Apache

by Ed Macy

  ‘All right, there, Mr M? How close have you cut it today then, eh? – 400 on the nose, I’ll bet. Sounds like it was quite a morning … fucking HELL …’ His eyes almost popped out when he saw the digital reading: 80 lb.

  The next stop was the arming bay. The one and only Kev Blundell was waiting for us, hands on hips, with his usual sardonic expression.

  He took a stroll around the aircraft. And for the first time I could remember, he didn’t say a single word. He took his time with the inspection, peering into every rocket hole and having a thoroughly good look at the 30-mm feed chain running to the cannon. He glanced up at Carl or me periodically, then looked right back down again.

  Eventually he was finished. He nodded lugubriously as he leaned his gargantuan weight against the aircraft’s wing and plugged in.

  ‘Not bad lads. I’ve got to admit it, not at all bad.’ He broke into a smile. ‘I hear you were put to shame by a bird, though.’

  I caught sight of the Boss, walking straight towards us. Thank God we’d got the fuel in …

  A Chinook thumped past over his left shoulder, on its way to the hospital landing site. Must have been Mathew. It was odd that the Boss had come down to the flight line to see us, even today. He was too busy for that. His brow was heavily furrowed and he looked like he had the weight of an elephant on each shoulder.

  I gave him a smile, but I didn’t get one back. When he saw my hands he stopped short and stared at them. I looked down too and realised they were still stained with Mathew’s blood.

  He nodded at them. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not mine.’ I gave him a big thumbs up as reassurance.

  Trigger’s expression still didn’t change. His clear blue eyes burned with a peculiar intensity. ‘Look, I just want you to know that I’m backing all four of you – no matter what happens next.’

  There was a silence. I was bewildered. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The CO has just got in from Kandahar on a Lynx,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you up top.’

  He turned and walked away.

  IN COMMAND: THE VERDICT

  Carl signed in the aircraft while I went to wash Mathew’s blood off my hands.

  I sat on the lid of a missile box in the bright sun and poured water from a jerrycan. I couldn’t bring myself to use the Portaloo handscrub.

  I tried to fathom what the hell was going on. It couldn’t have been about our fuel levels – Trigger would have understood, given the circumstances. I had never seen him that bothered before. And we weren’t expecting the CO in Bastion today …

  I joined Carl inside the Groundies’ hangar. We’d been delayed on the flight line while a technician examined my broken FLIR camera, so the others had gone ahead. We were both locked in thought. Okay, we’d broken a few rules that day. But anything we’d done wrong had been whilst trying to do something right. Our problem was that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

  The downside of the rescue didn’t bear thinking about. If both Apaches had gone down on the way out of the fort, we’d have been close to double figures dead. The very thought of that would have seriously scared a lot of important people, and the four of us had pushed hardest for the mission throughout. After twenty-two years in the army I knew only too well that a little hindsight could be a very dangerous thing. The more I thought about it, the more I understood what Trigger must have meant. Our actions were now going to be judged in the cold light of day, and it could go either way.

  I swung open the door of my locker. The word ‘angel’ was still scrawled across the inside of it in black marker as a reminder not to leave home without her. Carl was absorbed in his own little ritual: he pulled a letter from his wife out of a drawer and gave it a kiss. My angel deserved one too, after this morning. I tore open the Velcro seal of my right breast pocket and dug in my hand. I could only feel my war ID card.

  ‘Mate, take a look in here and see if you can find my angel, will you?’

  He peered in and shook his head. We scanned the smooth concrete floor beneath our feet, but there was no sign of her there either. My throat went dry. How would I tell Emily? She’d think it was an omen; that I’d die on my very next flight.

  ‘This is no joking matter,’ Carl said. ‘We might need her when the CO gets hold of us …’

  He put a hand on my shoulder. His expression told me that he knew this was no time to piss about. ‘Shoot a basket for the brews?’

  I hesitated for a moment, re-checking my pocket. Still nothing.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I replied.

