Apache

13. A GOOD NIGHT’S WORK

We flew a fifty-four-mile straight line back to Camp Bastion, taking us right past the Garmsir District Centre and over huge stretches of the Green Zone. We radioed back a list of what we needed and Kev and his boys were waiting with it all in the arming bays.

It was like a Formula One pit stop: fuel first, then 30-mm, rockets and six Hellfires loaded simultaneously. It was all hands to the pump. At one point I spotted Kev carrying a 100-lb missile on his own; I could have sworn he was smiling. They worked their socks off and got us out of there in twenty-five minutes.

More than three hours in the cockpit normally made me feel as though I was sitting on a bag of golf balls, but tonight I seemed immune from it. Perhaps it was because I’d never sat still; it had been a roller coaster of a ride.

All four of us were on an incredible high during the transit there and back. In his usual modest fashion, Billy texted us his Distinguished Flying Cross citation for the mission – par for the course when he thought a sortie had gone even moderately well.

The secure text messaging system had only four lines of text and 176 character spaces. He used them all:

We checked in on station over Koshtay at 6.14am and it was as dark then as it had been when we left.

In the eighty minutes we’d been away the geography of the battlefield had changed yet again. Maverick had obviously wanted more work done. Judging by the size of the heat splash on the ground, it looked like the B1 had plonked a 2,000-pounder bang in the middle of it. It must have been a super-quick fuse too. All the buildings in the compound where Maverick had asked me to engage the five Taliban had disappeared. There was nothing left; no heat sources whatsoever.

‘Looks like it was curtains for the donkey, buddy.’

Knight Rider Five Six and his small party from the Brigade Recce Force had withdrawn. They couldn’t risk hanging around in the middle of an enemy-controlled area of the Green Zone in daylight.

Maverick Zero Bravo appeared to have knocked off for the night too, now the back of the Taliban in Koshtay had been broken. The Nimrod MR2 – callsign Wizard – was spotting for targets with his equally powerful cameras instead. It had already directed Bone One Three to drop 2,000-pounders on the Boss’s sheds, but Bone had pulled off station again.

The Boss tried to speak to Wizard and couldn’t get a peep out of him. We knew Lashkar Gah would have the downlink, but we were too far away to establish comms with them. We’d had a satellite phone fitted to our version of the Apache for just such an occasion. Trigger dialled up the JTAC at Brigade HQ in Lashkar Gah, Widow Seven Zero. With no conference facility, Billy relayed the call to Carl and me.

‘Ugly Five One, Five Zero. The Boss has got Widow Seven Zero on the bat-phone in Lash. He has fresh targets from Wizard; stand by for talk on.’

I followed the irrigation ditch south-east from the chisel-shaped compound for 300 metres.

‘Five One has a large compound on the south-west side and two smaller compounds on the north-east side of the ditch, approximately fifty metres beyond the footbridge.’

‘Five Zero. Affirm. Wizard watched injured Taliban making their way across the bridge towards those compounds. You take all the buildings on the south-west of the ditch; we’ll take the east.’

The sky began to lighten as Billy and Carl put us in broad orbits above the compounds. As Carl and I came round, I saw two smart-looking 4x4s parked a few hundred metres down a dirt track which ran alongside the ditch. That was a Taliban indicator if ever there was one; a local could never have afforded one. Either reinforcements were arriving or, more likely, they’d come to collect their wounded.

‘Stand by, Carl. I think we might have a shoot on here.’ I had the gun and the crosshairs ready. I saw a flicker of movement on the canal side of the compound. ‘East a bit more, buddy.’

As we cleared the eastern wall, two men were trying to get inside the place. They had left what looked like a locked gate near the canal and staggered along the wall, looking for an opening. One was holding up the other, and they scrabbled about, increasingly desperate to find another entrance. Neither seemed to have weapons on them. I hit zoom as they drew level with the building on the inside of the compound.

The one being carried had clearly been in the battle earlier; the heat stains on his head and tattered clothing must have been blood. He appeared only to have one arm and his left foot was missing. Squirming like trapped rats, they were a truly pathetic sight.

