Ed Macy - Hellfire

The height warners extinguished and then the LIMITS message disappeared. I kept staring down and to my left. I wanted to get to the top of the climb, bump the aircraft over, level it, and pull off a burst. We were screaming straight up. It wasn’t a manoeuvre helicopters were famed for as they soon ran out of speed, so I hoped the gunner hadn’t bargained on it. The power margin indicator came on to warn me I was within 10 per cent of trashing the engines.

Then it started again. The tracer came pouring out. I hadn’t taken my eyes off him since I made that first desperate turn. This time it began low and behind us. I’d changed aspect and was climbing straight up, and he was well behind the curve. I made his position a familiar-looking shelter about thirty to forty metres along the flat roof of the building beside the banana.

Enough was enough. He’d started with the best hand possible, but now I had one or two trump cards of my own.

I ignored his fire and steadied the crosshairs.

I called Jon. ‘Where are you?’

‘South of the town.’

That was all I needed to know; he wasn’t anywhere on my line of sight. I pulled the trigger.

‘Engaging.’

The soles of my feet vibrated as the twenty-round burst of High Explosive Dual Purpose rounds began to pump out of the cannon barrel. I couldn’t see them in flight; I could just feel the airframe shudder. I knew the AA gunner had stopped firing because the jet of red light was now way behind and below us.

The Apache was still climbing, but I hadn’t once moved my crosshairs off the target. I held my aim with my right eye as my left watched the first HEDP rounds impacting with a series of bright orange flashes. I had to hold a steady aim because the cannon was still disgorging rounds at a speed of 800 metres per second. I lifted my finger from the trigger after it fell silent.

‘Look at the target,’ Simon called.

‘I am.’

‘On,’ he said, allowing me to move my head.

I looked down at the MPD by my right knee. For the first time since we’d been engaged Simon was in a position to use the TADS.

I called Jon: ‘Did you see the firing point I just hit?’

‘Negative, we have men on the ground, and they’re firing tracer all over the place.’

The building lay at forty-five degrees to us then straightened up as I bunted over the top of our rollercoaster arc.

Simon zoomed in. There were splashes of heat all along the rooftop where my cannon rounds had exploded but the box-shaped, brown-topped structure I was aiming to destroy remained untouched. At first glance, it looked as though it covered the staircase leading to the top of the building, but I was now sure it concealed something much more sinister.

I levelled off pretty much where we’d been when we were first engaged.

Jon had been keeping an eye on us while Jake watched the troops on the ground. The tracer fire could be a distraction tactic.

‘Wildman Five One, this is Widow Seven One – my north-east sangar confirmed that was a Delta Hotel on the Turret. Re-engage.’

The fucking Turret… Of course. It was the thing we’d seen on top of the bakery a few days before.

‘My gun,’ Simon called.

‘Is that raised block the firing point,’ he said. His crosshair was bang over the Turret.

‘A-firm.’ I never got to say anything else; the roar of the M230 thundering up my legs and into my arse told me everything I needed to know.

‘Engaging,’ he called.

I looked closely at the TADS FLIR image. The cannon was chewing great chunks off the Turret and scattering them across the surrounding area. But I wasn’t sure it was doing a good enough job.

I was pretty much convinced now that we were up against a ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft mount. The Russians left plenty behind when they threw in the towel. It was the smallest and simplest twinbarrelled AA gun the Taliban could get their hands on. They mounted them on pick-ups and flatbeds – and on top of buildings.

Until we destroyed it, they’d continue to pound the life out of the DC.

We needed to finish it off good and proper – and there was only one weapon to do that.

‘Let’s stick a Hellfire into it, Simon,’ I said.

SUNDAY, 16 JULY 2006

Now Zad

We both studied the target carefully. We could see heat sources around its three-metre-square perimeter. Small objects, not human beings: empty shell casings. They couldn’t have been ours; our cannon rounds exploded when they hit and the spent casings would have fallen into the Green Zone a klick to the east. They were still hot enough for us to know they were the remains of the tracer that had nearly knocked us out of the sky.

The ZU-23-2 – if that’s what it was – must have been hidden under what I could now confirm was not a roof but a hessian cover. The gunner must have hammered it good style, then disappeared back under the hessian. That’s why we hadn’t seen any points of impact. Our rounds had gone clean through the loosely woven material.

‘Delta Hotel, Delta Hotel,’ Widow Seven One called after watching Simon’s rounds pummel the Turret. ‘Destroy the building.’

‘I agree, Ed. It’s got to be a bomb or a Hellfire – and there are no jets here.’

The Widow continued to build the picture. ‘We’ve been under attack from there for the last three days.’

‘Wildman Five One, copied. We’ll put a Hellfire into it.’

‘We’re close to chicken, so expedite – the men are now in the base.’ Jake confirmed and authorised on the JTAC’s frequency.

‘Widow, copied.’ He knew we were off after this.

‘Five One, copied,’ Simon said.

We were now to the north-east. We could see the Turret quite easily.

The Hellfire missile had a double-shaped charge. If we fired from the north-east, it would direct its energy towards our troops. The blast would throw debris their way, and if we had a malfunction, the Hellfire could carry on and land anywhere along the line of aim, depending on its reserves of propellant. And if it had a potted coil failure it would nose dive into Now Zad.

Our boys were to the south-west; I wanted to keep them at ninety degrees.

‘We’re going to run in west to east,’ I told Jake and Jon on the inter-aircraft radio.

That way we had a clear view of the street in front of the building. If the gunner legged it we could adjust the crosshair and whack him in the street.

‘Copied-expedite,’ Jon said. They wanted us to get our skates on.

We kicked out to the west and I brought the aircraft round. We lined back up with the target. Now all we needed was clearance from the JTAC.

Simon zoomed in with the TADS.

‘Widow Seven One, Wildman Five One. Confirm clear to engage with Hellfire.’

The Widow shouted: ‘Stop, stop, stop. My men need to get under hard cover.’

What?

We were three klicks out. I turned ninety degrees left so Simon could maintain eyes on the Turret and the street. We didn’t want to orbit back over the town. I weaved between north and south, always keeping the target in view.

Jake and Jon were silent. I used the Longbow radar to keep tabs on them to the south of the Shrine.

After a few minutes we were pretty sure our boys would be under cover; they were used to being mortared and it never took them long.

We started our attack run again. Simon identified the banana, then the bakery.

‘Wildman Five One. Confirm we are clear hot on that target?’

‘Widow Seven One. My ground commander wants to know the safety distance.’

I cringed.

I carried the safety distances for bombs on a small card in my black brain, but there was nothing for Apache munitions.