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His  own folk there would be asleep. The muezzin would not call them to prayer in the  morning, not in a village the godless 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 freedom and God will return  to the village. Soon the Russians will be gone, God 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 God 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 God'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 testicles 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 assault. 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 couple of 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 cocks in the sausage machine. Just hearing that made Sergei want to clutch himself. Fyodor said, Oh, dear!   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,