Because for sure it wouldn’t last.
Eighteen
HELLFIRE’S THIRTEEN
It was stand-to. A couple of days had passed since the big battle, and the 2 MERCIAN lads were in their positions ready to rumble, should the enemy fancy having a go. Intel had been coming in thick and fast that the enemy were reinforcing their units, and getting into positions to attack. Same-old, same-old.
The sun rose harsh and brittle over the low mountains to the east. There wasn’t a sniff of action from the Green Zone, so most of the lads went back to bed. I was chatting to Lance Corporal John Hill, one of the Somme Company TA blokes whose job was to manage the interpreters. John was a forty-year-old, barrel-chested publican who ran two boozers back in London. I had an instinctive liking for him. He and Jason Peach, the 2 MERCIAN sergeant major, were as thick as thieves, and John would take no shit off anyone, least of all the terps.
We were torturing each other with visions of a cold pint of ale, when Jase went quiet. He jerked his head in the direction of one of the HESCO perimeter walls.
‘Here, lads, what d’you make of that fucker?’
John and I glanced where Jase had indicated, and there was that dodgy loner of a terp, the one we’d vowed to keep an eye on. As we watched, the guy paced out the length of the southern wall, counting out as he did so. Then we saw him starting the same with the eastern wall, murmuring numbers as he went.
We glanced at each other, and an instant later we were legging it across the compound. We dived on the terp, hurling him to the ground. As we held him down, Jase produced a length of paracord from somewhere, and we tied the guy up. We hauled him back to the Vector, and got Alan, our own terp, to have a few words with him.
‘Tell him we’re going to hand him over to his mates, the Taliban. Tell him that’s who he must be working for, so he can go and join them.’
Alan did the translation, and the terp started protesting: ‘No, no! I am innocent! I have been doing nothing.’
‘What the hell were you up to pacing out the walls then?’ we demanded.
The terp had no way of explaining his actions, so John decided the guy would have to be sent to FOB Price, for questioning. We plasticuffed him, securing his hands with plastic handcuffs. John put the guy under guard in the terps’ room. He had his hands untied, but he was booked on the next helicopter ride out of there.
After dealing with the dodgy terp I needed a brew. I got one on, then Sticky, Mikey Wallace and I went up on the roof to enjoy the view. I lit up a tab, and inhaled deeply. Down below I could see Jase Peach pottering about in the compound. Jase was an excellent bloke, and a top soldier. Recently, one of those parcels had arrived from well-wishers in the UK, with a consignment of pump-action water pistols. Jase, Throp and I had taken to hanging out at the well in the heat of the afternoon. Whenever someone came over to have a wash or a cool-down, we’d ambush him.
Some of our victims didn’t find it very funny — but we did, every time. They’d come to the well for a good cool-down, so what did it matter if it came from the well bucket, or our pump-action water guns?
I was just giving Jase a thumbs-up, ref the dodgy terp, when from out of nowhere there was a tell-tale violent burst of flame — a horizontal mortar flash aimed right at us. I didn’t need to see the black streak rocketing across the valley, to know that we had an RPG inbound.
The three of us were down on our bellies in a flash and clinging on to the domed roof, not that it would help much — there wasn’t a scrap of cover anywhere. Not one of us had our body armour or helmets on, and didn’t we feel like bloody fools now.
The rocket-propelled grenade came drilling in, its pointy head looking like it was dead on to smash us. At the last moment it veered slightly upwards, howling past a few metres above our heads. I turned to see it ploughing onwards into the desert. It detonated with a punching blast out in the midst of the emptiness.
‘Fucking hell,’ I kicked off. ‘I dropped me bloody tab.’
I had. It was only half finished, and I could see it smoking away on the edge of the roof. As I wriggled forward to grab it, there was the sharp buzz-snap of a high-velocity sniper round ricocheting off the roof. It had gone right between where Mikey and I had been.
Fuck me, was that close. We were off the roof like greased weasels and piling down the ammo-box steps, giggling our heads off. I still made sure I recovered my half-smoked tab though.
‘Fucking snipers,’ Mickey grouched. ‘That bastard better not’ve punctured my radar dome.’
His weirdly shaped mortar-locating gizmo was stuck up on the roof right next to JTAC Central. Mickey stomped off to check on his computer that his radar was still working.
I got word that the lads in the front sangar had spotted the position from where the RPG had fired. It had come from a compound bang between us and Alpha Xray, and a little to the east. I got on the air and dialled up some CAS, to see if we couldn’t catch that RPG team.
I got sent
I asked for more air, and kind of regretted it when I heard what I was getting. I had
Seven hours later I was on my fiftieth brew courtesy of Sticky, and I’d smoked ninety tabs or more. My eyes were like a cow’s udders, I’d filled up god only knows how many piss bottles, and not a sausage had we seen. It was 48°C in the back of the Vector and I was in my shorts and nothing else, but still I was sweating like a pig. Yet I didn’t fancy going up to JTAC Central until we’d nailed that bastard RPG team.
I’d gone through three different controllers in Nevada or wherever they were, and I’d recced from Helmand to Whitby and back. I was not enjoying this. It was made all the worse by Throp and Sticky constantly ripping the piss. Each new American operator would start his shift with boyish enthusiasm, and I’d have to try to reciprocate.
‘Visual one male pax walking down a dirt path between two trees,’ the guy would announce, in his thick American drawl. ‘Can you see him?’
In the background, Sticky was doing his best Yankee accent, mimicking the operator. ‘Say, you know, y’reckon we got us Osama Bin Laden his goddamn self?’
I was trying not to laugh.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Yeah, that bloke on the path — he’s an Afghan farmer going home to have his dinner.’ Instead, I feigned interest and told the Predator operator to ‘keep a close eye on him’.
Next the guy alerted me to being ‘visual two pax cooking their dinner’. I glanced at my watch: only thirty more minutes to go. At 1635 the operator announced he was visual with three pax walking down a track. I told him I was visual with them too. Then the three pax met up with three more pax, so now there were six.
I hunched a little forward in my seat. The Predator was at 22,000 feet, so there was no way the six figures would be able to hear or see it. The six pax met with seven more, and now there were thirteen. This was starting to get interesting. I told the operator to keep with the thirteen pax, then shouted out the door of the Vector.
‘I’ve got thirteen pax two-seventeen metres east of Alpha Xray!’
At that point Chris and anyone else who could squeeze into the Vector gathered around. The thirteen guys on my screen were all dressed alike, in black turbans and black robes. Not a weapon could be seen, but that didn’t mean a thing. The enemy were masters at hiding their guns until the very moment of attack.
‘
‘Roger. Stand by.’
Behind each Predator operator are a team of analysts who can rewind, pause, zoom in and flip the video images on a huge viewing screen. As opposed to our feed, they had the ability to scrutinise the footage in incredible detail.
