Redshift Part 16

He didn't answer. His ears burned as he trudged on. To most of Sayid Jaglan's fighters, the mountains were as much home as the villages down in the valley. He couldn't match their endurance or their skill. If he roamed these rocky wastes for the next ten years, he wouldn't be able to. He knew it. The knowledge humiliated him.

A few minutes later, another man up ahead did the same thing Satar had done. If anything,the other fellow made more noise than he had. The man drew several hissed warnings. All he did was laugh. What had been shame for Satar was no more than one of those things for him.

He wasn't conscious of his own inept.i.tude, as Satar was.

The man in front of Satar listened to the mujahid in front of him, then turned and said, "The G.o.dless Russians brought a couple of truck-loads of new men into Bulola this afternoon. Sayid Jaglan says our plan will not change."

"I understand. G.o.d willing, we'll beat them anyhow," Satar said before pa.s.sing the news to the man at his heels.

"Surely there is no G.o.d but G.o.d. With His help, all things may be accomplished," the mujahid in front of Satar said. "And surely G.o.d will not allow the struggle of a million brave Afghan forebears to be reduced to nothing."

"No. He will not. He cannot," Satar agreed. "The lives of our ancestors must not be made meaningless. G.o.d made man, unlike a sheep, to fight back, not to submit."

"That is well said," the man in front of him declared.

"That is very well said," the man behind him agreed.

"To G.o.d goes the credit, not to me," Satar said. His face heated with pleasure even so. But the night was dark, so none of his companions saw him flush.

Some time around midnight-or so Satar judged by the wheeling stars-the mujahideen reached the mountain slopes above Bulola. Satar's home village was dark and quiet, down there on the floor of the valley. It seemed peaceful. His own folk there would be asleep. The muezzin would not call them to prayer in the morning, not in a village the G.o.dless Shuravi held. Here and there, though, inside houses that hadn't been wrecked, men would gather in courtyards and turn toward Mecca at the appointed hours.

Satar cursed the Soviets. If not for them, his father would still have his foot. If not for them, he himself would never have left Bulola. But I am coming home now, he thought. Soon the Russians will be gone, and free-dom and G.o.d will return to the village.

Soon the Russians will be gone, G.o.d willing, he amended. He could not see their trenches and forts and strongpoints, but he knew where they were, as he knew not all the deniers of G.o.d would be sleeping. Some of the mujahideen would not enter into Bulola. Some, instead, would go Straight to Paradise, as did all martyrs who fell in the jihad. If that is what G.o.d's plan holds for me, be it so. But I would like to see my father again.

He took his place behind a boulder. For all he knew, it was the same boulder he'd used the last time Sayid Jaglan's men struck at the Shuravi in Bulola. His shiver had nothing to do with the chill of the night. His t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es tried to crawl up into his belly. A man who said he was not afraid when a helicopter gunship spat death from the sky was surely a liar. He'd never felt so helpless as under that a.s.sault.

Now, though, now he would have his revenge. He clicked his Kalashnikov's change lever from safe to full automatic. He was ready.

The night-vision scope turned the landscape to a ghostly jumble of green and black. Shapes flitted from one rock to another. Sergei looked away from the scope, and the normal blackness of night clamped down on him again. "They're out there, all right," he said. "Through this thing, they really look like ghosts."

"Yeah," Vladimir agreed. Sergei could just make out his nod, though he stood only a coupleof meters away. But he'd had no trouble spotting the dukhi sneaking toward Bulola. Vladimir went on, "Sure as the Devil's grandmother, they're going to stick their c.o.c.ks in the sausage machine."

Just hearing that made Sergei want to clutch himself. Fyodor said, "Oh, dearl" in a shrill falsetto. Everybody laughed-probably more than the joke deserved, but Sergei and the rest of the men knew combat was coming soon.

He said, "Looks like Lieutenant Uspenski got the straight dope."

"If he got the straight dope, why didn't he share it with us?" Vladimir said. "I wouldn't mind smoking some myself."

More laughter. Sergei nodded. He smoked hashish every now and then, or sometimes more than every now and then. It made chunks of time go away, and he sometimes thought time a worse enemy in Afghanistan than the dukhi.

"When do we drop the hammer on them?" Fyodor said.

"Patience." That was Sergeant Krikor's throatily accented Russian. "They have to come in close enough so they can't get away easy when we start mauling them."

Time . . . Yes, it was an enemy, but it killed you slowly, second by second. The ghosts out there, the ghosts sneaking up on, swooping down on, Bulola could kill you in a hurry.

More often than not, they were a worry in the back of Sergei's mind. Now they came to the forefront.