  It was another of our sacred post-mission rituals, and nobody was going to stop us doing it. Carl won.

  He drove us up to the JHF Ops tent in the Land Rover he had parked by the hangar five hours earlier. Billy and Geordie were already there, and neither could bring themselves to meet my eye. So they’d picked up the vibe too. Nobody in the room was saying much.

  Trigger walked in. The look on his face was completely impenetrable. I had a bad feeling about this. ‘Can you four go through to the back, please? I’ll be in with the CO shortly.’

  We made our way out of the tent and into the secure Tactical Planning Facility.

  ‘Make us that brew, Piss Boy,’ Carl said, in a bid to break the tension.

  ‘Yeah, make that a double, Piss Boy,’ Geordie chipped in. ‘You were also last back from the fort.’

  But that was the end of the banter. I made four coffees in silence. Trigger reappeared as I handed them round, followed by the Commanding Officer. Trigger closed the door behind them. It was the first time I’d seen Colonel Sexton since his arrival in Afghanistan two weeks earlier.

  ‘Welcome to Bastion, sir.’

  The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.

  ‘It’s the second time I’ve been here.’

  The four of us sat in a row on the comfy seats. Trigger pulled up a couple of hard plastic chairs and he and Colonel Sexton took their places opposite us. As always, the Colonel looked freshly scrubbed. His dark, perfectly parted hair gleamed under the neon lights.

  ‘Right, gentlemen …’

  He paused to eyeball each of us individually. I suddenly knew how those poor bloody apprentices must feel when Sir Alan Sugar was about to tell them: ‘You’re fired …’

  ‘What the FUCK were you doing?’

  We stared at him in stunned silence.

  ‘You have advertised to the wider army a capability we do not have. People are now going to expect that this is a service we offer …’

  He slowed right down, making every word sound like a threat.

  ‘I’m not sure that you are aware of the gravity of your actions. People are going to come down on us from a great height. The JHC and the Directorate are going to want some answers.’

  Hindsight was kicking in. Shit. It was going to go against us.

  ‘You decided that you would break the RTS, which clearly states what you can and can’t do. Tell me, where in the RTS does it say that untrained troops can use this procedure? It is an emergency procedure, for aircrew only.’

  This went against every principle I have ever stood for. How could we have one rule for us, and one for everyone else?

  ‘You decided that you would ignore the RTS. Who here has done this for real? Who here has trained for this? Those marines were not trained for this. They were just hanging off the side.’

  Billy was the first to tiptoe across this minefield. ‘They were strapped on sir. Well, they were o –’

  ‘HOW were they strapped on?’

  I kept my voice as even as possible. ‘I showed each one of them the correct method, sir.’

  He ignored me.

  ‘So, without any training and with a total disregard for the RTS, you decided to strap men to an aircraft. What would have happened if one of them had fallen off?’

  His dark, slightly hooded eyes flashed dangerously. No one answered. We were starting to realise that there would be no ‘well done’.

&n
bsp; ‘You flew into an enemy stronghold! What would have happened if one of your aircraft had been shot down? Do you realise the implications of the Taliban parading round with an Apache?’

  You could have cut the silence that followed with a knife. But the Colonel still hadn’t finished.

  ‘I simply cannot believe you put two £40-million helicopters in harm’s way, in a vain attempt to save someone that was already dead.’

  I felt as though I’d been poleaxed. We all did.

  ‘We didn’t know, Colonel,’ Billy said quietly. ‘We didn’t know he was dead.’

  My mouth fell open. So, it had all been for nothing. A wave of sadness washed over me. The expression on the Colonel’s face changed from steely determination to surprise. He obviously had no idea that we hadn’t already been told.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Billy got to his feet and walked out of the room.

  Good on you Billy. You’re not going to sit here and take this.

  There was another silence as the CO waited for Billy to return.

  If only … If only we’d got to him faster, we might have saved him. If only we’d been quicker getting out of the fort. If only, if only, if only …

  Hope had made me believe in the impossible. Now the book was closed. We had failed, and were getting a good kicking for daring not to. What a shit day.

