Apache (25 page)

Billy sent an encrypted burst transmission. ‘Check data, Ed.’

With the push of a button Jugroom’s coordinates joined the tactical situational display on my MPD’s black map – the fort’s four corners were outlined alongside the firebase overlooking it on the western side of the river, six klicks east of our artillery’s gun line in the desert.

‘Good Data.’

The TADS was cool now so I readied it for the mission. The focus had jammed close up on me, making it utterly useless. The FLIR was shagged but at least the day TV camera was working. It was like opening a bag of tools to find you had a pair of pliers but no adjustable spanner. I could still do my job but it was going to be that much harder.

I broke the news to the rest of the flight, which was greeted by more groans from Carl. Billy would have to sort out all the thermal imagery we needed. This was getting complicated, even for seasoned multi-taskers.

We were cruising at 138 mph at an altitude of 5,000 feet, heading on the most direct line south over the GAFA, with Billy and Geordie about half a mile back to our left. It was a sixty-two-mile flight directly into the low and blinding winter sun. Even my visor couldn’t save me from having to squint.

Fifteen minutes into the flight, the casevac Chinook shot right
under us on the way back to Bastion. It was a mighty quick turn around and they were bombing it, flying low and straight – route one. It meant the casualties were in a bad way. We’d heard over the net that they’d then be loaded up to the gunnels with ammunition for the 105-mm guns which needed an emergency replen.

At fifteen miles to go, I checked in with the JTAC. ‘Widow Seven One, this is Ugly Five One, how do you read?’

‘Widow Seven One, Lima Charlie.’

‘Ugly Five One are two Apaches, Ugly Five One and Ugly Five Zero. We have 600 rounds of thirty Mike Mike, forty-eight rockets and eight Hellfire missiles. We have the usual amount of playtime.’

‘Widow Seven One copies your last. You’ll need to route west around the gun line as they’re firing onto the target.’

‘Is there any way we stop the guns and route direct?’ A big loop into the desert to go behind the guns would lose us a few minutes and we’d miss the RIP time.

The reply was firm and impatient. ‘NEGATIVE. We have a situation here. Wait out.’

The JTAC was obviously having a bad day; we didn’t want to compound it. We didn’t subscribe to the ‘large sky, small round theory’ and didn’t fancy testing our armour plating with a 105-calibre shell. We would comply. Then everything changed.

‘Ugly Five One, this is Widow Seven One. No longer five casualties. Now four casualties and one MIA.’

I felt the rush of adrenalin and the all too familiar taste of metal flooded into my mouth. It was preparing me for fear.

‘All other troops have withdrawn, but the MIA is still on the objective. Repeat, the MIA is STILL on the objective.’

My mind flashed back to Sangin in June – our search across the fields for the two SBS lads. Looking down onto the desert floor I
pictured what I had seen that day and remembered what the Taliban had done to them. Acid leaked into the hollow space in my lower abdomen. I could have put it down to missing breakfast, but I knew myself too well. Christ, not again.

Carl was on the ball immediately. He relayed the news to Billy and Geordie and shoved his cyclic forward. The aircraft’s nose dipped and the rotors growled as we accelerated to full speed.

‘Fucking hell,’ Billy said. ‘What the hell is going on down there?’

I tried to think it through. How the hell had they lost someone at the fort, and then all withdrawn without him? The Taliban were clearly still holding the place. Now they might have one of our guys, too.

There was a silence as the four of us shared the same thought. The memory of Sangin wasn’t the only thing disturbing me. There was also the fresh intelligence about the bastards’ plan for a TV skinning.

Geordie broke it. ‘Check Data.’

A text from Billy was waiting for us. It read
MIA …
NOT ON
OUR WATCH
.

I radioed in our reply. ‘Good Data. Affirm.’

Widow Seven One checked back in. ‘Ugly Five One, be aware Ugly Five Two Flight are chicken. They’ve only got enough fuel left for a direct flight back to base. They’re going off station now. We need you on station immediately to help locate the MIA. Send ETA.’

The bright green number in my monocle dropped from 11 to 10.

‘Ugly will be with you in ten minutes.’

‘We had to bug out without being able to look for him …’ Nick’s voice sounded tired and despondent. ‘We’re both completely out of gas and low on ammo too. We’ve been fighting solidly for an hour and a half. Stand by …’

Nick checked out with the JTAC before continuing.

‘We were held over the desert to the south-west for the initial bombardment then cleared in to look for leakers as Zulu Company prepared to cross the river. We saw a few Taliban, dispatched them with cannon. The place was devastated, apart from the north-east watchtower and main building. Five Three took out the watchtower and we both destroyed the building, all with Hellfire. We continued to observe but nothing moved. The place looked like Monte Casino.

