I heard my own men laughing first. It was that helpless, stuttering, choking laughter that makes men suffer for days with the ache of it in their ribs. It was the kind of laughter that you're sure will kill you if you can't get that next gasping breath. And then I heard the mujaheddin fighters laughing from the camp. And I arched my head backward to see Khader, facing around in his saddle and laughing as hard as the rest. And then _I started to laugh, and when the laughter weakened my arms, as I clutched at the horse, I laughed again. And as I choked out an anguished, croaky Whoa! Stop! Band karo! the men laughed harder than ever.
And so I entered the camp of the mujaheddin fighters. Men crouched around me at once, helping me from the horse's neck and steadying me on my feet. My own column of men followed us across the narrow path, and reached out to pat me on the back and slap at my shoulders. Seeing that familiarity, the mujaheddin joined in the slapping chorus, and it was fully fifteen minutes before the last man left my side and I could sit down to rest my jelly legs.
"Getting you to ride with him wasn't Khader's best-ever idea,"
Khaled Ansari said, sliding down a boulder face to sit beside me with his back to the stone. "But fuck, man, you are real popular after that trick. That's easily the funniest thing those guys have ever seen in their lives."
"For Christ's sake!" I sighed, with a last reflexive giggle of laughter. "I rode over a hundred mountains and crossed ten rivers, most of it in the dark, for a whole month, and everything was okay. I roll into the camp, and I'm hangin' on my horse's neck like a fuckin' monkey."
"Don't get me started again!" Khaled spluttered, laughing and clutching at his side.
I laughed with him, and although I was exhausted and resigned to the ridicule, I didn't want to laugh any more, so I glanced around to my right to avoid his eye. A canvas shamiana in camouflage colours provided shelter for our wounded men. In the shadows beside it, men were pulling cargo from the horses and ferrying it into the cavern. I saw Habib dragging something long and heavy away from behind the working line, and deeper into the darkness beyond.
"What's..." I began, still chuckling. "What's Habib doing over there?"
Khaled was instantly alert, and jumped to his feet. His urgency quickened me, and I leapt up after him. We ran to the line of rocks that formed one edge of the flattened mountain plateau, and as we rounded them we saw him kneeling, legs astride the body of a man. It was Siddiqi. While all the attention was on the fascinating bundles of the cargo, Habib had dragged the unconscious man from beneath the canvas awning. Just as we reached him, Habib drove his long knife into the man's neck and gave it that delicate twist. Siddiqi's legs twitched a tiny, trembling shake and then were still. Habib pulled the knife away and turned to see us staring back at him. The horror and rage in our faces seemed only to fuel the burning madness in his eyes. He grinned at us.
"Khader!" Khaled shouted, his face as pale as the moon-washed stone around us. "Khaderbhai! Iddar ao!" Come herel I heard an answering shout from behind us somewhere, but I didn't move. My eyes were on Habib. He turned to face me, swinging his leg over the murdered man and crouching on his haunches as if he was about to spring at me. The manic grin locked on his features, but his eyes grew darker-more afraid, perhaps, or more cunning.
He turned his head quickly and tilted it at an eccentric angle, as if listening with feral intensity to a faint sound in the distant night. I heard nothing but the noises of the camp behind me and the soft wail of the wind as it coursed through the canyons and ravines and secret pathways. In that instant, the land, the mountains, the very country of Afghanistan seemed to me so desolate, so bleached of loveliness and tenderness that it was like the landscape of Habib's insanity. I felt that I was trapped inside the stony maze of his hallucinated brain.
While he listened, tense in his animal crouch, with his face turned away from me, I slipped the stud-clip off my holster. I eased the gun out, and into my hands. Breathing hard, I followed Khader's instructions automatically, not realising until it was done that I'd flicked off the safety, chambered a round by pulling back the sliding return, and cocked the hammer. The sounds brought Habib round to face me. He looked at the gun in my hand. It was aimed at his chest. He looked back to my eyes, moving his gaze slowly, almost languorously. The long knife was still in his hand. I don't know what expression lit my face in the moonlight. It can't have been good. My mind was made up: if he moved a millimetre toward me, I would pull the trigger as many times as it took to finish him.
His grin widened into a laugh-at least, it looked like a laugh.
His mouth moved, and his head shook, but there was no sound. And his eyes, ignoring Khaled completely, stared a message into mine.
