Hellfire

OPERATION SNAKEBITE

SUNDAY, 6 AUGUST 2006

Camp Bastion

0213 hours local

The neon strip lights that hung above our cots burst into life. I shielded my eyes and scrutinised my right wrist.

‘Time to get up, freaks,’ Jon said.

‘Wanker,’ someone shouted.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and peeled off my light-weight-but still clammy-sleeping bag liner. Jon lifted the tent’s door flap and disappeared while Pat, Chris, Tony, Carl, Jake, Billy and I slowly came round. The scratching of arses, stretches and chorus of yawns would have done a bunch of gibbons proud.

I arrived in the Ops tent smack on 2.30 a.m. We’d been in earlier but Patrols Platoon had wanted more time to get through the minefield on the ridge, and to ensure the LS was clear before securing and marking it. Getting an hour’s kip here and an hour’s kip there was not conducive to flight safety, but we didn’t have much choice when it was this busy.

Things were looking good. 3 Flight were told to be ready to take off at 0440 hours. L hour had slipped to 0500 and would most likely slip again, but they’d lift regardless. We completed a final brief at 0300 hours with a strong black coffee and walked to the aircraft half an hour later. I knew that today was going to be a long operation even if the bloody Taliban didn’t turn up. And I was already knackered.

We’d be RIPing with Pat’s flight, but stayed on the APU instead of taking an extra two and a half hours’ rest. We had come a long way since Op Mutay. 3 Flight had taken the first Deliberate Ops callsigns, Wildman Five Two and Wildman Five Three, and needed to make their takeoff time. We’d have our aircraft running at the same time, so if either of theirs started with a fault, they could whack their kit into one of ours and leave us to sort out the shagged one with the technicians.

Jake would command 2 Flight from the front seat of Wildman Five Four with Jon flying; I’d command Wildman Five Five from the front with Billy flying. Simon was back at KAF, briefing the new squadron commander and his 2i/c.

3 Flight were in bays 3 and 4, Jon and Jake were in 5 and we had 6. The techs looked like zombies these days, but still had six aircraft lined up and ready to go. The boys were chirpy as ever as they stood around our four Apaches, but they were no oil paintings either. The whole squadron was feeling the strain. Even Billy was looking a bit rumpled.

Billy sparked up our aircraft. We tested the weapons, the sights, the sensors, defensive aids suite, video; checked that the data transfer cartridge had uploaded the mission correctly, that the comms came up in the right order and that the IDM – Improved Data Modem – had configured Pat’s patrol with ours so we could communicate with each other digitally.

Our Apache woke up in a good mood but Jake was experiencing comms problems again. I checked in with Pat’s patrol to make sure mine were working. They were. I kept the door open. Normally you’d close it to keep the cab air-conditioned, but there was a strong breeze from the east, making it an unusually cool morning on the flight line.

3 Flight lifted on time while Jake and Jon got their comms sorted. We sat on the APU. There was no way we would close down now. If something happened en route to the drop-off point or they had a problem we would need to get there asap.

We led the taxi out five minutes early, turning left to the top of the HALS. We lined up on the right; Jon and Jake forward left. We started to roll. Exactly two hours and thirty minutes after 3 Flight departed our wheels lifted off the metal runway. We took off south this time because of the wind.

‘Saxon Ops. Wildman Five Four and Five Five…airborne…’ I called. ‘Zero Seven One Zero hours. Out.’

We took a left and climbed to 5,500 feet. Jon and Jake went up to 6,000. The visibility wasn’t anything to shout about, but it’d do. It wasn’t a particularly long flight to Musa Qa’leh, but we knew our kit was working so we could relax for a moment or two. On our IRT/HRF stint we’d been setting stuff up on the way, so things had been more fraught.

Flying north-east across the desert, we needed to establish the gun line. We knew our guns were south-west of the town. If they were operating, we didn’t want to fly through them. We didn’t want to restrict their fire or end up with a shell up our arse.

