Where were they?
‘What about those bushes?’ Billy aimed at them with his monocle.
They followed an irrigation ditch. It was a good position, right on the eastern side of the Green Zone. But they only ran part of the way, which meant they’d end up in an irrigation ditch for fifty metres before getting back into cover.
Widow Seven Zero pressed us for an update.
‘Wildman Five Five. Negative,’ I said. ‘Looking.’
‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Four-give Wildman Five Five some space. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
I gave Jake a silent thank you and kept searching.
It all looked the bloody same. Just west of the wadi were fields and irrigation ditches with tree lines and hedgerows but none was unbroken. There must be a continuous hedgerow somewhere, or a tree line, or a mixture of both…but I couldn’t find anything and I was getting to the limits of a long-range sniper shot.
Just west of these fields was the edge of the Green Zone. Could he have scored a hit from this distance? Yes. But the fields were in full crop, and the crops were high, so he couldn’t possibly have got a clear shot at the convoy.
‘Where the fuck…?’
That’s where they are.
‘There…Pilot…Target…HMD! Right! One o’clock! Tree line east-west, looks like an inverted Y.’
Billy’s crosshair matched mine in my monocle.
‘Seen,’ he said.
Running south from a group of compounds was a thin but unbroken line of trees which forked after 200 metres. One row went south-west and buried itself in thick crops too high to see over. The other went east for about 300 metres before turning south-east and continuing to the very edge of the wadi. Trees didn’t survive in Afghanistan unless there was plenty of water, so there had to be irrigation ditches right alongside them.
I lased and stored the junction of the Y in the Apache’s computer in case we needed it.
‘From the very bottom of that row, buddy.’ I pointed with my right eye, knowing that Billy was following closely with his. ‘At the very end of the south-eastern leg, you can see straight down the wadi, all the way down to the convoy.’
‘It’s a long way,’ Billy said.
He had a point. It was between 500 and 700 metres. It was 600 metres to the centre of the wadi.
It was pretty much like the sniper position outside Crossmaglen. A long clear shot from a concealed wood. It had a good escape route with cover. And it led to an urban area where they could dump the weapons and melt away.
But what about the distance?
I needed to commit to a search or discount it on range, and quickly.
‘Six hundred metres is about 660 yards.’ I was thinking aloud. ‘One minute of arc at 660 is up to a six and a half inch error. He can hit a head at that range. If the convoy stopped for a second or if he led the target by about a second, he could still hit a head.’
‘There’s nowhere else he can be,’ Billy said. ‘Look at the size of those crops…’
‘Wildman Five Four has a possible firing point north up the wadi. Investigating.’ I needed to keep everyone off my back.
Billy kept the aircraft on an offensive heading, without pointing directly at the tree line. We wanted them to stay exactly where they were.
I searched very carefully under the trees, flicking the TADS from DTV to FLIR, FLIR white-hot to FLIR black-hot. Sometimes it stood out better when heat was displayed as black and cold as white. I was afraid I’d miss something. My eyes were stinging with tiredness, and from not blinking.
I started from the edge of the compounds and worked south. I didn’t want them to escape while I was searching for the possible firing point. I had an awesome picture. It was working a treat.
The trees were well established along this route. The bottom of the tree canopy was between four and twelve feet proud of a footpath, beside which ran an irrigation ditch. It looked fairly deep. They’d be glowing if they were silhouetted against it.
Nothing.
I rubbed my eyes.
I searched again and this time looked into the trees too, to see if they’d taken the koala route up into them.
Still nothing.
My back was killing me. I’d been strapped in one position for too long, hunched over a five-inch screen, looking for a shagging pixel to move.
‘They’re nearly across,’ Jon called. ‘You see anything yet?’
‘Negative. If they’re in there, we’re going to have to sucker them out.’
It was a long way to extract and they must have felt safe so far north. They
had
to be there.
With Jon orbiting below us, we were heading west over the convoy.
‘Billy, fly an orbit clockwise, making the centre point well south of them. As we come round onto east they’ll think we’re looking at something to the south of us. They may make a break for it.’
We flew the arc, everything peeled.
