Hellfire

SNIPER TEAM

SUNDAY, 6 AUGUST 2006

Musa Qa’leh

We rolled out onto the runway, took off and climbed away from the sun. It was a welcome release. My eyes burnt through lack of sleep and staring into the TADS for days on end. I felt like I needed a regular supply of ice cubes down my trousers to keep me awake.

Must focus, I kept telling myself. Must focus…

Pat and Chris were tracking Taliban so we didn’t interrupt them. We skirted north of the guns. All three fired in unison as we passed. Dust billowed around them, carried by the radial shockwave.

I was trying to get my head around what the Taliban were up to. They’d learned a thing or two over the past three months. What was I missing? There were no IEDs so far today and no mines either. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know we were coming and hadn’t had time to prepare. And they sure as hell weren’t scared. Their primary aim was to send the British infidels home in body bags, and they weren’t going to get many better chances than this.

Trying to stay one step ahead of them was what was focusing my mind, but my mind was as knackered as my increasingly emaciated body. They clearly weren’t going to take on 3 Para, but how could they take out the convoy without getting close? Their mortars, RPGs and rockets weren’t accurate enough.

‘Wildman Five Five this is Wildman Five Four.’ Jake broke through my tortured thoughts. He’d taken advantage of a lull in the radio traffic and spoken to Pat.

The convoy was in the DC and shortly to depart. B and D Companies were in position on the western side of the wadi, covering east. The Pathfinders and Danes were at the end of the Bazaar road, on the eastern side of the wadi, covering west. Pat and Tony were orbiting the track across the wadi as a deterrent. Chris and Carl were to the south, short of gas, looking for Taliban from an intelligence hit.

We were in the north, approaching the ridge, with the Patrols Platoon below us.

Jake told us to take over from Chris; he would stay close to the convoy route.

Bollocks.

The guns were firing. We were told we’d have to route back west, around the rear of them, and come back east to meet up with Chris and Carl.

Billy muttered, ‘No way, José.’

He dropped the nose, and within a heartbeat we were thirty feet off the deck, banging southbound across the desert floor at max chat. The guns were firing but he knew that their trajectory would take the shells over our heads. It was a no-no to fly through the gun line, but needs must. We weren’t going to waste any more gas flying three sides of a square.

Then Billy nosed us up vertically and all I could see was sky.

Chris told me to look out for a white car, which would be our anchor point, and sent me a grid via the IDM. I slaved the TADS. When I looked down, there was the white car by a small stream just off the main wadi. Three men were making a poor show of pretending to wash it.

Chris wasn’t a slave to the digital environment; he was a head-out-of-the-cockpit kind of guy. Any directions he gave me now would always begin at this anchor point.

We were now three klicks south of the crossing point and too far away from the boys to either defend them or act as a deterrent. The last time we’d been on overwatch was after the IED killed three of our guys five days ago. We’d had an intelligence hit then too, only thirty klicks away to the north-east.

We’d tried to fob it off, but the head sheds at Lashkar Gar were highly excited; they believed it was a high value target, ‘a sizable force that was preparing to set off and kill our troops’. We pointed out that its location meant it had no bearing on the troops we were protecting, but were ordered to go.

It was too far to send a lone Apache, so we both went, leaving our guys with no Intimate Support – only to be greeted by a couple of men in the open, waving their dishdashes to prove they didn’t have any concealed weapons.

As we got back to the area we were supposed to patrol, Dan’s flight had just arrived to RIP us. The Taliban were crawling all over the place. We were lucky we hadn’t taken any further casualties.

This seemed like an action replay to me, and I resolved to get back to the convoy as soon as possible.

‘Five hundred metres south-west of anchor is a group of about fifteen compounds,’ Chris said.

I saw them out of the window and copied.

‘There is a back-to-front, J-shaped tree line oriented west.’ Okay, looking west I will see a J with the hook pointing north--got it.

‘Visual with a J tree line,’ I acknowledged. ‘It has fields to the north and west, buildings to the south and east.’

