Stephen Grey - Operation Snakebite

Not every Taliban leader had skipped town, though. And, as the night progressed, control of the battle passed, for a while, into the hands of more secretive American forces.

This night like no other was the night of the Spectre gunships. They were hunting in a pair, circling their targets and pounding them from two sides. Up on the ridgeline, Brigadier Mackay stood watching the display. At first there was just a low buzz, as these hunters started closing in on their prey. The Spectre is a low-flying converted Hercules plane that would be an easy target for ground fire by day. But it is called the ‘Spooky’ for a reason. It never ventures out in the sunshine.

At one time, the existence of the Spectre and its armaments was classified information. Spectre missions were still run by special forces airmen. But the deadly night-time accuracy of its weapons and its ability to linger for long periods had made this plane one of the military’s top performers. Carrying both a Gatling gun for rapid fire and a 105mm cannon firing the same-sized shells as the army’s artillery field guns, the plane came equipped for devastation. These days, the planes were made available for both conventional forces and the more secretive units. Even when the Spectre started firing there was little that made it visible, apart from the muzzle flash in the sky from its cannon. But its throaty roar was unmistakable and, for those on the ground, deeply frightening.

Like the growling thunder and sparks of lightning of some fierce electric storm, all through the night this invisible machine of death was systematically erasing the enemy left in the green zone. Mackay described what was the most spectacular display he’d seen. ‘It really beats the Edinburgh Festival fireworks anytime!’ He too had watched on screen the moment when the Taliban headquarters was hit. ‘It really was an absolute massacre… and they were all armed. You could see that on the screen.’

In the hours before midnight, an operational box was marked on the map that was declared out of bounds to conventional forces. It surrounded a compound not far from Musa Qala centre. The target had been pre-planned – the product of an intelligence cell based in Kandahar airbase. This time two Spectre gunships roared into action at once – pummelling the target as they circled in tandem. The Americans later told the press the Taliban’s deputy governor of Helmand was inside the building and had been killed.

Mullah Sadiq called Qais, the Al Jazeera journalist in Kabul, in the middle of the battle. The commanders of the Taliban had held a shura in the desert, he revealed. They had their own ruse up their sleeves. ‘There has been a meeting. The foreigners have left a door open, a way to slip out of the town. We’re going somewhere else. We’re moving in trucks.’ Mullah Sadiq, who was there, had volunteered to come with them. Though he would not say it then, the battle would take place in his home town, Sangin.

Bravo Company was at last making the kind of progress they needed. It was past midnight now, and the enemy had already taken a hell of a pounding, they thought. 1st Platoon were pushing ahead.

There was little noise but dogs barking and a faint hum from their guardian angel overhead, the Spectre gunship. Then Reese, the platoon leader, made a mistake. When he changed the route to avoid a big canal, he forgot to tell the Spectre.

Otilio Vasquez and Bryce Hamilton were ahead on point. They were 50 yards down a narrow alleyway: about 8 feet wide and with 8-feet-high walls.

Vasquez was on the left side. Up ahead he spotted a man who was crouching down.

‘Do you see that?’ he asked Hamilton to his right.

‘Yeah.’

They crept forward but they lost sight of him. ‘Where’s he at now?’ asked Hamilton. Vasquez had switched a night-vision flashlight on, and he began to side-step across the path, creeping right towards Hamilton to see round a bend. Both men had their eyes peeled forward.

Finally he noticed him about 75 yards away. ‘I see him,’ Vasquez whispered. The man answered with a volley from a PKM machine gun.

Hamilton would come to wish he had shot the guy on sight. ‘Orders said we were allowed to shoot anybody out at night who we thought was a threat.’ But no one had told Hamilton.

When the bullet struck Vasquez, he thought at first he had run into Hamilton, but then when he pulled the trigger and fired two shots, he felt a stabbing pain up his forearm. His arm felt numb and heavy. By now there were more bullets flying than he could ever imagine. It wasn’t just one Taliban down this ammo tunnel, but a whole gang in ambush.

Hamilton had shouldered the SAW gun – the squad automatic weapon capable of firing 750 rounds per minute. As he stood upright with no cover, he went cyclic – turning the alleyway into daylight with an explosion of bullets.

Dust swirled up, and he began to breathe sand. Hamilton could see almost nothing through his goggles but the bright spark of his tracer rounds cutting through a cloud ahead, and a line of flashes of the enemy tracer coming in.

Vasquez was being dragged back down the line. ‘Man, I’m going to die here,’ he thought.

Hamilton was in a daze of combat, his ears deafened by his own gun. He’d probably shot more than 200 rounds in the last half-minute. He was walking slowly backwards through the dust, facing forward and firing but kicking out against the wall with his right foot as he moved. He hoped that somewhere was a place to take cover. Finally his foot struck out, and there was nothing solid there. But he heard a cry. He’d booted someone finding shelter.

Hamilton ducked out of the alley. ‘Dude, they just shot Vasquez,’ he said. ‘All those fuckers are going to die.’

Further back, medic Dustin Jones was desperately trying to reach Vasquez. It was like his worst nightmare. He had heard the shouts of ‘Medic! Medic!’ but now he was stuck down what seemed like a 20-foot muddy embankment where he had dived when the firing started. He kept slipping back down again.

The Spectre was soon back and ‘it just laid waste to every moving thing on that ground’ said Reese. The gunship was using its cannon and its 105mm shells. By now the Taliban were manoeuvring – creeping round the side of where the platoon was sheltering. Bravo’s air controller, Sergeant Mellon, brought the Spectre strikes to within 150 feet.

The platoon was now hunkered behind walls. They heard the thud of the shells being fired from the gunship and then the dread-filled boom of the explosion, as low-pitched as you can imagine. It was deafening and bone-chilling too. Chunks of mud came raining down on their heads.

Vasquez was still sitting on his rucksack getting bandaged. They had denied him morphine because he was going to have to walk out. ‘Oh man, this is really close,’ he said. He could see the dust flying to Hamilton’s position. ‘This is gonna be a disaster,’ he thought. ‘They’re actually gonna hit those guys.’

But when it was over Vasquez felt a sense of wonderment. Looking back, he said later, the Spectre had saved them time and again. They all remembered its infra-red beam that turned the night into day with a kind of religious awe.

‘You look up there and you see that light of Heaven,’ said Vasquez. ‘And you’ll say you can do anything you want in the world. I’d walk around naked if I had that thing chasing me.’

The invisible Spectre came on the net. ‘Yeah, I think we got all of them.’ After it was over they went forward and found about fifteen bodies. One guy was still alive and crawling for his gun. He was shot in the head by a sniper.