Fire Strike 7/9 Read online

  Had the bullets that had hit Davey Graham been an inch or two higher, the breastplate would have saved him. As it was, the enemy gunner had sneaked the rounds in beneath the lower edge, tearing apart Davey’s guts.

  The newly-qualified 2 MERCIAN medic had done the emergency first aid on him. But in spite of her best efforts, barely a soldier amongst us doubted that Davey Graham was a dead man.

  Private Davey Graham was a fresh-faced lad with a ready smile and a pair of piercing blue eyes. He was known as being a bit of a joker. Earlier in the morning I’d seen him holding up his helmet on the end of a stick, in a mock gesture to draw enemy fire. Graham was the kind of bloke you’d have trusted with your life, and he’d more than likely volunteered to take point on the lead platoon. After the shock of fighting so hard to save him, the idea that we could lose him was hitting us all bastard hard.

  I loosened my own body armour, and went to heave it over my head. As I did so, I felt a stabbing, jabbing pain deep in my left shoulder. It was only now that I remembered the violent thump to my back that had sent me flying face-first into the ditch.

  I craned my head around, and I could just about see this huge spreading purple-red bruise where my left shoulder met my neck. Something big must have hit me, and cannoned off the top of my body armour. I didn’t dwell on it for long, or breathe a word to anyone. I was alive and in one piece: others hadn’t been so lucky.

  In any case, there was barely a man amongst us who hadn’t taken a lump of frag here or there, or a blast of flying rock and grit, in their body armour. Until those jets had got to work hitting the enemy with their five-hundred- and eight-hundred-pounders, we’d taken a right malleting.

  A couple of the 2 MERCIAN lads came up to me.

  ‘Nice one, like, Bommer,’ said the one.

  ‘Yeah, cheers and all that,’ said the other.

  ‘Cheers for what?’ I asked.

  ‘For saving us necks out there,’ one said.

  ‘With the airstrikes and stuff,’ said the other.

  ‘Aye, well, get the kettle on, will you lads. Time for a brew.’

  As they wandered off, I heard one say to the other: ‘We got second place today. Runner-up prize. Bommer’s right — better get the tea on.’

  It was 1030 when the OC gathered us together for a chat. I’d seen him giving a couple of the lads a fatherly slap and a hug, and I knew we were all feeling it.

  ‘I’ve just had word that Davey Graham made it back to Camp Bastion alive,’ the OC announced. ‘He’s been badly shot up, and will be evacuated to the UK just as soon as that is possible. He’s in a very serious condition, and will need to be operated on. But we got him out of a massive enemy ambush, and we got him back to Camp Bastion. And for that, every man amongst you should feel justifiably proud.’

  We drifted off, each trying to find our own little patch of personal space. Not easy to do, in a mud-walled compound crammed full of fifty-odd soldiers. In spite of the OC’s words, we knew that we’d been smashed. The enemy had had the upper hand, and it was only the air, and a shedload of good luck, that had saved us.

  I grabbed a brew before the rush, and headed for the stairs leading up to JTAC Central. I knew I could get some headspace up there. At the ammo-box staircase I got collared by the OC. He fixed me with a look, and for a second or two he said nothing.

  Then: ‘Cheers, Bommer.’

  That was all. Butsy was the type of bloke who didn’t give praise easily. But you knew from the expression in his eyes if he was happy or not, and by Christ his eyes had said it all. Cheers Bommer. That was enough for me.

  Up on the roof I took a slurp of my brew. I’d ladled in the sugar to give me some energy. All I kept thinking was this: Please do not give me any more air. All I wanted to do was to get on the blower and speak to Nicola. Today was our wedding anniversary, and I’d not been able to wish her a happy anniversary.

  Down below I could hear this thick Cockney voice going: ‘Fucking ’ell! Fucking ’ell!’ Over and over the same phrase, in turboclip mode. It was Andy, the press photographer. He and his reporter mate kept laughing and laughing. They’d been with 2 Platoon in the heart of the ambush, and they were fried.

  ‘Fucking ’ell,’ Andy kept repeating. ‘I can’t believe that’s what you guys go through every day. Fucking ’ell.’

