The Soviet response was to bomb, rocket and strafe anything that moved: man, woman, child or animal. They seeded the mountains with untold millions of air-dropped mines, which eventually created a nation of crutches and prosthetic limbs. Before it was over there would be a million Afghans dead, a million crippled and five million refugees.
Izmat Khan knew all about guns from his time in the refugee camp, and the favourite was of course the Kalashnikov – the infamous AK-47. It was a supreme irony that this Soviet weapon, the favourite assault rifle of every dissident movement and terrorist in the world, was now being used against them. But the Americans were providing them for a reason; every Afghan could replenish his ammunition from the packs on a dead Russian, which saved carrying compatible ammunition across the mountains.
Assault rifle apart, the weapon of choice was the rocket-propelled grenade, the RPG, simple, easy to use, easy to reload and deadly at short to medium range. This too was provided by the West.
Izmat Khan was big for fifteen, desperately trying to grow a fuzz round the chin, and the mountains soon made him as hard as he had ever been. Witnesses have seen the Pashtun mountain men moving like wild goats through their own terrain, legs seemingly immune from exhaustion, breathing unlaboured when others are gasping for breath.
He had been back home for a year when his father summoned him. There was a stranger with him; face burned dark from the sun, black-bearded, wearing a grey woollen shalwar kameez over stout hiking boots and a sleeveless jerkin. On the ground behind him stood the biggest backpack the boy had ever seen and two tubes wrapped in sheepskin. On his head was a Pashtun turban.
‘This man is a guest and a friend,’ said Nuri Khan. ‘He has come to help us and fight with us. He has to take his tubes to Shah Massoud in the Panjshir, and you will guide him there.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The young Pashtun stared at the stranger. he did not seem to have understood what Nuri Khan had said.
‘Is he Afghan?’ he asked.
‘No, he is Angleez.’
Izmat Khan was staggered. This was the old enemy. More, he was what the imam in the madrassah had condemned with constant venom. He must be kafir, an unbeliever, a Nasrani, a Christian, destined to burn for all eternity in hell. And he was to escort this man over a hundred miles of mountainside to a great valley in the north? To spend days and nights in his company? Yet his father was a good man, a good Muslim, and he had called him friend. How could this be?
The Englishman tapped his forefingers lightly on his chest near the heart.
‘Salaam aleikhem, Izmat Khan,’ he said. The father spoke no Arabic even though there were now many Arab volunteers further down the mountain range. The Arabs kept themselves to themselves, always digging, so there was no cause to mix with them and learn any of their language. But Izmat had read the Koran over and over again; it was written in Arabic only; and his imam had spoken only his native Saudi Arabic. Izmat had a good working knowledge.
‘Aleikhem as-salaam,’ he acknowledged. ‘How do you call yourself?’
‘Mike,’ said the man.
‘Ma-ick.’ Izmat tried it. Strange name.
‘Good, let us take tea,’ said his father. They were sheltering in a cave mouth about ten miles from the wreckage of their hamlet. Further inside the cave a small fire glowed, too far inside to let a visible plume of smoke emerge to attract a Soviet aircraft.
‘We will sleep here tonight. In the morning you will go north. I go south to join Abdul Haq. There will be another operation against the Jalalabad to Kandahar road.’
They chewed on goat and nibbled rice cakes. Then they slept. Before dawn the two heading north were roused and left. Their journey led them through a maze of linking valleys where there would be some shelter. But between the valleys were mountain ridges and the sides of the mountains were steep slopes covered in rock and shale with little or no cover. It would be wise to scale these by moonlight and stay in the valleys by day.
Bad luck struck them on the second day out. To speed the rate of march they had left night-camp before dawn and just after first light found themselves forced to cross a large expanse of rock and shale to find the cover of the next spine of hills. To wait would have meant waiting all day until nightfall. Izmat Khan urged that they cross in daylight. Halfway across the mountainside they heard the growl of the gunship engines.
Both man and boy dived for the ground and lay motionless – but not in time. Over the crest ahead, menacing as a deadly dragonfly, came the Soviet Mil Mi-24D, known simply as the Hind. One of the pilots must have seen a flicker of movement or perhaps the glint of metal down there on the rock field, for the Hind turned from its course and headed towards them. The roar of the two Isotov engines grew in their ears, as did the unmistakable tacka-tacka-tacka of the main rotor blades.
With his head buried in his forearms, Mike Martin risked a quick glance. There was no doubt they had been spotted. The two Soviet pilots, sitting in their tandem seats with the second above and behind the first, were staring straight at him as the Hind went into attack mode. To be caught in the open without cover by a helicopter gunship is every footsoldier’s nightmare. He glanced round. One hundred yards away was a single group of boulders; not as high as a man’s head but just enough to shelter behind. With a yell to the Afghan boy he was up and running, leaving his 100-lb Bergen rucksack where it was but carrying one of the two tubes that had so intrigued his guide.
He heard the running feet of the boy behind him, the roaring of his own blood in his ears and the matching snarl of the diving Hind. He would never have made the dash had he not seen something about the gunship that gave a flicker of hope. Its rocket pods were empty and it carried no under-slung bombs. He gulped at the thin air and hoped his guess was right. It was.
Pilot Simonov and his co-pilot Grigoriev had been on a dawn patrol to harass a narrow valley where agents had reported that Muj were hiding out. They had dropped their bombs from altitude, then gone in lower to blast the rocky cleft with rockets. A number of goats had pelted from the crack in the mountains, indicating there had indeed been human life sheltering in there. Simonov had shredded the beasts with his 30-mm cannon, using up most of the shells.