How much longer? He wanted to ask the question. Ask it? He wanted to scream it. But he couldn't, not when Krikor'd just put Fyodor down. He had to wait. Seconds seemed to stretch out into hours. Once the shooting started, time would squeeze tight again. Everything would happen at once. He knew that. He'd seen it before.

For the dozenth time, he checked to make sure he'd set the change lever on his Kalashnikov to single shot. For the dozenth time, he found out he had. He was ready.

Sergeant Krikor bent to peer into his night-vision scope. "Won't be-," he began.

Maybe he said long now. If he did, Sergei never heard him. Sure enough, everything started happening at once. Parachute flares arced up into the night, turning the mountain slopes into brightest noon. Krikor pulled his head away from the night-vision scope with a horrible Armenian oath. Since the scope intensified all the light there was, he might have stared into the heart of the sun for a moment.

Behind Sergei, mortars started flinging bombs at the dukhi, pop! pop! pop! The noise wasn't very loud-about like slamming a door. The finned bombs whistled as they fell.

"Incoming!" somebody shouted. The ghosts had mortars, too, either captured, stolen from the Afghan army, or bought from the Chinese. Crump! The first bomb burst about fifty meters behind Sergei's trench. Fragments of sharp-edged metal hissed through the air. Through the rattle of Kalashnikov and machine-gun fire, Sergei heard the ghosts' war cry, endlessly repeated: "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu!. . ."

Some of the dukhi, by now, were down off the hillsides and onto the flatter ground near Bulola. Sergei squeezed off a few rounds. The Afghans went down as if scythed. But they were wily warriors; he didn't know whether he'd hit them or they were diving for cover.

Bullets cracked past overhead, a distinctive, distinctively horrible sound. The dukhi had no fire discipline. They shot off long bursts, emp-tying a clip with a pull of the trigger or two. A Kalashnikov treated so cavalierly pulled high and to the right. Accuracy, never splendid withan a.s.sault rifle, become nothing but a bad joke.

But the dukhi put a lot of lead in the air. Even worse than the sound of bullets flying by overhead was the unmistakable slap one made when struck flesh. Sergei flinched when he heard that sound only a few meters away.

Fyodor shrieked and then started cursing. "Where are you hit?" Sergei asked. "Shoulder,"

the wounded man answered.

"That's not so bad," Vladimir said.

"f.u.c.k you," Fyodor said through clenched teeth. "It's not your shoulder."

'"Get him back to the medics," Sergeant Krikor said. "Come on, somebody, give him a hand."

As Fyodor slapped a thick square of gauze on the wound to slow the bleeding, Sergei asked, "Where are the b.u.mblebees? You said we were supposed to have b.u.mblebees, Sergeant." He knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he couldn't help it. Fear did strange, dreadful things to a man. "And why haven't the Katyushas opened up? "

Before Krikor could answer, a burst of Kalashnikov fire chewed up the ground in front of the trench and spat dirt into Sergei's eyes. He rubbed frantically, fearing ghosts would be upon him before he cleared his vision. And, also before Krikor could answer, he heard the rapidly swelling thutter that said the helicopter gunships were indeed swooping to the attack.

Lines of fire st.i.tched the night sky as the Mi-24s-three of them- raked the mountainside: thin lines of fire from their nose-mounted Catlings, thicker ones from their rocket pods. Fresh bursts of hot orange light rose as the rockets slammed into the stones above Bulola. Along with cries of "Allahu akbar!" Sergei also heard screams of pain and screams of terror from the dukhi-music sweeter to his ears than any hit by Alia Pugacheva or losif Kobzon.

And then, as if they'd been waiting for the b.u.mblebees to arrive- and they probably had-the men at the Katyusha launchers let fly. Forty rockets salvoed from each launcher, with a noise like the end of the world. The fiery lines they drew across the night seemed thick as a man's leg. Each salvo sent four and a half tons of high explosive up and then down onto the heads of the dukhi on the mountainside.

"Betrayed!" The cry rose from more than one throat, out there in the chilly night above Bulola. "Sold to the Shuravi n "They knew we were coming!"

"With G.o.d's help, we can still beat the atheists," Sayid Jaglan shouted. "Forward, mujahideen! He who falls is a martyr, and will know Paradise forever."

Forward Satar went, down toward his home village. The closer he came to the Russians, the less likely those accursed helicopters were to spray him with death. He paused to inject a wounded mujahid with morphine, then ran on.

But as he ran, sheaves of flame rose into the air from down in the valley, from the very outskirts of Bulola: one, two, three. They were as yellow, as tightly bound, as sheaves of wheat. "Katyushas!" That cry rose from more than one throat, too-from Satar's, among others-and it was nothing less than a cry of despair.