My MPD had the gun icon marked on the TSD – Tactical Situational Display – page, and a line from the guns to the point where the convoy track went through the Green Zone. That was roughly where the guns should be firing. I flipped the radar from air to air to ground targeting mode.

The radar immediately identified the guns so I flipped onto the TADS. Exactly where they said they’d be.

We now needed to locate 3 Flight. We didn’t want to route north of the guns to find out they were south of the gun-to-target line. That would mean backtracking west, turning south around the guns and back to the east to do a RIP.

‘Wildman Five Two, this is Wildman Five Four-routing in, five minutes to run, send sitrep.’

‘Wildman Five Two. The gun line is active. Guns are registering. The LS has changed to grid Forty-One-Sierra, Papa-Romeo, Six-Four-Six-Zero, Eight-One-Two-Nine and active.’

Jake read the grid back to confirm.

‘Stand by,’ Pat said. ‘Come north of the gun line. We’ve got people fleeing north. Come to my position and maintain overwatch.’ Pat and Tony were north of the gun-to-target line.

As we headed north-east past the guns Chris and Carl’s Apache should have been operating at the same height and hopefully in the same area. The Longbow radar picked them up and confirmed their position from five miles away. We climbed to 6,500 feet. If they were in a battle we didn’t want to be below them. Visibility was still hazy, but TADS was on the case.

There was no action yet or they would have given us a target. The boys were on the ground and the LS was active. The second wave had just landed and the new LS was a mile north-west of the choke point where the track entered the Green Zone. Our concerns were for Taliban moving into the area, and combat indicators of people moving out of it.

‘Wildman Five Five, this is Wildman Five Four,’ Jake called. ‘Five Four will concentrate on the immediate area where the troops are. Can you check out those movements to the north and let me know as soon as you know the convoy’s position, and that it’s still safe?’

‘Wildman Five Five, copied.’ Jake always thought of the big picture and never got bogged down in detail that didn’t concern him.

Jon kept tight in to the gun line. We moved steadily further north, away from them. Billy had the radar spinning to detect the convoy. I set up my acquisition source for the FCR ready for when he found them. They were supposed to be north-west, so we would have to pass them at some point.

‘Gunner – Target – FCR – Tracked and wheeled vehicles – Stationary – Range five point nine klicks,’ Billy reported. No sooner said than done.

I hit slave on the ORT and before Billy had finished reading out what the FCR had detected I was looking at a group of LAVs, Scimitars and trucks. They’d formed a big corral for all round defence, just like the wagons in the Wild West movies I used to watch on a Saturday with my granddad.

They were on the western side of a south-pointing spur between two huge adjacent wadis that joined to form a Y. This was a great place to hide and gave them access to the major wadi system leading down to 3 Para and the choke point between the urban area and the Green Zone three klicks south-east. I offset the laser to prevent any eye damage and lased their position.

Up flashed 41S PR 6332 8226.

I sent it to Jake over the IDM, giving him details of the convoy’s set-up.

We had a good look around the main wadi leading north from Musa Qa’leh to make sure no one was heading west to intercept it. Several groups of women and children were heading north up the wadi, but no males. They were 2.5 klicks north of the choke point already. All the combat indicators I’d learned in Northern Ireland were telling me that something was going down and the locals knew it.

I spotted our first three males – two in dark robes, one in white – heading south. They seemed to be ignoring everyone rushing to escape on donkeys and on foot, clutching their bags and possessions. They didn’t seem to be carrying weapons and I couldn’t see any unusual bulges in their dishdashes.

Saxon called. The boss had intelligence that Taliban were to the north.

‘Wildman Five Four, this is Saxon Ops. We’ve got an intelligence grid. Grid, Forty-One-Sierra, Papa-Romeo, Six-Three-Eight-Seven, Eight-Triple-Three. Read back.’

Jake read it back and I checked that what I’d punched into my keyboard was correct then hit Enter. I’d stored it as a red icon – so it came up on my MPD as enemy.

