Lethal Shot

by Robert Driscoll

  Regardless of title, it was great to have an extra pair of hands, let alone a pair that belonged to someone so qualified. Come the last night in camp, I was even more relieved to have him with us. Just because there was nothing left to guard didn’t mean we weren’t a target. The powers that be disagreed. They decided that three of us – with no heavy artillery or military defences – were enough to guard a compound that three times our number had long struggled to defend. Thank God for Pinky!

  More by luck than judgement we made it through the night and the next morning we handed Mulladad back to the family. They were all set to be annoyed at the changes we made until they walked in and found their home in a 1-million per cent better state than that in which they’d handed it over to us. We’d repaired walls roofs and plumbing, and done the garden. And they’d been paid for the trouble.

  * * *

  The decision to move us meant a 2-square-kilometre region without a patrol. The road that stretched directly north from Shazaad to Taalander, with Mulladad between them, had been one of the easiest to guard. Abandoning the CP was a gamble, but in light of Toki, Command wanted to move personnel closer to the action. So it was that by the end of June my multiple was moving into Daqhiqh, about 3 kilometres north of Al Blackman’s Omar. Considering Devon and Dorset had already seen significant kinetic activity, with the attack on Steve McCulley’s convoy and the Kamiabi raid, all the intel said Cornwall was a valuable target. If you can imagine a dual carriageway with the central reservation being a 5-metre-wide canal, over 3.5 metres deep in places, an attack along there would cut off supply to a lot of places. Visibility from Omar was good. With clear skies they could see about 3 kilometres in all directions. At the other end of the stretch, Daqhiqh should be able to take up the slack.

  Daqhiqh wasn’t a new checkpoint, although it was new to the British. If you think of a clockface, with Shazaad in the centre, the area of British responsibility ran from about midnight around to 2.15. All the CPs under our jurisdiction were within that segment. The Americans, Afghans and troops from other NATO countries controlled elsewhere. The place we were moving into had previously been under Estonian authority.

  We were driven from Shazaad in a couple of Mastiffs and a reinforced HGV with wheels taller than me and metal plating a foot deep. We had a ton of heavy artillery and surveillance kit. I was met by the Estonian commander, a gorilla of a man – 6 foot 7 if he was an inch – and with a thick accent that made him sound like a James Bond villain. If he’d wanted to make us feel as welcome as the paras at Mulladad had made me feel, it could have got sticky, but he was nice enough. I’d go so far as to say all the Estonians were happy to see us, relieved even. Then I realised why: our tour length was seven months including a break. The Estonians were stationed for a whole year – with no let-off. Several of them were on their third or fourth tour. And I thought we had it bad. No wonder they looked like shit. But I couldn’t talk. The change in me and the rest of the lads after three months was noticeable. We were all becoming those ghosts that haunted Camp Bastion.

  ‘While you get yourself sorted,’ the commander said, ‘we’re going on patrol.’

  They hadn’t been gone long when we heard an explosion.

  ‘IED!’

  I jumped on the radio to the commander. ‘Is everything okay? Are you under attack?’

  ‘It was just a mine,’ he said, totally chilled.

  ‘Did someone step on it?’

  ‘No, we detonated it with a grenade. It shouldn’t bother anyone else now.’

  Wow. That makes perfect sense.

  I thought back to the to-ing and fro-ing of messages when we discovered an IED. Not only couldn’t we destroy the thing, but we had to guard it until the investigators could come and sieve it for evidence.

  On reflection? Give me the Estonian model any day …

  * * *

  The compound was big, about the size of two football pitches. Obviously the owners were pretty wealthy, although the ISAF forces had pushed the boundaries out here and there to include one of the jerubs (fields) and part of a stream. It even had room on the far east for a gravel area that served as a helicopter landing site (HLS).

  It needed to be big. In the short term at least. As well as my multiple of fifteen men we had our two translators, a new Navy medic (for Jonesy had returned to Taalander), a Recce troop with us plus a team of engineers who were going to build further security walls from Hesco bastion as well as offices, canteens, sanitary blocks and numerous other buildings. Throw in the Estonians as well and we would have swamped a lot of the other CPs.

  Across the road from us was a small compound. Beyond that, stretching to the west of us, were fields. Fields and more fields, all bordered with trees. Like so much of the region, viewed from above it’s a patchwork quilt of a place.

  The western side of the CP housed our work space, all the living accommodation, our vehicles and the super-sangar. If you imagine that as bottom left of the CP, there was another sangar at top right. The engineers erected an ops room and meeting rooms and dorms out of sea containers, powered by generators they installed. It was not modern by any means, but coming from the mud hut we were used to it felt state-of-the-art. I actually chose to pitch a 9 x 9 tent with some of the other senior guys between the super-sangar and the ops room. If anything happened, I wanted to be able to roll out of bed and into the fray. Until the handover we’d be looking after the south of the compound and the Estonians the north. We couldn’t wait to get the whole lot – their bit had the cool, refreshing river.

