Hellfire (23 page)
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I did offer…’
We were bounced over the rough terrain to the main camp in a Land Rover. On the ground, Bastion was smaller than I imagined and it only took a minute or two of driving in our own dust cloud before we reached the accommodation area, a tented compound surrounded by Hesco Bastion barriers. The Portakabin luxury we’d known briefly at KAF was markedly absent but, on the plus side, so was the stink of shit. Bastion was still in its infancy and very austere.
After dropping our kit off in our tent, Billy and I walked over to the north side of the compound, past a couple of Paras manning a gap in a Hesco Bastion wall, and entered the Joint Operations Cell. The JOC was run by the 3 Para CO, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart
Tootal, a short, wiry man with several masters degrees under his belt and, rumour had it, a PhD or two for good measure. Tootal was passionate about the men under his charge and just as determined to fulfil his mission in Afghanistan.
The JOC was a very long tent with a walkway down either side. Men and women in uniform sat at long tables staring at computers, some with their heads jammed to radio handsets. Every unit operating in Helmand, including ours, had a desk here. During an operation, Major Black would move into the JOC and act as liaison between us and Tootal.
One of the most important areas in the JOC-Billy pointed to two adjacent positions on his left-was given over to the JTACs, the ‘Widow’ callsigns who acted as liaison for air operations. The JTACs out in the field had a special radio for communicating back to this Widow Tactical Operations Cell (TOC), Billy explained, and this was the hub, where it all happened. He directed my attention to some large tables in the middle of the room, covered in maps that depicted the Helmand Area of Responsibility (AOR). The maps were covered with plastic laminate and ringed in places by red chinagraph.
‘ROZs,’ Billy said pointing to the Restricted Operating Zones. ‘If the shit hits the fan and there’s a battle, no one is allowed to enter a ROZ without permission from the relevant JTAC on the ground. The JTACs are all-important. Without them, nothing would happen here.’
I noticed that there was a large red ring over Now Zad.
‘It looks like something’s going down there,’ I said. Several members of Tootal’s staff seemed to be paying particular attention to the place.
‘After the trouble a few weeks back, there are persistent rumours that the Taliban are going to strike at Now Zad next,’ Billy said. ‘When I ask anyone who should be in a position to know, they shrug and give me the brush-off, which means, almost certainly,
that the rumours are true. B Company 3 Para moved into Now Zad about a week ago and found the place deserted. Everybody had buggered off, including the ANP.’
If the Afghan National Police had left, it was a fair indication of trouble.
I thought back to my time in Northern Ireland, to the indicators I’d been trained to look for-dumper trucks parked where they shouldn’t have been; a dustbin out on a non-collection day; upper windows open to prevent them being blown in by the pressure wave of an explosion; kids not out playing when they should be…
Here we go again, I thought.
We left the JOC and walked next door. The ‘JHF(A) Forward’ was our Ops centre, known to us as the ‘Ops tent’. There was a desk manned by a corporal where visitors checked in and out. Otherwise, it looked like a smaller version of the JOC. There was a desk for the OC, Major Black, a desk for the Ops Officer, a couple of positions for our signallers and watchkeepers and a few other spare desks for people like us to use when we needed them. In the middle, again, were two tables, one given over to a 1:50,000 map of Helmand, the other to aviation maps of Afghanistan.
Two-thirds of the way down the tent was a screen-a large white board that separated the operations area of the Ops tent from the administration area. The admin area, Billy explained, also doubled as a place where pilots on readiness could hang out, away from the frenetic activity that would kick off next door if and when the shit hit the fan.
In the corner, a flat-screen TV was tuned to Sky News-quite how, I didn’t know. On a table next to the TV was a laptop where we could send and receive emails to and from home and pull data from the internet. On the opposite side of the tent were two mission planning stations-computers where we could sit down and map out our sorties.
Mission planning had reached new heights with the Apache. Everything from weapon parameters to frequencies and codewords was input into the laptop before we flew. Once we were happy with the way the mission looked, we pressed ‘save’, downloaded the data to a data transfer cartridge then took it down to the aircraft and plugged it in. The mission was then uploaded into the Apache’s own computer and we were ready to fly.