‘Correct. Taliban are in that area. Zero Alpha would like you to look.’ Zero Alpha was Major Black, back at base.

‘Wildman Five Five, Wildman Five Four. That’s to the north. It’s your area. Can you investigate?’

‘A-firm,’ I said. ‘Stand by.’

Jake was in the south over the LS. The grid was just over a klick and a half north-west of me but – alarmingly – just a fraction over a klick north-east of the convoy.

We didn’t need to move and we weren’t about to advertise to the Taliban that we knew where they were, so we stayed over the fleeing civilians. Billy was watching for anyone heading south and I slewed the camera to the intelligence grid with a push of a button. It was a small cut-out in the ridge on top of a wadi wall, but there was nothing there. It was a great vantage point to look south-west towards our convoy, but they were on the reverse slope of the spur and out of sight.

A hundred metres north-west, however, was a house and a compound; a little farmstead. Just north-west of that were four large tents, with cooking pots still over a fire pit. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside.

These tents were huge, not at all your traditional nomadic arrangement. Nomads kept all their shit in one sock. These things were black tarpaulin palaces, about five metres by eight, held up by poles and pegged down by lengthy guy ropes. The place seemed deserted. The fire was still smoking, but it looked like someone had just dropped the pan and run. I shifted the radar down to see if I could pick up any vehicles. There were none hiding under cover and the radar would know. All I could see in the entire area was the convoy.

We moved overhead. It looked well set up, but there was no perimeter fence. These guys were either genuine nomads, or the Taliban. Nomads were curious tribesmen that were always fascinated by our helicopters. I didn’t see why they would have done a runner; they knew they had nothing to fear. If they had left the camp, they would be around the top with goats. There were no goats in the area, no indicators telling me this was friendly. But nor was there anything to suggest otherwise; no big vehicle tracks, nothing. We could have dropped to ten feet and flown an arc around them, peeping under their tarpaulin, but that wasn’t our job. We were there to protect the convoy and the ground troops. If there were Taliban hiding here, their day would have to wait.

‘Wildman Five Four, Wildman Five Five,’ I reported back to Jake. ‘Looked into that area. All I can see is a deserted camp 1,200 metres north-north-east of our convoy. I can’t see if it’s enemy or not. I’m going to search the convoy route.’

The first thing we did was over-fly the route our convoy would take, looking for any likely IEDs or mined areas, in case the Taliban, indicated by intelligence had left.

‘Wildman Five Four, Wildman Five Five and Top Man. Both guns and mortars finished and the troops are shortly going to move off. Stand by.’

‘Wildman Five Four, acknowledged.’

‘Wildman Five Five, acknowledged.’

‘Top Man, acknowledged.’ I looked at my black brain for the sync-matrix. The British Harrier would soon be replaced by a US B1 bomber.

The boys were about to face their first real threat, about to stand up and move down a forward-facing slope into what could be an enemy position.

My pulse started to race. The pressure was up. If something was going to go bang, this was the time and place. I imagined the enemy looking up the long slope to their west, hidden behind little portholes they’d poked through walls. For them, it was about to become a target-rich environment. A swarm of Paratroopers was about to walk towards them in extended line.

If the Taliban had been told to fight, they were going to start hitting our boys early. I had visions of World War One squaddies being mercilessly mowed down by the most technologically advanced weapon of the day, the machine gun. If they hadn’t been told to fight, then they would be legging it backwards. Either way, our job was to find them – and then to nail them. We couldn’t have them reappearing from around another corner later that day.

We were over the Green Zone now and I was looking at the urban area north of the east-west track the convoy would take through the choke point. It was from here that the community lived and farmed the Green Zone.

There were three long tracks running north-south between compound walls fifteen feet high and, in places, four feet wide. The main tracks all paralleled the Green Zone; the right-hand one separated the Green Zone and the first row of compounds.

