The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

“Center sight!”

“Fire! Shut down! Two kills,” the instructor said with a smile, relaxing now, clearly pleased with his little demonstration. If the gunners could replicate this precise sequence in the field, they’d bring down their targets every time.

“Engineer Ghaffar, why do you superelevate before you fire?”

“Because the rocket launches out six meters and drops slightly as the main rocket motor kicks in, sir. Superelevating keeps it lined up on the target it has acquired. If you don’t superelevate, the rocket might drop too low to pick up its target once the motor kicks in.”

I left the classroom more impressed by the makeshift nature of the training facilities than by the scripted performance arranged for my benefit. Nevertheless, I was convinced that the fighters would be able to use the Stinger successfully. Unlike the British-made Blowpipe that had been introduced almost a year earlier in small numbers, the Stinger was what the Afghans desperately needed—a “fire and forget” missile that allowed a gunner to live and tell of his encounter with Soviet gunships. With a Blowpipe the gunner had to acquire his target optically, fire the missile, and then stand his ground, usually upright and in the open, while he guided the missile with a toggle all the way to the target. The predictable result was an uneven duel between the MI-24D and the lone gunner, with the gunner more often than not ending up a martyr. The Soviet-designed SAM-7, widely available on the gray and black arms markets, was no more effective, but for a different reason. It was reliable, and even then just marginally so, only when it was “looking at” the hot tailpipes of an enemy aircraft. It could rarely acquire an incoming aircraft head-on. So the Afghans would usually have to wait until the enemy aircraft, either a helicopter or a fast mover, came in, dropped its bombs or fired its rockets, and then turned tail, at which time the SAM-7 gunner could pop up and let his missile fly—that is, if he was still alive. In every sense the Stinger was a revolutionary weapon, and even before it was first fired in combat, a belief began to spread through the highly superstitious ranks of the resistance that it possessed certain magical powers. They would eventually come to value the Stinger as their American amulet, their talisman for victory.

Though I hadn’t been part of the early political debate in Washington on the wisdom of giving the Afghans the Stinger, I had been brought in peripherally, so I knew something about the furor it had caused on Capitol Hill. Clair George asked me to brief Senator Sam Nunn of the Senate Armed Services Committee on the fact that Stinger technology had already been lost to the Soviets. The GRU officer who’d bought the system from an agent inside NATO was none other than Colonel Sergei Bokhan, the CIA’s man in Athens. Now, I thought as I left the training classroom in Ojhri camp, let’s hope after all the sound and fury over getting this little baby into the war that it really works.

The Soviets were deeply concerned about the new technology behind the Stinger, and they’d had a couple of years to develop countermeasures. I would soon find out if they had been successful.

Northeast of Jalalabad Airfield, 1505 Hours, September 25, 1986

Engineer Ghaffar and his three dozen fighters had been moving constantly since they had crossed over zero line into Afghanistan one week earlier. Now, on the afternoon of September 25, they were settling into a concealed position about a mile northeast of Jalalabad airfield, some two miles southeast of the city. A thriving trading town that had hosted supply caravans and garrisoned armies for two millennia going back to Alexander the Great, Jalalabad had been the hinge of the bloodiest of Afghanistan’s wars going back to antiquity. It was the destination of the ill-fated British garrison that in 1842 set off in retreat from Kabul with 16,500 British and Indian troops. After constant ambush along the ninety-mile line of retreat, only one British officer arrived at Jalalabad safely.

The Soviet garrison at Jalalabad was ideally situated near the point where the Kabul and Konar Rivers joined up and began to wind their way, skirting the Khyber Pass, into Pakistan to join the mighty Indus in its search for the sea. There had been a few Soviet combat air patrols over the last two days as Ghaffar and his men jockeyed into their final firing position, but they had been fast-moving MiGs or Sukhois, flying too high for a sure shot. Ghaffar had let them pass through the area without firing. He was hoping for fresh targets today, possibly MI-24D gunships, the dreaded, heavily armored attack helicopters that had swept over his country with impunity since the invasion. They would usually come home to Jalalabad late in the afternoon, after completing the day’s mission. He and his men could wait, hidden in the scrub grass and large boulders on a slight rise in the terrain. That afternoon the wind was blowing from the northwest; landing aircraft, even helicopters, would probably approach from downwind.

Ghaffar and his men sat quietly in their hidden position, fitting the three grip stocks with missiles, checking and rechecking their work, and monitoring enemy troop activity nearby through their binoculars. As the men settled down to wait, a few of the fighters quietly prayed for strength and wisdom in battle. They sought help and guidance from the Creator of Death, the Avenger. Ghaffar himself recited Ya-Rashid, the Guide to the Right Path, to ensure that he would be steered according to His eternal plan.

Ghaffar would later tell me that he had uttered Ya-Rashid for exactly the one thousandth time when his targets came into view, eight beautiful MI-24D gunships. Quickly Ghaffar ordered his other two gunners to their positions. Both perched their weapons on their shoulders, poised like hunters stalking their prey.

“Wait until I give the order to