Apache (26 page)

‘Engaging with thirty Mike Mike.’

I glanced up from my TADS to see his cannon rounds tearing into the first of the fifteen huts and buildings, spitting great lumps of earth and rock out of the walls and igniting the straw roof. Billy got off four good twenty-round bursts before Geordie had to break off. Every ten seconds, another three 105-mm shells pounded down on the village too. Two long, barn-like buildings had good arcs of fire up the towpath and onto Mathew. On his second and third attack runs, he planted Hellfires and raked them with 30-mm, collapsing their stone roofs on the fighters inside.

We swapped over. I could still see a series of holes dug into the eastern wall of one of the barns at ground level – little holes a few inches wide, enough to poke a muzzle through. My bet was that the Taliban snipers had covered themselves with mattresses, to protect themselves from our frag. I smacked a Hellfire into the wall and took it down. My adrenalin was up. With my second, I dropped the roof of a smaller building with three sniping ports, ten metres further north. The mattresses wouldn’t get in the way of those puppies, that was for sure. Widow Seven One piped up as we swapped roles again.

‘Ugly, we are taking heavy incoming fire across here at the firebase. Every time you turn away from the village it’s RPG Central out of there.’

We must have killed a fair few by now, but our pummelling hadn’t distracted the bastards at all. There had to be dozens of them
down there, but we’d seen no movement between buildings since we’d begun our onslaught. How the hell were they all getting in? Billy broke in as Carl began our third run.

‘Stand by, stand by; he has moved.’

‘Say again Billy?’

‘Mathew Ford has moved. I say again, he HAS moved.’

‘Stand by. Break off, Carl.’ I shuffled my backside in the seat to get more comfortable. My pulse started to race. Carl turned sharply right back into the fort and I slewed my TADS back onto Mathew. His feet and hands were still in the same position. He looked no different to me.

‘Are you sure, Billy?’

‘One hundred per cent. He has moved. He’s alive.’

If Billy was sure he’d seen him move, that was good enough for me. I told the JTAC. This was big news, and it upped the ante considerably. Another tidal wave of chatter burst over the net. Now the marines knew they had a life to save.

But Billy had been thinking.

‘Ed, I’ve got an idea. Ford needs to be moved now. He’s alive, but clearly badly injured. He could be dying right now.’

‘Affirm.’

‘Well, we could pick him up …’

‘Say again?’

‘We could rescue him. You stay up, we’ll go down. One of us gets out and straps him to the side of the aircraft. You know, like our downed aircraft emergency drill.’

‘Stand by.’

If he’d moved he was probably badly hurt, because he wasn’t moving a muscle now. Or he was unconscious. Either way, he needed help fast. I thought it through. It was ludicrous; we had no
FLIR and they had no access to the mission net. More importantly still, I’d picked up unconscious bodies before. There was no way one person could shift Mathew to the Apache and strap him on alone. I consulted Carl and he agreed.

‘I know what you’re saying Billy. But we’ve got a U / S FLIR and you wouldn’t be able to lift him on your own.’

Billy paused. ‘Okay, I’ll speak to the Boss.’

He called Trigger on the secure FM net. He’d made a beeline for Camp Bastion’s Joint Operations Cell on his return from Kandahar, to follow the battle and sort out a contingency plan.

‘Negative,’ was Trigger’s response.

‘But he’s still hot and we think he’s just unconscious. We can get him back.’

‘NEGATIVE,’ Trigger said, more firmly still.

Billy wasn’t giving up that easily. There had been no word on exactly when the marines we’re going to cross. He was convinced it was Mathew Ford’s best chance. Thirty seconds later, he came back on to me.

‘Let’s do it together, Ed.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s both go down there; then two of us can get out and carry him.’

It was still totally impractical. We’d get cut to pieces if we both went. Every time we turned tail they’d volley-fired RPGs at us.

‘Look Billy, Zulu Company are going to recover him. We have no top cover and the whole place is filling up with Taliban. Sure we’d get in, but we couldn’t get out of there without a massively well-coordinated fire plan and shit-loads of top cover.’

Billy fell silent.

‘Okay, I’ve got a better plan. Let’s go and collect two marines
each and fly them into the fort to collect the casualty. It’ll be much quicker. You coord the fire plan and 3 Flight can give us top cover.’

