by Damien Lewis
‘Not if we can help it, mate.’
‘All right. Then this is what we’ll do. We’ll aim to drop you guys around 2400 hours – gives you six or seven hours before sun up to get some miles under your belt. An’ that means us doin’ the first leg of the drive from here in the daylight, which should be all right, long as we can keep the fuckin’ Talibuttholes’ heads down. How does that sound, buddy?’
‘Bleedin’ near perfect, mate,’ Mat replied. ‘A good six or seven hours’ darkness to get lost in the hills should do it.’
‘Yeah. Should be plenty of time. Guess you wouldn’t say no to another beer, buddy? Cos you sure as hell won’t be takin’ any with you on that climb, that’s for certain.’ As Commander Jim jumped to his feet to fetch some beers the stiff rim of his Stetson jabbed Mat right in the eye.
‘Hey, mind where you put that hat of yours,’ Mat remarked, tapping the brim of the Stetson with the neck of his beer bottle. ‘That went right in me bleedin’ eye, mate.’
‘No one ever, EVER, touches ma hat,’ Commander Jim growled, anger flashing across his face. ‘Make no mistake about that, buddy.’
With that he turned and stalked back into his tent. Bollocks, Mat thought to himself, as the commander disappeared from view. It looked as if he’d just managed to piss off the one person they needed to get their mission underway and into the Naka Valley. As Mat rubbed his eye – which was stinging like mad and had started streaming tears – Commander Jim came back out with another couple of beers.
‘How’s that eye of yours, buddy?’ he said, flipping the top off a beer and pushing it in Mat’s direction. ‘Guess you folks don’t have ’em much in England, do ya?’
‘Don’t have what, mate?’ Mat asked.
‘Stetsons. Best hat ever made in the whole goddam world,’ Commander Jim responded, with a mischievous gleam in his eye. ‘Now, I’m thinkin’ it’s because you don’t have ’em in England much that you committed the major sin of touchin’ the brim of ma hat with your beer bottle? Am I right?’
‘You’re right, mate,’ Mat said. He reckoned he needed to mollify Commander Jim a little. The best way he could think of doing so was to use a few ‘quaint’ English stereotypes. ‘You know how it is in England, mate. Afternoon tea. The Queen Mum. Cricket. Warm beer. Us blokes don’t go in much for Stetsons over there.’
‘Yeah, I figured. And that’s why I’m not gonna have to kill you. Any other guy touches ma hat, I’d have to whup his ass.’
For a split second Mat almost lost control of himself, and he gave Commander Jim a blank stare. He didn’t appreciate being threatened and had never backed down from a fight in his life. But then he told himself to cool it, as they badly needed Commander Jim’s help with this mission.
‘Sorry for any offence, mate,’ Mat said, with a forced grin. ‘I’m just a dumb Brit who’s only ever seen a Stetson on JR’s head in Dallas, or in them old John Wayne movies.’
‘No offence taken, buddy. Let’s take a drink to your mission,’ the Delta commander replied, as he raised his beer bottle at Mat. ‘I been to England a couple times. My folks are from there way back. Say, buddy, that eye looks to be in a pretty bad way. You need to see the medic or somethin’?’
Later that night, at around 0100 hours, a massive firefight broke out on the outskirts of the fort. One moment Mat and his team were asleep, the next they were wide awake as rounds slammed into the mud walls. An enemy patrol had hit the sleeping base with a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and machine-gun fire. The enemy fighters had somehow worked out how to fire their RPGs at a forty-five-degree angle, so that the grenades acted something like mortar rounds. It increased the operational range of the RPG by three hundred yards or more, and meant that the enemy had a chance of lobbing their grenades over the fort walls. But the RPG was seriously inaccurate when fired in this way. Rounds were firing off all over the place, scorching fiery trails across the dark sky above the fort.
As soon as the attack started, Mat, Sam and the Team 6 lads headed up on to the fort roof to join the US forces returning fire. The enemy had taken cover some three hundred yards away in a heap of jumbled rocks, which meant that they were still within effective range of the SBS soldiers’ Diemaco assault rifles. Mat and his team took cover as best they could and began returning fire, aiming at the muzzle flashes out there in the darkness. It felt good to be finally taking the fight to the enemy. As the skirmish intensified, the two sides exchanged heavy machine-gun fire across the valley floor, the tracer arcing back and forth in the night sky. On their arrival at the base, Commander Jim had warned Mat and his team to expect such night-time attacks. This was the enemy’s way of reminding the US forces that they were out there somewhere, just beyond the walls of the fort. These probing, strafing attacks were designed to test the fort’s defences and provoke Commander Jim into doing something silly.