Each compound was a walled garden that backed onto the next without break. They all ran into each other as they sprawled northwards from the choke point. Seven compounds north there was a break: an east-west alleyway connecting the right-hand and centre tracks. The alleyways between them were just wide enough to take a small vehicle.

On the left of the centre track was another set of sprawling compounds. Each walled garden bordered the next, with the odd alleyway connecting to the final north-south track.

Each compound had been given a number on the satellite imagery. When the troops were moving through, they could tell their commanding officer which had been cleared. The guys were going to have to enter each and every one of them. Ideally, it would be completely methodical, one compound after the other. But CO 3 Para didn’t have the time; he instructed them to get through there at warp speed. This was a close-quarter-battle area, he said, and they’d have to clear them as fast as they could.

Tootal had taken the brave and unusual decision to tell his men they didn’t have to wear body armour. He’d suffered more injuries through heat exhaustion than he had from bullets and shrapnel. A lot of the lads decided to risk it, because it was roasting out there and they were going to be doing this for hours.

We divided up the compounds between us. I’d take everything from the choke point next to Compound 1 northwards to Compound 35, and Jake from 36 to 70. Billy and Jon would maintain a watchful eye on the advancing troops and on each other.

My blood pressure had risen; I could feel my temples pumping against my helmet. Something was about to go horribly wrong. I knew I could take out anyone that fired at them and smash their hideaways, but if they did open up I was only going to be killing the killers who’d just killed a fuck lot of Paratroopers.

I was tired and needed to stay focused.

I started searching the western side of the built-up area first, the side facing the slope, compound by compound. There was no one hiding behind any of the walls, just livestock.

‘B Company are up, Ed,’ Billy said. ‘They’re beginning to move east towards the compounds. They’re not hanging around. Mind you, neither would I in the wide open.’

I flicked in and out of FLIR to look for heat sources. All I could see were cows, goats, chickens and more cows, goats and chickens. Most of the compounds contained between three and five terraced buildings, mostly against the northern wall, opposite the compound entrance, where the meagre sunlight could still warm them in winter. They usually had one or two in another corner for the livestock, and a low square shelter in the centre where the locals kept their chickens and the Taliban hid their weapons. This was quite an affluent area. They had solid roofs.

We normally expected to see civilians. The men would be in the Green Zone tending their crops, the women around the cooking pot and the children playing. There were no schools. The Taliban had destroyed them all.

There were no men today, and no women, children or cooking pots. The whole place looked deserted. It gave me the heebiejeebies. Had they fled? Or were they in there, too afraid to come out?

You didn’t have to be Stephen Hawking to figure it out. The residual heat from the fire pits and fire places should have been white hot on FLIR. They hadn’t had a sudden attack of the collywobbles. They’d been tipped off nice and early; that was why the place was stone cold dead, and why there were relatively few civilians still fleeing north. They must even have known it was going to be a one day op, because they’d left all their livestock behind.

We’d seen men walking back towards the area. We hadn’t seen any of fighting age leaving. I was feeling more uncomfortable by the minute.

Jake was covering the northern part of B Company’s urban area. I worked my way south through the village until I got to the buildings by the choke point.

I spotted thirty or so barrels stacked against the southern wall of Compound 1, where the track the convoy would take was at its narrowest.

I flicked on the radio. ‘Widow Seven Zero, this is Wildman Five Five – I’ve got a potential IED at Compound Zero One.’

‘Stand by.’

He’d be telling the CO.

‘Widow Seven Zero, copied.’

‘It’s at the narrowest part of the choke point, on the northern side of the track. Copy so far?’ I pictured Tootal sitting in the dirt, his finger tracing the relevant section of the map.

‘Copied.’

‘I can see about thirty barrels neatly stacked against the southern wall of this compound, right next to the track. It’s the perfect IED spot. If you had to hit the convoy as it passed through the built up area, this would be the place to do it.’

‘Stand by.’

Billy dropped our height to take a closer look.

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Five – I can see no command wires.’

‘Wildman Five Five, this is Widow Seven Zero. I want you to destroy that target with high-sap.’

