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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, 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