Apache

15. FINDING MATHEW FORD

We rounded the gun line as all three 105s sparked up together. A series of concentric pressure rings surged out of each barrel across the desert floor, then disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke. Inside our air-conditioned chariot, I didn’t hear a whisper.

Carl threw the aircraft into a hard left turn, and then righted her again a second later. The Power Meter Indicator flashed up in my monocle as we pulled G. The torque was up so high we were within 10 per cent of blowing up the engines. Carl kept milking them for everything he could get. We were going balls out now. If the Taliban hadn’t got Ford, every second counted. At times like this, Carl was the man to fly with.

‘Eight klicks to run. On target in two and a half minutes.’

‘Thanks Carl. Keep south and east of the fort. The guns are firing onto the village west of it.’

Plumes of dark smoke were now clearly visible on the horizon directly in front of us. It was time to go to work. I pressed TADS on the ‘Sight Select’ switch on my right ORT handgrip, and the camera inside the nose turret jumped into life. I hit the ‘Slave’ button; the Apache knew where Jugroom was. As quick as a flash, a black and white image filled the MPD: smoke spewing from the fort. The river ran north–south in the distance. A hodgepodge of bushes, trees, walls and buildings was shrouded in a billowing cloud of dust. Every few seconds, a shell or heavy-calibre tracer round exploded with a tiny flash of light and a fresh puff of smoke.

The Taliban would try to get Ford into a building and obscure him from our optics as soon as they could. But searching for something outside, in a Green Zone battle, was already a nightmare from this distance.

‘Ugly Five One is ready for a talk on. Where exactly was the MIA last seen?’

The JTAC was quick. ‘There is a major bend in the river, with a tributary to the east and a canal running north off it…’

I zoomed in closer.

‘Copied. Confirm it’s the one running into the smoke?’

‘Affirm. There’s a track on the eastern side of the canal running north. It is then bordered by a canal on the west and a wall on the east. That wall is the beginning of the fort. Copied?’

‘Copied. Visual with the wall.’ The adobe and stone battlement glowed in the low sun.

‘The furthest our friendly callsigns got was about a hundred metres along that track. Stand by for a grid.’

Grid 41 R PQ 1142 3752 Altitude 2257 feet. I punched the info into the system as he gave it to me then slaved the TV camera to it. The screen showed the fort’s south-west corner, next to the towpath.

I looked for a unique feature to confirm I had the correct starting point for the search; I still needed to be 100 per cent sure. ‘Ugly Five One is visual with a wall at the grid. About fifty metres east, away from the canal, is a bomb crater where it has been demolished. Confirm I am looking at the correct wall?’

‘Affirm. That was their limit of exploitation. We believe they were in the vicinity of that crater when they got contacted.’

‘Copied. We’re searching now.’

Carl relayed to Geordie. We were closing fast now, so I zoomed out as wide as I could on the TADS to get a better overall picture. We were almost at the edge of the desert. The marines’ firebase sat on top of a berm, beyond which the ground plummeted to the river. Dozens of commandos were in position, in WMIKs, Vikings or on their belt buckles, all of them desperate to do their bit to get their mate back. Light Dragoons’ Scimitars were lined up alongside them.

As we passed over their heads, Carl pulled back hard on the cyclic, virtually standing the aircraft on its tail and catapulting me hard into my straps. He needed to go from 161 mph to nothing on a sixpence; if he didn’t we’d overshoot the fort by a mile in a matter of seconds. He banked gently to the left as Billy and Geordie banked right and we began a lazy three-quarter wheel circuit. A white object flew a few hundred feet over the fort and across my TADS screen. We weren’t the only people watching.

‘Keep our height up Carl; there’s a UAV flying around low-level, buddy.’

‘I see it. Don’t worry; you won’t get me low-level over that place.’

Billy and I broke up the ground we needed to search.

‘Let’s start at the last known sighting. Mate, can you take everywhere north of the wall? Carl and I will take the southern side in case he’s crawled down to the river.’