I could almost feel Billy’s eyebrows disappearing beneath his hairline. ‘High-sap?’

He was right. High Explosive Incendiary Semi-Armour Piercing rockets were not precision weapons. How could I hit a barrel with a rocket? They were free-flight, and since the launchers were haphazardly aligned to the Apache in the first place, they could go anywhere.

‘I know we wouldn’t use them against this target, Ed,’ Billy said. ‘But have you aligned the rockets on this cab?’

‘I can’t guarantee that the launchers haven’t been swapped. They could go anywhere, buddy.’

I’d decided to use HEDP.

‘Widow Seven Zero, this is Wildman Five Five – negative. I’ll fire Hedpee as this is likely to initiate any explosives or fuel employed.’

‘Widow Seven Zero, clear hot.’

‘Wildman Five Four, Wildman Five Five – did you copy the last?’

‘Wildman Five Four, A-firm, go ahead.’

‘Where are they, Billy?’ I didn’t want to fire at Jon and Jake, and didn’t want to take my eyes off the target to look for them either.

‘They’re clear, and so is B Company.’

We were still in an orbit and flying clockwise at seventy knots. Billy kept it low and slow.

I dropped to a ten-round burst setting, lined the crosshair up on the centre of the barrels, steadied, and lased the target with my right middle finger. I didn’t use my index finger; some of its muscles were linked to the thumb which controlled the crosshair.

The MPD showed 1,699 metres – a mile away.

‘Firing!’ I called.

I pulled the left trigger and held it until the gun stopped firing. Ten rounds came off, and missed the target completely. They landed low and left – in the middle of the track.

‘Fucking Gun DH!’ I was absolutely threaders with the boss.

‘Thank God we weren’t firing close to troops.’ Billy had been watching on his MPD. My crosshairs were bang over the target and there was no drift. Those rounds should have been spot on.

I aimed up and right the distance I’d missed by, and fired another ten-round burst. A huge cloud of dust enveloped the compound. When it settled there was a little smoke and plenty of hot spots in the barrels, but over half of them hadn’t been touched.

‘Widow Seven Zero, this is Wildman Five Five. Delta Hotel but no IED detonation.’

‘Wildman Five Five – is it safe?’

They’d all been thrown around, but I couldn’t guarantee that one of the barrels at the bottom of the pile didn’t still contain an active initiation device.

‘Negative. Not 100 per cent. A 500-lb bomb would be advisable. Dart Two Four is available.’ According to my sync matrix Dart Two Four was a B1 from Diego Garcia and had been on task for fifteen minutes.

D Company, the CO and his JTAC were still up the slope. They had full view of the entire route, all the way down to B Company’s position just short of the urban area.

Patrols Platoon were covering the high ground and guarding the wadi to the west, where the convoy would emerge.

It had just set off from the spur, and was making its way slowly down the most secure route they could find – the wide, flat, dry river bed. You could see by its colour that it had been flooded during the wet season, so any mines left from the previous defence of Musa Qa’leh would have been washed away, and any fresh ones would have been laid in the last twenty – four hours. The recce cars were working overtime.

B Company were now just above the compounds, ready to go.

It was a tense moment. A Taliban sniper team could have a field day here. B Company would be pinned down in the open, and we’d be the ones who’d have to flush them out. If they’d all fired together and their weapons were nice and dry, it would be like finding a handful of needles in a haystack.

‘Bring them in.’

CO 3 Para wasn’t messing around. He understood the threat all too well. Every single vehicle was going to have to go through the choke point. And he needed B Company out of the potential killing ground asap.

I called Dart Two Four. An attractive-sounding female American voice told me she couldn’t drop without strato clearance. I had no idea what that meant, or if she was the pilot or offensive systems officer. Strategic clearance, maybe? Did she have to get permission from somebody out of theatre?

I called Widow Seven Zero and passed on the message.

