Ed Macy - Apache

‘Nightrider Five Five, Ugly. Confirm, you actually want the Taliban to shoot at you?’

‘Affirm. It’s the best way to assess their location and strength. That’s when we might need your help. Confirm you can see the ridgeline?’

‘Affirm. We have you visual on our optics. We’re due east; can you hear our rotors?’

‘Negative Ugly. We can see a couple of black dots through binos, but that’s about it.’

‘Good. We’re in dead ground to the Green Zone but we’ll have some fire down for you within thirty seconds of your call. Keep us updated on what you see and pass suspect grids regularly; it will cut down on our response time.’

‘Knight Rider Five Five, that’s a copy; stand by for some playtime.’

We orbited in oval-shaped ‘race tracks’ at seventy knots, keeping 100 feet off the desert floor to stay out of view. Either my TADS camera or Billy’s was on the marines at all times. Our downdraughts made wonderful patterns in the thick red sand beneath us.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. We’re moving up onto the ridgeline now. Get ready.’

We saw their vehicles cautiously ascend the 500 metre slope. I actioned the cannon.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. We’re now presenting the vehicles to the Green Zone. Stand by for contact.’

The second the guys started taking rounds, the Boss would power up hard and make a beeline for them. I kept my finger over my trigger, and the Boss tensed up on the cyclic. Both Apaches were now pointing towards the BRF, but nothing happened. Ten minutes and as many circuits later – still nothing.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. We’re getting no response. The feeling is the Taliban might think we’re looking a bit too handy in the vehicles with our weapons pointing down on ’em and that’s what’s stopping ’em from engaging. We’re going to debus. Standby for contact. Again.’

The marines slipped down into firing positions around their vehicles, lying on their belt buckles. Another ten minutes passed. Still no reaction. Billy and Carl had started doing flying exercises, landing in the desert and taking off again.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. Okay, we’re going to stand up and have a bit of a mill around the ridge. Hopefully that’ll do it. Stand by.’

The figures on the ridge strolled about for five more uncomfortable minutes, cradling their rifles. It looked utterly incongruous. When that didn’t work, they gathered into a group for a pow-wow by the middle Land Rover. The Boss wanted to know what Billy and Carl were up to.

‘You never know when you might need to do a dust-out landing. Just keeping our skills up.’

The BRF strode purposefully back to their vehicles.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. We don’t fucking understand this. Normally when we come down this far, we get shot at. Today they’re not doing a bloody thing. We’ve decided we’re going to get a brew on.’

‘Confirm; you’re going to do it up there?’

‘Affirmative. The enemy will think we’ve decided they’re definitely not around and, fingers crossed, they’ll open up.’

The Green Zone was less than 100 metres away. They were either very brave, or clinically insane. Or even more bored than Billy and Carl. The marines separated into small groups, lit their hexamine stoves and brought out their mugs. Then the Mad Hatter’s tea party began.

‘This is priceless,’ I said. ‘HM Government is paying 20k an hour for us to watch a load of mad bootnecks have a cuppa in the enemy’s back garden.’

‘I hope they’re enjoying themselves. It’s making me thirsty. But we’ve only got about ten minutes of combat gas left before we go chicken. You might want to tell them to get a scoot on.’

All still quiet on the ridge. I gave Knight Rider our ten-minute warning.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. Copied. Bear with us. We’ve got one final trick up our sleeves.’

Twenty commandos stripped off their body armour and helmets and stood in line, weapons down and hands on their hips, facing the Green Zone. They might as well have tattooed ‘Shoot Me Quick’ on their foreheads. For all the reaction the marines got, they might as well have been on the Hog’s Back. It was time to draw the charade to a close.

‘Knight Rider Five Five, Ugly Five One. We’re bang out of gas. We’re going to have to disappear. The Taliban just aren’t here, mate.’

‘Copied. Well, we tried our best. They obviously don’t want to play today. Thanks for coming down.’

We overflew the suspect patch of Green Zone on our way out, but could see nothing either. Back in the JHF Ops Room an hour and a half later, we updated Alice during the quickest sortie debrief ever. She shook her head and smiled.

‘Did none of you stop to think what day it is today?’

We looked blank.

‘Friday. On Friday at noon, all good Muslims go to Jumu’ah .’

‘Jumu’ah ?’

‘Friday Prayers. I could have told you that this morning. Next time you lot get a bright idea, do feel free to ask.’

We weren’t having a great run. It took 42 Commando’s Intelligence Officer to steer us out of our next reconnaissance cul-de-sac a few nights later. That sortie also served to remind us that the Apache’s high-tech gadgetry could only ever be as smart as the human being in charge of it.

We had moved onto the IRT / HRF shift, and got a late night call out from the Kajaki DC. Once we’d got there, the shooting had stopped and we couldn’t see a trace of the enemy. To make the trip worthwhile, we decided to take a covert look from a distance at a compound that 42 Commando, the local battlegroup, had asked us to keep an eye on. They suspected the Taliban might be using it as a training camp.

We stayed three kilometres back, at about 4,000 feet and downwind, so its inhabitants wouldn’t hear us. As we began to circle, five men walked out of one of the buildings. The locals never moved around Helmand at night, so this could only mean one thing. I hit record on the TADS.

They headed in staggered file down a track, a few metres apart, turned slightly outwards with the rear marker checking back, like a well-trained military patrol. The Apache’s thirty-six-times-magnification FLIR thermal imaging camera was so powerful we could pick up a heat source in an open field miles away. Just a short distance closer we could identify a human shape, so we had a grand-stand view of whatever they were about to do. It was like watching a black and white TV show. About fifty metres up the track, the men peeled off right, one by one, into the field alongside it. They moved a safe distance and crouched down, now about ten metres apart.

‘Fuck me,’ Billy said. ‘They’re in extended line; infantry tactics. They’re practising battle drills.’

We couldn’t engage them because they weren’t armed, but 42 Commando’s Int Cell needed to take a look at this.

After a few minutes, the first man got up and walked back to the path. The rest followed at roughly thirty second intervals, and once the whole group was back on the path, they patrolled back to the compound. We’d found the notorious Taliban training ground 42 Commando were after.

We projected our footage onto the big screen in the JHF. Our Ops Officer was intrigued, and popped next door to fetch his opposite number from 42 Commando. He in turn fetched his Intelligence Officer, and then the 2i/c and CO. We played the tape a third time, beaming with pride.

‘What do you think of that then? Quite a find, eh? But what does it mean?’

The 42 Commando Int Officer was a wise old bird.

‘Right, take it back. Here they go; they walk down the road then break into an extended line. Now, watch carefully. Zoom in on this man… here…’

He surveyed our blank faces.

‘Look, he is crouching, and then he moves away. Do you see his weapon? Look carefully… there…’ He pointed to the patch of ground the man had just left.