The Kill Zone (6 page)

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Authors: Chris Ryan

BOOK: The Kill Zone
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Fly approached them. ‘New orders,’ he said. ‘We’re to put the Professor on the Chinook with her goody bag. The rest of us are waiting behind to bring fast air on to target.’
Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘Bullshit,’ he hissed. ‘They know our fucking location.’ He grabbed the sat phone. ‘This is Harker,’ he stated. ‘What are you fucking playing at? We’re about to lose the darkness and we’ve got enemy strongholds on two sides. We don’t have to be on the ground to direct the air strike. We’re coming back on that Chinook.’
A crackly pause. And then a voice on the other end, which Jack recognised as belonging to the MoD goon back at Bastion.
‘Negative,’ it said. ‘We’re monitoring Taliban Icom chatter. They are unaware of your movements. Repeat, they are unaware of your movements. Your instructions are to laser mark the cave entrance from a distance. We’ll send a chopper in to pick you up once the caves are destroyed.’
Jack shoved the sat phone back at Fly. ‘Idiots,’ he hissed. He looked out into the desert – the black night was turning to the steely grey of dawn. They were going to be lit up like a fucking Christmas tree any minute now. He spoke into the radio again. ‘We don’t need eight men to lase the cave. I’m sending four back in the Chinook.’
A pause. And then . . .
‘Affirmative.’
Jack scowled. He turned to Stenton. ‘Looks like they want to make very sure your little cave system gets permanently put out of action.’
‘It’s not
my
cave system,’ Stenton replied. At least she had the decency to look concerned about Jack’s outburst. Not that Jack gave a shit. He knew he’d have to decide who was staying and who was going.
‘Red, stay with me. We’ll RV with Pixie and Al.’ As he spoke he heard the sound of the Chinook approaching. ‘The rest of you,’ he shouted over the noise of the chopper, ‘back to base. No questions. You’re escorting the Prof back to Bastion. Get on with it.’
Shaking their heads, the unit started gathering their gear. Jack nodded at Red and the two of them picked up the container once more.
‘
Don’t drop it!
’ Stenton shouted over the noise of the aircraft touching down. Jack and Red ignored her and hurried with the flight case towards the back of the Chinook where the tailgate was already opening. They carried it up into the belly of the helicopter, then laid it carefully on the ground. Stenton was right by them. She held out one hand to Jack. ‘Nice to meet you, Captain Harker,’ she said, one eyebrow slightly raised.
Jack just gave her a flat, unfriendly stare, then turned and alighted from the aircraft along with Red just as Fly, Dunc, Dukey and Frankie got on.
The tailgate rose, then the chopper lifted into the air and flew off, its Apache chaperone hovering close above it, leaving the remaining members of the unit on the ground.
05.13 hrs.
Jack and Red hadn’t waited around. The sky was getting brighter by the minute. They’d immediately headed south again into the desert, moving silently and keeping to the low ground as they hurried the klick to where Pixie was on stag, signalled to Al to join them, then turned to look back at the hills where the cave system was located.
‘I’ll sort it,’ said Pixie.
‘Make sure you use your good eye,’ said Red. ‘I don’t want you lasing my arsehole.’
Pixie grinned at him. He carried the laser target designator twenty metres away up a gentle slope so that he had a direct line of sight back north towards the hills; then he clicked the khaki scope on to its small tripod before crouching down and peering through the viewfinder and focusing the apparatus on the cave mouth. There was a small whirring of machinery as Pixie charged up the LTD.
Jack got back on the sat phone while Red and Frankie took up positions on either side of him, pointing their weapons to the west and east.
‘Zero Alpha, this is Delta Five One. We’re in position. Over.’
A crackle. ‘Roger that.’ It was Matt Cooper, the ops officer. ‘Fast air two minutes away. We’ll have you out of there very soon, Jack.’
Jack didn’t reply. They held their position and waited for the F-16 to arrive.
Silence on the radio.