Widow Seven Zero contacted Dart Two Four direct. He said he was the commander on the ground. This was extremely high risk, a possible IED; he had men in the open and it must be removed.

After a ten-minute wait, she confirmed that she had strato clearance to drop. The B1 Lancer had a synthetic aperture radar. She could only see a radar-mapped area of the ground, not the real thing – and Compound Zero One wouldn’t mean anything to her. She mapped the target and was talked onto the southern wall of the compound. She was about to deliver a JDAM – Joint Direct Attack Munition – an inertial and GPS kit strapped to a dumb bomb to guide it with pinpoint accuracy.

‘Ready three zero,’ she called. Time of flight, thirty seconds.

There was an almighty boom and a pillar of black earth blasted 150 feet into the air. When the dust cleared, we could see that it had demolished the southern wall with pinpoint perfection, gouging a hole some ten feet wide and four feet deep in the ground. There wasn’t a single barrel left.

‘Dart Two Four, Wildman Five Five. That’s a Delta Hotel. Nice hole.’

Widow Seven Zero told us the mortars were about to fire. We were instructed to move east to the wadi.

The Green Zone was only a couple of hundred metres thick, but the trees overlapped to form a canopy. I tried to see if there was anything beneath it that might pose a threat to the convoy. I had a sporadic view of the track running through it; there were plenty of potholes, but I couldn’t see any fresh holes or unusual heat shapes.

The trees overhung the point where the buildings came to an end and the Green Zone began. It was the most hazardous area for the convoy because it could be viewed – at ground level – from a distance, and command detonated from cover with deadly accuracy. Once in the Green Zone, the Taliban bomb-makers would have to depend on a pressure pad trigger, which our engineers could find without the threat of a remote detonation.

When the mortars stopped Billy took us low over the western side of the compounds as the boys went firm, ready for the assault.

I noticed a roadblock just past the bomb crater, where the track disappeared into the trees.

‘Widow, Wildman Five Five. I’ve seen what looks like a roadblock at the entrance to the Green Zone. Copy so far.’

‘Widow Copied.’

I continued to describe what I saw. Just under the canopy, the right-hand side of the track was blocked by what looked like two forty-five gallon concrete barrels with a steel pole stretched between them spanning the right side of the track. Any vehicle passing to the left of them would then be forced to swing hard right by another set. It was a tight chicane and not one that you could ram aside at high speed. It was designed to slow traffic to a crawl. There were no ANP checkpoints here, which meant it was down to the Taliban.

Widow acknowledged and informed his search engineers.

As we kicked over to the east, I looked down and saw a man with a gun. On closer inspection I realised it wasn’t a gun and he was very old. Dishdashes and full face beards made it hard to tell the age of some Afghans from this height, but his gait, stoop, pace and the way he held his shoulders earned him pensioner status in my book.

No more than 500 metres north-east of where the bomb had gone off, and north of the track that ran east-west through the Green Zone, he ducked inside a small, door-less dome constructed out of four poles overlaid with grasses. It wasn’t a home, but a place to rest while working the fields, just large enough to lie down in with his feet poking out.

I told Widow Seven Zero he was no threat. I didn’t want one of the lads to pop round a corner and get spooked by a harmless old man with a stick.

A few seconds later, the Widow said B Company was going to start clearing the compounds.

They moved from building to building with incredible speed. It was as much as we could do to stay one step ahead of them. I couldn’t cover everything they were doing. They weren’t grenading. They pairs fire-and-manoeuvred through each doorway. They were treating the place with respect while aggressively clearing compound after compound.

Before we knew it, 3 Flight was back out to do a RIP with us. That was how long it had taken to get in there, clear the IED, and get B Company in.

I was very surprised B Company had got down the slope without a contact. It was a golden opportunity. The Taliban knew that the built-up area had great killing fields. Perhaps the Now Zad experience had made them think twice. We were directly overhead and if they did open up, they would die wherever they fired from. If they made a break for it, they’d just die tired.