‘Affirm,’ Billy said. ‘We’re on it.’

The radios were going ape-shit now. Even though it had only just been announced, Ford had been officially MIA for thirty minutes and word had spread. Every man and his dog were asking what was going on. Widow Eight Three, a second JTAC working with the gunners, was asking for sitreps to better his targeting. Then there was Nick’s voice calling urgently for more fuel and ammunition on the FM.

I could make out at least three different levels of command on the mission net, including Zulu Company’s OC, Colonel Magowan, and the brigade HQ in Lashkar Gah. It was a given that the CO of 45 Commando would be listening in, and Trigger, who should now be back at Bastion.

A Predator UAV and a Nimrod MR2 circled somewhere way above us. Their downlinks were being pumped into every HQ, fuelling the frenzy. Every rubberneck within reach would be crowded around the feed screens. With an MIA, everyone wants in. Over a hundred minutes had passed since the initial contact; they’d be hanging on every word.

Yup, the mission now bore all the hallmarks of a classic cluster-fuck. The cascade of voices in my ears made it almost impossible to concentrate. They all had a job to do, but I wished they’d all shut up.

I focused the TADS on the corner wall. The image gleamed in the bright sunshine. I moved the camera slowly down the towpath south; in the direction which Mathew Ford would have aimed to withdraw. Carl saw where my TADS was headed in his monocle and tracked east towards the crater.

Twenty seconds later: ‘Ed, I’ve got an unusual shape. It’s about forty metres along the wall, on the southern side.’

‘Okay, stand by.’

I shifted the TADS onto Carl’s line of sight. A large, S-shaped blob lay sprawled on a raised bank about ten metres shy of the crater, two feet away from the wall – exactly where the JTAC said the marines had been contacted.

It looked like a body, lying on its side. I felt a surge of excitement – then got a grip on myself. This wasn’t the time or the place for an outburst of wishful thinking.

Carl continued the wheel turn, bringing us perpendicular to the blob. I swept the surrounding area. There were no more bodies; this one was on its own.

I flicked the TADS’s Field of View button on the left ORT grip with my thumb and magnified the picture nearly five times. It filled a third of the screen. It was definitely a human body. But was it one of theirs, or one of ours? Let it be him. Please let it be him…

‘Good spot, Carl. We have a body. Drop us down to 2,000 feet, mate.’

‘That puts us in RPG range of the fort, Ed…’

‘We can take it. Just twenty seconds at 2,000; that’s all I need.’

‘You’ll have to make it fifteen. Then I’m going to have break right because of the artillery.’

We dropped and I studied the body throughout Carl’s 180-degree turn to the north-west. It was lying on its left side, thighs up at ninety degrees to the torso, feet slightly apart, arms outstretched. It was a natural position to lie in, not contorted, and that was a good sign. The chest looked bulky, another good sign… Osprey body armour and an SA80 rifle? Looked like it. I waited for a better view as we turned. Shit – the camera couldn’t pick it up in the shadow. It was only 8.44am and the sun was still low.

‘Five seconds left, Ed.’

Now square-on to the body, I flicked the TADS into the largest zoom. Final confirmation: trousers and jacket were a similar shade to the ground, and patterned exactly like mine – British DPM.

‘Breaking off, Ed. Sorry. We’ve got to turn out of the guns.’

‘No problem, Carl. It’s him. We’ve got the MIA.’

We’d found our man. But was he still alive? The moment I announced we’d found him the whole world would want to know.

We came round again, higher. I couldn’t detect any dark patches on his clothing; so, no heavy blood loss – as far as we could see. His helmet was on, fastened tight and without deformation. His face was intact, eyes closed and mouth just slightly open. I felt a rush of relief. He looked peaceful; as if he was sleeping. No obvious signs of wounding. Had he collapsed through exhaustion? The marines carried an awesome amount of kit into battle these days.

‘Let Billy and Geordie know, buddy. Ask Billy to use his FLIR for a heat source.’

