Fire Strike 7/9 Read online

There was a ripple of nervous laughter. ‘Grinner’ is northern slang for backside. The lads were starting to learn a little of my lingo as time went by.

  ‘Best pray it’s another dud, if you’ve got it up your ass,’ said Sticky. ‘I still ain’t pulling it out though.’

  And that was it — nothing more was said about our closest ever encounter with death. No one wanted to stay on this cursed ridge line, that was for certain. But we sure as hell weren’t leaving until the job was done.

  Lance Bombardier Ben ‘Sticky’ Stickland was always larking about, no matter what shit we were in. Over the past few weeks he’d become like my mucker. I couldn’t help but love him. Sticky hailed from 29 Commando, and being a Commando gunner he was a top soldier. He was fit as a robber’s dog, and was on the scale of an ultramarathon runner. He had a totally stupid sense of humour, and was the funniest kind of killer you ever could meet. He and I were always messing, and he was almost as much of a practical joker as me.

  But it wasn’t this that endeared me most to Sticky. Over the past few weeks he’d become like my shadow. More than anyone, I reckoned Sticky really got it. He could sense the unique beauty of conducting the air war, and he thrilled to the awesome power wielded by the JTAC.

  The air war could turn a battle within seconds, and Sticky knew it. No other soldier on the battlefield could bring hundreds of million of dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art war machines to bear, with unrivalled power to crush and smash an attacking enemy. He loved JTAC-ing almost as much as I did.

  Throp wrestled the wagon across a patch of rutted terrain, trying to choose a spot on high ground where we hadn’t already been targeted. A dog should never return to its own vomit, but we didn’t have much choice up here. I got on the TACSAT to the F-16 orbiting overhead.

  ‘Wicked Four One, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: we’re getting targeted by mortars plus 107mm rockets. Push up to twenty-five thousand feet, and search around our forward platoons, now eight hundred metres into the Green Zone.’

  ‘Roger that,’ came the F-16 pilot’s reply. ‘Climbing to twenty-five thousand.’

  I wanted the F-16 high enough so no one could hear him, but low enough to spy on the enemy. Via the high-resolution optics located in the aircraft’s nose cone, the pilot could maintain eyes on the ground even from that altitude. I wanted the enemy to think our air cover had gone, so we could lure them out and smash them.

  As the noise of the F-16 faded away to nothing, I levered myself up into the Vector’s turret. No sooner had it gone quiet, than there was another distant boom. The mortar was back in action.

  But this time, the flash of the exploding round was down in the Green Zone, somewhere around the forward line of our troops. At about the same moment there were a series of sharp cracks of small arms fire and the crump of exploding RPGs.

  ‘Arsenic Three Zero’s in contact,’ Sticky yelled across at me. ‘Small arms, RPGs and mortars. They’re pinned down and going nowhere.’

  I grabbed Sticky’s radio handset. He carried a specialist bit of comms kit that could talk to the 105mm field guns back at FOB Price, Camp Bastion, the air power and most stations in between. At present he had it tuned in to the company net.

  ‘Arsenic Three Zero, Widow Seven Nine,’ I yelled. ‘Give me a grid of your position and talk me on to the contact point.’

  ‘Roger. Grid coming up. Stand by.’

  As the platoon commander spoke I could hear the whipcrack of rounds in the background. I could just imagine what that poor bastard was going through. He was in the midst of a shit fight, with thick vegetation all around him and terrified of losing some of his lads. And now he had some arsehole of a JTAC telling him to get out his map and compass and try to work out where the hell they were positioned.

  I waited for his reply, with one ear scanning the TACSAT for any comms from the F-16. At the same time I got Sticky to grab the GeoCell map and spread it out on the roof of the wagon. Fuck any rounds that were coming our way. It was time to nail these bastards.

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, Arsenic Three Zero.’ The platoon commander sounded breathless, like he’d been running. ‘Friendly grid: 986745. Repeat: 986745. I’ve got eyes on the enemy firing point. They’re one-seven-five metres due east of us.’

  Yeah! Get in! It was still danger-close, but 175 metres was good enough. It was time to smash ’em. I bent over the map, trying to convert the six-figure grid the platoon commander had given me to an eight-figure grid, the minimum the F-16 pilot would need.

  ‘Describe the enemy position,’ I yelled into Sticky’s handset.