‘Correct. In and around the hook of the J I’ve got two pax, possibly Taliban.’ Chris went on to say that they were hiding from him, possibly with a SAM or an RPG, and maybe personal weapons as well.

Carl couldn’t hang around any longer; they headed back to refuel.

His final words confirmed my worries. ‘I wouldn’t hang around down here, if you know what I mean…’

I knew exactly what he meant. I called Widow Seven Zero. ‘The area we’re looking in isn’t a direct threat to your convoy route.’

‘Try to find them and ascertain if they’ve got weapons. If they have, you’re clear hot.’

If I’d found them on my own I couldn’t have fired because they were not a threat to the convoy. He must have had better intelligence to clear me hot. Either way, he couldn’t see them so I was going to have to give him a full picture and then request his clearance again.

One man was trying to conceal himself under the trees at the very end of the hook of the J. He had something hanging over his shoulder. I didn’t want to hang around so the best thing, I reckoned, was to provoke some form of response. If I fired close to but not at him, he’d run away empty-handed, or fire back at me or at least reveal a weapon.

I put down a warning burst about fifty metres away, in the field to his west.

Nothing.

We turned away to see if we could tempt him at least to move or draw a weapon. He got up and sauntered under the tree line.

As we turned back towards him, he went static again. Maybe he thought we couldn’t see him because he was in shadow and wearing black. It looked like he was carrying some kind of flag. I tried to get an angle on him as we came round, but he stayed behind a tree trunk as we circled.

‘Keep it up,’ I said. ‘He’s going to move into the sunlight in a minute; maybe we’ll be able to spot something.’

As he moved round to avoid us the sun glinted on something long and thin across his shoulder. It couldn’t have been a weapon. Weapons don’t glint. Gunmetal is dull, for good reason.

Billy said, ‘Maybe it’s a sword.’

We completed a full orbit and found another two men. One of them had what looked like another flag. Two flags? What was this, the opening ceremony of the Taliban Olympics?

We brought Widow up to speed. He was clearly taking these guys seriously. ‘Do they have concealed weapons?’

‘Stand by,’ I said. ‘I’ll put down another ten-round warning burst.’

All three were now just across the track from the compounds.

This time I aimed the burst so close they all got a free pedicure. The third man whipped across to a doorway in the compound wall, but couldn’t get through. This was a big combat indicator to me. This wasn’t their turf; they had to be Taliban. Had they been locals he would have known the other side of the door was bricked up.

His two mates set off east along the track, towards the woods. I finally got a good view of them. The lead man had a swathe of cloth over his shoulder, and had something long underneath it. Chris was right. My money was on an RPG or a SAM. The one behind him had something similar under his arm, similarly concealed. It must have weighed a bit; he was using both hands to keep it under his armpit. It was long and chunky enough to have been a recoilless rifle.

But they were walking away from the fight and I couldn’t positively identify weapons. Our ROE didn’t support shooting them. There was another flash of reflected sunlight. It was an antenna. He had a radio.

‘Contact!’ Widow called.

Billy spun us on a sixpence.

The radios went manic. The convoy had come under fire in the wadi from Yellow 14.

I was absolutely fuming at myself. While we’d been mincing around, trying to coax these three into doing something stupid so we could either identify or discount them, the convoy had been hit three klicks away. We had only one Apache over it; it should have been our priority.

We raced north.

The convoy was still strewn across the wadi. I glanced at Yellow 14 on my spot map; it was 200 metres north of B Company, 700 metres west of the Norsemen in Musa Qa’leh and about 300 metres north-west of the centre of the convoy.

The airwaves were suddenly flooded with chatter. We found out why there wasn’t a raging firefight going on. There had only been a single shot from Yellow 14.

The dense vegetation of the Green Zone thinned out as you moved further north, and gave way to an open expanse of irrigated farmland. Right in the middle of it was a small copse-otherwise known as Yellow 14.

The next thing we heard was that a soldier had been killed on one of the vehicles.

‘Fuck,’ Billy said.

Yellow 14 had a direct view across to the convoy, and would have made sense as a firing point – but for one thing.

I said, ‘Can’t be there, mate.’