That would give us a good indication of whether our guy was still alive. It was just five degrees celsius outside, cold enough to chill a dead body in half an hour.

‘Will do.’

At least the Taliban hadn’t got him. Establishing that was our number one priority. The entire brigade’s actions for the next week depended on it. If he was alive, he was unconscious. But why? If he’d been bounced off the wall he could be concussed for ages. I didn’t want him to be unconscious. I wanted him to give us a little wave to tell us that he was pretending to be dead so the Taliban didn’t come for him.

A giant fountain of soil and dirt erupted on the other side of the canal, 100 metres away from the man we now knew to be Mathew Ford. He was Danger Close to the gunners’ nearest shells…

Being on the raised bank wasn’t so good. It put him in clear line of sight of the enemy in the western village. It was surely only a matter of time before they saw him, artillery barrage or not.

He couldn’t be bluffing the Taliban, could he? Surely he would have done that from the relative safety of the ditch. He must have been concussed…

‘As soon as you can, Carl, I need both of our eyes back on Mathew, in case any of those scumbags make a run for him. I’ll tell the chain of command.’

Carl threw the Apache over his right shoulder and rolled her out 180 degrees, giving us both eyes on again. I gave Widow Seven One the news, and heard it echo repeatedly down all the commands. They were desperate to plan their next move.

‘Ugly Five One this is Widow Seven One. Is he alive?’

I’d already told him we didn’t know, and repeated it.

‘Ugly Five One, please confirm if he’s dead or alive.’

Billy had looked through his FLIR. ‘He’s got a heat source mate. A strong one. His extremities are still hot too. His hands are almost the same temperature as the rest of his body.’

It was the strongest sign of life we could get without actually seeing him move.

‘Ugly Five One can confirm he is warm but has not moved. There are no obvious signs of death; assumption is, he’s alive.’

An immediate response from a new callsign: ‘Ugly Five One, this is Wizard.’

Wizard? It was the Nimrod MR2, 20,000 feet above us. They only ever relayed messages from way up the food chain. That morning, it was the brigadier.

‘Ugly Five One, Sunray says do not let anyone get anywhere near the MIA. Ground troops will re-cross the river and recover Lance Corporal Ford ASAP.’

The brigadier had given the order. The rescue was on.

The big question now was would the marines get to him before the Taliban?

I kept my eyes glued to Mathew whilst Carl described the ground to me. Somehow the western village was still filling up with enemy. It was still almost entirely intact; the night’s bombardment hadn’t touched it. Though the artillery shells had left scorch marks on the walls, they hadn’t brought the buildings down. We’d spotted tracer and muzzle flashes from most of the huts, as the Taliban engaged the marines’ firebase on the berm. Whenever we got too close, they gave us a burst too – and a couple of RPGs for good measure.

The river still only had one crossing point. There was only one way the marines would get to Mathew, and that was right past the village. There was no two ways about it – they’d get another horrible smacking, if they got through at all.

Billy was the first to frame the thought. ‘Ed, we’ve got to take on that village. The marines are screwed unless someone flattens it before they get there.’

‘Not to mention what the wankers in there could do to Ford,’ Geordie chimed in.

I told the JTAC and asked for permission to engage.

He didn’t fuck about. ‘Ugly Five One this is Widow Seven One. You’re cleared hot onto the village. Destroy the position in preparation for the rescue.’

‘Copied. The buildings have multiple rooms and look pretty strong. Hellfire may not be best suited. Request fast air to assist ASAP.’

‘I have called for close air support. Do what you can in the meantime. But do not, I repeat, do NOT let anyone get near the MIA.’

We divided up the workload between the two Apaches. We needed to keep one aircraft pointing at the fort at all times so the Taliban knew we’d shoot them if they went for Ford. Carl and I watched Mathew from a half-moon-shaped orbit in the east while Billy let rip on the village. Then we swapped roles. As I slaved my crosshairs up and down the fort wall, Geordie and Billy began their first run from the south-east at 9.03am.

‘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.