Satar threw himself flat. He clapped his hands over his ears and opened his mouth very wide. That offered some protection against blast. Against salvos of Katyushas . . . "There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Muhammad is the prophet of G.o.d!" Satar gasped out. AgainstKatyushas, prayer offered more protection than anything else.

The Russian rockets shrieked as they descended. They might have been so many d.a.m.ned souls, already feeling Shaitan's grip on them. When they slammed into the side of the mountain-most of them well behind Satar-the ground shook under him, as if in torment.

Roaring whooshes from down below announced that the Russians were launching another salvo. But then the ground shook under Satar, and shook, and shook, and would not stop shaking.

Evil dreams, pain-filled dreams, had come too often to the dragon's endless sleep lately. It had twitched and jerked again and again, trying to get away from them, but they persisted. Its doze grew ever lighter, ever more fitful, ever more restless.

A hundred twenty Katyushas-no, the truth: a hundred eighteen, for one blew up in midair, and another, a dud, didn't explode when it landed-burst against the mountain's flank that was also the dragon's flank. Thirteen tons of high explosive . . . Not even a dragon asleep for centuries could ignore that.

Asleep no more, the dragon turned and stretched and looked around to see what was tormenting it.

The screams on the mountainside took on a different note, one so frantic that Satar lifted his face from the trembling earth and looked back over his shoulder to see what had happened.

"There is no G.o.d but G.o.d!" he gasped, his tone altogether different from the one he'd used a moment before. That had been terror. This? This was awe.

Wings and body the red of hot iron in a blacksmith's forge, the dragon ascended into the air. Had it sprung from nowhere? Or had it somehow burst from the side of the mountain?

Satar didn't see it till it was already airborne, so he never could have said for certain, which was a grief in him till the end of his days. But the earthquakes stopped after tJiat, which at least let him have an opinion.

Eyes? If the dragon might have been red-hot iron, its eyes were white-hot iron. Just for the tiniest fraction of an instant, the dragon's gaze touched Satar. That touch, however brief, made the mujahid grovel facedown among the rocks again. No man, save perhaps the Prophet himself, was meant to meet a dragon eye to eye.

As if it were the shadow of death, Satar felt the dragon's regard slide away from him. He looked up once more, but remained on his knees as if at prayer. Many of the mujahideen were praying; he heard their voices rising up to Heaven, and hoped G.o.d cared to listen.

But, to the G.o.dless Shuravi in the helicopter gunships, the dragon was not something that proved His glory to a sinful mankind. It was something risen from the Afghan countryside-and, like everything else risen from the Afghan countryside, something to be beaten down and destroyed. They swung their machines against it, machine guns spitting fire.

One of them still carried a pod of rockets under its stubby wing. Those, too, raced toward the dragon.

They are brave, Satar thought. He'd thought that about Russians before. They are brave, but oh, by G.o.d the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful, they are stupid.

Had the helicopters not fired on it, the dragon might have ignored them, as a man intent on his business might ignore mosquitoes or bees. But if he were bitten, if he were stung . . .The dragon's roar of fury made the earth tremble yet again. It swung toward the gunships that had annoyed it. Helicopters were maneuver-able. But the dragon? The awakened dragon, like the jinni of whom the Prophet spoke, could have been a creature of fire, not a creature of matter at all. It moved like thought, now here, now there. One enormous forepaw lashed out. A helicopter gunship, smashed and broken, slammed mto the side of the mountain and burst into flame.

Satar couldn't blame the Soviets in the other two gunships for fleeing then, fleeing as fast as their machines would carry them. He couldn't blame them, but it did them no good. The dragon swatted down the second helicopter as easily as it had the first. Then it went after the last one, the one that had launched rockets against it. Again, Satar could not have denied the gunship crew's courage. When they saw the dragon gaining on them, they spun their machine in the air and fired their Gatling at the great, impossible beast.

Again, that courage did them no good at all. Dragons were supposed to breathe fire. This one did, and the helicopter, burning, burning, crashed to the ground. The dragon looked around, as if wondering what to do next.

Down in Bulola, the Russians serving the Katyusha, launchers had had time to reload again.

Roaring like lions, roaring like the d.a.m.ned, their rockets raced toward the dragon.

They are brave, too, Satar thought. But I thought no one could be stupider than the men in those gunships, and now I see I was wrong.

Sergei said, "I haven't smoked any hashish lately, and even if I had, it couldn't make me see that."

"Bozhemoi!" Vladimir sounded like-was-a man shaken to the core. "Not even chars would make me see that."

Sergei wasn't so sure he was right. The local narcotic, a lethal blend of opium and, some said, horse manure, might make a man see almost anything. But Sergei had never had the nerve to try the stuff, and he saw the scarlet dragon anyhow. He was horribly afraid it would see him, too.

