Amber

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘In Kirov’s plan, we would be ambushed as we forded the stream,’ Kolya explained, quietly, coming to me and resting his hand on my shoulder. I knelt down, felt the path dampen the knees of my trousers.

  ‘It was a good place for an ambush,’ Kolya continued. ‘The curve in the road that put the last vehicles out of sight of the first; the fact that we had to slow down to ford the river; the vantage point of the village on the hill.

  ‘Zena was travelling in one of the last APCs, that had been organised. On the last BMP were the armaments Hashim’s friends wanted. It should have been easy. The road was mined. The last two vehicles would be cut off, quickly surrounded, and the objectives achieved with minimum fuss.’

  When I glanced up from the stream, wiping the freezing droplets of water from my cheeks, brushing them up through my hair, I noticed a sudden movement in the blackened window of one of the abandoned buildings. It was so fast, so fleeting, I could not be sure it had not been a trick of the light. I stood up, retrieving my gun from the river bank.

  Experience had taught us excessive caution, and I called to the driver of the next APC, which was slowly negotiating the steep slope to the bed of the stream. His head bent out of the APC and he shouted to me, but the roar of the engines, the crunch of gravel and the splash of the water drowned out his voice. I stepped into the water and jogged over to the APC.

  The water detonated with an ear-shattering crunch. l pitched back. Fighting for breath, I choked and gagged. Rising from the water long enough to grab half a breath before my arms gave way, I plunged down again beneath the icy surface. Confused and panicked, I rolled on to my back. The water was not deep. I grabbed another breath and struggled to my knees. I glanced around.

  In the centre of the ford the APC billowed thick black smoke. Its guts had been wrenched violently open. The air whistled and the ground danced. The stream flamed. My gun was lying close, submerged beneath the flickering surface of the water. I reached for it.

  Though it was perhaps only a moment, time stretched elastically as I fought to make sense of events – to incorporate them so that I might react. My eyes flicked from the hulk of charred metal that had been an APC up the incline to the BMP and the Agitprop Brigade’s APC. The vehicle was accelerating towards the stream, bodies tumbling from it, scattering into the undergrowth, bouncing on the dusty earth. The BMP reversed furiously back up the slope, its machine gun spitting pink-blue flames randomly, spraying the hillside, ripping through the foliage, bullets pinging from the trunks of the trees and dancing across the mud walls of the buildings. Figures emerged from the undergrowth. They scrambled over the BMP. The heavy machine gun jerked up, sending its stream of fire into the sky.

  In the window of the abandoned house at the foot of the hill, flames flickered menacingly. I saw Zena, crouched foetally in a shallow hollow, beneath the mud wall. Her face rose, crumpled with despair. She shouted out, but her voice was lost. I stumbled forwards, the icy water spraying around me. My right arm throbbed. As if in a dream, my legs seemed to paddle in soup, barely moving forwards. Distinctly I heard the zip of bullets slit the air around my head; saw the hollow beneath the trees shiver and swell with light, dust and stones splaying out, a wall vanish.

  Behind Zena the air billowed with flames. Her mouth opened and she screamed. Her beautiful ochre skin puckered as she cried into the blistering sky.

  Among the dark figures that had emerged from the shadows, I noticed a familiar face darting across the track towards where Zena lay huddled. For a moment I could not place where I had seen his sharp features before. Kirov stood, as if bewildered, on the far bank of the stream, his automatic slung loosely, staring across the water at the mayhem. I waved for him to move across with me, but he did not react. I shouted at him, and, as if only then noticing me, he brought up his rifle. It struck me suddenly that I had seen the sharp featured man in the café in Jalalabad talking to Kirov.

  When I glanced back across the water Zena had gone. I stumbled towards the bank, eyes searching the undergrowth. Farther up the track the BMP was disappearing over the crest of a rise. From the way the blackened APC lay twisted in the stream it was evident it had hit a mine. A group of our soldiers regrouped on the far side of the stream. Setting up a heavy machine gun, they opened up on the brush higher up the slope. The ground rocked as a grenade exploded close to the Agitprop’s APC.

