Despite Carl’s whingeing, I knew I was in good hands with him flying me that night. His was the best pair of night hands we had.
We were all set in good time. No need for calls; we just slipped out of the bays with two minutes to takeoff.
We lifted silently at 2.40am. Billy led us a few klicks north to dupe any Taliban dickers then backtracked south-west across the A01 Highway, and hard south once we were into the empty desert, our Hellfire-laden machines invisible against the GAFA’s sky.
12. OP GLACIER 1: KOSHTAY
It was a thirty-five minute flight to our holding area in the desert. We’d chosen a spot fifteen kilometres due west of the Taliban base at Koshtay, giving us a run-in time onto the target of four minutes and three seconds. Nobody would hear us that far out; we’d do racetrack patterns at seventy knots and fifty feet off the ground until the time came.
Carl and Billy kept the aircraft 200 feet off the ground as we headed south. We would normally have gone lower to prevent detection, but the Dasht-e-Margo lived up to its name and was void of all habitation.
The Boss and Billy were 500 metres to the left and marginally in front of us. The TADS FLIR camera was slaved to my eye; I could see them clearly with my right eye, but in the complete absence of ambient light, my left eye might as well have had a patch over it.
It had been a while since I’d been a gunner on a night flight. I used some of the transit time to re-familiarise myself with the feel of the firing grips. The front seat had exactly the same controls as the back seat, as well as a bloody great targeting console bolted into the middle of the dash, at the centre of which was a three-inch TV screen providing an additional display for one of the cameras or sensors. I selected the Longbow FCR option. If there was anything remotely threatening in the desert, it was sure to find it and give us a heads up so we could box around it. A large metal PlayStation-like grip sat on either side, with buttons and cursors galore to control the cameras and weapons. Each grip also had a trigger: the right for the laser range finder and designator, the left to kill.
I moved my thumb and fingertips across the buttons, rockers, switches and pads, instantly recognising each different shape and function, and ran through a dozen different combinations until I was completely comfortable. It didn’t take long.
The night was unusually still for January. It made me fidget even more. I needed to keep myself occupied. I tried chatting with Carl but he wanted to concentrate on his flying. I sparked up the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF), a radio navigation system we used to pick up homing beacons in bad weather, and absentmindedly scanned the local stations. I’d already preset the channels with the strongest signals to help counter the boredom of desert flying.
Apache pilots never met any Afghans. Life in the cockpit was remote from the real life of the country; it was the one disadvantage of the job. The nearest we could get was listening to their radio. We all used to do it. Local Pashtun songs were my favourite.
A Pakistani station broadcasting at 900 kilohertz was often the clearest. I tuned into a mullah in mid rant. I had no idea what he was saying, but he sounded pretty angry about something; maybe he didn’t like having to whip up the faithful at ten to three in the morning.
‘Hey Carl, check out the ADF Preset 1. I think they’re onto us. “Come out and kill the mosquito pilots,” they’re saying. “The infidels are nearly here.”’
Carl remained unmoved. ‘I’m not listening to it, Ed.’
‘Okay buddy, suit yourself.’ I turned the volume back up in my helmet.
This was getting more surreal by the minute. The infidel-hater had been replaced by the opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. So there we were, armed to the teeth at the dead of night in The Land That Time Forgot on our way to give a whole load of Taliban a rude awakening, and an insomniac radio producer somewhere in Baluchistan had managed to provide us with the perfect soundtrack.
As we reached the holding area, Trigger put a call into the BRF’s JTAC. I turned off Beethoven as Knight Rider Five Six whispered, slowly and softly. We knew he was in position and perilously close to the enemy before he told us.
‘Ugly Five Zero, Knight Rider. I can’t get hold of Bone One One. Can you try to establish comms with him? We need his time on target.’
The Boss made several calls, each of them unanswered. Sometimes prearranged fast air left their arrival right to the last minute. We’d all just have to wait.
Two fresh icons popped up on the map page on my left MPD. Our Radar Warning Receiver had just pinged two other air assets over the battlespace, tens of thousands of feet above us. Their radar codes identified them as the Nimrod MR2 and a Predator UAV. We hadn’t been told about the Predator. We often weren’t.
Five minutes later, at 3.20am, a southern US drawl broke the silence.
‘Knight Rider Five Six, Knight Rider Five Six. This is Bone One Three. How do you read, sir?’
‘Bone One Three, Knight Rider Five Six, Lima Charlie. We were expecting to hear from Bone One One.’
‘Affirmative, sir. The pre-planned B1 has gone unserviceable in Diego Garcia. We are a B1 and we have been tasked to you as the airborne alert from the Afghanistan stack. How many targets do you have for us?’
The BRF JTAC whispered his reply. ‘Bone, Knight Rider. I have many targets. How many grids have you been given and how many bombs can you drop in one go?’
He could drop a maximum of ten in a oner and had not been given any of the pre-planned targets. Knight Rider asked him if he could have all ten.
‘That’s an affirmative.’
‘Okay. Stand by to copy…’
The JTAC read over each and every fifteen-digit grid and four-figure altitude in the same strained whisper. It can’t have been easy with Taliban sentries on the prowl and no wind to hide any noise.
‘Target Number One.’
Pause.
‘Priority target.’
Pause.
‘Forty One Romeo… Papa Quebec.’
Pause.
‘One Zero One… Three Two.’
Pause.
‘Two Double Four… Four Zero.’
Pause.
‘Altitude… Two Two Five Seven… Feet.’
Pause.
‘Target Number Two…’
It made for painful listening, and it took for ever. I copied the ten grids down as well and cross-referenced them on the map. Each of the three accommodation blocks was getting a 2,000-pounder and the middle one was getting two; one in each half. The four highest priority buildings would be on the receiving end of enough 500-pounders to flatten the Pentagon. The B1 could carry a total of twenty-four GBUs or sixteen thermonuclear gravity bombs.
‘Bone, Knight Rider. Read back.’
Bone had to repeat each and every grid and altitude correctly to ensure that he wasn’t going to rain down merry hell on innocent civilians.
There was a pause as the B1’s offensive systems officer tapped in the grids.
‘Bone, Knight Rider. Call Time on Target.’
It was 3.29am.
‘Knight Rider, Bone. TOT in four-zero minutes. I am nine-zero miles to your south.’
Bloody hell. He’s still in Pakistan, about to cross the border.
‘We haven’t got the fuel to wait all night for these jokers,’ Carl grumbled.
They’d slashed the time we’d have over the target by almost half. We’d started off with ninety minutes and now had barely fifty. And that was only if Bone dropped when he said he would. Bone’s problem was that he had to programme each bomb with the coordinates of the starting and finishing points of its journey. To ensure pinpoint accuracy, he also needed to radar map the ground beneath him and then commensurate the grids.