by Damien Lewis
‘OK, so I’m going to run through it one more time, just to make sure you guys know what you’re up to. But this time, you’re going to tell me how we do it, right? So, let’s start at the beginning. You lot are on patrol and you’re taking point. Now, let’s say you spot a big, easily recognisable rock and you choose that as your first muster point if your patrol gets compromised. How d’you indicate to the rest of the blokes in your patrol that that’s your first ERV?’
By lunchtime the mission briefings and rehearsals were finally over. As Mat, Sam and the other lads came out of the hangar they spotted a further flight of C-130s putting down on the runway. These turned out to be carrying a large force of SAS – the majority of two squadrons. It was barely three days since the SBS had seized Bagram and it seemed that everyone wanted a slice of the action. But with the airbase secured there would be little for the SAS lads to do but sit around killing time and awaiting their mission orders – just as the SBS had been forced to do before them. As for Mat and Sam, they’d be departing for the Naka Valley mission that night.
Winter on the Afghan front line was harsh for Ali, Ahmed and the other brothers. They had deployed to trenches positioned around a battle-scarred and run-down ex-Soviet base. All drinking water came from a nearby stream, which was also where they washed, and the freezing waters came straight off the mountainside. Every morning in the pre-dawn light Ali had to shake himself awake from his bedroll and break the ice on the stream, so that he could make his first ablutions of the day. As a Muslim, he had to undertake wudu – the ritual washing of his hands, face and feet – before making each of his five daily prayers to Allah.
Now that the Nineteen Lions had unleashed the wrath of Allah on the Great Satan the brothers knew that war was upon them. The American air attacks had started already, hitting strategic targets all across the country. Soon, there would be a ground offensive and the brothers knew that they had to be ready. They had started training with some of the heavier weapons that the Taliban had in their arsenal. That morning, after breakfast, Ahmed had the brothers gather around an ancient, Soviet-era DShK ‘Dushka’ machine gun. The massive, 12.7mm heavy machine gun (HMG) was suspended on a tripod that had clearly seen better days.
‘Do I have a volunteer, brothers?’ a grinning Ahmed asked, looking around at the assembled group. ‘There is not much to it really. It is just like an AK47, but bigger. You aim it in the same way – you line up the sights, hold the big gun very steady and squeeze the trigger. And the target we will make that old Soviet Gaz jeep over there. And, insh’Allah, the godless American infidels driving the jeep, they will be no more. So, who’s my first volunteer?’
There was a second or so’s silence and as no one else seemed that keen, Ali stepped forward.
‘I’ll give it a go, brother,’ he remarked, quietly.
‘So, Brother Ali the Lion Cub is the one to volunteer again,’ Ahmed announced. ‘The rest of you are not so keen to be shouhada’a – martyrs – so quickly? Fine, Brother Ali, then it is all yours.’
As Ali prepared to fire the weapon, Ahmed and the rest of the brothers backed off a good distance. Ali slammed the first of the rounds into the Dushka’s heavy breech and glanced over at the others. Though it was still early morning, the sun was already beating down from a hot Afghan sky and Ali could feel the sweat pouring off his forehead. As he squinted through the sights of the weapon and tried to line up the target, it kept dripping into his eyes. Taking his hand off the machine gun for a second, he wiped away the moisture and dirt, but still he couldn’t stop it from obstructing his vision. None of the brothers were exactly rushing forward to help him, either.
‘There is one more thing, brother,’ Ahmed called over from where he was standing. ‘When you fire the gun, remember to keep shouting “Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!” as loud as you can. If you do not do this, the concussion from that gun when it is firing can blow your eardrums.’
Ali lined up the metal sights on the wreck of the Gaz jeep as best he could. It was a rusting hulk of a thing, some five hundred metres away across the flat, hard-packed desert. It clearly hadn’t been driven by anyone, anywhere for a very long time. But in his mind’s eye, Ali could now see a group of American soldiers together with their Afghan guide crouched over the wheel of the jeep, powering across the desert, oblivious to the destructive power that he was about to unleash on them. What would they be doing in there? he wondered, excitedly. Eating some dehydrated rations? Chewing gum? Drinking from their flasks and chatting about their girls back home? It didn’t matter, really, did it? All that mattered was that they were infidels who had invaded a Muslim country and slaughtered Muslims. This is what jihad is all about, Ali told himself, as he tightened his grip around the trigger. This is what jihad is all about. This is what I came here for.