‘It’s got to be,’ Billy said. ‘That’s Yellow 14.’

‘Look at the distance. It was a single shot, and that’s too far for anything other than a sniper. There’s no way a sniper would shoot from there.’ It was too close to the Paras and there was no escape route. They’d be a sitting target. As soon as he pulled that trigger again, the artillery would come down and he’d become a magnet for every British soldier in Musa Qa’leh.

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Five – Yellow 14 cannot be the firing point. It must be somewhere else,’ I said. ‘Has anyone else got a better steer on where the shot came from?’

‘B Company heard the shot from there, and he’s been shot straight through the head.’

‘Ohhh no,’ Billy groaned.

I cursed the Taliban and blamed myself. The most vulnerable part of the convoy’s journey was when they were crossing the wadi. I knew it, and I hadn’t been there for them. How could I have been so fucking stupid? I should have insisted on getting back to the priority task of protection.

I felt sick to my stomach.

‘It might have been a single shot, Billy. But there are at least two of them out there, buddy – possibly four – and they’re not at Yellow 14.’

I’d learned about terrorist sniping in Northern Ireland. A head shot needed maximum concentration. He wouldn’t have looked up from his sight for anything. So he will have had a spotter. The spotter must have been watching Jon’s aircraft, to let the sniper know when it was safe to fire. If they felt 100 per cent safe there might just have been the two of them. It was my guess they’d have some muscle with them, too, in case of a follow-up. One or two heavies deployed as lookouts to ensure that they weren’t being outflanked or compromised. RPG men most likely; men with weapons that could buy them time in the getaway.

‘Wildman Five Five, Wildman Five Four – you take a look around here; we’ll stay over the convoy.’

‘Wildman Five Five, copied.’

The convoy had slowed to a halt. The dead soldier, we gathered, was the driver of one of the vehicles.

I looked out of the cockpit window and scoured the area for good fields of fire.

Jake and John dropped lower than they should have. They trundled round and round in the same piece of sky, deliberately setting themselves up to attract fire away from the convoy and ID the firing point.

The pressure was on. If it was a sniper, and he thought we didn’t know where he was, he might be tempted to try it again. Chances were, though, that he’d be making his getaway. I pictured him looking through his sight, watching the body jerk then slump. He’d be up for it now, and we’d become the focus. What we did next determined what he’d do next.

‘Billy, keep over this side of the wadi and don’t turn tail on the north-western area of the Green Zone. We must make them think we can see them. It’s our only way of preventing a shot until I can work out where they are.’

I’d learned fieldcraft during my time with 2 Para: how to patrol, how to manoeuvre, how to set ambushes. I was taught how to pick routes that gave cover from view and cover from fire.

As a Gazelle pilot, I’d given top-cover to the boys on the ground, and I knew what to look for to keep them safe. The IRA knew exactly how we patrolled. They’d had lads in the TA; they’d had lads defect and come across. They knew how to set an ambush so that no one escaped, and how to get away before the security forces turned up.

They’d be sure to hit us from the greatest distance and had perfect killing fields. And so did our new enemy. Yellow 14 had cover from view, but that was it. It was on its own. It was a shit position.

But where else was there?

They needed to have a good escape route, one that provided cover from above so they could get away from the hot firing point if incoming started, or we attempted to flush them out with recce-by-fire-firing into all the most likely places until we got a response.

They’d need to move back, and that meant somewhere northwest. Once they’d broken free they’d hide their weapons and turn into Afghan locals waving their dishdashes to prove they were just on their way to the mosque.

The IRA quartermaster would bag all the stuff and drive away, leaving the sniper team to separate and blend in with whoever else was around.

But there was one phase neither could avoid: they’d have to extract from the firing point first.

Where were they?

‘What about those bushes?’ Billy aimed at them with his monocle.

They followed an irrigation ditch. It was a good position, right on the eastern side of the Green Zone. But they only ran part of the way, which meant they’d end up in an irrigation ditch for fifty metres before getting back into cover.

Widow Seven Zero pressed us for an update.

‘Wildman Five Five. Negative,’ I said. ‘Looking.’