‘Stand by.’

I looked at Mathew Ford’s body. Strapping someone to the side of the aircraft was an emergency drill only ever to be used to rescue downed Apache aircrew. We’d rehearsed it as part of our escape and evasion training, but only on the ground and never with engines on or the rotors actually turning. That contravened MoD health and safety guidelines. In sixteen years of Apache operations, the Americans had never lifted any ground troops on the wings.

However, it was theoretically possible. We were all carrying our emergency straps as routine equipment, and the grab bars were right there behind the canopy. The only other aircraft we had available were the Chinooks, and they’d just set off back to Bastion, low on fuel, after dropping more ammo at the gun line. Besides, a great big flying cow like that would get shot to shit down there. Unlike the Apache it wasn’t designed to take rounds …

We were the only airborne option. It
was
possible. Maybe it could work …

Billy had the bit between his teeth now. I’d seen him like that before. He was like a bulldozer; nothing got in his way. But this needed serious cool. If it went wrong, we’d lose a whole load more men, and gift the Taliban eighty million quid’s worth of Apaches. It would be enough to make those boys believe in Father Christmas. And it could lose us the whole bloody campaign.

I tried not to let on to Billy that I was coming round to his idea. The truth is, I was. When Billy was this confident, his track record was 100 per cent spot on.

‘Listen Billy, we could only do it if Nick and Charlotte came back to give us top cover …’

That was all he needed. He was straight back onto the Boss.

‘Listen, sir, the ground troops are nowhere near ready to cross. I want to get two men on each aircraft and fly them into the fort to recover the casualty. Ed thinks we can do it too …’

Bollocks.

‘Can you send 3 Flight down to assist?’

‘Billy, listen to me,’ Trigger said. ‘We’ve been on the phone to Lashkar Gah and they have said it will be a ground rescue.’

‘Okay, sir. If I land, just confirm I will be disobeying a direct order.’

‘Affirmative. You will be. You can’t land both aircraft, you have no top cover.’

There was an uneasy five-second silence.

Then the Boss came back on. ‘I am launching 3 Flight to come and assist you.’

He paused, to allow the message to sink in.

‘Don’t do anything until the other aircraft arrive. I have no situational awareness and you have the bigger picture. If you think it will work, you’ll need permission from the ground commander.’

‘Copied, sir. Thank you.’

Billy didn’t need to prompt me. I was straight onto Widow Seven One. He was working out of Magowan’s HQ, and would only have been a few feet away from him.

The JTAC’s response was swift and uncompromising. ‘Negative. That request is denied, Ugly Five One. Zulu Company is going to rescue him.’ He added, ‘We don’t want cowboy missions,’ in case we hadn’t got the message.

Carl began to relay it to Billy and Geordie but I stopped him halfway through.

‘Don’t tell Billy the “cowboy missions” bit. He’ll flip.’

Carl wasn’t going to. Billy was angry enough anyway.

‘Right, well, if the marines are going to do it, they’d better fucking well get on with it. They’re running out of time. This place is filling up like Wembley on Cup Final day. I hope they realise that.’

We were all pissed off. With Nick and Charlotte dealing death and destruction from above us, coupled with a good arse-kicking fire plan, we’d convinced ourselves we could do it. Neither of us had taken our sights off Mathew, but we’d left the village alone for five minutes while the debate had raged. Billy and Geordie began another run in to attack with a Hellfire while Carl and I stayed where we were.

I looked briefly out of the canopy window to see it explode with pinpoint precision. Something caught my attention by the river bank directly south of the fort. Movement? It couldn’t be; the Taliban would have had to cross the canal to get there from the village. Nobody had come out of the fort; we were sure of that. Ditto the trees to the east.

‘Did you see something by the river, Carl?’

‘No.’

Maybe I’d imagined it. Better just double-check. Nothing.

‘Do us a favour, buddy, break off from Mathew for a sec and pull over to the east. But keep your eye on him.’

‘Will do. I have Mathew.’

‘Set a course so it looks as if we can’t see the fort.’

I slewed my TADS down to the river as we banked right and rolled away. Anyone watching would think both Apaches were heading out. I picked up five black rings on the embankment, evenly spaced, ten metres apart, where I thought I’d seen the movement. I’d wondered what they were when we first arrived. I kept
scanning the area. Nothing happened. Carl held the Apache so that the TADS was looking backwards.