After the Ops tent, Billy led me back to ‘tent city’ where we went and grabbed some nosh from the ‘Para kitchen’. The Regimental Sergeant Major of 3 Para, flanked by a couple of burly mates, was checking to ensure that everyone washed their hands with antibacterial scrub before they sat down to eat. It was like being back at school. But Bastion was such a tight ship, and so stretched, Billy explained, that nobody could afford a bunch of rogue e-coli to sweep through the camp. And the capacity for transmission of this or any other disease was breathtaking, as I was about to find out.
It had been hot in the JOC and the JHF(A), but the cookhouse felt like a sauna. The heat was so bad that people came in, grabbed their food, sat down, shovelled it into their mouths and left. I don’t sweat easily-it’s not something I do even when out running-but in less than a minute at the table, I was drenched. Rivulets ran down my arms and onto my plate. My plastic bucket chair was like a swimming pool. It didn’t take me long to figure out why nobody hung around to chat. I did what everybody else did: stuffed my meal into my mouth and got off and out-total elapsed time, three minutes. Talk about fast food.
Our tent, my new bedroom, was fifteen feet wide and thirty long and filled with eight camp beds: four on the right and four on the left. A giant plastic duct pumped cool air in from a huge exterior air-conditioning unit, but it was fighting a losing battle against the heat. The talcum-like dust-that had so nearly done for me during my landing-covered everything.
After my various exertions, I was exhausted. I took a shower, threw my sleeping bag on my cot and crashed out, my head buzzing with thoughts of the ‘bag’ and dust-outs; so much so that I found myself dreaming about an Apache flight in which Billy had been replaced by my old instructor, Chopper Palmer. Palmer was bollocking me for the way I was attempting to land my aircraft in a dust-out. While I was trying to concentrate, Chopper reached forward and shook me by the shoulder, which was fucking annoying because I was trying to concentrate on not killing us. But still he kept on shaking…
I opened my eyes and there was Billy.
‘Ed,’ he said, slightly freaked, no doubt, by the wild look in my eyes. ‘We’ve got to get on back to the JOC. Now.’
‘Why?’ I said, wiping away the thin film of dust that had settled on my face in the couple of hours I’d been asleep.
‘The mission’s on,’ Billy said. ‘It’s Now Zad.’
FRIDAY, 2 JUNE 2006
Camp Bastion, Afghanistan
Billy and I headed for the duties board with a spring in our step. We’d heard whispers about the upcoming operation over the past few days, and been told we’d be on a deliberate mission.
Sure enough, Op Mutay was up there, lined up for the fourth. But our flight was marked HRF and IRT. We’d be on standby; we’d been taken off the mission.
As Helmand Reaction Force and Incident Response Team we needed to be ready for anything, and that included supporting the Deliberate Ops Apache pair. We’d be the next to fly, responsible for replacing Pat and his crews if needed. How on earth could we do that if we’d been kept in the dark?
Pat told us it was because we weren’t a constituted flight-we hadn’t operated together. The OC had his two flights up and running, under Pat and Dan. He wanted to keep it that way because they’d know what they were doing.
‘Why do you need constituted flights?’ I asked.
Pat shrugged. ‘Flight procedure.’
Billy beat me to it. ‘There’s no such thing.’
He wasn’t wrong. The only flight procedure was that any one of us could jump into any aircraft with any wingman and mesh in seamlessly. Pilots were matched in an aircraft and kept together until they operated as one, but periodic changeovers stopped errors creeping in.
‘Well, our flights are constituted,’ Pat insisted. ‘We’ve practised together.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. They’d flown together on a handful of missions in Afghanistan, that was all. We’d trained together for years.
We left, knowing only that Op Mutay would take place around Now Zad. Even the broadest brushstrokes were being kept secret from other aircrew.
The alarm bells kept ringing in my head. I turned to Billy and Jon. ‘What if it goes tits up and the rest of us have to step in?’ We hadn’t been here long and only had four Apaches up and running.
Keeping the circle of knowledge to a minimum was normal and necessary. A lot of locals worked at Camp Bastion. The Taliban could infiltrate their ranks, or intimidate them into handing over information. That was why we only ever discussed a mission in the secure Ops tents and briefing areas.
The OC and Pat-who commanded the only Apache flight designated to the mission-had taken this to extremes. They had attended the preliminary mission orders along with Dickie Bonn, the new Operations Officer, and decided not to allow any other crews into the planning process.
