Apache (30 page)

Then I realised the supporting fire into the treeline to our left had stopped. The noise had shifted behind us.

‘There’s AK fire the other side of the wall …’ Fraser-Perry strained to see whatever was going on in there. ‘Sounds real close …’

A few seconds later, an Apache’s 30-mm opened up again 100 metres away, high and to our north. Billy and Geordie. They were obviously in serious trouble; Charlotte must have switched her fire to support them. It left us without any cover, but there was no point in sitting around thinking about it.

I used the momentary pause to change my grip; my arms weighed a ton and my hands were shaking. I rammed one under Mathew’s body armour and out the other side by his collar, then grabbed my own wrist to form a tight noose.

Despair was starting to flood through me. For the first time I thought we might not be able to do it. I didn’t know where I was going to summon the energy for the last few metres.

The Apache’s rotor blades battered the air close by. I needed some Para aggression to get me through this. ‘
Right
,’ I roared. ‘
Come on!
’

At that moment, plumes of soil and sand erupted like a series of mini volcanoes about a dozen metres to the left of us. I stared at them, momentarily transfixed, unable to work out what the hell was going on.

Then I caught sight of at least six bright orange flashes 150 metres away, perfect star shapes spread out along the treeline. Muzzle flashes. Automatic fire.

The earth continued to erupt only two or three metres away now and the air crackled as bullets whipped above our heads. A huge weight pulled on my right side. Mathew’s whole body mass pressed down on my pistol holster, dragging me onto the ground, and then my heel was trapped under his torso and I collapsed back on top of him. Rigg had let go of him entirely. As my head turned, I saw him go down, face first.

I was now pinned to the dirt by Mathew, momentarily powerless to do anything but watch the muzzle flashes approaching through the haze.

And Rigg’s hit. Oh fuck. This wasn’t how I wanted us to die
…

I ripped my right arm out of Mathew’s body armour and scrabbled for my pistol. But it was no longer there.

Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds earlier
…

Timing the manoeuvre with his usual perfection, Geordie had heaved
back hard on his cyclic stick to bring Ugly Five Zero in to land alongside
Mathew’s body. Dust billowed ahead of them and rose 100 feet
into the air before being sucked back down by his rotors, entirely
smothering the Apache. Geordie had flown over 2,000 helicopter hours
in his ten years as a pilot and this was the worst brown-out he’d ever
been in
.

‘
I can’t put down in this shit Billy. Ed and Carl won’t see us; they’ll
come in straight on top of us
.’

‘
Well anywhere then. Just get us down
.’

‘
I’m going into the fort
.’

‘
You sure
?
’

‘
Just over the wall. It’s another big field; there’s nothing in it
.’

‘
Copied mate. Do it
.’

A quick jerk on the collective and Geordie’s Apache was ascending
again. Some left-foot pedal twisted the gunship ninety degrees to the
right, then a push on the cyclic and they were over the wall and into
the adjacent field; a rectangle, 100 metres long and 200 wide. A line of
trees to their right divided it into two squares
.

Geordie pressed on a further fifty metres so his next dust cloud
wouldn’t blind Ed and Carl. Billy slewed the TADS to the northern
end of the field and lined up his crosshairs on the fort’s outer wall
.

‘
Engaging
.’

He squeezed the trigger and the cannon threw twenty rounds into
the remnants of the watchtower on the far right. Then he raked
another twenty along the top of the wall. Rock splinters and shrapnel
span off it in all directions as the rounds exploded. If anyone was near
the wall, they weren’t going to put their heads above it in a hurry now.
It bought Billy and Geordie thirty extra seconds
.

Nick was watching their insertion from 2,000 feet above. He hosed
down the entire western wall and the canal path alongside it with
consecutive twenty round bursts, to discourage anyone trying to flank
round and ambush his friends in Ugly Five Zero
.

Geordie landed hard at a forty-degree angle to Jugroom’s main
building. Hearn and Robinson jumped off and ran to the wall, as
they’d been told to do. The wrong wall
.

