Fire Strike 7/9

‘Broken Arrow.’

By declaring a Broken Arrow, I’d torn up the rulebook. Broken Arrow means friendly forces about to be overrun and killed or captured. It clears the fast jets to do whatever the JTAC asks, even if that includes dropping ordnance on their own men to prevent them getting captured.

‘I’ve called a Broken Arrow!’ I yelled to the OC. ‘I’m bringing in a danger-close strafe — like right on fucking top of us.’

The OC gave me the nod. ‘Get ’em out, Bommer. Whatever it takes, just get ’em out.’

We were deep in the shit and getting deeper by the second. We were hundreds of metres into the Green Zone, cut off from friendlies and surrounded. We had three injured lads, and we had no idea how serious they were. The OC had given me the word: whatever it took, we had to get our wounded men out of there.

‘Dude One Three: this is the grid of our most forward platoon: 59368219. Repeat: 59368219. That is the friendly grid. Readback.’

The pilot confirmed the grid.

‘Attack instructions. I want a 20mm strafe to the north of grid, and I want it twenty-five metres from the friendlies. Attack run west to east. Confirm.’

The pilot confirmed the attack instructions. Calling for a 20mm strafe at twenty-five metres from friendlies was pretty much bringing it in on top of our lead platoon. But I didn’t see that I had any options.

‘Banking around now,’ the pilot radioed.

‘Roger.’

The OC mouthed into his radio headset. ‘Charlie Charlie One: all stations keep low. Jets coming in on strafing run.’

I heard Chris repeat the warning. At the same time the OC, Chris and Jase Peach were frantically working the radios, trying to get the IRT launched and a Chinook in the air to evacuate our wounded. But at present we had no way of retrieving them, we were stranded deep in the Green Zone with no LZ, and we had a strafe coming in on top of us.

I rolled on to my back and searched in the sky to the west. The F-15 would be coming in right over our heads — that’s if he’d got his attack run right. Anything else, and we were fucking dead.

As I lay there, I thought momentarily of my wife and young Harry and Ella. God knows I’d miss them, but if I had to die anywhere, at any time, with anyone — then it would be here, in this fight, with these lads all around me. I’d rage and bleed and die for these blokes — every last one of them.

‘Tipping in,’ came the voice on my TACSAT.

As the pilot spoke, I saw the glinting sliver of a knife-sharp jet arrowing out of the west and into the rising sun. The F-15 was coming in low and fast, and the pilot looked bang-on for the line of attack that I’d given him.

‘Visual two pax, crawling forwards on top of your lead platoon’s ditch position,’ the pilot told me. ‘Call for clearance.’

‘You’re clear hot. Ground commander’s initials are SB. Kill ’em!’

The F-15 spat fire. ‘Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzt!’

It streaked right over us, the six-barrel cannon flaming, and threading the smoke from those muzzle flashes in a thick trail across the valley. In an instant it was past, the roar of the jet’s massive after-burners frying the air, as the pilot put pedal to the metal climbing for altitude.

‘BDA!’ I yelled. ‘BDA!’

‘BDA: two dead,’ the pilot replied. ‘Your lead platoon…’

‘Break! Break!’ Dude One Four crashed in on the traffic. ‘Widow Seven Nine: they’re running at you in large numbers from the northeast around to south-west of your position. Widow Seven Nine, they’re lookin’ to fuck you up bad down there.’

‘Well get the fuck in and start killing ’em,’ I screamed at him. ‘Get in and kill ’em, fast!’

‘Roger. Attack instructions.’

At that moment, the predatory silence erupted. The bush sparked with muzzle flashes in every direction, as a savage barrage of concerted fire tore down on us, and RPGs flared in the shadows. I didn’t need Alan yelling intercepts at me to know what was happening: the enemy commander had given the word for the final attack.

‘Dude One Three, you have our friendly grid,’ I screamed. ‘No call signs will move position. Map it out on your computers, get your cannons going and start fucking smashing ’em.’

‘Roger. We’re lining up for attack runs now, shooter-shooter. Stand by.’

‘Dude call signs, you’re cleared to attack. Just get your bastard guns going!’

The air above us was alive with the angry snarl of rounds. I felt a sharp tug, as one smashed into my donkey dick aerial, whining off into the undergrowth. If they took out the TACSAT, then we were well and truly buggered. I tried to burrow deeper into the shit and stench of the ditch. I was climbing inside my bloody helmet.

‘Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzt!’

The roar and thump of battle was torn apart by a long and beautiful strafe.

‘Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzt!’

A second came a few moments later, as Dude One Four followed after the lead F- 15’s attack.

From the skies above the kill zone it was raining chunks of redhot shrapnel. One landed smack-bang in the middle of the map, and lay there, smoking. I shoved it aside, hardly noticing the burning in my fingers, as I yelled for a BDA.

‘BDA: three killed,’ the lead pilot confirmed. Result. We were starting to smash them back. ‘Banking around now.’ A beat. ‘Engaging.’

The F-15s came in again, shooter-shooter, smashing the bush to either side of us. An instant later a series of agonised, unearthly screams rent the air. Nothing on earth sounds like the cries of a wounded man, especially one torn apart by 20mm cannon fire.

I’d never had a hunger to hear that noise before. But now the enemy were taking casualties and those screams sounded good. The Dude call signs came arrowing in on two further strafing runs, but the enemy fighters just didn’t seem to care. They were blind to their casualties and closing in from all sides. The violence of the firefight was numbing.

Along with the lads all around me I was pumping rounds into the bush, aiming with my needle-sight at the flash of movement, or the burst of muzzle flame in the shadows. But as one went down, another took his place. How many of them were there? And how long would our ammo last? And for how long could we keep beating the fuckers off?

The chuntering of some big, nasty weapon joined in the death-fight now. Its deep, throaty thunk-thunk-thunk tore into our thin line of men, rounds smashing apart tree trunks and making mincemeat of the branches above us. It sounded like a Dushka, and the noise of those 12.7mm bullets tearing apart our positions was horrible.

‘Tipping in.’ Dude One Three’s radio call dragged my mind back to the air war. ‘Commencing fourth strafing run.’ A pause. ‘Engaging.’

As the dense funnel of 20mm rounds thrummed through the air above, the second F-15 pilot came up on the radio.

‘Widow Seven Nine, Dude One Four: sir, this isn’t working. They’re charging your positions from the north-east, dozens and dozens of ’em. We need to switch to bombs, sir. If not, you’re finished.’

‘Roger. Stand by.’

God, give me a few moments to fucking think.

The patrol was strung out some two hundred metres from end to end. The enemy were right on top of us, danger-close in all directions. The danger-safe frag distance for a five-hundred-pound bomb — the smallest an F-15 carried — was three hundred metres. Basically, we were fucked if they started dropping bombs. But it was either that, or get captured and killed.

An idea came to me. I’d learned about it in JTAC school, but it was rarely if ever used for real, in combat.

‘I’m calling a bug-splat!’ I yelled at Chris and the OC.

The two of them ceased firing for an instant, and stared at me, like: What the fuck’s a bug-