Fire Strike 7/9

by Paul Grahame Bommer

  ‘Thimble bladder strikes again,’ I quipped.

  Up through the turret came a nasty-looking 1.5-litre plastic water bottle, with the top cut off. Over the past few weeks I’d learned that trying to pee through the neck of the bottle was a bad idea. So Sticky had taken on the role of chief bottle-cutter.

  I did my business and passed it back to Sticky, who threw the contents out of the wagon’s back door. The last thing we needed was someone knocking it over before it was emptied. It was smelly enough in the wagon as it was.

  Off to the east there was a faint boom. I jerked my head up and scanned the horizon. About 2.5 clicks due east was a tiny plume of smoke. I glanced at Sticky. He shrugged. I guessed he was right. Whatever it was, it was far distant from the battlefield and hardly a threat.

  I got on the net and briefed the F-18 pilot, just in case. As I spoke into the TACSAT I became aware of a faint whistling. For a couple of seconds I mistook it for comms interference, and then the whistle became a piercing scream. An instant later the mortar round slammed into the ridge line.

  It impacted seventy-five metres east of the Vector, the blast showering us in rocks and sand. There was another distant boom and a puff of smoke, and a second mortar came howling down. It landed sixty-five metres to the west of the wagon, blasting Sticky and me in shit, and hammering the wagon’s steel sides.

  The enemy mortar boys were good. They had to have a dicker somewhere spotting where their rounds were falling. He’d have a mobile phone and be calling in adjustments to their fire. Now they had us bracketed, with a mortar dropped on either side of us. Top joy that was.

  Shell number three had our names written all over it. We dived into the wagon, as Throp revved the engine. He floored the accelerator, and the Vector growled and shook itself into motion, the six wheels crunching and spinning backwards away from the drop-off.

  Chris was on the radio, warning the OC that we were under mortar fire, and moving south-west along the ridge. It wouldn’t make one hell of a lot of difference to those mortar boys. We’d still be sticking out like a bullet magnet, and well within their range. Either we took out that dicker or the mortar team, or they were going to get us.

  There was no time to worry about it. As the third mortar ploughed into the dust-dry earth where the wagon had just been standing, all hell broke lose below. 3 Platoon — call sign Arsenic Three Zero — had been ambushed from sixty metres. It was 0800, and the lads had yet to hit any of the objectives, and they were getting smashed again.

  The F-18 Hornet above me packed an array of top-notch weaponry, including a 20mm cannon and Maverick air-to-surface missiles, plus precision-guided JDAM and Paveway ‘smart’ bombs. But the danger-close distance to which any of those could be deployed was measured in hundreds of metres — not the sixty between the lads of 3 Platoon and the enemy.

  I put a call through to the pilot. ‘Uproar Two One, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: I have a forward platoon engaged at close quarters. This is the platoon’s grid: 93467235. Readback.’

  The pilot confirmed the grid.

  ‘Affirm. I want you to fly a show of force over the grid. We’re under mortar fire, so how low can you bring your jet without getting hit?’

  ‘How low d’ya want me?’ came back the American pilot’s reply.

  ‘As low as you can get. I want a low-level pass with flares and sonic boom.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘What about the mortars?’ I queried.

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, I don’t give a fuck. It’s a big sky small target. Tippin’ in.’

  I turned to Sticky and grinned. ‘Fucking top bloke, or what!’

  The F-18 came screaming in popping flares as it went, and if you’d thrown a rock you could have hit it, it was so low. Right over the grid the pilot pulled up violently, the air in the jet’s wake like a tortured steam cloud. A massive deep BOOM! thundered the length and breadth of the Green Zone, and I could feel the Vector beneath me shiver with the shockwave.

  Now that was a sonic boom.

  Achieving sonic boom uses up shedloads of fuel. The F-18 pilot warned me he had to head directly for the refuelling tanker. He got ripped with a Dutch F-16, call sign Rammit Six Three. The Dutch jet was inbound into my Restricted Operating Zone (ROZ) four minutes out. He’d enter my ROZ just as the F-18 was leaving it.

