by Ed Macy
‘Ready three zero,’ she called. Time of flight, thirty seconds.
There was an almighty boom and a pillar of black earth blasted 150 feet into the air. When the dust cleared, we could see that it had demolished the southern wall with pinpoint perfection, gouging a hole some ten feet wide and four feet deep in the ground. There wasn’t a single barrel left.
‘Dart Two Four, Wildman Five Five. That’s a Delta Hotel. Nice hole.’
Widow Seven Zero told us the mortars were about to fire. We were instructed to move east to the wadi.
The Green Zone was only a couple of hundred metres thick, but the trees overlapped to form a canopy. I tried to see if there was anything beneath it that might pose a threat to the convoy. I had a sporadic view of the track running through it; there were plenty of potholes, but I couldn’t see any fresh holes or unusual heat shapes.
The trees overhung the point where the buildings came to an end and the Green Zone began. It was the most hazardous area for the convoy because it could be viewed-at ground level-from a distance, and command detonated from cover with deadly accuracy. Once in the Green Zone, the Taliban bomb-makers would have to depend on a pressure pad trigger, which our engineers could find without the threat of a remote detonation.
When the mortars stopped Billy took us low over the western side of the compounds as the boys went firm, ready for the assault.
I noticed a roadblock just past the bomb crater, where the track disappeared into the trees.
‘Widow, Wildman Five Five. I’ve seen what looks like a roadblock at the entrance to the Green Zone. Copy so far.’
‘Widow Copied.’
I continued to describe what I saw. Just under the canopy, the right-hand side of the track was blocked by what looked like two forty-five gallon concrete barrels with a steel pole stretched between them spanning the right side of the track. Any vehicle passing to the left of them would then be forced to swing hard right by another set. It was a tight chicane and not one that you could ram aside at high speed. It was designed to slow traffic to a crawl. There were no ANP checkpoints here, which meant it was down to the Taliban.
Widow acknowledged and informed his search engineers.
As we kicked over to the east, I looked down and saw a man with a gun. On closer inspection I realised it wasn’t a gun and he was very old. Dishdashes and full face beards made it hard to tell the age of some Afghans from this height, but his gait, stoop, pace and the way he held his shoulders earned him pensioner status in my book.
No more than 500 metres north-east of where the bomb had gone off, and north of the track that ran east-west through the Green Zone, he ducked inside a small, door-less dome constructed out of four poles overlaid with grasses. It wasn’t a home, but a place to rest while working the fields, just large enough to lie down in with his feet poking out.
I told Widow Seven Zero he was no threat. I didn’t want one of the lads to pop round a corner and get spooked by a harmless old man with a stick.
A few seconds later, the Widow said B Company was going to start clearing the compounds.
They moved from building to building with incredible speed. It was as much as we could do to stay one step ahead of them. I couldn’t cover everything they were doing. They weren’t grenading. They pairs fire-and-manoeuvred through each doorway. They were treating the place with respect while aggressively clearing compound after compound.
Before we knew it, 3 Flight was back out to do a RIP with us. That was how long it had taken to get in there, clear the IED, and get B Company in.
I was very surprised B Company had got down the slope without a contact. It was a golden opportunity. The Taliban knew that the built-up area had great killing fields. Perhaps the Now Zad experience had made them think twice. We were directly overhead and if they did open up, they would die wherever they fired from. If they made a break for it, they’d just die tired.
They’d wait until the Green Zone to attack. They would ’shwhack 3 Para on their terms, in their backyard.
We had to route back around the north to avoid the gun-to-target line after briefing Pat about the roadblock and the old-timer. As we flew past the three guns, I could see they were no more than twenty metres apart.
Billy and I bypassed Camp Bastion. We went straight onto the range just to the west of the camp and fired fifty rounds to DH my cannon.
We took a suck of gas and a 30 mil ammo upload then taxied back out onto the runway just fifteen minutes later. With the gun DH, the refuel and upload we only had nineteen minutes on the end of the HALS before we roared off again.
