Ed Macy - Apache

‘Five Zero. Affirm. Wizard watched injured Taliban making their way across the bridge towards those compounds. You take all the buildings on the south-west of the ditch; we’ll take the east.’

The sky began to lighten as Billy and Carl put us in broad orbits above the compounds. As Carl and I came round, I saw two smart-looking 4x4s parked a few hundred metres down a dirt track which ran alongside the ditch. That was a Taliban indicator if ever there was one; a local could never have afforded one. Either reinforcements were arriving or, more likely, they’d come to collect their wounded.

‘Stand by, Carl. I think we might have a shoot on here.’ I had the gun and the crosshairs ready. I saw a flicker of movement on the canal side of the compound. ‘East a bit more, buddy.’

As we cleared the eastern wall, two men were trying to get inside the place. They had left what looked like a locked gate near the canal and staggered along the wall, looking for an opening. One was holding up the other, and they scrabbled about, increasingly desperate to find another entrance. Neither seemed to have weapons on them. I hit zoom as they drew level with the building on the inside of the compound.

The one being carried had clearly been in the battle earlier; the heat stains on his head and tattered clothing must have been blood. He appeared only to have one arm and his left foot was missing. Squirming like trapped rats, they were a truly pathetic sight.

Then I spotted an RPG launcher and an AK47 fifteen metres behind them, on the ground, just short of the ditch. They must have dropped them when they heard our rotor blades. So they knew the drill.

‘Ugly Five Zero, Ugly Five One. I have eyes on two Taliban trying to get into the first compound on the west side of the ditch. Confirm clear to engage.’

‘Ugly Five Zero. Affirm. Widow has cleared us to engage any targets and all buildings with Taliban sheltering in them.’

The duo was bang in the centre of my crosshairs, but I hesitated. My cannon rounds would chew up the house on the other side of the wall for sure, along with whoever was inside it. I had clear orders, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. I kept thinking: what if it was my kids in there?

All I needed was for them to give me a few more feet… They finally found the gate and scuttled inside. They stayed as close to the wall and then the house as they could, desperate for somewhere to hide.

It was a typical Afghan compound, forty metres long and twenty-five wide, with a floor of hard-packed dirt, divided in two by the house where it extended from the eastern wall. Behind it was a solid stone oven and a chicken coop, a big stack of firewood, cooking pans, matting, a goat and a toilet. The other half was empty.

The uninjured fighter pushed against the first of the house’s three doors, but it didn’t move an inch. Struggling to keep his companion upright, he eventually managed to bounce him along the wall to the next one. It too was locked.

I would finish them as they rounded the corner if the last door was also impassable; Carl put me in position to do so with minimum collateral damage. As they hobbled towards it, the injured man collapsed; he’d probably passed out. Could I fire? Shit, no, not quite – they were within a metre of the house and it was guaranteed to get some of my splash. This fucker knew what he was doing. I stuck my crosshairs on him like glue. He banged hard on the third door.

I could now make out the building with my naked eye. Dawn hadn’t quite broken and there was no colour in my vision, but I could see the two fugitives increasingly clearly. The door opened and he pulled his unconscious comrade inside by the shoulders, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

Ten seconds later, five children of varying sizes burst out of the same door and huddled together in the open courtyard. They were afraid of being outside, but clearly didn’t want to go back in. They stared at the doorway and suddenly began pushing each other into line. The smallest one clung to the tallest and wouldn’t let go. The others were clearly agitated. They must have been receiving orders from inside the house.

As dawn broke they looked up at us in unison and waved madly. I zoomed in tight on their faces. Their ages ranged from about two to perhaps twelve. And every single one of them was terrified.

‘Look at your TADS screen, Carl.’

‘I’m seeing it. Scum of the earth.’

‘Carl, that scum is using innocent kids as a shield to protect his sorry arse.’

The children shuffled back to the door and stopped outside it. As we swarmed, they followed our every move. Every orbit we did saw each of them turn with us. I told the Boss what was happening.

‘Ugly Five Zero. Wizard’s orders are to destroy any building with Taliban occupants. But I am instructing you: Do not engage that house .’

I had no intention of doing so. Our ROE were simple. We’d kill any amount of Taliban, but never at the risk of even one innocent life. The Boss informed the Widow that he was not prepared to authorise the engagement of our target as he had better situational awareness than they did. Good man.

The wounded Taliban was as good as dead, if he wasn’t already. His companion was too savvy to come out into the open until we were long gone. I looked forward to meeting him another day.

It was now three-quarters light. A deep red dawn filled the eastern horizon, and the sun would begin to pop up out of the Red Desert at any minute. We swarmed over the compounds up and down the irrigation ditch for a few minutes more and I poked my TADS inside it, hunting for survivors.

The more I looked, the more I realised we wouldn’t be putting any more rounds down that morning. The daily routines were beginning to re-establish themselves: women carried bowls out of their houses; teenagers fed goats and started fires. The men stayed indoors while we were overhead, terrified they’d get mistaken for Taliban.

‘Ugly Five One is seeing a normal pattern of life here and negative targets.’

‘Five Zero. Copied; my thoughts too. I’ll inform Lash that we can’t engage any of these targets due to civilians. Let’s sweep the initial target and conduct some Battle Damage Assessment.’

Carl swung us west, back to the main Taliban complex, to film the battle’s aftermath with our TADS cameras for the battlegroup to analyse. The first rays of sunlight dusted everything below us a delicate pink, then bright, flaming orange as the sun’s crest popped over the horizon. I looked out of my right-hand window as we passed over the complex. It was only then that I realised the full extent of the devastation we’d caused.

It looked like the old pictures of Hiroshima. The earth was still smouldering; the wisps of battlefield smoke hung low in the chill morning air, giving the place a strange, dreamlike quality. The trees that had survived were charred and skeletal. The huts we’d Hellfired were mounds of darkened rubble; the 2,000- and 500-pounders had reduced everything in their path to powder.

Trigger’s leaker lay where he’d fallen, the huge hole in his chest now a dark ring. His first sentry was still slumped in his guardhut, but the one hiding behind the tree hadn’t died immediately; he’d crawled nearly forty metres towards the mosque.

‘Check out east, Ed. Here comes the burial party.’

A long line of women and a few unarmed men began to fan out from the far irrigation channel and made their way slowly towards the complex. We’d seen this before. After a battle, the Taliban forced the locals to scour the ground for their dead. One or two members of the burial party were probably Taliban directing the operation; they knew they were safe as houses.

Behind them two local women emerged from a domed wicker hut, halfway up the path where I’d gunned down the runner. A jumble of legs and feet stuck out of its arched entrance. They must have been piling up the corpses inside. A man in a black dishdash ducked down and crawled into the hut. When he backed out he wiped his hands on the ground before he stood up.