Then I spotted an RPG launcher and an AK47 fifteen metres behind them, on the ground, just short of the ditch. They must have dropped them when they heard our rotor blades. So they knew the drill.

‘Ugly Five Zero, Ugly Five One. I have eyes on two Taliban trying to get into the first compound on the west side of the ditch. Confirm clear to engage.’

‘Ugly Five Zero. Affirm. Widow has cleared us to engage any targets and all buildings with Taliban sheltering in them.’

The duo was bang in the centre of my crosshairs, but I hesitated. My cannon rounds would chew up the house on the other side of the wall for sure, along with whoever was inside it. I had clear orders, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. I kept thinking: what if it was my kids in there?

All I needed was for them to give me a few more feet… They finally found the gate and scuttled inside. They stayed as close to the wall and then the house as they could, desperate for somewhere to hide.

It was a typical Afghan compound, forty metres long and twenty-five wide, with a floor of hard-packed dirt, divided in two by the house where it extended from the eastern wall. Behind it was a solid stone oven and a chicken coop, a big stack of firewood, cooking pans, matting, a goat and a toilet. The other half was empty.

The uninjured fighter pushed against the first of the house’s three doors, but it didn’t move an inch. Struggling to keep his companion upright, he eventually managed to bounce him along the wall to the next one. It too was locked.

I would finish them as they rounded the corner if the last door was also impassable; Carl put me in position to do so with minimum collateral damage. As they hobbled towards it, the injured man collapsed; he’d probably passed out. Could I fire? Shit, no, not quite – they were within a metre of the house and it was guaranteed to get some of my splash. This fucker knew what he was doing. I stuck my crosshairs on him like glue. He banged hard on the third door.

I could now make out the building with my naked eye. Dawn hadn’t quite broken and there was no colour in my vision, but I could see the two fugitives increasingly clearly. The door opened and he pulled his unconscious comrade inside by the shoulders, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

Ten seconds later, five children of varying sizes burst out of the same door and huddled together in the open courtyard. They were afraid of being outside, but clearly didn’t want to go back in. They stared at the doorway and suddenly began pushing each other into line. The smallest one clung to the tallest and wouldn’t let go. The others were clearly agitated. They must have been receiving orders from inside the house.

As dawn broke they looked up at us in unison and waved madly. I zoomed in tight on their faces. Their ages ranged from about two to perhaps twelve. And every single one of them was terrified.

‘Look at your TADS screen, Carl.’

‘I’m seeing it. Scum of the earth.’

‘Carl, that scum is using innocent kids as a shield to protect his sorry arse.’

The children shuffled back to the door and stopped outside it. As we swarmed, they followed our every move. Every orbit we did saw each of them turn with us. I told the Boss what was happening.

‘Ugly Five Zero. Wizard’s orders are to destroy any building with Taliban occupants. But I am instructing you: Do not engage that house.’

I had no intention of doing so. Our ROE were simple. We’d kill any amount of Taliban, but never at the risk of even one innocent life. The Boss informed the Widow that he was not prepared to authorise the engagement of our target as he had better situational awareness than they did. Good man.

The wounded Taliban was as good as dead, if he wasn’t already. His companion was too savvy to come out into the open until we were long gone. I looked forward to meeting him another day.

It was now three-quarters light. A deep red dawn filled the eastern horizon, and the sun would begin to pop up out of the Red Desert at any minute. We swarmed over the compounds up and down the irrigation ditch for a few minutes more and I poked my TADS inside it, hunting for survivors.

The more I looked, the more I realised we wouldn’t be putting any more rounds down that morning. The daily routines were beginning to re-establish themselves: women carried bowls out of their houses; teenagers fed goats and started fires. The men stayed indoors while we were overhead, terrified they’d get mistaken for Taliban.

‘Ugly Five One is seeing a normal pattern of life here and negative targets.’

‘Five Zero. Copied; my thoughts too. I’ll inform Lash that we can’t engage any of these targets due to civilians. Let’s sweep the initial target and conduct some Battle Damage Assessment.’

Carl swung us west, back to the main Taliban complex, to film the battle’s aftermath with our TADS cameras for the battlegroup to analyse. The first rays of sunlight dusted everything below us a delicate pink, then bright, flaming orange as the sun’s crest popped over the horizon. I looked out of my right-hand window as we passed over the complex. It was only then that I realised the full extent of the devastation we’d caused.