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Four-give Wildman Five Five some space. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

I gave Jake a silent thank you and kept searching.

It all looked the bloody same. Just west of the wadi were fields and irrigation ditches with tree lines and hedgerows but none was unbroken. There must be a continuous hedgerow somewhere, or a tree line, or a mixture of both… but I couldn’t find anything and I was getting to the limits of a long-range sniper shot.

Just west of these fields was the edge of the Green Zone. Could he have scored a hit from this distance? Yes. But the fields were in full crop, and the crops were high, so he couldn’t possibly have got a clear shot at the convoy.

‘Where the fuck…?’

That’s where they are.

‘There… Pilot… Target… HMD! Right! One o’clock! Tree line east-west, looks like an inverted Y.’

Billy’s crosshair matched mine in my monocle.

‘Seen,’ he said.

Running south from a group of compounds was a thin but unbroken line of trees which forked after 200 metres. One row went south-west and buried itself in thick crops too high to see over. The other went east for about 300 metres before turning south-east and continuing to the very edge of the wadi. Trees didn’t survive in Afghanistan unless there was plenty of water, so there had to be irrigation ditches right alongside them.

I lased and stored the junction of the Y in the Apache’s computer in case we needed it.

‘From the very bottom of that row, buddy.’ I pointed with my right eye, knowing that Billy was following closely with his. ‘At the very end of the south-eastern leg, you can see straight down the wadi, all the way down to the convoy.’

‘It’s a long way,’ Billy said.

He had a point. It was between 500 and 700 metres. It was 600 metres to the centre of the wadi.

It was pretty much like the sniper position outside Crossmaglen. A long clear shot from a concealed wood. It had a good escape route with cover. And it led to an urban area where they could dump the weapons and melt away.

But what about the distance?

I needed to commit to a search or discount it on range, and quickly.

‘Six hundred metres is about 660 yards.’ I was thinking aloud. ‘One minute of arc at 660 is up to a six and a half inch error. He can hit a head at that range. If the convoy stopped for a second or if he led the target by about a second, he could still hit a head.’

‘There’s nowhere else he can be,’ Billy said. ‘Look at the size of those crops…’

‘Wildman Five Four has a possible firing point north up the wadi. Investigating.’ I needed to keep everyone off my back.

Billy kept the aircraft on an offensive heading, without pointing directly at the tree line. We wanted them to stay exactly where they were.

I searched very carefully under the trees, flicking the TADS from DTV to FLIR, FLIR white-hot to FLIR black-hot. Sometimes it stood out better when heat was displayed as black and cold as white. I was afraid I’d miss something. My eyes were stinging with tiredness, and from not blinking.

I started from the edge of the compounds and worked south. I didn’t want them to escape while I was searching for the possible firing point. I had an awesome picture. It was working a treat.

The trees were well established along this route. The bottom of the tree canopy was between four and twelve feet proud of a footpath, beside which ran an irrigation ditch. It looked fairly deep. They’d be glowing if they were silhouetted against it.

Nothing.

I rubbed my eyes.

I searched again and this time looked into the trees too, to see if they’d taken the koala route up into them.

Still nothing.

My back was killing me. I’d been strapped in one position for too long, hunched over a five-inch screen, looking for a shagging pixel to move.

‘They’re nearly across,’ Jon called. ‘You see anything yet?’

‘Negative. If they’re in there, we’re going to have to sucker them out.’

It was a long way to extract and they must have felt safe so far north. They had to be there.

With Jon orbiting below us, we were heading west over the convoy.

‘Billy, fly an orbit clockwise, making the centre point well south of them. As we come round onto east they’ll think we’re looking at something to the south of us. They may make a break for it.’

We flew the arc, everything peeled.

‘Nothing yet.’ Billy was using the thermal PNVS.

We were now facing north-east, in a slow right-banked orbit with the inverted Y to our north. I had a perfect view. As we passed through north I saw what looked like a footbridge about six to eight feet wide, about ten metres to the right of the Y, under the trees. I hadn’t spotted it earlier.

I flicked from DTV to FLIR and back again, in and out on maximum zoom.

