Fire Strike 7/9

second I glared at it.

Then I pointed and said to Mikey: ‘What the fuck do we do if it comes through that?’

We started laughing, hysterically. But it didn’t sound very clever as the shell came howling in on us. We stopped smiling, and kafucking-boom, it smashed into the compound, blasted sand and shit slamming against the metal skin of the Vector.

Mikey had a fix on the mortar launch point. His ten-figure grid was 3.8 kilometres to the north-east of our position. I got allocated a Predator, and I got it to do an overwatch of the mortar firing point, with a live feed to my Rover terminal. After each 120mm round went up I saw half a dozen males of fighting age leaping over a wall and diving into a tiny building. Were they the mortar crew — the bastards I so badly wanted to get? I was pretty certain they were, but I couldn’t actually see the mortar firing, to ‘positively ID’ it. It must have been doing so through the shadow of a roof, or a door, or a window, but they had it too well hidden. I began wondering if they had some kind of automatic, rollable roof, so that as soon as it fired it slid it back into place again. This was more James Bond than Mullah Omer’s Taliban. It was messing with my head.

That evening John Hill, Jase Peach, the OC, Chris and I were talking at the back of Vector. We were saying how fucking horrific that 120mm mortar was, and how we needed to come up with a plan to smash it. Everyone was shit scared of it: when the air horn went off it was the worst feeling possible.

We reckoned they wouldn’t risk firing the thing at night, for then our air could track down the hot tube with infrared scanners. The OC decided to push a fighting patrol out towards the Golf Charlies, on foot and at night. His aim was to show the enemy that we weren’t cowed by their mortar. But there was also the hope they might be tempted to lob a couple of 120mm rounds at us, in which case we could nail the hot tube.

The patrol left PB Sandford at 1900, heading across the high ground to Monkey One Echo. As soon as it was out the intercepts started going wild about the ‘Diamond Special Forces’ being out on foot in the Green Zone.

I had Hog One Five and Hog One Six in the overhead, and for this patrol we’d been granted less restrictive rules of engagement. By 2000 hours the patrol was pushing into the dense bush around Golf Charlie One Seven, and heading in the direction of Bin Laden’s Summerhouse. At this point the lead edge of the platoon spotted three armed figures fifty metres ahead, in ambush positions. I passed the grid to Hog One Five, and told him to hit them. I asked him to attack with his 30mm cannon, on a north-west to southeast run.

‘I want the strafe of all strafes,’ I told him, ‘all along that treeline.’

‘Affirm,’ he replied. ‘Banking around.’

For thirty seconds or so you could hear a pin drop in the stillness of the night, and then the A-10 came screaming in like a thing possessed. When the pilot finally unleashed his seven-barrel Gatling gun I thought the strafe would never end.

‘Brrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttt tttttttttt.’

It was the longest I’d ever heard, the 30mm thundering on and on as it ripped apart the treeline. The BDA was bang on target: two enemy dead, and a third dragging an injured fighter away. I told the A-10 that it was a class strafe, and that the platoon would pull back to Monkey One Echo, as we’d found the enemy’s front line.

At that moment, I got a call sign trying to break into my radio traffic.

‘Break! Break! Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC: on no account are you to engage the enemy with the Hog call signs.’

‘Say again,’ I replied.

The message was repeated.

‘Roger: why not?’ I asked.

‘Your rules of engagement you can only use with British jets.’

‘Well, there’s a couple of Taliban in the Green Zone’ll probably wish you’d sent that message a few seconds earlier.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause I just killed two, and the third is dragging one of the injured away.’

‘Stand by.’ There were a few moments’ silence, then Widow TOC was back on the air. ‘Widow Seven Nine, there might be a problem with that.’

‘Not for fucking me there’s not,’ I told him. I flipped back to the A-10’s frequency. ‘Hog One Five, seems there’s something wrong with the engagement. I wasn’t meant to fire ’cause of the rules.’

‘What the… why?’

‘Look, it’s nowt to do with you guys. I bought the rounds, so if anyone’s in the shit it’s me. Can you watch over the patrol, while I try and sort this shit out.’

‘Roger that.’

I flipped frequencies back to Widow TOC. ‘Look, 95 per cent of all controls in Helmand are with US platforms. If what you’ve said is right, you should’ve made sure we had Harriers over the patrol.’

The duty guy at Widow TOC ducked the issue. ‘Widow Seven Nine, release the Hog call signs once your patrol is back in base.’

I told the Hogs I’d been ordered to release them, but they basically refused to go.

‘We’re on X-CAS, Widow Seven Nine, and we’re remaining on XCAS. And it just so happens we’ll be right in your overhead, and it just so happens you’ll still be receiving our Rover downlink. You OK with that?’

‘Fucking cheers, lads,’ I told them.

I’d worked with these pilots before, and we knew the score. But I wasn’t about to let it rest with Widow control. I was steaming.

‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine. Look, we need to clear this up. Are you asking us to hold the front line in the Green Zone, but if we find armed enemy we’re not allowed to do anything? ’Cause if that’s the case you need to get the lot of us out of here.’

‘Stand by.’

As I waited for a proper answer, I got a call from the A-10s.

‘Sir, are you watching your Rover? I’m visual with an eight-man patrol with RPGs and AKs moving west out of Qada Kalay.’

I flicked my eyes to my Rover screen: the eight-man enemy patrol was clearly visible, snaking through the trees.

‘Roger. Stand by.’ I called Widow TOC, told him what we could see, and asked if we were clear to engage.

‘Negative: they are not an immediate threat to you.’

‘Not now they’re not,’ I fumed, ‘but what about when they reach Alpha Xray in an hour’s time?’

‘Negative: they are not an immediate threat to you.’

I got on to the A-10 pilot, and told him what was what. Then: ‘Is there any chance you can dive on to target, have an ND with the 30mm, and mow the lot of them down?’

The pilot burst out laughing. An ND stood for negligent discharge — a posh term for firing off some rounds by accident.

We tracked that patrol for an hour or more, as they passed through several enemy checkpoints. Every five minutes I kept asking for clearance to fire. I didn’t get it, and finally the A-10s were out of fuel.

‘Stay safe,’ the pilot told me. ‘It’s excellent work you’re doing down there, Widow Seven Nine, we all know that. Sometimes the rules are just shit — what can you say.’

The A-10s left my ROZ and I lost the downlink. Whilst I’d been controlling the jets, Throp had been killing time by tallying up the kills in my JTAC log. He turned to me with a grin.

‘Guess what?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You’re not going to fucking believe this, Bommer, but you’ve got more kills than Harold Shipman. You’re on 199, mate. 199. We’ve got to get over two hundred.’

I’d never once thought about totting up the kills. I guess I’d been too busy doing them. In any case, body counts always have a degree of inaccuracy in them and frequently get overestimated. And there were better measures of our success — like the fact we’d seized and held the Triangle for many weeks now.