Fire Strike 7/9 Page 5

  Each threw up a boiling plume of debris, from out of which an angry cloud of dark smoke billowed skywards. As the explosions reached their zenith they merged into one giant wall of searing greyblack stretching all along the woodstrip.

  ‘Devo Two Two, BDA. Wait out.’

  I wanted a battle damage report from the pilot, but first I had to control the jet searching for the mortar.

  ‘Jackpot!’ Chris exclaimed, as he passed me back a scribbled note of the mortar’s grid.

  ‘Devo Two One, Widow Seven Nine, I have enemy mortar grid: 46278190. Repeat: 46278190. Readback.’

  The pilot repeated the grid.

  ‘Affirm,’ I confirmed. ‘I want you to find that base plate and smash it.’

  ‘Roger. Two minutes out from…’

  ‘Break. Break,’ his wing aircraft cut in, using the codeword to clear the frequency of all traffic. ‘BDA: four pax dead. Low fuel. Tanker.’

  The brevity of the pilot’s message said it all. He was sipping on air and breaking off for an urgent refuelling.

  Chris briefed the OC that he would lose air cover for several minutes, as we had one F-18 refuelling and the other searching for the mortar. There was another distant bang and a plume of smoke. It was dead on the grid that Chris had given for the mortar.

  To formulate a grid from a visual reference point is about the hardest thing in our game. Chris would’ve checked out the terrain as he could see it nearest the mortar, and chosen a couple of distinctive features — maybe an odd-shaped compound or distinctive hillock. He’d then have matched those with what he could see on the map, and worked out the grid from there. Chris was a bloody genius at it. The best I’d ever seen. I’d never known him get a single digit wrong. And he was bang on this time.

  ‘Devo Two Two, Widow Seven Nine,’ I radioed the F-16. He was still a minute out and I wanted to refine the plan of attack. ‘Bank up to 30,000 feet, and don’t come below. I want you to search around that mortar grid and tell me what you see.’

  ‘Roger. Climbing to 30,000. Zooming in my optics to grid as given now.’

  With one F-18 having left the airspace, I didn’t want the mortar crew to know I had another jet coming in. At 30,000 feet the F-18 would be totally silent and invisible. That mortar was the single greatest threat we faced right now: it was targeting us and, more importantly, the lads in the Green Zone.

  Ninety seconds later I got the call that I was waiting for. ‘Sitrep: at grid given I see three males standing around a glowing metal tube. And guess what — I’ve just seen ’em reloading it.’

  Chris radioed an all-stations warning that a mortar round was about to go up, so the lads could get into some good cover. There was a distant boom, and the pilot radioed me that he’d just watched the muzzle flash of its firing.

  ‘Confirm no civvies in the area,’ I asked the pilot.

  ‘Affirm. No other pax present.’

  The enemy were renowned for sighting their mortar tubes with women and children gathered around them, as cover. I had to double-check and brief the OC. Ultimately it was his call, but one that he’d delegate to me.

  ‘Devo Two Two, hit it as fast as you can any line of attack,’ I told the pilot. ‘Your choice of ordnance.’

  I gave him final clearance and he gave me ‘stores’. We were all eyes on the far horizon. There was a sudden flash, followed by a boom, and a couple of seconds later a mushroom plume of smoke rose into the distant sky. He’d hit it with a 500-pounder, I reckoned.

  ‘Devo Two Two; BDA.’

  ‘It’s a Delta Hotel,’ came back the pilot’s reply. Direct Hit. ‘There’s bits of warm pipe everywhere. And nothing left of the three pax around the tube.’

  Fucking result.

  It was 1630 by now, and we’d been in the game for eleven hours solid. Unbelievably, we’d yet to take any casualties. The platoons were just short of the three targets — Objectives Silver, Gold and Platinum — and the limit of their advance. They’d been bar-mining their way into compounds, blowing holes in the walls and clearing them as they went.

  The bar-mines were hammered on to the wall with spikes, and the flick of a switch set off a fifteen-second fuse. There’d be the cry of ‘MINE!’ Then the crump of an explosion. As soon as the hole was blown, the lads would follow through with grenades. We didn’t know which doors and entrances might be booby-trapped, so the only ‘safe’ way in was by blowing the walls.