‘I think I’ve cracked it, mate. There’s nowhere else. Do you see that?’

The aircraft was banking away from the bridge, but the TADS was staring directly at it.

‘Seen.’ His crosshair matched the TADS crosshair.

We continued around the arc.

‘Keep pointing the aircraft in this direction,’ I said. ‘Make it look as if we’re flying away.’

‘Good thinking.’

‘I don’t know what else to do,’ I said.

I zoomed in on the bridge as we got further and further away.

We both stared at the MPD, not daring to blink.

‘There,’ Billy yelled over the intercom. ‘We’ve found one. Stand by.’

A head appeared from under the bridge.

‘Hold it,’ I said to Billy. ‘Hold it…’

I was right on the edge of the TADS hard stop; I didn’t want him to turn the aircraft and lose them.

‘I have it.’

Out came the shoulders. FLIR had him glowing against the ditch water.

The sun was at the best possible angle, so I flicked from FLIR to DTV. His black dishdash stood out beautifully against the far bank of the irrigation ditch. He slung his RPG over his shoulder and a sack of warheads on his back.

As he started to climb, out came Number Two.

I felt a surge of excitement.

‘Steady, steady…’ I kept counting.

The second guy had a weapon too – an assault rifle of some description, but I couldn’t make out a distinctive AK47 magazine. Right behind him, pushing him hard, was Number Three.

The fourth, in white, also had an RPG, but it was Number Three that got my pulse racing. As he stretched forward to scramble up the bank, he had a long, thin-barrelled weapon at his side.

‘Sniper,’ we said in unison.

‘Bring it round to the right, but don’t give the game away.’

‘We’ve found the sniper team, stand by for data,’ Billy updated Jon and Jake and sent them the Y junction grid.

If they’d been in fire positions, we could just have flipped the aircraft over and poured rounds down on them. But they weren’t; they were trying to escape.

We didn’t want to spook them. We had to lull them into thinking they’d got away with it. We were in a big lazy turn, when what we really wanted to do was flip the aircraft round and blow them away.

We lost sight of them as the TADS locked out, but they were moving cautiously. By the time we rolled out they would be at the junction of the tree line running north to the compounds.

As he turned the aircraft and we passed 180 degrees from the stored Y grid, the TADS swung from full left to full right. It was ready to lock on the second it came within 120 degrees.

I cursed the IPT. I’d been asking all tour for the Flechette restriction to be lifted. It was deemed an inhumane weapon by the legal boffins; they thought the place would end up looking like George A. Romero’s version of the World Darts Championship. We knew the clearance was on its way, but if we used the best weapon the Apache had to nail them in this wood right now, we’d be breaking the law.

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Four, this is Wildman Five Five. We’ve located the sniper team. Widow, call when ready to copy.’

‘Widow ready to copy.’

‘Four armed men in a tree line egressing north from Grid Forty-One-Sierra, Six-Five-Nine-Two, Eight-Zero-Nine-Three. Setting up to attack.’

I took a deep breath and forced myself to stay alert.

The sun was right above us and baking through the glass. The cockpit was air-conditioned, but my flameproof clothing, escape jacket and helmet combo didn’t allow the cool air to get through. I was baking.

My hands had barely come off this big PlayStation control for over twelve hours. My thumbs felt like they couldn’t move another millimetre. My lumbar spine was on fire and my eyes were dry and stung like hell. My lids felt like they were lined with sandpaper every time I blinked.

Anxious to see every minute detail, I’d been getting closer and closer to the screen. I’d been looking north most of the day, using the sun to aid the TADS, which meant I needed to keep my visor up to see the MPDs – which meant the air-conditioning gasper poking out of the console kept hitting me smack in the face.

As front-seater, I’d sat still for so long my buttocks felt like they were pressing down on a couple of golf balls. I’d been lifting one cheek, then the other for ages now, but it didn’t relieve the pain. To round things off, leaning over perpetually made my body armour dig deep into my bladder.

In the turn I checked the cannon was set to a twenty-round burst, then selected HEISAP rockets to two. As we approached the 120 degree TADS stop, I actioned the cannon and felt the comforting thud as it moved fully right to intercept the target.