Ali gradually increased the pressure, waiting for the trigger point. As he did so he started yelling, ‘Allahu Akhbar! Allah Akh –!’ But he never got to finish the last word. The firing pin slammed home and as it did so his world just exploded around him. Flames and smoke shot out in front of him, as the massive weapon rocked back on its tripod, the force of the recoil of each of the heavy-calibre rounds tearing into his shoulder muscles. Suddenly Ali’s world had become one of the deafening roar of the gun, of the pain in his upper torso, and of the smoke and concussion of the weapon firing.
As a series of rounds tore into the Gaz jeep, punching massive rents in the rusted bodywork, it just seemed to crumple before him. Again, in his mind’s eye, he could see the US soldiers, now being cut to pieces by the massive destructive power of the gun. This is what I have come here for, he told himself again, with grim satisfaction. To kill the kafir, the infidels, the unbelievers. To kill them all. Then Ali watched, transfixed, as a massive blast convulsed the dry desert air and the jeep just seems to vaporise. Whatever petrol had been left in the Gaz’s fuel tank had just ignited, throwing a huge mushroom cloud of black, oily smoke high into the air. As debris from the exploding jeep clattered to earth, Ali ceased firing.
After the deafening roar of the giant machine gun, the desert seemed strangely silent. Ali sat there behind the smoking gun, unsure of what to do next. He heard footsteps approaching from behind him, and then Ahmed was clapping him on the shoulders and congratulating him on a job well done. Ali felt as if his legs were about to buckle under him, after the strain of operating the huge weapon. He was grateful when he felt Ahmed lifting him out of the gun carriage and placing a conspiratorial arm around him.
‘This is very good shooting, Brother Ali,’ Ahmed said, as he helped Ali to stand. ‘If there had been any of our American friends inside that vehicle – that Humvee – they would all have gone to their infidel hell by now, that is if they even have one.’
‘Insh’Allah,’ Ali replied. ‘May the grace of Allah keep us safe from this American bombing so that I may get the chance to use this weapon for real, brother.’
‘Insh’Allah, brother,’ Ahmed replied, ‘insh’Allah. But I think it’s not just the Americans that you will need to be protected from. You’ll need all the protection of all the Holy Prophets, peace be upon them, if you truly want to be a Dushka gunner. Nine times out of ten, brother, the Dushka destroys the target and kills the kafir. But there is always the chance that a round explodes in the barrel, and then it will take your arm off in the process.’
Ali looked up at Ahmed sharply.
‘Oh yes,’ he continued, ‘it will take your arm right off. Or, if you are really lucky and the tripod is as old and worn as is this one, it just collapses with the force of the recoil, so crushing you. One minute you would be there, brother, bravely firing the weapon. The next you would be gone, crushed under the weight of the weapon. A martyr. And would that not be great and glorious? For then you would have gone to join the other shouhada’a and your seventy-two virgins in Paradise.’
Ali looked down at the still-smoking Dushka. He noticed that the breech was held together by nothing more than a length of twisted wire, a
nd that the tripod was worn and badly buckled and missing several bolts from the mounting. Which meant that the giant machine gun was about as well maintained and functional as most of the other weapons that they were using.
‘Did you not wonder why the rest of the brothers stood so far back from that thing when you were firing it?’ Ahmed continued, nodding at the Dushka. ‘The answer, Brother Ali, is that although they all may want to be shouhada’a, they let you volunteer, because they wanted you to have the chance to be the lucky one, the shaheed. That is the truly great thing about the jihad, brother – how blessed we all are by Allah: either you kill the kafir, the unbelievers, which is the very essence of jihad, or you are killed, and then you are swiftly off to join the Prophet in Paradise.’