  A movement on the hillside caught my eye. Glancing up, I saw Zena being pushed by two figures, advancing up the hill through the heavy undergrowth towards the family compound. Ducking into the trees, I worked my way around the side of the hill and, finding a path on the far slope, advanced to the summit cautiously. A goat was tethered by the wall of the first hut. It gazed at me nonchalantly as I approached. Chickens cackled and fluttered across the dusty earth. From the ford in the hollow, machine-gun fire rattled. Dark smoke curled up through the tops of the trees.

  As I reached the square in the centre of the family compound, Zena emerged, pushed from behind by two Afghans in civilian dress. She stumbled and fell heavily to the ground. One of the men, the one I recognised from Jalalabad, shouted. He kicked her and, bending, grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling her face from the dust. While his short, bearded colleague watched, he shoved the nozzle of his pistol against the back of her head.

  Without pausing to consider, I raised my rifle, sighted it and fired. The bearded Afghan looked up, surprised, as his colleague pitched violently to one side. I shot another round immediately and the second Afghan twisted around and fell backwards. Zena squealed.

  She turned to me, her eyes wide with fear, uncomprehending. I called for her to come across the square. She nodded and stumbled to her feet. As she staggered across the dusty square, her shirt became entangled in some stray wire.

  ‘Keep low,’ I shouted as she straightened to untangle it.

  ‘What?’ she mouthed, turning.

  A dark hole opened in her throat and she gasped. A look of intense surprise flickered across her face. A second hole opened in her cheek. She spun around as if she had been slapped violently and fell to the earth. For one moment I watched as her fingers scrabbled in the dirt.

  ‘Zena…’

  I lurched forward. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement in the dark shadow of one of the huts.

  ‘Zena,’ I called again.

  My body lay across hers, protecting her. I grasped her tight, felt her body buck beneath my own. Her eyes did not shut. I closed my hand around the wound in her neck, my palm slipping on the soft wet flesh. The blood pumped hotly between my fingers. She gazed up, a look of astonishment on her face.

  ‘Zena,’ I whispered into her ear.

  She moved, but it was her muscles twitching. Her skin paled. The blood pooled in the dirt. The weight of my body, as I shifted, pressed the air from her lungs so that she gasped and spat bloodily, her unblinking eyes staring fixedly into eternity.

  From the shadows I heard the shuffle of footsteps and the click of a magazine being slotted into place. I looked up into the shadowed doorway of one of the huts. An elderly man gazed out, Kalashnikov raised. Rising from the earth, blood dripping from my hands, my shirt dark and wet, clinging to my chest, I faced him. He shouted something in Pashtu and waved the gun. I stepped towards him. He shouted louder, pointing the gun at me threateningly. From my belt I took my knife. The old man tottered out into the sunlight. He pointed at the girl and shouted. He pointed at the two men and shouted again. He waved the gun at me and shouted some more. His pale, old eyes were wild with fear.

  Knocking the gun from his hands, I grabbed the front of his tunic. He fell to his knees, gabbling, pointing at his hut, at the three bodies strewn across the centre of his little village. I wound the dirty white cloth of his turban in my fist and jerked his head back. He looked up into my eyes, his lips moving continually, words pouring forth incomprehensibly, his arms jerking back and forth between his hut and the bodies. I took the knife and, with one hand holding his head back, slit his throa
t. He gargled, his lips moving silently, working still as the blood fountained out across the front of my shirt.

  Kneeling beside me, Kolya stroked my back. I pressed my forehead against the sharp gravel of the path. I smelt the earth beneath me, felt the small stones biting into my flesh. I dug my fingers into the soil, turning it, clawing at it.

  ‘It’s over,’ Kolya murmured. ‘It’s all over now. It’s finished.’

  He placed the metal box on the path beside me, and attempted to pull me up from the ground.

  ‘Let’s get a move on,’ he encouraged. ‘We have the bracelet. It was for this that Kirov sold her. He betrayed us all. We lost half the battalion in that ambush.’

  When the old man was dead, I stood for some moments in the centre of the square. Below the village, in the hollow where the road forded the stream, the battle was still raging. Rocket fire shook the ground, automatic gunfire chattered among the trees. I knelt beside Zena and gently lowered her eyelids. I kissed her forehead. Her skin was cool and clammy.

  Birds had begun to gather on the roofs of the houses. Insects swirled in dark clouds, settling already on the bloody pools, on the stained earth, on the warm flesh of the bodies. I picked Zena up and moved her to the side of the square, laid my jacket over her face and shoulders.