‘Nothing yet.’ Billy was using the thermal PNVS.
We were now facing north-east, in a slow right-banked orbit with the inverted Y to our north. I had a perfect view. As we passed through north I saw what looked like a footbridge about six to eight feet wide, about ten metres to the right of the Y, under the trees. I hadn’t spotted it earlier.
I flicked from DTV to FLIR and back again, in and out on maximum zoom.
‘I think I’ve cracked it, mate. There’s nowhere else. Do you see that?’
The aircraft was banking away from the bridge, but the TADS was staring directly at it.
‘Seen.’ His crosshair matched the TADS crosshair.
We continued around the arc.
‘Keep pointing the aircraft in this direction,’ I said. ‘Make it look as if we’re flying away.’
‘Good thinking.’
‘I don’t know what else to do,’ I said.
I zoomed in on the bridge as we got further and further away.
We both stared at the MPD, not daring to blink.
‘There,’ Billy yelled over the intercom. ‘We’ve found one. Stand by.’
A head appeared from under the bridge.
‘Hold it,’ I said to Billy. ‘Hold it…’
I was right on the edge of the TADS hard stop; I didn’t want him to turn the aircraft and lose them.
‘I have it.’
Out came the shoulders. FLIR had him glowing against the ditch water.
The sun was at the best possible angle, so I flicked from FLIR to DTV. His black dishdash stood out beautifully against the far bank of the irrigation ditch. He slung his RPG over his shoulder and a sack of warheads on his back.
As he started to climb, out came Number Two.
I felt a surge of excitement.
‘Steady, steady…’ I kept counting.
The second guy had a weapon too-an assault rifle of some description, but I couldn’t make out a distinctive AK47 magazine. Right behind him, pushing him hard, was Number Three.
The fourth, in white, also had an RPG, but it was Number Three that got my pulse racing. As he stretched forward to scramble up the bank, he had a long, thin-barrelled weapon at his side.
‘Sniper,’ we said in unison.
‘Bring it round to the right, but don’t give the game away.’
‘We’ve found the sniper team, stand by for data,’ Billy updated Jon and Jake and sent them the Y junction grid.
If they’d been in fire positions, we could just have flipped the aircraft over and poured rounds down on them. But they weren’t; they were trying to escape.
We didn’t want to spook them. We had to lull them into thinking they’d got away with it. We were in a big lazy turn, when what we really wanted to do was flip the aircraft round and blow them away.
We lost sight of them as the TADS locked out, but they were moving cautiously. By the time we rolled out they would be at the junction of the tree line running north to the compounds.
As he turned the aircraft and we passed 180 degrees from the stored Y grid, the TADS swung from full left to full right. It was ready to lock on the second it came within 120 degrees.
I cursed the IPT. I’d been asking all tour for the Flechette restriction to be lifted. It was deemed an inhumane weapon by the legal
boffins; they thought the place would end up looking like George A. Romero’s version of the World Darts Championship. We knew the clearance was on its way, but if we used the best weapon the Apache had to nail them in this wood right now, we’d be breaking the law.
‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Four, this is Wildman Five Five. We’ve located the sniper team. Widow, call when ready to copy.’
‘Widow ready to copy.’
‘Four armed men in a tree line egressing north from Grid Forty-One-Sierra, Six-Five-Nine-Two, Eight-Zero-Nine-Three. Setting up to attack.’
I took a deep breath and forced myself to stay alert.
The sun was right above us and baking through the glass. The cockpit was air-conditioned, but my flameproof clothing, escape jacket and helmet combo didn’t allow the cool air to get through. I was baking.
My hands had barely come off this big PlayStation control for over twelve hours. My thumbs felt like they couldn’t move another millimetre. My lumbar spine was on fire and my eyes were dry and stung like hell. My lids felt like they were lined with sandpaper every time I blinked.
Anxious to see every minute detail, I’d been getting closer and closer to the screen. I’d been looking north most of the day, using the sun to aid the TADS, which meant I needed to keep my visor up to see the MPDs-which meant the air-conditioning gasper poking out of the console kept hitting me smack in the face.