‘Just keep it on that line a few more seconds, Carl. Let’s try and sucker them out.’

And bang, out popped a black-turbaned head from the second ring to the right, followed by a puff of smoke from behind him then a cloud of dust as he loosed off an RPG at the firebase. Quick as a flash, he disappeared again.

Tunnels
. The black circles were part of a fucking tunnel system. Where did they lead to? Had the black turban been in there all along? We’d had no idea about them – nobody had. Maybe he’d shot the five marines from there …

My stomach turned to liquid. Zulu Company had been surrounded the second they drove in there. Black Turban would only have been fifty yards away from them when they got to the wall. And now he was only fifty yards away from Mathew.

‘Billy, Taliban in the tunnels thirty-five metres south of Mathew. Engaging. Watch my strikes.’

As soon as Carl managed to flip us around enough, twenty of my cannon rounds went straight down Black Turban’s hidey-hole. No wonder it was RPG Central at the firebase.

I put another burst of twenty down Black Turban’s hole for good measure, and then another twenty to collapse each of the four other tunnel entrances. There was no way of knowing if any of the 120 rounds had hit anyone, but if we hammered them hard and fast enough, perhaps we could scare them away. At least they’d know we were onto them.

Billy continued to hammer the village with 30-mm HEDP rounds. Maybe there were tunnels under some of its buildings too. It would explain how they were infiltrating so fast.

Billy had used up more than half his Hellfires, so he switched to rockets and planted eight HEISAPs over a fifty-metre radius into the main cluster of buildings. Their charges were powerful enough to penetrate the walls, pelting the occupants with stone and debris, followed by a killer pressure wave. We switched over guard and attack roles.

‘My gun. Firing.’ Slaving the cannon to his right eye, Carl looked straight down at the back end of one of the buildings hit by Billy. ‘I’ve got movement in the village.’

He was right; as his first rounds flashed and exploded on the stone, eight Taliban sprinted from the other end of the building. He gave them three more bursts of twenty before they reached cover.

‘Good shooting, bonny lad,’ was Geordie’s verdict.

We were back on strike now, so I sent a Hellfire straight into the building that the lone escapee had just reached. They didn’t like our rockets, so I slammed eight Flechettes – containing 656 five-inch-long Tungsten darts – into the village centre. The darts could penetrate armour, so they’d get through those walls. Flashes of bright orange light erupted on each side of the aircraft as we came in again.

‘Long-range missile launch,’ Bitching Betty announced. ‘Six o’clock.’ The flares continued to pour off. My neck cracked as I threw my head rapidly back and to the right. I could see Carl follow suit.

‘Ugly Five One, missile launch six o’clock.’ Carl’s voice sounded laboured. He pulled as hard as he could on the cyclic to throw the Apache onto its back. ‘Billy and Geordie are chucking flares too.’

We’d been locked on at exactly the same time, but no missiles had passed our windows. The two pilots compared notes.

‘Geordie, we’ve just had a long-range missile launch from the south-east. Confirm the direction on you.’

‘South-east. Long range too.’

‘Where the bloody hell is it then?’

All four of us craned our heads round. There were no telltale smoke trails to give away the firing point.

‘Maybe it was the sun. Our systems could be playing up.’

‘On both aircraft? You’re the Ewok, Carl.’

‘Yeah, I know. That’s bollocks. I don’t like it.’

Did the Taliban have a SAM down there now? They’d certainly had enough time to ship one in. Apaches had been scrapping over the fort for six hours now. If it was a SAM, it must have misfired. There was definitely something down there, but God knew what. Widow Seven One had more bad news.

‘Be advised Ugly Five One, Zulu Company will be a further thirty minutes. Keep suppressing for their assault.’

Billy was livid when Carl relayed. ‘
What?
For fuck’s sake … How much time do they think they’ve got?’

It was now 9.48am, and we’d been on station for an hour and eleven minutes. We’d prepped the area for a rescue
now
, not in half-an-hour’s time.

‘We’re not going to be able to do this for much longer you know, Ed. I’m down to one Hellfire, sixteen Flechettes and 120 thirty Mike Mike.’