  As each new patch of territory fell to us the radio chatter was going wild, with enemy commanders urging their men to stand and fight. It was far from over yet.

  The two jets were ripped by a singleton F-18, call sign City Desk Four One. I was getting shedloads of F-18s launched off an American carrier steaming in the Gulf. It was all good by me. The American pilots were doing sterling work of smashing what I told them to smash, whenever I told them to smash it. It was a top job.

  As I talked the new pilot around the battlefield, the lads of the 2 MERCIAN sniper team came over to have a natter. They’d been up on the high ground all day long, but hunkered down in their hides. They’d seen little or no action, for most of the contacts were happening at the far end of their effective, eight-hundred-metre, range. I was feeling a little sorry for them.

  The two lads looked to be no more than eighteen- or nineteenyears old, and they carried these long, L96 sniper rifles. We shared an Army ration milkshake, my other favourite scoff when in continuous action. I’d kept a couple of water bottles on the burning roof of the Vector, the contents of which were the perfect temperature for dissolving the powdered shake.

  From the turrets we had a good vantage point over the battlefield. As we supped our shakes and gazed out over the Green Zone, I ribbed the sniper lads about how they should have trained as JTACs. We spotted movement some eight hundred metres away, in territory where we’d just been smashing the enemy.

  I was about to alert the F-18, when one of the young lads took a butcher’s through his scope. The L96 is fitted with a Schmidt & Bender 12x magnification sight. He had two enemy figures in the crosshairs of his scope. Both were armed, and they were advancing towards our troops.

  I watched in fascination as this teenage lad flipped out the bipod of his weapon, and settled himself down to fire. He squeezed off the first shot, adjusted his aim, and squeezed off a second. We were just about to congratulate him — two shots: two kills — when all hell broke loose below us.

  Pushing up towards the main target — Objective Platinum — the lead platoon had stumbled into another hornets’ nest. They had machine-gun rounds and RPGs slamming into them from a treeline just to their front.

  Major Butt was on the air immediately, requesting a danger-close air mission to smash that enemy position. Their fighters were positioned around 100 metres ahead of our lads, and they were pushing men forward to surround and outflank us.

  I talked City Desk Four One on to the enemy in the treeline, and told him to look a hundred metres to his west for the lead platoon. When he was visual with our lads I told him I needed a danger-close strike to smash the enemy. I asked him what ordnance he’d recommend at a hundred metres’ distance from friendly troops.

  ‘A thousand-pound JDAM,’ came back the pilot’s calm reply.

  It wasn’t quite the answer I’d been expecting. A thousandpounder was twice the weight and destructive power of anything I’d dropped so far, yet this was the most danger-close air mission. I swallowed hard. It was the JTAC who bought the bomb, and I knew that I’d never be able to live with myself if I smashed my own lads.

  ‘A thousand-pounder?’ I queried. ‘Not owt a bit smaller?’

  ‘Sir, that’s a pinpoint-accurate munition,’ came the pilot’s reply. ‘As long as your boys have their heads down, they’ll be OK.’

  I flicked a glance at Sticky. He gave me a thumbs-up. There was something about the calm tone of the F-18 pilot that gave me real confidence in his abilities.

  ‘Roger, a thousand-pound JDAM,’ I confirmed. ‘Attack on north–south ru
n, to keep the blast away from friendlies.’

  The pilot told me he was tipping in, and called for clearance. I had him visual to the north of us, and I could tell he knew what he was doing. I could hear Chris screaming into the radio for all stations to get low. I gave the pilot the green light.

  ‘You’re clear hot. Ground commander’s initials are SB.’ ‘SB’ for Major Simon Butt.

  ‘In hot,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘Stores.’

  A moment later I heard the faint whistle of the incoming JDAM. Within seconds it grew into an ear-piercing scream. The noise was like an express train speeding down a tunnel with us at the very end of it. It drilled into my head. There was the flash of a wheelie bin-sized object streaking through the air in front of us, and then the thing hit.

  The blinding flash of the explosion burned away the lateafternoon shadows, leaving a fuzzy white blob on my retina. The sound and blast wave hit, rolling and thundering across the valley in a deafening tidal wave of noise, rocking the wagon backwards and forwards on its suspension.