I flicked semi-automatic onto automatic on the HIDAS and Billy power-climbed into the haze.
The artillery were firing straight in. We went north of the guns and waited for an opportunity to call Pat.
I spoke to the patrol ahead. Pat said the troops had cleared the roadblock. It was a Taliban checkpoint. We were to clear them immediately due east, and watch the boys move through the Green Zone.
We’d left them not too far short of it. They’d taken so long to get past the Taliban checkpoint they’d hardly moved. The engineers had needed to go forward first to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped.
The old man’s crops had been immaculate when we left. They were now trampled in snaking lines. It did look as if the Taliban had been waiting in ambush.
There were also 2,000-lb bomb craters by the road and in the fields. They’d been dropped as pre-emptive strikes.
The old-timer was still taking refuge in his hut. I saw his head poke out every now and again.
The boys began their clearance of the Green Zone. Two Paras ran forward through an open field and put a wooden frame against a solid wall and ran back again. Mouse-hole charges. After the explosion they ran back to the wall with half of their group; the other half had their weapons up, ready to fire. They went through the freshly blown hole in pairs, then down on their belt buckles. The whole process was repeated over and over again, field after field. They weren’t prepared to go through doorways. One patrol even head butted their way through one of the flimsier walls.
We did another RIP when they were halfway through the Green Zone. That was how long this mission was taking.
The Taliban still hadn’t kicked off. They weren’t ones for shying away from a fight in the Green Zone, no matter how outnumbered they were. So they had to be biding their time. They knew about the convoy. They were deliberately avoiding any confrontation with 3 Para. They wanted the convoy: an easy target that couldn’t fight back.
If it wasn’t an IED or an ambush, what could they have planned? Whatever it was, I prayed that our boys would all still be alive and unscathed when we returned.
We parked up when we got back. We had thirty minutes or so to spare this time because we didn’t need to go on the range. While Billy sorted out the aircraft, Jon and I borrowed the lads’ ‘Mimic’-it looked like a WMIK, but without any weapons or weapon mounts-and we drove like men possessed to the 3 Para cookhouse. It was closed. We should have guessed; every swinging dick was at Musa Qa’leh. We begged for some grub. They handed us a doggie bag of turkey mash sandwiches and wedges of cheesecake and we belted back.
Jon glanced over his shoulder and began to laugh. ‘The fuzz are after us.’ A wagonload of Royal Military Police (RMP) with flashing blue light and siren blaring were in hot pursuit because we were speeding. Still wearing our Apache helmets with visors down-helmets were mandatory in convertibles and this one didn’t have a windscreen-I kept my foot to the floor. They weren’t allowed inside the flight line, so had to stop at our barrier.
We were ravenous, but had no time to eat before we jumped in the aircraft, so we stuffed our faces as we sat waiting to taxi.
Taff plugged in and told me the RMPs were going to charge the driver of the Land Rover and his name was on the work ticket.
‘Tell them it was me and there’s a fucking war going on out there,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Thank you, sir.’
&
nbsp; I was chinstrapped. We’d been strapped into the Apache for nearly eleven hours and they hadn’t even got into the DC yet. I immediately felt guilty. At least I was fighting from an air-condi-tioned seat, while 3 Para were out there on the ground.
The radio transmissions came through sporadically as Billy threw the engine power levers forward, ready to move out again.
The vehicles were crossing the wadi and Chris had found the Taliban.
I’d spoken too soon.
SNIPER TEAM
SUNDAY, 6 AUGUST 2006
Musa Qa’leh
We rolled out onto the runway, took off and climbed away from the sun. It was a welcome release. My eyes burnt through lack of sleep and staring into the TADS for days on end. I felt like I needed a regular supply of ice cubes down my trousers to keep me awake.
Must focus, I kept telling myself. Must focus…
Pat and Chris were tracking Taliban so we didn’t interrupt them. We skirted north of the guns. All three fired in unison as we passed. Dust billowed around them, carried by the radial shockwave.
