Apache

by Ed Macy

  I used the momentary pause to change my grip; my arms weighed a ton and my hands were shaking. I rammed one under Mathew’s body armour and out the other side by his collar, then grabbed my own wrist to form a tight noose.

  Despair was starting to flood through me. For the first time I thought we might not be able to do it. I didn’t know where I was going to summon the energy for the last few metres.

  The Apache’s rotor blades battered the air close by. I needed some Para aggression to get me through this. ‘Right,’ I roared. ‘Come on!’

  At that moment, plumes of soil and sand erupted like a series of mini volcanoes about a dozen metres to the left of us. I stared at them, momentarily transfixed, unable to work out what the hell was going on.

  Then I caught sight of at least six bright orange flashes 150 metres away, perfect star shapes spread out along the treeline. Muzzle flashes. Automatic fire.

  The earth continued to erupt only two or three metres away now and the air crackled as bullets whipped above our heads. A huge weight pulled on my right side. Mathew’s whole body mass pressed down on my pistol holster, dragging me onto the ground, and then my heel was trapped under his torso and I collapsed back on top of him. Rigg had let go of him entirely. As my head turned, I saw him go down, face first.

  I was now pinned to the dirt by Mathew, momentarily powerless to do anything but watch the muzzle flashes approaching through the haze.

  And Rigg’s hit. Oh fuck. This wasn’t how I wanted us to die …

  I ripped my right arm out of Mathew’s body armour and scrabbled for my pistol. But it was no longer there.

  THE WRONG WALL

  Three minutes and twenty-eight seconds earlier …

  Timing the manoeuvre with his usual perfection, Geordie had heaved back hard on his cyclic stick to bring Ugly Five Zero in to land alongside Mathew’s body. Dust billowed ahead of them and rose 100 feet into the air before being sucked back down by his rotors, entirely smothering the Apache. Geordie had flown over 2,000 helicopter hours in his ten years as a pilot and this was the worst brown-out he’d ever been in.

  ‘I can’t put down in this shit Billy. Ed and Carl won’t see us; they’ll come in straight on top of us.’

  ‘Well anywhere then. Just get us down.’

  ‘I’m going into the fort.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Just over the wall. It’s another big field; there’s nothing in it.’

  ‘Copied mate. Do it.’

  A quick jerk on the collective and Geordie’s Apache was ascending again. Some left-foot pedal twisted the gunship ninety degrees to the right, then a push on the cyclic and they were over the wall and into the adjacent field; a rectangle, 100 metres long and 200 wide. A line of trees to their right divided it into two squares.

  Geordie pressed on a further fifty metres so his next dust cloud wouldn’t blind Ed and Carl. Billy slewed the TADS to the northern end of the field and lined up his crosshairs on the fort’s outer wall.

  ‘Engaging.’

  He squeezed the trigger and the cannon threw twenty rounds into the remnants of the watchtower on the far right. Then he raked another twenty along the top of the wall. Rock splinters and shrapnel span off it in all directions as the rounds exploded. If anyone was near the wall, they weren’t going to put their heads above it in a hurry now. It bought Billy and Geordie thirty extra seconds.

  Nick was watching their insertion from 2,000 feet above. He hosed down the entire western wall and the canal path alongside it with consecutive twenty round bursts, to discourage anyone trying to flank round and ambush his friends in Ugly Five Zero.

  Geordie landed hard at a forty-degree angle to Jugroom’s main building. Hearn and Robinson jumped off and ran to the wall, as they’d been told to do. The wrong wall.

  Geordie watched them disappear into the brown-out and immediately began to worry. ‘Do you think they know where we are now, Billy?’

  ‘Probably not. They wouldn’t have seen anything on the wing. We could barely see ourselves.’

  It took forty seconds for Billy and Geordie to get back their visibility. Hearn and Robinson had groped up and down the northern wall, looking in vain for Mathew, and were now jogging back to the Apache. Robinson was leading, hands and rifle raised as a signal to the pilots of their bewilderment. Geordie spotted them first from the back seat.

  ‘They’ve got no idea we’re in a different field. I’m going to have to show them where to go.’