  But it wasn’t anger that had propelled Billy from the room. After a few seconds, the silence was interrupted by the sound of him throwing up outside. He came back in, white but expressionless, and dropped a tissue into the bin. We all knew how he felt. The CO gave us a few more seconds for the news to sink in. Our reaction had clearly thrown him.

  ‘Why didn’t you wait for the Chinook IRT plan?’

  My eyes narrowed. Carl looked as dumbstruck as I was. Geordie shrugged his shoulders. Billy was staring at the CO throughout, trying to make head or tail of what he was saying.

  ‘The IRT plan was to take effect twenty minutes later with a Chinook.’

  ‘As far as we knew sir, there was no Chinook IRT plan,’ Billy said.

  The Colonel fell silent again. We didn’t know about his plan. He rested his hands on his thighs as if he was about to stand up, then changed his mind and turned to Trigger.

  ‘We are going to need to decide how we report this.’ He paused. ‘We must ensure that we were in the decision process and knew what was happening at all times. At the moment it looks as though four NCOs have gone and done whatever they pleased, without our authority.’

  So that was it. Stay calm, Macy; stay very calm.

  ‘Sir …’

  He looked at me.

  Stay calm, Macy.

  ‘I’m not an NCO,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I am a fucking Warrant Officer.’

  Well done, Macy … really calm …

  He glared at me.

  Which was preferable: the Taliban videoing a downed Apache or a British soldier skinned alive on Al Jazeera? Who was going to be more upset, the Chancellor losing forty million quid or a family not being able to sleep at night? His mother wouldn’t even have been able to bury him.

  A long time ago the red mist would have arrived good and proper at that point; the red mist that got me into fights as a kid and in the Paras. It wasn’t there now, but I was deep down fucking angry. I knew I should probably just sit on my hands, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘I haven’t said anything yet, sir.’ I leaned forward. ‘But I’d like to make three points.’

  I looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘First, I don’t care how much a helicopter costs; it was a calculated decision.’

  ‘It’s not just the helicopters, Mr Macy,’ the Colonel replied. ‘It’s the four marines with you. The risk to them –’

  ‘We asked for volunteers, sir,’ I said. ‘We asked for volunteers, and I described the plan in detail to Colonel Magowan.’

  The CO just looked at me.

  ‘Second, I don’t, can’t and won’t ever see the difference between any British soldier, aircrew or otherwise. And finally …’ I paused, because I really wanted him to hear this loud and clear, ‘… do you really believe for one moment, sir, that we thought you were not in the decision-making loop?’

  He looked completely blank.

  ‘I expected both you and Major James to be in the loop, and to have followed the whole thing on a Nimrod feed. You could have turned this off any time. Sir …’

  ‘I tried to, Mr Macy. And the brigadier went against me.’

  That explained the shenanigans over the radio when we arrived at Magowan’s command post.

  ‘I didn’t know that, sir.’

  He now understood that we hadn’t a clue about the Chinook IRT; that we had not disobeyed any direct orders, and believed that he knew of – and endorsed – the rescue.

  But he also knew that we had thrown the rulebook out the window. The crucial question was: did he think the result was worth the risk?

  It was decision time. A decision that would affect the careers of everyone in the room – not least his. Was he going to take a punt and institute a disciplinary investigation against us, or play it safe and wait for someone else to? Would he back us, or throw us to the dogs?

  The CO turned to Trigger and took a deep breath.

  ‘Chris, if you were in the flight down there, what would you have done?’

  It was a hospital pass if ever I’d seen one. As one of his squadron commanders, the Boss answered to Colonel Sexton; he was duty bound to back him up. Trigger had been given the casting vote. He didn’t hesitate for a second.

  ‘Given the same circumstances, Colonel, I would have done exactly the same as my men.’

  Fucking good man.