  While the ‘makeover’ of the compound was going on, and with so many bodies guarding the camp, I took the lads out on a recce to our local CPs. The first one had to be Omar, which had now become an internal CP. They’d suffered such casualties in Toki and this was the first chance my lads and Al Blackman’s had got to talk about it. I didn’t know what to say to Al himself. He was gutted he hadn’t gone. I think only so many times you can say, ‘There’s nothing anyone could have done.’ We’re all brothers, but Sam Alexander – a member of his troop – and Kaz – from his multiple – were two of his good friends.

  Another reason for dropping in, obviously, was because Al was able to talk us through the entire region. He had the full tactical picture: terrain to watch out for, compounds of interest, locals not to trust.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to tell us who to trust?’

  ‘Yeah. And as soon as I think of someone I’ll tell you.’

  He never did.

  * * *

  When the makeover was done, the engineers and transport disappeared leaving us and twenty Estonians. Before we could take over completely the Estonians needed to move out their kit. This had to be done extremely clinically. As their machine gun and mount came out, ours needed to be ready to go in. You can’t afford to be without defences for a second in that place. It wasn’t a quick job. They would say, ‘At ten o’clock we will remove the two heavy machine guns from the northwestern sangar,’ so at 10 o’clock one of my guys would be standing there with two of our GPMGs to replace the Estonians’ weapons.

  It was incredibly well worked-out, so I had to take my hat off to the Estonians for that. But I don’t think they appreciated quite how different – or how advanced – some of the equipment we had brought was. As we gradually took over the majority of the camp there was little else for the Estonians to do than patrol. For their penultimate sortie, the friendly gorilla took me to their ops room and showed me a map on the wall.

  He said, ‘We’re going to go to this compound first, moving on to this compound, then this compound and these three.’ They were basically doing a full 360-degree patrol, hitting all the nearest compounds on the perimeter of the camp.

  ‘Good to know,’ I said. ‘We will keep an eye on you.’

  From the enthusiasm with which he said ‘Yes’, I imagine he just thought that our sentries would be watching out for them.

  Even with a camera mounted 3 metres above the 5-metre super-sangar giv
ing the best visibility I’d ever known in a CP, because of the trees lining every field we could only see so far. Which is where our high-tech heat-recognition surveillance system came in very handy.

  I went over to the particular sea container that passed for our ops room. We weren’t planning on being sneaky, but it soon felt like it. Using the surveillance system, we watched the Estonians set off for the first compound. They obviously knew the area better than we did. Even so, compounds can be very dangerous places so we kept a close eye on the thermal imagery.

  Suddenly Fergie said, ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re coming back.’

  I studied the screen. ‘Are they under attack?’

  A pause.

  ‘I can’t see anyone else. Can you?’

  No one could. Yet there were the twenty Estonians all walking away from the compound without having so much as knocked on the door.

  ‘What are they up to?’ Fergie said. ‘Do you want me to call them?’

  (At Toki we’d had full-time radio ops. Back at a smaller CP it was more DIY.)

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s see how this plays out.’

  For the next thirty minutes we watched on the screen as the giant commander and his team moved parallel with our compound wall while keeping firmly on the other side of the trees.

  ‘It’s almost like they don’t want to be seen …’

  Not only did they not go into the first compound, they didn’t even bother heading to the second, the third, or any of the others. Instead they made a beeline for the point of Daqhiqh closest to the trees, and made a bolt for the wall. Then following it like a handrail, they walked around to the south of the compound – the furthest point from the sentries and our men – and sat down. And that’s where they stayed for three hours, smoking, laughing and sleeping.

  Eventually they took up a southern route towards the direction of the last compound, then turned sharply and eventually arrived at the CP door proclaiming, ‘Everything’s fine, nothing of interest out there.’

  I can’t even begin to list the rules those guys had broken but, you know what? Even before they returned, I said to the lads in the command room, ‘It’s been a giggle. We don’t know what shit they’ve had to put up with the last year. Let’s just keep this to ourselves.’ According to all the Estonian reports, Daqhiqh had been a

  particularly benign posting for the last four or five months. That is, if they’d actually undertaken any patrols at all. Even Toki might look harmless if you never set foot outside.

  For my own sanity, I had to believe the Estonians were telling the truth. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  * * *

  The Estonians were in a sense unlucky in that they caught us on a relatively cool day. Within a few weeks we’d discover that the heat cameras couldn’t cope with the local temperatures. Looking south it didn’t matter because we had a virtually unobstructed view along Cornwall to Omar thanks to the straight-as-a-die canal running along the west side of the road. All other directions were obscured by the trees and vegetation. Not even our 5-metre super-sangar could see clearly over those.