  ‘Treeline one-seven-five metres to the east,’ the platoon commander yelled back. ‘Running north-west to south-east. There’s a kink at the southern end like the handle of a walking stick.’

  ‘Roger. Out.’ I passed the handset to Sticky, confident that he would do what was needed. He’d warn 3 Platoon when the bombs were coming in, and Chris would brief the OC.

  I pressed the TACSAT to my ear, and dialled up the F-16. I gave him a sitrep, passed him the eight-figure grid of the friendlies, described the enemy position, and told him to get visual with that treeline.

  ‘Comin’ down for a closer look,’ came the pilot’s reply. ‘Zooming in my optics to your coordinates. Right, I’m visual with the friendlies.’ There was a moment’s pause. ‘Now visual with muzzle flashes coming out of a dog-legged treeline, one-seventy metres east of there. Visual with heat spots in that treeline. Six pax at least.’

  ‘Stand by to attack,’ I replied.

  ‘Jet visual with enemy pax in the treeline!’ I yelled to Chris. ‘Danger-close one-seventy metres to 3 Platoon. I need OC’s clearance.’

  With a danger-close mission I needed top-level clearance. As Chris dialled up the OC, I could hear Sticky briefing 3 Platoon on what was happening. He didn’t know what bombs I’d be using, and in truth neither did I. I was running through the ordnance package of an F-16 in my head, and trying to work out what was best at 170 metres.

  ‘OC says to hit ’em!’ Chris yelled up at me.

  We were on! ‘Wicked Four One, Widow Seven Nine. I want you to hit those heat spots with a GBU-38. Repeat: GBU-38. I want you coming in on an attack run…’

  I gave the pilot a bearing that should throw the blast away from 3 Platoon. A GBU-38 is a five-hundred-pound JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition). It’s a standard Boeing Mk-82 ‘dumb’ bomb, turned ‘smart’ by having the JDAM precision guidance system strapped on to it.

  Standing on end, a GBU-38 is about the same height as Throp, and twice as nasty. It’s not the heaviest bit of kit the F-16 carries: the thousand-pound JDAM makes double the noise and blast. But it was about as big a bang as I felt I could risk at 170 metres danger-close to our lads.

  ‘Visual with six enemy pax in the treeline firing RPGs and small arms,’ the F-16 pilot radioed. A pause. ‘I’m sixty seconds out.’

  ‘Sticky, give 3 Platoon the sixty-second call!’ I yelled. ‘And check they’ve not changed position.’

  It was bloody hectic now. I had less than a minute to do a visual check of the F-16’s attack run, check 3 Platoon hadn’t moved, and make the call to clear the airstrike in or abort it. I glanced to the north-east, and bang on cue there was the knife-sharp wedge of the F-16 arrowing out of the burning blue of the Afghan sky.

  ‘Call for clearance,’ intoned the pilot.

  I glanced at Sticky. He gave me a smile and a thumbs-up.

  ‘No change friendlies,’ I told the pilot. ‘You’re clear hot.’

  ‘In hot,’ the pilot confirmed.

  There was a tense silence in my handset, as the pilot powered in towards the release point.

  Then: ‘Stores.’

  Sticky radioed the warning to 3 Platoon: ‘Bombs away!’

  I saw the jet pull up over the release point, and then it was streaking past right in front of our noses. I didn’t see the bomb fall, but the flash of the impact was like an ammo dump blowing in a Second World War movie. An instant later the awesom
e roar of the explosion swept over us, followed by the air-rush of the shockwave.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ I yelled. ‘Get in!’ I turned to Sticky. ‘Get a sitrep from 3 Platoon.’

  The lads knew the bomb was going in, so they’d be on their belt buckles hard in cover. And the airstrike had looked to be bang on target. But the splinter distance — the safe range for friendly forces — of a GBU-38 is 275 metres, and that’s with the good guys in proper cover. I wanted to make totally sure the 3 Platoon lads were still alive.

  ‘Wicked Four One, BDA,’ I radioed the pilot. ‘Repeat: BDA.’

  I was asking the F-16 pilot for a Battle Damage Assessment (BDA). I didn’t really need one, for the contact had died down to nothing. But with his sniper optics he was sure to see more than any of us lot.

  ‘Ground troops are all A-OK,’ Sticky reported back to me. ‘The impact point was right on top of the enemy. Platoon commander was visual with three enemy with RPGs as the bomb hit ’em.’