Geordie watched them disappear into the brown-out and immediately
began to worry. ‘Do you think they know where we are now,
Billy
?
’

‘
Probably not. They wouldn’t have seen anything on the wing. We
could barely see ourselves
.’

It took forty seconds for Billy and Geordie to get back their visibility.
Hearn and Robinson had groped up and down the northern wall,
looking in vain for Mathew, and were now jogging back to the
Apache. Robinson was leading, hands and rifle raised as a signal to
the pilots of their bewilderment. Geordie spotted them first from the
back seat
.

‘
They’ve got no idea we’re in a different field. I’m going to have to
show them where to go
.’

Billy was the captain and Geordie was the primary pilot, but they
didn’t have time to argue the toss about who should leave the aircraft.
Geordie was out of his seat and gone, safety-locking the collective lever
as he jumped but not stopping to unclip his carbine
.

He charged over to Robinson and shouted: ‘Follow me, he’s this
way
.’

Changing course ninety degrees, Geordie made for the hole in the
wall eighty metres to his left. That’s where Mathew was, Geordie
thought – around the crater and immediately to the right
.

The brown-out had disorientated Geordie too. His mental compass
was off by ninety degrees. He led the marines at full tilt to a bomb
crater in the field’s west wall instead. Geordie rounded the corner and
turned sharp right. The marines dutifully followed – heading north,
ever deeper into enemy territory
.

Visibility was down to ten metres. Geordie, Hearn and Robinson
were in the midst of the 2,000-pounder’s smokescreen. The stench of
explosives and burning was overpowering
.

‘
Come on lads, the others will be up here somewhere,’ Geordie
yelled over his shoulder as he pressed on up the canal path. Robinson
was ten metres behind him, and Hearn brought up the rear
.

One hundred metres along, Geordie still hadn’t found anybody. He
knew Ford was just by the wall; he’d seen him from above. Had he
regained consciousness and started to crawl away? Down to the river
perhaps? Geordie pressed on
.

After another eighty metres the black cloud began to dissipate. He
was almost at the end of the wall now. The corner had taken a direct
hit, strewing rubble across the path. Geordie didn’t remember the wall
being hit here. When he’d last seen it, it was still standing. Perhaps
Nick or Charlotte had smacked it while the rescue Apaches were at
Magowan’s HQ
.

He could see round the corner now. Fruit trees loomed over the piles
of stone. He didn’t remember fruit trees either
.

Geordie slowed to a walk. This wasn’t right. The canal should have
been ahead of him. Where the hell was it? It started to materialise
through the dust to his left
…

So what was in front of him? Just fields, and
…

Geordie jolted to a halt. Not more than fifteen metres in front of
him, under the spreading branches of a tree, were three men with
turbans and beards. One had a PK machine gun slung across his back,
the second rested the butt of his AK47 in the dirt, and the third
crouched with an RPG in each hand. They were in animated conversation,
keeping in the shadow so the Apaches circling above couldn’t
see them. Taliban
…

They stopped talking when they saw Geordie. They looked at him.
He looked at them. Each was frozen to the spot; each as shocked as the
other
.

That’s when he realised … We’re in the wrong place. This is the
north side of the fort, not the west. Jesus fucking Christ
.

The Taliban fighters knew that if the British soldiers came for
them
,
they wouldn’t come alone. There would be a hundred at
least, like the
last attack. They hesitated, giving Geordie a few
crucial seconds. He
spun around and took off back in the
direction he’d come, pumping his
thigh muscles as hard as he
could
.

‘
Go-
go-
go …Wrong-
way-
wrong-
way …’ he jabbered
.

Robinson heard the next word very clearly. ‘TALIBAN
!
’

He spun round too and sprinted for all he was worth
.

Seeing the red face of his approaching RSM, Robinson screamed:
‘Run sir. Run the other way, the other way
…’

The Taliban opened fire, and bullets began to kick into the dirt
around their feet. Geordie did an impression of the Roadrunner on
speed. He overtook Robinson within a few metres. Seconds later he
overtook Hearn, too. Then the wall erupted
.

Billy had no choice but to sit tight
.

