Fire Strike 7/9

there was a sharp pop as the missiles released their tungsten darts.

The air above the battleground was filled with the ghostly fzztfzzt-fzzt-fzzt-fzzt of the projectiles streaking in. I winced. I was no Carol Vordeman, but that was going to rasp. The three hundred and twenty darts struck the target in a hail of devastation, chewing into tree trunks and splintering branches like a massive chainsaw.

‘Get in!’ I yelled. ‘BDA: one-hundred-and-eighty!’

I couldn’t resist it, and it sure got a laugh out of Sticky. Even Throp couldn’t help grinning.

‘Widow Seven Nine, Dude.’ I had the F-15 on the air. ‘I got enemy pax extracting to the south-east of where the Uglys are hitting ’em. I got armed pax going into a bunker position. This is the grid: 98375826.’

‘Roger: 98375826. Stand by.’

I glanced at the map, tracing my finger to the coordinates. It was on the far side of the village from our lads. We could hit the bunker no problem.

‘Pass the grid to the OC,’ I yelled at Chris. ‘Dude Zero Three, I want you to hit that bunker with a GBU-38. Attack line north-east to south-west, to keep the blast away from the Ugly call signs.’

‘Affirm target and attack line. But Widow Seven Nine, I can do better ’n’ that. I’ll hit it with two GBU-38s simultaneously?’

‘Happy with that.’

‘Tipping in. Call for clearance.’

The F-15 began his attack run, as I warned the Apaches of the airstrike going in.

‘Clearance,’ came the F-15 pilot’s voice.

‘Clear hot,’ I replied.

‘In hot.’ A beat. ‘Stores.’

After several seconds there was an enormous kaboom-kaboom on the far side of the village. A double-headed mushroom cloud of smoke and debris was thrown high into the air, chunks of wall and wood and sandbags spinning off in all directions.

‘Dude Zero Three: BDA,’ I asked the pilot.

‘ BDA: the bunker’s gone. Enemy pax obliterated.’

As the Apaches hunted above the battleground, squirting off ten-round bursts of 30mm at enemy fighters, I passed the F-15 the coordinates of two of the enemy tunnels.

‘Dude, I want you to hit those caves with a double-drop GBU-38. I want a bomb in each cave entrance, with a ten-millisecond delay on the fuses to penetrate deep before exploding. Attack run as before. I’m asking Ugly to talk you on to the caves.’

‘Affirmative. But I’m running on fumes here, Widow Seven Nine, so make it snappy.’

‘Roger. Ugly, Widow Seven Nine. I want you to talk the Dude call sign on to those caves. You can see it better from the air, and you can lase the bombs on to target.’

‘Roger that,’ came the Apache pilot’s reply. ‘Dude Zero Three, Ugly Five Zero. Target is a series of two cave entrances, at the base of the southern wall of the main compound. I’m lasing the first cave entrance now. Confirm you see my laser spot.’

‘Visual your spot,’ came the F-15 pilot’s reply.

‘Spot-on: we’re lasing the target for you now, Dude.’

‘OK, good spot,’ the F-15 pilot confirmed. ‘I’m starting my attack run now. Widow Seven Nine, Dude: call for clearance.’

‘Clear hot,’ I confirmed.

‘In hot.’ A pause. ‘Stores.’

The F-15 released a pair of GBU-38 smart bombs, programmed to home in on the Apache’s laser beam. The ‘hot-point’ of the laser — the spot where it bounced back from the target — was the lock-on point for the bombs to strike.

A second double concussion rocked the battlefield, as the F-15’s thousand pounds of ordnance smashed into the enemy stronghold. The noise of the double blast was muffled, as the five-hundred-pound bombs had burrowed deep before exploding. Each threw up a tight plume of shattered earth and debris, and the strikes looked to be bang on target.

‘Dude: BDA,’ I requested.

‘Stand by,’ the pilot replied. ‘BDA: both bombs went into the cave entrances. Caves obliterated. Widow Seven Nine, I got to go to the tanker, ’cause I’m sippin’ on air.’

‘Roger,’ I confirmed. I radioed the Apaches. ‘Ugly, I’m switching foxtrot.’ I was changing frequencies. ‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine. My Dude call sign is at the refuelling tanker. I need something with a big-hitting potential overhead.’

‘Roger, stand by.’

The F-15 could be anything from ten to forty minutes at the tanker, depending on where it was in orbit. I wanted an air platform that could drop bombs. I was also worried that the Apaches had fired a boatload of rounds, and were low on ammo. I got allocated Recoil Four Three and Recoil Four Four, a pair of Harriers.

As luck would have it the tanker must’ve been close to my ROZ. I got the F-15 back above me in no time, and I sent the Harriers on their way. Almost immediately, the F-15 pilot spotted more fighters in the main compound. His bombs must have driven them out of the tunnel system. I got him to hit them with another GBU-38, which blasted the compound into shattered heaps of rubble, and there were four confirmed kills.

The pair of Apaches had been in action for a full hour now, smashing the enemy wherever they found them. It was 1410, and this was without doubt the maddest hour I’d spent in theatre. We’d been smashing everything that moved. The company was still firm, but under sporadic fire, and I sensed we were starting to win this battle.

Finally, the Apache pilots turned their attention to that white saloon car.

‘Widow Seven Nine, Ugly. Not happy with that vehicle. It’s blocking the track between two walls, and your lads will have to walk past it to advance into the village.’

‘Roger. Stand by.’

All the aircrews had sensed a danger emanating from that vehicle. First, the Harrier pilot — but I’d ignored him. Now, the Apache aircrews. I passed it up to the OC. Butsy said if there was no one in the car we should hit it, to get rid of the thing.

‘Ugly, you’re cleared to hit that car.’

‘Roger. I’ll hit it with one times Hellfire, to deny it. Banking around. I’ll give you a sixty-second call.’

A few seconds later I got the call from the Apache. The missile fired, a blinding flash of flame yellow blooming on the aircraft’s stub-wing. I saw the high-explosive armour-piercing warhead plummeting earthwards. There was a flash of black against the grey-brown of the village, and an instant later the crack of the exploding Hellfire rolled over us.

I was on my TACSAT asking for a BDA, when four further explosions echoed across the battlefield from the same impact point. The blasts must have torn the vehicle to pieces, for I could see chunks of metal spinning into the air to the nearside of the enemy compound. As the explosions died away, a dense column of oily black smoke fingered skywards, and the saloon car was engulfed in a seething mass of flames.

‘BDA: direct hit,’ the Ugly pilot reported. ‘Secondary explosions. It’s going up like Blackpool seafront. Looks like it was full of mines or RPGs, or maybe an IED.’

‘A big well done, lads,’ I radioed the Ugly aircrews. ‘Double A-star top fucking job.’

‘Happy with that,’ the pilot replied. ‘We’re Winchester ammo and approaching bingo fuel. We need to return to Bastion. The position seems clear of enemy forces, but watch out for the tunnel system running beneath the compound.’

Winchester ammo meant the Apaches had fired off all their 30mm cannon rounds. They were also running short — ‘bingo’ — on fuel.

‘Roger that, Ugly. You guys should know you saved a lot of lives down here today… We lost three, but there’d have been a whole lot more if we hadn’t had you above us.’

‘We’re glad we could come back to help,’ the Apache pilot replied. ‘We’ll ask Bastion to keep a replacement flight on standby, just in case.’