Paul Grahame: Fire Strike 7/9

I glanced at Sticky. ‘Hold on a minute: what if it’s a 107 firing from Qada Kalay?’

‘Then we’re dead,’ Sticky gasped.

Qada Kalay was directly to the south of us, and a regular firing point for 107mm rockets. If it was a warhead coming from there we were right in line to be hit. I jumped up and ran towards a second HESCO barrier some ten metres away. It gave us a little better cover, but not much.

I was on my back and Sticky dived on top of me, slamming my head into the dirt. We were face-to-face, and we were still laughing our tits off. And then we heard the blood-curdling howl of the incoming round. I tried burrowing deeper into the sand. As I did so I felt Sticky kind of spread himself out on top of me.

‘BOMMER, YOU’RE TOO FUCKIN’ IMPORTANT TO HAVE YOU GETTING KILLED!’ he screamed. ‘LONG LIVE THE JTAC!’

I stared into Sticky’s eyes — the lunatic. He was like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlamps. I hope I don’t look as scared shitless as he does .

In the thing came. We’d both stopped laughing now.

During the last seconds of the weapon’s descent it sounded twenty times worse than it had done when we’d been in some kind of cover. When the giant round smacked into the dirt barely six metres from us, our world erupted in a whirlwind of shock and pain.

A wall of blasted shrapnel engulfed us, the terrifying power of the explosion punching and pounding me like a rag doll. I felt my body tense, as I waited for the burning agony of injury or worse. The violence of the blast tore the air from my lungs, forcing me deeper into the earth. I choked and gagged on a mouthful of grit and sand, but still came up breathing. How the hell was I still alive? And what about that poor fucker Sticky? He’d been lying on top of me, fully exposed to the gut-wrenching blast. Surely, he must’ve been peppered full of jagged, razor-sharp steel.

After the thunderous roar there was a deafening, echoing silence. For a second I just lay there, Sticky pressing me down into the hot Afghan dirt. I tried lifting my head, but either Sticky was dead, or he just wasn’t moving. I tried wriggling out from under him, but I was pinned down. It was like the grave down there.

‘Gerroff, you daft bugger!’ I choked, hoping and praying that he’d answer me.

For an instant there was no reply, and then I heard a rasping wheeze of laughter — the crazed cackle of a man who somehow had survived. Sticky sounded even more insane that normal, which was saying something. We struggled to our feet. We staggered about in the thick cloud of smoke and dust. Neither of us could believe it. We were alive. And we didn’t appear to have a scratch on us. Not a scratch .

I turned to inspect the nearside surface of the HESCO barrier. From about half a metre upwards it was completely torn to shreds. Scores of ragged holes were still smoking from where the hot shards of 120mm shrapnel had torn it apart.

That should have been us , I told myself. We should have been peppered full of red-hot Taliban metal. How the hell had we escaped all that?

But there was no time to contemplate the unbelievable fact that we both weren’t dead. All of a sudden we heard the faint screechhowl of a second incoming round. This wasn’t funny any more. The bastards had sent up two in quick succession.

‘Back to the Vector!’ I yelled.

Sticky and I sprinted for the wagon. As we did so the string holding together my flip-flop gave out. I was trying to run with the sole bent double, which wasn’t very clever. We made the Vector just as that second 120mm round tore into the earth behind us. We dived inside the wagon and lay there gasping for breath. We were plastered in sand and dirt from head to toe, and soaked in sweat. Chris and Throp were in there, and they stared at us as if we’d gone completely nuts. Neither of them had a clue as to where we’d just been, or of our death-defying escape.

There was no time to explain. I got on the TACSAT and dialled up the air. I got four F-15s — Dude Zero Three to Dude Zero Six — allocated to me, for six hours on yo-yo. I now had four fast jets overhead equipped with ace sniper optics, and I figured we had the wherewithal to find and nail that bastard mortar crew.

I got them flying recces over Pizza Pie Wood, but they detected absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. I was slouched in the back of the burning hot Vector staring into my Rover screen, eyes glued to the downlink and I was boiling over with frustration. Where the fuck was that mortar team?

Then we spotted the hay cart. This was it. Finally, we had them. Six males were pushing a massive cart, which was clearly far too heavy to be filled just with dry grass. What did they have hidden beneath the hay: crates of 120mm rounds, or the entire tube? I could feel the excitement building, as the Dude call signs said they were ready to smash them.

The six men pushed the cart along a track just to the north-west of Pizza Pie Wood. Finally they stopped in a mud-walled compound and began unloading. My eyes were glued to my downlink as first all the bundles of hay came off and then… nothing.

I couldn’t believe it: there was nothing on the cart but fucking hay. Only fucking hay. Where the bollocks was that bastard mortar?

Whilst the F-15s continued flying their air recces, Sticky decided to tell everyone within earshot how we’d been caught in the open by those mortar rounds. Chris and a few of the other lads had seen us wandering off, but none of them had thought much about it. Jess had made it into the cover of a bunker, which made us look even more idiotic. As Sticky finished his story, the OC stared at us like we were a couple of complete lunatics. He shook his head in disbelief.

‘A Royal Marine and a JTAC… What is it, sixteen years’ experience between you? You couldn’t make this up.’

Sticky grinned, sheepishly. I stared into my Rover screen, trying to avoid the OC’s eye. There was a chorus of ‘you stupid twats’ from the other lads. Only Mikey Wallace seemed to disagree. He told us he was chuffed as nuts that we’d got him his tail fin. Chris seemed to think that our behaviour was beyond warped.

‘Why on earth did you want to go to a 120mm mortar impact point, in your shorts and flip-flops?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Especially when the mortar’s still live?’

‘Why d’you think?’ I snorted. ‘’Cause Mikey wanted a tail fin — and a tail fin Mikey got.’

For an hour or so after the jets had gone Sticky and I sat in the Vector, and we couldn’t stop laughing at each other. It was the sheer simple joy of still being alive.

A few hours later I said to Sticky: ‘You know what, mate, lightning never strikes twice. Let’s go take a butcher’s at the impact point, eh?’

‘Yeah, come on then,’ said Sticky.

We wandered over, me with my little digital camera in hand. I was hobbling like an old man, for my foot was cut to shreds from where I’d been trying to run with a broken flip-flop. We didn’t really say much when we saw that blasted HESCO barrier; we knew how close it had been, and how by rights we should be dead.

I took a photo of Sticky and he took one of me. Sticky was pointing at the ground where we’d been lying, as if to say — That’s where we were, so how the hell did we get away with it? I picked up a lump of shrapnel about the size of my foot, and all bent double on itself. I decided to keep it as a souvenir of the day that Sticky and I cheated death.

The following morning there was the warning of a major op in the offing. C Company, 2 MERCIAN were tasked with pushing five kilometres east into the Green Zone on the southern side of the river. They were to take Qada Kalay, and square off the front line with us, so turning the Triangle into a proper kill-box. Once that was achieved, we’d be handing over the entire territory to a Danish battle group.