Fire Strike 7/9 Page 7

  By the time it was dark the ATO and SIB lads still hadn’t finished doing their stuff. On the original mission tasking we were supposed to have been back in FOB Price hours ago. Instead, we laagered up in the desert for a third night running, so we could finish dealing with the bodies come morning.

  With our mission officially over I had no more air controls, which was a massive relief. Sticky, Throp, Chris and I were laid by the side of the wagon, with the dead bodies not more than twenty metres from us. But I couldn’t let that unsettle me. I got my bracket down by the side of the Vector, and fell into a deep sleep.

  I jerked upright to the sounds of an almighty explosion echoing through the night. At first I thought I was dreaming, but then I noticed the white-hot blasts lighting up the skyline. It was 2300 hours, and all hell had broken loose some thousand metres to the east of us. There was the juddering crackle of gunfire, the thump of heavier weapons, and the thunderous roar of repeated explosions rocking the desert air. I shook the sleep out of my head and tried to focus on what was happening. At first I presumed we’d been ambushed, but there didn’t seem to be any of the fire hitting us.

  For an instant I picked out the rhythmic thwoop-thwoopthwooping of rotor blades, and the unmistakeable shape of an Apache gunship flashed in silhouette against the angry red of an explosion, as it banked around. What the hell was going on?

  I grabbed my TACSAT: ‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: we’re laagered up in the desert at Adin Zai. One click to the east of us there’s a massive contact. There’s an Ugly call sign in action and explosions and gunfire. What the hell’s happening?’

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC. No idea, I’m afraid. Wait out.’

  Whilst Widow TOC asked around, I put out a message requesting any ground call signs to respond. No one answered. Next I tried this.

  ‘This is Widow Seven Nine making an any-stations call. We’re on the ground visual with a massive contact, and this is our grid: 90236784. I repeat: this is an any-stations call, Widow Seven Nine.’

  There was a moment’s echoing silence, then: ‘Widow Seven Nine, this is Spooky Two Zero. Sir, we’re in the middle of an op, and you need to keep the traffic down.’

  Spooky was the call sign of a specialised US airframe, one reserved for covert operations requiring immense firepower. That aircraft alone had the firepower to take out our entire convoy, and yet there was a mission going down that no one had bothered to warn us about.

  ‘Spooky Two Zero, Widow Seven Nine, stop fucking about,’ I rasped. ‘We’re laagered up less than a click away from your op and we need to know what the fuck’s going on.’

  ‘Well, I have this message for you, sir, just in: “Bommer, what the fuck’re you doing out at this time of night?” Sir, that message is from Nick the Stick.’

  Now I knew what was happening.

  I’d befriended Nick the Stick back in FOB Price. He hung out down the American end of the base, and my main reason for going there was the grub. The US Army cookhouse would serve lobster, followed by ice-cream gateau, all washed down with chilled soft drinks. In the British mess tent you’d make do with bangers ’n’ mash and a plastic cup of warm water.

  Like most of the guys in the American base, Nick the Stick was a giant of a bloke. You could’ve fitted two of me into one of him, and still had room to spare. I guess his nickname — ‘the Stick’ — had to be a pisstake. All the US operators went by their first names only, and it didn’t take a genius to work out what units they were from. But as all their operations were strictly classified, I wasn’t about to go asking.

  I had one card to play to blag my way into their mess tent: Operation Silver. Nick the Stick had heard all about that mission, and how I’d taken out a cadre of top enemy commanders in the one hit. I’d been on my first combat mission in Helmand, as the JTAC embedded with 42 Commando. We’d been ordered to take Sangin town on foot. My airstrike on the enemy commander’s compound had earned me a certain kudos.

  Nick the Stick was a JTAC newly arrived in theatre, and he’d wanted to know all about it. I was more than happy to fill him in, as long as the chefs kept piling my plate with lobster. I left the US mess tent with my combats stuffed full of scram — cans of Coke, Mars bars and the like. I didn’t give a damn about the looks I got off the other American operators — you sad, scruffy British bastard.