‘It all started to go wrong just before H-hour. Zulu Company weren’t ready to move. The ground assault was put back so we went back to rearm and refuel. When we returned they still weren’t ready. They didn’t end up going in until just before 0700. The lost time must have given the Taliban a chance to reinfiltrate. We don’t know how they got back in.’

The marines’ twelve-strong column of Viking tracked armoured vehicles had crossed the river at an especially shallow point but dawn was already breaking. Their vehicles stopped in a line adjacent to the point one of the 2,000-lb bombs had blown a gaping hole in the fort’s southern outer wall.

The marines had debussed into the poppy field and pepper potted forward towards the wall. As soon as they got there, five of them were hit by a volley of machine-gun fire. A hail of small arms and RPG fire cascaded down the canal and from the village to the west. It was mayhem.

‘We covered them as much as we could with Hellfire and cannon, but it wasn’t enough. With five serious casualties they were in a whole world of pain, and had no chance of continuing the attack. It was now light and the Taliban had already begun to encircle them. The order was given to withdraw. We put down everything we could to protect them on the way out. I used all my cannon rounds …

‘The first we knew of the MIA was a few minutes ago, after we pulled off target. He was one of the casualties. We’ve no idea where he is or how it happened.’

‘That’s all copied. Thanks, Nick.’

‘Ford – that’s the MIA’s name. Lance Corporal Mathew Ford. Good luck guys. I’m sorry.’

He had nothing to apologise for. Getting the marines out of that hornets’ nest without any more casualties was a miracle in itself. Tony and FOG would have been flying harder than ever to keep up with the thrust of Nick and Charlotte’s offensive.

Colonel Magowan now faced every commander’s worst nightmare. There was no point in the marines going back in without knowing where Lance Corporal Ford was. With the weight of fire from the fort and the surrounding villages, it would have been suicide. The marines were still firing from the ridge in a desperate attempt to suppress the enemy. It was all they could do for Ford until they knew where he was.

We rounded the gun line as all three 105s sparked up together. A series of concentric pressure rings surged out of each barrel across the desert floor, then disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke. Inside our air-conditioned chariot, I didn’t hear a whisper.

Carl threw the aircraft into a hard left turn, and then righted her again a second later. The Power Meter Indicator flashed up in my monocle as we pulled G. The torque was up so high we were within 10 per cent of blowing up the engines. Carl kept milking them for everything he could get. We were going balls out now. If the Taliban hadn’t got Ford, every second counted. At times like this, Carl was the man to fly with.

‘Eight klicks to run. On target in two and a half minutes.’

‘Thanks Carl. Keep south and east of the fort. The guns are firing onto the village west of it.’

Plumes of dark smoke were now clearly visible on the horizon directly in front of us. It was time to go to work. I pressed TADS on the ‘Sight Select’ switch on my right ORT handgrip, and the camera inside the nose turret jumped into life. I hit the ‘Slave’ button; the Apache knew where Jugroom was. As quick as a flash, a black and
white image filled the MPD: smoke spewing from the fort. The river ran north–south in the distance. A hodgepodge of bushes, trees, walls and buildings was shrouded in a billowing cloud of dust. Every few seconds, a shell or heavy-calibre tracer round exploded with a tiny flash of light and a fresh puff of smoke.

The Taliban would try to get Ford into a building and obscure him from our optics as soon as they could. But searching for something outside, in a Green Zone battle, was already a nightmare from this distance.

‘Ugly Five One is ready for a talk on. Where exactly was the MIA last seen?’

The JTAC was quick. ‘There is a major bend in the river, with a tributary to the east and a canal running north off it …’

I zoomed in closer.

‘Copied. Confirm it’s the one running into the smoke?’

‘Affirm. There’s a track on the eastern side of the canal running north. It is then bordered by a canal on the west and a wall on the east. That wall is the beginning of the fort. Copied?’

‘Copied. Visual with the wall.’ The adobe and stone battlement glowed in the low sun.

‘The furthest our friendly callsigns got was about a hundred metres along that track. Stand by for a grid.’

Grid 41 R PQ 1142 3752 Altitude 2257 feet. I punched the info into the system as he gave it to me then slaved the TV camera to it. The screen showed the fort’s south-west corner, next to the towpath.

I looked for a unique feature to confirm I had the correct starting point for the search; I still needed to be 100 per cent sure. ‘Ugly Five One is visual with a wall at the grid. About fifty metres east, away from the canal, is a bomb crater where it has been demolished.
Confirm I am looking at the correct wall?’

