Fire Strike 7/9

The only reply I got was an echoing void of static. I cursed those Apache pilots, yet little did I know that the aircrew had been choking up listening to me. And their comms had failed: the ‘crypto fill’ — the encrypted communications system of one of the helicopters — had dumped. It made the aircraft next to useless, and they had no option but to set a course for Bastion.

As the noise of the Apache’s rotor blades faded away on the baking desert air, I got a call from one of the Harriers, Recoil Four Two.

‘I’m visual with male pax running around the compound to the forward line of your troops,’ the pilot reported. ‘They’re taking up positions at those same walls.’

No sooner had he said it than there was a burst of fire, and a volley of RPGs came streaking towards our positions.

‘Widow TOC and Widow Eight Two, this is Widow Seven Nine,’ I yelled into my TACSAT. ‘We’ve got a fucking TIC! The Apaches have gone and we’re getting smashed. I want those AH back! I want them fucking back at all costs, before someone gets killed.’

‘Widow Eight Two, fucking right you’ll get ’em mate.’ It was Damo. ‘I’ll get a lift to Bastion and launch them myself if I have to.’

‘Just get ’em back above me, before more of our lads get whacked.’

‘Widow Seven Nine, Recoil Four Two,’ the Harrier pilot cut in. ‘Visual male pax carrying around bundles, uncovering and covering them up again, in same compound as before. It looks highly suspicious, but I can’t PID any weapons.’

‘Recoil Four Two, Widow Seven Nine: hit that compound. I want you to use a GBU-12 500-pounder on a west-to-east attacking run.’

‘Negative. I can’t do that. I can’t PID any weapons.’

‘Well who the hell else would be running around with bundles in the middle of a firefight?’ I demanded. ‘It’s hardly fucking Tom and Jerry, is it? Our forward platoon is getting smashed by fire coming from that very compound, and I want you to hit it.’

‘Negative. Under the rules of engagement I can’t be certain…’

I buried the Harrier pilot’s words in a string of curses. He may have been technically in the right, but that meant fuck all when we had lads deep in the shit and getting smashed.

Ten minutes later, and with our lads hunkered down under fire, I got a pair of Apaches inbound. At this stage I had no idea if it was the same pilots as before. I started to give a briefing over the air. I mentioned the compound where the Harrier had seen all the males of fighting age, plus the ‘suspicious’ white vehicle.

My biggest concern was that the enemy were trying to outflank us, after which we’d be well and truly fucked. If they got us surrounded at close quarters, even the Apaches wouldn’t be able to help us. Their weapons systems have a small margin of error, and no one wanted to be on the wrong end of an Apache’s 30mm cannon fire.

Just as soon as the pair of gunships were audible, the firefight died down to nothing. I could feel myself burning up with frustration.

‘Get your lads to go firm in their positions,’ the lead Apache pilot told me. ‘Go firm until we’ve completed our air recces. We were overhead thirty minutes ago, so we know the lie of the land pretty well.’

‘Roger that,’ I confirmed. ‘Going firm.’

So, they were the same aircrew as before. I hoped there were no bad feelings about what I’d said to them.

Being an Army Air Corps unit — as opposed to Air Force or Navy — many of the Apache pilots had been soldiers on the ground at one time or another. It meant that they could think like ground troops, with the same kind of instinct. And they could put themselves in the mindset of the enemy, to try to work out where to find and kill them.

At 1445 with the lads still firm, Ugly Five One told me he was visual with three males in the same compound as where the Harrier had seen them. They were covering and uncovering ‘long bundles’, and peering through the walls at our line of troops.

‘They’re peering through the walls, not at them?’ I queried.

‘Affirmative. They’ve got spyholes in the walls, looking out over your positions.’

At that moment the Harriers told me they had to bug out, for they were low on fuel.

‘Keep safe, and watch what you’re doing,’ the pilots told me.

I snorted. ‘No shit.’

With the Harriers gone, I got allocated a lone F-15, call sign Dude Zero Three. I wondered if the American pilot would have the same qualms about firing on what had to be enemy fighters as our Harrier pilots had. Somehow, I doubted it.

‘Widow Seven Nine, Ugly Five Zero,’ the Apaches were back on the air. ‘We’re 105 per cent certain those pax in that compound are enemy fighters. What d’you want us to do?’

I got Chris to put a call through to the OC, asking for clearance to fire warning shots. Butsy gave the green light.

‘Ugly Five Zero, I want you to fire warning shots outside the compound wall, and see how they react.’

‘If we put it outside the wall we won’t get a reaction,’ the Apache pilot replied. ‘It needs to be inside the compound — just to make sure they’re not doing a double-glazing survey, or something.’

‘How big is the compound?’ I asked. I was too wired to appreciate the joke.

‘Thirty to forty metres square. We can put a ten-round burst of 30mm into the far side of the compound.’

‘Roger that. You’re cleared to fire.’

The Apache is equipped with a state-of-the-art surveillance pod, which sticks out of the aircraft’s nose like an angry zit. It provides unrivalled day and night-vision in close-up detail. It was via that pod that the pilots above me were peering into the compound, the images from their daytime cameras playing on laptop-sized screens in the two-man cockpit.

Each gunship has a single-barrel 30mm cannon slung beneath the forward, gunner’s seat. It can be aimed using pistol-grip hand controls, or ‘slaved’ to follow the pilot’s eyeline via a series of sensors mounted in the cockpit. In that mode, wherever the pilot looks and pulls the trigger, the cannon fires. Plus the stub-wings set to either side of the aircraft carry pods of CRV7 70mm rockets, and Hellfire ‘tank buster’ missiles.

From the chin turret of Ugly Five Zero the 30mm cannon barked. A tongue of white flame shot out from the Apache’s gun. There was a couple of seconds’ delay, and then the heavy-calibre explosive rounds tore into the hard-beaten surface of the compound’s interior.

‘No change the pax inside that compound,’ the Apache pilot reported. ‘They glanced up at us; now they’re back peering through their spyholes.’

I cleared them to fire a second warning burst. Only one of the figures reacted. He turned away from the peephole, put his arms behind his back as if on a leisurely stroll, and moved down the wall to the next spyhole.

‘Widow Seven Nine, it looks to me like ambush positions,’ the Apache pilot radioed. ‘I know how I’d react if someone put ten rounds of 30mm next to me, and it’s not like these guys are doing.’

Via Chris I put it up to the OC. Butsy came back saying we were clear to engage. I cleared the Apaches to open fire, and sat back to enjoy the show.

Both aircraft opened up on target. The boom-boom-boom of the 30mm cannons firing was slow enough for the individual shots to be audible to the ear. I counted: ‘one, two, three… ten… twenty.’ Before the last rounds were out of the guns, the first were slamming into the target.

The twenty-round bursts tore into the position, the 30mm shells exploding on and around the western wall, throwing up gouts of mud and shrapnel. Figures came running out of the dust storm, abandoning their positions in their haste to get out of the killing ground.

The Apache pilots tracked the figures as they crossed the open ground and linked up with others, giving me a running commentary as they did so. As the fleeing figures paused, the Apache pilots spotted the weapons that they’d been trying to hide. The blanket-bundles concealed AK-47s, RPGs, machine guns and shedloads of