  Nick the Stick and I had bonded over the lobster, and after that we’d become good mates. And now I knew what the contact was to the east of us. It was a classified US operation going in, and Nick was calling in the airstrikes. I got on my TACSAT and made the call.

  ‘Nick the Stick, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: we’re a click to the west of you laagered up in the open desert. We’re here retrieving the bodies of ten Afghan policemen murdered by the enemy. Now, what the fuck are you lot up to?’

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, this is Nick. We’re doin’ a lift op, to the west of Adin Zai. And buddy, we got to keep the traffic down. I got your position, and we’ll keep the fire away from your guys.’

  I snorted. ‘Cheers. And thanks for the early warning, mate.’

  I briefed the OC and Chris. The US forces were doing an op under cover of darkness to snatch a high-value target — that’s what Nick the Stick had meant by a ‘lift op’.

  Then I got another call from the aircraft above us. ‘Widow Seven Nine, Spooky Two Zero. It’s going to get very noisy on the ground there for a while now…’

  ‘Thanks for telling us,’ I cut in, sarcastically.

  ‘Roger that, sir. And sir, if you’re that close to the contact point you might want to have your men stand by to help our team extract, that’s if we need you.’

  The bloody cheek of it. First they’d launched a covert op right on top of us, and didn’t bother to warn us. And now they were asking for our help, in case it all went to rat shit.

  I told the OC what the pilot was suggesting. Butsy radioed the CO, who cleared us to assist. And so the entire company was placed on immediate notice to move, in case Nick the Stick and his buddies needed us to get them out of the shit.

  The pilot then relayed a request from the task force doing the snatch operation. They were stood off in the desert, and they wanted us to launch a feint into the Green Zone. They were asking us to draw enemy fire, so they could sneak in and out again.

  I briefed Butsy, and he passed it up to the CO. Having got clearance, Butsy now had to come up with an instant plan of action. From being exhausted and laagered up, it was flash-bang into launching a full-on combat assault to support the snatch operation.

  Butsy put together a strike force, consisting of himself and his HQ element, plus 3 Platoon and our FST. He estimated we’d be up against no more than twenty enemy, after the pounding they’d taken over the past two days from us lot. We set off into the Green Zone, a line of troops navigating on night-vision and by the light of the moon.

  We descended like a silent snake from the white of the moonlit desert into the thick sea of darkened vegetation. I felt my adrenaline pumping. I loved missions like this one. It was what a soldier thrilled for — taking the fight to the enemy on foot and in a nightdark battlefield.

  Overhead, we had a US warplane shadowing us, with its state-of-the-art scoping equipment keeping a watch for the enemy. We pushed a mile down the track that led into the heart of Adin Zai, when suddenly it all went pear-shaped. The bush all around us erupted in a wall of fire, as the enemy hit us with everything they’d got. Rounds went slamming into the undergrowth and the dirt track, and RPGs were churning overhead, trailing gouts of fire like giant spurts of lava.

  As the bullets snapped angrily past, I felt a kick to my backpack. A round had pinged off the ‘donkey dick’ aerial of my TACSAT, going snarling past my head and burying itself in the bush. When in man-portable mode — ie, not in the wagon — the TACSAT went in my pack with a thick metal aerial, about the size of a donkey’s dick, stuck out of the top. Hence the name. Luckily, it was made of thick, rubberised steel, and could take a few ro
unds.

  The US warplane reported up to one hundred enemy fighters massing all around us, and closing fast. The OC decided the feint was most definitely over, and it was time to get the hell out of there. He was a man for doing battle at the time and place of his choosing. The trouble was, how on earth were we going to get out arses out of this one?

  It was then that the pilot orbiting above us came up with a blinding suggestion. He proposed that we run hell for leather back the way we’d come, as he programmed his aircraft to hit the positions to either side of the track and to our rear with every weapon he carried. As we ran so he would shadow us, shepherding our progress with his awesome firepower.

  The OC gave the order for all stations to retreat at full speed sticking strictly to the track, and we turned as one and legged it. As we did so the heavens opened up, the night sky below the invisible aircraft erupting in a seething fountain of white and blue flame that tunnelled earthwards, as first the cannons and then the bigger guns started to rain down fire.

