Well done, Macy… really calm…
He glared at me.
Which was preferable: the Taliban videoing a downed Apache or a British soldier skinned alive on Al Jazeera? Who was going to be more upset, the Chancellor losing forty million quid or a family not being able to sleep at night? His mother wouldn’t even have been able to bury him.
A long time ago the red mist would have arrived good and proper at that point; the red mist that got me into fights as a kid and in the Paras. It wasn’t there now, but I was deep down fucking angry. I knew I should probably just sit on my hands, but I couldn’t help myself.
‘I haven’t said anything yet, sir.’ I leaned forward. ‘But I’d like to make three points.’
I looked him straight in the eye.
‘First, I don’t care how much a helicopter costs; it was a calculated decision.’
‘It’s not just the helicopters, Mr Macy,’ the Colonel replied. ‘It’s the four marines with you. The risk to them–’
‘We asked for volunteers, sir,’ I said. ‘We asked for volunteers, and I described the plan in detail to Colonel Magowan.’
The CO just looked at me.
‘Second, I don’t, can’t and won’t ever see the difference between any British soldier, aircrew or otherwise. And finally…’ I paused, because I really wanted him to hear this loud and clear, ‘…do you really believe for one moment, sir, that we thought you were not in the decision-making loop?’
He looked completely blank.
‘I expected both you and Major James to be in the loop, and to have followed the whole thing on a Nimrod feed. You could have turned this off any time. Sir…’
‘I tried to, Mr Macy. And the brigadier went against me.’
That explained the shenanigans over the radio when we arrived at Magowan’s command post.
‘I didn’t know that, sir.’
He now understood that we hadn’t a clue about the Chinook IRT; that we had not disobeyed any direct orders, and believed that he knew of – and endorsed – the rescue.
But he also knew that we had thrown the rulebook out the window. The crucial question was: did he think the result was worth the risk?
It was decision time. A decision that would affect the careers of everyone in the room – not least his. Was he going to take a punt and institute a disciplinary investigation against us, or play it safe and wait for someone else to? Would he back us, or throw us to the dogs?
The CO turned to Trigger and took a deep breath.
‘Chris, if you were in the flight down there, what would you have done?’
It was a hospital pass if ever I’d seen one. As one of his squadron commanders, the Boss answered to Colonel Sexton; he was duty bound to back him up. Trigger had been given the casting vote. He didn’t hesitate for a second.
‘Given the same circumstances, Colonel, I would have done exactly the same as my men.’
Fucking good man.
The Colonel’s mouth opened and closed, and he looked around the room, as if for inspiration.
Finally, he said, ‘We need to talk, Chris.’ And with that they got up and walked swiftly to the door.
Billy, Geordie, Carl and I looked at each other.
‘Fuck me,’ Geordie said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Me neither,’ Carl said. ‘You okay, Billy?’
‘Yeah.’ Billy was still reeling.
I fished my notebook out of my trouser pocket.
‘Okay, boys, I’m getting all of that down verbatim. We’ll need it for the board of inquiry. Right, can you remember who said what?’
Geordie stood up.
‘Great idea, Ed, but can we do it outside? I’m in serious need of some fresh air.’
We spent the next hour grouped around a bench in the sun. I jotted down every word while Geordie and Carl bitched like hell. For once, Carl had a genuine reason to do so, and we weren’t going to deny him.
Writing it down helped us revisit our actions and the thought processes behind them. It also took the lid off the pressure cooker after the incredible tension of the morning.
Billy rubbed the palm of his hand slowly over his stubble as we finished. Of all of us, Billy had taken it the worst. He was the mission commander. It wasn’t just the shock of Mathew’s death that had made him puke. Flying meant everything to him; it was his life. He was going for an officer’s commission. The least he could expect if we got done was to lose his wings. As the Sky Police, Billy knew that better than anyone. He was looking over the abyss.
Billy wasn’t alone. Geordie was the Rescue Police, Carl the Electronic Warfare Police, and I was the Weapons Police. We kept the rulebook: the same book that was about to be thrown at us – and probably all the harder because it was ours. Billy looked at each of us in turn.
‘We did the right thing.’
We all agreed with him. And then the four of us shook hands. All for one, and one for all. It was lunchtime, but only Carl and Geordie were hungry. Billy and I wandered back into the Ops Room to get on with the day’s work.
FOG wandered over and told us about the Colonel’s IRT plan. It was to re-role a Chinook at Bastion and carry twenty-odd marines into the fort to pick up Mathew. Trigger had asked FOG to pass it on to us when we’d hit our radio black spot at Magowan’s HQ. He’d forgotten.
It changed nothing. The Chinook was twenty minutes behind us, minimum, and Mathew didn’t have twenty minutes. And anyway, it was total lunacy. A big old bird like a Chinook would have been shot to shit at Jugroom. If it had gone down in the air there would have been twenty-five-plus dead. The brigadier clearly had no interest in it either; he’d only mentioned two options during his orders broadcast on the net.
FOG also forgot to tell us that Trigger was sending a second Chinook down to the gun line with extra gas. Now that would have been nice to know. Ironically, the fuel drama was the one thing the CO still didn’t know about yet.
HQ Flight was taken off the IRT / HRF task with immediate effect. As with all fatalities, there was a mountain of admin to climb over. A couple of MPs from the Red Caps’ Special Investigations Branch turned up to take lengthy statements from all the pilots – Nick, Charlotte, FOG and Darwin included. Under the law, we were all witnesses to a death, and until it was solved, it was treated as suspicious.
Trigger came back after lunch to lead the routine mission debrief. Standing up for us in the face of the CO was a brave thing to do, but he didn’t see it like that. As far as he was concerned, he’d just told the truth as he always did. If an officer lied, he had no integrity. Without integrity, how could he lead his men?
He admitted that this was a defining moment in his career, though – because he most probably wouldn’t have one now. I told him I’d never forget what he’d done, and I never will. We didn’t bother discussing our situation any further. It was out of all our hands now – Trigger’s included.
The eight pilots, the guy from Intelligence, the Ops Officer and the Boss filed back into the Tactical Planning Facility and watched the gun tapes on the five-foot-square screen. It taught us some pretty interesting things about the morning.
There were RPGs everywhere. We’d missed most of them because our screens were small and we were obsessed with Mathew. More than 100 were fired at or past HQ Flight while we were on station; the majority in volley-fire from the south-east – the bottom of the treeline and the village.
We checked out Billy’s FLIR tape and saw just how hot Mathew had been throughout the mission. He was glowing, and his temperature never dissipated, despite the cold. It meant he had circulation. His heart was beating throughout. I didn’t know whether that made things better or worse.
Billy’s tape made it clear that Mathew had never moved. We replayed it three times at the point Billy thought he had – then realised his shadow had moved as the sun rose.