As the battle escalated, the US forces responded with 50-cal heavy machine-gun fire and mortar rounds. But Commander Jim had decided that this night, he wanted to hit the enemy forces really hard – largely because he knew that he had to get Mat’s patrol out of the fort during daylight hours in the next day or so. And he couldn’t do that if the enemy kept him pinned down in his own base. Some twenty minutes into the firefight, the Delta commander called Mat on his radio and told him to get over to his command post smartish, as there was ‘somethin’ pretty special goin’ down’. Mat scuttled across the fort roof, keeping to the shadows of the battlements so as not to make an easy target for the enemy, wondering as he did so what the US commander had in mind.
‘How’s that eye of yours, buddy?’ Commander Jim asked, as soon as he caught sight of Mat.
‘Bearing up,’ Mat replied, with a grin. ‘How’s that Stetson of yours, mate?’
‘Still allergic to goddam beer bottles,’ Commander Jim growled.
The two men laughed.
‘How many of the fookers d’you reckon there’s out there then, mate?’ Mat asked, nodding in the general direction of the enemy.
‘Aw, not many, say fifteen or so. But they’re sure as hell makin’ a racket and forcin’ us to lose some sleep these last few days.’
‘So, what’s the crack now then?’ Mat asked.
‘You what? The crack? You Brits sure got a strange turn of phrase. I guess you mean “what’s goin’ down”, right? Well, I reckon it’s time to show them Talibuttholes we ain’t puttin’ up with this no more – disturbin’ our sleep n’all. Gonna hit ’em with some JDAMs.’
It turned out that Commander Jim had called in an air strike from some fast air that he had on standby. As the Delta commander began talking the F-18 pilot down on to target, Mat was surprised to hear a female voice coming back to him from the lead aircraft. Commander Jim gave the woman pilot a set of coordinates that pinpointed the enemy muzzle flashes out there in the darkness. Almost before the aircraft was audible there was the unearthly scream of precision-guided munitions rocketing overhead, followed by a series of massive explosions. Two JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions – GPS-guided 2,000-pound bombs) slammed into the enemy positions, followed in quick succession by two more. The giant explosions lit up the night-time scene, momentarily throwing everything – rocks, scrub, squat mud buildings – into stark relief. By the time that darkness had descended again, the enemy guns had fallen silent.
‘Nice shootin’, Thunder Thighs,’ Commander Jim drawled into his radio. ‘I reckon them Talibuttfucks are toast.’
‘You stay safe down there,’ came back the F-18 pilot – whose call sign was actually Thunder Ranger One. ‘I’m goin’ away wet, boys.’
‘Jesus, that’s one horny bitch,’ Commander Jim remarked, as he came off the radio. ‘I’m goin’ away wet. Jesus! Horny little bitch. I wanna kiss your ass, Thunder Ranger, I wanna kiss your beautiful ass.’
‘What’d she mean, “going away wet”?’ Mat asked, feigning ignorance. ‘That some sort of code for mission accomplished or something?’
‘Jesus, it ain’t
just Stetsons you don’t have a lot of over there in England, is it, buddy? You got any women over there? Like, real ones? She means that she’s creamed herself, buddy. An’ she’s doin’ that just to wind us up cos she knows we been down here for days on end and there ain’t no women for a thousand fuckin’ miles around. Not real ones like her, anyways.’
After the air strikes the enemy didn’t trouble the base any further that night. Early the following morning the CIA agent that would be joining Mat’s team arrived by chopper. He introduced himself to the lads as Bob Frankell. He was a short, wiry guy with a big, bushy beard. He was looking flustered. Apparently, he had a huge task ahead of him collating all the intelligence for the forthcoming mission. He quickly made his excuses and disappeared into the CIA’s end of the base. As far as Mat was concerned, CIA Bob looked like he’d spent too much time alone in his log cabin out in the Oregon back woods. Either that, or too long staring at a CIA computer screen. Mat hoped to hell that CIA Bob was going to be up to the challenging mission ahead of them.
