The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

“Ours or theirs?” I was never sure when I would learn that someone had brought down a commercial flight along the border where Pakistani Fokkers flew on an irregular schedule.

“It was an Su-25, and it has come down in very good condition. The pilot ejected.”

“You’re sure it’s a Sukhoi-25?”

“We’re getting verification. The crash site is under control of one of the militias. They say the aircraft is in excellent condition.”

“Stinger get it?”

“No. A lucky burst from triple A.”

“That’s great, Colonel.” I was delighted. A lightly damaged Su-25, a superb ground attack aircraft, would add nicely to the equipment we had been collecting from the Afghan battlefield over the last ten years. We had delivered a mint-condition, flyable MiG-21bis to the USAF for use in its aggressor training squadron a few months back, and my predecessor, Bill Piekney, had gotten his hands on a serviceable MI-25 attack helicopter that he had sent back home for the U.S. Army to play with. We had actually been able to pick up one or two copies of just about everything on the battlefield over the years, and some items, such as flares used by the Soviets to counter heat-seeking missiles, were being bought by the case from Soviet quartermasters through a series of elaborate cutouts.

“Can you get word to the people at the crash site to keep souvenir hunters away from the plane?” I didn’t want anyone carrying off the nose cone or the tail cones, where the weapons systems and avionics were located.

“Nobody will touch the aircraft, but you’ll have to commit to buy it now. Otherwise they’ll put it out for bids.”

Sure they would, I thought. This war was great business for the battlefield scavengers and the scrap metal guys. It was tailor-made for the Afghan entrepreneur. Everybody was in the game, from most of NATO to the Chinese. But we often had right of first refusal, and the Afghan traders knew where to go with their first offer. I even knew of some enterprising scrap dealers in Paktia and Nangarhar Provinces who would arrange for mujahideen militias to stage attacks on Soviet garrisons just to get the garrison to counter with an artillery barrage, so that the next day they could wind up the hill in their old Bedfords and offer to buy the scrap brass from the garrison commander (they operated pretty close to the daily fix on the local scrap markets). It was also good business for a Soviet commander in a lonely outpost. For good measure, the wily scrap metal dealers would usually throw in a case of Stolichnaya or tinned caviar or Kamchatka crab wheedled out of another garrison earlier. Everybody ended up happy, and only rarely did anyone get hurt.

“What do they want?”

“Mr. Milton, I am sure that you can get this Sukhoi for less than ten Toyota Hilux pickup trucks. And maybe some BM-12 rocket launchers.”

“How many trucks? And how many BM-12s?” I asked, knowing that it would be pretty close to ten.

“Maybe eight each, Mr. Milton. But the trucks should be new and white with red pinstriping. And it would be better if there are some with double cabs—room for five inside the cab.”

“Look, Colonel. You find the new trucks from your motor pool, but you can be sure I’ll cover you. Same goes for the BM-12s. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, I think we do.”

“Then I’ll need your office to get the Sukhoi across zero line; my people will manage it from there. Can you put it under twenty-four-hour guard until I get instructions? I’ll have an answer tomorrow. And thanks. This might be a big break. But for God’s sake, don’t tell those guys we’re excited about it. Okay? They’ll jack up the price.”

“Fine, Mr. Milton. But there’s one more thing. They also have the pilot.”

“The pilot!”

“Yes. A gray-haired colonel ejected and was captured. He was only very slightly hurt and is in custody of the same militia holding the plane. What are your thoughts on the pilot?”

“Just make sure nothing happens to him,” I said.

I had long preached to both the Afghans and the Pakistanis that the mujahideen needed to change their ways when it came to the treatment of Soviet prisoners, in particular downed pilots. Soon after I arrived in Pakistan, I was shown a photograph of a Soviet pilot in a silver flight suit, up to his waist in snow, skin burned by the relentless sun, with a bullet hole in the side of his head. His Tokarev semiautomatic was still clutched in his hand. He had killed himself rather than be captured. Soviet pilots had it particularly rough when captured, hence their extreme caution since the introduction of the Stinger in 1986. The greatest fear was not so much being hit as falling into mujahideen hands.

I had made it clear that American policy was that captured pilots be treated as prisoners of war under the norms of international agreements and that I would even be prepared to offer rewards for pilots repatriated to the USSR or, if they so desired, resettled in the West.

“They will give him to us for two more trucks and perhaps two more BM-12s.”

“Let’s make the same deal. You pay the militia and I’ll cover you. And I’ll want to talk to General Gul first thing in the morning.”

“I’ll send a car, Mr. Milton.”

Jalalabad, August 9, 1988

The 40th Army had pulled its forces out of Jalalabad early in their front-loaded withdrawal in mid-May, handing over to the Afghan 2nd Army Corps the city that had once been the old winter residence of Afghan kings. Many in the Soviet limited contingent believed that as soon as the Soviet troops pulled out of Jalalabad, Afghan defenses would collapse and the bandits would take the Nangarhar provincial capital. Some even thought that the local Afghan allies of the Soviets would panic and try to clamber aboard their departing tanks and helicopters, as the South Vietnamese had done