‘Affirm. That was their limit of exploitation. We believe they were in the vicinity of that crater when they got contacted.’

‘Copied. We’re searching now.’

Carl relayed to Geordie. We were closing fast now, so I zoomed out as wide as I could on the TADS to get a better overall picture. We were almost at the edge of the desert. The marines’ firebase sat on top of a berm, beyond which the ground plummeted to the river. Dozens of commandos were in position, in WMIKs, Vikings or on their belt buckles, all of them desperate to do their bit to get their mate back. Light Dragoons’ Scimitars were lined up alongside them.

As we passed over their heads, Carl pulled back hard on the cyclic, virtually standing the aircraft on its tail and catapulting me hard into my straps. He needed to go from 161 mph to nothing on a sixpence; if he didn’t we’d overshoot the fort by a mile in a matter of seconds. He banked gently to the left as Billy and Geordie banked right and we began a lazy three-quarter wheel circuit. A white object flew a few hundred feet over the fort and across my TADS screen. We weren’t the only people watching.

‘Keep our height up Carl; there’s a UAV flying around low-level, buddy.’

‘I see it. Don’t worry; you won’t get me low-level over that place.’

Billy and I broke up the ground we needed to search.

‘Let’s start at the last known sighting. Mate, can you take everywhere north of the wall? Carl and I will take the southern side in case he’s crawled down to the river.’

‘Affirm,’ Billy said. ‘We’re on it.’

The radios were going ape-shit now. Even though it had only just been announced, Ford had been officially MIA for thirty minutes
and word had spread. Every man and his dog were asking what was going on. Widow Eight Three, a second JTAC working with the gunners, was asking for sitreps to better his targeting. Then there was Nick’s voice calling urgently for more fuel and ammunition on the FM.

I could make out at least three different levels of command on the mission net, including Zulu Company’s OC, Colonel Magowan, and the brigade HQ in Lashkar Gah. It was a given that the CO of 45 Commando would be listening in, and Trigger, who should now be back at Bastion.

A Predator UAV and a Nimrod MR2 circled somewhere way above us. Their downlinks were being pumped into every HQ, fuelling the frenzy. Every rubberneck within reach would be crowded around the feed screens. With an MIA, everyone wants in. Over a hundred minutes had passed since the initial contact; they’d be hanging on every word.

Yup, the mission now bore all the hallmarks of a classic cluster-fuck. The cascade of voices in my ears made it almost impossible to concentrate. They all had a job to do, but I wished they’d all shut up.

I focused the TADS on the corner wall. The image gleamed in the bright sunshine. I moved the camera slowly down the towpath south; in the direction which Mathew Ford would have aimed to withdraw. Carl saw where my TADS was headed in his monocle and tracked east towards the crater.

Twenty seconds later: ‘Ed, I’ve got an unusual shape. It’s about forty metres along the wall, on the southern side.’

‘Okay, stand by.’

I shifted the TADS onto Carl’s line of sight. A large, S-shaped blob lay sprawled on a raised bank about ten metres shy of the
crater, two feet away from the wall – exactly where the JTAC said the marines had been contacted.

It looked like a body, lying on its side. I felt a surge of excitement – then got a grip on myself. This wasn’t the time or the place for an outburst of wishful thinking.

Carl continued the wheel turn, bringing us perpendicular to the blob. I swept the surrounding area. There were no more bodies; this one was on its own.

I flicked the TADS’s Field of View button on the left ORT grip with my thumb and magnified the picture nearly five times. It filled a third of the screen. It was definitely a human body. But was it one of theirs, or one of ours? Let it be him.
Please let it be him
…

‘Good spot, Carl. We have a body. Drop us down to 2,000 feet, mate.’

‘That puts us in RPG range of the fort, Ed …’

‘We can take it. Just twenty seconds at 2,000; that’s all I need.’

‘You’ll have to make it fifteen. Then I’m going to have break right because of the artillery.’

We dropped and I studied the body throughout Carl’s 180-degree turn to the north-west. It was lying on its left side, thighs up at ninety degrees to the torso, feet slightly apart, arms outstretched. It was a natural position to lie in, not contorted, and that was a good sign. The chest looked bulky, another good sign … Osprey body armour and an SA80 rifle? Looked like it. I waited for a better view as we turned.
Shit
– the camera couldn’t pick it up in the shadow. It was only 8.44am and the sun was still low.

‘Five seconds left, Ed.’

Now square-on to the body, I flicked the TADS into the largest zoom. Final confirmation: trousers and jacket were a similar shade to the ground, and patterned exactly like mine – British DPM.

‘Breaking off, Ed. Sorry. We’ve got to turn out of the guns.’

