Ed Macy - Hellfire

Another variation was for Dan Rex, the OC, to have all the men chilling out, not a care in the world. They knew what time they’d be going out, but the policemen didn’t. At exactly three minutes before the go, every man would jump up, whack his body armour on, clamber onto the vehicles, and roar off to meet the helicopters.

They had to do a lot of that stuff to confuse the touts. At that time, nobody trusted the ANP. It was an awful situation. They couldn’t even have guys watching for the helicopters, because their body language would broadcast what they were up to. The commanders could only go by timings or sound. As soon as they heard the aircraft, the men piled out of the base and tanked it to the LS.

The PNVS had an awesome picture tonight; it looked more like a two-tone TV picture than an IR image. I could see the boys coming out in vehicles, under cover of the sangars. I knew they’d be as anxious as I was. There was a lot of ammunition and men to offload, and a Chinook was the biggest target going.

Now that the Chinooks were landing and the game was up, the Widow finally called us.

‘Wildman Five Zero this is Widow Seven One. How do you read?’

‘Lima Charlie.’

‘We’ve got patrols going out on the ground right now. Stand by.’

We were looking down. I was visual with Jon, and he would have been with us.

I keyed across to him on the inter-aircraft.

‘We’re visual with the patrols going out. Confirm you’ve got four vehicles.’

‘A-firm, four vehicles coming down to the north of the Shrine.’

Almost immediately, the Chinooks rose out of the dust and pegged it out of there to the south-west.

We’d done it, less than thirty seconds on the ground, a truly amazing feat from the loadies and disembarking soldiers. The Chinooks hadn’t received any fire and were now too far away to come to any harm from Now Zad. It didn’t mean that the boys on the ground were in the clear, but the prize the Taliban really wanted was a big cow.

All we had to do now was provide cover for the patrols while they got everybody back to camp and then home for a rest.

My heart raced as tracer streamed out of the base, aiming north-west. I thought north-west was a safe area. A village extended from Now Zad in that direction, but I didn’t have it down as holding Taliban. Within seconds it was like Star Wars down there.

‘They’re taking fire – I can see tracer,’ Jake shouted.

I clicked the mic. ‘Negative. That’s not incoming.’ All of the tracer was coming from the DC and it was now heading north-west, north, north-east and east.

Widow Seven One jumped in. ‘We’re under attack, we’re under attack. We’re taking heavy fire from the north-east. Can you see a firing point to the north-east?’ The north-east tracer trail had stopped.

‘Wildman Five Zero will cover the patrol,’ Jake said. ‘Wildman Five One, you help Widow Seven One.’

‘Copied, Wildman Five One ready for talk-on.’ We were ready for him to direct us onto the target.

‘All I know right now is the north-east sangar is pinned down from a building 200 metres north-east.’

It must have taken a heavy weight of fire to pin the sangar down. And it meant we couldn’t use their tracer to locate the firing point.

At least we had something to go on. We needed to start looking in the area of the bakery. A long street led east off the main one, a couple of hundred metres north of the DC, then south-east, past a drop-off point for the jingly wagons the locals used as buses, to a wadi we called the M25. The wadi was a main supply route for the Taliban, out of sight of the DC.

We’d had a look round to orientate ourselves a few days earlier, because the ANP and Taliban were fighting over who owned the bakery. We’d picked up the offending building quite easily because it was one of only a handful of three-storey buildings in the place. Actually, it just had a little breeze block and hessian-roofed hut on top, but that qualified as three storeys in this town.

I looked down but couldn’t see movement. It was pitch-black in my left eye and my right was looking at a thermal picture.

I released the gun back to its stowed position.

Simon scanned the streets with his FLIR camera.

‘Five One’s looking but nothing seen. Confirm tracer?’

I still couldn’t see any incoming. Normally there was a lot of tracer fire from the Taliban, but not this time.

‘Negative. He won’t give his position away.’ Bright bloke. There was an aircraft above him. He was going easy on the tracer.

We were now to the east of the town, directly over the Green Zone, heading north and looking west.

The JTAC tried to steer us onto the gunner’s firing position, ‘He’s on the—’

I saw what he was about to describe in horrifying detail with my naked eye before he had time to finish the sentence – a red glow shooting up from the location he was in the process of describing.

My right eye had the thermal picture, but there was no light in it whatsoever.

Fuck , it was tracer. My right eye only saw heat. Tracer burnt, but from the back. You didn’t see tracer on thermal.

The glow in my left eye extended towards us like a long red laser beam. The point it appeared to start from wasn’t the muzzle of the gun. Tracer only begins to burn 110 metres out.

If tracer grew in length, it indicated longer bursts. This was a sustained, continually growing line of red light. The gunman wasn’t in the business of spraying. He was in the business of killing.

So far, the solid red line was going to miss us. It was way forward of the aircraft. The radio sparked up: ‘Being engaged.’

No shit, Sherlock…

I hoped the JTAC was about to tell me which building the gunner was in.

Then the red beam started to curve towards the aircraft. I had no time to react. At 1,000 metres per second, it was approaching far too fast.

We were only 1,500 metres away now, and the stream of tracer had aligned itself to us within one and a half seconds of the trigger first being pulled. I lifted my shoulders and buried my neck low, waiting for the impact, eyes narrowed to stop any shit getting in them at that point. The bullets flew straight past my left window, appearing to mesh through the blades. How it failed to smash pieces off them I had no idea.

Fucking hell…

I’d never had tracer fired accurately at me in the air before. The bending phenomenon was a new one on me.

‘That nearly hit us!’ Simon’s voice had risen a couple of octaves. I knew just how he felt.

My mind raced. Our assailant’s range was a fraction too long, which was why it went just over the top, but his lead was perfect. That hadn’t been a bend. Tracer only bends with gravity. He’d been firing straight and I’d been moving forward at 110 mph. He’d anticipated where I was going to be one and a half seconds later and only missed by a whisker.

I flung the stick to the right, pulling back hard on the cyclic to wrench the aircraft round.

The tracer continued to shoot past on my left. Had it gone behind us he would have been using the ambush method: fire in one place and wait for the Apache to fly through it. Not this fucker though. He was tracking me. I had less than a second and a half to move before he dropped his aim slightly and cut us in two.

So far it was only luck that had saved us.

I tipped the blades and threw the Apache right, onto its side. When you turn a helicopter through ninety degrees and pull power the thrust drags you horizontally; you are pulling yourself sideways across the sky. But the weight of the aircraft takes you diagonally downwards.

I didn’t want to go down in the Green Zone.

I pulled back hard, keeping the Apache on its side, the radius of the turn getting tighter and slower as I adjusted the cyclic, moving the thrust arrow up enough to keep me level.