The downside of the rescue didn’t bear thinking about. If both Apaches had gone down on the way out of the fort, we’d have been close to double figures dead. The very thought of that would have seriously scared a lot of important people, and the four of us had pushed hardest for the mission throughout. After twenty-two years in the army I knew only too well that a little hindsight could be a very dangerous thing. The more I thought about it, the more I understood what Trigger must have meant. Our actions were now going to be judged in the cold light of day, and it could go either way.
I swung open the door of my locker. The word ‘angel’ was still scrawled across the inside of it in black marker as a reminder not to leave home without her. Carl was absorbed in his own little rituaclass="underline" he pulled a letter from his wife out of a drawer and gave it a kiss. My angel deserved one too, after this morning. I tore open the Velcro seal of my right breast pocket and dug in my hand. I could only feel my war ID card.
‘Mate, take a look in here and see if you can find my angel, will you?’
He peered in and shook his head. We scanned the smooth concrete floor beneath our feet, but there was no sign of her there either. My throat went dry. How would I tell Emily? She’d think it was an omen; that I’d die on my very next flight.
‘This is no joking matter,’ Carl said. ‘We might need her when the CO gets hold of us…’
He put a hand on my shoulder. His expression told me that he knew this was no time to piss about. ‘Shoot a basket for the brews?’
I hesitated for a moment, re-checking my pocket. Still nothing.
‘Let’s do it,’ I replied.
It was another of our sacred post-mission rituals, and nobody was going to stop us doing it. Carl won.
He drove us up to the JHF Ops tent in the Land Rover he had parked by the hangar five hours earlier. Billy and Geordie were already there, and neither could bring themselves to meet my eye. So they’d picked up the vibe too. Nobody in the room was saying much.
Trigger walked in. The look on his face was completely impenetrable. I had a bad feeling about this. ‘Can you four go through to the back, please? I’ll be in with the CO shortly.’
We made our way out of the tent and into the secure Tactical Planning Facility.
‘Make us that brew, Piss Boy,’ Carl said, in a bid to break the tension.
‘Yeah, make that a double, Piss Boy,’ Geordie chipped in. ‘You were also last back from the fort.’
But that was the end of the banter. I made four coffees in silence. Trigger reappeared as I handed them round, followed by the Commanding Officer. Trigger closed the door behind them. It was the first time I’d seen Colonel Sexton since his arrival in Afghanistan two weeks earlier.
‘Welcome to Bastion, sir.’
The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.
‘It’s the second time I’ve been here.’
The four of us sat in a row on the comfy seats. Trigger pulled up a couple of hard plastic chairs and he and Colonel Sexton took their places opposite us. As always, the Colonel looked freshly scrubbed. His dark, perfectly parted hair gleamed under the neon lights.
‘Right, gentlemen…’
He paused to eyeball each of us individually. I suddenly knew how those poor bloody apprentices must feel when Sir Alan Sugar was about to tell them: ‘You’re fired…’
‘What the FUCK were you doing?’
We stared at him in stunned silence.
‘You have advertised to the wider army a capability we do not have. People are now going to expect that this is a service we offer…’
He slowed right down, making every word sound like a threat.
‘I’m not sure that you are aware of the gravity of your actions. People are going to come down on us from a great height. The JHC and the Directorate are going to want some answers.’
Hindsight was kicking in. Shit. It was going to go against us.
‘You decided that you would break the RTS, which clearly states what you can and can’t do. Tell me, where in the RTS does it say that untrained troops can use this procedure? It is an emergency procedure, for aircrew only.’
This went against every principle I have ever stood for. How could we have one rule for us, and one for everyone else?
‘You decided that you would ignore the RTS. Who here has done this for real? Who here has trained for this? Those marines were not trained for this. They were just hanging off the side.’
Billy was the first to tiptoe across this minefield. ‘They were strapped on sir. Well, they were o–’
‘HOW were they strapped on?’
I kept my voice as even as possible. ‘I showed each one of them the correct method, sir.’
He ignored me.
‘So, without any training and with a total disregard for the RTS, you decided to strap men to an aircraft. What would have happened if one of them had fallen off?’
His dark, slightly hooded eyes flashed dangerously. No one answered. We were starting to realise that there would be no ‘well done’.
‘You flew into an enemy stronghold! What would have happened if one of your aircraft had been shot down? Do you realise the implications of the Taliban parading round with an Apache?’
You could have cut the silence that followed with a knife. But the Colonel still hadn’t finished.
‘I simply cannot believe you put two £40-million helicopters in harm’s way, in a vain attempt to save someone that was already dead.’
I felt as though I’d been poleaxed. We all did.
‘We didn’t know, Colonel,’ Billy said quietly. ‘We didn’t know he was dead.’
My mouth fell open. So, it had all been for nothing. A wave of sadness washed over me. The expression on the Colonel’s face changed from steely determination to surprise. He obviously had no idea that we hadn’t already been told.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Billy got to his feet and walked out of the room.
Good on you Billy. You’re not going to sit here and take this.
There was another silence as the CO waited for Billy to return.
If only… If only we’d got to him faster, we might have saved him. If only we’d been quicker getting out of the fort. If only, if only, if only…
Hope had made me believe in the impossible. Now the book was closed. We had failed, and were getting a good kicking for daring not to. What a shit day.
But it wasn’t anger that had propelled Billy from the room. After a few seconds, the silence was interrupted by the sound of him throwing up outside. He came back in, white but expressionless, and dropped a tissue into the bin. We all knew how he felt. The CO gave us a few more seconds for the news to sink in. Our reaction had clearly thrown him.
‘Why didn’t you wait for the Chinook IRT plan?’
My eyes narrowed. Carl looked as dumbstruck as I was. Geordie shrugged his shoulders. Billy was staring at the CO throughout, trying to make head or tail of what he was saying.
‘The IRT plan was to take effect twenty minutes later with a Chinook.’
‘As far as we knew sir, there was no Chinook IRT plan,’ Billy said.
The Colonel fell silent again. We didn’t know about his plan. He rested his hands on his thighs as if he was about to stand up, then changed his mind and turned to Trigger.
‘We are going to need to decide how we report this.’ He paused. ‘We must ensure that we were in the decision process and knew what was happening at all times. At the moment it looks as though four NCOs have gone and done whatever they pleased, without our authority.’
So that was it. Stay calm, Macy; stay very calm.
‘Sir…’
He looked at me.
Stay calm, Macy.
‘I’m not an NCO,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I am a fucking Warrant Officer.’