  I worked quickly, moving from hut to hut, gathering wood. Tables, chairs, wardrobes, roofing, doors. I fashioned a pyre in the centre of the square, stuffing dry grass into the gaps between the wood. I worked with care, as if building a bonfire at home, making sure that when I lit it, it would go up. When the clumsy pyre was finished I took a can of fuel I had come across in one of the huts and poured it liberally over the wood. For some moments I stood back, surveying my work. It gave me grim satisfaction to see the sturdiness of the table on which I would lay her.

  Her body rested on the ground, by the hut, her limbs carefully arranged, my jacket covering her, keeping away the flies. I knelt by her, pulling back the khaki shroud. She could have been sleeping. She did not look so different from those times when I had awoken in the morning to see her face by my side in her room in the hostel in Jalalabad. A little paler perhaps. There was a smudge of dirt on her forehead. I took the corner of my jacket, dampened it with my saliva and wiped the soot from her skin, cleaned the neat wound in her cheek, washed away the blood from her throat.

  Looping my arms beneath her, I lifted her from the dust. Her body was strangely stiff, resistant to my touch. She was heavy and I struggled slightly under her weight.

  Carefully I laid her on the pile of wood. She looked fragile in death. I pressed my lips to the scar running down the side of her face. A breeze had picked up, blowing from the east, from Pakistan. It rustled the dry grass in the pyre and whistled across the roofs of the huts.

  I knelt before the pyre. There should have been something fitting for me to say, but I had no prayer – no prayer any god would find decent, would consider bending an ear to listen to. A poem, a couple of lines, would have done, something to sanctify the moment, but my mind was dark, a blank fury. I knelt in silence, my head bowed, my hands trembling.

  When I rose I took the can of fuel and went quickly to the farthest hut. There, without pausing, I sloshed the fuel around the dark interior. There was little in the hut, just a table and a rug. In the corner was a Koran, and I took that and ripped a page from it. Taking from my pocket the Chinese lighter Vassily had once given me, I lit the crinkled yellow pa per and tossed it to the floor. A small flame rose from the packed earth. It ran quickly along the rug, and as I turned the fuel exploded with a dull thud, knocking me forwards with a warm burst of heat. Without turning back, I hurried to the next hut and doused that with fuel, taking care not to use too much. Tearing another page from the Koran, tucked beneath my arm, I tossed the flaming, crinkled ball into the hut and watched it explode in flames.

  When all the huts were burning I stood once more before the roughly fashioned pyre and drank in her form. She seemed shrunken in death. Reduced. Childlike and vulnerable. The dry grass and wooden beams crackled as they burnt around me. Dark smoke billowed up into the clear air, then, caught on a draught of suffocating wind, bent back down and swirled around the village. Ships of flame sailed the currents of air, descending beside me lightly, smouldering in the dust.

  Slowly and with care I tore each remaining page from the Koran. I clothed her with the sheets, spread them over her, weighted down with dust. As I worked, the fire descended softly upon us, settling on the dusty pages, on the grass that stuck out like unruly whiskers from between the planks of wood. The pages darkened, wrinkled and curled along their edges. Blue flames rushed along them, joining, spreading. The grass withered, pulled itself into the cracks, smoking, charred. A gust of wind blew low across the hilltop. There was a gasp, like a sudden intake of breath, a moment’s silence, and then a belch of flame jumped from the wooden mound. The pages lifted into the air, sailing on the updraught, into the smoke-darkened air, as if God Himself were drawing His Word up into His hands.

  The heat knocked me back and I staggered and fell into the dust. I felt the flesh on my face blister. The air tore at my lungs; my throat burnt. I crawled beneath the billowing clouds of smoke, my hands and knees shredding themselves on the sharp stones. At the edge of the village the path descended a sharp incline. In my hurry I stumbled from the path and, blinded by the smoke and my tears, I fell.

  ‘Come on,’ Kolya urged. He thrust his hands beneath my arms and pulled me up. ‘We can’t hang around here all night. Let’s get moving.’