  Billy was the captain and Geordie was the primary pilot, but they didn’t have time to argue the toss about who should leave the aircraft. Geordie was out of his seat and gone, safety-locking the collective lever as he jumped but not stopping to unclip his carbine.

  He charged over to Robinson and shouted: ‘Follow me, he’s this way.’

  Changing course ninety degrees, Geordie made for the hole in the wall eighty metres to his left. That’s where Mathew was, Geordie thought – around the crater and immediately to the right.

  The brown-out had disorientated Geordie too. His mental compass was off by ninety degrees. He led the marines at full tilt to a bomb crater in the field’s west wall instead. Geordie rounded the corner and turned sharp right. The marines dutifully followed – heading north, ever deeper into enemy territory.

  Visibility was down to ten metres. Geordie, Hearn and Robinson were in the midst of the 2,000-pounder’s smokescreen. The stench of explosives and burning was overpowering.

  ‘Come on lads, the others will be up here somewhere,’ Geordie yelled over his shoulder as he pressed on up the canal path. Robinson was ten metres behind him, and Hearn brought up the rear.

  One hundred metres along, Geordie still hadn’t found anybody. He knew Ford was just by the wall; he’d seen him from above. Had he regained consciousness and started to crawl away? Down to the river perhaps? Geordie pressed on.

  After another eighty metres the black cloud began to dissipate. He was almost at the end of the wall now. The corner had taken a direct hit, strewing rubble across the path. Geordie didn’t remember the wall being hit here. When he’d last seen it, it was still standing. Perhaps Nick or Charlotte had smacked it while the rescue Apaches were at Magowan’s HQ.

  He could see round the corner now. Fruit trees loomed over the piles of stone. He didn’t remember fruit trees either.

  Geordie slowed to a walk. This wasn’t right. The canal should have been ahead of him. Where the hell was it? It started to materialise through the dust to his left …

  So what was in front of him? Just fields, and …

  Geordie jolted to a halt. Not more than fifteen metres in front of him, under the spreading branches of a tree, were three men with turbans and beards. One had a PK machine gun slung across his back, the second rested the butt of his AK47 in the dirt, and the third crouched with an RPG in each hand. They were in animated conversation, keeping in the shadow so the Apaches circling above couldn’t see them. Taliban …

  They stopped talking when they saw Geordie. They looked at him. He looked at them. Each was frozen to the spot; each as shocked as the other.

  That’s when he realised … We’re in the wrong place. This is the north side of the fort, not the west. Jesus fucking Christ.

  The Taliban fighters knew that if the British soldiers came for them, they wouldn’t come alone. There would be a hundred at least, like the last attack. They hesitated, giving Geordie a few crucial seconds. He spun around and took off back in the direction he’d come, pumping his thigh muscles as hard as he could.

  ‘Go-go-go …Wrong-way-wrong-way …’ he jabbered.

  Robinson heard the next word very clearly. ‘TALIBAN!’

  He spun round too and sprinted for all he was worth.

  Seeing the red face of his approaching RSM, Robinson screamed: ‘Run sir. Run the other way, the other way …’

  The Taliban opened fire, and bullets began to kick into the dirt around their feet. Geordie did an impression of the Roadrunner on speed. He overto
ok Robinson within a few metres. Seconds later he overtook Hearn, too. Then the wall erupted.

  Billy had no choice but to sit tight.

  His job was to keep the front of the aircraft clear for their return. It was easier said than done; he could only fire the cannon at point-blank range in front of him and up to ninety degrees to his right. If the Taliban came through the hole in the wall, he wouldn’t be able to touch them.

  The world’s most devastating fighting machine was now a sitting duck. Apaches weren’t built to be shot at on the ground. From below, fine. Same level, you had a problem.

  The Kevlar plating stopped at his waist, and they could hit him in the chest with a pop gun now. An RPG through the window and he was history. Even a brick into the tail rotor would have put the aircraft out of action. How long would it take for the Taliban to know he was there?

  Billy soon got his answer. Just over twenty seconds after Geordie and the marines exited the field, two AK47s appeared at the top of the wall, 100 degrees to the right of him, and began blatting away blindly on fully automatic. Billy stamped on his floor pressel.

