Hellfire

OPERATION MUTAY

SUNDAY, 4 JUNE 2006

As we flew through the hills twelve miles to the south of Now Zad, the distinctive bowl around it materialised through the dust and heat haze.

‘Holy smoke, look twelve o’clock, Billy.’

‘Oh my God.’

Columns of black smoke towered into the sky, spreading to the east as they met the winds above the ridgeline. The town was aflame. A fast jet sent out a series of orange flashes, each one higher than the last, as it broke off its attack and pumped out flares as it climbed back to the safety of the ether.

The fight or flight instinct kicked in and the metallic taste of adrenalin flooded my mouth. I fought the urge to urinate. My body was preparing itself for battle. My grip tightened on the controls. This was my first proper mission in an Apache, not just my first in Afghanistan.

Time to rock and roll.

Bring it on.

With Nick’s mission radio down, we had taken the lead. It was not something we’d discussed in the air. It had been briefed during the planning phase and kicked in when necessary.

I was the JTAC in our aircraft, and until Billy got used to FAC speak, I would be the one in communication with the JTAC on the ground.

FAC speak was used to portray the ground, circumstances and type of attack required. Although not coded, it employed vernacular protocols with definitive meanings. Our training in Canada and the Oman had enabled me to get the best out of even the worst JTAC and with a bit of luck I could now show Billy the ropes.

Widow Seven Two, in the main body of the attack, should have been alongside the attacking commander Major Pike and the CO Lieutenant Colonel Tootal. All I could hear between the hoarse breathing and the loud ruffling of the mic were the words, ‘Wait out.’

I switched to Widow Seven Zero. Judging by Pat’s calls, they had been in the thick of it. I couldn’t raise them on the secure radios, but eventually managed to on the insecure CTAF. Now I understood why we’d heard so much earlier. Widow Seven Zero was breathless, too, as he told us they’d called in a US A10. It must have been the one I’d seen climbing away from the battle, coming in now on its next run.

The jet screamed towards the ground, waiting for final clearance. The Taliban were firing out of the woods; despite their proximity, Widow Seven Zero decided to prosecute the target. They ordered the A10 ‘hot’ – the executive command to fire live munitions – turned around and sprinted.

The JTAC still had his mic on; my earpieces filled with the rippling, ground-shaking blast of the wood line exploding behind them. I felt my blood pulsing through my veins and every one of my senses on hyper-alert.

We were still a couple of miles south of Now Zad when Widow Seven Zero finally caught his breath. ‘Wildman Five One, this is Widow Seven Zero, how do you read?’

‘Wildman Five One, Lima Charlie,’ I replied. Lima Charlie was FAC speak for Loud and Clear. I whacked the holds in so I could go hands free and grabbed my pencil.

‘We are receiving heavy fire from our south-east and need you to suppress the buildings at…standby for grid…’ He kept his mic open and I could hear someone reading it out as he relayed it to us. ‘Grid Forty-One-Sierra Papa-Romeo Three-Nine-Six Eight-Five-Two, copy?’

Billy punched the coordinates into his non-qwerty keyboard as I scribbled. ‘Wildman Five One, Forty-One-Sierra Papa-Romeo Three-Nine-Six Eight-Five-Two.’

Widow Seven Zero was asking for us to engage the buildings beside the smoke. I was pretty sure what he meant but Now Zad was now full of the bloody stuff. My training had drilled into me: never assume; assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups. I needed more information.

‘We need to positively identify your location. Confirm you’re on the west side of the Green Zone, over.’

I guided the Apache into an orbit over the western edge of the Green Zone and began to search north-west.

We flew through a shaft of incredibly bright sunlight into the shadow of the biggest smoke column. Our world dimmed and I banked too tightly, taking us into absolute darkness. For a moment I felt as though we’d been swallowed whole; then we emerged from the belly of the beast once more, into the blinding sunlight.

The stroboscopic progression of light and shade made it almost impossible to operate the TADS, but within a couple of seconds I found friendly vehicles with the naked eye, about a klick west of the grid.

Billy confirmed and drove the TADS to the tower of smoke east of the vehicles, in an attempt to ID Taliban.

Widow Seven Zero wasn’t with the vehicles – I’d gathered as much from his breathless running – and I couldn’t ID him anywhere near where the A10 had laid down its fire.

The Widow attempted to describe his position but neither of us could identify it. My cueing dots led my gaze back towards the smoke; the acquisition source crosshair hovered over the burning building. Open fields stretched to the north-west; empty fields bathed in sunshine and criss-crossed by irrigation ditches.