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, BDA,’ the F-16 pilot cut in. ‘The only thing left is a smoking crater. Enemy position obliterated.’ He paused for a second to let it sink in. ‘Repeat: enemy obliterated. And sir, I gotta bug out, ’cause I’m all out of fuel.’

  Fair enough. Enemy obliterated. What more could I ask of him?

  Four

  RIPPED

  The F-16 got ripped by a pair of F-18s, which I’d have on station for two hours. It was 1445 by now, and the 2 MERCIAN lads were on the move again, pushing further into enemy terrain. But we now had a barrage of mortars smashing into the Green Zone.

  From the Vector’s open turret I could see the smoke plumes of those explosions. The mortars were impacting four hundred metres in front of us, and two hundred behind our forward line of troops. The barrage was creeping closer to our lads, and it wouldn’t take long for the dicker to walk the enemy mortars on to target.

  I split the F-18s. I got Devo Two Two over a two-mile-square grid where we reckoned the mortar team were firing from. I briefed the pilot to search with his FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) scanner for a hot mortar tube. If he found it he was to smash it.

  I got Devo Two One over the Green Zone to the front of our line of troops. All three platoons were in fierce contact now, sandwiched between the enemy to their front and a mortar barrage at their backs.

  The focus of enemy fire seemed to be coming from a patch of dense bush two hundred and fifty metres to the north-west of our lads. I gave Devo Two One the coordinates of a hundred-metre-square box to search. Within minutes the pilot came back to me.

  ‘Visual six pax two-two-five metres north-west of your lead platoon. Visual four pax with weapons. Visual with muzzle flashes all along the woodline.’

  ‘ Nearest friendlies 225 metres south-east of enemy,’ I told the pilot. ‘Describe enemy position.’

  I needed a better idea of the target, so I could work out how best to hit it. Our lead platoon were close to the splinter distance of some of the weapons that the F-18 was carrying.

  ‘Six pax have taken cover in a narrow ditch in the woodline,’ the pilot replied. ‘Visual with muzzle flashes from out of that ditch position.’

  ‘Right, I want you to drop a GBU-12 airburst right on top of ’em,’ I told the pilot. ‘Attack line coming in from the south-west to north-east. Confirm.’

  The pilot repeated the details back to me. Coming in on that run he’d be flying over the heads of our lads as he launched his strike. But the trajectory of his attack should throw the blast away from our forces, or at least that was the theory.

  A GBU-12 is an eight-hundred-pound smart bomb that can be set to ‘airburst’ mode, meaning it detonates one hundred metres above the target. It sends its explosive force downwards in a funnel of shrapnel that follows the bomb’s momentum. It was the only way to hit those enemy fighters in that ditch, and keep the blast away from our lads.

  I listened in as Devo Two One warned his wing of his attacking run, to deconflict the air, and then he gave me the sixty-seconds call. But as Sticky went to pass the warning to the platoon, there was the scream of an incoming mortar.

  Sticky and I dived into the open turrets, but we were too slow. An instant later there was a crunching impact, the round smashing into the dirt not sixty metres from our wagon. The wave of the explosion tore across us, and I felt the stinging pain of blast-driven dust and rock and shit smacking into me.

  But I was halfway through doing a live run with an F-18, and I was the JTAC who was calling the bomb: I didn’t have the time to worry about getting hit.

  ‘Time to fucking man it out!’ I yelled at Sticky.

  We let out a demented cackle, and thrust ourselves back out of the armoured turrets of the Vector. I swivelled and searched the skies to the south-west for a glimpse of a speeding F-18 Hornet. Almost immediately I spotted the gleaming dart of the aircraft on the far horizon. The pilot was right where I wanted him.

  Let’s get the bomb in.

  ‘Call for clearance,’ came the pilot’s voice.

  ‘No change friendlies. Clear hot!’

  ‘In hot.’ A beat. ‘Stores.’

  The GBU-12 is three metres long, and it ‘flies’ on a set of tail wings. It can be released from several kilometres away, gliding into target with a nine-metre margin of error. At a cost of some $20,000 it was far from being the most expensive munition in the F-18’s arsenal, but it was a peachy one.

  Released at height and distance it could take a good thirty seconds to reach target — plenty of time for the 2 MERCIAN lads to get their heads down. This time, there was no conventional ground explosion. As the GBU-12 detonated, the sky above the Green Zone erupted in a massive ball of raging fire.