He had gone back to a safe altitude and was heading home to the Soviet base outside Jalalabad when Grigoriev had spotted a tiny movement on the mountainside below and to the port side. When he saw the figures start to run he flicked his cannon to ‘fire’ mode and dived. The two running figures far below were heading for a cluster of rocks. Simonov steadied the Hind at two thousand feet, watched the two figures hurl themselves into the rock cluster and fired. The twin barrels of the GSH cannon shuddered as the shells poured out, then stopped. Simonov swore as his ammunition ran out. He had used his cannon shells on goats, and here were Muj to kill and he had none left. He lifted the nose and turned in a wide arc to avoid the mountain crest and the Hind clattered out over the valley.
Martin and Izmat Khan crouched behind their pitiable cluster of rocks. The Afghan boy watched as the Angleez rapidly opened his sheepskin case and extracted a short tube. He was vaguely aware that someone had punched him in the right thigh, but there was no pain. Just numbness.
What the SAS man was assembling as fast as his fingers would work was one of the two Blowpipe missiles he was trying to bring to Shah Massoud in the Panjshir. It was not as good as the American Stinger, but more basic, lighter and simpler.
Some surface-to-air missiles are guided to target by a ground-based radar ‘fix’. Others carry their own tiny radar set in the nose. Others emit their own infra-red beam. These are the beam-riders. Others are heat-seekers, whose nose cones ‘smell’ the heat of the aircraft’s own engines and home towards it. Blowpipe was much more basic than that; it was styled ‘command to line of sight’, or CLOS; and it meant the firer had to stand there and guide the rocket all the way to target by sending radio signals from a tiny control stick to the movable fins in the rocket’s head.
The disadvantage of
the Blowpipe was always that to ask a man to stay still in the face of an attacking gunship was to ensure a lot of dead operators. Martin pushed the two-stage missile into the launching tube, fired up the battery and the gyro, squinted through the sight and found the Hind coming straight back at him. He steadied the image in the sights and fired. With a whoosh of blazing gases the rocket left the tube on his shoulder and headed blindly into the sky. Being completely non-automatic, it now required his control to rise or drop, turn left or right. He estimated the range at 1,400 yards and closing fast. Simonov opened fire with his chain gun.
In the nose of the Hind the four barrels hurling out a curtain of finger-sized machine-gun bullets began to turn. Then the Soviet pilot saw the tiny flickering flame of the Blowpipe coming towards him. It became a question of nerve.
Bullets tore into the rocks, blowing away chunks of stone in all directions. It lasted two seconds but at two thousand rounds per minute some seventy bullets hit the rocks before Simonov tried to evade and the bullet stream swept to one side.
It is proven that in a no-thought instinctive emergency a man will normally pull left. That is why driving on the left of the road, though confined to very few countries, is actually safer. A panicking driver pulls off the road into the meadow rather than into a head-on collision. Simonov panicked and slewed the Hind to its left.
The Blowpipe had jettisoned its first stage and was going supersonic. Martin tweaked the trajectory to his right just before Simonov swerved. It was a good guess. As it turned out the Hind exposed its belly and the warhead slammed into it. It was only just under five pounds in weight and the Hind is immensely strong. But even that size of warhead at a thousand mph is a terrific punch. It cracked the base armour, entered and exploded.
Drenched with sweat on the icy mountainside Martin saw the beast lurch with the impact, start to stream smoke and plunge towards the valley floor far below.
When it impacted in the river bed the noise stopped. There was a silent peony of flame as the two Russians died, then a plume of dark smoke. That alone would bring attention from the Russians at Jalalabad. Harsh and long though the journey might be overland, it was only a few minutes for a Sukhoi ground-attack fighter.
‘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.
‘Let us see,’ said the doctor and peeled back the dressing. The wound was clean, bruised round the edges but closed by six stitches and uninfected. He tutted his satisfaction and redressed the suture.
‘You will be walking in a week,’ said Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri. Then he and Osama bin Laden left the ward. No one took any notice of the sweat-stained Muj squatting in the corner with his head on his knees as if asleep.
Martin rose and crossed to the youth on the bed.
‘I must go,’ he said. ‘The Arabs will look after you. I will seek to find your father and ask for a fresh guide. Go with Allah, my friend.’
‘Be careful, Ma-ick,’ said the boy. ‘These Arabs are not like us. You are kafir, unbeliever. They are like the imam in my madrassah. They hate all infidel.’
‘Then I would be grateful if you would not tell them who I am,’ said the Englishman.
Izmat Khan closed his eyes. He would die under torment rather than betray his new friend. It was the code. When he opened his eyes the Angleez was gone. He heard later the man had reached Shah Massoud in the Panjshir, but he never saw him again.
After his six months behind the Soviet lines in Afghanistan Mike Martin made it home via Pakistan unspotted and with fluent Pashto added to his armoury. He was sent on leave, remustered into the army and, being still in service with the SAS, was posted to Northern Ireland again in autumn 1988. But this time it was different.
The SAS were the men who really terrified the IRA and to kill – or better still capture alive, torture and kill – what they called a Sassman was the IRA’s greatest dream. Mike Martin found himself working with the 14th Intelligence Company, known as ‘the Detachment’ or ‘the Det’.
These were the watchers, the trackers, the eavesdroppers. Their job was to be so stealthy as never to be seen, but to find out where the IRA killers would strike next. To do this they performed some remarkable feats.
IRA leaders’ houses were penetrated via the roof tiles and bugged from the attic downwards. Bugs were placed in dead IRA men’s coffins for it was the habit of the godfathers to hold conferences while pretending to pay their respects to the casket. Long-range cameras caught images of moving mouths and lip-readers deciphered the words. Rifle-mikes recorded conversations through closed windows. When the Det had a real gem, they passed it to the hard men.