‘Come on,’ Jack muttered. ‘Come on, come on, come on . . .’
They waited.
A burst of activity from the radio.
‘
Delta Five One! Delta Five One! You’ve got company!
’
Jack grabbed the handset. ‘What the fuck do you mean?’
‘Icom chatter. Jack, you’ve got Taliban approaching from the south, the west and the east. They think they know where you are. They’re less than five hundred metres away.’
‘How many?’
‘Impossible to say, but they sound confident.’
‘
Exfiltrate us now!
’ Jack roared. ‘
Now, Matt!
’
‘The chopper’s on its way.’
‘How long?’
A pause.
‘
How fucking long, Matt?
’
‘Three minutes. Coming in from the north.’
Three minutes. In situations like this, it was a lifetime. Jack addressed Red and Al. ‘Did you get all that?’
‘Yeah,’ Al spat. ‘We got it. How the fuck did they get so close without us seeing them?’
The same thought had been going through Jack’s head. ‘They must have clocked us the moment we landed.’ He shouted up at Pixie. ‘
Have you lased the target?
’
Pixie looked over his shoulder and held up one thumb.
‘
Get down!
’ Jack shouted.
But too late.
The round came from the west, hitting Pixie square in his left shoulder. The SAS man fell to the ground, knocking the LTD on to its side. The remaining three members of the unit acted immediately. Red started firing slow, regular shots into the air towards where the round had come from; Al covered them to the east with one Minimi and Jack to the south with another while they moved, as quickly as they could, up towards where Pixie was lying.
He was still alive, but his shoulder was buggered. His arm was hanging limply and it was immediately obvious to Jack that he was going to lose it. His face was white and sweating and his breathing was short and irregular. Jack lowered his weapon and pulled out a morphine injection from his ops waistcoat, quickly breaking off the safety tab at the end of its plastic coffin and punching it down through Pixie’s clothes and into the skin of his thigh. He didn’t say anything – no words of comfort, no ‘We’re going to get you out of here,’ because he knew Pixie didn’t want any of that bullshit.
And besides, there wasn’t time.
Jack could see the enemy now, advancing on three sides, their heads appearing and disappearing behind the undulating terrain. The ones coming from the west were the closest – about fifty metres away. Jack turned to Al, who had the LASM slung over his shoulder.
‘
Let them have it!
’
Al didn’t need telling twice. He lowered his rifle. Getting down on one knee he rested the back end of the LASM over his right shoulder, took a moment to correct his aim, and then fired.
A whizzing sound, then an immense bang as the thermobaric round found its target to the south. It had an immediate effect on the advancing enemy, who hit the ground and started shouting. Jack knew it wouldn’t keep them back for long, though, and they still had Taliban advancing from two other sides, over the brow of the ridges to the west and east. They were seventy-five metres away and swarming.
A thumping sound.
‘
RPG!
’ Red shouted, and the three men standing hit the ground. Jack felt a sharp rush of air as the grenade whizzed over them, missing them by inches but starbursting twenty-five metres beyond them – sufficiently far away for its shrapnel to miss them, but only by a metre or so.
Pixie’s whole body was shaking now. He needed attention, and fast, but they were pinned down, unable to move. ‘
We need that fucking chopper!
’ Al bellowed.
And it was just as he spoke that the Black Hawk appeared over the brow of the hills to the north, a kilometre away. It sped towards them, skirting low above the desert – so low that it kicked up clouds of sand as it went. Seconds later it was hovering right above them, filling their ears with the noise of its engines.
It hung in the air for a moment, thirty metres high. And then its gunner started firing in bursts.
Thirty-cal rounds from the chopper’s minigun ripped through the air, accompanied by the orange light of tracer rounds like molten metal and the mechanical chugging of the weapon. The gunner fired first towards the westernmost flank of the advancing enemy. Then the Black Hawk spun in the air, moving in a semicircle so its weaponry hit the enemy to the south and then to the east, before going back on itself to give them all a second helping. The guns fell silent and the aircraft lowered itself down on to the sand, no more than five metres from where Jack was standing.