Widow confirmed this was a known position; other lads had also been contacted from here. Bloody hell, Widow. It would have been useful to have known that earlier.

If the lads had been contacted from there it was obviously on the way in, not on the way back out.

The TADS image whipped past then froze. The bottom of the Y filled the screen. I just caught sight of the hem of a set of white robes as the last man disappeared under the trees, heading north.

I nearly whooped with excitement.

‘The sniper team are all in the wood, heading north. Come in after us fast with rockets; we’ll kick right out of your way. Don’t wait for us to say clear, just fire as soon as you can. Then we’ll swarm the target. We’ll take the northern cut-off, you take the south.’

‘Copied,’ Jon said.

I zoomed to the top of the tree line, at the south-east corner of the first compound wall. Awesome. There was a fifteen-foot gap they’d need to cross to get to the wall. The wall itself ran fifty metres east and twenty-five metres north without a single hole or access point.

‘We’ve got them buddy,’ I called. ‘They’ve nowhere to go.’

They’d just killed one of our lads. Now I was going to make sure they would never do it again.

My eyes were out on stalks, watching the TADS for the slightest movement.

We rolled out north and began running in. I estimated them to be nearly halfway along the irrigation ditch. They wouldn’t be able to see us now.

Jake and Jon were running in behind us.

The plan was for me to fire cannon rounds towards the top of the tree line to stop them in their tracks, fire a pair of HEISAP rockets to check their alignment and finally to make the necessary correction and hit them hard with another flurry of rockets.

At that point we’d push right and fly up the eastern side of the trees, watching the gap at the top to make sure they didn’t escape.

Jake and Jon would follow suit.

Both of us would then circle like a pair of avenging eagles: we were responsible for the northern escape point; they’d cover the southern fork.

I held the crosshair three-quarters of the way up the tree line, lasing constantly. I squeezed the weapons release trigger hard and called, ‘Engaging’ over the Mission Net.

The second the gun stopped firing I lowered the crosshair to the centre of the wood and actioned the rockets with a flick of a button.

‘Come co-op, Billy.’

‘Co-op,’ he yelled back, letting me know that we were ready to fire rockets co-operatively.

The cannon rounds smashed into the trees with incredible accuracy. I knew they would; we’d DH’d it some hours earlier and got it spot on. The HEDP rounds would be sending shrapnel, fire, branches and splinters all over the place, right across the sniper team’s path. There’s no way they’d run into that lot.

‘Match and shoot.’ My crosshair was dead centre.

‘Engaging,’ Billy called over the radio to let Jake and Jon know it would be their turn in a moment.

A pair of rockets peeled off each side of our airframe and roared towards the target with their arses on fire.

Before they had even impacted I could see they were going too high and to the right.

‘Fucking IPT…’ I set the quantity to eight HEISAPs. We needed a tool to align these launchers and they still wouldn’t buy one.

They landed in the field just right of the gap between the trees and the corner of the wall. I adjusted low and left and called for another volley.

‘Match and sh—’

There was a tremendous whoosh as eight rockets rippled off the wings.

‘My gun.’ I was ready to smash these Taliban to pieces at the same time Jon and Jake fired.

‘Kicking right.’ Billy let the others know they were up.

FUCK…

I had a TADS FAIL and LOS INVALID message in my monocle as soon as the rockets fired. The weapons computer suddenly didn’t know where the TADS was pointing or I was looking. It was a catastrophe. The computer wouldn’t allow me to fire any weapons if it couldn’t corroborate an accurate sight.

All eight rockets cracked straight into the canopy. Splintered branches, trunks and leaves burst out of the centre of the tree line. At least we’d got top marks for adjustment.

‘My gun,’ Billy called. He was as fast as they came in the Apache world and knew from this point onwards that I was just talking baggage. I had no offensive capability beyond firing the weapons in their restrictive head-on-only redundant mode. He could still fight using his monocle.

Jon and Jake were running in on the same approach path. I looked at the gap through the cockpit window to make sure the sniper team hadn’t reached it and quickly ran my eyes southwards.

