Hellfire (44 page)

I was trying to get my head around what the Taliban were up to. They’d learned a thing or two over the past three months. What was I missing? There were no IEDs so far today and no mines either. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know we were coming and hadn’t had time to prepare. And they sure as hell weren’t scared. Their primary aim was to send the British infidels home in body bags, and they weren’t going to get many better chances than this.

Trying to stay one step ahead of them was what was focusing my mind, but my mind was as knackered as my increasingly emaciated body. They clearly weren’t going to take on 3 Para, but how could
they take out the convoy without getting close? Their mortars, RPGs and rockets weren’t accurate enough.

‘Wildman Five Five this is Wildman Five Four.’ Jake broke through my tortured thoughts. He’d taken advantage of a lull in the radio traffic and spoken to Pat.

The convoy was in the DC and shortly to depart. B and D Companies were in position on the western side of the wadi, covering east. The Pathfinders and Danes were at the end of the Bazaar road, on the eastern side of the wadi, covering west. Pat and Tony were orbiting the track across the wadi as a deterrent. Chris and Carl were to the south, short of gas, looking for Taliban from an intelligence hit.

We were in the north, approaching the ridge, with the Patrols Platoon below us.

Jake told us to take over from Chris; he would stay close to the convoy route.

Bollocks.

The guns were firing. We were told we’d have to route back west, around the rear of them, and come back east to meet up with Chris and Carl.

Billy muttered, ‘No way, José.’

He dropped the nose, and within a heartbeat we were thirty feet off the deck, banging southbound across the desert floor at max chat. The guns were firing but he knew that their trajectory would take the shells over our heads. It was a no-no to fly through the gun line, but needs must. We weren’t going to waste any more gas flying three sides of a square.

Then Billy nosed us up vertically and all I could see was sky.

Chris told me to look out for a white car, which would be our anchor point, and sent me a grid via the IDM. I slaved the TADS. When I looked down, there was the white car by a small stream just off the main wadi. Three men were making a poor show of pretending to wash it.

Chris wasn’t a slave to the digital environment; he was a head-out-of-the-cockpit kind of guy. Any directions he gave me now would always begin at this anchor point.

We were now three klicks south of the crossing point and too far away from the boys to either defend them or act as a deterrent. The last time we’d been on overwatch was after the IED killed three of our guys five days ago. We’d had an intelligence hit then too, only thirty klicks away to the north-east.

We’d tried to fob it off, but the head sheds at Lashkar Gar were highly excited; they believed it was a high value target, ‘a sizable force that was preparing to set off and kill our troops’. We pointed out that its location meant it had no bearing on the troops we were protecting, but were ordered to go.

It was too far to send a lone Apache, so we both went, leaving our guys with no Intimate Support-only to be greeted by a couple of men in the open, waving their dishdashes to prove they didn’t have any concealed weapons.

As we got back to the area we were supposed to patrol, Dan’s flight had just arrived to RIP us. The Taliban were crawling all over the place. We were lucky we hadn’t taken any further casualties.

This seemed like an action replay to me, and I resolved to get back to the convoy as soon as possible.

‘Five hundred metres south-west of anchor is a group of about fifteen compounds,’ Chris said.

I saw them out of the window and copied.

‘There is a back-to-front, J-shaped tree line oriented west.’ Okay, looking west I will see a J with the hook pointing north-
-got it.

‘Visual with a J tree line,’ I acknowledged. ‘It has fields to the north and west, buildings to the south and east.’

‘Correct. In and around the hook of the J I’ve got two pax, possibly Taliban.’ Chris went on to say that they were hiding from him,
possibly with a SAM or an RPG, and maybe personal weapons as well.

Carl couldn’t hang around any longer; they headed back to refuel.

His final words confirmed my worries. ‘I wouldn’t hang around down here, if you know what I mean…’

I knew exactly what he meant. I called Widow Seven Zero. ‘The area we’re looking in isn’t a direct threat to your convoy route.’

‘Try to find them and ascertain if they’ve got weapons. If they have, you’re clear hot.’

If I’d found them on my own I couldn’t have fired because they were not a threat to the convoy. He must have had better intelligence to clear me hot. Either way, he couldn’t see them so I was going to have to give him a full picture and then request his clearance again.

One man was trying to conceal himself under the trees at the very end of the hook of the J. He had something hanging over his shoulder. I didn’t want to hang around so the best thing, I reckoned, was to provoke some form of response. If I fired close to but not at him, he’d run away empty-handed, or fire back at me or at least reveal a weapon.

I put down a warning burst about fifty metres away, in the field to his west.

Nothing.

We turned away to see if we could tempt him at least to move or draw a weapon. He got up and sauntered under the tree line.

As we turned back towards him, he went static again. Maybe he thought we couldn’t see him because he was in shadow and wearing black. It looked like he was carrying some kind of flag. I tried to get an angle on him as we came round, but he stayed behind a tree trunk as we circled.

‘Keep it up,’ I said. ‘He’s going to move into the sunlight in a minute; maybe we’ll be able to spot something.’

As he moved round to avoid us the sun glinted on something long and thin across his shoulder. It couldn’t have been a weapon. Weapons don’t glint. Gunmetal is dull, for good reason.

Billy said, ‘Maybe it’s a sword.’

We completed a full orbit and found another two men. One of them had what looked like another flag. Two flags? What was this, the opening ceremony of the Taliban Olympics?

We brought Widow up to speed. He was clearly taking these guys seriously. ‘Do they have concealed weapons?’

‘Stand by,’ I said. ‘I’ll put down another ten-round warning burst.’

All three were now just across the track from the compounds.

