‘We are.’
‘The enemy are shooting rockets at us from somewhere near the top of the Shrine. Firing position as yet unidentified. Can you locate and prosecute Taliban there too please?’
‘Affirm.’
‘Roger. One more thing, Ugly: can you give me your time on target?’
A loud burst from a heavy machine gun echoed across the JTAC’s radio microphone and we could also hear curt instructions being issued in the background. Our JTAC was very calm for a man about to be overrun by a highly trained guerrilla force. But they nearly always were. It was a testament to their training, professionalism and, above all, courage.
‘Ugly Five Zero, we’ll be with you in figures eight minutes.’
We divided up the workload.
‘I’ve spent ages up at the Shrine, Boss. If we take that, Billy and Carl can go for Falcon.’
Trigger detailed the tasks to our wingmen.
‘Copied all. Happy with that.’
All we needed to know now was when the Harrier’s bomb would impact. I hoped for the marines’ sake it would be soon.
‘Ugly Five One, Widow Seven Eight. Confirm time on target for Topman.’
Topman replied himself. He was a Brit – RAF – even better news.
‘Time on target… six minutes…’ I could hear him demand oxygen from his facemask every few words. He sounded like a public school version of Darth Vader. We’d be there only a minute or two behind them. Less, if Carl and I could squeeze any more power out of our beasts.
The Boss tapped in the Shrine’s coordinates, and our lenses shot towards it. Billy did the same for Falcon. From that distance we could already make out the shape of the loaf, but we were too far off to see heat sources. Not long now though; maybe only a couple of minutes. Then we’d be amongst it. Bring it on.
‘Topman… Impact one minute…’
Now we were heading north over the Green Zone, with four klicks to run. I could see the Falcon and Arnhem ridgeline clearly now in our one o’clock, as jagged as a dinosaur’s back.
My right eye flicked back and forth from the ridgeline to the clock, keeping count of the seconds. Carl and I had bought us some time. The other Apache was right in behind us, 500 feet lower and to our right. At four klicks a minute we’d be coming level with Falcon almost as the bomb went off. If we got too close we might catch a bit of the blast.
‘Ease up a touch, Carl. Drop to 100 knots – that should do it.’
‘Copied mate. Just what I was thinking.’
The Harrier came on one final time.
‘Topman’s pickled the load… Impact in Two Zero seconds.’
‘I better have a look at this.’ The Boss slewed his TADS across to Falcon. He didn’t want to miss the fireworks, and the Shrine was still some way off.
White light erupted on Falcon’s pinnacle and a crown of orange flame curled up around its epicentre, enveloped a second later by a vast dust cloud that mushroomed high into the sky. At 2,000 metres off, we had a grandstand view.
‘Okay, moving the TADS back to… Wait; hang on, I’ve got a runner…’
I glanced down at my right MPD screen. A Taliban fighter was shifting it down the western side of Falcon, right out in the open, around 150 metres below the crest. He was going like the clappers, leaping from one rock to the next. If Trigger didn’t get him, the hail of stone splinters from the explosion would.
‘I’ve got him in my crosshairs… engaging with cannon.’
Trigger was preparing to go into Top Gun mode. Two bursts, angled seventy-five degrees right of our nose, from no more than 1,500 metres. The runner disappeared in a cloud of dust and flame. The air cleared and he was nowhere to be seen.
‘Wow. Good shooting, Boss.’
‘Tally one dead fighter,’ Billy said. ‘I was lined up ready to engage.’
Too professional to say so overtly, he was clearly pissed off.
‘Topman… Negative playtime remaining… Top shooting, Ugly…’ With that, Darth broke station for Kandahar.
It was Billy’s target, no question. But we were a few hundred metres ahead of our wingmen and there was no escaping Trigger. Now he wanted to pay his respects at the Shrine too.
‘FLIR should pick up the residual heat from the rocket motors. Come on Elton, where are these tunnels I’ve heard so much about? Let’s nail them before they bolt.’
Tracking the Boss’s FLIR image on my MPD, I talked him onto the tunnel entrances at the western edge of the Shrine. One large heat source appeared to the right of the screen – where the rockets must have been launched – then two more melted away down a blowhole nearby.
‘See those heat sources, Boss?’
‘Yeah, visual.’
‘Widow Seven Eight, I have two men at the top of the Shrine, western end, dropping down a shaft. Is that where you were taking fire from?’
‘Affirm. You are cleared to engage.’
Only a weapon with pinpoint accuracy could do the job.
‘Copied. Engaging with Hellfire.’
The AGM-114K SAL Hellfire II missile landed precisely where we pointed the laser beam projected from the TADS on the Apache’s nose. A Hellfire climbed after leaving its rail whilst a seeker in its head searched for the coded laser energy. Once found, it locked on, lined itself up and screamed down onto the painted target at 475 metres a second. The missile was so accurate we could post it through a letterbox.
But the shaft entrance was still going to be a hell of a shot. Every Hellfire we had was programmed to hit the target from above because that’s how tank armour was best penetrated. We were 1,500 metres south of the Shrine and 3,000 feet above it. If the Boss banged the Hellfire in from here it would explode on the lip of the shaft, blowing the Taliban’s ear drums and showering them with rock splinters – but if they’d got ten metres or so down from the surface, it probably wouldn’t kill them. The missile’s forte was penetration; its 12.5-lb warhead propelled a molten slug at thirty times the speed of sound through up to three feet of solid steel. It wasn’t the explosion that did the killing, but the pressure wave that followed.
The Taliban were already inside the shaft, and would be burrowing deeper with every passing second.
‘Don’t fire until I say, Boss. We’ll ram it right down the vent.’
I reduced our speed but maintained the height. The closer we got, the lower the TADS was pointing. The only way we’d get the Hellfire into the shaft was to fire it at a sharp angle from the shaft’s entrance so it wouldn’t have time to track down to its normal impact angle.
‘Trust me, Boss. One thousand metres.’ I wanted vertical and didn’t have time to explain. ‘Lase the target now, but hold fire.’
Five hundred metres from the target would do it. But we only had ten more seconds before our quarry would be out of harm’s way. The bottom right-hand corner of my MPD told me that the dog had seen the rabbit – our missile had locked onto the laser. The Boss’s crosshairs were still on the shaft but the TADS could move no further.
‘Mr M, I’m about to break lock – and they’re about to escape.’
‘Seven hundred and fifty metres. Stand by to fire.’
I dumped the collective and thrust the cyclic forward in one fast, smooth movement.
The Apache’s nose dropped and its tail shot up. Within a second it was pointing straight down and hurtling towards the Shrine at 100 knots.
‘Okay, fire Bo–’
‘Firing.’
The Hellfire’s propellant ignited with a bright yellow flash as it slid off its rail and blasted straight towards the target. The cockpit window was filling up with Shrine, and fast – 125 knots… I couldn’t pull up because the Boss would lose lock.
The Boss hunched over his screen, keeping the TADS crosshairs over the shaft entrance and his laser trigger tight. A fraction over two seconds after it left us, the missile followed the beam straight into the blowhole and impacted five metres down the tunnel with five million pounds of pressure upon every square inch of rock it hit. Yes…