Beneath his jovial air, Ali knew that Ahmed was deadly serious. Most of the foreign fighters that he’d met so far seemed to desire nothing more that to meet a rapid and violent end in battle. They were actively seeking to be martyrs, at the first available opportunity. They were rushing headlong towards death, embracing the promise of eternal Paradise. It was this unyielding death wish that Ali found so difficult to understand. Why were they so desperate to find death, he wondered, when there were so many of the cursed enemy out there to kill?
As far as Ali was concerned every mujahid was a volunteer and an individual and free to speak his own mind. In the training camp he’d had several discussions with the other brothers concerning this death wish. Ali had argued that the true mujahid should not seek the quickest route to death and the reward of Paradise. He should fight purely for the cause, for the jihad, and seek no reward for himself at all. He should wage the jihad with ultimate selfless dedication. As Ali had explained all this to his brothers, he had found himself earning a new respect in their eyes. Many had concluded that they should be more like him, because he was on the purest path of jihad seeking no reward.
Ali cherished the respect that he was earning from the other brothers. He walked tall in the knowledge that he was a true mujahid. And he longed for the day when he could prove himself so in battle.
4
IN HARM’S WAY
ON THE NIGHT of 12 November, Mat, Sam and the Team 6 lads set off on stage one of the Naka Valley mission. They deployed by Chinook to a forward mounting base (FMB), an old fort some twenty kilometres short of their destination. From here Mat and his team would travel on into the Naka Valley, scale one of its highest peaks and set up a covert observation position. They would then feed back intelligence on the terrorist activities they observed. This would be used to plan the US air strikes, which were scheduled to take place in nine days’ time. They would guide in those air strikes using laser target designators (LTDs) – a portable device used for ‘painting’ the target with a laser beam, so that a guided munition could home in on it.
The FMB turned out to be a mud-walled Afghan fort, with a few single-storey buildings clustered along one wall. The fort was small by Afghan standards, some two hundred yards from end to end, and there were sixty US military personnel of Task Force Dagger based there. For these Delta Force and CIA operators accommodation was pretty basic: camp beds slung in the open or under a sheet of canvas. The fort’s main gates were just tall enough to allow US Army trucks to enter. The walls were thirty feet high and topped off by battlements, from where defenders in ancient times would have shot at an attacking enemy. Little seemed to have changed, as the fort kept on being attacked by probing AQT patrols. No one knew the exact number of enemy in the region surrounding the fort. But the attacks were taking place on a more or less daily basis and the fort was on a permanent high state of alert.
After a few hours’ snatched sleep Mat and his team began planning the mission ahead of them. At first they considered deploying directly from the fort into the Naka Valley by chopper. Mat was dead keen on the idea, especially as it meant that they wouldn’t have to hump in all their own gear on their backs. But the more he and his men looked into it, the less feasible that option became. They had been warned during the briefings that the enemy were dug in on the ridgelines at around 10,000 feet. They were just waiting for a heavily loaded allied chopper to fly over within range of their hand-held surface-to-air missiles (US Stingers and Soviet SAMs). The mujahidin had learned this method of attack when fighting the Red Army, and the British and American assault planners felt certain that they would now repeat such tactics wherever possible.
And there were other drawbacks with getting choppered into the Naka Valley. First, any flight into the area – even at night – risked alerting the enemy to the arrival of British and US forces. That would mean that Mat’s team would have been compromised before the mission even began. Second, the peaks around the Naka Valley were over 12,000 feet high, which was approaching the limit of the Chinook’s operating ceiling. The choppers would be laden down with more than a dozen SBS operators and flight crew, extra fuel, food supplies, water and weapons. So it would be touch and go as to whether the aircraft would actually be able to make it. And no one fancied making a crash landing in the middle of hostile territory. Eventually, Mat, Sam and the Team 6 lads were forced to conclude that flying into the Naka Valley was a non-starter.
Once he knew that the air route wasn’t feasible, Mat went to have a chat with the US base commander about their possible onward deployment overland. The man in charge at the fort was a charismatic Delta Force officer known as ‘Commander Jim’. It was late afternoon when Mat found him sitting outside his tent in an easy chair, sporting a Stetson and enjoying a cold beer. Mat got stuck in straight away and began a detailed explanation of the nature of his mission: that he and his team needed to get dropped on the outskirts of the ‘Knackered Valley’, as they’d started calling it; that they’d then have to yomp over the mountain ranges with all their kit, set up a covert OP and stay there for several days getting eyes on the enemy targets; that this was all in preparation for the mother of all air bombardments, to be carried out by US warplanes.
