Apache (31 page)

‘
No there aren’t
.’

‘
What’s Ed doing out of the aircraft
?
’

‘
That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There aren’t four of them; just
our two marines and Ed. Where are your marines
?
’

‘
Can’t you see them
?
’

‘
Negative
.’

‘
What about Geordie? Is Geordie not there either
?
’

‘
He’s with you, isn’t he
?
’

‘
Negative
.’

Silence
.

‘
Fuck
.’

Geordie swept past the entrance to the field where his Apache was as
their third minute on the ground began. He turned to check Robinson
and Hearn were still following him and snatched a quick glance at the
aircraft, eighty metres away through the haze. He couldn’t make out
his co-pilot. He hoped to God he hadn’t been hit
.

Geordie was in pain now. He’d run more than 500 metres at a full
sprint and his lungs were full of smoke. His throat rasped as he tried
to suck in more oxygen. The battle still raged around him, but at least
nobody was shooting directly at him now
.

The southern end of the west wall was just ten metres away. A left
turn and he’d hook up with Mathew and the two other marines. Then
they could all get the hell out of there
.

Geordie rounded the corner to see Ed and Rigg heaving Ford
towards the Apache and Fraser-Perry in position to give covering fire.
Muzzle flashes sparked up at the far end of the field. Bullets tore up the
furrows, their points of impact careering ever closer
.

Rigg and Mathew went down like a sack of shit. Ed went down
right after him. Geordie had got there too late
.

The bastards are not getting me alive. I need my pistol
.

I glanced back across the field, and there was Geordie, thirty metres away. The Taliban bullets cracked through the air around us.

‘
Geordie, put some rounds down!
’ Then I saw he didn’t have his carbine with him either.

Got to move Mathew out of the fire. Get him behind the aircraft
… The fuselage was only seven metres away; we were very near the blades. My eyes dipped as I grasped Mathew more firmly and tugged my foot free. My pistol poked out from underneath him. I grabbed the grip and spun round on my knees, preparing to return fire towards the muzzle flashes. As I did so, the sound of the Apache’s rotor pitch changed.
Oh no
…

Carl started to pull power. Dust and grit smacked me in the face as I turned to see the aircraft begin to wobble. The blades coned upwards. I got straight to my feet. I could just make out Carl speaking fast into his microphone and monitoring our every move. He didn’t want to hit us when he took off.

‘
No Carl, get down!
’

He couldn’t hear me. The suspension struts lightened as he
began to lift. I threw both arms out and flapped them vigorously downwards. He finally got the message and powered down. I didn’t know whether he was leaving or just turning to engage the treeline, but I wasn’t having any of it.

The dust cloud he’d thrown up was so thick I couldn’t see my own hands. I stumbled about, trying to regain my bearings.

With an ear-piercing screech, a Hellfire came in to the east of us and exploded with a mighty flash. A quarter of a second later, the pressure wave passed through my clothing. Ten seconds later I heard two deep booms, then the sound of branches splitting and plummeting to the ground. HEISAP rockets. Charlotte and Nick were taking care of the treeline.
Thank fuck, they’re onto them
. Carl must have called them in.

The brown-out was still all-consuming. But it was now rippling slowly away from the aircraft in concentric rings, leaving us with a few metres of visibility inside it. The enemy gunfire from the eastern treeline had now dwindled. If we couldn’t see the Taliban, they couldn’t see us. Carl’s brown-out and the pounding from Ugly Five Two and Three had bought us a few crucial seconds.
Got to move
right now
. I turned to check how badly hit Rigg was. To my amazement, he was crouching over Mathew and preparing to lift him again. Geordie was with him now.

‘Rigg, you okay?’

‘Yeah. Just tripped. Sorry.’

‘You’re not hit?’

‘Don’t think so. Can’t feel anything.’

I was astonished. They’d missed all of us.

I holstered my pistol and lunged for Mathew too. I grabbed hold of his webbing, Geordie latched onto his right leg, and summoning every last scrap of energy we headed for the aircraft.

Fraser-Perry and Robinson suddenly materialised too; one grasped a sleeve and one Mathew’s other leg. Last to break through the dust cloud was Hearn, his face red as a beetroot.

We were three minutes behind schedule and had been on the ground for over four. Yet suddenly – and I had no idea how – the plan was working.

‘Where the fuck have you lot been?’ I hollered above the engine’s whine.

‘Sorry, bonny lad,’ Geordie yelled. ‘Detour.’

