He had done it, evaded the triple-A and broken lock with the SA-6 all inside a minute. John and I were lucky to be alive. But pro-Gad had been ready for us. He was bristling. We’d killed the immediate threat; now it was best to leave the rest to talk about it.
To Mark: ‘Broken lock with SA6. Very low-level, heading west. I have you visual.’
Mark got on the net: ‘Triple-A destroyed. At least three men… looks like there might be more. Can’t quite see where they all went.’
‘That’ll do for that,’ I transmitted. ‘Good work. Let’s move away. I have you visual. Head two-eight-zero. One hundred, one hundred.’
My patrol broke away from the southern target area and headed west to reposition closer to Brega itself. Our next target was the now disused airport south-west of Brega. We turned north to get our sights into the area. Looking north at the town with my left eye I could see streaks of fire racing skywards and similar hitting the ground. Nick Stevens and the Underdog patrol were engaged in a fight for their lives.
Three miles north of Brega port, Nick was trying to identify targets with the help of the Pred. To the south he could see the triple-A and tracer fire whipping the sky around my target areas. Having launched fifteen minutes later than us, he arrived to find Brega on full alert. Unknown to both patrols was the fact that surprise was never ours at all. The Rolex, endorsed by the CAOC, was not passed on to, not understood by or ignored by the French, who stuck to the original timings and woke the whole town up as they launched their assault to the east. In the CAOC Chris James watched helplessly as the huge aircraft-tracking screen displayed helicopter icons lift and depart the Tonnerre after he requested they delay by twenty minutes. In the Ops Room in Ocean, Big Shippers could see the same data feed. The timeline unravelled before we got off the deck. Whatever the Apaches did that night, pro-Gad was awake and waiting. Risk, originally assessed as ‘medium’, was at the red end of ‘high’ before we’d lifted, and Underdog were about to experience their share of the pain.
Brega was writhing with violence and throwing it skyward. To stay out of pro-Gad range Underdog needed the Pred to give him targets, but the drone was slow and seemed confused over where to look. Realizing he needed to join the fight to take some of the heat and attention away from us, Nick rapidly took control, giving coordinates and descriptions of target areas to the Pred and directing his target search. Pred looked and reported ‘nothing seen’. He tried again, and again the Pred reported negative. In the front seat of the lead aircraft Nick was utterly frustrated. Brega was full of targets and Jilted was clearly in trouble to the south, but Pred-man just sounded bored. Time, which was never on Nick’s side, was now critical. He had to get right into Brega, find targets himself and change the battle.
Checking his map and target imagery, he made a quick plan and burst a transmission to Reuben Sands on the wing: ‘We’ve got to do this for ourselves. Close in for FLIR find, same targets as briefed.’
Reuben and JB knew what this meant – the Pred was not the de-risker the ‘Go’ brief had said it was, just as time was not the provider of surprise – and they had to make up the difference.
Little Shippers nudged the cyclic forward and he and Nick closed in on the maelstrom. Searching a few hundred metres to the west of the port, Nick immediately began identifying armed pro-Gad soldiers rushing between defensive positions. Triple-A systems were being readied and technicals were Mad-Maxing all round the town. The targets were there, right there, in plain sight. And so was he.
Within a minute of closing the coastline, a bright orange flash captured his right eye in the same nano-second as the American lady in the wing calmly announced, ‘Missile launch, ten o’clock.’
In his cockpit JB saw it too; at the same time as the flares began punching out of his patrol commander’s aircraft he screamed, ‘Missile in the air!’ across the mission net.
Both aircraft went into the pandemonium of self-preservation. While the rear-seaters controlled the height and speed to deceive the missile, the flares fired out and away to seduce the savvy seeker head, while both front-seaters looked into the launch point. Everyone stopped breathing and willed themselves smaller, twisting in the five-point harnesses anchored to the armoured seats, shoulders hunched and jaws clenched tight shut.
The missile arced towards Nick and Little Shippers. In the two and a half seconds since launch it had covered two kilometres and was now just one second from its target. The seeker head had done its job and ignored the flares; all was looking good for pro-Gad.
In that final second no one spoke; there wasn’t time. Everything had been done, they had all dedicated those last three seconds wholly to their survival, the American lady had done her best, too, and they weren’t giving up. Then a last set of flares spat out and glided away, leading the missile with them. JB saw it pass within 20m of the patrol. In that final second, when all four pilots braced for impact, the MANPAD missed.
JB and Little Shippers pulled their aircraft hard to the left and pointed directly at the launch point, closing quickly.
Alive and in disbelief, Nick went on the offensive. A quick glance back at the launch point, a flick of the thumb and, squeezing the laser trigger, he stored the coordinates and transmitted to Reuben, ‘The launch point tallies with the suspicious activity at the supposed artillery site, stand by for QBOs.’
Reuben was already in position: ‘No need. On your left, ready to go, eyes on the target, Hellfire in 20 seconds.’
Their response was accurate and lethal, but the patrol remained very much on edge. The enemy could hide, then pop out of buildings to take a shot when it suited them. The combat indicator of a hurrying man crouching and pointing next to a coastal bunker now drew the eye. Thousands of hours observing people move in Afghanistan had made all four pilots highly attuned to what was normal and what was suspicious. A few more minutes of searching passed, then came the confirmation needed to engage. Another man emerged from the bunker carrying a long tubular object and ran towards the crouching man. Bunker man threw the long tube on to his right shoulder and pointed it in the direction of the patrol. They were head-to-head with a MANPAD team. Underdog was once more just seconds away from being shot down, but this time it was the Apache that got the missile off first.
Nick spoke: ‘Good target. Me shooter, you looker, I’ll break right. Firing now.’
One Hellfire, two hundred rounds of 30mm, and forty-five seconds later the MANPAD team were dead, their weapon systems burning with a white intensity, sending high explosive debris across the harbour. Pro-Gad was on the run. Nick had taken control of the fight. His patrol had narrowly escaped death twice and now they were engaging a panicking enemy ground force whose most potent weapon had just failed.
Underdog had to exploit this opportunity, and once again the Pred was asked to help. But again the response came, ‘nothing seen’. He hadn’t seen the MANPAD launch or the response and hadn’t attempted to assist in the aftermath. Back in the Ops Room in Ocean Big Shippers could see via the tracking data feed that the Pred was ten miles out over the Med and had no chance of seeing into the port. Nick didn’t know this and reasonably assumed that everyone on the net was as interested as he was in staying alive and fighting. The combat dynamics had been reduced to the primordial fact that it is the soldier beside you, in the same danger as you, who fights as hard as you. The out-of-range observer, with no emotional investment or sensation of fear, can enjoy the option of disinterest, and tonight he took it. Underdog was on his own.
Two miles to the south-west, Jilted raced toward the airfield. I could see vehicles moving in and out of the town and Underdog’s Hellfire thrashing the harbour targets. Brega was full of pro-Gad all rushing to respond to our attack.