  ‘Ugly Five Zero has got Taliban doing a Beirut unload from the wall sixty metres to my right. Put some fire down now.’

  Nick responded instantly. ‘Ugly Five Two copies. Stand by …’

  FOG was flying Nick low on a northerly axis over the treeline to the east, scanning the fort for any movement.

  ‘My gun.’ FOG slaved the cannon with a flick of his right thumb, aligned the crosshair and loosed off a twenty-round burst.

  ‘Engaging with cannon, Billy,’ he bellowed. ‘Watch my strikes.’

  Great chunks of adobe flew off a long building in the centre of the compound. FOG moved his eyeball swiftly left and shifted the impact zone. A second wave ploughed into the neighbouring courtyard, shredding paving stones and slicing along the wall Billy was being engaged from.

  FOG spotted movement inside the far end of it. ‘Talibs escaping; firing.’ His third burst blasted away the section of wall alongside where Geordie was overtaking RSM Hearn …

  Geordie was blown a metre sideways by the pressure wave four feet above his head.

  More explosions, some on the other side of the wall, others on the canal bank to the right of him. Red-hot shrapnel whipped across the path, centimetres behind him, through a waist-high, metre-long shell hole. Geordie’s ears rang and his mouth filled with grit.

  Jesus, what the hell was that? An RPG? Ten RPGs?

  Sound travels at 343 metres per second. So it took Geordie just over three seconds to hear the pounding of the Apache cannon a kilometre away. Shit, the guys are firing on us.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ screamed Hearn.

  ‘Just fucking run,’ Geordie shouted.

  Geordie didn’t know it was possible to run faster than they already were. But he did it then.

  ‘Delta Hotel, FOG. Delta Hotel,’ Billy said. ‘Good shooting mate. Keep it up.’

  Billy was doing mental cartwheels. He checked the clock: 10:40 and fifty-five seconds. Jesus, almost two-and-a-half minutes on the ground. Time up. They needed to get out of there now. The next Beirut unload from God knew which direction couldn’t be far off. The Taliban would have given their eye teeth to get their hands on one of the feared mosquitoes. And now they had two of them, gift wrapped, and delivered to their door.

  Where the hell was Geordie? He should have got back by now. He’d been out there for a minute and forty seconds. Maybe they needed a hand. Maybe he should lift and start putting some fire down … But if he moved, he’d brown the place out again, and Geordie and the marines wouldn’t be able to see where he was. He couldn’t leave them behind, no matter what.

  What if they’ve been hit, and can’t get back? They hadn’t discussed Actions On for that. Billy tried to flush the disaster scenario from his mind. Of course they were coming back.

  Lifting and firing was going to be his last resort if ten Taliban came running round the corner. He wrapped his hand around the collective’s grip. It was locked. Geordie must have done it on his way out. He could only take-off in an emergency and fly by wire. Shit. Please don’t let anyone come round the corner. At least Carl and Ed were in the right place. He stamped on the pressel again.

  ‘Ed, it’s taking too long. What’s going on? Is Ford strapped onto you yet?’

  ‘Billy, it’s Carl. Ed’s outside. They’re having a really tough job moving him.’

  ‘There are four of them …’

  ‘No there aren’t.’

  ‘What’s Ed doing out of the aircraft?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There aren’t four of them; just our two marines and Ed. Where are your marines?’

  ‘Can’t you see them?’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘What about Geordie? Is Geordie not there either?’

  ‘He’s with you, isn’t he?’

  ‘Negative.’

  Silence.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Geordie swept past the entrance to the field where his Apache was as their third minute on the ground began. He turned to check Robinson and Hearn were still following him and snatched a quick glance at the aircraft, eighty metres away through the haze. He couldn’t make out his co-pilot. He hoped to God he hadn’t been hit.

  Geordie was in pain now. He’d run more than 500 metres at a full sprint and his lungs were full of smoke. His throat rasped as he tried to suck in more oxygen. The battle still raged around him, but at least nobody was shooting directly at him now.

  The southern end of the west wall was just ten metres away. A left turn and he’d hook up with Mathew and the two other marines. Then they could all get the hell out of there.