As gently as we could, we lowered Mathew beneath the aircraft, placing his head below the step in front of the right wheel.

‘Anyone got a strap?’

Robinson’s immediately appeared in my hand.

‘Okay, back to your aircraft guys. We can manage from here.’ I turned to Fraser-Perry. ‘You get on, too.’

The marines sprinted off, but Geordie hung around. He needed to see it through.

‘Honestly, Geordie mate, we’re almost there. Last one back to Bastion is Piss Boy, eh?’

‘That’ll be you then.’ He smiled and set off.

Rigg lifted Mathew’s shoulders while I wrapped the strap around his back, under his arms, through his body armour and out by the top of his chest.
Bollocks
. It wouldn’t quite reach the step. We heaved him forward another six inches. But the strap was as taut as a bowstring and I was worried we would garrotte him in mid-flight.

‘Give me yours.’

I repeated the process with Rigg’s strap and fastened it to the step above his helmet. Now at least he would hang steady and straight.

‘Okay, mate, jump on. And hold tight.’

‘Roger …’

Robinson and Rigg were going to have to follow Fraser-Perry’s example and just cling on. Rigg leapt back onto his Hellfire rail and hauled himself onto the wing as I clambered back into the cockpit.

I moved my harness buckle away from the cyclic so Carl could lift safely. A quick check on Rigg and Fraser-Perry, then I raised both thumbs and screamed above the din: ‘
Go, go, go
…’

We’d well overstayed our welcome at Jugroom Fort, and Mathew desperately needed a crash team: 10.43 and forty-five seconds.
Fuck
me, five minutes and ten seconds on the ground. It had seemed like five
years
…

Carl pulled power and the canal disappeared from in front of us as we whipped the dust into a frenzy. He was flying blind, with only the symbology in his monocle: heading, height, torque and velocity. The hardest flying in the world. We began to wobble.

I fastened my harness, clipped the monocle to my helmet and connected my microphone lead. ‘Five One lifting. Give us cover.’

I took a firm hold of the two grab handles either side of the cockpit roof. Not to brace myself for a crash – it was the only way to suppress the screaming urge to take hold of the flying controls at a time like this. I wished I was in the back.
Trust your symbology, buddy
.

I felt the Apache move through the seat of my pants, but God only knew where. My monocle told me that we’d swung ninety degrees left, pointing the nose back towards the river. The whine of the engines increased as he pulled more pitch. I checked our height, thirty feet, and torque, 85 per cent. Carl was giving it some serious welly. I checked the airspeed: we were moving forward at five knots. Another five seconds and I looked at the height again, still only thirty feet, same speed and the torque was up to 90 per cent. We’d stopped lifting, and were still not clear of the brown-out. We should have been well away by now. There was a problem.

‘Ed, the power is much higher than it should be. Is Mathew tied to the bloody ground?’

‘Maybe it’s recirculation from the wall …’

‘No way. We should have bags of power. I’m topping out.’

The wobble became an uncomfortable sway. Jesus, we had a fifty-three knot tailwind.
That’s
what was destroying Carl’s lift. It was blowing away his purchase on clean air.

‘Can’t be right,’ Carl said. ‘It’s been five knots all morning.’

It was up and down like a yoyo. We had a squall on our hands. It could last for minutes. Afghanistan was full of them, but we’d never faced one on takeoff before. At this height the emergency drill was to turn into it, down the aircraft immediately and wait for the squall to pass. We didn’t have that option. Our truckload of luck had finally run out. Our height began to drop.

‘Twenty-five feet, and forty-two knots downwind …’

Carl called up more power, taking the torque to 95 per cent. He was doing all he could to get some translational lift. Increase the speed and you increased the airflow over the blades; then you were up. But we were downwind, so it wasn’t happening.

‘Twenty-one feet and thirty-seven knots downwind …’

We were sinking. Carl pushed the torque all the way to 100 per cent. He had nothing left to pull. The velocity vector was off the scale so we were moving forward fast, but still reversing into the wind. Any more and we’d be in serious danger of trashing our escape plan.

‘Nineteen feet and thirty knots downwind. Watch your torque, Carl. We’re dropping.’

Come on, fly, you bastard
. I still couldn’t see a thing.

‘Fifteen feet, twenty-six knots downwind. Mathew’s too close to the ground, mate.’

Carl was going to have to turn back towards the fort to get forward airspeed or we’d ditch in the Helmand River.