  A ROZ is a block of airspace above a battlefield that is the exclusive domain of a JTAC. No other JTAC is allowed to operate in that ROZ, and no aircraft other than those controlled by that JTAC are permitted to fly in it. This allows for deconfliction between air assets, and prevents one aircraft flying into another, or getting hit by ‘friendly’ bombs.

  I briefed Rammit Six Three on the battle as he was inbound. 3 Platoon were still under withering fire. I asked the pilot to fly an immediate low-level pass over their grid as soon as he was with us, firing flares. But I sensed the enemy were getting wise to these shows of force.

  I was getting well pissed off. I knew where the enemy were, yet I couldn’t kill them, for they were too close to our lads. What I needed was Apache. I put a call through to Widow Tactical Operations Centre (TOC), the central command element for all air operations.

  ‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine,’ I rasped.

  ‘Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC.’

  ‘Sitrep: as at now — TIC.’ TIC stands for Troops in Contact, the minimum requirement to call out Apache gunships. ‘I’ve got a platoon in close-quarters combat in the Green Zone.’

  As I spoke into the TACSAT there was a deafening explosion right on my left shoulder. Yet another mortar had slammed into the ridge line barely metres from us. It hadn’t taken that mortar team long to retarget our wagon.

  ‘Widow TOC, wait out!’ I yelled.

  I grabbed the edge of the turret and clung on tight, as Throp gunned the Vector through the cloud of blasted smoke and sand, doing his hide-and-seek routine with the enemy mortar team.

  He wrenched the wagon to one side, crunching over boulders and the broken masonry of a half-demolished wall. He pulled up in a flattened and deserted compound, gaining us a little cover.

  On the net I could hear the leader of 3 Platoon calling for airstrikes. The enemy were pressing in on his position. I fucking needed those Apache yesterday.

  ‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine — requesting immediate CCA!’ I yelled into the handset. ‘Repeat: immediate CCA.’

  CCA was the call to launch Apache. ‘Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC: affirm: CCA, fifteen minutes to launch. Repeat: fifteen minutes to launch.’

  The AH-64 Apache gunships would be in the air in fifteen minutes, which would get them over Adin Zai in twenty. That’s how long the lads of 3 Platoon had to hang on before we had some surgical air power above us. I got Sticky to tell them what was what, and they reported back five enemy fighters killed. But still they were pinned down and taking murderous fire.

  The Apache helicopter gunships can engage targets closer than any other air asset. They can sit at altitude eyeing their sniper optics and cuing up their 30mm cannon, and doing danger-close engagements. With jets it was all about positioning attack runs, and with their speed of approach they were far less accurate. That’s what I’d learned at JTAC school, and that’s how it had proven over the last few weeks in Helmand. But it was a lesson the enemy also seemed to have learned well.

  I got allocated two Apaches, call signs Ugly Five Zero and Ugly Five One. I got the F-16 banked up high, to allow the gunships in to do their work. But as soon as the squat black predatory shapes of the Apaches tipped up over the battlefield, the contact died down.

  It all went deadly silent. I sat in the Vector’s turret hardly believing what was happening. Nothing. There wasn’t a single round being loosed off below, or a mortar being lobbed at us lot on the high ground. It was as if I’d called out the Ugly call signs on a lie.

  The enemy seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

  Three

  GRAND THEFT AUTO

  I split the flight. I got
Ugly Five Two scanning the compounds to the front of 3 Platoon, whilst Ugly Five Zero got overhead the enemy mortar plate. Not a soul was moving on the ground, and there wasn’t a thing to be seen in either location. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

  At least it gave 3 Platoon time to re-bomb their mags and get some water down their necks. It was late morning under a burning Afghan sun, and the lads in the Green Zone had to be sweating their cocks off. It was like an oven in the Vector. It had zero airconditioning, which was another reason we kept the turrets open.

  By rights we shouldn’t even have been using an armoured truck like the Vector. On arrival in Camp Bastion our FST had been issued with a WMIK — an open-topped vehicle bristling with machine guns. It sure looked the business, but after a handful of missions we’d realised how utterly useless it was for our tasking.