Departure time for their insertion into the Naka Valley was set for 1600 hours the following afternoon, which left Mat and his team a good twenty-four hours in which to sort and pack all their gear. The lads broke out their maps, compasses, charts and some less than perfect satellite photos, and began planning the route they’d take to reach their objective. The Naka Valley itself was some eight miles west of Shah-i-Khot – the Valley of the Kings – a renowned stronghold of enemy forces in southern Afghanistan. Recent allied air strikes on the Shah-i-Khot had reportedly forced large numbers of enemy fighters to retreat into the shelter of the Naka Valley, hence the need for the present mission. Mat’s team aimed to set up a covert observation post (OP) in the heart of the Naka Valley, on a ridgeline running between two of the highest peaks. This would give them a good line of sight into positions to the north of them, where US intelligence sited the mother of all terrorist training camps.
Their route in with Commander Jim’s convoy would take them barely to the foothills of the Naka Valley. There, the maps showed, all roads came to an abrupt halt. The climb from the drop-off point to the intended OP was around eight miles as the crow flies, through pretty much uncharted territory, and it would take Mat and his team from an altitude of 2,500 feet to over 12,000 feet, with several major climbs and descents in between. All in all, Mat calculated that they’d be making some 15,000 feet of ascent to reach their final destination. At best, they would have seven hours’ darkness in which to make the climb, which was nowhere near enough time.
As Mat and his team studied the maps, a local Afghan guide was brought over to help with the planning. Because Mat’s team was attached to Task Force Dagger, they were – like all US forces under Dagger – cleared for crossing the border into Pakistan. But only if they absolutely had to. The role being played by Pakistan in this war was sensitive enough as it was. The Pakistanis were allowing US forces to use their bases and to operate on their soil in the hunt for terrorists. But with Pakistan being a fiercely Muslim country this risked inflaming Muslim sentiment, both within Pakistan and across the wider Muslim world. All troops under Task Force Dagger had been ordered to cross on to the Pakistani side of the border only if they absolutely had to.
Unfortunately, Mat’s map put the border with Pakistan in a different place to where their Afghan guide said it ought to be. The guide maintained that the border had been changed, which would mean that the maps that the SBS lads were using were wrong. If this was true, it put their intended OP some ten miles inside Pakistani territory. Mat suspected that the Afghan guide was right, and that their maps were wrong. But the location that he had chosen for the OP was on the highest peak, and anywhere else just wouldn’t give them the vantage point that they required. So Mat decided to ignore the Afghan guide and argue that if their maps put the OP bang on the Afghan–Pakistan border, then that was what they would go by.
Having planned their route in and pinpointed their intended OP, Mat, Sam and the Team 6 lads began packing their bergens. They were scheduled to be on this operation for six days, but had been told to prepare for anything up to eleven. And Mat just had a sneaky feeling that this might turn out to be a long mission. As they laid out the food rations, weapons, ammunition, photographic kit, communications gear, cold-weather survival equipment and water that each man would need to carry, they realised the enormity of the task before them. Hauling all this kit to over 12,000 feet was going to take a superhuman effort.
Luckily, prior to deployment, the SBS had put up a ‘war fund’ from which the lads had been free to purchase any personal gear they required. First priority had been boots, and all the lads were now sporting tough Berghaus, Karrimor or Scarpa Gore-Tex walking boots. None was wearing British Army issue footwear – if they had been Mat would have been truly worried. A lot of the standard-issue British Army gear had a bad reputation with the soldiers, and deservedly so. In addition to the boots, everyone on Mat’s team had purchased a couple of sets of thermal underwear, a windproof Gore-Tex jacket and a down-filled duvet jacket, all in civvy colours.
Into their bergens went a camo poncho liner and a poncho – to be used as a makeshift ground sheet to sleep on at night and as a sunshade to rest under during the day. Weather conditions in the area were expected to be freezing cold at night and burning hot by day, with very little chance of rain. Each man packed two spare sets of socks, one spare set of thin cotton trousers, a thermal balaclava and gloves, a woolly hat, a Gore-Tex bivvy bag, an inflatable Thermarest and a down-filled four-season sleeping bag. Taking pity on his under-equipped fellow warriors, Commander Jim had given each of the SBS soldiers a giant US Army issue fur-lined winter Parka. But, regretfully, the men decided these were too heavy and bulky and would have to be left behind.