  The Colonel’s mouth opened and closed, and he looked around the room, as if for inspiration.

  Finally, he said, ‘We need to talk, Chris.’ And with that they got up and walked swiftly to the door.

  Billy, Geordie, Carl and I looked at each other.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Geordie said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Carl said. ‘You okay, Billy?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Billy was still reeling.

  I fished my notebook out of my trouser pocket.

  ‘Okay, boys, I’m getting all of that down verbatim. We’ll need it for the board of inquiry. Right, can you remember who said what?’

  Geordie stood up.

  ‘Great idea, Ed, but can we do it outside? I’m in serious need of some fresh air.’

  We spent the next hour grouped around a bench in the sun. I jotted down every word while Geordie and Carl bitched like hell. For once, Carl had a genuine reason to do so, and we weren’t going to deny him.

  Writing it down helped us revisit our actions and the thought processes behind them. It also took the lid off the pressure cooker after the incredible tension of the morning.

  Billy rubbed the palm of his hand slowly over his stubble as we finished. Of all of us, Billy had taken it the worst. He was the mission commander. It wasn’t just the shock of Mathew’s death that had made him puke. Flying meant everything to him; it was his life. He was going for an officer’s commission. The least he could expect if we got done was to lose his wings. As the Sky Police, Billy knew that better than anyone. He was looking over the abyss.

  Billy wasn’t alone. Geordie was the Rescue Police, Carl the Electronic Warfare Police, and I was the Weapons Police. We kept the rulebook: the same book that was about to be thrown at us – and probably all the harder because it was ours. Billy looked at each of us in turn.

  ‘We did the right thing.’

  We all agreed with him. And then the four of us shook hands. All for one, and one for all. It was lunchtime, but only Carl and Geordie were hungry. Billy and I wandered back into the Ops Room to get on with the day’s work.

  FOG wandered over and told us about the Colonel’s IRT plan. It was to re-role a Chinook at Bastion and carry twenty-odd marines into the fort to pick up Mathew. Trigger had asked F
OG to pass it on to us when we’d hit our radio black spot at Magowan’s HQ. He’d forgotten.

  It changed nothing. The Chinook was twenty minutes behind us, minimum, and Mathew didn’t have twenty minutes. And anyway, it was total lunacy. A big old bird like a Chinook would have been shot to shit at Jugroom. If it had gone down in the air there would have been twenty-five-plus dead. The brigadier clearly had no interest in it either; he’d only mentioned two options during his orders broadcast on the net.

  FOG also forgot to tell us that Trigger was sending a second Chinook down to the gun line with extra gas. Now that would have been nice to know. Ironically, the fuel drama was the one thing the CO still didn’t know about yet.

  HQ Flight was taken off the IRT / HRF task with immediate effect. As with all fatalities, there was a mountain of admin to climb over. A couple of MPs from the Red Caps’ Special Investigations Branch turned up to take lengthy statements from all the pilots – Nick, Charlotte, FOG and Darwin included. Under the law, we were all witnesses to a death, and until it was solved, it was treated as suspicious.

  Trigger came back after lunch to lead the routine mission debrief. Standing up for us in the face of the CO was a brave thing to do, but he didn’t see it like that. As far as he was concerned, he’d just told the truth as he always did. If an officer lied, he had no integrity. Without integrity, how could he lead his men?

  He admitted that this was a defining moment in his career, though – because he most probably wouldn’t have one now. I told him I’d never forget what he’d done, and I never will. We didn’t bother discussing our situation any further. It was out of all our hands now – Trigger’s included.

  The eight pilots, the guy from Intelligence, the Ops Officer and the Boss filed back into the Tactical Planning Facility and watched the gun tapes on the five-foot-square screen. It taught us some pretty interesting things about the morning.

  There were RPGs everywhere. We’d missed most of them because our screens were small and we were obsessed with Mathew. More than 100 were fired at or past HQ Flight while we were on station; the majority in volley-fire from the south-east – the bottom of the treeline and the village.