‘You sure?’
‘Just over the wall. It’s another big field; there’s nothing in it.’
‘Copied mate. Do it.’
A quick jerk on the collective and Geordie’s Apache was ascending again. Some left-foot pedal twisted the gunship ninety degrees to the right, then a push on the cyclic and they were over the wall and into the adjacent field; a rectangle, 100 metres long and 200 wide. A line of trees to their right divided it into two squares.
Geordie pressed on a further fifty metres so his next dust cloud wouldn’t blind Ed and Carl. Billy slewed the TADS to the northern end of the field and lined up his crosshairs on the fort’s outer wall.
‘Engaging.’
He squeezed the trigger and the cannon threw twenty rounds into the remnants of the watchtower on the far right. Then he raked another twenty along the top of the wall. Rock splinters and shrapnel span off it in all directions as the rounds exploded. If anyone was near the wall, they weren’t going to put their heads above it in a hurry now. It bought Billy and Geordie thirty extra seconds.
Nick was watching their insertion from 2,000 feet above. He hosed down the entire western wall and the canal path alongside it with consecutive twenty round bursts, to discourage anyone trying to flank round and ambush his friends in Ugly Five Zero.
Geordie landed hard at a forty-degree angle to Jugroom’s main building. Hearn and Robinson jumped off and ran to the wall, as they’d been told to do. The wrong wall.
Geordie watched them disappear into the brown-out and immediately began to worry. ‘Do you think they know where we are now, Billy?’
‘Probably not. They wouldn’t have seen anything on the wing. We could barely see ourselves.’
It took forty seconds for Billy and Geordie to get back their visibility. Hearn and Robinson had groped up and down the northern wall, looking in vain for Mathew, and were now jogging back to the Apache. Robinson was leading, hands and rifle raised as a signal to the pilots of their bewilderment. Geordie spotted them first from the back seat.
‘They’ve got no idea we’re in a different field. I’m going to have to show them where to go.’
Billy was the captain and Geordie was the primary pilot, but they didn’t have time to argue the toss about who should leave the aircraft. Geordie was out of his seat and gone, safety-locking the collective lever as he jumped but not stopping to unclip his carbine.
He charged over to Robinson and shouted: ‘Follow me, he’s this way.’
Changing course ninety degrees, Geordie made for the hole in the wall eighty metres to his left. That’s where Mathew was, Geordie thought – around the crater and immediately to the right.
The brown-out had disorientated Geordie too. His mental compass was off by ninety degrees. He led the marines at full tilt to a bomb crater in the field’s west wall instead. Geordie rounded the corner and turned sharp right. The marines dutifully followed – heading north, ever deeper into enemy territory.
Visibility was down to ten metres. Geordie, Hearn and Robinson were in the midst of the 2,000-pounder’s smokescreen. The stench of explosives and burning was overpowering.
‘Come on lads, the others will be up here somewhere,’ Geordie yelled over his shoulder as he pressed on up the canal path. Robinson was ten metres behind him, and Hearn brought up the rear.
One hundred metres along, Geordie still hadn’t found anybody. He knew Ford was just by the wall; he’d seen him from above. Had he regained consciousness and started to crawl away? Down to the river perhaps? Geordie pressed on.
After another eighty metres the black cloud began to dissipate. He was almost at the end of the wall now. The corner had taken a direct hit, strewing rubble across the path. Geordie didn’t remember the wall being hit here. When he’d last seen it, it was still standing. Perhaps Nick or Charlotte had smacked it while the rescue Apaches were at Magowan’s HQ.
He could see round the corner now. Fruit trees loomed over the piles of stone. He didn’t remember fruit trees either.
Geordie slowed to a walk. This wasn’t right. The canal should have been ahead of him. Where the hell was it? It started to materialise through the dust to his left…
So what was in front of him? Just fields, and…
Geordie jolted to a halt. Not more than fifteen metres in front of him, under the spreading branches of a tree, were three men with turbans and beards. One had a PK machine gun slung across his back, the second rested the butt of his AK47 in the dirt, and the third crouched with an RPG in each hand. They were in animated conversation, keeping in the shadow so the Apaches circling above couldn’t see them. Taliban…
They stopped talking when they saw Geordie. They looked at him. He looked at them. Each was frozen to the spot; each as shocked as the other.
That’s when he realised… We’re in the wrong place. This is the north side of the fort, not the west. Jesus fucking Christ.
The Taliban fighters knew that if the British soldiers came for them, they wouldn’t come alone. There would be a hundred at least, like the last attack. They hesitated, giving Geordie a few crucial seconds. He spun around and took off back in the direction he’d come, pumping his thigh muscles as hard as he could.
‘Go-go-go…Wrong-way-wrong-way…’ he jabbered.
Robinson heard the next word very clearly. ‘TALIBAN!’
He spun round too and sprinted for all he was worth.
Seeing the red face of his approaching RSM, Robinson screamed: ‘Run sir. Run the other way, the other way…’
The Taliban opened fire, and bullets began to kick into the dirt around their feet. Geordie did an impression of the Roadrunner on speed. He overtook Robinson within a few metres. Seconds later he overtook Hearn, too. Then the wall erupted.
Billy had no choice but to sit tight.
His job was to keep the front of the aircraft clear for their return. It was easier said than done; he could only fire the cannon at point-blank range in front of him and up to ninety degrees to his right. If the Taliban came through the hole in the wall, he wouldn’t be able to touch them.
The world’s most devastating fighting machine was now a sitting duck. Apaches weren’t built to be shot at on the ground. From below, fine. Same level, you had a problem.
The Kevlar plating stopped at his waist, and they could hit him in the chest with a pop gun now. An RPG through the window and he was history. Even a brick into the tail rotor would have put the aircraft out of action. How long would it take for the Taliban to know he was there?
Billy soon got his answer. Just over twenty seconds after Geordie and the marines exited the field, two AK47s appeared at the top of the wall, 100 degrees to the right of him, and began blatting away blindly on fully automatic. Billy stamped on his floor pressel.
‘Ugly Five Zero has got Taliban doing a Beirut unload from the wall sixty metres to my right. Put some fire down now.’
Nick responded instantly. ‘Ugly Five Two copies. Stand by…’