Fire Strike 7/9

kept appearing. Sooner or later one of those rocket-propelled grenades was going to smash open AX, and cause carnage in there.

My fellow JTAC across the river at PB Arnhem had a pair of Apaches on hand. I borrowed one, and got it fast into the overhead. Chris ordered the mortar and artillery units to go to ‘check fire’ — to cease firing — so the gunship could hunt out the enemy.

As soon as the Ugly call sign was audible, the firefight died to nothing. I got the Apache over Golf Bravo Nine One, and within minutes the pilot had detected four enemy fighters. The Taliban were nothing if not creatures of habit: the stupid sods had been hitting Alpha Xray from the crater left by a previous thousand-pound JDAM strike. I still had the coordinates of that airstrike in my little black JTAC log: I passed them up to the Apache, and cleared him in to do four strafes with 30mm. The enemy were hardly able to scramble up the sides of the crater, before all four of them were whacked.

Using a bomb crater as ‘cover’ was like a dog returning to its own vomit: bad idea. But the one thing I couldn’t understand was how the enemy kept getting into position at Golf Bravo Nine One without being spotted. One moment it was deserted, the next they were there, pounding Alpha Xray. Somewhere, there had to be a tunnel or a hideout.

The following morning I got allocated a Predator for six hours solid. It wasn’t my favourite platform, but I’d not forgotten the Hellfire Thirteen strike, and I was determined to man it out. I got it over Bin Laden’s Summerhouse, and once again there were scores of males of fighting age all around it. Frustratingly, not one of them had a visible weapon.

Next, I got it flying air recces over the Golf Bravos. I’d searched all the way down from Golf Bravo Nine Eight to Golf Bravo Nine One, and was just moving on to Alpha Xray. I wanted to give the lads there some stick about my being able to see them without their helmets or body armour on — just to let them know that they weren’t forgotten.

But as the Predator cruised south-west I noticed something odd. Adjacent to the bald brown scoop of the thousand-pound crater was a tiny thread of smoke. I wouldn’t even have seen it had I not been studying the crater so closely. It looked like a cooking fire. But why on earth would anyone be getting a brew on in the middle of a blasted battlefield?

The only person likely to do that had to be an enemy fighter. I got the Predator to zoom in on the thin column of smoke. At its base was a tiny, two-metre by four-metre mud-walled building. It had been totally covered by trees, until the JDAM had blown away enough foliage to partly reveal it. This had to be the entrance to the enemy’s hideout, from where they kept popping up to hit us. I felt certain of it. I just needed an excuse to smash it from the air. I got the Predator to pass me the ten-figure grid of the tiny, bunker-like building, and stored it away for later.

Once I’d lost the Predator I got Rammit Six One, a Dutch F-16, into my ROZ. I passed the pilot the ten-figure grid of the bunker, and asked him to zoom in his sniper optics.

‘Rammit Six One, tell me what you see,’ I radioed.

‘Roger. Searching.’ There was a minute’s silence, then this: ‘Visual a tiny building, but only when banked off to the east. Obscured by foliage otherwise. There’s a small fire beside it.’

So now I knew we had their hideout nailed. All I had to do was pass an aircraft those coordinates, and they’d be on to it.

At 2030, just after last light, Alpha Xray got smashed again. Machine-gun fire was whipping out of Golf Bravo Nine One, plus an RPG team were hitting the base from a new position to the north.

I got allocated a pair of Mirages, my least favourite platform. Top joy. The French pilots weren’t familiar with the area, so I gave them a full update, then requested: ‘Rage Three Two, I want a 500- pounder dropped on that RPG team to the north of Golf Bravo Nine One. Nearest friendlies to the south-west one- two-five metres.’

‘Negative,’ the pilot replied. ‘It is too close and I cannot drop ordnance.’

‘Shut up,’ I snapped. ‘We’ll just use you on a north–south attacking run, which’ll keep the blast away from friendlies.’

‘Negative. I ’ave never dropped this close to friendlies. It is beyond danger-close and in darkness, and…’

‘Break! Break!’ The pilot of the other Mirage cut in. ‘Widow Seven Nine, Rage Three Three. Visual twelve pax to the east of Golf Bravo Nine One, all with weapons, moving south towards Alpha Xray. Now going firm: grid is 04827436.’

I confirmed the grid and checked my map. Those twelve fighters were now the nearest and single greatest threat to AX, and I wanted them smashed.

‘Rage Three Three, I want a 500-pound bomb dropped on that grid on a south- west to north-east attack run, to throw blast away from friendlies. Confirm.’

‘Negative,’ the pilot replied. ‘I cannot do the drop.’

‘Listen,’ I rasped, ‘every other platform in theatre has done drops this close and closer, so why the bloody hell won’t the both of you?’

‘It is just too close,’ the pilot replied.

It was time to call their bluff. ‘Rage call signs, you are not up to task. I’m calling for replacement air.’

‘Widow Seven Nine, Rage Three Three. I will come in and do the drop, but first I need the ground commander’s initials, and your name.’

‘Ground commander’s initials SH. I’m Widow Seven Nine.’

‘No, no — I need your name, please,’ the pilot repeated.

‘I just told you, I’m Widow Seven Nine.’

‘No, I ’ave to ’ave your real name please…’

By the time the French pilot had finished buggering about, half the heat sources had disappeared. I talked both jets in, got them to do four drops and winchestered them. It was six minutes after we’d started arguing, and they were all out of bombs.

‘BDA: we have killed nine enemy pax with the four GBU-38s,’ the pilot of Rage Three Two reported, sniffily.

Frankly, I didn’t believe a word the Rage pilots were saying. I just wanted them gone and some different air above me. I got on to Widow TOC.

‘Both Rage call signs are fucking Winchester. The contact’s still hot, so now can I have some proper air?’

The Mirages were ripped by Rammit Seven Three and Rammit Seven Four, a pair of Dutch F-16s. We hit a score of enemy positions danger-close and without any problems, and finally the contact died down to nothing. I went to my cot cursing the French pilots, and wondering how on earth we were going to smash that enemy bunker at Golf Bravo Nine One.

At breakfast the following morning, Chris, Sergeant Major ‘Peachy’ Peach and I formulated a plan. I had air allocated for later in the day. I’d get it banked off to the desert in the south, where the enemy couldn’t hear it. I’d pass the pilot the ten-figure grid of the bunker, and Peachy would get in a WMIK and start driving. He’d head down Route Crow, pass Alpha Xray and keep going. Pushing onwards he’d hit the southern boundary of Golf Bravo Nine One. If his arrival didn’t provoke the enemy to open fire, he’d start malleting the bunker with the WMIK’s 50-cal. Just as soon as they opened up he’d reverse like fuck, and I’d get the air to smash the bunker.

It was proper British tactics, and I had no doubt that the sergeant major would do it. He had bollocks the size of a horse. It was just his kind of thing, and reminiscent of the crazed mission he’d driven in the WMIK, when he rescued the three wounded men during the battle for Rahim Kalay.

When the three of us put our plan for smashing the bunker to the OC, he just stared at us for a good long second.

‘I just don’t want to fucking know,’ he said.

We guessed we’d got the go-ahead. At 1300 I had a pair of Dutch F-16s — Rammit Six One and Rammit Six Two — check in to my ROZ. I passed them the grid of the bunker. The Rammit call signs seemed happy enough with the plan of attack, but the pilots did query what would happen if the WMIK got bogged in or rolled.

‘If that happens we’ll abort the drop,’ I told them. ‘I’ll get you to do a low-level pass, as the lads make a run for it.’