  Sticky and I gazed in open-mouthed amazement at the impact point. The boiling cloud of dust and debris tore ever upwards and outwards, dwarfing the bush and the compounds that lay below it. Chunks of masonry and trees flew high into the air, each trailing its own dark and angry finger of smoke. From the centre of the explosion an ink-black pillar of burning barrelled into the air, pooling into a mushroom cloud high above the strike point. Unsurprisingly, the battlefield had fallen echoingly silent.

  I turned to Sticky to get a sitrep from the lead platoon. As I did so rounds started coughing out of the treeline, one hundred metres to the north of the JDAM’s impact point. I could barely believe that anyone was left alive in there — but they were, and they were still fighting.

  The OC was up on the net immediately: ‘Bommer, we need that target sorting! Get the air in again now!’

  ‘City Desk Four One, Widow Seven Nine,’ I yelled into the TACSAT. ‘I want immediate re-attack on the same target, but one hundred metres north. Put a five-hundred-pound airburst over that position.’

  ‘Roger that. Banking round.’ A beat. ‘Tipping in now.’

  The pilot brought the F-18 around in a spanking turn, streaks of cloud-like vapour trail clinging to the twin, v-shaped fins of its tail. Forty seconds later I cleared him in hot. He put the airburst exactly where I’d asked, and the northern end of the treeline was torn to shreds in the blast that rained down from the air.

  The pilot was low on fuel, and he got ripped by Devo Two One and Devo Two Two, the pair of F-18s that I’d had earlier. It was 1800 by now, and three platoons were on their objectives. They were a thousand metres away across the Green Zone, and in the gathering dusk I couldn’t see much with the naked eye.

  I got the pair of F-18s flying recces over the objectives, but no further enemy fighters were seen. By 1830 Objectives Silver, Gold and Platinum had been taken. Whether it was the air power or whatever had done it, the enemy’s will to fight seemed to have been broken.

  They’d bugged out leaving behind three huge, mud-walled compounds stuffed full of ammo, weapons and big bales of opium. There were also stacks of maps, notebooks and other useful Intel. The platoons went firm and set about destroying all the weaponry they could find.

  As darkness fell across the valley, the men of 2 MERCIAN began their withdrawal. The mission brief called for all friendly forces to be out of the Green Zone by nightfall, and laagered up in the comparative safety of the open desert.

  But as the men fell back through the silent territory they’d just been fighting across, the rear platoon got hit. All of a sudden I could see the fiery trails of RPGs and tracer rounds sparking red through the thickening Afghan night.

  I got the F-18s overhead the contact point. Almost immediately Devo Two One picked up two glowing, pipe-like objects — the heat signatures of RPG launchers that had just fired. I asked the pilot to hit them with a GBU-12 in non-airburst mode.

  As the eight-hundred-pound smart bomb smashed into the position, there was a burst of white-hot fire that lit up the entire night sky, fading to a darker orange at the edges. Walls and trees and rooftops were silhouetted in the heat of the explosion, which fired the valley a ghostly volcanic red.

  The OC’s voice came up on the net. ‘Cheers, Bommer. Thanks for that.’

  I asked for an immediate BDA, and the pilot reported that the heat spots had gone. Finally, all had fallen utterly silent across the night-dark battlefield.

  The platoons withdrew past the ridge line and pushed into the desert, and we prepared to leave our position on the high ground. As Throp gunned the Vector’s motor and turned the wagon away from the battlefield, I presumed I’d seen the last of Adin Zai. But in fact, this very stretch of terrain was to become our permanent battleground. We would be back. Today was just one day, and we would spend the next hundred days fighting here.

  And when we returned, the enemy would be waiting for us with a bloody vengeance.

  Five

  TAKE US TO THE BODIES

  Our convoy of vehicles was parked in the open desert, with a skeleton crew as security. We rejoined them, and laagered up in all-round defence. I checked with the platoon commanders, and not a single man had been injured. It was an incredible result, after thirteen hours of intense combat at close quarters.