  ‘You’re fucking lucky, lad,’ ‘Mortar’ Jim, 2 Platoon’s mortar-operator replied. ‘That’s the worst we’ve ever had it.’

  I finished my brew, came down from the roof, and got on the satphone to Nicola. I wished her a happy wedding anniversary, and asked her what she was doing for the day. She told me she was having a nice meal with the nippers, Harry and Ella.

  ‘What’s your day been like?’ she asked me.

  ‘Well, nowt much’s been happening,’ I lied. ‘We’ve had a bit of a boring one.’

  ‘Paul, what’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘You don’t sound like you normally do. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nowt’s the matter, love. It’s just, I was up at the crack of dawn and I’m well-knackered.’

  After the call, I went and joined Throp and Sticky in the Vector. Sticky was staring ahead with that wired, ‘thousand-yard stare’ look that I guess we all had to have by now. It was the weird, unfocused, shell-shocked look of having been in the fight of your lives for hours and hours on end, not to mention the weeks of combat before.

  ‘Is it all ever worth it?’ Sticky muttered.

  ‘Is what ever worth it, mate?’ I asked.

  ‘Any one of us could’ve got whacked from those bombs you called in.’

  I shrugged. ‘Aye. Top bloody present that would’ve been on the wife’s wedding anniversary.’

  ‘So, is it ever worth it, for eighteen hundred quid a month?’

  The only answer was a chorus of Andy’s ‘Fucking ’ells’ that drifted across to the Vector.

  Twenty Two

  BIN LADEN’S SUMMERHOUSE

  At stand-to the following morning I had two Apaches — Ugly Five Zero and Ugly Five One — check in. The pilots were learning that ROZ Suzy was seriously busy. They’d fly at higher altitude in an effort to conserve fuel, so they could offer me a few minutes’ playtime en route back from whatever mission they’d been on.

  The Apache pilots were gutted that a major action like yesterday’s could have gone down without Ugly playing a bigger part in it. For once I was glad to have had those jets over us, as opposed to Apache. Only something with the capacity to drop serious ordnance could have beaten off an attack of the ferocity that we had faced.

  I got the Apache pilots searching over the positions of the previous day’s battle. But apart from a smoking cooking fire at Golf Bravo Nine One, there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere.

  A couple of days went by with only sporadic attacks against us. The odd burst of small arms fire and 107mm rocket barrages hit PB Sandford, but there was nothing resembling a full-blown attack.

  Alpha Xray got malleted from the woodline at Golf Bravo Nine One. I couldn’t get any air, so Chris called in a barrage from the 105mm howitzers and drove the enemy off. It was like they were probing us all over again, in an effort to test our resolve and our lines of defence.

  Golf Bravo Nine One was fast becoming the enemy’s start line for any assault. Their headquarters we reckoned was back at Golf Bravo Nine Eight — the position that our foot patrol had stumbled into. That would explain why they had fought so ferociously, throwing in waves of fighters in an effort to annihilate us.

  We pushed a patrol down to Alpha Xray, on foot and with two Snatch Land Rovers. Throp and I went on it, in part to defuse the tension of being cooped up in PB Sandford, and in part ’cause I had air over the convoy. I got the Dude call signs flying recces to the east of AX, around where Davey Graham had been gunned down.

  Nothing was seen. Throp and I tabbed back towards PB Sand-ford, along with the platoon from AX that had been relieved. As we did I lost the air. The F-15s were ripped to a TIC somewhere else in Helmand. The
radio chatter was going wild that they had eyes on the patrol, but even with the F-15s gone there still wasn’t a sniff from the enemy.

  That night I got a pair of A-10s above me. We’d got Intel that the enemy were doing a major resupply by vehicles out in the desert. It was all part of their build-up in the Triangle, the ultimate aim of which was to smash us. Intel reports had eight or nine vehicles involved in the resupply. In due course the A-10 pilots found a desert convoy.

  Via my Rover terminal I could see the group of vehicles the Hog call signs had discovered. But as Chris, Throp, Sticky and I studied the images, we couldn’t see anything that resembled ammo or weapons. For all we knew it could be a midnight wedding. We decided we couldn’t hit the convoy, and we let it go on its way.