I was trying to get my head around what the Taliban were up to. They’d learned a thing or two over the past three months. What was I missing? There were no IEDs so far today and no mines either. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know we were coming and hadn’t had time to prepare. And they sure as hell weren’t scared. Their primary aim was to send the British infidels home in body bags, and they weren’t going to get many better chances than this.
Trying to stay one step ahead of them was what was focusing my mind, but my mind was as knackered as my increasingly emaciated body. They clearly weren’t going to take on 3 Para, but how could they take out the convoy without getting close? Their mortars, RPGs and rockets weren’t accurate enough.
‘Wildman Five Five this is Wildman Five Four.’ Jake broke through my tortured thoughts. He’d taken advantage of a lull in the radio traffic and spoken to Pat.
The convoy was in the DC and shortly to depart. B and D Companies were in position on the western side of the wadi, covering east. The Pathfinders and Danes were at the end of the Bazaar road, on the eastern side of the wadi, covering west. Pat and Tony were orbiting the track across the wadi as a deterrent. Chris and Carl were to the south, short of gas, looking for Taliban from an intelligence hit.
We were in the north, approaching the ridge, with the Patrols Platoon below us.
Jake told us to take over from Chris; he would stay close to the convoy route.
Bollocks.
The guns were firing. We were told we’d have to route back west, around the rear of them, and come back east to meet up with Chris and Carl.
Billy muttered, ‘No way, José.’
He dropped the nose, and within a heartbeat we were thirty feet off the deck, banging southbound across the desert floor at max chat. The guns were firing but he knew that their trajectory would take the shells over our heads. It was a no-no to fly through the gun line, but needs must. We weren’t going to waste any more gas flying three sides of a square.
Then Billy nosed us up vertically and all I could see was sky.
Chris told me to look out for a white car, which would be our anchor point, and sent me a grid via the IDM. I slaved the TADS. When I looked down, there was the white car by a small stream just off the main wadi. Three men were making a poor show of pretending to wash it.
Chris wasn’t a slave to the digital environment; he was a head-out-of-the-cockpit kind of guy. Any directions he gave me now would always begin at this anchor point.
We were now three klicks south of the crossing point and too far away from the boys to either defend them or act as a deterrent. The last time we’d been on overwatch was after the IED killed three of our guys five days ago. We’d had an intelligence hit then too, only thirty klicks away to the north-east.
We’d tried to fob it off, but the head sheds at Lashkar Gar were highly excited; they believed it was a high value target, ‘a sizable force that was preparing to set off and kill our troops’. We pointed out that its location meant it had no bearing on the troops we were protecting, but were ordered to go.
It was too far to send a lone Apache, so we both went, leaving our guys with no Intimate Support-only to be greeted by a couple of men in the open, waving their dishdashes to prove they didn’t have any concealed weapons.
As we got back to the area we were supposed to patrol, Dan’s flight had just arrived to RIP us. The Taliban were crawling all over the place. We were lucky we hadn’t taken any further casualties.
This seemed like an action replay to me, and I resolved to get back to the convoy as soon as possible.
‘Five hundred metres south-west of anchor is a group of about fifteen compounds,’ Chris said.
I saw them out of the window and copied.
‘There is a back-to-front, J-shaped tree line oriented west.’ Okay, looking west I will see a J with the hook pointing north--got it.
‘Visual with a J tree line,’ I acknowledged. ‘It has fields to the north and west, buildings to the south and east.’
‘Correct. In and around the hook of the J I’ve got two pax, possibly Taliban.’ Chris went on to say that they were hiding from him, possibly with a SAM or an RPG, and maybe personal weapons as well.
Carl couldn’t hang around any longer; they headed back to refuel.
His final words confirmed my worries. ‘I wouldn’t hang around down here, if you know what I mean…’
I knew exactly what he meant. I called Widow Seven Zero. ‘The area we’re looking in isn’t a direct threat to your convoy route.’
‘Try to find them and ascertain if they’ve got weapons. If they have, you’re clear hot.’
