The souk was 700 metres east of the DC. On the TADS screen, I could see broken wooden frames hanging off its stalls and shredded curtains flapping in the wind. It had been heavily shot up over the summer, but never stopped being a hive of activity. There was money to be made in the opium business.
Old rice sacks were piled high outside several stalls – the favoured receptacle for opium poppy sap – and dozens of locals crowded around them under the watchful gaze of the marines in the DC. Busting the drugs industry wasn’t their job. We’d get to that later, once the Taliban had been defeated. Otherwise, we’d be banging up 80 per cent of the local population.
‘My line of sight now – that’s Wombat Wood.’ I was looking a kilometre north of the DC. ‘The Taliban use it regularly to shell the guys.’
A wombat was a Weapon Of Magnesium Battalion Anti Tank; the generic slang the army gave to recoilless rifles. They were around eight feet long and fired shells up to a diameter of 120 mm. Nasty.
‘Wombats aren’t the only sinister things lurking in that wood, Boss. They fire 107-millimetre Chinese rockets from there too.’
A 107-mm Chinese rocket had killed two signallers in a blockhouse that covered the stairwell to the roof of the Sangin DC in July. Corporal Peter Thorpe died alongside his comrade Jabron Hashmi – the first British Army Muslim killed fighting the Taliban.
‘Okay, let’s show you Macy House.’
A few months before, I’d found a building 200 metres to the south which the Taliban had occupied, giving them good arcs of fire onto the DC. They’d knocked a series of firing ports into its walls. The Apache crews had named it after me as a way of identifying it to each other. I searched for it in vain.
‘Forget it, it’s gone.’
Where Macy House once stood, there was now nothing. It had obviously been bombed to oblivion while we’d been away. I looked at the clock.
‘We’d better be moving on, Boss.’
We wanted to get in all four DCs, so we only had time for a whistle stop tour. Four minutes in Sangin was enough.
‘Okay. Billy, let’s move on to Kajaki.’
‘Copied, Boss.’
We broke out of the wheel, slipped east of the Green Zone and pointed our noses north-east again. Kajaki was thirty-eight kilometres further up the Green Zone. My monocle said we’d be there in ten minutes.
Two minutes into the flight, an urgent message was broadcast over the JTAC net for Widow TOC – the JTACs’ central hub in Camp Bastion’s JOC Ops Room.
‘Stand by.’ The Boss cut across my chat with Billy about the fate of Macy House.
‘Widow TOC, this is Widow Eight Four. We are north-east of Gereshk; we have come under sniper and mortar fire. Requesting immediate air support. Repeat, requesting immediate air support.’
Gereshk was only forty klicks south-west of us. The Boss stepped on the pressel by his left foot to fire up his radio mike.
‘Widow TOC, Widow TOC; this is Ugly Five One. We are two Apaches; we have just left Sangin on a familiarisation flight and we’ve got plenty of gas. We’re available for tasking if required.’
I pushed the cyclic forward and right, throwing the Apache into a tight bank.
‘Ugly Five One, Widow TOC. Copied. Stand by.’
Widow TOC needed a senior officer’s authority from the JHF to deploy us.
‘Wait Widow TOC, I am Zero Alpha of all Ugly callsigns. I am authorising if you want us to do it.’
‘Widow TOC, Roger. It’s yours.’
‘Eight minutes, Boss.’
‘Ugly Five One, affirm. Widow Eight Four, we’ll be with you in eight minutes; stand by.’
The familiarisation flight was out of the window.
We were tanking it down to Gereshk at maximum speed, 120 knots per hour; we were heavy. It would take forty minutes for the Apache pair on standby at Camp Bastion to launch and get to the marines. We’d be there in a quarter of the time. It was a no-brainer.
I needed to get as much juice out of Ugly Five One as I could; cyclic forward to push the nose down and pick up speed, topping up the collective to keep our height. Cyclic with collective, again and again – my eye constantly on the torque. It edged past 95 per cent.
The Boss got back on the net to talk to the marines directly.
‘Widow Eight Four, this is Ugly Five One. Send sitrep.’
‘Ugly Five One, Widow Eight Four; we are pinned down on the north-western edge of the Green Zone, at grid 41R PQ 5506 2603.’
The boss read back the grid.
‘They’re hitting us with mortars. Rounds are landing in and around us as I speak.’
‘Copied all. Do you have a grid for the mortar team?’
‘Negative. They’re firing from the Green Zone, approximately 200 to 300 metres east-south-east, but we’re struggling to find them at the moment.’
‘Roger. I’ll call in the overhead.’
Our brains crunched the JTAC’s information as we tried to build up a picture of what we could expect. We had to find that mortar team before they put a shell right on top of our guys, but Objective Number One was always to locate the friendlies or we simply couldn’t engage. The last thing we needed was a blue-on-blue, the military term for soldiers killed or wounded by friendly fire.
The Boss tapped the marines’ grid reference into the keyboard and the TADS swivelled in their direction.
‘Okay Mr M, I’m starting to see some thin puffs of smoke on the ridgeline, my line of sight. Confirm you can see them.’
The mortar rounds’ point of impact.
‘Negative, Boss. We’re still eight klicks off.’ I couldn’t see them with my naked eye. ‘I’ve got the smoke on my MPD though.’
‘Okay, keep an eye out for them; I’m going into the Green Zone to see if I can get a bead on the mortar team.’
We were 3,000 feet higher than the rapidly approaching Green Zone, with Billy and Carl 500 feet beneath us, to the left and slightly back. We were leading now because the Boss was back in command.
I pushed the weapons button under my right thumb between ‘M’ for missile and ‘R’ for rocket up to ‘G’ for gun and the cockpit juddered beneath my feet as the cannon followed my line of sight. I flicked up the guard and rested my forefinger lightly on the trigger. The Boss could fire far more accurately with his TADS image, but if I needed to take a snap shot, I was ready.
‘My gun, Boss.’
I thought about what lay ahead. My grip on the controls tightened, my heartbeat quickened; I just adored the sensation of flying into combat. I could taste metal. I did so before every fight, as far back as my dust-ups in the school playground. The taste of adrenalin; my body was physically, chemically and mentally preparing itself for battle.
Four kilometres off I shuffled my arse into a more comfortable position, checked my harness was tight and the extendable bullet-catching Kevlar shield by my right shoulder was completely forward.
Exhilaration coursed through