They’d wait until the Green Zone to attack. They would ’shwhack 3 Para on their terms, in their backyard.

We had to route back around the north to avoid the gun-to-target line after briefing Pat about the roadblock and the old-timer. As we flew past the three guns, I could see they were no more than twenty metres apart.

Billy and I bypassed Camp Bastion. We went straight onto the range just to the west of the camp and fired fifty rounds to DH my cannon.

We took a suck of gas and a 30 mil ammo upload then taxied back out onto the runway just fifteen minutes later. With the gun DH, the refuel and upload we only had nineteen minutes on the end of the HALS before we roared off again.

I flicked semi-automatic onto automatic on the HIDAS and Billy power-climbed into the haze.

The artillery were firing straight in. We went north of the guns and waited for an opportunity to call Pat.

I spoke to the patrol ahead. Pat said the troops had cleared the roadblock. It was a Taliban checkpoint. We were to clear them immediately due east, and watch the boys move through the Green Zone.

We’d left them not too far short of it. They’d taken so long to get past the Taliban checkpoint they’d hardly moved. The engineers had needed to go forward first to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped.

The old man’s crops had been immaculate when we left. They were now trampled in snaking lines. It did look as if the Taliban had been waiting in ambush.

There were also 2,000-lb bomb craters by the road and in the fields. They’d been dropped as preemptive strikes.

The old-timer was still taking refuge in his hut. I saw his head poke out every now and again.

The boys began their clearance of the Green Zone. Two Paras ran forward through an open field and put a wooden frame against a solid wall and ran back again. Mouse-hole charges. After the explosion they ran back to the wall with half of their group; the other half had their weapons up, ready to fire. They went through the freshly blown hole in pairs, then down on their belt buckles. The whole process was repeated over and over again, field after field. They weren’t prepared to go through doorways. One patrol even head butted their way through one of the flimsier walls.

We did another RIP when they were halfway through the Green Zone. That was how long this mission was taking.

The Taliban still hadn’t kicked off. They weren’t ones for shying away from a fight in the Green Zone, no matter how outnumbered they were. So they had to be biding their time. They knew about the convoy. They were deliberately avoiding any confrontation with 3 Para. They wanted the convoy: an easy target that couldn’t fight back.

If it wasn’t an IED or an ambush, what could they have planned? Whatever it was, I prayed that our boys would all still be alive and unscathed when we returned.

We parked up when we got back. We had thirty minutes or so to spare this time because we didn’t need to go on the range. While Billy sorted out the aircraft, Jon and I borrowed the lads’ ‘Mimic’ – it looked like a WMIK, but without any weapons or weapon mounts – and we drove like men possessed to the 3 Para cookhouse. It was closed. We should have guessed; every swinging dick was at Musa Qa’leh. We begged for some grub. They handed us a doggie bag of turkey mash sandwiches and wedges of cheesecake and we belted back.

Jon glanced over his shoulder and began to laugh. ‘The fuzz are after us.’ A wagonload of Royal Military Police (RMP) with flashing blue light and siren blaring were in hot pursuit because we were speeding. Still wearing our Apache helmets with visors down – helmets were mandatory in convertibles and this one didn’t have a windscreen – I kept my foot to the floor. They weren’t allowed inside the flight line, so had to stop at our barrier.

We were ravenous, but had no time to eat before we jumped in the aircraft, so we stuffed our faces as we sat waiting to taxi.

Taff plugged in and told me the RMPs were going to charge the driver of the Land Rover and his name was on the work ticket.

‘Tell them it was me and there’s a fucking war going on out there,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Thank you, sir.’

I was chinstrapped. We’d been strapped into the Apache for nearly eleven hours and they hadn’t even got into the DC yet. I immediately felt guilty. At least I was fighting from an air-conditioned seat, while 3 Para were out there on the ground.

The radio transmissions came through sporadically as Billy threw the engine power levers forward, ready to move out again.

The vehicles were crossing the wadi and Chris had found the Taliban.

I’d spoken too soon.