Ed Macy - Apache

‘Knight Rider Five Six, Ugly Five One. I have one building still intact. It’s on the southern side of the target. Confirm you want it destroyed.’

‘Ugly Five One, that’s an A-ffirmative. Engage all remaining target buildings with Hellfire. Leave nothing standing.’

Carl banked hard right, taking us back the way we had come. There was enough heat from the place to indicate it was still inhabited but too much around it to allow me to lock it up. I’d need a straight line of sight to it all the way in.

‘Ugly Five One. Running in from the west with Hellfire.’

I flicked the weapons select switch with my left thumb; right for missiles. On my right MPD I lined up the crosshairs on the middle of the target’s front wall. My left MPD told me that a missile on the right wing had spun up and was ready to go. The dog was well and truly ready; it just needed a glimpse of the rabbit.

‘Confirm we’re on the correct side, Carl.’

It was imperative that the missile didn’t pass in front of the camera lens on launch as its heat haze would have destroyed my line of sight on my FLIR image. If it did, I would lose the target and have to keep searching for it whilst the Hellfire sped on, in search of my laser beam. Carl eased down his foot pedal, moving the aircraft’s nose a fraction to the right. Perfect.

‘I’ve stepped on it, Ed. Clear to engage.’

I flipped the guard and pulled the laser trigger with my right index finger whilst maintaining enough thumb pressure to keep the crosshairs on the centre of the building. My left index finger also flipped its guard.

At 2,000 metres, I pulled the weapons trigger, ‘Engaging with Hellfire.’

A one second pause. No bang, judder or jolt – just a rush of jet propulsion as it slipped gracefully off the right rail.

‘Missile off the rail and it’s away.’ Carl treated us to the usual pilot’s running commentary.

MSL LAUNCH flashed up on my TV screen.

‘Missile climbing, Ed.’

My entire focus shot to the thumb cursor on my right grip. The helicopter swayed slightly, but I had to keep pointing the laser beam bang in the middle of the building. For those seven seconds, it was the only thing that mattered in the whole world.

Two seconds later, MSL LAUNCH was replaced by the Hellfire’s Time of Flight countdown in seconds:

TF 5 …

‘Missile levelling off now. Missile coming down.’

TF 4 …

Shit . As we closed on it, I saw a cool ridge running through the middle of the target, front and top – two buildings, joined together.

TF3 …

To do the most damage, I needed to hit each section individually.

TF2 …

I adjusted the crosshairs to the right side of the building.

TF1 …

As I centred them on the apex of the walls the missile struck, smack on the laser beam. A flash, followed by a billowing cloud of dust as the roof lifted. The dust cleared to reveal a huge chunk missing from two-thirds up the front of the building. The right-hand and back walls had collapsed, bringing down the roof. The left-hand side of the building still stood firm.

‘Good hit, mate.’

‘Take us back out for another run-in.’

‘I’ve got the second sentry hiding behind a tree near the remains of the northern accommodation block,’ the Boss reported. ‘I need to get in close.’

‘We’re clear,’ Carl called.

‘Engaging with cannon.’

I swung the TADS across in time to see the earth and a low wall erupt beside the base of a bare tree fifty metres south-west of the mosque. As Carl banked us back in to the target I saw the lone heat source drop to the ground from behind the trunk. Trigger was in his element. My adrenalin was pumping like a piston engine too.

Carl pushed Billy north to give us a clear shot. I put a second Hellfire into the cooler stripe where the roof met the interconnecting wall. Two minutes and twenty-one seconds after the first Hellfire impacted, the building was in ruins, but I caught a glimpse on the left of my screen of a small guardhouse still standing twenty metres to its north-east. We were just 1,000 metres off now; could I get it on the same run?

‘Hold it steady, Carl. Going for one more.’

‘No, Ed. There’s not time left for–’

‘Firing Hellfire!’ The third missile streaked off the rail to my right, between two skeletal trees. It never had time to climb, or even to count me down; it just slammed straight into the middle of the six-foot by six-foot building, reducing it to rubble.

The Boss came on again, cool as a cucumber.

‘Ugly Five Zero has got a leaker, running east. Stand by…’

‘Engaging with cannon.’

I couldn’t see anyone in my half of the target area, so I swung my TADS sharp left to catch his second burst cut straight through the guy’s path. He was hurled forward, a metre off the ground, then hard down on one side. The 30-mm round that hit him had failed to explode, but it hadn’t done him any favours. It had powered straight through his back and out of his chest, leaving a hole the size of Trigger’s clenched fist.

Only the mosque was left without a scratch. They were strictly off the target list. It was where Trigger’s leaker had appeared from. And if there was one, there would be more. We needed to nail them before they reached their DShKs and Stingers, and our fuel clocks were ticking.

‘Okay Carl, bring us in close. Complete sanitisation now.’

Carl threw us into an anticlockwise orbit as I scanned the southern half of the site. Nothing.

‘Ugly Five Zero, Knight Rider Five Six. Intelligence from higher has identified a further enemy compound at the following grid. Ready to copy.’

Intelligence from higher?

‘Ugly Five Zero has identified a building in the northern sector.’ The Boss hadn’t finished with his half of the target yet. ‘Pass grid to Five One. Five One acknowledge.’

I was only too pleased to copy.

‘Break… Break… Engaging with Hellfire.’ The Boss was doing an increasingly bad job of disguising his excitement.

I copied down Knight Rider’s grid, punched it into the keypad and slaved my TADS thermal camera to it with a push of a button. It was a small, chisel-shaped compound surrounded by fields, 200 metres directly east of the Taliban base. Whoever wanted us to have a look at it wasn’t part of the stack. We’d be able to talk to the Nimrod, and the B1 had a radar. ‘Higher’ was either connected to the Predator feed, or had picked up a SigInt hit from the place – or both.

High and to the east, I zoomed into the chisel-shaped compound as three men ran through its main entrance and ducked into the first of the five single-storey buildings inside it.

‘Runners to the north, closing in fast on the compound.’ Keeping a broad sweeping arc – out of Billy’s and Trigger’s way – Carl had spotted two more sprinting down a path to the south. We hadn’t seen them leave the complex, which made them a fresh target; I needed permission to engage.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly Five One. Two men heading south towards the second compound; confirm clear to engage?’

I flicked the weapons switch forward, tracked him with the crosshairs and began lasing to update the gun’s range to target.

‘Knight Rider Five Six, you are clear hot–’

‘Firing with thirty Mike Mike.’

I gave the path a burst as the first runner reached the nearest building, throwing up mud and dust. The second runner was still 100 metres short. He’d stopped to see his mate get through and knew he wouldn’t be so lucky.

I centred on him and squeezed off a twenty-round burst. I saw the heat of the rounds arc down and knew they were going to miss him too. Bollocks. He stumbled as the ground erupted behind him then legged it into the field.