Jack, Red and Al moved quickly. Jack handed Red his M16, then he and Al each grabbed one end of Pixie’s body while Red, a rifle in each hand, fired quick single rounds towards the enemy. The side door of the chopper was already open – Jack recognised a couple of lads from the Parachute Regiment inside. They helped him and Al get Pixie on board.
Jack turned, just in time to see another RPG flying just forward from where Red was firing on the enemy still advancing from the west. Christ, these fuckers had been hit with thermobaric rounds from the LASM, thirty-cals from the Black Hawk and now Red was raining M16 rounds on them, but they wouldn’t lie down and die.
‘
Get in the chopper!
’ he shouted at his friend. ‘
Let’s get the fuck out of here!
’
Red was happy to oblige. He and Jack launched themselves into the aircraft. As it rose into the air, Red continued to fire down on the enemy while the pilots spun the bird round, pointing it to the north – the only direction they could travel if they were going to get out of the range of the Taliban’s rockets.
Jack turned his attention to Pixie. He was stretched out on the floor of the aircraft, his eyes were closed, but he was breathing – just. One of the Paras was fixing a tourniquet at the top of his shoulder just above where the round had entered. Another was inserting a saline drip into his good arm. His face was grim. ‘He needs a hospital!’ he yelled.
But the hospital at Bastion was fifteen minutes away.
Red had stopped firing and had his back pressed against the wall of the chopper, his face covered in sand and sweat, a picture of exhaustion. ‘They knew where we were,’ he gasped. ‘It was a fucking ambush.’
Jack nodded. Red was right. He also knew that if they didn’t get Pixie back to base quickly, he’d pay for it with his life.
He looked out of the side of the chopper. The sky was much lighter now, and he could see the desert below. As they flew over the brow of the hills, the ground grew much closer. And it was just then that Jack saw them.
Even from a height they were easy to distinguish. They wore black and white keffiyehs and khaki camouflage jackets; on their shoulders each man carried a weapon. From this distance Jack couldn’t make out the weapons precisely, but he had a pretty good idea what they were.
‘We’re going to take a hit!’ he yelled at the pilots up front, but with their headsets and the noise of the engines they perhaps didn’t hear him. ‘
We’re going to take a hit!
’
Jack saw the rockets coming towards them. They didn’t hit the chopper, but they starburst all around like some colourless, metallic firework display. It only took a second for pieces of that showering shrapnel to make contact with the heli, but that moment happened in horrible slow motion. Jack instinctively grabbed hold of the webbing on the side of the chopper, listening to a hailstone sound of metal on metal. He braced himself.
A massive explosion as more shrapnel hit the undercarriage of the aircraft.
A high-pitched warning alarm that started beeping inside the helicopter.
A thunder of fire as the side gunner started manically discharging his Minigun.
A sickening jolt.
A burst of heat that felt like it was scorching the skin from Jack’s face.
They started to spin.
The chopper filled with smoke – thick, black smoke that it was impossible to see through. Jack heard himself choking as they continued to spin blindly towards the ground. Instinctively he grabbed harder on to the webbing, but then, through the smoke, he saw Pixie. The wounded man was rolling across the floor of the Black Hawk towards the opening at the side.
‘
Get him!
’ he shouted, but in the noise and confusion Jack didn’t know if anyone had heard him. He moved almost without thinking, hurling himself at Pixie’s body as it continued to tumble towards the side. He grabbed him by the ankle and tried to pull him, but the forces were too great and instead he found himself slipping towards the exit along with his comrade.
Suddenly Pixie’s body was half out of the chopper, and he was bringing Jack with him.
Jesus, he could see the fucking sand.
Twenty metres and getting closer. He yanked at his mate’s ankle in one final, desperate attempt to get him back into the chopper, but it was no good.

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