  But the Estonians didn’t lie about everything. On their final night they promised us a feast, and they delivered on that promise. We had barbecued goat, a surprising number of different vegetables plus some of the harshest paint stripper posing as alcohol you can imagine. It was hard on the lads I had to keep on sentry watch but at least they didn’t get gut rot from the liquor.

  The next day the Estonians drove off in their interesting-looking vehicles, resembling a procession from Star Wars. They’d been gone barely an hour when a few of the more creative lads had transformed the narrow stream into a large pool by a damming part it, slowing the water flow and causing it to flood. The result was a large, cool pool – perfect for June temperatures in the 50s. It didn’t stop there. The next day they spray-painted palm trees on the walls of the compound and later found wood to make a decking area. Overnight this grim corner of a war zone was transformed into a little oasis.

  All we need now is the pizza oven.

  * * *

  Estonian forces in Afghanistan had been under-strength, but the multiple housed at Daqhiqh was much larger than ours. When they left, the number of us for such a huge camp felt positively paltry. Throw in the fact that it was now July and the R&R season was in full swing, and I was seriously worried about being able to maintain security at the CP as well as conduct patrols. There were only fifteen of us to start with. Suddenly we were in a cycle where at any time two men would be missing, and not just for their allotted fortnight back home. Throw in the journey time to Bastion and back and you were looking at another four or five days. Virtually another week.

  It stank. I don’t believe it should have been sanctioned. Look at the numbers: during the night we had four people on sentry. We had one guy in the ops room and others getting ready to come on for their shifts, so at any given time you have six people or more working or getting ready to work. That’s tight when your multiple is fifteen. Knock that down to thirteen and suddenly if you want to patrol you’re splitting your manpower 50/50. And what if someone gets ill? Or injured? Forget about the craziness of setting foot into the Green Zone with barely half a dozen men, how are you meant to relieve the guards if you’ve just got back from patrol? Either we gave up the patrols, we gave up sentry duty or we gave up our sleep.

  One of those would make us ill, but the other two could get us killed. No, scratch that – all of those options could get us killed. Eventually.

  My plea for additional bodies fell on deaf ears at Shazaad, and even at Bastion.

  ‘You’ll just have to make do,’ I was told.

  * * *

  Regardless of numbers, at least with no other agencies at the CP I could get on with my programme. We collated all previous reports on one side of the ops room and had ongoing intel mapped out on the other. The plan was to map the area and identify the buildings and bridges and communities, as we’d done in Mulladad, and bring our badass biometrics to bear on the local population. It was all about collecting and collating intelligence.

  If we got the chance …

  On the first day I thought, Okay, we are a bit light on the ground so we’re not going to stretch ourselves. I picked the local mosque as a destination. It was no more than 600 metres away, reachable at snake pace in an hour. That passed without incident. I had two interpreters this time, so ‘Max’ came out while John stayed behind. He located and introduced me to the local elders. I explained our mission and asked for their help in passing on any information they had about local insurgents or suspicious behaviour. They all agreed, each man Jack of them. As we walked away Fergie radioed me.

  ‘You’re never hearing from them again.’

  ‘I know.’

  For the journey back I decided to get a feel for the area. Daqhiqh had two main gates plus another three improvised entry points so we could do a clockface tour anywhere up to 360 degrees and still get in relatively quickly. It was harder to guard but it did mean that the insurgents couldn’t predict where we’d be exiting when they were setting up their IEDs.

  It was as we were in sight of the CP on our way back that the ICOM started going crazy. This wasn’t one voice shouting obscenities at us. It was dozens.

  The CP was only 200 metres away but it might as well have been a mile. I gave the order to increase vigilance and step up the pace within safe boundaries. It was hard-going, stressful. At moments like that the extra 18 kilos (40 pounds) on your back weighs nothing compared with the pressures on your mind.

  We made it back into the compound without incident, although it didn’t feel that way. We were knackered, drained and confused.

  ‘What the fuck was that about?’ I said. ‘Did we just get away with something massive?’

  ‘Are they messing with us?’ Robbie asked.

  ‘No,’ Max said. ‘They were there. They were planning something. I think
they ran out of time.’

  ‘That should make tomorrow interesting,’ Fergie laughed.

  Which was one word for it …

  * * *

  Instead of going 600 metres the next day, I decided to follow a similar route but push out to 800 metres instead, into an area designated on our maps as ‘Green 13’, then patrol back the other way. Green 13, according to aerial intel, was a junction on Route Devon although no one I met had been there personally.

  En route we met quite a few friendly locals who didn’t seem to mind our being among them. They were used to patrols from Daqhiqh. Mind you, they said, ‘We liked the Estonians. The Estonians did things right.’

  After the thermal imagery cock-up, I was pleased to hear it.

  It was only later that I came to suspect what they actually meant. We were making our way towards a large compound that was on our map but about which we had no information. Obviously the Estonians hadn’t got that far. Biometrically testing as we went, I asked one local who was being logged if he knew the compound owners.