Ed Macy - Hellfire

I said, ‘Can’t be there, mate.’

‘It’s got to be,’ Billy said. ‘That’s Yellow 14.’

‘Look at the distance. It was a single shot, and that’s too far for anything other than a sniper. There’s no way a sniper would shoot from there.’ It was too close to the Paras and there was no escape route. They’d be a sitting target. As soon as he pulled that trigger again, the artillery would come down and he’d become a magnet for every British soldier in Musa Qa’leh.

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Five – Yellow 14 cannot be the firing point. It must be somewhere else,’ I said. ‘Has anyone else got a better steer on where the shot came from?’

‘B Company heard the shot from there, and he’s been shot straight through the head.’

‘Ohhh no,’ Billy groaned.

I cursed the Taliban and blamed myself. The most vulnerable part of the convoy’s journey was when they were crossing the wadi. I knew it, and I hadn’t been there for them. How could I have been so fucking stupid? I should have insisted on getting back to the priority task of protection.

I felt sick to my stomach.

‘It might have been a single shot, Billy. But there are at least two of them out there, buddy – possibly four – and they’re not at Yellow 14.’

I’d learned about terrorist sniping in Northern Ireland. A head shot needed maximum concentration. He wouldn’t have looked up from his sight for anything. So he will have had a spotter. The spotter must have been watching Jon’s aircraft, to let the sniper know when it was safe to fire. If they felt 100 per cent safe there might just have been the two of them. It was my guess they’d have some muscle with them, too, in case of a follow-up. One or two heavies deployed as lookouts to ensure that they weren’t being outflanked or compromised. RPG men most likely; men with weapons that could buy them time in the getaway.

‘Wildman Five Five, Wildman Five Four – you take a look around here; we’ll stay over the convoy.’

‘Wildman Five Five, copied.’

The convoy had slowed to a halt. The dead soldier, we gathered, was the driver of one of the vehicles.

I looked out of the cockpit window and scoured the area for good fields of fire.

Jake and John dropped lower than they should have. They trundled round and round in the same piece of sky, deliberately setting themselves up to attract fire away from the convoy and ID the firing point.

The pressure was on. If it was a sniper, and he thought we didn’t know where he was, he might be tempted to try it again. Chances were, though, that he’d be making his getaway. I pictured him looking through his sight, watching the body jerk then slump. He’d be up for it now, and we’d become the focus. What we did next determined what he’d do next.

‘Billy, keep over this side of the wadi and don’t turn tail on the north-western area of the Green Zone. We must make them think we can see them. It’s our only way of preventing a shot until I can work out where they are.’

I’d learned fieldcraft during my time with 2 Para: how to patrol, how to manoeuvre, how to set ambushes. I was taught how to pick routes that gave cover from view and cover from fire.

As a Gazelle pilot, I’d given top-cover to the boys on the ground, and I knew what to look for to keep them safe. The IRA knew exactly how we patrolled. They’d had lads in the TA; they’d had lads defect and come across. They knew how to set an ambush so that no one escaped, and how to get away before the security forces turned up.

They’d be sure to hit us from the greatest distance and had perfect killing fields. And so did our new enemy. Yellow 14 had cover from view, but that was it. It was on its own. It was a shit position.

But where else was there?

They needed to have a good escape route, one that provided cover from above so they could get away from the hot firing point if incoming started, or we attempted to flush them out with recce-by-fire-firing into all the most likely places until we got a response.

They’d need to move back, and that meant somewhere northwest. Once they’d broken free they’d hide their weapons and turn into Afghan locals waving their dishdashes to prove they were just on their way to the mosque.

The IRA quartermaster would bag all the stuff and drive away, leaving the sniper team to separate and blend in with whoever else was around.

But there was one phase neither could avoid: they’d have to extract from the firing point first.

Where were they?

‘What about those bushes?’ Billy aimed at them with his monocle.

They followed an irrigation ditch. It was a good position, right on the eastern side of the Green Zone. But they only ran part of the way, which meant they’d end up in an irrigation ditch for fifty metres before getting back into cover.

Widow Seven Zero pressed us for an update.

‘Wildman Five Five. Negative,’ I said. ‘Looking.’

‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five Four-give Wildman Five Five some space. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

I gave Jake a silent thank you and kept searching.

It all looked the bloody same. Just west of the wadi were fields and irrigation ditches with tree lines and hedgerows but none was unbroken. There must be a continuous hedgerow somewhere, or a tree line, or a mixture of both… but I couldn’t find anything and I was getting to the limits of a long-range sniper shot.

Just west of these fields was the edge of the Green Zone. Could he have scored a hit from this distance? Yes. But the fields were in full crop, and the crops were high, so he couldn’t possibly have got a clear shot at the convoy.

‘Where the fuck…?’

That’s where they are.

‘There… Pilot… Target… HMD! Right! One o’clock! Tree line east-west, looks like an inverted Y.’

Billy’s crosshair matched mine in my monocle.

‘Seen,’ he said.

Running south from a group of compounds was a thin but unbroken line of trees which forked after 200 metres. One row went south-west and buried itself in thick crops too high to see over. The other went east for about 300 metres before turning south-east and continuing to the very edge of the wadi. Trees didn’t survive in Afghanistan unless there was plenty of water, so there had to be irrigation ditches right alongside them.

I lased and stored the junction of the Y in the Apache’s computer in case we needed it.

‘From the very bottom of that row, buddy.’ I pointed with my right eye, knowing that Billy was following closely with his. ‘At the very end of the south-eastern leg, you can see straight down the wadi, all the way down to the convoy.’

‘It’s a long way,’ Billy said.

He had a point. It was between 500 and 700 metres. It was 600 metres to the centre of the wadi.

It was pretty much like the sniper position outside Crossmaglen. A long clear shot from a concealed wood. It had a good escape route with cover. And it led to an urban area where they could dump the weapons and melt away.

But what about the distance?

I needed to commit to a search or discount it on range, and quickly.

‘Six hundred metres is about 660 yards.’ I was thinking aloud. ‘One minute of arc at 660 is up to a six and a half inch error. He can hit a head at that range. If the convoy stopped for a second or if he led the target by about a second, he could still hit a head.’

‘There’s nowhere else he can be,’ Billy said. ‘Look at the size of those crops…’

‘Wildman Five Four has a possible firing point north up the wadi. Investigating.’ I needed to keep everyone off my back.

Billy kept the aircraft on an offensive heading, without pointing directly at the tree line. We wanted them to stay exactly where they were.