I asked if they had a mirror and, if so, to signal to me with it.

A flicker of light immediately glinted in one of the ditches 250 metres away.

‘Visual standby.’

The ditch ran north-south between two fields, one of which was black and smouldering from an earlier fire.

I called, ‘Confirm that you are in a north-south irrigation ditch, in the middle of fields with a triangular compound to your west containing friendly vehicles.’

‘That’s correct. We’re pinned down, taking heavy fire from an area to the south and south-east of us. I need you to fire into a compound to the south-east of me by a couple of hundred metres.’

I was in no doubt that they were in receipt of some heavy fire. I could hear the crack of the bullets flying over their heads on the radio, above the sound of their own fire. I relayed the Widow’s position to Nick and Jon and instructed them to watch out for the troops while we attempted to ID and prosecute the enemy.

I walked the Widow onto the target I thought he meant. ‘Right in front of you I can see a burnt field…’ pause ‘…in the far corner of the burnt field is a compound with a smoking building in it…’ pause ‘…confirm that is the compound you want us to fire into.’

‘Negative. It’s south of there; it’s south by fifty metres.’

The next compound down was the last to have line-of-sight with them before a densely wooded area. Another plume of smoke drifted slowly upwards from one of its buildings.

I was flying an odd orbit just to keep eyes on the area. Jon was flying a much larger elliptical pattern below us, in the opposite direction.

‘Reference the compound just beyond the burnt field… directly on its southern edge… is one row of east-west trees…’ I paused long enough for Widow Seven Zero to get his head up out of the ditch and process my information.

‘To the south of the row of trees is a high-walled compound… it has a raised wall on the northern edge… there’s a building behind it… this building-which may look like a high wall to you-is smoking… confirm that is the target.’

The Widow responded in an instant. ‘Correct.’

‘Where’s the target, Ed?’ Billy wanted to be 100 per cent sure. We were both keen not to fuck up our very first offensive action.

I instinctively placed the crosshair in my right eye over the target building and called, ‘Gunner – Target – HMD – Target building low left.’

Billy had already switched his acquisition source from the previous grid to my Helmet Mounted Display and pressed the slave button. Following every movement of my right eye, the TADS swivelled itself towards where I was focused. Billy scanned the picture the TADS was giving him on his MPD; I couldn’t look away until he was happy.

‘On…’ he said. ‘De-slaved.’

The TADS was back under his control and not slaved to my eye; my gaze could now sweep wherever I wanted. I glanced at my MPD to confirm he had the correct target.

I kept in tight to the target, a trick I’d learned in Northern Ireland. Whenever a helicopter circled directly above anyone who was in the wrong, they assumed the helicopter crews could see everything they were doing. They weren’t always right. The sky had very little in it, so a helicopter was blatantly obvious. The ground, on the other hand, was full of clutter: buildings, trees, walls, bushes, high ground, alleyways, low ground, deep avenues of trees, you name it. It was a huge expanse from our perspective, and pinpointing the enemy was like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

‘I’ll increase the radius of the turn to make it easier on the TADS,’ I told Billy. ‘We’ll fire a witness burst into the compound, just as we clear the smoke, starting ninety degrees out from the boys and finishing at the forty-five.’

I was still nervous about this first shot. It was dangerous practice to fire over the heads of your own troops – or even point towards them in case the range information was wrong and the rounds went long or short of their intended target. That was why we were offsetting.

Billy placed his crosshairs on the centre mass of the target building and I confirmed on my MPD that he had the correct target. ‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five One, target identified. Ready with thirty mike mike.’

‘Widow Seven Zero – fire as soon as you can so we can extract to the west, over.’

‘We’ll kick off with a witness burst. I need you to confirm that we have the correct target. If we do, we will cover your extraction.’

He acknowledged.

Billy scoured the target for innocent civilians, but could see no one in the compound at all.

‘Clear to engage, Billy.’

From a standing start to full speed in a quarter of a second, the M230 cannon thundered away beneath our feet.

‘Firing,’ I called. ‘Confirm splash.’ I wanted the JTAC to confirm that the rounds were landing in the right place.

The cannon fired all twenty rounds in two seconds but I could still hear and feel every single one. The sheer brute force of the thing pushed the Apache’s nose to the right and twisted us, ever so slightly, left wing low. She regained her perfect orbit the second she stopped, with me following her on the cyclic.

I called Camp Bastion. ‘Saxon Ops, this is Wildman Five One, engaging compounds with covering fire, out.’

