We were having a break from kicking tanky arse and were concentrating instead on the fine art of Forward Air Controlling-FACing, as it was politely known in the trade. The Pathfinders were FACs-Forward Air Controllers. Dom and I were Airborne FACs or ABFACs. We did exactly what they did, but from the comfort of our Gazelles. The Pathfinders thought we were a couple of soft pussies, but I’d done the stripped-down Land Rover routine before my accident and knew where I’d rather be.
The radio sparked into life. ‘Any callsign, any callsign, this is Starburst Two Four. How do you read?’ The accent was Canadian. The ‘how’ came out sounding like ‘hoe’.
The Pathfinders’ game of Belgrade-or-bust ground to a halt before they could inflict further damage on any other rogue states.
‘Okay, who’s up first?’ one of them yelled in our direction.
I offered it to them. In a six-month period, a FAC needed to control a certain number of jets and hit the target to remain qualified. In the past two months alone, I’d notched up more than twenty ‘controls’-easily enough to remain in business. It was only polite to let them have a go.
Dom and I listened as they contacted Starburst Two Four and brought it in for a practice bombing run. Aiming for the only man-made edifice on a plain the size of Kent was hardly Krypton Factor material. The second Pathfinder directed a further T-33 at a tank hulk approximately 200 hundred metres from the building.
Dom started to snigger.
One of the Pathfinders, a little lad with a Freddie Mercury moustache, asked us what was so fucking amusing.
‘Nothing, mate,’ Dom said. ‘Really. Excellent work. Bravo.’ He gave him a slow handclap.
Freddie dropped over the side of the vehicle and looked like he wanted to do to Dom and me what he and his mates had talked about doing to Slobodan Milosevic. I jumped to my feet. Dom, the chicken, retreated behind me.
‘Looks like you guys need to get some more “controls” under your belt,’ I said, trying to sound helpful.
Well done, Macy; that came out beautifully.
‘Funny guy,’ Freddie said. ‘Dodge, put this arsehole out of his misery will you?’
His mate picked up the handset. ‘Your target,’ he said to the inbound jet, ‘is a helicopter…’
‘He’d have to be half blind to miss my little green sports car on the top of this hill,’ I said.
The T-33 was built under licence by the Canadians and renamed the CT-133 Silver Star but the name never stuck. It looked like something from Thunderbirds as it flew in towards us. The big, cigar-shaped body and huge fuel tanks perched on the tips of two thin wings lined up on the hill. We heard a beep over the radio as it roared overhead-the sound that indicated he’d pickled off a simulated bomb.
The Pathfinder grinned as he spoke to the T-33 pilot. ‘Roger. That’s a Delta Hotel. The chopper is a goner. I’ll be sure to tell its proud owner.’
‘Delta Hotel’ meant direct hit.
They all rolled around laughing and high-fiving.
‘Playtime’s over,’ I said. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes to hide. Then I’m coming for you.’
Silence returned to the prairie.
‘Fuck off,’ Freddie said. ‘You…?’
‘I bet you tossers a night out in Medicine Hat that I can hit you and you won’t even know where I am,’ I told him. ‘If you can find me and send an accurate grid reference to me before I bomb you, you win. Otherwise you buy the beers.’
‘Game on, crap-hat.’ This was intended as the ultimate insult; they knew I was an ex-Para.
They mounted up and prepared to set off. The next jet was due in twenty minutes. I put my hands over my eyes and started to count, hide-and-seek style: ‘One, two, three…’
‘Hey,’ one of them shouted, ‘we’re not ready yet!’
‘…seven, eight, nine…’
They roared off in a cloud of dust.
As promised, I gave them a twenty-minute start. Then I took off and headed south. It wasn’t long before I spotted their dust trail. I followed them with my optics from a decent stand-off range of about eight kilometres, until I saw them stop on the edge of a depression. It was a good position, but I knew they would move the minute I sent their coordinates to the T-33; we were sharing the same frequency. As soon as I opened my mouth they’d be off like rats up an aqueduct, and it’d turn into a rolling goat-fuck trying to hit the bastards on the move.
It was time to get sneaky.
FACing is a finer art than most people think. A low level jet couldn’t find its own targets. When you were a few hundred feet over enemy territory approaching Mach 1, it was nearly impossible to tell the location of the enemy and, even more importantly, of your own forces. That’s when you needed a FAC, or, as they were sometimes also referred to in-theatre, a ‘Jaytac’-a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (the same thing but theatre specific). FACs and JTACs did the same thing.
As fast jet pilots generally didn’t have any time or inclination to loiter over hostile territory in the low level environment, the FAC’s job was to identify the target, ‘buy’ the bomb and deliver it on-target as quickly as possible.
We popped up to their south and held the Gazelle in a hover so the Pathfinders could see us. Once I was sure they had us registered I dropped behind cover and got Dom to pop up every few minutes in a different position, always to the south of them to draw their eyes away from my intended OP. Our little game of cat and mouse was on…
‘If they guess our next position, you’re going halfers on the night out.’
The colour drained from Dom’s face. The Pathfinders were known for putting it away.
A few minutes later, two fresh jets turned up and checked onto the FAC frequency.
‘Any callsign, this is Starburst Two One and Two Two. How do you read?’
I was quick to get back to him. ‘Starburst Two One, this is Spindle Eight Zero. If you work with me on this frequency and get Two Two to go onto the spare frequency, another callsign will control him later.’
‘Starburst Two One, copied.’
‘Starburst Two Two, copied and changing freq.’
I called Starburst Two One and he confirmed that they were Lockheed T-33 Shooting Stars too, jets older than my father, but good enough for my purposes. I told him that his target was an SF Land Rover, but that I was struggling to find it.
I told Dom to get behind cover then move round the range to the north-west as fast as he could so the Pathfinders wouldn’t know where we were.
They would be looking for us in the south and after that call they’d assume I couldn’t see them and hopefully sit still.
I switched to the spare frequency so the Pathfinders couldn’t hear us and contacted Starburst Two Two.
Freddie fucking Mercury would be listening out on the other frequency for me to send his coordinates to Starburst Two One, not having a clue I was actually working both jets.
‘Starburst Two Two, this is Spindle Eight Zero.’ I gave him Freddie’s coordinates first. North five-zero, three-five, zero-five, decimal six-six. West one-one-zero, four-eight, four-five, decimal niner-zero.’ Then his height: ‘Seven-six-zero metres.’
I told him the target was a Special Forces Land Rover.
I’d get the T-33 to attack from over the ridge behind them. If I did it right, they wouldn’t even see it coming.
I continued into the microphone: ‘Mandatory attack heading, two-one-zero degrees magnetic.