  The lads gathered in the safe harbour created by the circle of armoured vehicles, and started throwing around an American football. We got a brew on using an empty 7.62mm ammo tin and some hexy solid-fuel blocks. You could get six good Jack flasks (Armyissue metal cups with screw-on lid) out of one ammo tin, so there was more than enough for the four of us in our FST.

  Like every proper north-east of England lad, I can drink tea until it comes out of my ears. I’d been dying for a good brew all day long. But I’d barely taken my first sip when a call came through on the TACSAT. I had an F-18 inbound, call sign Voodoo Five Two. No rest for the wicked, I told myself, as I briefed the pilot on what I wanted doing.

  I got him flying recces around the perimeter of our laager, and he reported the terrain as deserted. Then I tasked him to fly some recces over the battlefield. All he could see were a couple of tractors and trailers pottering about in the Green Zone. I asked him to take a close look. A few moments later the pilot was back on the air.

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, Voodoo Five Two. Those trailers are stacked high with bodies. I guess that’s the enemy haulin’ out their dead and injured.’

  Keeping one ear on the pilot’s commentary, I reached for the ratpack that Sticky was holding out to me. Over the past few weeks Sticky had taken it upon himself to be the FST’s honorary chef. He’d chucked four of the silver foil-clad heat-in-the-bag meals into the ammo tin, and boiled up some scoff.

  I ripped off the top and stuck my nose into the steaming bag. Ah — lovely! Meatballs and pasta. I grabbed my spoon, which I kept jammed in the top of my radio pack, and dug in. When I’d finished eating I cleaned the spoon by giving my brew a good stir, then jammed it back in my pack.

  I was fed and watered and dying for some kip, but I still had that F-18 on station. Keeping a listen on the pilot’s commentary, I pulled out my JTAC log, and did the next vital task. At the end of every battle the JTAC is supposed to submit a mission report (‘missrep’) on every live drop — a JTAC-controlled attack using an air asset.

  One of the main reasons for doing those missreps is in case of friendly fire or civilian casualties. As every JTAC knows only too well, if we dropped a bomb or did a strafe and killed some of our own men, we would be held legally responsible. Likewise if we killed some Afghan civilians who had somehow wandered on to the battlefield.

  Since leaving FOB Price at the start of the operation I’d done 115 air controls, so there were a good few missreps to write up. I scribbled away, my head torch casting a faint halo over my notebook — black pen for non-use of munitions; red for live-fire missions.

  I ran through the missrep headings that I’d learned back in JTAC
school: bearing; distance; target location (lat & long); target elevation; target description; attack heading; friendly forces; hazards; weather (if significant)… I tried to stifle a yawn.

  Major Butt came over for a chat, which was a good excuse to break off what I was doing. He was a gruff, tough kind of commander, and not the sort of guy who gave praise lightly. The word was that the OC had been a professional rugby player in his youth, and he certainly had the size and the physique for it. I reckoned the guy could give Throp a good run for his money.

  ‘Bloody cracking op,’ remarked Butsy. He seemed in an unusually talkative mood. ‘Couldn’t have gone better. Everything went as planned. How about from your end?’

  ‘Aye. Top op, sir,’ I confirmed.

  ‘It all went without a hitch, sir,’ Chris concurred. ‘From the FST’s perspective, not a single problem with the guns or the air.’

  Chris was actually the second most senior rank in the company after the OC. The mission plan allowed for him to take over command, if the major got injured or otherwise taken out of action.

  ‘Still, let’s not underestimate these guys,’ Butsy remarked. ‘Look how swiftly they reacted to us being on the ground. As we were massing for the op those black-clad figures were forcing women and children out of the village. They pushed their fighters forward, and got the civvies out. And you saw the sophistication of their dicking procedures? They had guys on the high ground flashing with mirrors and torches all around us.’

  I took a slurp of tea. ‘Aye.’

  ‘There was one moment we saw them looking through their binos,’ the OC continued. ‘I had this instinctive sense of let’s not move forwards, and ordered the lads to stop. In that instant three RPGs flashed in front of us. If we hadn’t stopped the four of us would’ve been whacked. There was this voice in my head that told me to stop, and the RPGs flashed in front of our bloody noses. I reckon we make our own luck, but that was the first time I realised they were targeting the HQ element specifically.’