  An instant later the torrent of red-hot destruction tore into the vegetation to either side of us, which erupted in wild explosions. First came the small stuff, then the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of shells slamming into the earth to either side of us. Finally, the monster weapon opened up, lending its thumping, devastating firepower to the madness and the mayhem. From the slow, steady beat I guessed it had to be firing at the rate of a dozen or more projectiles a minute. As they smashed into the earth, a series of rhythmic flashes lit up the Green Zone, throwing monstrous shadows across our path. I felt as if I was running through a tunnel of churning, howling, raging fire, and into the depths of hell itself.

  As the awesome firepower chased us up the track, it was touch and go as to whether we’d keep ahead of Spooky’s pounding annihilation. One wrong move by the pilot and a lot of us were going to get whacked. I spurred my legs to move faster, and cursed myself for smoking so many cigarettes over the previous two days. I reached the high ground soaked in sweat and coughing my guts up, but still very much alive. The adrenaline was pumping in bucket-loads. I didn’t know which had been the more terrifying: the mad dash through the kill zone, or being under the Spooky call sign’s guns.

  With awe-inspiring skill the warplane’s crew had managed to open an escape corridor for us all the way back to the desert, without putting a shot wrong. Not one of the lads on that crazed mission had so much as a scratch on him. It was miraculous. It was like we were blessed. I knew in my heart it couldn’t last.

  There had been something of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom about that feint mission into the midnight heart of darkness. But there was also something Monty Python-esque about the crazed rush of the escape: ‘Run away! Run away! Run away!’

  At 0100 we were back in our desert laager, and I got a call from the Spooky call sign overhead.

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, Spooky Two Zero. Task force has extracted, mission accomplished. Thanks for having your boys go in for us like that.’

  ‘It was nothing, mate,’ I replied. ‘If you’re done ’n’ dusted, can we go back to sleep now?’

  I heard the pilot chuckle. ‘Roger that, sir. I’m gonna do a sweep around your position, just to make sure you guys are safe to get some shut-eye. Stand by.’

  I was tempted to ask him not to bother, and to let me get some kip, but I knew what these American pilots were like. You couldn’t fault their enthusiasm, or their skill. A few minutes later a call on the TACSAT jerked me out of a doze.

  ‘Sweep complete. There’s nothing moving in the desert. You get your heads down. And stay safe down there.’

  ‘Same to you lot,’ I mumbled.

  My head slumped back on to the sand, and I was out like a light.

  By 0700 the following morning the SIB and bomb-disposal boys were done. We went about the horrific task of zipping up the nine bloodied corpses into body bags, and loading them on board one of the Vikings. We received the order to mount up. It wasn’t a moment too soon to be getting the hell out of there.

  I got my head out the wagon’s turret, so I could see what was what. I never bothered wearing my body armour in the Vector, as it slowed me down too much. With the weight of the Osprey ceramic plates, I’d never be able to haul my fat arse out of the turret, or do my job properly.

  On the signal for the off, there was this massive explosion to the front of us, not more than five metres away. It blew me back inside the Vector. Everything was chaos and confusion, and I didn’t have the slightest idea how I was still alive.

  Through the ringing in my ears I could hear the distant sound of Chris screaming at Throp to reverse. There were voices everywhere yelling for us to dismount, but they sounded as if they were coming from the end of a long, echoing tunnel. A thick, choking smoke was everywhere. I presumed we’d gone over a mine and that the wagon was on fire. For fifteen seconds or more I was blinded in dust and a toxic burning that had me gagging for breath. Eventually I managed to haul myself back out of the turret, and as I did so I caught sight of what was on fire.

  The Vector in front of us was billowing smoke and flames. Guys were falling about half-obscured in the thick cloud of acrid black fumes, as they tried to evacuate through the rear door of the vehicle. One of them lunged for our wagon, but he didn’t make it, and collapsed on the dirt right in front of us.

  ‘The Vector in front’s been blown to fuck!’ I yelled. ‘It’s the wagon in front!’