We discovered that confirmatory orders were going to be at 0700 on the morning of the mission-two days’ time-and knew we had to be there.
This was going to be 3 Para’s-but more importantly to us, the British Apaches’-first ever deliberate operation in Afghanistan. We’d spent over two and a half years training for this, and by hook or by crook, we’d have what it took to make it work.
Back at the tent, 3 Flight’s lights were out. A quick shower and I was into my doss bag on my camp cot. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but then again, I wasn’t in the pissing rain in the middle of Dartmoor in December with a hunter force tracking me down with dogs and dragging me away for interrogation.
When the artillery temporarily eased up my mind still wouldn’t let me sleep. I’d been plagued by the fear of failure or rejection all my life; I didn’t want to be remembered as one of the bumbling idiots that fucked up our very first mission. Worse still, if we left a gap in the support to 3 Para and someone died we’d be dismissed as a shambles and never be trusted again. If the papers got hold of the details the whole Apache programme would be seen as a big white elephant.
Billy and I skipped breakfast the next morning and headed over to the Ops tent for a coffee. We had an escort mission-to insert the Gurkhas into Now Zad-but when we weren’t flying we kept pushing.
We finally decided to brief for the operation ourselves, late in the evening when the Ops room was quiet. We knew jack shit, but we could at least do a detailed map recce, and settle on a strategy if everything did go pear-shaped.
We crisis-planned. We went through all the what ifs. What if one of them was sick in the morning? What if the plan changed and they needed four Apaches? What if they crashed on departure, en route, in the target area or returning to base? What if they got low on fuel and 3 Para were in a firefight? We planned for every eventuality we could think of.
We were in the Ops tent bang on time the following morning. I’d had nightmares about not being able to start the Apache, about the CO of 3 Para shouting through the cockpit window that it was my fault his men were bleeding to death in Now Zad.
The boss barked, ‘3 Flight we need to get over for the JMB now.’
We asked our Ops Officer yet again if we could attend the Joint Mission Brief. Dickie Bonn finally relented; we could squeeze in if there was room.
We were off before he finished speaking. We didn’t even have time to make a brew.
The tent was packed and stiflingly hot. The briefing team stood in front of an array of maps and satellite photography. Most of the guys were seated, but for late arrivals and the officially uninvited it was standing room only, at the very back.
The 3 Para Ops Officer began the orders. The mission was a cordon and search operation of a known Taliban house and grounds. The commander of the operation was Lieutenant Colonel Tootal. The CO was an extremely astute man. He had delegated mission command to the lead Chinook for the insertion and extraction phases. The lead Chinook callsign, Hardwood Two Five, was captained by Nichol Benzie, a polite, dark-haired, highly capable naval lieutenant.
‘The Taliban commander is located at grid Papa-Romeo Four-Zero-One Eight-Six-Three. That’s Papa-Romeo Four-Zero-One Eight-Six-Three in Now Zad.’
The Ops Officer pointed to a satellite photograph-a house approximately twelve feet high, with ten-foot walls around the perimeter. The target was using it as a bomb-making factory. It was also a safe house for local fighters and an arms cache.
He and his associates were likely to have small arms and RPGs.
The 3 Para battlegroup was to fly into the Green Zone east of Now Zad, under the shadow of the mountain spine, between the town and the main wadi. It would use four Chinooks to land in three sites at exactly 1100 hours.
The first LS, codenamed Green One, was just to the north of the house. The second, Green Two, was one field to its south-west, and
Green Three one field to the south. There were four alternative LSs further from the target in case it was too hot or unacceptable to the crews following a ‘boiling’ call.
‘Meanwhile,’ the Ops Officer said, ‘the troops in Now Zad DC will have moved out in their WMIKs to collect Haji Muhammadzai, the District Chief of Police.’
He’d only find out what was happening as the troops touched down on the LSs, so no warnings would be sent to the occupants by anyone. As they set up a cordon around the grounds, he’d be driven to the house by the troops from the DC, arriving before we went into the compound to confirm that the search and lift was done in a dignified manner with no harassment to any locals. Other troops from the 3 Para battlegroup would have secured the perimeter to ensure that no Taliban escaped and no reinforcements could infiltrate the target area.