Ed Macy - Apache

The bastards are not getting me alive. I need my pistol .

I glanced back across the field, and there was Geordie, thirty metres away. The Taliban bullets cracked through the air around us.

‘ Geordie, put some rounds down! ’ Then I saw he didn’t have his carbine with him either.

Got to move Mathew out of the fire. Get him behind the aircraft … The fuselage was only seven metres away; we were very near the blades. My eyes dipped as I grasped Mathew more firmly and tugged my foot free. My pistol poked out from underneath him. I grabbed the grip and spun round on my knees, preparing to return fire towards the muzzle flashes. As I did so, the sound of the Apache’s rotor pitch changed. Oh no …

Carl started to pull power. Dust and grit smacked me in the face as I turned to see the aircraft begin to wobble. The blades coned upwards. I got straight to my feet. I could just make out Carl speaking fast into his microphone and monitoring our every move. He didn’t want to hit us when he took off.

‘ No Carl, get down! ’

He couldn’t hear me. The suspension struts lightened as he began to lift. I threw both arms out and flapped them vigorously downwards. He finally got the message and powered down. I didn’t know whether he was leaving or just turning to engage the treeline, but I wasn’t having any of it.

The dust cloud he’d thrown up was so thick I couldn’t see my own hands. I stumbled about, trying to regain my bearings.

With an ear-piercing screech, a Hellfire came in to the east of us and exploded with a mighty flash. A quarter of a second later, the pressure wave passed through my clothing. Ten seconds later I heard two deep booms, then the sound of branches splitting and plummeting to the ground. HEISAP rockets. Charlotte and Nick were taking care of the treeline. Thank fuck, they’re onto them . Carl must have called them in.

The brown-out was still all-consuming. But it was now rippling slowly away from the aircraft in concentric rings, leaving us with a few metres of visibility inside it. The enemy gunfire from the eastern treeline had now dwindled. If we couldn’t see the Taliban, they couldn’t see us. Carl’s brown-out and the pounding from Ugly Five Two and Three had bought us a few crucial seconds. Got to move right now . I turned to check how badly hit Rigg was. To my amazement, he was crouching over Mathew and preparing to lift him again. Geordie was with him now.

‘Rigg, you okay?’

‘Yeah. Just tripped. Sorry.’

‘You’re not hit?’

‘Don’t think so. Can’t feel anything.’

I was astonished. They’d missed all of us.

I holstered my pistol and lunged for Mathew too. I grabbed hold of his webbing, Geordie latched onto his right leg, and summoning every last scrap of energy we headed for the aircraft.

Fraser-Perry and Robinson suddenly materialised too; one grasped a sleeve and one Mathew’s other leg. Last to break through the dust cloud was Hearn, his face red as a beetroot.

We were three minutes behind schedule and had been on the ground for over four. Yet suddenly – and I had no idea how – the plan was working.

‘Where the fuck have you lot been?’ I hollered above the engine’s whine.

‘Sorry, bonny lad,’ Geordie yelled. ‘Detour.’

As gently as we could, we lowered Mathew beneath the aircraft, placing his head below the step in front of the right wheel.

‘Anyone got a strap?’

Robinson’s immediately appeared in my hand.

‘Okay, back to your aircraft guys. We can manage from here.’ I turned to Fraser-Perry. ‘You get on, too.’

The marines sprinted off, but Geordie hung around. He needed to see it through.

‘Honestly, Geordie mate, we’re almost there. Last one back to Bastion is Piss Boy, eh?’

‘That’ll be you then.’ He smiled and set off.

Rigg lifted Mathew’s shoulders while I wrapped the strap around his back, under his arms, through his body armour and out by the top of his chest. Bollocks . It wouldn’t quite reach the step. We heaved him forward another six inches. But the strap was as taut as a bowstring and I was worried we would garrotte him in mid-flight.

‘Give me yours.’

I repeated the process with Rigg’s strap and fastened it to the step above his helmet. Now at least he would hang steady and straight.

‘Okay, mate, jump on. And hold tight.’

‘Roger…’

Robinson and Rigg were going to have to follow Fraser-Perry’s example and just cling on. Rigg leapt back onto his Hellfire rail and hauled himself onto the wing as I clambered back into the cockpit.

I moved my harness buckle away from the cyclic so Carl could lift safely. A quick check on Rigg and Fraser-Perry, then I raised both thumbs and screamed above the din: ‘ Go, go, go …’

We’d well overstayed our welcome at Jugroom Fort, and Mathew desperately needed a crash team: 10.43 and forty-five seconds. Fuck me, five minutes and ten seconds on the ground. It had seemed like five years …

Carl pulled power and the canal disappeared from in front of us as we whipped the dust into a frenzy. He was flying blind, with only the symbology in his monocle: heading, height, torque and velocity. The hardest flying in the world. We began to wobble.

I fastened my harness, clipped the monocle to my helmet and connected my microphone lead. ‘Five One lifting. Give us cover.’

I took a firm hold of the two grab handles either side of the cockpit roof. Not to brace myself for a crash – it was the only way to suppress the screaming urge to take hold of the flying controls at a time like this. I wished I was in the back. Trust your symbology, buddy .

I felt the Apache move through the seat of my pants, but God only knew where. My monocle told me that we’d swung ninety degrees left, pointing the nose back towards the river. The whine of the engines increased as he pulled more pitch. I checked our height, thirty feet, and torque, 85 per cent. Carl was giving it some serious welly. I checked the airspeed: we were moving forward at five knots. Another five seconds and I looked at the height again, still only thirty feet, same speed and the torque was up to 90 per cent. We’d stopped lifting, and were still not clear of the brown-out. We should have been well away by now. There was a problem.

‘Ed, the power is much higher than it should be. Is Mathew tied to the bloody ground?’

‘Maybe it’s recirculation from the wall…’

‘No way. We should have bags of power. I’m topping out.’

The wobble became an uncomfortable sway. Jesus, we had a fifty-three knot tailwind. That’s what was destroying Carl’s lift. It was blowing away his purchase on clean air.

‘Can’t be right,’ Carl said. ‘It’s been five knots all morning.’

It was up and down like a yoyo. We had a squall on our hands. It could last for minutes. Afghanistan was full of them, but we’d never faced one on takeoff before. At this height the emergency drill was to turn into it, down the aircraft immediately and wait for the squall to pass. We didn’t have that option. Our truckload of luck had finally run out. Our height began to drop.

‘Twenty-five feet, and forty-two knots downwind…’

Carl called up more power, taking the torque to 95 per cent. He was doing all he could to get some translational lift. Increase the speed and you increased the airflow over the blades; then you were up. But we were downwind, so it wasn’t happening.

‘Twenty-one feet and thirty-seven knots downwind…’

We were sinking. Carl pushed the torque all the way to 100 per cent. He had nothing left to pull. The velocity vector was off the scale so we were moving forward fast, but still reversing into the wind. Any more and we’d be in serious danger of trashing our escape plan.