‘Billy, left and low,’ I called. He wouldn’t see my crosshair now so I had to talk him on.

The trees ran north, bordered by tall crops on either side, and I glimpsed a stretch of track on the right. I could see two of the team almost directly below us.

‘Halfway down the tree line… this side… two men…’

‘Seen.’

As the cannon growled into life the leading Taliban wanted to run, but couldn’t manage much more than a hobble. His companion staggered to a halt and waved frantically to someone behind him, as if trying to hurry him on.

I spotted the third. He was bent double, moving slowly about ten metres behind his mates. He wasn’t in good shape at all, and could barely put one foot in front of the other.

A huge explosion burst through the foliage above their heads.

Taliban Number Three disappeared in a cloud of dust and leaves. Jake and Jon’s rockets had impacted spot on target, a fraction of a second before Billy’s HEDP rounds sent a series of ghostly orange pulses along the track. He’d fired using his monocle and even though we never saw what they struck, the flashes told us his aim was spot on.

The dust wasn’t settling. The ground was like talcum powder. There wasn’t a breath of wind. The gap was still clear.

‘Have I got them?’ Billy said.

‘No idea. But they haven’t escaped north. I’ve got that covered.’

‘Engaging.’ He fired three further bursts into the billowing cloud.

We pulled into a tight orbit and dropped down low.

Jon was flying in the same direction, clockwise, and 180 degrees out. We swarmed the target, waiting for the first sign of life.

‘Wildman Five Four, Wildman Five Five,’ I called. ‘Three Taliban were hit indirectly by your rockets and we think directly by our cannon. They’ve gone unsighted in the dust. Confirm the southern escape route was secure and the fourth man never leaked out that way.’

‘Negative. We can confirm one Taliban dressed in white jumped into the haystack before our rocket hit it.’

What fucking haystack?

We didn’t need to look hard. On the western side of the tree line, just north of the Y junction, was a pall of grey smoke. The haystack was burning ferociously.

Billy and I needed Flechette clearance, and soon. The HEISAP rockets were magic against buildings but rubbish in the open.

When the dust settled, there was nothing left but the smouldering remains of a haystack, a line of burning trees, a succession of craters, splintered branches and fragments of rock. The four Taliban had completely disappeared.

Jon and Jake reported a heat source in the crops to the west, but no movement, and it was debatable if it was big enough to be human.

The crop was about eight feet high and must have had a very damp base to reflect sunlight. If their legs and arms were in the water, or if they were lying hunched up, trying to look smaller, all we’d see was a glowing torso.

Billy and I looked at his PNVS image. We’d just lost a British soldier and the DC had been under months of relentless sniper fire. The only Afghan we had seen down here was the old-timer in the grass shelter by the crossing point. We were sure these scumbags had killed our boy and Widow had taken fire earlier from this very spot. We didn’t want a single one of these guys to fight another day.

Billy opened up with another twenty-round burst.

Mud, water and shredded foliage blossomed along the line of fire and the heat source disintegrated.

We had a perfect view under the trees at this low altitude. We continued to search. But there was no one there.

‘Wildman Five Four, Widow Seven Zero. That’s the convoy in the Green Zone. Send sitrep.’

Jon called on the inter-aircraft radio, ‘We’ll get that.’

‘Widow this is Wildman Five Four,’ Jake said. ‘The sniper team has been destroyed. We are short of gas but will hold on for as long as possible. We’ll be overhead in two minutes.’

‘Wildman Five Four. Wildman Five Two Flight will be with you in two minutes for RIP,’ Pat called. ‘Send update.’

We were just about to cover the convoy back up the slope. There wasn’t much to say.

We broke off and tanked it back across the desert.

I felt relieved, but numb. Billy and I were now fighting on redundant systems, in more ways than one. I’d lost all line of sight, which meant I had no control of the TADS. If I needed to fire I’d have to fix the cannon forward and then point the aircraft directly at the target and dive at it.