‘I’m going over 100 …’

With a mighty heave on the collective, he pulled the torque to 115 per cent. It was our last chance. Six seconds at that level and he’d twist the transmission permanently out of shape. The aircraft would be toast.

Fucking come on. Do it NOW
…

I felt a small waver in the tail.

‘Eighteen feet, nine knots downwind. The squall’s dropping. Twenty-two feet, eight knots
forward
.’

‘Got it!
Sylvia’s flying!
’ Carl dropped the torque to 90 per cent. We were away.

‘Top flying, mate. Thank God for that.’

My guardian angel was looking after my lilywhite arse that morning …

Height and airspeed continued to climb for five more seconds and the torque remained constant.

Then we burst out of the dust, straight into blinding sunshine and a crystal blue sky. It was a beautiful day; I’d forgotten after so long in the Jugroom underworld. It was mind-blowing, unlike anything I’d seen before, or will see again.

As we soared towards the berm, a myriad red and orange light pulses streaked past the cockpit windows. It felt like Han Solo taking the Millennium Falcon into hyperspace. The marines at the firebase had seen our dust cloud, and were giving the Taliban every last bullet they had to cover us out. Thousands and thousands of rounds winged past us. Some of them were frighteningly close, but the marines knew exactly where they were shooting. It was an awesome display of firepower.

Charlotte and Tony’s Apache flew right in front of us, 200 feet above the firebase. The moment we emerged, two Hellfires shot off her rails with their arses on fire and buried themselves deep into the eastern treeline.

Nick and FOG had kept their best till last. I caught a glimpse of them in our two o’clock, running into the village from the desert. Then they let rip instantaneously with every single one of the sixteen Flechettes they had left in their launchers. They came out in pairs, the left ahead of the right – left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right – each leaving a vivid jet of flame in their wake. It was the biggest rocket launch I’d ever seen, and at the end of it, angry clouds of propellant vapour shrouded their entire aircraft.

A fraction of a second later, 1,280 Tungsten darts tore into each and every one of the huts, barns and compounds within a 100-metre radius – turning the village into a giant pin cushion.

Geordie lifted thirty seconds behind us. It was perfect timing. With two final cannon bursts he and Billy broke west and then sharp south down the canal. Tony unleashed all his and Charlotte’s Flechettes into the fort and as he pulled hard out of a low-level dive, Nick squeezed off four HEISAPs into the treeline.

I was mesmerised by the sheer ferocity of the attacks. Anyone waiting to ambush us on our way out had been rewarded with a very nasty surprise.

We were over the middle of the river. My excitement vanished and my stomach churned. The straps holding Mathew had never been tested. I looked out for him, but the fuselage blocked my view.

‘Mate, I hope Mathew’s still on. Just keep it nice and slow.’

‘Forty knots. Look right, Ed.’

I looked down through the Perspex and there on the mirrored surface of the water beneath us was the shadow of an Apache heli
copter gunship with a man hanging beneath it. A feeling close to euphoria began to pulse through my veins. I felt the tension ease from my shoulder muscles.

‘I can’t believe it, Carl. We’ve made it …’

‘Don’t,’ he grunted as we reached the far bank of the river. ‘We’ve 100 metres to go …’

The hillside rose steeply ahead of us. Five seconds later we crossed the ridge, and the Royal Marines’ firebase was spread out below us. We’d saved ourselves. Now we had to save Mathew.

‘Mate, let’s take him into the desert, to the Casevac LS.’

‘We don’t have the fuel, Ed.’

‘We must have; it’s only a couple of miles.’

‘Trust me, we don’t have the fuel.’ Carl was adamant. ‘We’re putting him down right here.’

He’d already begun to bank right and turn the aircraft 180 degrees into the wind to land. He picked a spot just behind the Light Dragoons’ Scimitars where he could see Viking vehicles and a red cross. There would be medics and basic life support equipment to keep Mathew going until the Chinook arrived. Carl went into a hover as dozens of marines rushed to our impromptu landing site.

‘Keep bringing it left, mate …’

If Carl went down hard, seven tonnes of aircraft was going to squash Mathew flat.

I opened up my door to get a better view; Rigg was already leaning off the side of the aircraft signalling to Carl with his hand. With extraordinary deftness, Carl lowered Mathew gently to the ground, feet first. Next, he eased the aircraft left until Mathew was in a sitting position, and then very gradually laid him down. As his helmet touched the ground, Carl pulled the aircraft back a fraction
to ensure that his now prone body was well clear of the wheel as he gently touched down.