‘No problem, Carl. It’s him. We’ve got the MIA.’

We’d found our man. But was he still alive? The moment I announced we’d found him the whole world would want to know.

We came round again, higher. I couldn’t detect any dark patches on his clothing; so, no heavy blood loss – as far as we could see. His helmet was on, fastened tight and without deformation. His face was intact, eyes closed and mouth just slightly open. I felt a rush of relief. He looked peaceful; as if he was sleeping. No obvious signs of wounding. Had he collapsed through exhaustion? The marines carried an awesome amount of kit into battle these days.

‘Let Billy and Geordie know, buddy. Ask Billy to use his FLIR for a heat source.’

That would give us a good indication of whether our guy was still alive. It was just five degrees celsius outside, cold enough to chill a dead body in half an hour.

‘Will do.’

At least the Taliban hadn’t got him. Establishing that was our number one priority. The entire brigade’s actions for the next week depended on it. If he was alive, he was unconscious. But why? If he’d been bounced off the wall he could be concussed for ages. I didn’t want him to be unconscious. I wanted him to give us a little wave to tell us that he was pretending to be dead so the Taliban didn’t come for him.

A giant fountain of soil and dirt erupted on the other side of the canal, 100 metres away from the man we now knew to be Mathew Ford. He was Danger Close to the gunners’ nearest shells …

Being on the raised bank wasn’t so good. It put him in clear line of sight of the enemy in the western village. It was surely only a
matter of time before they saw him, artillery barrage or not.

He couldn’t be bluffing the Taliban, could he? Surely he would have
done that from the relative safety of the ditch. He must have been
concussed
…

‘As soon as you can, Carl, I need both of our eyes back on Mathew, in case any of those scumbags make a run for him. I’ll tell the chain of command.’

Carl threw the Apache over his right shoulder and rolled her out 180 degrees, giving us both eyes on again. I gave Widow Seven One the news, and heard it echo repeatedly down all the commands. They were desperate to plan their next move.

‘Ugly Five One this is Widow Seven One. Is he alive?’

I’d already told him we didn’t know, and repeated it.

‘Ugly Five One, please confirm if he’s dead or alive.’

Billy had looked through his FLIR. ‘He’s got a heat source mate. A strong one. His extremities are still hot too. His hands are almost the same temperature as the rest of his body.’

It was the strongest sign of life we could get without actually seeing him move.

‘Ugly Five One can confirm he is warm but has not moved. There are no obvious signs of death; assumption is, he’s alive.’

An immediate response from a new callsign: ‘Ugly Five One, this is Wizard.’

Wizard? It was the Nimrod MR2, 20,000 feet above us. They only ever relayed messages from way up the food chain. That morning, it was the brigadier.

‘Ugly Five One, Sunray says do not let anyone get anywhere near the MIA. Ground troops will re-cross the river and recover Lance Corporal Ford ASAP.’

The brigadier had given the order. The rescue was on.

The big question now was would the marines get to him before the Taliban?

I kept my eyes glued to Mathew whilst Carl described the ground to me. Somehow the western village was still filling up with enemy. It was still almost entirely intact; the night’s bombardment hadn’t touched it. Though the artillery shells had left scorch marks on the walls, they hadn’t brought the buildings down. We’d spotted tracer and muzzle flashes from most of the huts, as the Taliban engaged the marines’ firebase on the berm. Whenever we got too close, they gave us a burst too – and a couple of RPGs for good measure.

The river still only had one crossing point. There was only one way the marines would get to Mathew, and that was right past the village. There was no two ways about it – they’d get another horrible smacking, if they got through at all.

Billy was the first to frame the thought. ‘Ed, we’ve got to take on that village. The marines are screwed unless someone flattens it before they get there.’

‘Not to mention what the wankers in there could do to Ford,’ Geordie chimed in.

I told the JTAC and asked for permission to engage.

He didn’t fuck about. ‘Ugly Five One this is Widow Seven One. You’re cleared hot onto the village. Destroy the position in preparation for the rescue.’

‘Copied. The buildings have multiple rooms and look pretty strong. Hellfire may not be best suited. Request fast air to assist ASAP.’

‘I have called for close air support. Do what you can in the meantime. But do not, I repeat, do NOT let anyone get near the MIA.’

We divided up the workload between the two Apaches. We needed to keep one aircraft pointing at the fort at all times so the
Taliban knew we’d shoot them if they went for Ford. Carl and I watched Mathew from a half-moon-shaped orbit in the east while Billy let rip on the village. Then we swapped roles. As I slaved my crosshairs up and down the fort wall, Geordie and Billy began their first run from the south-east at 9.03am.