Nick hit the transmit switch again: ‘QBOs. Me shooter, you looker, trail left, break right. Attack heading one-nine-zero. Hellfire to gun, first trigger pull at 4,000m. Turning in now.’
Reuben read back the message to confirm his understanding as JB manoeuvred their Apache to keep the lead aircraft in sight just ahead. He had to watch the target to observe the strike and assist if required; they also had to watch out for any incoming fire in return, effectively becoming the guardian for the patrol.
It was a straight, uncomplicated shoot. The checkpoint soldiers had made a poor attempt to hide themselves and their vehicles among some trees near the road. In taking the patrol out to sea Nick had gone out of audible range, making the soldiers on the ground think they had hidden successfully. But by not joining the traffic they had differentiated themselves, displayed their weapons and underlined their legitimacy as a target. The two or three minutes all this had taken had also been enough for the traffic to move on, leaving a clear, unambiguous target free of any civilians. Hiding among trees may have given sufficient cover to avoid a high-up jet strike, but the low-flying Apache could see beneath the branches, right into the hiding place. There was no cover, and hell was about to thunder in off the sea.
Little Shippers counted down the range: ‘All steady… in constraints… five hundred to go. Missile will come off the left side.’ His calm tone was intended to reduce the adrenaline that accompanies shooting.
In the front seat Nick was absorbing the forty or so pieces of symbology in his right eye telling him the Hellfire was ready and locked-on and his laser was functioning correctly, and giving him every detail he would ever need about the aircraft’s height, speed, power and heading. He could tell where Little Shippers was looking, where the other aircraft was in relation to him, where the target was and where the coast was. He had to select which information was immediately important. He knew the target was his priority. Reuben and JB would do everything he needed from the wing aircraft, and Little Shippers would deal with their own positioning and aircraft management. Now Nick just had to select the target and decide whether it was good to shoot or not.
He could see which vehicles were manned and which were empty. Selecting the empty vehicle furthest from the pro-Gad soldiers, he actioned a Hellfire missile with his left thumb and pulled the trigger with his index finger. The missile roared away from the aircraft and obliterated the vehicle.
Nick paused. He could have launched two more missiles in quick succession and controlled all three in the air at once. But this would have given no chance to pro-Gad on the ground, and he didn’t need them to die. He needed to deny their vehicles, their weapons and their equipment, but he wanted them to have a chance to run for their lives. And they did so with impressive speed. Ten soldiers threw away their AKs and leapt over each other to put distance between themselves and the checkpoint. Three more missiles followed into the technicals at the now abandoned checkpoint. Four vehicles gone, no loss of life, checkpoint scrubbed and more pro-Gad out of work. Job done. The patrol turned north and headed for Ocean.
Back in the Ops Room the JCHAT feed that had been idle for 90 minutes streamed a SITREP:
Valkyrie. 7xHellfire, 540x30mm. Targets destroyed. 6xTechnicals, 1xbuilding, multiple mil pers. Zero CD. Zero civcas. Outbound. ETA 10mins.[10]
Another result, and they were on their way back. Ocean got into position to receive the aircraft, and a couple of minutes later Nick came over the net: ‘Valkyrie inbound, Mother visual. Weapons safe.’
I remained in the Ops Room until the roar of both aircraft could be heard on the flight deck. The front-seaters would be getting out of the aircraft very soon and making their way down to the flip-flop. My next job was to debrief the patrol, review the guntape and draft the MISREP. John and I took the maps and the timeline and headed off to the flip-flop. We descended the chain ladder into the planning compartment and saw Nick already in and signing in his personal weapons and morphine.
John was straight in with the baiting: ‘Sir, seven Hellfire and no ZSU 23-4? What happened, did you miss it?’
‘Didn’t see it, must have been switched off and hiding,’ Nick offered, knowing he was about to be mauled.
John turned to me. ‘See, if we’d been on it that ZSU would have been done right with the first trigger pull, no problem.’ He looked at Nick. ‘So, just me and the boss with the ZSU kill then. Shame, I thought you were going to join our exclusive club. Never mind.’ Then, with an even more sarcastic inflection: ‘Come on, load up your guntape and let’s see what a pick-up truck looks like when a Hellfire hits it… again.’
Nick, damp through with the sweat of another combat mission and long low-level sea track, could only chuckle and sit down to write the MISREP.
His narrative was the now prescriptive retelling of the facts – heights and speeds, headings and missile launches, coordinates and target effect. Checkpoints and technicals again, but they were significant. If the regime controlled the roads the FLF would be held back. If we knocked the checkpoints out, fear of loitering attack helicopters would encourage more desertions, the roads would be clear and the FLF could move. The no-show from the ZSU 23-4 was good news; being surprised by one of those could have presented a very different outcome. We reviewed the guntape and finished the MISREP.
From an initial five addressees, we now had to send our MISREP to over thirty people, and our Ops team had to work through until breakfast to edit and upload the guntape footage. Every other day a new email would arrive from someone in London demanding to get early sight of the MISREP ‘so I can brief my boss’. I knew that by the time I got to my cabin, tired and grateful that we’d got through another mission without coming unstuck, officers in London would be opening their email, reading the MISREP and viewing the footage.
The scrutiny was intense, much of it necessary and useful. Some of it, however, was just access to information. Occasionally, contextless questions were generated that made our days longer than they needed to be and made me wonder if these people really knew where we were and what we were doing. Ignoring the CAOC, they would reach right into the ship to question us. Bypassing those who knew our work, they made the electronic leap of thousands of miles to ask ‘Why did you fly there?’ or ‘Why did you shoot that?’ Often such missives were double- or triple-sent over a period of hours, if the initial email was not answered immediately. Of course, by the time the London latte had cooled enough to drink and the email was sent, I was asleep in my cabin. The question-generator didn’t know that, and the third email would usually arrive with highlighted demands for his second-guessing by about lunchtime. Which was also, as it happened, the time that I would get out of bed.
Back at the sharp end of the war, the FLF had watched the mission going in. Pro-Gad did desert, and a gaping hole opened just where the regime needed to be strong. Colonel El-Moktar Firnana took his opportunity, and the following day Libyan rebels began to advance north, taking ground previously held by Gaddafi. A tentatively planned Apache strike against more checkpoints was aborted late that night due to uncertainty over who was where on the ground. We chalked up another cancellation, but the irony was that the success of our first strike on the third front was putting us out of business.
Chapter 13
10
Brief factual text conversations keep all commanders informed. Here Nick had transmitted to the ABCCC, who had then sent the text on JCHAT. His full message was, ‘Callsign Valkyrie has fired 7 Hellfire and 540 30mm destroying 6 armed pickup trucks, 1 building and several Regime soldiers. There was no collateral damage, nor were any civilians injured or killed. We are now returning to HMS