‘You’re what?’ Commander Jim said, once Mat had finished outlining the mission. He tipped his Stetson back on his head a little to get a proper look at Mat. ‘Buddy, you’re tellin’ me you’re gonna walk in there with enough kit for a week’s mission? Up them mountain peaks, n’all? You know how fuckin’ high they are? What are you Brits, goddam mules or somethin’?’
‘I reckon,’ Mat replied, with a grin. ‘Talking of bleedin’ mules, you don’t happen to have a couple knocking around the fort, do you, mate? We could do with some to carry all of our kit in.’
‘I mean, we’ll get you in there all right, I ain’t worried none about that,’ the Delta commander continued, ignoring Mat’s joke. ‘We’ll get you some 10th Mountain boys and an escort of Humvees, some Predator drones up top as eyes in the sky, and we’ll snuck y’all in there under cover of darkness. Piece of cake, buddy. I ain’t worried none about that. It’s the next part of your mission I ain’t too sure of. You’re gonna walk in there for a week’s duration? Carryin’ all your kit n’all? I mean, all your goddam water? Man, that shit is heavy. Then you gonna just hide away in them rocks – which’re crawlin’ with al-Qaeda and Taliban – and then just walk right on out of there again after it’s all over and done with. After our flyboys have flattened the whole place. Is that it? Is that your plan? I mean, I’m just kinda checking to see if I heard you right.’
‘More or less, mate,’ Mat replied. ‘It’s sort of pretty standard stuff for us. It’s just the next leg to get us into the Knackered Valley – that’s where we need your help.’
‘Well, all I can say, buddy, is that they must make you guys pretty goddam tough over there in England.’ The Delta commander disappeared into his tent and came back with a map and a couple more beers. ‘Right, buddy, crack open a beer cos by God you deserve it, and let’s take a look-see at the map here. Now, this is the shit-hole where y’all are now, see? And that there’s your intended destination, ’bout fifteen miles away, I guess. Now, the roads between there an’ here were first made in h
ell and haven’t been worked on much since. But we’ve driven ’em and we know ’em – so we can get y’all in there all right. Question is, where exactly d’you wanna get to before, you know – Jesus – we just drop you off with your packs and you begin your 12,000-foot climb?’
‘Round about here,’ Mat replied, pointing out a mountain peak straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
‘Right, you folks are part of Task Force Dagger, aren’t ya?’ Commander Jim asked, levelling his steely-grey eyes at Mat.
‘Far as I know, mate, we are, yeah,’ Mat answered.
‘Well, OK, then it’s fine by me. We got permission from the Paks that our Task Force Dagger boys can chase these Talibuttfuck motherfuckers right into their country if we have to. Only problem is, nearest we can take you boys to is around here – ’bout, let me see, eight miles or so short of where you wanna get to. After that, even the roads made in hell run out. Far as we know it’s all just mountains, bush and Injun country from there on in. Maybe there’s some old tracks and paths in there someplace, but if there is we ain’t looked for ’em or used ’em.’
‘Reckon we’ll be yomping in from around about there then, eh?’ Mat said, indicating the proposed drop-off point on the map.
‘Whatever you say, buddy. So, when d’you wanna start? Just give me a day to get the Predators sorted, then it’ll be overnight we’ll take you in there. Hell, the drive in there takes, you know, about eight hours or so. Sounds long, but we’ll be crawlin’ in there in convoy and them roads is real bad, lethal, and we’ll be checkin’ ahead for the bad guys all the time. We’ll leave here around 2000 hours, kinda gives us time to get you in and us out again under cover of darkness. Means we’ll be dropping you sometime around 0400. Hell, but I just thought of somethin’.’ The Delta commander tipped his hat back and scratched his forehead. ‘We maybe got us a problem … You folks ain’t gonna wanna do most of your climb in daylight, are ya?’
