by Ed Macy
‘The Taliban had a really good look around the crater area for your two guys, but they couldn’t find a thing. Then one of them went about thirty metres into the next field and came back holding a soggy arm. That’s why it’s now called “Soggy Arm Field”.’
The Special Boat Service had done a fair bit of work all over southern Afghanistan with the US Apaches co-located with them in Kandahar. But every now and then they came to us. Our first request from the Special Forces Group arrived six weeks into the tour.
The JHF was just told that it was an op in the notorious Panjwayi Valley – a Taliban hotbed west of Kandahar city. We would be briefed on everything else by the SBS themselves in Kandahar on the night. They’d asked for permanent cover as they expected it to go on a bit. So two flights went over that morning: 3 Flight’s Nick, Charlotte, Darwin and FOG, and the four of us.
I’d worked with Special Forces before, so the mythical aura that surrounds them no longer had quite the same effect on me. They’re just normal blokes like you and me, who prefer to stick to the shadows and happen to be particularly bloody good at what they do. It was Nick’s first SF operation, so he had a grin on him like a Cheshire cat from the moment he got up. Bonnie was straining at the leash.
‘It’s exciting isn’t it, Mr M? It really is.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Bless him.
The other thing I knew about Special Forces was that an awful lot of their missions never went down – but I didn’t want to piss on Nick’s bonfire. He wouldn’t have wanted to believe me anyway.
It was a fifty-minute flight to Kandahar. Around the halfway mark we passed ten klicks to the south of a remote little town called Maiwand. The Boss pointed it out. ‘We studied it at Sandhurst.’ It was the site of the British Army’s second great Afghan disaster: 969 officers and men were massacred there during the Second Afghan War in 1880. A massively superior 25,000-strong native force wiped out the 1st Grenadiers and 66th Regiment of Foot, throwing the nation into shock and precipitating a campaign of bloody revenge. ‘A grim lesson,’ Trigger said. ‘They were betrayed by their local allies.’
It was always odd coming back to Kandahar after a week or so at Camp Bastion. Its giant runway and line of helicopters stretched almost as far as the eye could see, dwarfing our tiny sideshow 100 miles away. Dozens of Blackhawks, Chinooks and Apache AH64As jostled for space. Beside the military colossus of the United States, we were a bunch of pygmies. The Special Forces compound was set discreetly to one side of the sprawling base’s main thoroughfare. Its Hesco Bastion walls were ringed with razor wire.
Bob, the SBS officer running the operation that night, waited for us at the front gate with a couple of colleagues. They both introduced themselves as Bob, too. Three Bobs. The normal SF drill. One of the other two Bobs was the operation’s JTAC. We never found out what the third Bob did.
The Bobs walked us swiftly to a nearby building and down a short corridor. Framed photographs of Sergeant Paul Bartlett and Captain David Patten hung from the wall, their names typed neatly beneath their smiling faces.
‘Sorry about your boys,’ I said. ‘We found them the following morning.’
‘Thanks. It was a crying shame.’
We were led into a briefing room completely devoid of furniture and decoration, except for one table and a handful of chairs. A room for visitors like us, sanitised of all useful information. We would only ever know from the Special Forces what they needed us to know. It was how SF always worked. Officer Bob plonked a laptop and projector down on the table, connected them and began the brief.
The mission was to kill or capture a senior Taliban player called Haji Mullah Sahib. In his mid-fifties, he was the former governor of Helmand province. He was believed to be holed up in Siah Choy, an isolated area of the Panjwayi, in a major Taliban command post. Officer Bob showed us maps of the target area and aerial photographs of the compound. Other Taliban commanders were expected to be joining him that night.
The operation was going to go one of two ways. We’d know which by a certain time that night before we took off. If the right intelligence came in to establish Sahib was definitely in the compound, they would bomb it. There was no point in risking boots on the ground unnecessarily. If the intelligence didn’t come in, a ground assault would be launched.
‘You’ll only be needed for the second option,’ Officer Bob said. ‘But the second option is looking likely at the moment.’
The second option would go like this. A large ground force of SBS would be dropped some distance off, move in and surround the compound, then give it a ‘hard knock’. Nobody expected Sahib to come quietly, so the SBS force had prepared some backup. (JTAC Bob took over, and Officer Bob leaned back against the wall.)
