Fire Strike 7/9

‘Affirm,’ I confirmed. ‘I want you to find that base plate and smash it.’

‘Roger. Two minutes out from…’

‘Break. Break,’ his wing aircraft cut in, using the codeword to clear the frequency of all traffic. ‘BDA: four pax dead. Low fuel. Tanker.’

The brevity of the pilot’s message said it all. He was sipping on air and breaking off for an urgent refuelling.

Chris briefed the OC that he would lose air cover for several minutes, as we had one F-18 refuelling and the other searching for the mortar. There was another distant bang and a plume of smoke. It was dead on the grid that Chris had given for the mortar.

To formulate a grid from a visual reference point is about the hardest thing in our game. Chris would’ve checked out the terrain as he could see it nearest the mortar, and chosen a couple of distinctive features — maybe an odd-shaped compound or distinctive hillock. He’d then have matched those with what he could see on the map, and worked out the grid from there. Chris was a bloody genius at it. The best I’d ever seen. I’d never known him get a single digit wrong. And he was bang on this time.

‘Devo Two Two, Widow Seven Nine,’ I radioed the F-16. He was still a minute out and I wanted to refine the plan of attack. ‘Bank up to 30,000 feet, and don’t come below. I want you to search around that mortar grid and tell me what you see.’

‘Roger. Climbing to 30,000. Zooming in my optics to grid as given now.’

With one F-18 having left the airspace, I didn’t want the mortar crew to know I had another jet coming in. At 30,000 feet the F-18 would be totally silent and invisible. That mortar was the single greatest threat we faced right now: it was targeting us and, more importantly, the lads in the Green Zone.

Ninety seconds later I got the call that I was waiting for. ‘Sitrep: at grid given I see three males standing around a glowing metal tube. And guess what — I’ve just seen ’em reloading it.’

Chris radioed an all-stations warning that a mortar round was about to go up, so the lads could get into some good cover. There was a distant boom, and the pilot radioed me that he’d just watched the muzzle flash of its firing.

‘Confirm no civvies in the area,’ I asked the pilot.

‘Affirm. No other pax present.’

The enemy were renowned for sighting their mortar tubes with women and children gathered around them, as cover. I had to double-check and brief the OC. Ultimately it was his call, but one that he’d delegate to me.

‘Devo Two Two, hit it as fast as you can any line of attack,’ I told the pilot. ‘Your choice of ordnance.’

I gave him final clearance and he gave me ‘stores’. We were all eyes on the far horizon. There was a sudden flash, followed by a boom, and a couple of seconds later a mushroom plume of smoke rose into the distant sky. He’d hit it with a 500-pounder, I reckoned.

‘Devo Two Two; BDA.’

‘It’s a Delta Hotel,’ came back the pilot’s reply. Direct Hit. ‘There’s bits of warm pipe everywhere. And nothing left of the three pax around the tube.’

Fucking result.

It was 1630 by now, and we’d been in the game for eleven hours solid. Unbelievably, we’d yet to take any casualties. The platoons were just short of the three targets — Objectives Silver, Gold and Platinum — and the limit of their advance. They’d been bar-mining their way into compounds, blowing holes in the walls and clearing them as they went.

The bar-mines were hammered on to the wall with spikes, and the flick of a switch set off a fifteen-second fuse. There’d be the cry of ‘MINE!’ Then the crump of an explosion. As soon as the hole was blown, the lads would follow through with grenades. We didn’t know which doors and entrances might be booby-trapped, so the only ‘safe’ way in was by blowing the walls.

As each new patch of territory fell to us the radio chatter was going wild, with enemy commanders urging their men to stand and fight. It was far from over yet.

The two jets were ripped by a singleton F-18, call sign City Desk Four One. I was getting shedloads of F-18s launched off an American carrier steaming in the Gulf. It was all good by me. The American pilots were doing sterling work of smashing what I told them to smash, whenever I told them to smash it. It was a top job.

As I talked the new pilot around the battlefield, the lads of the 2 MERCIAN sniper team came over to have a natter. They’d been up on the high ground all day long, but hunkered down in their hides. They’d seen little or no action, for most of the contacts were happening at the far end of their effective, eight-hundred-metre, range. I was feeling a little sorry for them.

The two lads looked to be no more than eighteen- or nineteenyears old, and they carried these long, L96 sniper rifles. We shared an Army ration milkshake, my other favourite scoff when in continuous action. I’d kept a couple of water bottles on the burning roof of the Vector, the contents of which were the perfect temperature for dissolving the powdered shake.

From the turrets we had a good vantage point over the battlefield. As we supped our shakes and gazed out over the Green Zone, I ribbed the sniper lads about how they should have trained as JTACs. We spotted movement some eight hundred metres away, in territory where we’d just been smashing the enemy.

I was about to alert the F-18, when one of the young lads took a butcher’s through his scope. The L96 is fitted with a Schmidt & Bender 12x magnification sight. He had two enemy figures in the crosshairs of his scope. Both were armed, and they were advancing towards our troops.

I watched in fascination as this teenage lad flipped out the bipod of his weapon, and settled himself down to fire. He squeezed off the first shot, adjusted his aim, and squeezed off a second. We were just about to congratulate him — two shots: two kills — when all hell broke loose below us.

Pushing up towards the main target — Objective Platinum — the lead platoon had stumbled into another hornets’ nest. They had machine-gun rounds and RPGs slamming into them from a treeline just to their front.

Major Butt was on the air immediately, requesting a danger-close air mission to smash that enemy position. Their fighters were positioned around 100 metres ahead of our lads, and they were pushing men forward to surround and outflank us.

I talked City Desk Four One on to the enemy in the treeline, and told him to look a hundred metres to his west for the lead platoon. When he was visual with our lads I told him I needed a danger- close strike to smash the enemy. I asked him what ordnance he’d recommend at a hundred metres’ distance from friendly troops.

‘A thousand-pound JDAM,’ came back the pilot’s calm reply.

It wasn’t quite the answer I’d been expecting. A thousandpounder was twice the weight and destructive power of anything I’d dropped so far, yet this was the most danger-close air mission. I swallowed hard. It was the JTAC who bought the bomb, and I knew that I’d never be able to live with myself if I smashed my own lads.

‘A thousand-pounder?’ I queried. ‘Not owt a bit smaller?’

‘Sir, that’s a pinpoint-accurate munition,’ came the pilot’s reply. ‘As long as your boys have their heads down, they’ll be OK.’

I flicked a glance at Sticky. He gave me a thumbs-up. There was something about the calm tone of the F-18 pilot that gave me real confidence in his abilities.

‘Roger, a thousand-pound JDAM,’ I confirmed. ‘Attack on north–south run, to keep the blast away from friendlies.’

The pilot told me he was tipping in, and called for clearance. I had him visual to the north of us, and I could tell he knew what he was doing. I could hear Chris screaming into the radio for all stations to get low. I gave the pilot the green light.

‘You’re clear hot. Ground commander’s initials are SB.’ ‘SB’ for Major Simon Butt.

‘In hot,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘Stores.’

A moment later I heard the faint whistle of the incoming JDAM. Within seconds it grew into an ear-piercing scream. The noise was like an express train speeding down a tunnel with us at the very end of it. It drilled into my head. There was the flash of a wheelie bin-sized object streaking through the air in front of us, and then the thing hit.