‘Copied. The buildings have multiple rooms and look pretty strong. Hellfire may not be best suited. Request fast air to assist ASAP.’
‘I have called for close air support. Do what you can in the meantime. But do not, I repeat, do NOT let anyone get near the MIA.’
We divided up the workload between the two Apaches. We needed to keep one aircraft pointing at the fort at all times so the Taliban knew we’d shoot them if they went for Ford. Carl and I watched Mathew from a half-moon-shaped orbit in the east while Billy let rip on the village. Then we swapped roles. As I slaved my crosshairs up and down the fort wall, Geordie and Billy began their first run from the south-east at 9.03am.
‘Engaging with thirty Mike Mike.’
I glanced up from my TADS to see his cannon rounds tearing into the first of the fifteen huts and buildings, spitting great lumps of earth and rock out of the walls and igniting the straw roof. Billy got off four good twenty-round bursts before Geordie had to break off. Every ten seconds, another three 105-mm shells pounded down on the village too. Two long, barn-like buildings had good arcs of fire up the towpath and onto Mathew. On his second and third attack runs, he planted Hellfires and raked them with 30-mm, collapsing their stone roofs on the fighters inside.
We swapped over. I could still see a series of holes dug into the eastern wall of one of the barns at ground level – little holes a few inches wide, enough to poke a muzzle through. My bet was that the Taliban snipers had covered themselves with mattresses, to protect themselves from our frag. I smacked a Hellfire into the wall and took it down. My adrenalin was up. With my second, I dropped the roof of a smaller building with three sniping ports, ten metres further north. The mattresses wouldn’t get in the way of those puppies, that was for sure. Widow Seven One piped up as we swapped roles again.
‘Ugly, we are taking heavy incoming fire across here at the firebase. Every time you turn away from the village it’s RPG Central out of there.’
We must have killed a fair few by now, but our pummelling hadn’t distracted the bastards at all. There had to be dozens of them down there, but we’d seen no movement between buildings since we’d begun our onslaught. How the hell were they all getting in? Billy broke in as Carl began our third run.
‘Stand by, stand by; he has moved.’
‘Say again Billy?’
‘Mathew Ford has moved. I say again, he HAS moved.’
‘Stand by. Break off, Carl.’ I shuffled my backside in the seat to get more comfortable. My pulse started to race. Carl turned sharply right back into the fort and I slewed my TADS back onto Mathew. His feet and hands were still in the same position. He looked no different to me.
‘Are you sure, Billy?’
‘One hundred per cent. He has moved. He’s alive.’
If Billy was sure he’d seen him move, that was good enough for me. I told the JTAC. This was big news, and it upped the ante considerably. Another tidal wave of chatter burst over the net. Now the marines knew they had a life to save.
But Billy had been thinking.
‘Ed, I’ve got an idea. Ford needs to be moved now. He’s alive, but clearly badly injured. He could be dying right now.’
‘Affirm.’
‘Well, we could pick him up…’
‘Say again?’
‘We could rescue him. You stay up, we’ll go down. One of us gets out and straps him to the side of the aircraft. You know, like our downed aircraft emergency drill.’
‘Stand by.’
If he’d moved he was probably badly hurt, because he wasn’t moving a muscle now. Or he was unconscious. Either way, he needed help fast. I thought it through. It was ludicrous; we had no FLIR and they had no access to the mission net. More importantly still, I’d picked up unconscious bodies before. There was no way one person could shift Mathew to the Apache and strap him on alone. I consulted Carl and he agreed.
‘I know what you’re saying Billy. But we’ve got a U / S FLIR and you wouldn’t be able to lift him on your own.’
Billy paused. ‘Okay, I’ll speak to the Boss.’
He called Trigger on the secure FM net. He’d made a beeline for Camp Bastion’s Joint Operations Cell on his return from Kandahar, to follow the battle and sort out a contingency plan.
‘Negative,’ was Trigger’s response.
‘But he’s still hot and we think he’s just unconscious. We can get him back.’
‘NEGATIVE,’ Trigger said, more firmly still.
Billy wasn’t giving up that easily. There had been no word on exactly when the marines we’re going to cross. He was convinced it was Mathew Ford’s best chance. Thirty seconds later, he came back on to me.
‘Let’s do it together, Ed.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s both go down there; then two of us can get out and carry him.’
It was still totally impractical. We’d get cut to pieces if we both went. Every time we turned tail they’d volley-fired RPGs at us.
‘Look Billy, Zulu Company are going to recover him. We have no top cover and the whole place is filling up with Taliban. Sure we’d get in, but we couldn’t get out of there without a massively well-coordinated fire plan and shit-loads of top cover.’
Billy fell silent.
‘Okay, I’ve got a better plan. Let’s go and collect two marines each and fly them into the fort to collect the casualty. It’ll be much quicker. You coord the fire plan and 3 Flight can give us top cover.’
‘Stand by.’
I looked at Mathew Ford’s body. Strapping someone to the side of the aircraft was an emergency drill only ever to be used to rescue downed Apache aircrew. We’d rehearsed it as part of our escape and evasion training, but only on the ground and never with engines on or the rotors actually turning. That contravened MoD health and safety guidelines. In sixteen years of Apache operations, the Americans had never lifted any ground troops on the wings.
However, it was theoretically possible. We were all carrying our emergency straps as routine equipment, and the grab bars were right there behind the canopy. The only other aircraft we had available were the Chinooks, and they’d just set off back to Bastion, low on fuel, after dropping more ammo at the gun line. Besides, a great big flying cow like that would get shot to shit down there. Unlike the Apache it wasn’t designed to take rounds…
We were the only airborne option. It was possible. Maybe it could work…
Billy had the bit between his teeth now. I’d seen him like that before. He was like a bulldozer; nothing got in his way. But this needed serious cool. If it went wrong, we’d lose a whole load more men, and gift the Taliban eighty million quid’s worth of Apaches. It would be enough to make those boys believe in Father Christmas. And it could lose us the whole bloody campaign.
I tried not to let on to Billy that I was coming round to his idea. The truth is, I was. When Billy was this confident, his track record was 100 per cent spot on.
‘Listen Billy, we could only do it if Nick and Charlotte came back to give us top cover…’
That was all he needed. He was straight back onto the Boss.
‘Listen, sir, the ground troops are nowhere near ready to cross. I want to get two men on each aircraft and fly them into the fort to recover the casualty. Ed thinks we can do it too…’
Bollocks.
‘Can you send 3 Flight down to assist?’
‘Billy, listen to me,’ Trigger said. ‘We’ve been on the phone to Lashkar Gah and they have said it will be a ground rescue.’
‘Okay, sir. If I land, just confirm I will be disobeying a direct order.’
‘Affirmative. You will be. You can’t land both aircraft, you have no top cover.’
There was an uneasy five-second silence.
Then the Boss came back on. ‘I am launching 3 Flight to come and assist you.’