend’s favorite expression. He took a couple of steps forward, his feet half covered by several centimeters of snow, and peered up the valley. “Praise Allah. We got two with one hit, Baz,” he said. “Now let’s go and see if any of the bastards in those choppers are still alive. If they are, we’ll take them back to the village and show them the damage they’ve done before we finish them off.”

Part One