  ‘Get the lads into our wagon!’ Chris yelled back. ‘Get them in here! Now!’

  Sticky and I vaulted down and fought our way through the smoke. I grabbed the nearest body and dragged him inside the wagon, then went back for another.

  There were six lads from Somme Company, a Territorial Army (TA) unit attached to 2 MERCIAN, in that Vector. By some miracle all were still alive. The worst was a lad with a smashed leg. We manhandled him into the rear of our Vector in double-quick time.

  As the smoke cleared it was obvious this was no mine strike. A jagged rent had been torn in the side of the Vector, where some kind of projectile had torn it open like a giant tin opener. Only a direct hit from a 107mm rocket could have done that.

  The wagons were on a ridge above the wadi, and the enemy must have targeted us from out of the Green Zone. Our Vector was directly in the line of fire of the next rocket. We got the last guy loaded and the rear door to the Vector slammed shut.

  ‘Throp, fucking step on it!’ I yelled. ‘Get us the fuck out of here!’

  The last words weren’t out of my mouth before Throp dropped the clutch and we shot forward. As he flogged the Vector and it bucked and smashed its way across the rough ground, another 107mm fired, smashing into the desert somewhere to the rear of us.

  Together with the Somme lads we were crammed into the back like sardines. We held on to the injured soldier to stop him from cannoning off the ceiling with all the bumps, and I got my one free hand on the TACSAT.

  ‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine,’ I yelled above the noise of the speeding vehicle. ‘Sitrep: one Vector blown up, one injured T3. Need immediate CAS.’

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC. Roger that. I’m sending you Hog Two One, fifteen minutes out.’

  CAS stands for Close Air Support — the nearest aircraft that is airborne and can come to a unit’s aid. I had a Hog call sign inbound, which meant an A-10 tank buster was on its way. I reckoned the injured lad was no more than a T3 — the least urgent casualty — and that he’d make it back to FOB Price fine in the Vector.

  I radioed the OC and gave him a heads-up. My main concern was the burning wagon, which was stuffed full of all sorts of sensitive comms kit, plus crates and crates of mortar rounds. I couldn’t believe how none of those mortars had blown up when the 107mm tore into the wagon.

  We rejoined the main body of the convoy and waited for the A-10 to pitch up. The lads from Somme Company were going apeshit in the back of the Vector. All they wanted to do was get back to FOB Price, so they could phone their mates and let them know they’d b
een ‘blown up in Afghanistan’. It was Friday night back in the UK and they reckoned we could make it back in time for nightclub chucking-out time. They were all painters and decorators and the like, and they wanted to get on to their mates to have a good crow. You had to hand it to them: that’s the spirit, lads.

  The injured soldier was on an adrenaline high. As the 107mm had hit, it had blown a mortar clean out of its crate. He’d watched the round exit via one of the Vector’s open hatches and come flying back down through the other, whereupon it had smashed into his thigh. And that was how he had sustained his injury. The mortar hadn’t exploded, of course, or else none of the Somme lads would be breathing. But whatever way you looked at it, the fact they were alive and in one piece was a bleeding miracle.

  With the A-10 inbound, Butsy decided he and some men had to return to the scene of the attack. They needed to rip out the Vector’s most sensitive equipment, in case the A-10 didn’t destroy it all, plus there were mortar rounds in there that we couldn’t allow to fall into enemy hands. They set off in two vehicles and loaded up the ammo from the burning Vector.

  Just as Butsy had finished what was about the craziest mission imaginable, they pulled away from the burning Vector and another 107mm slammed into the desert where they’d been sitting.

  The A-10 checked in to my ROZ and I did my easiest talk-on of the deployment so far. We were six hundred metres from the burning Vector, which was throwing a pillar of thick, oily black smoke high into the sky.

  ‘See that column of smoke,’ I told the pilot. ‘Vehicle to the base of that. Take it out. Your choice ordnance.’

  ‘Roger that,’ the pilot chuckled. ‘I was visual with that smoke forty nautical miles out. I’m gonna hit it with a Mark 82 five-hundred-pound laser-guided bomb.’