As front-seater, I’d sat still for so long my buttocks felt like they were pressing down on a couple of golf balls. I’d been lifting one cheek, then the other for ages now, but it didn’t relieve the pain. To round things off, leaning over perpetually made my body armour dig deep into my bladder.
In the turn I checked the cannon was set to a twenty-round burst, then selected HEISAP rockets to two. As we approached the 120 degree TADS stop, I actioned the cannon and felt the comforting thud as it moved fully right to intercept the target.
Widow confirmed this was a known position; other lads had also been contacted from here.
Bloody hell, Widow.
It would have been useful to have known that earlier.
If the lads had been contacted from there it was obviously on the way in, not on the way back out.
The TADS image whipped past then froze. The bottom of the Y filled the screen. I just caught sight of the hem of a set of white robes as the last man disappeared under the trees, heading north.
I nearly whooped with excitement.
‘The sniper team are all in the wood, heading north. Come in after us fast with rockets; we’ll kick right out of your way. Don’t wait for us to say clear, just fire as soon as you can. Then we’ll swarm the target. We’ll take the northern cut-off, you take the south.’
‘Copied,’ Jon said.
I zoomed to the top of the tree line, at the south-east corner of the first compound wall. Awesome. There was a fifteen-foot gap they’d need to cross to get to the wall. The wall itself ran fifty metres east and twenty-five metres north without a single hole or access point.
‘We’ve got them buddy,’ I called. ‘They’ve nowhere to go.’
They’d just killed one of our lads. Now I was going to make sure they would never do it again.
My eyes were out on stalks, watching the TADS for the slightest movement.
We rolled out north and began running in. I estimated them to be nearly halfway along the irrigation ditch. They wouldn’t be able to see us now.
Jake and Jon were running in behind us.
The plan was for me to fire cannon rounds towards the top of the tree line to stop them in their tracks, fire a pair of HEISAP rockets to check their alignment and finally to make the necessary correction and hit them hard with another flurry of rockets.
At that point we’d push right and fly up the eastern side of the trees, watching the gap at the top to make sure they didn’t escape.
Jake and Jon would follow suit.
Both of us would then circle like a pair of avenging eagles: we were responsible for the northern escape point; they’d cover the southern fork.
I held the crosshair three-quarters of the way up the tree line, lasing constantly. I squeezed the weapons release trigger hard and called, ‘Engaging’ over the Mission Net.
The second the gun stopped firing I lowered the crosshair to the centre of the wood and actioned the rockets with a flick of a button.
‘Come co-op, Billy.’
‘Co-op,’ he yelled back, letting me know that we were ready to fire rockets co-operatively.
The cannon rounds smashed into the trees with incredible accuracy. I knew they would; we’d DH’d it some hours earlier and got it spot on. The HEDP rounds would be sending shrapnel, fire, branches and splinters all over the place, right across the sniper team’s path. There’s no way they’d run into that lot.
‘Match and shoot.’ My crosshair was dead centre.
‘Engaging,’ Billy called over the radio to let Jake and Jon know it would be their turn in a moment.
A pair of rockets peeled off each side of our airframe and roared towards the target with their arses on fire.
Before they had even impacted I could see they were going too high and to the right.
‘Fucking IPT…’ I set the quantity to eight HEISAPs. We needed a tool to align these launchers and they still wouldn’t buy one.
They landed in the field just right of the gap between the trees and the corner of the wall. I adjusted low and left and called for another volley.
‘Match and sh—’
There was a tremendous whoosh as eight rockets rippled off the wings.
‘My gun.’ I was ready to smash these Taliban to pieces at the same time Jon and Jake fired.
‘Kicking right.’ Billy let the others know they were up.
FUCK…
I had a TADS FAIL and LOS INVALID message in my monocle as soon as the rockets fired. The weapons computer suddenly didn’t know where the TADS was pointing or I was looking. It was a catastrophe. The computer wouldn’t allow me to fire any weapons if it couldn’t corroborate an accurate sight.
All eight rockets cracked straight into the canopy. Splintered branches, trunks and leaves burst out of the centre of the tree line. At least we’d got top marks for adjustment.