  Geordie rounded the corner to see Ed and Rigg heaving Ford towards the Apache and Fraser-Perry in position to give covering fire. Muzzle flashes sparked up at the far end of the field. Bullets tore up the furrows, their points of impact careering ever closer.

  Rigg and Mathew went down like a sack of shit. Ed went down right after him. Geordie had got there too late.

  ESCAPING JUGROOM FORT

  The bastards are not getting me alive. I need my pistol.

  I glanced back across the field, and there was Geordie, thirty metres away. The Taliban bullets cracked through the air around us.

  ‘Geordie, put some rounds down!’ Then I saw he didn’t have his carbine with him either.

  Got to move Mathew out of the fire. Get him behind the aircraft … The fuselage was only seven metres away; we were very near the blades. My eyes dipped as I grasped Mathew more firmly and tugged my foot free. My pistol poked out from underneath him. I grabbed the grip and spun round on my knees, preparing to return fire towards the muzzle flashes. As I did so, the sound of the Apache’s rotor pitch changed. Oh no …

  Carl started to pull power. Dust and grit smacked me in the face as I turned to see the aircraft begin to wobble. The blades coned upwards. I got straight to my feet. I could just make out Carl speaking fast into his microphone and monitoring our every move. He didn’t want to hit us when he took off.

  ‘No Carl, get down!’

  He couldn’t hear me. The suspension struts lightened as he began to lift. I threw both arms out and flapped them vigorously downwards. He finally got the message and powered down. I didn’t know whether he was leaving or just turning to engage the treeline, but I wasn’t having any of it.

  The dust cloud he’d thrown up was so thick I couldn’t see my own hands. I stumbled about, trying to regain my bearings.

  With an ear-piercing screech, a Hellfire came in to the east of us and exploded with a mighty flash. A quarter of a second later, the pressure wave passed through my clothing. Ten seconds later I heard two deep booms, then the sound of branches splitting and plummeting to the ground. HEISAP rockets. Charlotte and Nick were taking care of the treeline. Thank fuck, they’re onto them. Carl must have called them in.

  The brown-out was still all-consuming. But it was now rippling slowly away f
rom the aircraft in concentric rings, leaving us with a few metres of visibility inside it. The enemy gunfire from the eastern treeline had now dwindled. If we couldn’t see the Taliban, they couldn’t see us. Carl’s brown-out and the pounding from Ugly Five Two and Three had bought us a few crucial seconds. Got to move right now. I turned to check how badly hit Rigg was. To my amazement, he was crouching over Mathew and preparing to lift him again. Geordie was with him now.

  ‘Rigg, you okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Just tripped. Sorry.’

  ‘You’re not hit?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Can’t feel anything.’

  I was astonished. They’d missed all of us.

  I holstered my pistol and lunged for Mathew too. I grabbed hold of his webbing, Geordie latched onto his right leg, and summoning every last scrap of energy we headed for the aircraft.

  Fraser-Perry and Robinson suddenly materialised too; one grasped a sleeve and one Mathew’s other leg. Last to break through the dust cloud was Hearn, his face red as a beetroot.

  We were three minutes behind schedule and had been on the ground for over four. Yet suddenly – and I had no idea how – the plan was working.

  ‘Where the fuck have you lot been?’ I hollered above the engine’s whine.

  ‘Sorry, bonny lad,’ Geordie yelled. ‘Detour.’

  As gently as we could, we lowered Mathew beneath the aircraft, placing his head below the step in front of the right wheel.

  ‘Anyone got a strap?’

  Robinson’s immediately appeared in my hand.

  ‘Okay, back to your aircraft guys. We can manage from here.’ I turned to Fraser-Perry. ‘You get on, too.’

  The marines sprinted off, but Geordie hung around. He needed to see it through.

  ‘Honestly, Geordie mate, we’re almost there. Last one back to Bastion is Piss Boy, eh?’

  ‘That’ll be you then.’ He smiled and set off.

  Rigg lifted Mathew’s shoulders while I wrapped the strap around his back, under his arms, through his body armour and out by the top of his chest. Bollocks. It wouldn’t quite reach the step. We heaved him forward another six inches. But the strap was as taut as a bowstring and I was worried we would garrotte him in mid-flight.