Paul Grahame - Fire Strike 7/9

Lance Bombardier Ben ‘Sticky’ Stickland was always larking about, no matter what shit we were in. Over the past few weeks he’d become like my mucker. I couldn’t help but love him. Sticky hailed from 29 Commando, and being a Commando gunner he was a top soldier. He was fit as a robber’s dog, and was on the scale of an ultramarathon runner. He had a totally stupid sense of humour, and was the funniest kind of killer you ever could meet. He and I were always messing, and he was almost as much of a practical joker as me.

But it wasn’t this that endeared me most to Sticky. Over the past few weeks he’d become like my shadow. More than anyone, I reckoned Sticky really got it. He could sense the unique beauty of conducting the air war, and he thrilled to the awesome power wielded by the JTAC.

The air war could turn a battle within seconds, and Sticky knew it. No other soldier on the battlefield could bring hundreds of million of dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art war machines to bear, with unrivalled power to crush and smash an attacking enemy. He loved JTAC-ing almost as much as I did.

Throp wrestled the wagon across a patch of rutted terrain, trying to choose a spot on high ground where we hadn’t already been targeted. A dog should never return to its own vomit, but we didn’t have much choice up here. I got on the TACSAT to the F-16 orbiting overhead.

‘ Wicked Four One, Widow Seven Nine . Sitrep: we’re getting targeted by mortars plus 107mm rockets. Push up to twenty-five thousand feet, and search around our forward platoons, now eight hundred metres into the Green Zone.’

‘Roger that,’ came the F-16 pilot’s reply. ‘Climbing to twenty-five thousand.’

I wanted the F-16 high enough so no one could hear him, but low enough to spy on the enemy. Via the high-resolution optics located in the aircraft’s nose cone, the pilot could maintain eyes on the ground even from that altitude. I wanted the enemy to think our air cover had gone, so we could lure them out and smash them.

As the noise of the F-16 faded away to nothing, I levered myself up into the Vector’s turret. No sooner had it gone quiet, than there was another distant boom. The mortar was back in action.

But this time, the flash of the exploding round was down in the Green Zone, somewhere around the forward line of our troops. At about the same moment there were a series of sharp cracks of small arms fire and the crump of exploding RPGs.

‘ Arsenic Three Zero ’s in contact,’ Sticky yelled across at me. ‘Small arms, RPGs and mortars. They’re pinned down and going nowhere.’

I grabbed Sticky’s radio handset. He carried a specialist bit of comms kit that could talk to the 105mm field guns back at FOB Price, Camp Bastion, the air power and most stations in between. At present he had it tuned in to the company net.

‘ Arsenic Three Zero, Widow Seven Nine ,’ I yelled. ‘Give me a grid of your position and talk me on to the contact point.’

‘Roger. Grid coming up. Stand by.’

As the platoon commander spoke I could hear the whipcrack of rounds in the background. I could just imagine what that poor bastard was going through. He was in the midst of a shit fight, with thick vegetation all around him and terrified of losing some of his lads. And now he had some arsehole of a JTAC telling him to get out his map and compass and try to work out where the hell they were positioned.

I waited for his reply, with one ear scanning the TACSAT for any comms from the F-16. At the same time I got Sticky to grab the GeoCell map and spread it out on the roof of the wagon. Fuck any rounds that were coming our way. It was time to nail these bastards.

‘ Widow Seven Nine, Arsenic Three Zero .’ The platoon commander sounded breathless, like he’d been running. ‘Friendly grid: 986745. Repeat: 986745. I’ve got eyes on the enemy firing point. They’re one-seven-five metres due east of us.’

Yeah! Get in! It was still danger-close, but 175 metres was good enough. It was time to smash ’em. I bent over the map, trying to convert the six-figure grid the platoon commander had given me to an eight-figure grid, the minimum the F-16 pilot would need.

‘Describe the enemy position,’ I yelled into Sticky’s handset.

‘Treeline one-seven-five metres to the east,’ the platoon commander yelled back. ‘Running north-west to south-east. There’s a kink at the southern end like the handle of a walking stick.’

‘Roger. Out.’ I passed the handset to Sticky, confident that he would do what was needed. He’d warn 3 Platoon when the bombs were coming in, and Chris would brief the OC.

I pressed the TACSAT to my ear, and dialled up the F-16. I gave him a sitrep, passed him the eight-figure grid of the friendlies, described the enemy position, and told him to get visual with that treeline.

‘Comin’ down for a closer look,’ came the pilot’s reply. ‘Zooming in my optics to your coordinates. Right, I’m visual with the friendlies.’ There was a moment’s pause. ‘Now visual with muzzle flashes coming out of a dog-legged treeline, one-seventy metres east of there. Visual with heat spots in that treeline. Six pax at least.’

‘Stand by to attack,’ I replied.

‘Jet visual with enemy pax in the treeline!’ I yelled to Chris. ‘Danger-close one-seventy metres to 3 Platoon. I need OC’s clearance.’

With a danger-close mission I needed top-level clearance. As Chris dialled up the OC, I could hear Sticky briefing 3 Platoon on what was happening. He didn’t know what bombs I’d be using, and in truth neither did I. I was running through the ordnance package of an F-16 in my head, and trying to work out what was best at 170 metres.

‘OC says to hit ’em!’ Chris yelled up at me.

We were on! ‘ Wicked Four One, Widow Seven Nine . I want you to hit those heat spots with a GBU-38. Repeat: GBU-38. I want you coming in on an attack run…’

I gave the pilot a bearing that should throw the blast away from 3 Platoon. A GBU-38 is a five-hundred-pound JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition). It’s a standard Boeing Mk-82 ‘dumb’ bomb, turned ‘smart’ by having the JDAM precision guidance system strapped on to it.

Standing on end, a GBU-38 is about the same height as Throp, and twice as nasty. It’s not the heaviest bit of kit the F-16 carries: the thousand-pound JDAM makes double the noise and blast. But it was about as big a bang as I felt I could risk at 170 metres danger-close to our lads.

‘Visual with six enemy pax in the treeline firing RPGs and small arms,’ the F-16 pilot radioed. A pause. ‘I’m sixty seconds out.’

‘Sticky, give 3 Platoon the sixty-second call!’ I yelled. ‘And check they’ve not changed position.’

It was bloody hectic now. I had less than a minute to do a visual check of the F-16’s attack run, check 3 Platoon hadn’t moved, and make the call to clear the airstrike in or abort it. I glanced to the north-east, and bang on cue there was the knife-sharp wedge of the F-16 arrowing out of the burning blue of the Afghan sky.

‘Call for clearance,’ intoned the pilot.

I glanced at Sticky. He gave me a smile and a thumbs-up.

‘No change friendlies,’ I told the pilot. ‘You’re clear hot.’

‘In hot,’ the pilot confirmed.

There was a tense silence in my handset, as the pilot powered in towards the release point.

Then: ‘Stores.’

Sticky radioed the warning to 3 Platoon: ‘Bombs away!’

I saw the jet pull up over the release point, and then it was streaking past right in front of our noses. I didn’t see the bomb fall, but the flash of the impact was like an ammo dump blowing in a Second World War movie. An instant later the awesome roar of the explosion swept over us, followed by the air-rush of the shockwave.