It looked like the old pictures of Hiroshima. The earth was still smouldering; the wisps of battlefield smoke hung low in the chill morning air, giving the place a strange, dreamlike quality. The trees that had survived were charred and skeletal. The huts we’d Hellfired were mounds of darkened rubble; the 2,000- and 500-pounders had reduced everything in their path to powder.

Trigger’s leaker lay where he’d fallen, the huge hole in his chest now a dark ring. His first sentry was still slumped in his guardhut, but the one hiding behind the tree hadn’t died immediately; he’d crawled nearly forty metres towards the mosque.

‘Check out east, Ed. Here comes the burial party.’

A long line of women and a few unarmed men began to fan out from the far irrigation channel and made their way slowly towards the complex. We’d seen this before. After a battle, the Taliban forced the locals to scour the ground for their dead. One or two members of the burial party were probably Taliban directing the operation; they knew they were safe as houses.

Behind them two local women emerged from a domed wicker hut, halfway up the path where I’d gunned down the runner. A jumble of legs and feet stuck out of its arched entrance. They must have been piling up the corpses inside. A man in a black dishdash ducked down and crawled into the hut. When he backed out he wiped his hands on the ground before he stood up.

Fifteen minutes later, the Boss told Lashkar Gah we had everything.

Unsurprisingly, after Billy had awarded Trigger his DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) via text, the graveyard humour ran riot on the flight back.

As we passed Garmsir, the Boss said he’d check in with the incumbent JTAC to check all was still quiet with them. It was the opportunity I’d been waiting for all night. I jumped in before he could make the call.

‘Ugly Five Zero, Five One. I had a message passed into the cockpit during the upload. The JTAC in Garmsir has switched to the alternate frequency due to atmospheric interference on primary.’

‘Copied. What’s the frequency?’

‘Don’t know. I can’t find my comms card. Sorry.’

Cue the Boss flicking through his Black Brain to the frequencies page. And there it was. Do you suffer from erectile dysfunction? Put the pleasure back in your life with a little blue pill… Below the headline there was a photo of a good-looking middle-aged man staring disconsolately into his Y-fronts. Geordie had torn the Viagra advert out of a magazine.

‘Very funny, Elton.’

I couldn’t believe it had taken the whole night for Trigger to look up a radio frequency.

Rocco hadn’t been seen for three weeks and we were worried that he’d been taken prisoner. The conspiracy theory had it that the Boss had hidden him because he was so alarmed by the stunt during General Dannatt’s visit, but nobody could prove it. Two days before Glacier 1 was launched, Geordie and Darwin came up with a plan to smoke Rocco out. We’d Rocco Trigger relentlessly by other means until he had the Italian Stallion released.

We had a strong cup of coffee back at the JHF, courtesy of Billy, who’d lost Apache Triv on an excellent HIDAS question from Carl. Then it was into the debrief. The Ops Officer had crunched a few stats during our second sortie.

‘Well, Mr Macy, aren’t we Flash Harry this morning. Not only was that the fastest pair of Hellfires ever fired by the British Army, it’s also the first time we’ve had two in the air from one Apache at the same time in combat.’

I was so consumed by the mission, I’d had no idea.

‘As for you, Boss, Kev Blundell tells me you’ve passed your £1 million of Hellfire marker. And for all of you: that’s the most Hellfires ever fired in one mission. But I imagine you don’t need me to tell you that.’

We debated the one aspect of the mission that had puzzled us all – the identity of ‘Higher’. Maverick Zero Bravo was a new callsign on all the pilots, as well as everyone in the JHF.

‘I tried to look it up,’ the Ops Officer said. ‘It’s not in any of the battlegroup’s orders and it’s not on the Air Plan. It’s not Colonel Magowan; you spoke to his JTAC. And it wasn’t Brigade either; they were Widow Seven Zero. I can’t find any reference to Maverick Zero Bravo anywhere.’