‘Copied. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. If we slow down on ammo, we lose Mathew. If we continue at this rate and they’re not ready, we lose Mathew when we run out of ammo. I’ve only one Hellfire, eight of each rocket type and 80 thirty Mike Mike,’ I reported in return.

I got back onto the JTAC.

‘Widow Seven One this is Ugly Five One. We’re depleting our ammunition. We could really do with some fast air on the village.’

‘Affirm Ugly Five One. Still no fast air on station. I’ve requested it three times. I’ll request it again.’

We had to keep the pressure up. We swapped over again, and Billy launched his last Hellfire and eight more Flechettes into the village. Rather than swap again, Carl launched our last missile whilst I kept eyes on Mathew, and Billy gathered it with his laser
and guided it down onto the roof of a building that posed a direct threat to him. We’d never done that before in combat. We’d never had to. A bolt of blindingly white light shot straight up into the air.

‘An alleluia missile.’ Billy sounded impressed.

Even though it now resembled an ancient ruin, battered by endless battles across the centuries, the JTAC reported outgoing fire from the village yet again. We were hammering them, but they kept on coming.

They couldn’t possibly have been there all along. There wasn’t a building that hadn’t been dropped by five million-lb-per-square-inch of Hellfire, smashed to pieces by HEISAPs, torn apart by Flechettes or torched by the M230’s High Explosive Dual Purpose cannon rounds.

The Taliban must have worked out the Mathew Ford situation by now. Why else would two Apaches be pummelling a shitty little village when there were no ground troops in sight? And why else would they have kept coming into our thunderous shower of lead, frag and fire? It was pretty obvious now: Zulu Company weren’t ever going to get back in there without fatalities.

Geordie got a second missile lock. His Apache pumped off another eight flares. ‘Long range, from the south-east again. No smoke trails. I’d love to know what the hell that is …’

We tried to ignore it. It was going to take more than a Taliban SAM to make us abandon Mathew. But whatever it was, flying around smack bang in the middle of the SAM belt was now getting spooky.

Carl and I ploughed sixty more cannon rounds into the one building left that could afford a firing solution onto Mathew. The main wall collapsed on the second burst and the rest followed suit. The village was burning and we still couldn’t see any Taliban moving between buildings.

It wasn’t just our ammunition that was running out. At 10.02am, Carl called ‘Bingo’. Bingo meant we were running low on gas. It was a call for the squadron commander’s ears – it was the last moment an RIP could be ordered and launched, because in thirty minutes’ time we’d only have enough fuel left to get back to Bastion.

‘Yeah, I’m Bingo too,’ Geordie chimed in.

The Boss acknowledged.

Our own clock was ticking down too. That made Billy even more impatient. He told Geordie to loop over the firebase on their way round for an attack run on the village so he could take a peek at Zulu Company. Now Billy really did his nut.

‘Ed, I can’t believe it. They’re still sitting on their Bergens. Their helmets are off and some of them are smoking. Nobody’s even told them to mount up.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Nope. They look like they’ve been told to wait.’

‘But the JTAC said they’d be assaulting in ten minutes.’

‘Those lads are going nowhere.’

Billy’s voice rose an octave. ‘We’re going to lose Ford, you know. He went down at what, 7am? That’s three hours ago.’

‘I know, mate.’

‘He’s just not going to …’

‘WIDOW SEVEN ONE, THIS IS TUSK.’

Billy’s voice was drowned out by a new voice on the air net. American, and professional.

‘Widow Seven One, Tusk is now on station and ready for trade.’

An A10 Thunderbolt. Top news. A fast jet with serious strike power that could do the enemy some real damage. It could also protect Mathew; it packed a Gatling Gun. Carl relayed to Billy and Geordie. Then more good news, this time from the Boss.

‘Ugly Five Zero and Ugly Five One, 3 Flight en route. They’ll be with you in figures Two Zero minutes.’

Billy heard that one himself. That was it. Billy’s waters broke.

‘Right Ed, that’s it. We’ve got our air cover coming, and Tusk can watch Mathew while we’re gone. I want to rescue him with Royals on the wings, and I want to do it now. We
need
to do it now. Get on the net and make it happen.’

‘Okay, stand by.’

I knew he was right. We had an A10 here, and Nick and FOG, with Charlotte and Tony, on their way. We had about twenty-five minutes of combat gas left, and the Taliban were getting stronger by the minute. The stars would never be better aligned for an Apache rescue attempt. We had one shot at this, and that shot was now. My blood was up too. Mathew was now kipping in the Last Chance Saloon.