A vast air stack would position itself above them, from a Nimrod MR2 at the very top to an array of fast air in the middle and then us at the bottom. Each aircraft was given its own height parameters so we would all deconflict; ours was from 3,000 feet down to the ground. The assault teams could also call in fire from 81-mm mortars and 155-mm artillery guns if they needed it. I’d never seen so much firepower concentrated on one small place in all my time in Afghanistan.
‘It’s immediate and intimate fire support that we’re looking for from you. We’d like you to hang around to the south of the target area so you’re ready to tip in whenever I call.’
He showed us on a map where he wanted us, asked if we had any questions, and then wrapped up the brief with one final to me, as the lead front-seater on the mission.
‘Can you confirm which close-in fire support card you’re using, mate? Mine might be out of date …’
Billy knew he’d ask me that. It detailed the criteria he needed to give us, so we could bring weapons to bear. I flicked through my Black Brain to the close-in fire support card, and there he was … From Rocco, With Love. x.
JTAC Bob saw Rocco immediately. ‘What the fuck’s that?’
‘Er, it’s Rocco. A squadron joke … you see …’ I tried to explain Rocco.
‘I don’t know what he’s talking about, Bob,’ Charlotte said with an utterly straight face. She added haughtily: ‘We’ve never seen that disgusting picture before in our lives.’ The rest of my Apache colleagues took Charlotte’s cue and all solemnly agreed. Silence from all three Bobs. Not even a flicker of a smile from any of them. But Billy grinned at me from ear to ear. He’d pulled off a corker.
We had a few hours to kill before we got our heads down in the Apache crews’ temporary accommodation, so we sampled the R and R delights every mid-sized US base in the region had on offer. They were spread around the four sides of a giant wooden boardwalk square with a thirty-metre-long plastic hockey pitch at its centre.
There was a Burger King trailer; a Pizza Hut stand; a Subway restaurant; a dry cleaner; a local souvenir shop flogging scarves, jewellery and stone carvings; and a PX the size of an average Sainsbury’s. The Post Exchange flogged everything from giant feather pillows and duvets to video cameras and PlayStation consoles: everything you could possibly want to fight a war in extreme comfort. We settled for Tim Horton’s; an air-conditioned coffee shop that served Charlotte’s favourite, an apple juice with a giant chocolate chip cookie. The Americans were well entrenched in Kandahar.
The Boss and I moved on to the Joint Helicopter Force HQ’s Ops Room. The call came in from Force 84 bang on the dot, as promised. The intelligence had been good. Sahib was in the compound. So they’d already bombed him to oblivion from 20,000 feet. The jets that had carried out the attack took off from locations in the Middle East. Nobody even had to leave the base. Nick sat in his sleeping bag looking crestfallen when we relayed the news.
‘Bad luck Bonnie,’ the Boss said. ‘You’ll have to be Andy McNab’s bitch another day.’
We weren’t going to be any use to the ground troops if we couldn’t be sure we could stay up in the air. So from time to time we had to come up with a few jobs of our own.
By mid-December, Now Zad had hotted up. It seeme
d to have taken over from Kajaki as the Taliban’s new focus of attention. The Now Zad DC had started to get pummelled, a twenty-three-year-old Royal Marine from 42 Commando was shot dead on a foot patrol to the north of the town. And they were going for every helicopter within reach.
During the morning and evening briefs, Alice started to feed through some alarming intercepts that had been picked up in the town. ‘We are dug in and ready for the helicopters,’ was one. Another revealed a detailed plan for a helicopter ambush employing small arms, RPGs and possibly even a SAM.
Then Nick and Darwin got shot up during an IRT shout 2,000 feet over the town. A 12.7-mm Dushka round passed through the airframe’s forward left electronics bay, destroying avionics and a systems processor, before hitting a Kevlar plate and smashing into tiny pieces less than two feet from Nick. It set off all the cockpit alarms and Nick suggested they bug out, but Darwin – the aircraft’s pilot – was cool.
‘We’re okay, sir. Is your TADS still working?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then put some fucking fire down there.’
