‘Billy and Geordie, it’s a go.’
‘Copied. You sort the fire plan with the JTAC and we’ll lead you into the desert. You spoke to the CO so he’ll be expecting you to brief the volunteers.’
‘Okay, Billy. Just give me twenty more seconds on station.’
Widow Seven One was already briefing up the A10 on how to protect Mathew. I stepped on their conversation because we didn’t have a second to lose. I had some terminal controlling of my own I wanted to complete. If we were pulling off, I wanted Black Turban’s warren nailed first.
‘Break, break. This is Ugly Five One. Tusk, I’ve got a tunnel system I would like you to destroy.’
‘Copy that. Go ahead Ugly Five One, I’m ready.’
‘Tusk, from the fort’s southern wall go south thirty-five metres to where the canal and the river join. Can you see five black circles?’
‘Visual, sir.’
‘That’s the tunnel system I want destroying. Now, confirm that you can identify the MIA on the southern side of the wall, thirty-five metres away.’
‘I have a good visual on the prone friendly just west of the crater, sir.’
‘He is well within Danger Close but there is no ricochet risk, and the ground is soft. Are you sure you can make the shot without hitting the MIA?’
‘I’m sure. I’ll get it right on the nose sir, don’t worry.’
‘Copied. You’re cleared hot on the tunnels.’
The A10 climbed up to 15,000 feet to set up his run, then dived. At 5,000 feet he opened up with a giant, six-second burst from his GAU-8 Gatling gun. The GAU-8 is the largest, heaviest and most powerful aircraft cannon ever built. The A10 is literally two wings, two engines and a cockpit bolted onto it. It fires 30-mm Depleted Uranium armour-piercing shells at a rate of 4,200 rounds per minute, or seventy per second. It is also highly accurate, with the ability to place 80 per cent of its shots within a ten-metre circle from 4,000 feet up. When the gun fired, you could hear its trademark roar and echo five miles away.
It didn’t miss the tunnels, either. Some 420 DU shells spanked into the tunnel system in a double sweep up. The soil erupted in flame and dust. It looked like a mini earthquake, the ground doing a Mexican wave. The dust cloud around the tunnels began to clear as the A10 pulled up, throwing off precautionary flares. The DU rounds had exploded with such heat that the earth itself was burning. The rounds lodged up to fifteen metres deep, ploughing up everything in their path.
‘That’s a Delta Hotel, Tusk. Excellent shooting.’
‘My pleasure “mate”.’ He put on a poor British accent. Tusk had a sense of humour, too.
The tunnels wouldn’t have survived that, even if they were lined with concrete. Nobody was walking out of there for a while.
‘Okay, Billy, let’s go.’
The JTAC took over with an almighty artillery barrage on the village as we departed.
Colonel Magowan’s Command Post was located in a wadi six kilometres into the desert, due west of the fort. Vikings, Pinzgauers and the UAV detachment’s Scimitar were corralled alongside large canvas tents from which the signallers worked. Everybody else sat around portable desks. Loudspeakers broadcast the mission net traffic. Colonel Magowan put down the radio handset and asked for four volunteers.
His Ops Officer and his JTAC stepped forward immediately, but were indispensable where they were. Captain Dave Rigg, the battlegroup’s Royal Engineers adviser, insisted on going. He’d been watching the Nimrod feed for the last ten hours, knew the exact location of Lance Corporal Ford and every inch of the fort.
The colonel called for the Landing Force Command Support Group’s regimental sergeant major, WO1 Colin Hearn, the only member of the command staff who hadn’t heard his radio conversation. Nineteen-year-old Zulu Company Marine Chris Fraser-Perry and Magowan’s twenty-six year-old signaller, Marine Gary Robinson, were also selected.
When the RSM appeared, he was asked to get his weapon, body armour and helmet, and told he was going on the side of an Apache to retrieve Lance Corporal Ford. Colin Hearn chuckled to himself and marched off to pick up his gear. He was well used to the CO’s sense of humour by now.
Magowan’s CP was the nearest place we could land out of Taliban mortar range, which was why it was there. The rolling desert sands thundering by 1,000 feet beneath us made a pleasant change from the intensity of battle at the fort.
Tusk may not have been able to hunt and kill the bad guys like we could, but he could tip in and shoot straight any time. The Desert Hawk UAV controlled by Magowan’s HQ, Predator and Nimrod were also watching Mathew like hawks. But I still didn’t like leaving Mathew Ford. I just hoped the Taliban didn’t catch up with him while we were away.
I looked at the clock: 10.16am. We’d been over Jugroom for the last hour and forty-five minutes and every second of it had been ferocious. I rubbed my eyes. I was starting to get an Apache headache. I hadn’t had one in six months.
Carl and Geordie were jabbering away, going over their fuel states again and double-checking each other’s HIDAS self-defence systems. While they talked, I tried to rehearse my brief to the four volunteers.
First, I was going to have to show them how to strap themselves onto the aircraft. I reached involuntarily for the black karabiner that clipped mine to the front of my survival jacket. Then I was going to have to tell them what to do if they get shot on the wing. What would we do if they got shot? Just press on. What if two of them got hit? Badly hit, and before we even reached Ford? We could cope with two.
What happened if we crash-landed on the way down there, or even in the river? What if they were blinded by the dust during the flight and couldn’t see shit? What happened if they ran into the Taliban? Could we cover them from the ground? What if they got shot when they were on the ground – or if they turned around and saw their aircraft getting blown up behind them?
There were a million what ifs. I had the answers, but they weren’t going to like them one little bit. A three-day planning conference to iron out all the potential mishaps would have been nice. I only had three minutes. Bollocks. I’d just have to wing it.
Carl reared up hard as we closed on Magowan’s HQ. Our landing site 150 metres from the vehicles was marked with green smoke. Billy and Geordie came in first, turning 180 degrees to face into the wind and landing hard to limit the dust cloud. Carl put us down between them and the billowing smoke canister, fifty metres to our right.
As the dust cleared, I could make out two figures standing waiting for us, one in full battle rig and helmet, the other just in his shirt sleeves. Behind them were three more marines in full rig. I’d already unbuckled, reached for the door handle and was just about to disconnect my helmet when Carl stopped me dead.
‘The mission is off.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s off, Ed. Nick has just been on; he was given a message from Trigger. The Boss couldn’t reach us down here so he relayed it. It’s been canned.’
‘Who by?’
‘Zero Alpha.’
Zero Alpha. Our Commanding Officer in Kandahar.
That was it then. It’s was totally out of our hands. We couldn’t counteract our own CO. We didn’t even have comms with him. The regular babble between the marine units crackled away in the background as I sank back into my seat. What the hell had happened?
The disappointment welled up in me so vigorously I could almost taste it. We were out of the game. 3 Flight wouldn’t have top cover, so that ruled them out, too. There was no way Zulu Company would make it over and back without more casualties; the Tardis village would make sure of that. It looked like the Last Chance Saloon had called time on Mathew.
I looked out the window at the group of five servicemen standing there expectantly. Nobody had told them it was off. I wasn’t going to either. I couldn’t get out unless Carl shut down the rotors, a strict Apache rule. Knock the cyclic on your way, and the thing will roll itself straight over and thrash itself to pieces. Billy and I texted each other to minimise the chat on the Apache net.