His job was to keep the front of the aircraft clear for their return.
It was easier said than done; he could only fire the cannon at point-
blank range in front of him and up to ninety degrees to his right. If the
Taliban came through the hole in the wall, he wouldn’t be able to
touch them
.

The world’s most devastating fighting machine was now a sitting
duck. Apaches weren’t built to be shot at on the ground. From below,
fine. Same level, you had a problem
.

The Kevlar plating stopped at his waist, and they could hit him in
the chest with a pop gun now. An RPG through the window and he
was history. Even a brick into the tail rotor would have put the aircraft
out of action. How long would it take for the Taliban to know he was
there
?

Billy soon got his answer. Just over twenty seconds after Geordie
and the marines exited the field, two AK47s appeared at the top of the
wall, 100 degrees to the right of him, and began blatting away blindly
on fully automatic. Billy stamped on his floor pressel
.

‘
Ugly Five Zero has got Taliban doing a Beirut unload from the
wall sixty metres to my right. Put some fire down now
.’

Nick responded instantly. ‘Ugly Five Two copies. Stand by
…’

FOG was flying Nick low on a northerly axis over the treeline to the
east, scanning the fort for any movement
.

‘
My gun.’ FOG slaved the cannon with a flick of his right thumb,
aligned the crosshair and loosed off a twenty-round burst
.

‘
Engaging with cannon, Billy,’ he bellowed. ‘Watch my strikes
.’

Great chunks of adobe flew off a long building in the centre of the
compound. FOG moved his eyeball swiftly left and shifted the impact
zone. A second wave ploughed into the neighbouring courtyard, shredding
paving stones and slicing along the wall Billy was being engaged
from
.

FOG spotted movement inside the far end of it. ‘Talibs escaping;
firing.’ His third burst blasted away the section of wall alongside where
Geordie was overtaking RSM Hearn
…

Geordie was blown a metre sideways by the pressure wave four feet
above his head
.

More explosions, some on the other side of the wall, others on the
canal bank to the right of him. Red-hot shrapnel whipped across the
path, centimetres behind him, through a waist-high, metre-long shell
hole. Geordie’s ears rang and his mouth filled with grit
.

Jesus, what the hell was that? An RPG? Ten RPGs
?

Sound travels at 343 metres per second. So it took Geordie just over
three seconds to hear the pounding of the Apache cannon a kilometre
away. Shit, the guys are firing on us
.

‘
What the fuck is that?’ screamed Hearn
.

‘
Just fucking run,’ Geordie shouted
.

Geordie didn’t know it was possible to run faster than they already
were. But he did it then
.

‘
Delta Hotel, FOG. Delta Hotel,’ Billy said. ‘Good shooting mate.
Keep it up
.’

Billy was doing mental cartwheels. He checked the clock: 10:40
and fifty-five seconds. Jesus, almost two-
and-
a-
half minutes on the
ground. Time up. They needed to get out of there now. The next Beirut
unload from God knew which direction couldn’t be far off. The
Taliban would have given their eye teeth to get their hands on one of
the feared mosquitoes. And now they had two of them, gift wrapped,
and delivered to their door
.

Where the hell was Geordie? He should have got back by now. He’d
been out there for a minute and forty seconds. Maybe they needed a
hand. Maybe he should lift and start putting some fire down … But
if he moved, he’d brown the place out again, and Geordie and the
marines wouldn’t be able to see where he was. He couldn’t leave them
behind, no matter what
.

What if they’ve been hit, and can’t get back? They hadn’t discussed
Actions On for that. Billy tried to flush the disaster scenario from his
mind. Of course they were coming back
.

Lifting and firing was going to be his last resort if ten Taliban came
running round the corner. He wrapped his hand around the collective’s
grip. It was locked. Geordie must have done it on his way out. He
could only take-off in an emergency and fly by wire. Shit. Please don’t
let anyone come round the corner. At least Carl and Ed were in the
right place. He stamped on the pressel again
.

‘
Ed, it’s taking too long. What’s going on? Is Ford strapped onto you
yet
?’

‘
Billy, it’s Carl. Ed’s outside. They’re having a really tough job
moving him
.’

‘
There are four of them
…’