  The WMIK is a three-seater vehicle: two at the front and one at the rear on the 50-cal. Someone seemed to have overlooked the fact that we were four in our FST. Smart. Whenever we went out on ops we had to leave one behind. Plus using an open-topped Land Rover in the burning heat and dust killed the kind of kit we were using. The tools of the trade are all kinds of sensitive electronic equipment: radios, satellite comms, laser target designators, computers and handheld navigation devices. The kit was taking a right hammering in the WMIK, and it wouldn’t last the duration of the tour.

  A month into our deployment Sticky, Throp and I had been rotated back through Camp Bastion. We’d been promised a Vector at the very least, and we had our hearts set on getting one. But when we got there we were told that ‘our’ vehicle had been allocated to another unit.

  So we went looking for one. We found a Vector complete with its work ticket — a green leather wallet containing all its roadworthy certs — and with the keys in the ignition. It had a full tank of fuel, so we jumped aboard and joined a convoy heading back to base, at FOB Price.

  Admittedly, we’d ‘borrowed’ that Vector, but no one seemed to mind. And ever since then we’d been driving around in ‘our’ Vector. It was about the minimum that the four of us plus all our kit could get away with.

  And I was mighty glad of it now, stuck up here on the ridge line overlooking Adin Zai. I’d lost count of the number of times we’d been bracketed by the enemy mortar team, shrapnel and rocks slamming into the steel sides of the wagon.

  By now we were also getting targeted by a 107mm rocket launcher. A direct hit from a 107mm warhead would be terminally lethal. Plus small arms rounds kept pinging off the armoured skin of the beast. The Vector mightn’t be bomb-proof, but it sure as hell was doing its job up here on the high ground.

  By 1300 there was still not the slightest sign of the enemy. The Apache gunships were low on fuel, and they left to return to Bastion without a shot being fired. We were yet to have a single injury amongst our lads, which was unbelievable. We’d been lucky as fuck, and having the Apaches overhead had bought us some precious time.

  I told Widow TOC that I needed air cover, as we were TIC-imminent. I got allocated an American F-16, Wicked Four One, which was five minutes out. As I awaited the jet’s arrival, I got down from the wagon. Sticky, Chris and I strolled around to the front of the Vector, wondering how it could all have gone so silent.

  ‘It’s fucking spooky,’ Sticky remarked, as he gazed over the Green Zone. ‘Where’ve they gone? They’ve just disappeared.’

  ‘Aye — that’s Apache for you.’ I dug in the pocket of my combats and pulled out a packet of ciggies. ‘I got to feed me habit.’ I waved the packet around. ‘Anyone?’

  Chris was a fitness fanatic, and too much into being body beautiful to smoke a tab. Throp would share the odd Lambert & Butler moment with me, but there was no getting him out of his seat at the Vector’s wheel. It was fair enough: his rapid manoeuvring had saved us from getting splatted more than once that morning.

  I slumped down on the dirt, leaning my back against the wagon’s knobbly tires. God, was I knackered. I was hanging out of me hoop. We’d been on the go for forty hours, and for two nights I hadn’t slept. It was only the adrenaline that was keeping me wired.

  It was the morning of 16 May — two full days ago — when Butsy had first briefed us on the Adin Zai mission. Chris insisted on the whole of the FST being present during briefings, and each of us worked directly to the OC’s orders. Chris wanted every one of us to hear what the gaffer had to say, in case one or another of us was taken out during the coming battle.

  The key aim of the Adin Zai mission was to take Objective Platinum — the Taliban training school. That was our limit of exploitation, and we would push no further east. We were targeting an enemy stronghold in the heart of ‘their territory’ — the Green Zone — and I had priority as a JTAC throughout Helmand in terms of air missions.

  At 2300 we’d pushed out of the British base at FOB Price in a convoy of Vikings, WMIKs and Snatches, plus our borrowed Vector. I had an intelligence asset flying over the convoy, call sign Dragon Zero Two. No sooner had the gates of FOB Price clanged shut, than the aircraft started picking up some interesting snippets of enemy chatter.

  ‘The enemy tanks have left their base!’ the Taliban were yelling to each other. They called all our vehicles ‘tanks’, no matter what they were. ‘They’re heading to Adin Zai. Fight them to the death, brothers! Allahu akbar!’