They flew back gingerly, and landed with smoke pouring out of the side. Demonstrating their usual tenderness, the Groundies rushed out to film Nick and Darwin’s approach for their personal tour videos in case they crashed.
It was the second time Darwin had been shot; he’d taken a Dushka round on the first tour, so he then became known as the Bullet Magnet. Then, two days later, a Lynx on a photo recce over Now Zad took a Dushka round too. Two aircraft getting hit in the same location in such a short space of time added up to a Dushka gunner somewhere in Now Zad who knew exactly what he was doing.
We obviously couldn’t continue normal air operations while he was there. A dropped Apache would have been bad enough – but the thought of a Chinook going down with thirty marines aboard was what really gave us sleepless nights. We had to find the Now Zad Dushka gunner and remove him.
‘I’ve got it,’ the Boss said proudly, after a couple of hours of deep thought. ‘We’re going to launch Op Steve-O.’
The night before, the Boss had taken a break from the first episode of 24 and watched a few minutes of Jackass: The Movie instead – just long enough to catch the scene where a bloke called Steve-O had a hook pushed through his cheek and was thrown off a speed boat by his mates so he could be dragged along as shark bait.
‘That’s what we’re going to be, Mr Macy – Dushka bait. You and I will ramble around above Now Zad while 3 Flight hide off to one side. A nice, juicy Apache over his head is bound to lure our man out. Then Charlotte and Darwin will tip in and blow him away.’
‘Right you are, Boss. And how are you going to explain this to my family when it all goes tits up?’
‘Not a problem,’ he said cheerfully. ‘If we go down, I won’t be the one who’ll have to tell them.’
If any pilot on the squadron was going to attempt something like this, it had to be the Boss. He couldn’t order anyone else into harm’s way without first going there himself. And I was the poor sod who crewed with him. Darwin was coming along with Charlotte as his regular front-seater, for his insight into how the Dushka gunner worked – and hopefully a touch of revenge.
I could have refused to go – but the truth was I wanted to. It was a bold plan, and would guarantee one hell of an adrenalin rush. The Boss knew the aircraft as well as any of us, and he was confident the Apache could take it.
We decided to fly Op Steve-O at night. The Dushka’s muzzle flash and tracer rounds would be seen easily with the naked eye whilst the heat of his barrel in the chill of the night would show up far better on our FLIR camera. And if we went down, we’d have Night Vision Goggles and the cover of darkness.
I would be flying this mission, and Trigger would provide the eyes. The four of us headed down to the flight line after the evening brief. Charlotte and Darwin were small but perfectly formed at the best of times. They were completely dwarfed by the Apache they were checking over. ‘Hey, Umpalumpas,’ I said. ‘Do you want an extra cushion in that beast to help you see over the dash?’
‘You better believe it, Ed.’ Darwin looked up from the cannon. ‘There’ll be that many bells and whistles going off in your cockpit when the sniper sparks up, you’ll be praying we can see enough to nail him before he finishes you off.’
Charlotte carried on polishing the seeker dome of a Hellfire. Maximum effect for minimum effort was more her style. ‘Here’s the deal, Mr Macy. You concentrate on not getting shot and leave the bad guy to me. If I get him first time, you sign off our annual weapons check.’ She treated me to her most Sphinx-like smile. ‘What do you say?’
Trigger chuckled. ‘They’ll do, eh?’
‘Yes, Boss,’ I said with a grin. ‘They’ll do just fine.’
The Apache was built to be shot. If it had been smothered in armour like a flying tank, it would never have got off the ground. It was designed to absorb incoming fire; it practically invited it – a challenging concept to get your head around if you were sitting in the driving seat.
The Apache could withstand a direct hit from a 23-mm high-explosive incendiary round. The airframe’s entire skin, and the drive shaft that ran down its spine to the tail rotor, was constructed from thin alloy, so that a round could pass clean through the body without tearing a bloody great hole in it. Anything crucial to the aircraft’s survival had a backup: it had two engines, two sets of hydraulics and electrics, four computers, two sets of flying controls – and if they broke we could still fly with fly-by-wire sensors. It even had two pilots.
The gunship only had one rotor head and one set of rotor controls, but both were built from electro-slag-remelt, strong enough to stop a round from penetrating. Multiple rounds could pass straight through a rotor blade without impairing its capacity to generate lift.
