Black Tulip

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, emptying a clip with a pull of the trigger or two. A Kalashnikov treated so cavalierly pulled high and to the right. Accuracy, never splendid with an assault 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.

"Fuck 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 bumblebees? You said we were supposed to have bumblebees, 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 stitched the night sky as the Mi-24s—three of them— raked the mountainside: thin lines of fire from their nose-mounted Gatlings, 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 Josif Kobzon.

And then, as if they'd been waiting for the bumblebees 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! "They knew we were coming!"

"With God'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 God but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God!" Satar gasped out. Against Katyushas, prayer offered more protection than anything else.

The Russian rockets shrieked as they descended. They might have been so many damned 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.