  By morning, the radio chatter was hot about a successful resupply. Enemy units were being ordered to fetch new weapons and ammo. I had a pair of F-15s overhead, and got them flying air recces all across the Triangle. But not a thing was moving down there, not even farmers working their fields. I’d never seen it this quiet. It was weird. Spooky.

  In desperation, I got the F-15s to fly search transects over the old Soviet trench system, in the desert four kilometres to the north-east of us. There was more than a kilometre of interlinked earthworks, where you could move from position to position without being seen.

  We reckoned those trenches linked into an underground tunnel system, stretching all across the Triangle. How else could the enemy resupply their fighters, without being seen from the air? We’d had reports that the Triangle was honeycombed with hidden caverns and tunnels, and the body of evidence was growing by the day.

  A couple of days back I’d had a Predator over the Green Zone. As it had flown its recces, the drone had passed over this small, tower-like building, enclosed on all sides by thick woodland. There were four males visible, one on each corner of the roof. I couldn’t see any weapons, but those guys sure looked like sentries to me.

  The building was some 2.5 kilometres east of Alpha Xray, so well into enemy territory. It was way beyond the Golf Bravo codenames, and into the Golf Charlies. I got the Predator to loiter over that grid. I saw a figure leave the building and walk along a path for a minute or so. He reached the middle of a field and completely disappeared. One moment he was there, the next gone.

  I watched another male of fighting age leave the building, follow the path to the centre of the field, and puff — he was gone. By the third time, I was convinced I’d found the entrance to a tunnel system. More than likely it had been built during the time of the war against the Soviet Red Army, and would lead all the way back to the Soviet trenches.

  The building in the woods was in a perfect defensive position. It sat in a crook of the Helmand River, on a promontory. It was invisible from the ground, being surrounded by thick woodland. It was only by luck that I’d spotted it from the air. I nicknamed it ‘Bin Laden’s Summerhouse’, and the name just stuck. Word spread, and I started having pilots ask me if I’d spotted Bin Laden himself there yet.

  I got another Predator in overwatch of the Summerhouse. This time, there were fifteen males sat under the trees, getting briefed by a guy leaning on a motorcycle. Not one of them was showing any weapons, and I’d yet to see a sniff of a gun. But my instinct was screaming at me that this was a major enemy hub.

  The guy finished talking, got astride the bike, and was driven off down the track by his ‘driver’. I tracked them for fifteen kilometres moving in the direction of Sangin. En route they kept getting waved through by groups of males of fighting age. Finally, they reached a crossing of the Helmand River and boarded a boat. Whilst on the water the main figure swapped his black turban — the uniform of the Taliban — for a white one. Around about then I lost the Predator. But I’d bet any money that the guy was some Taliban bigwig, and the Summerhouse some high-level enemy base.

  Of course, everyone from the OC down wanted to go in and hit the Summerhouse. But it was a good kilometre beyond Golf Bravo Nine Eight, the point at which we’d walked into the Davey Graham ambush. It would take a lot more blokes, and a lot more firepower, to battle through to there.

  I kept the memory sticks of all the material that I’d recorded from the Predator feeds. I passed the lot up to Nick the Stick, and those in command of his group of elite American warriors. It was better to leave it up to those boys to hit the Summerhouse, with maybe a ‘Spooky’ call sign and some Apaches on hand to assist. For now I had my own priorities to deal with. Chief of those was trying to work out where the hell the entire human presence in the Triangle had got to. Maybe the enemy were down in their tunnel systems, sorting out their ammo resupply, and briefing their newly arrived fighters. That would fit with the Intel that was coming in.

  We decided to take advantage of the enemy going to ground. We headed out with the Czech Army unit, in their Toyota wagons encased in camo-netting and mock-greenery. Watching from a distance, the Czechs on patrol looked like a line of moving bushes, albeit with long-nosed Dushka heavy machine guns poking out.