I looked out of my cockpit, low and left. The twenty rounds went straight into the middle of the compound, with no collateral damage. Billy’s firing was absolutely accurate, and more importantly still, so was the gun’s. The rounds kicked up enough dust to obliterate the view inside the compound but the Widow couldn’t see them land behind the wall.

I asked Billy to change to a ten-round burst and go for the building instead.

I transmitted, ‘Stand by for a further witness burst.’

Then to Billy: ‘Clear to engage.’

Billy squeezed the trigger again until the cannon had dispensed its ten rounds.

I transmitted, ‘Firing now.’

The rounds impacted on the target building, ripping holes in its roof and gouging into its sides. Even from this height I could make out slivers of rock and adobe blasting all over the place.

‘Negative, negative.’ Widow Seven Zero shouted. ‘Go fifty metres south-west. The enemy have moved; go fifty metres south-west.’

As we flew over our troops I spotted a square compound with one single single-storey building hidden in the trees fifty metres further south-west.

‘Confirm the very next compound south-west of our fire is the compound you want us to attack.’

‘Yes, yes,’ came his urgent reply.

‘Stand by while we set up.’

I lined up the Apache to the east of the target, heading north, so I could keep an eye on the Widow’s position.

Billy called, ‘Ready.’

He let go with another ten-round burst onto the wall facing the Widow so he could observe the splash they made through the trees.

‘Firing now,’ I informed the Widow.

The Widow shouted, ‘On target, on target’ the second we saw the rounds impact on and around the compound wall.

Billy changed the burst rate back to twenty and unleashed two further onslaughts into the building on the north-western edge of the compound. I watched the boys break from cover then looked at the MPD to see what Billy could see.

The rounds exploded with a ferocity I had never imagined. The training ammo we used was inert; these High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) rounds were the real McCoy. I knew what they claimed to be able to do, but I was completely unprepared for what I saw. They were far more deadly than their name suggested.

I saw the heat haze swirling behind the succession of little black dots that flew up the image and dropped onto the building. Each one produced an almighty flash as the armour piercing punched its way through roof and walls. Once through the building’s skin, the incendiary set the interior alight. Thick black smoke billowed from a small window like steam out of a pressure cooker. I could only guess at the effectiveness of the HEDP’s fragmentation. The blast should have sent red-hot shards of metal winging their way into every corner.

Chunks of rock and adobe flew off the exterior and the courtyard entrance remained empty. Either there was no one at home or the frag was working big time. My money was on the latter; the Patrols Platoon had been able to get the hell out of that field without being engaged again.

I lost my visual lock on them in the plantation to the south for longer than I was comfortable with. I couldn’t raise the Widow. Then I spotted them moving fast into an orchard to the south and south-west of where they’d been pinned down.

The boss should have been extremely thankful that they’d managed to hold out. I wouldn’t have wanted to explain why we hadn’t been ready to Tootal. Without Apache cover they’d been sitting ducks, out in the open, nowhere to go.

When I finally got hold of them they were moving through the orchard 200 metres west of the compound Billy had just annihilated. Widow Seven Zero informed us that they had broken contact and were going to search the area they’d come under fire from. ‘Report any movement in the target compound.’

Saxon Ops at base gave us grid 41S PR 3957 8673. The target was a suspect white pick-up in the north of Now Zad. With the threat brief earlier, this target was deemed to be a direct threat. Billy handed it over to Nick and Jon because they couldn’t speak to the ground troops.

I kept a close eye on Jon as he peeled away to the north.

We couldn’t see anything moving or leaving the compound or the wood alongside it. We covered the lads through what seemed to be a cross between an orchard and open parkland.

They looked like ants from my vantage point, but I could see them employing good FIBUA tactics as they entered the compound. No surprises there; 3 Para were masters at Fighting In a Built-Up Area. Once inside they reported loads of blood and blood trails all over the place, but no human life.

‘They must have dragged the injured and dead into the trees, undercover of the dust and smoke,’ I said.

‘Lesson identified, lesson learned,’ Billy replied. We wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

Base told us intelligence was indicating a target in the north, grid 41S PR 3980 8648. They must have been listening to Taliban transmissions. While I looked out for Patrols Platoon, Billy checked the map. It was only 300 metres from where Nick and Jon had gone to search.

I told Saxon Ops we’d need a RIP in an hour. 3 Flight would be on the APU on thirty minutes’ notice to move. They’d have more than enough time to throw their engine power levers forward, taxi, fly out to us and do a full RIP. We were on an insecure radio, but we’d maintain full Apache cover. Better to risk keeping the Taliban up to speed than to leave 3 Para in the lurch again.