  The blast tore downwards from the epicentre of the explosion. Fingers of hot shrapnel rained on to the enemy position, throwing up a plume of dirt and debris where they smashed into the earth. That enemy ditch position had to have been smashed, but still I needed a BDA.

  ‘BDA: there’s nothing left alive down there,’ came the pilot’s voice. ‘Correction: one male pax crawling away from the blast site.’ A beat. ‘Correction: he’s stopped moving. Unsure of how many killed, but there are tiny heat spots everywhere.’

  ‘Tiny heat spots’ equalled body parts. The six enemy fighters in that ditch had been shredded, along with anything else caught in the airburst’s downblast.

  Devo Two One had to break off and head for the refuelling tanker. I pulled Devo Two Two in over the lead platoon, and gave him the grid of the most forward troops. The pilot confirmed he was visual with our lads, and happy with their route of advance. He told me that he was scanning the terrain up ahead for any sign of the enemy.

  As the F-16 went about its work, Sticky held up an Army-issue Yorkie bar. He traced the distinctive red and yellow wording printed on the metallic blue wrapping.

  ‘Yorkie!’ he drawled, putting on a deep and manly voice as he did so. ‘It’s not for civvies!’

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had any scoff. I grabbed the proffered bar, tore off one corner with my teeth, and sucked the molten chocolate down in one greedy blast. Everything melted in the intense Afghan heat: food, shoes, your brains even. This was the only way to eat a Yorkie, plus it gave the body an instant burst of energy.

  There was a squelch of static in my TACSAT. ‘Widow Seven Nine, Devo Two Two.’ There was an urgency in the pilot’s voice. ‘Tell your lead platoon to go firm! Repeat: your lead platoon to go firm.’

  I flicked my eyes across to Sticky, knowing that he was monitoring the air net. He gave me a nod, and put the call through to the OC. Not a word had been spoken between us. That instinctive communication was all part of the joy of conducting the ground-to-air war.

  ‘Roger. Lead platoon going firm,’ I confirmed to the pilot.

  ‘I’m visual four males going into the treeline three hundred metres ahead of your lead troops. They’re taking up positions on the track along which your men are advancing. I now have six pax spaced thirty m
etres apart, visual two with AK-47s.’

  ‘Roger that. Wait out.’

  I asked Chris to confirm with the OC that we could attack. They weren’t firing at our lads, but they had been PID’d with weapons, and they were in ambush positions on our line of advance. The OC came back saying he was happy for the strike to go ahead.

  For a second I considered what weapon to use. The F-18 carries an M61 Vulcan cannon, so maybe a strafe would do it. But the enemy were well spread out in a 150-metre stretch of dense woodland. The F-18’s six-barrel 20mm cannon wasn’t quite the A-10 Warthog’s seven-barrel 30mm Gatling gun. Instead, I opted to go for bombs.

  ‘Devo Two Two, Widow Seven Nine. I want immediate attack on target using two GBU-38s, coming in on a north–south attack run.’

  ‘Affirmative. Two GBU-38s dropped simultaneously on target.’

  I cleared him in to attack, and he gave me the ‘in hot’ call, the last before ‘stores’ — bombs away. Before he was able to release, Chris spotted the plume of a mortar firing in the far distance. At last: we were visual with that bastard enemy mortar team.

  Chris gave an ‘all stations’ warning of the F-18 bombing run, so all ground call signs could get their heads down. He also warned the OC that he was visual with the mortar firing point. He reached for his map, and began trying to work out the grid from where the mortar was firing.

  I got the ‘stores’ call from the F-18 pilot at the same moment that the OC came up on the net, telling us to smash that mortar tube — for under the rules of engagement we had every right to do so. The F-18’s bombs were in the air, and there was nowt I could do but wait for the impact. So I dialled up Devo Two One, the F-18’s wing.

  ‘Devo Two One, Widow Seven Nine, sitrep: enemy mortar located three kilometres to the east of our position. Just fired, so tube will be hot.’

  ‘Roger. Fully refuelled and two minutes out of your ROZ. Just as soon as I’m in the overhead I’ll start my search…’

  The pilot’s last words were lost as a massive double blast roared across the valley: BOOOM-BOOOM! Two GBU-38s had ploughed into the earth one after the other, smashing apart either end of the woodline.