Sergeant Krikor rattled off something in Armenian. He made the sign of the cross, something Sergei had never seen him do before. Then he seemed to remember his Russian: "The people in this land have been fighting against us all along. Now the land itself is rising up."

"What the f.u.c.k is that supposed to mean?" Vladimir demanded. Just then, the dragon flamed the last b.u.mblebee out of the sky, which made a better answer than any Krikor could have given.

The dragon looked around, as if wondering what to do next. That was when the Katyusha crews launched their next salvos-straight at the beast. Sergei had never known them to reload their launchers so fast.

That didn't fill him with delight. "Noooo!" he screamed, a long wail of despair.

"You fools!" Krikor cried.

Vladimir remained foulmouthed to the end: "f.u.c.king s.h.i.theaded idiots! How the f.u.c.k you going to shoot down something the size of a mountain?"

Katyushas weren't made for antiaircraft fire. But, against a target that size, most of them struck home. And they must have hurt, too, for the dragon roared in pain and fury, where it had all but ignored the helicopter gunships' weapons. But hurting it and killing it were verydifferent things.

With a scream that rounded inside Sergei's mind as much as in his ears; the dragon flew down toward the Ural trucks. It breathed flame again, once, twice, three times, and the trucks were twisted, molten metal. A couple of the men who'd launched the Katyushas had time to scream.

Somebody from the trench near Sergei squeezed off a banana clip at the dragon. If that wasn't idiocy, he didn't know what was. "Noooo!" he cried again. If Katyushas couldn't kill it, what would Kalashnikov rounds do? Nothing. Less than nothing.

No. More than nothing. Much more than nothing. The Kalashnikov rounds made the beast notice the Red Army men in the trench. Its head swung their way. Its great, blazing eyes met Sergei's, just for a moment. Its mouth, greater still, opened wide.

Sergei jerked his a.s.sault rifle up to his shoulder and fired off all the ammunition he had left in the clip. It wasn't that he thought it would do any good. But how, at that point, could it possibly hurt?

Fire, redder and hotter than the sun.

Blackness.

"Truly," Satar said to his father, "there is no G.o.d but G.o.d."

"Truly," the older man agreed. His left foot, his left leg halfway up to the knee, were gone, but the wound was healing. The Russian medic- now among the dead-had done an honest job with it. Maybe Satar's father could get an artificial foot one day. Till then, he would be able to get around, after a fashion, on crutches.

Satar said, "After the dragon destroyed the Shuravi at the edge of the village, I thought it would wreck Bulola, too."

"So did I," his father said. "But it knew who the pious and G.o.dfearing were, or at least-"

He chuckled wryly. "-who had the sense not to shoot at it."

"Well . . . yes." Satar wished his father hadn't said anything so secular. He would have to pray to bring him closer to G.o.d. He looked around, thinking on what they had won. "Bulola is ours again. This whole valley is ours again. The Russians will never dare come back here."

"I should hope not!" his father said. "After all, the dragon might wake up again."

He and Satar both looked to the mountainside. That streak of reddish rock . . . That was where the dragon had come from, and where it had returned. If Satar let his eyes drift ever so slightly out of focus, he could, or thought he could, discern the great beast's outline. Would it rouse once more? If it is the will of G.o.d, he thought, and turned his mind to other things.

The dragon slept. For a while, till its slumber deepened, it had new dreams.

The black tulip roared out of Kabul airport, firing flares as it went to confuse any antiaircraft missiles the dukhi might launch. Major Ch.o.r.n.y-whose very name meant black -took a flask of vodka from his hip and swigged. He hated Code 200 missions, and hated them worst when they were like this.

In the black tulip's cargo bay lay a zinc coffin. It was bound for Tambov, maybe three hundred kilometers south and east of Moscow. It had no windows. It was welded shut. Major Ch.o.r.n.y would have to stay with it every moment till it went into the ground, to make sureSergei's grieving kin didn't try to open it. For it held not the young man's mortal remains but seventy-five kilos of sand, packed tight in plastic bags to keep it from rustling.

As far as the major knew, no mortal remains of this soldier had ever been found. He was just . . . gone. By the time the black tulip crossed from Afghan to Soviet airs.p.a.ce, Ch.o.r.n.y was very drunk indeed.

Trish Cacek was also in my last anthology, and her story therein was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. She didn't win, but that's okay because she already has a Stoker and a World Fantasy Award. She is the author of a short story collection, Leavings, and a new novel from Tor t.i.tled Canyons.

"Belief" was the second story Trish hit me with for Redshift; the first one just didn't work for me, but when I started this one I knew it would. Some stories just have yes written all over them, and sometimes you can't put your finger on why. This was one of those.

Yes.