‘Take us over the firebase will you buddy?’

It was still a huge call, and I wanted to see Zulu Company with my own eyes.

‘Will do,’ said Carl, and began to bank. Billy was spot on. They were still sitting on their Bergens waiting for the order.

I only had one question left. ‘Carl, can we really do this
and
get the aircraft back to Bastion?’

Carl made a swift calculation. ‘Yes. Just.’

Right.

‘Billy, affirm. I’ll push the ground commander until he gives us a go. Stand by.’

I could see Billy and Geordie running in, rockets exploding just shy of a thousand metres from their aircraft and showering the area with darts.

I got back onto Widow Seven One and explained exactly what we
wanted to do and why. ‘Zulu Company are not ready. We are,’ I finished. ‘All we need you to do is sort out the fire plan from the artillery and fast air.’

‘Stand by.’

There was a thirty-second pause.

‘Ugly Five One, negative. Zulu Company are going to do the rescue.’

Wrong answer from the JTAC. Time to up the ante.

‘Put Charlie Oscar on.’

‘The CO?’

‘Affirm. The CO.’

It was time to talk to the organ grinder, Colonel Magowan.

‘Stand by.’

Another twenty-second pause.

‘Charlie Oscar speaking.’

‘Charlie Oscar, Ugly Five One. What is your immediate plan?’

‘Zulu Company will cross the river to recover Lance Corporal Ford.’

‘How long is it going to take them to get ready?’

He sighed loudly enough for me to hear. ‘They say they’ll be ready in ninety minutes.’

What?
I must have misheard.

‘Confirm, NINE ZERO minutes?’

‘Yes, H-hour is at 1130 hours.’

There was obviously some sort of problem with Zulu Company. We didn’t have time to go into it.

‘Sir, we can be across and back in five minutes maximum, but need to move now.’

‘How?’

He bloody knows how. This is wasting time
.

‘Give me four volunteers and we’ll be in and out with Ford in two minutes.’

‘But I don’t have any pilots.’

Pilots
? What was he on?

‘No sir,
we
are the pilots. I just need four marine volunteers. They will be strapped onto the wings of the Apaches.’

‘We don’t have any straps.’

‘We have the straps; we will strap them on …’

It dawned on me that this was the first time Magowan had heard any of our plan. None of the messages had got back to him. I explained the whole thing as succinctly as I could.

‘Give me two minutes to think.’

‘Tell him we don’t have two minutes, Ed,’ Carl said quietly over our internal intercom. He was watching the fuel level and the delay was getting on his tits.

‘We don’t have two minutes, sir.’

‘Give me twenty seconds then.’

Utter silence. For the first time all day, the mission radio net went quiet. Half of Helmand province was listening in now, and everybody was waiting for Magowan’s answer. You could have heard a mouse fart. He only took ten.

‘Ugly Five One, this is Charlie Oscar. Your plan is approved.’

‘Roger. We will be with you in four minutes.’

Now we’re really going to have to do this
…

‘Billy and Geordie, it’s a go.’

‘Copied. You sort the fire plan with the JTAC and we’ll lead you into the desert. You spoke to the CO so he’ll be expecting you to brief the volunteers.’

‘Okay, Billy. Just give me twenty more seconds on station.’

Widow Seven One was already briefing up the A10 on how to
protect Mathew. I stepped on their conversation because we didn’t have a second to lose. I had some terminal controlling of my own I wanted to complete. If we were pulling off, I wanted Black Turban’s warren nailed first.

‘Break, break. This is Ugly Five One. Tusk, I’ve got a tunnel system I would like you to destroy.’

‘Copy that. Go ahead Ugly Five One, I’m ready.’

‘Tusk, from the fort’s southern wall go south thirty-five metres to where the canal and the river join. Can you see five black circles?’

‘Visual, sir.’

‘That’s the tunnel system I want destroying. Now, confirm that you can identify the MIA on the southern side of the wall, thirty-five metres away.’

‘I have a good visual on the prone friendly just west of the crater, sir.’

‘He is well within Danger Close but there is no ricochet risk, and the ground is soft. Are you sure you can make the shot without hitting the MIA?’