Ed Macy - Apache

‘Take us over the firebase will you buddy?’

It was still a huge call, and I wanted to see Zulu Company with my own eyes.

‘Will do,’ said Carl, and began to bank. Billy was spot on. They were still sitting on their Bergens waiting for the order.

I only had one question left. ‘Carl, can we really do this and get the aircraft back to Bastion?’

Carl made a swift calculation. ‘Yes. Just.’

Right.

‘Billy, affirm. I’ll push the ground commander until he gives us a go. Stand by.’

I could see Billy and Geordie running in, rockets exploding just shy of a thousand metres from their aircraft and showering the area with darts.

I got back onto Widow Seven One and explained exactly what we wanted to do and why. ‘Zulu Company are not ready. We are,’ I finished. ‘All we need you to do is sort out the fire plan from the artillery and fast air.’

‘Stand by.’

There was a thirty-second pause.

‘Ugly Five One, negative. Zulu Company are going to do the rescue.’

Wrong answer from the JTAC. Time to up the ante.

‘Put Charlie Oscar on.’

‘The CO?’

‘Affirm. The CO.’

It was time to talk to the organ grinder, Colonel Magowan.

‘Stand by.’

Another twenty-second pause.

‘Charlie Oscar speaking.’

‘Charlie Oscar, Ugly Five One. What is your immediate plan?’

‘Zulu Company will cross the river to recover Lance Corporal Ford.’

‘How long is it going to take them to get ready?’

He sighed loudly enough for me to hear. ‘They say they’ll be ready in ninety minutes.’

What? I must have misheard.

‘Confirm, NINE ZERO minutes?’

‘Yes, H-hour is at 1130 hours.’

There was obviously some sort of problem with Zulu Company. We didn’t have time to go into it.

‘Sir, we can be across and back in five minutes maximum, but need to move now.’

‘How?’

He bloody knows how. This is wasting time .

‘Give me four volunteers and we’ll be in and out with Ford in two minutes.’

‘But I don’t have any pilots.’

Pilots ? What was he on?

‘No sir, we are the pilots. I just need four marine volunteers. They will be strapped onto the wings of the Apaches.’

‘We don’t have any straps.’

‘We have the straps; we will strap them on…’

It dawned on me that this was the first time Magowan had heard any of our plan. None of the messages had got back to him. I explained the whole thing as succinctly as I could.

‘Give me two minutes to think.’

‘Tell him we don’t have two minutes, Ed,’ Carl said quietly over our internal intercom. He was watching the fuel level and the delay was getting on his tits.

‘We don’t have two minutes, sir.’

‘Give me twenty seconds then.’

Utter silence. For the first time all day, the mission radio net went quiet. Half of Helmand province was listening in now, and everybody was waiting for Magowan’s answer. You could have heard a mouse fart. He only took ten.

‘Ugly Five One, this is Charlie Oscar. Your plan is approved.’

‘Roger. We will be with you in four minutes.’

Now we’re really going to have to do this …

‘Billy and Geordie, it’s a go.’

‘Copied. You sort the fire plan with the JTAC and we’ll lead you into the desert. You spoke to the CO so he’ll be expecting you to brief the volunteers.’

‘Okay, Billy. Just give me twenty more seconds on station.’

Widow Seven One was already briefing up the A10 on how to protect Mathew. I stepped on their conversation because we didn’t have a second to lose. I had some terminal controlling of my own I wanted to complete. If we were pulling off, I wanted Black Turban’s warren nailed first.

‘Break, break. This is Ugly Five One. Tusk, I’ve got a tunnel system I would like you to destroy.’

‘Copy that. Go ahead Ugly Five One, I’m ready.’

‘Tusk, from the fort’s southern wall go south thirty-five metres to where the canal and the river join. Can you see five black circles?’

‘Visual, sir.’

‘That’s the tunnel system I want destroying. Now, confirm that you can identify the MIA on the southern side of the wall, thirty-five metres away.’

‘I have a good visual on the prone friendly just west of the crater, sir.’

‘He is well within Danger Close but there is no ricochet risk, and the ground is soft. Are you sure you can make the shot without hitting the MIA?’

‘I’m sure. I’ll get it right on the nose sir, don’t worry.’

‘Copied. You’re cleared hot on the tunnels.’

The A10 climbed up to 15,000 feet to set up his run, then dived. At 5,000 feet he opened up with a giant, six-second burst from his GAU-8 Gatling gun. The GAU-8 is the largest, heaviest and most powerful aircraft cannon ever built. The A10 is literally two wings, two engines and a cockpit bolted onto it. It fires 30-mm Depleted Uranium armour-piercing shells at a rate of 4,200 rounds per minute, or seventy per second. It is also highly accurate, with the ability to place 80 per cent of its shots within a ten-metre circle from 4,000 feet up. When the gun fired, you could hear its trademark roar and echo five miles away.

It didn’t miss the tunnels, either. Some 420 DU shells spanked into the tunnel system in a double sweep up. The soil erupted in flame and dust. It looked like a mini earthquake, the ground doing a Mexican wave. The dust cloud around the tunnels began to clear as the A10 pulled up, throwing off precautionary flares. The DU rounds had exploded with such heat that the earth itself was burning. The rounds lodged up to fifteen metres deep, ploughing up everything in their path.

‘That’s a Delta Hotel, Tusk. Excellent shooting.’

‘My pleasure “mate”.’ He put on a poor British accent. Tusk had a sense of humour, too.

The tunnels wouldn’t have survived that, even if they were lined with concrete. Nobody was walking out of there for a while.

‘Okay, Billy, let’s go.’

The JTAC took over with an almighty artillery barrage on the village as we departed.

Colonel Magowan’s Command Post was located in a wadi six kilometres into the desert, due west of the fort. Vikings, Pinzgauers and the UAV detachment’s Scimitar were corralled alongside large canvas tents from which the signallers worked. Everybody else sat around portable desks. Loudspeakers broadcast the mission net traffic. Colonel Magowan put down the radio handset and asked for four volunteers.

His Ops Officer and his JTAC stepped forward immediately, but were indispensable where they were. Captain Dave Rigg, the battlegroup’s Royal Engineers adviser, insisted on going. He’d been watching the Nimrod feed for the last ten hours, knew the exact location of Lance Corporal Ford and every inch of the fort.

The colonel called for the Landing Force Command Support Group’s regimental sergeant major, WO1 Colin Hearn, the only member of the command staff who hadn’t heard his radio conversation. Nineteen-year-old Zulu Company Marine Chris Fraser-Perry and Magowan’s twenty-six year-old signaller, Marine Gary Robinson, were also selected.

When the RSM appeared, he was asked to get his weapon, body armour and helmet, and told he was going on the side of an Apache to retrieve Lance Corporal Ford. Colin Hearn chuckled to himself and marched off to pick up his gear. He was well used to the CO’s sense of humour by now.

Magowan’s CP was the nearest place we could land out of Taliban mortar range, which was why it was there. The rolling desert sands thundering by 1,000 feet beneath us made a pleasant change from the intensity of battle at the fort.

Tusk may not have been able to hunt and kill the bad guys like we could, but he could tip in and shoot straight any time. The Desert Hawk UAV controlled by Magowan’s HQ, Predator and Nimrod were also watching Mathew like hawks. But I still didn’t like leaving Mathew Ford. I just hoped the Taliban didn’t catch up with him while we were away.