  The smoke plumed from the hilltop, like a volcano. From nowhere, then, the cry of a child arrested me, catching all at once the hate, the raging anger in my heart. Shrivelling it. I stopped; the dust rose in swirls around me; the smoke, forced down by the wind, curled into the trees. The scream froze my legs. I looked back up towards the village, barely visible, the sun behind it dark and brooding. The choking smoke burnt the back of my throat; the fire crackled in my ears as it rushed along the dry wood, through the grass roofs, consuming the village.

  Scrambling back up the bank, madly, I thought it was Zena crying from her pyre. Crawling forwards on hands and knees, struggling for breath beneath the thick clouds of smoke, I worked my way into the centre of the village once more. The cries came from the hut in which the old man had been standing. I crawled over his inert body and stumbled around the back of his crumbling home. Smoke poured from a ventilation window high in the wall. I clambered up to it. From inside I could hear a hoarse low cough, the sound of a child struggling to breathe. I called through the opening. I clawed at the mud, pulling away dry handfuls, enlarging the hole.

  I pushed myself through into the darkness. Landing heavily, I immediately felt the movement beside me. Squeezed tight into the corner was a child, eyes pressed tightly shut, face dark, lips blue, throat gasping, groping for oxygen, tearing painfully, choking on the smoke. I scooped the girl into my arms and staggered out through the flames.

  Chapter 29

  A sharp breeze rustled the branches of the trees in Vingis Park. The sudden noise startled Kolya and he turned quickly on his heel, his hand reaching beneath his jacket. The moon had disappeared, covered by another thick layer of cloud blowing in from the coast. The only light came from the lamps on the bridge, just visible through the trees.

  I pushed up the sleeve of my jacket and unbuttoned my shirt. My fingers trembled so that it took a while. It was so dark that it was hard to make out the crinkled pink skin. The scars. I felt the skin’s odd hairlessness, its wrinkles. Tentatively Kolya reached out and placed his fingers on my arm. They were cold and trembling too.

  I felt again the weight of the fragile child’s body in my arms, recalling how I had stumbled down the hill, the branches of the trees lashing my face, my arms numb with pain. How I fell, headlong, tossing the child aside. Crawled through the undergrowth, picked her up and staggered on. And fell and gathered her and stumbled on.

  ‘We’re pulling out,’ a voice shouted close
to my ear.

  Vassily was perspiring, his face black with dirt, glistening with large beads of sweat. He loomed over me, blocking out the light. His hand reached down and brushed my cheek. I tried to turn my head, but it would not move.

  His hands gripped the front of my flak jacket. He pulled the child from my arms. I struggled to hold on to the small body, pulling it close to my chest. Crushing it against me. Another set of hands pulled at my arms. The pain seared through my body, vibrating in my head. It was as if somebody were pushing hot iron against my flesh, tearing the skin away from my bone.

  ‘He’s badly burnt,’ somebody said.

  ‘Come on, let’s move,’ Vassily said, his voice tight with fear. ‘They may come back and we’re totally fucked. Zhuralev has taken a bullet, and the radio operator is dead.’

  I tried to struggle to my feet, but Vassily pushed me back down.

  ‘Just roll over,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you on to the stretcher.’

  Hands reached out and tugged at me. Pulled and pushed. Lifted and dropped. Sick with exhaustion, I lay still as they hoisted me up. They ran, jolting me so my teeth rattled. I heard the splash of water as they forded the stream and their heavy breathing and curses as they stumbled down the line. My head throbbed and my arms burnt.

  ‘Zena,’ I murmured, my voice hoarse, barely audible above the noise of the engines of the armoured vehicles.

  There was a strong wind blowing. The sand was whipped up from the track and swirled in dark, choking clouds around the stationary vehicles. The wind was accompanied by a heavy throb, a clattering pulse. My stretcher was lifted and slid along the floor of a helicopter.

  A medic looked down at me, gently pushing my head to one side, digging strong fingers into the side of my neck, eliciting a pain so sharp it brought tears to my eyes and a cry to my lips. A look of wearied annoyance crossed the medic’s face and he pushed my head roughly back into place. He turned and extracted a syringe from his bag, took a small glass vial and snapped off its nipple. Inserting the needle, he sucked the morphine up into the syringe. The tip was white from where it had been boiled. Its rubber looked dark and perished. He injected me and turned immediately to deal with another casualty.