I spoke to all three Widow callsigns to see if they needed assistance. Our covering fire had quietened the Taliban down and our presence was keeping them at bay.

I told Widow Seven Two that base had given me intelligence on a target west of their target compound, because he was with the CO. We couldn’t wander off on our own little mission without confirming with the ground commander; we were here to assist him, after all. Widow Seven Two informed me that they had the same information and 2 Platoon of A Company 3 Para were already routing to the grid from the east.

Nick and Jon were still hunting for the white pick-up. They were over the area of the grid, knowing that this posed a greater threat to the boys on the ground than they perhaps realised. If it knocked us out of the sky, they’d have a helicopter rescue mission on their hands.

With that in mind we moved fractionally north, leaving them to hunt for the pick-up. I still maintained a wide-enough orbit to pass over our lads every couple of minutes; with a bit of luck it would keep the Taliban diving for cover.

Billy looked into the intelligence grid; all we could make out was the edge of a field, a north-south track bordered by a wall, and a compound about fifty metres due east.

We had no other information about the target. The obvious feature was the compound; the only fire we’d encountered in our short brush with the Taliban in Afghanistan was from a compound, and the blood trails must have led somewhere.

The area was totally enclosed, with a double wall on its eastern side bordering a wood which stretched 500 metres to the main wadi-our perimeter. Opposite it was a large white steel gate, the only access point to the compound. What appeared to be five open garages ran along the northern wall. I saw shadow movement in the furthest east, but couldn’t identify it. I needed to tell the CO’s men, and find out where they were.

Widow Seven Two said he had a few hundred metres to go; I requested another flash from his mirror.

The signal was easy to see; they were in a sunlit clearing in the wood, closer to the target than we’d anticipated, tracking directly to the intelligence grid. They’d break out into open fields if they continued. I instructed him to continue west then turn south ten metres short of the wood line and contour the edge of the wood until they reached the double wall. It should give them the element of surprise and afford them whatever cover was available.

Widow Seven Two called when he was at the wall. I talked them round the perimeter until they were on the track just west of the compound. They gathered by the gates and studied their maps.

I saw the JTAC look up.

‘Wildman Five One, this is Widow Seven Two. The grid we have is some fifty metres west, in another compound.’

‘Wildman Five One, there isn’t a compound fifty metres west. The wall you’re looking at isn’t a compound wall; it’s just got a track on the other side of it, and then a field. The field stretches about 100 metres to an orchard and that’s it. No buildings or compounds.’

Billy had called Nick and Jon to join us as the pick-up was nowhere to be seen and there was little else happening. Jon and I flew contra-rotating orbits around the whole area, with us high on the inside and them lower on the outside so we could both fire at the centre point without hitting each other.

I told Widow Seven Two that if they wanted to check out that area they’d have to follow the wall north initially then turn back down the track for fifty metres. From there they could look west and see the empty field for themselves.

We gauged our fuel and reminded Saxon Ops that we would need 3 Flight to leave in the next five minutes. I was pleased with our performance. We hadn’t killed anyone we weren’t supposed to and 3 Para felt safe enough to patrol around Now Zad looking for an intelligence target.

Saxon came back to me a minute or two later.

‘There will be no RIP, I spell, Romeo, India, Papa. On your return to base you are to refuel, rearm and go back to Now Zad immediately.’

Something must have flared up elsewhere in the AOR; 3 Flight must have deployed to support other troops in contact. We let Nick and Jon know. I felt a hollowness in my gut at the prospect of the ground troops being without Intimate Support again.

Nick and Jon hadn’t spotted anything suspicious and nor could we. I took advantage of the lull in activity to inform the CO of our predicament and asked Widow Seven Two if we should break station now and come back asap or wait until we’d reached chicken fuel. He told me to wait out while they asked the CO.

The Paras moved down the wall in single file. Billy scoured the area for Taliban while I maintained over-watch of the troops. I could see the lead soldier; he wasn’t much more than a boy. As he reached the end of the south wall he’d be able to see across open ground towards the orchard.

I heard Widow Seven Two’s microphone click open to reply as the lad and his immediate successor stepped clear of the wall. I saw the wall explode and heard a massive weight of machine-gun fire over the JTAC’s radio.

Dirt, rock and soil erupted from the trail and wall. I saw a figure tumble back towards the wall. A pair of legs shot up out of the dust. I knew it was the young soldier I’d just delivered to the Taliban on a plate.