All the lighter clothing and survival gear went in the bottom of the pack. Heavier kit would then be packed into the upper reaches of the bergen, as weight balances better the higher up on a man’s back it can be carried. Food went it next, a selection of the best from the British Army twenty-four-hour ration packs and the US military MREs (meals ready to eat). As everything was to be eaten cold, they discarded such things as the hot-drink packs and the self-heating meals. Mat’s team were going in on ‘hard routine’. This meant no hot food or drinks, as even the aroma of a cup of soup in the clear mountain air could give the game away. And they took plastic freezer bags for crapping in, as the smell of fresh human faeces would be even more of a dead giveaway.
Each man broke his food down into one-meal-a-day packs. Other than that, the men would survive on snacks like chocolate bars. Back in Poole Mat had purchased several bags of Brazil nuts. These were a near-perfect food for this kind of mission, being a rich source of energy and protein and unbeatable weight-for-weight. Another vital piece of kit was the baby oil. Baby oil had achieved an almost mythical status in the SBS (and SAS). Long periods spent at the mercy of the elements in hostile environments had proven its worth. Baby oil kept exposed skin soft and moist, preventing lips and hands from cracking. Intense cold and heat could cause cracks to deepen and get infected. This could quickly render a soldier useless, as it was all but impossible to operate a weapon with cracked, painful hands.
Mat, Sam and the Team 6 lads each stuffed six water bottles into their packs – allowing 1.5 litres for each day spent in the OP, if it did turn out to be a six-day mission. At 12,000 feet and with daytime temperatures such as they were, it would be far too little fluid, but any more than this would be prohibitively heavy. Mat was banking on their finding a mountain spring or stream from which they would be able to replenish their supplies. Two Katadyn pump-action water filters were added to their loads, so that they could render any water they found drinkable. Each man also carried his own set of basic field dressings and a personal medical kit, in case of injury.
Next, the men began packing their weapons and ammo. Four of the team would be taking the Diemaco 5.56mm assault rifle (a modified version of the standard US M16), while the
other two opted for the Minimi SAW (squad assault weapon) 5.56mm drum-fed machine gun. The four men with the Diemacos also had Heckler & Koch 40mm grenade launchers attached to the barrel of their assault rifle. This devastating weapon was accurate up to three hundred metres. While at close range a 40mm round could pass straight through a man’s body, a direct detonation would blow a man’s torso in two. It was a fearsome weapon, and one favoured by the special forces troops.
During the climb up the mountain, each man would carry his weapon in his hands, in case of contact with the enemy. But a Diemaco with attached grenade launcher was a hefty piece of kit – weighing 11.79 pounds in all. The 40mm grenade launchers also made the assault rifle very front-end-heavy. So on the mountain ascent the team chose to detach the 40mm grenade launchers from their weapons and sling them on to their webbing. One of their webbing pouches would be stuffed full of 40mm rounds. Each operator also carried a 9mm Sig Sauer pistol as his emergency weapon, plus two smoke and two white phosphorous grenades. And then there were the five kiwi-fruit-sized high-explosives grenades that Commander Jim had given each of them, just for ‘good luck’.
With their personal gear, food, water and weapons packed, the men moved on to their ammo. Each man carried sixteen full magazines for the Diemaco, with three tracer rounds at the start of each mag. That way, if there was a contact and one of them needed to show the others where the enemy was, all he had to do was yell out, ‘Watch my tracer.’ One magazine was loaded purely with tracer – and marked as such with a length of gaffer tape – in case of a night-time contact. Plus a couple of the magazines were loaded with armour-piercing rounds, just in case they came up against any heavy weaponry. In addition to the magazines, each man took an extra dozen boxes of ammunition, which meant that he had some five hundred rounds in all for his main weapon.
Everyone also carried a BE499 TACBE (tactical beacon). The TACBE is used for line-of-sight communication if a patrol gets compromised, and acts as an emergency beacon that can be located by allied aircraft. Each TACBE was assigned to the SBS operator’s own call sign, so that an allied aircraft would automatically know exactly which operator was using it. Notebooks, pencils, compasses, binoculars and other small kit were stuffed into the bergen’s side pockets.