The fuel tanks were even cleverer. The Apache had three and they all worked independently. They were made from layers of impregnated nylon and uncured rubber. If a bullet punctured the tank, the uncured rubber would react with the fuel to create a fast-hardening foam which would seal any large hole. The main gearbox couldn’t self-seal, but it didn’t need to; it could run dry of all oil and still turn the rotors long enough to get back to Bastion.
By far the most vulnerable bits of the Apache were the two pink, fleshy things in the cockpit – so the floor, the side and front panels and the back and sides of the seats were lined with Kevlar plates. Nothing smaller than an artillery shell would penetrate them. The armour-plated front windscreens could take.50 cal shots head on, but the enemy were armed with more than that now.
Since bullets mostly came from below us, we were only at threat from high mountains or when we turned sharply during a fight. That was when we pushed our backs hard into the Kevlar shell and hoped for the best.
In case the unthinkable did happen, our cockpits were separated by a two-inch-thick glass blast fragmentation shield and had their own air-conditioning systems. If an RPG whipped into the front compartment, it could remove the gunner, all his electronics, his controls and even his seat, and the back-seater could still fly on. He wouldn’t even smell the burning.
But every time we walked out to the aircraft no one needed to remind us of what we called ‘the golden shot’; even the best pilots were not immune to a lucky round, or sheer bad luck. Otherwise, eight highly skilled US Apache crews would not have been shot down over Iraq.
It was a twenty-minute flight to Apocalypse Now Zad, as the marines had christened it. Now Zad was built in the shape of a triangle, with its flat-roofed, mostly single-storey, buildings hemmed in by towering rock faces on all three sides. It was an awesome sight; a geographer’s paradise. The southernmost tip of the Hindu Kush sprang up along its western edge. Its eastern boundary consisted of a series of interwoven ridgelines that ran south to north. And the base of the triangle, to the south, was a stand-alone range, five kilometres long and 400 metres tall at its peak.
We knew the Dushka gunner was in the south-east of the town, so we
planned to split up as we approached the southern ridgeline. Charlotte and Darwin would wait on the desert side, nose forward, high enough to get a visual on the town. Trigger and I would bear right through a 300-metre-wide crevasse, bringing us immediately over the gunner’s territory. The Boss would target spot for the Dushka gunner, moving between his monocle and his Night Vision Goggles – and leave the flying to me.
I thought through how I was going to do it on the flight up. It would take the Dushka gunner’s rounds four seconds to reach us, up at 4,000 feet, so he needed to predict where we’d be four seconds after he pulled the trigger. I had a reaction time of perhaps half a second from the moment I saw tracer, or heard the Boss’s or the wingman’s shout. Ugly Five One was a weighty beast and it would take a second to overcome its inertia and change direction. So that gave me two and a half seconds, maximum, to take evasive action. This was going to be a penalty shoot-out, Apache-style – except that I wanted to stay as far as possible from the ball. Two and a half seconds didn’t feel like very long. And all those clever statistics suddenly didn’t add up to a hill of beans. I felt like I was flying an eggshell.
I tried to think through what I’d do if we were hit. We’d lose some systems for sure. I hoped it wouldn’t sever a hydraulic line. Hydraulic fluid was the most flammable thing on the aircraft, and so highly pressurised it would go off like a volcano. The next round would ignite it and we’d turn into one big fireball. Even the heat from the engines could set it off. Jesus, what then?
I realised I was fingering the fire extinguisher buttons top left of the dash. Stop it … I’d disappear up my own arse if I carried on like this. I wrenched myself away from the endless succession of what ifs … Charlotte and Darwin had the lead.
‘Five Three, five klicks from the crevasse now,’ Darwin said. ‘We’ll start to break off left and cover you through the gap. Good luck guys.’
They banked, and the crevasse opened up in front of us. Ninety seconds and we’d be through it. Gripping the cyclic and collective, my hands were so clammy I could feel them sticking to the insides of my gloves. I actioned the gun, moving my head side to side to check it was still slaved to my eye. It was. I flipped the trigger guard and rested my finger on the red button. A breath away from firing.
