Then Geordie’s Longbow Radar suddenly materialised, followed by his rotor blades. The tail appeared next, swinging ninety degrees to the left and then lifting. His Apache moved forward, passed directly over the bomb crater and straight through the gap in the wall. Carl was as horrified as I was.
‘Where the hell are they going? Through the wall means–’
‘Just get us down, buddy.’
Carl thrust our nose forward for a second and then flared the aircraft. Geordie came on.
‘There isn’t enough space for the two of us in the field. There’s no choice; we’ve got to put down inside the fort.’
I looked right for Billy and Geordie as we went down. All I caught through the haze was a great burst of flame from the breach of their cannon as it released its steady stream of giant, electrically initiated rounds.
‘Engaging!’ Billy yelled.
Then the dust enveloped us completely and they were gone.
The urge to say or do something was overwhelming me. I grabbed the handles above my head and shut my mouth tight whilst Carl flew the most dangerous and crucial part of the mission. We’d lost the element of surprise, we’d lost all visibility. We’d even managed to lose each other. And we still had to find Mathew.
He slapped us down hard into the space that Geordie had just vacated. We were totally blind. I breathed again. We’d made it.
‘Quick Carl; thumbs up, thumbs up.’
Fraser-Perry whipped past my left window and rounded the aircraft’s nose. Rigg shot off from the right, just ahead of him. They ducked under the thumping rotor blades and disappeared into the dust cloud which had begun to merge with the fallout from the 2,000-pounder and now completely blotted out the sun.
If any Taliban were waiting to nick Mathew, now was the time to strike. I strained to catch sight of him, but there was no chance of that; I could hardly see beyond the ends of the rotors. There was nothing Carl or I could do but sit it out.
We weren’t used to this. Normally we kept to the skies, with an array of cameras so powerful we could see up people’s backsides. Now we were slap in the middle of the enemy’s back garden, and we couldn’t tell shit from Shinola. Every second felt like an hour.
Then, incredibly slowly, the brown mass began to recede. We could see five metres… then eight… then twelve…
‘Where the hell is the wall? Why can’t we see the wall of the fort?’
I screwed up my eyes and grasped for the slightest hint of the rescue party. I wanted to see four men running towards us, carrying Mathew Ford between them. Please, please… Where the fuck are you?
But they weren’t coming. The clock: 10.39 and twenty-five seconds. A whole minute had gone by on the ground. We only had one left. They should be halfway back now.
What was that? A long, horizontal line… The dust cleared further. Could I make out the wall now? Yes… My eyes scanned left, inch by inch. Finally, at least forty-five degrees forward of the aircraft, I could see the hole and the crater. We were a lot further away from it than I had thought. But where the hell were the marines?
I continued scanning left towards the spot I’d last seen Mathew’s prone body. One metre, two metres, three metres…
‘There!’ Carl shouted.
There weren’t four of them, only two. Just Rigg and Fraser-Perry. They were a full fifty metres away. Worse, they’d only managed to move Mathew off the raised bank and down into a bloody great ditch. They weren’t moving; it was as if they were stuck in quicksand. One of us was going to have to get out and help. Or we’d all be dead by eleven o’clock.
‘They’re not going to make it.’
‘I’m going to jump, Carl.’ I started unstrapping my harness.
‘No, I’m going. I’m the aircraft captain.’
Neither of us could get out of the thing fast enough, but Carl was the primary pilot and he knew he had to stay. And it was my briefing that was going haywire.
‘I’ll be back in thirty seconds.’ I threw open the canopy door and leaped from my seat without even touching the side of the Apache. I braced myself for the six-foot drop.
Instead of jarring my feet, I plunged eighteen inches beneath the surface of the field. The earth was thinner than talcum powder. God knows how many times it had been ploughed.
Waves of sound burst across my eardrums. The noise was unbelievable. From the air-conditioned silence of the Apache cockpit, it felt like someone had whacked up the volume to max. Rolls of thunderous gunfire ebbed and flowed around the aircraft, punctuated by the pounding of the blades above my head.
I started for the lads at full sprint, but the ground kept disappearing beneath my feet. My boots sank twelve inches with every step before I got any kind of purchase. My legs pumped at warp speed, but I was going nowhere fast. And I felt them getting hot, painfully hot.
As the whine of our Apache engine and the thud of its rotor blades receded, the sound of total war intensified; the constant crack of rifle rounds, bursts of cannon fire from the gunships, and the ground-shaking crump of artillery shells. The reek of cordite was so strong it seared my nostrils.
I heard an unearthly scream and looked up to see a couple of Taliban RPGs blasting their way towards the ridge. Instead of the familiar whoosh, these things were shrieking like banshees.
To my left, the curtain of smoke from the 2,000-pounder still hung thick and high, obscuring the village and dimming the light, but I could now see the treeline clearly to my right. The dust cloud was clearing fast.
By the time I reached the ditch, my lungs were heaving and the blood was pounding through my head. I jumped down alongside Fraser-Perry, sweat streaming from every pore.
They’d given up trying to lift Mathew and were trying to drag him out instead. That wasn’t working either. He was now lying, face forward, on the side of the ditch furthest from the wall. His head was level with the field and his legs pushed out to the right. Rigg stood above him, tugging at his webbing, and Fraser-Perry was below, trying to lever him upwards, but the lip of Mathew’s helmet was wedged into the earth, anchoring him firmly.
I yelled at them to stop. The guys released him, close to exhaustion.
‘Fucking hell, he’s heavy…’ Fraser-Perry gasped.
Mathew Ford was a giant of a man, well over six foot and solid as rock. We hadn’t known that. Maybe if we could turn him over, the three of us might be able to lift him. I shoved my right knee into the ditch wall, grabbed Mathew’s shoulder with my left hand and pulled. I slid my right hand beneath his right arm and flipped him around so most of his weight was on my thigh.
As his body turned, Mathew’s head flipped backwards and rested momentarily on the bank. That’s when I first saw his face. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted, and his skin was caked with dust, but he was a handsome giant. He looked like he was fast asleep. The only thing that told me different was the glistening trail of blood that ran from under the lip of his helmet, down his cheek and onto his neck. A few drops had splashed across his shoulder.
Was he still alive? That question had bombarded us the whole morning; the JTAC, his CO on the ground, the Nimrod above us – even the brigadier back at HQ. And I wanted to know myself. If he regained consciousness, I wanted to tell him not to struggle and that everything was going to be okay.
I gripped his right wrist between his cuff and a big watch with my right hand and slammed the fingertips of my left onto his neck. No pulse. I’d trained as a medic in the Paras. If he’d had one, I’d have found it in three seconds.
But it didn’t mean he was dead. It just meant his heart had stopped. It could be started again. Yes; only an hour ago, when we were above him, Billy said he’d seen Mathew move. Five seconds. Still no pulse.