  We drove past Alpha Xray and pushed on to Golf Bravo Nine One. As there was nothing doing with the enemy, we wrapped a couple of strings of plastic explosive around each of the trees, and blew a long line of them sky-high. Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! It wasn’t that we hated trees: we just didn’t like the cover they provided for the enemy. Golf Bravo Nine One was the front line from where they kept hitting Alpha Xray. By blowing the treelines, we deprived them of cover via which to sneak up on our base. Alpha Xray was getting whacked pretty much on a daily basis, and we didn’t want to make it any easier for the bastards.

  The following morning Alpha Xray got hit just after first light. Maybe we’d needled the Taliban by blowing up their greenery. Either way, there was a barrage of small arms and RPGs smashing into the base. I couldn’t get any air, so Chris called in fire, pounding the enemy with the 105mm guns and our own 81mm mortars.

  But none of this was the big one, and we knew it. Something nasty was brewing. We kept having walk-ins warn us that the enemy were reinforcing and rearming for a big push. They planned to overrun one of our bases, and we guessed it had to be Alpha Xray.

  The OC decided to push out a foot patrol to the east of Monkey One Echo, and into the Golf Charlie codenames. The aim was to get a rise out of the enemy around Bin Laden’s Summerhouse, so we could pre-empt their big push by forcing them into a fight. We reckoned the Summerhouse was ‘the Mosque’ that the enemy commander kept calling their men to for pre-battle briefings. If the Summerhouse and the Mosque were the same place, and our foot patrol could provoke them into opening fire, we could smash it from the air.

  We pushed east and crossed the enemy front lines, creeping deep into their territory. I had two A-10 Warthogs in support. I had one watching to the front of our patrol, and the other with eyes on the Summerhouse/Mosque. We hit the Golf Charlie One Seven area, and a lone RPG went sailing over our heads. It smashed into the bush twenty metres beyond us. No one could see the firing point, and apart from that it was dead all around us. Not a soul was to be seen.

  We got back to PB Sandford without another shot being fired, the A-10s shadowing us into base. It all confirmed what our walk-in sources were telling us: the enemy had pulled back to resupply and rearm, in preparation for the big one.

  The following day was Born Naked Day, or at least it was for the Czech Army unit. The Czechs had claimed their own corner of PB Sandford, where they kept their Mad Max Toyotas parked up between two massive mud ramparts, like blast walls.

  It was Saturday, 11 August and the Czechs intended to spend the entire day naked, no matter what. They’d bloody fight naked if they had to, or so they told us.

  They erected a sign at the entrance to their domain:

  The World Famous Czech Born Naked Day.

  Make Love Not War.

  All proceeds to the Children of Chernobyl Fund.

  Then there was a list of rules.

  Get Naked.

  Stay Naked.

&n
bsp; Extreme nudity.

  No clothing ever.

  It wasn’t exactly our sense of humour: that was more of the Get Snoopy kind. But maybe we were just repressed when it came to getting our kit off. And for sure we had some bizarre traditions of our own in Britain — like chasing cheeses down mountains, or peashooter contests, or bog-snorkelling. In comparison, Born Naked Day was a no-brainer, especially if there were some Czech girls involved — which I guess there would be when doing it back home in the Czech Republic.

  The Czech unit were a massive bunch of lads. They made Throp look positively weedy. Each looked as if he’d been fed on an intravenous drip of steroids during infanthood. If they wanted to sit around with their tackle hanging out, none of us were going to argue. Anyway, it was all for a good cause. We dug deep in our pockets and chucked a load of our hard-earned spends into the Born Naked Day bucket, trying not to get an eyeful of any Czech tackle. One look could give you a serious inferiority complex.

  At midday we had an Afghan elder walk-in. We steered him away from the naked Czech monsters, and grabbed Alan, our terp. The word from the elder was that the enemy were moving back into the Triangle in big numbers. They were reinforced and rearmed, and their intention was to hit us hard and drive us out of here.

  The OC decided to pre-empt them. He was a man who believed in fighting on the terrain and at the time of his own choosing. We’d push out a patrol on foot past Alpha Xray, then hook north parallel to Route Buzzard, probing north of the area in an effort to force the enemy’s hand.