If I’d found them on my own I couldn’t have fired because they were not a threat to the convoy. He must have had better intelligence to clear me hot. Either way, he couldn’t see them so I was going to have to give him a full picture and then request his clearance again.
One man was trying to conceal himself under the trees at the very end of the hook of the J. He had something hanging over his shoulder. I didn’t want to hang around so the best thing, I reckoned, was to provoke some form of response. If I fired close to but not at him, he’d run away empty-handed, or fire back at me or at least reveal a weapon.
I put down a warning burst about fifty metres away, in the field to his west.
Nothing.
We turned away to see if we could tempt him at least to move or draw a weapon. He got up and sauntered under the tree line.
As we turned back towards him, he went static again. Maybe he thought we couldn’t see him because he was in shadow and wearing black. It looked like he was carrying some kind of flag. I tried to get an angle on him as we came round, but he stayed behind a tree trunk as we circled.
‘Keep it up,’ I said. ‘He’s going to move into the sunlight in a minute; maybe we’ll be able to spot something.’
As he moved round to avoid us the sun glinted on something long and thin across his shoulder. It couldn’t have been a weapon. Weapons don’t glint. Gunmetal is dull, for good reason.
Billy said, ‘Maybe it’s a sword.’
We completed a full orbit and found another two men. One of them had what looked like another flag. Two flags? What was this, the opening ceremony of the Taliban Olympics?
We brought Widow up to speed. He was clearly taking these guys seriously. ‘Do they have concealed weapons?’
‘Stand by,’ I said. ‘I’ll put down another ten-round warning burst.’
All three were now just across the track from the compounds.
This time I aimed the burst so close they all got a free pedicure. The third man whipped across to a doorway in the compound wall, but couldn’t get through. This was a big combat indicator to me. This wasn’t their turf; they had to be Taliban. Had they been locals he would have known the other side of the door was bricked up.
His two mates set off east along the track, towards the woods. I final
ly got a good view of them. The lead man had a swathe of cloth over his shoulder, and had something long underneath it. Chris was right. My money was on an RPG or a SAM. The one behind him had something similar under his arm, similarly concealed. It must have weighed a bit; he was using both hands to keep it under his armpit. It was long and chunky enough to have been a recoilless rifle.
But they were walking away from the fight and I couldn’t positively identify weapons. Our ROE didn’t support shooting them. There was another flash of reflected sunlight. It was an antenna. He had a radio.
‘Contact!’ Widow called.
Billy spun us on a sixpence.
The radios went manic. The convoy had come under fire in the wadi from Yellow 14.
I was absolutely fuming at myself. While we’d been mincing around, trying to coax these three into doing something stupid so we could either identify or discount them, the convoy had been hit three klicks away. We had only one Apache over it; it should have been our priority.
We raced north.
The convoy was still strewn across the wadi. I glanced at Yellow 14 on my spot map; it was 200 metres north of B Company, 700 metres west of the Norsemen in Musa Qa’leh and about 300 metres north-west of the centre of the convoy.
The airwaves were suddenly flooded with chatter. We found out why there wasn’t a raging firefight going on. There had only been a single shot from Yellow 14.
The dense vegetation of the Green Zone thinned out as you moved further north, and gave way to an open expanse of irrigated farmland. Right in the middle of it was a small copse-otherwise known as Yellow 14.
The next thing we heard was that a soldier had been killed on one of the vehicles.
‘Fuck,’ Billy said.
Yellow 14 had a direct view across to the convoy, and would have made sense as a firing point-but for one thing.
I said, ‘Can’t be there, mate.’
‘It’s got to be,’ Billy said. ‘That’s Yellow 14.’
‘Look at the distance. It was a single shot, and that’s too far for anything other than a sniper. There’s no way a sniper would shoot from there.’ It was too close to the Paras and there was no escape route. They’d be a sitting target. As soon as he pulled that trigger again, the artillery would come down and he’d become a magnet for every British soldier in Musa Qa’leh.