  So much for the secrecy of our mission. The enemy seemed to know what we were doing almost before we did. I had air controls all that night as we crept through the open desert. By the time we reached the high ground near Adin Zia, the air cover was reporting women and children fleeing the village to the east. It was a classic combat indicator.

  By mid-morning, Adin Zai village was totally deserted, apart from groups of males of fighting age. But this wasn’t going to be any old gunfight at the OK Corral. Under the rules of engagement we had to PID (positively identify) enemy fighters before killing them, and ideally once they’d started shooting at us to prove ‘hostile intent’.

  We’d lain up in the open desert during the day, our orders being to launch the attack at first light the following morning. I’d had air platforms stacked up above me, flying recces over the mission objectives.

  ‘We await the tanks that are parked in the desert!’ the Taliban commanders were calling to each other. ‘Hold firm in your positions, brothers, until they move to attack us!’

  I’d had more air that night, and a result I hadn’t slept a wink. Now, as I sucked nicotine into my greedy lungs, I realised how totally and utterly chinstrapped I was. I lay on the dirt longing to close my eyes and get just a few minutes’ kip.

  I jerked awake to the sound of a 107mm Chinese rocket screaming over the top of us. I’d dropped off for a second or two, my chin nodding on to my chest. The warhead ploughed into the desert some seventy metres beyond us, throwing out a deafening blast and a cloud of dirt and smoke. What a fucking rude awakening that was.

  I heard Sticky’s laugh. ‘Yeah, and no guessing: the next will be short.’

  Each 107mm rocket was about the size of a man’s leg. It took two to slide the twenty-kilo warhead into the launch tube. The enemy were using a man-portable tripod launcher, hence the time between each rocket being loaded, re-aimed and fired. So now we had a mortar unit, plus a 107mm launcher team to find and smash from the air.

  Not a minute after that first rocket had been fired, a second came screaming down on us. It smacked into the rock of the ridge line less than twenty metres below. It threw up an angry mushroom cloud of black smoke high above our heads.

  Sticky let out a crazed cackle. ‘Didn’t I bloody say so!’

  ‘Right, in the wagon!’ Chris yelled. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  I took a last drag on my tab, flicked the butt away and levered myself to my feet. As I turned to clamber aboard the Vector there was a howling, screaming inrush, like a bloody great big dragon was about to breathe fire down our necks. An instant later the ground shook with a sickening, thudding impact right at my very feet.

  Th
at third 107mm ploughed into the dirt three metres from where Chris, Sticky and I were standing. This is it, I thought. They got us. We’re fucking dead. I tensed for the explosion, fully expecting to see Sticky and Chris’s brains splattered all over the side of the Vector, an instant before mine joined them.

  Instead, a choking cloud of dust and sand engulfed us. I felt like shit, but I sure as hell wasn’t dead. Gradually, the cloud cleared. It revealed a small crater more like a rabbit hole right in the shadow of the Vector. I stared at it, barely daring to breathe. I swallowed hard.

  That 107mm rocket had burrowed a hole in the dirt at our very feet, but it hadn’t exploded. It was a dud. It was a fucking dud.

  I heaved myself into the wagon and grabbed another tab with a hand that was visibly shaking. I sparked it up and clamped it between my teeth to stop the shakes from showing. As I dragged in the smoke, all I kept thinking was this: What were the chances of that happening? What were the chances?

  It was a direct hit, and it was a fucking dud. It was the first — and, as it would prove, the last — dud 107mm of our entire Afghan tour. Whoever says that no one is looking after us? Someone was up there, that was for sure. We had an angel on our shoulders.

  I glanced furtively at Sticky, Throp and Chris. No one was saying a word. What was there to say, apart from something crass like: Aye, well, that was a close one. Best to crack on. But I knew what they were thinking, ’cause I was thinking it too: it’s time to get the fuck off this ridge line. No one wanted to be the one to say it, to voice the unthinkable. If we left the high ground, we were as good as abandoning the 2 MERCIAN lads in the midst of the battle of their lives.

  ‘If we get off the bloody ridge we’re next to bloody useless,’ I muttered, into the hands cupped around my fag. ‘I’d rather have a 107mm rammed up me grinner than do that.’