This time I aimed the burst so close they all got a free pedicure. The third man whipped across to a doorway in the compound wall, but couldn’t get through. This was a big combat indicator to me. This wasn’t their turf; they had to be Taliban. Had they been locals he would have known the other side of the door was bricked up.

His two mates set off east along the track, towards the woods. I finally got a good view of them. The lead man had a swathe of cloth over his shoulder, and had something long underneath it. Chris was right. My money was on an RPG or a SAM. The one behind him had something similar under his arm, similarly concealed. It must have weighed a bit; he was using both hands to keep it under his armpit. It was long and chunky enough to have been a recoilless rifle.

But they were walking away from the fight and I couldn’t positively identify weapons. Our ROE didn’t support shooting them. There was another flash of reflected sunlight. It was an antenna. He had a radio.

‘
Contact!
’ Widow called.

Billy spun us on a sixpence.

The radios went manic. The convoy had come under fire in the wadi from Yellow 14.

I was absolutely fuming at myself. While we’d been mincing around, trying to coax these three into doing something stupid so we could either identify or discount them, the convoy had been hit three klicks away. We had only one Apache over it;
it
should have been our priority.

We raced north.

The convoy was still strewn across the wadi. I glanced at Yellow 14 on my spot map; it was 200 metres north of B Company, 700 metres west of the Norsemen in Musa Qa’leh and about 300 metres north-west of the centre of the convoy.

The airwaves were suddenly flooded with chatter. We found out why there wasn’t a raging firefight going on. There had only been a single shot from Yellow 14.

The dense vegetation of the Green Zone thinned out as you moved further north, and gave way to an open expanse of irrigated farmland. Right in the middle of it was a small copse-otherwise known as Yellow 14.

The next thing we heard was that a soldier had been killed on one of the vehicles.

‘Fuck,’ Billy said.

Yellow 14 had a direct view across to the convoy, and would have made sense as a firing point-but for one thing.

I said, ‘Can’t be there, mate.’

‘It’s got to be,’ Billy said. ‘That’s Yellow 14.’

‘Look at the distance. It was a single shot, and that’s too far for anything other than a sniper. There’s no way a sniper would shoot from there.’ It was too close to the Paras and there was no escape route. They’d be a sitting target. As soon as he pulled that trigger again, the artillery would come down and he’d become a magnet for every British soldier in Musa Qa’leh.

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Five-Yellow 14 cannot be the firing point. It must be somewhere else,’ I said. ‘Has anyone else got a better steer on where the shot came from?’

‘B Company heard the shot from there, and he’s been shot straight through the head.’

‘Ohhh no,’ Billy groaned.

I cursed the Taliban and blamed myself. The most vulnerable part of the convoy’s journey was when they were crossing the wadi. I knew it, and I hadn’t been there for them. How could I have been so fucking stupid? I should have insisted on getting back to the priority task of protection.

I felt sick to my stomach.

‘It might have been a single shot, Billy. But there are at least two of them out there, buddy-possibly four-and they’re
not
at Yellow 14.’

I’d learned about terrorist sniping in Northern Ireland. A head shot needed maximum concentration. He wouldn’t have looked up from his sight for anything. So he will have had a spotter. The spotter must have been watching Jon’s aircraft, to let the sniper know when it was safe to fire. If they felt 100 per cent safe there might just have been the two of them. It was my guess they’d have some muscle with them, too, in case of a follow-up. One or two heavies deployed as lookouts to ensure that they weren’t being outflanked or compromised. RPG men most likely; men with weapons that could buy them time in the getaway.

‘Wildman Five Five, Wildman Five Four-you take a look around here; we’ll stay over the convoy.’

‘Wildman Five Five, copied.’

The convoy had slowed to a halt. The dead soldier, we gathered, was the driver of one of the vehicles.

I looked out of the cockpit window and scoured the area for good fields of fire.

Jake and John dropped lower than they should have. They trundled round and round in the same piece of sky, deliberately setting themselves up to attract fire away from the convoy and ID the firing point.

The pressure was on. If it was a sniper, and he thought we didn’t know where he was, he might be tempted to try it again. Chances were, though, that he’d be making his getaway. I pictured him looking through his sight, watching the body jerk then slump. He’d be up for it now, and we’d become the focus. What we did next determined what he’d do next.

‘Billy, keep over this side of the wadi and don’t turn tail on the north-western area of the Green Zone. We must make them think we can see them. It’s our only way of preventing a shot until I can work out where they are.’

I’d learned fieldcraft during my time with 2 Para: how to patrol, how to manoeuvre, how to set ambushes. I was taught how to pick routes that gave cover from view and cover from fire.

As a Gazelle pilot, I’d given top-cover to the boys on the ground, and I knew what to look for to keep them safe. The IRA knew exactly how we patrolled. They’d had lads in the TA; they’d had lads defect and come across. They knew how to set an ambush so that no one escaped, and how to get away before the security forces turned up.

They’d be sure to hit us from the greatest distance and had perfect killing fields. And so did our new enemy. Yellow 14 had cover from view, but that was it. It was on its own. It was a shit position.

But where else was there?

They needed to have a good escape route, one that provided cover from above so they could get away from the hot firing point if incoming started, or we attempted to flush them out with recce-by-fire-firing into all the most likely places until we got a response.

They’d need to move back, and that meant somewhere northwest. Once they’d broken free they’d hide their weapons and turn into Afghan locals waving their dishdashes to prove they were just on their way to the mosque.

The IRA quartermaster would bag all the stuff and drive away, leaving the sniper team to separate and blend in with whoever else was around.

But there was one phase neither could avoid: they’d have to extract from the firing point first.