5
I looked through the slats. Four Hueys were touching down in the field a hundred metres away. BDU-clad bodies leaped out and took up fire positions.
Paata was out of the van, dragging the camera from its mount, ripping out all the leads. He extended the small antenna that would maintain the link with the satellite dish and keep the feed live.
There was the rattle of automatic gunfire from the high ground to our right. Akaki’s crew were putting down fire from the village.
The helis’ engines roared and they lifted sharply. The guys on the ground spun around like headless chickens. It was like watching Kazbegi all over again.
One or two shots came from the field as the BDUs began to engage. I hoped they were aimed up at the village and not towards us.
Paata rushed outside, camera on his shoulder, Nana by his side.
I grabbed Charlie. ‘Well?’
He looked at me but didn’t answer.
I ran to the barn doors. ‘Nana! Nana!’
She indicated to Paata what she wanted filmed.
‘Nana!’
She turned back and I mimed the cut-away sign, finger across my throat.
The helis thundered overhead, eager to get out of the contact zone.
‘Go!’ she screamed. ‘Go!’
She turned away and got on with her job.
I skirted round the side of the barn, Charlie following at a hobble.
We scrambled up to the treeline, using the building as cover, and then turned back towards the village, paralleling the road. We had a bird’s-eye view of the chaos below us. BDUs milled around in the field, trying to take cover, not sure where. Maybe they hadn’t got to page two of the textbook yet.
American voices tried in vain to command and control as one-in-four tracer burned down from the militants’ light machine guns, thudding into the grass around their students.
One long burst arced down from the rooftops, scattering earth around the BDUs. They had no choice but to keep moving and get the f*ck off the open ground.
Nana crouched against the woodpile outside the barn, talking to camera as the contact went on behind her. Paata panned across the sky as the whirl of rotor blades sounded from the high ground behind the barn.
The Huey was really close, coming in low, and swept over our heads, banking into a steep climb over the field then breaking right, towards the village. The crew were trying to get some kind of fix on the attackers.
Another burst of tracer forced the heli to bank sharp left and disappear back into the dead ground.
Charlie slowed. I grabbed his arm, hooked it over my shoulder, and dragged him along. I slipped in the mud, finally bringing both of us down.
Charlie landed on top of me. ‘Any chance of a breather, lad?’
We lay where we had fallen, trying to catch our breath.
Another sustained burst from above us echoed around the valley. This time there was return fire; the boys in the field had finally got their act together.
Charlie shook his head. ‘Why aren’t those f*ckers up there just running for it? Do they really want to take on the army? They all escaped from the same asylum as Koba?’
I dragged him to his feet. Before long, wooden houses began to appear alongside the road below us.
Charlie stopped. ‘Listen, lad . . . No helis. Must have gone for reinforcements. Now’s our chance.’