We asked discreetly around over the next few days. Nobody in Camp Bastion had heard of the callsign either. We even checked the list of all registered callsigns in theatre and couldn’t find it there either. Maverick Zero Bravo didn’t seem to exist. And yet from somewhere outside Afghanistan, he had access to excellent live optics and intelligence as well as our highly secure net. And he’d been given the authority – presumably by the brigadier – to order instant strikes. That sort of power wasn’t handed over lightly.

There was only one explanation. Whether Maverick was in Vauxhall Cross or Langley, Virginia, there was no real clue. ‘Good arrows’ was an American military phrase, but our JTACs controlled US pilots and picked up their lingo too.

We had already been led to believe that the Koshtay complex’s initial discovery had been made by the spooks. We couldn’t hold it against them if they wanted a ringside seat at its destruction.

The full Battle Damage Assessment for Operation Glacier 1 arrived from Lashkar Gah forty-eight hours later. We knew it had been a good night, but it was even better than anyone could have hoped.

The strike was estimated to have killed between eighty and 130, double the initial projection. The figure was not more precise because nobody knew how many Taliban were asleep inside the barracks when they got frazzled. Three of their senior commanders were among the dead, including a big fish by the name of Mullah Fahir Mohammed. Intercepts from across the Pakistan border in Quetta revealed urgent discussions had begun about the need to restructure their southern command. They were shitting themselves, and they didn’t know where or how hard we’d hit them next. Which was exactly what we wanted.

The BDA also revealed that the complex had housed a jail. Thirteen Afghan prisoners may have died inside it. It was rumoured that the jail had been known about all along and that was the reason it required a Whitehall signature. Sometimes that’s the way it goes with strategic targeting. I’m glad I didn’t know that beforehand.

A brief press release went out to the British media celebrating our brave troops’ ‘capture’ of ‘a Taliban regional headquarters’. It sounded better than saying we had stonked 100 new recruits into blazing oblivion along with their commanders without putting so much as one marine’s boot into the place.

I was pleased to have played my part in stopping the influx of new fighters with the Corps’ first Deep Raid, but the fate of the thirteen prisoners left me empty, and I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate much after that.

Meanwhile, the harsh realities of life on the ground in Helmand continued.

Two days after the Koshtay raid, another twenty-one-year-old marine from 42 Commando was killed during close-quarter fighting in an enemy compound near the Kajaki Dam. Darwin and Charlotte had been out supporting the clearance patrol. I was in the JHF when they came back, waiting to scrutinise their gun tape. They looked pretty shaken up.

‘Everything okay, Tony?’

‘Not really mate. A guy got shot at point blank range right in front of us.’ He’d run round a corner as a Taliban fighter stepped out of a doorway.

That was one of the disadvantages of our powerful surveillance system. Sometimes we saw things in graphic detail that we didn’t want to remember. There was nothing Darwin and Charlotte could have done for the boy. But that didn’t mean his death wasn’t going to haunt them. Unlike gun tapes, memories couldn’t be locked away in a safe.

There were two new arrivals from Dishforth that week. The first was an instruction yet again upping the amount of hours we were allowed to fly the aircraft. We were now up to 415 per month, or fourteen hours a day. The Chinook and Lynx hours had gone up too, but not as steeply as the Apache’s. Needs must; and it was all the Joint Helicopter Command could do to respond to brigade’s ever greater demands on their woefully limited Afghan resources. We knew there was still no new money for the extra spares; as always, someone somewhere would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. Soon, Peter would have to declare bankruptcy.

The second arrival was our new Commanding Officer. Lieutenant Colonel Neil Sexton had taken over the reins of 9 Regiment at the back end of the year. Now he was coming out to command the Joint Helicopter Force in Kandahar. That made him Trigger’s immediate superior in the operational chain of command.

As the new CO, Colonel Sexton was an unknown quantity to most of us. We hadn’t had time to connect with him in the few weeks before we deployed. We knew he was unashamedly ambitious – but that was no bad thing. He wasn’t Apache trained as the previous CO had been. On the other hand, he’d done a lot of time in the simulator so he understood the machine and the demands on its aviators.

I had liked our outgoing CO. He was hugely popular and a great extrovert. I wondered how I’d get on with the new one. It wasn’t long before I found out.