There wasn’t any dialogue between us. The next patrol was out, so they had primary use of that radio frequency. We could flip onto another frequency for a chat, but then we wouldn’t hear what was going on at the pointy end. We still had to keep listening to what was happening behind us, in case we were needed to relay something back to base. We could have sent text messages to each other, but none of us was in the mood for doing anything unless we really had too. It was all too much effort.

3 Flight was out there now, watching the convoy pass through the Green Zone.

I was still trying to fix my aircraft. We might find ourselves straight back out if one of 3 Flight got hit. If I succeeded by the time we got to Bastion, we’d just need a suck of gas and ammunition.

I disconnected and reconnected my helmet, trying to bore sight it. Nothing. I switched over the systems processors. Nothing. I ran diagnostic checks on the equipment and attempted to reboot the systems. Nothing. I had no control over the line of sight. Nothing worked.

We listened to the fading sounds of the battle as we flew back across the desert.

I heard a beep and saw a text message.

Jake wanted to know what we had left. We’d fired 120 rounds of 30 mm HEDP and ten HEISAP rockets. I typed my reply into the keyboard:

‘Saxon, Saxon,’ Jake called. ‘Wildman Five Four and Wildman Five Five are RTB to you. With you in two zero minutes. Stand by for farm-c.’

Saxon Ops acknowledged.

‘We require 140 rounds of thirty mike mike, eighteen high-sap, and can you get a Greenie to the radio to speak with my wingman? He has a Tango Alpha Delta Sierra fail and an invalid Lima Oscar Sierra.’

A moment or two later, an avionics technician’s voice came through my earpiece. He sounded tentative. The techies didn’t much like talking on the radio.

‘Erm… Technician speaking… erm… over.’

He told me there was no way I could repair the fault in mid-flight and that it would have to wait until I got on the ground.

‘I’ll be ready when you get on the ground, sir. No problems, sir. Over and erm… out, sir.’ He gratefully signed off.

Calls between Pat and Chris were still coming through loud and clear. The vehicles were making their way up the slope to freedom. D Company and B Company were peeling back through the Green Zone at warp speed.

We landed, taxied, and pulled across to the refuel point. The spring in the groundies’ step had disappeared over the last few weeks. They connected the hose and started to refuel. The Greenie tech made his way to the door and pointed towards the arming bays. I signalled a ‘6’ to him and he set off to meet us there. He walked like a zombie. I knew the last thing he needed was hours and hours of work repairing my chariot. I had no idea how they managed to fix these flying computers when they could hardly keep their eyes open.

Billy taxied along the hardened area in front of the hangar and pulled into bay 6. As we ground to a halt, I heard Pat on the radio.

‘Saxon Ops, this is Wildman Five Two. That’s the convoy safe, in the wadi to the west. All troops now making their way back towards the LS. Send in the CH-Forty-Sevens to collect.’

We wouldn’t have to go out again.

I looked at the Up Front Display.

17:15:08… 17:15:09… 17:15:10…

We’d been on the go for fifteen hours, and that didn’t include getting up to discover the timing had slipped.

I’d jumped into this aircraft at 3.45 this morning. Actually, maybe ‘jumped’ was too big a word.

I dipped my head and gave my eyes a rub.

When the blurriness cleared I looked left out of the cockpit window towards my wingman.

Jon was slumped back, arms by his side, head resting on the back of the seat, his visored face pointing upwards.

Jake had his arms crossed over the ORT in front of him. They were all that prevented his head from touching his feet.

Their ALPC waited patiently for a thumbs-up so he could plug in.

I looked up and left at the mirror in the corner of the cockpit frame. Billy had flaked out, just like Jon. All I could see was his chinstrap.

It was over.

Automaton-like, I placed my right arm on the ORT and my left on top of it. I lowered my head until the browpad of my helmet was resting on my arms. Then I closed my eyes.

I heard the click of a comms lead being plugged into the wingtip.

There was a long silence before a broad Welsh lilt filled my earpieces.

‘You all right, sir?’

Billy was dead to the world, and I was too ball-bagged even to lift my head.

‘No, mate,’ I replied. ‘I’m totally and utterly fucked.’