Lethal Shot

by Robert Driscoll

And if they heard the news I was just getting from Shazaad they’d have packed up and gone home.

  ‘Guess what, boys,’ I said.

  A couple of the lads humoured me. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s an Ugly on station.’

  Instinctively eight heads swivelled up and round. They knew that was the call sign for an Apache. But the sky was empty. Nothing to see.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Matt said.

  He was joking. You don’t see those buggers unless they want to be seen. And if we couldn’t spot them hovering on the horizon 4 kilometres away, what chance did four or five renegades have crouching behind a wall?

  The pieces were falling nicely into place. Even so, I knew from experience that things in Helmand could go tits-up in no time at all. If back-up did arrive we might even take casualties.

  ‘We have to end this before they get themselves organised.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Matt asked.

  ‘I’m thinking we do this the old-fashioned way. We go in hard and fast. We’ve got them pinned back and outnumbered.’

  I outlined my plan for a two-pronged assault. A buzz went around the group. This was already our best day ever in Afghanistan. After all the shit we’d taken in Daqhiqh, if we got to take a few scalps as well we could all go home with our heads high.

  I ran the plan past Tom. He said he was almost in place to provide cover. Then I went to Shazaad. Unfortunately Sunray had different ideas.

  ‘Negative,’ he said. ‘Go firm.’

  ‘Go firm’ means remain where you are. There was only one reason: they were bringing the Apache into play.

  ‘With respect, sir,’ I said, ‘I think we can end this one on the ground.’

  ‘Negative,’ he repeated. ‘Go firm. Repeat: go firm.’

  What choice did I have?

  Breaking the news to the lads was difficult. The only sweetener I could offer was knowing that someone would have to go in and clear up after the helicopter had done its job.

  ‘If we’re lucky we might find some survivors.’

  I was patched into the chopper’s comms. Their optics were out of this world. We couldn’t see or hear them, but their weapons guy had three insurgents in his crosshairs. There was a tense few seconds while they verified their orders.

  ‘Kill or capture’ was off the table. This was ‘kill’ all the way.

  I heard the all-clear come through from Sunray. I turned to the lads.

  ‘Here we go.’

  A couple of seconds later a section of wall 25 metres south-west of our position disintegrated. With it the lives of three insurgents. They wouldn’t have had a clue. We saw the blast before we heard it – and we were expecting it. It was swiftly followed up by a torrent of anti-tank machine-gun fire. There was no mistaking that noise. I think it could have been heard in Shazaad.

  I know it was the sensible option to bring in the Apache. But I wasn’t interested in sensible. The eight men around me had been hung out to dry for the last few months, treated as target practice by a Taliban we weren’t really allowed to engage. We were deprived of sleep, of clean clothes, of back-up. And now, the only time we hadn’t been hunted down like dogs, when we’d had the chance to put down a bit of a marker for the honour of Daqhiqh, it had been denied us.

  As I said, I wasn’t thinking sensibly. How could a sensible person think that giving his men the opportunity to kill other human beings was a treat? But I did. That’s what six months in Afghan had turned me into.

  At least we still had the BDA (battle damage assessment).

  When the dust settled and the plumes of smoke dissipated I got the boys ready to break cover. The BDA needed to be conducted as soon as possible. People had been known to survive some horrific Apache onslaughts.

  I gave Sunray our position and said we were geared to go.

  ‘Tom’s closer,’ he said. ‘His men are doing it.’

  You are shitting me? After all this? This was our operation.

  I am still amazed that I held off saying it. But the thoughts were loud enough. My lads were as gutted as me. And, when we listened in to the commentary from Tom’s advancing party our mood got worse. The Apache had killed only two insurgents. A third was making a run for it – and was armed.

  The rules could not be clearer. Not just rules – the logic. HQ had given the order for those three insurgents to be wiped off the face of the earth. They’d sent their most efficient death machine – an Apache helicopter – to make it happen. For anyone who had miraculously survived, his death warrant had already been signed.

  I confess, when we heard Tom’s man, Tom ‘Smudge’ Gilbert, getting the rounds down, I had mixed feelings. Part of me wanted to punch the air, safe in the knowledge that the world was now short of one Taliban ambush group.

  Another part was pissed off that it wasn’t me pulling the trigger. Or Fergie, or Robbie, or Matt, or any of the others.

  We were owed this.

  I could only hope our time would come.

  * * *

  When we finally moved over to the scene of destruction, it was to find one corpse without its face, another shredded and a third riddled with bullet holes. We collected DNA and then, as the locals began to appear again, tried to establish identities. The man without a face proved tricky but one of the others, a surprisingly tall man by Afghan standards, drew a less than concerned response from a couple of people.

  ‘He wasn’t from here,’ one said. ‘He was a pig. I’m glad he’s dead.’

  If I hadn’t recently heard a farmer use similar words to describe his own murdered family I might have been more impressed.

  Despite our ultimately frustrating day, back at Daqhiqh there was something of a party mood in the air, encouraged by Ugly doing a fly-by low enough for the pilot to give us a wave. The fact that we were celebrating three deaths tells you a lot about what we had become as people. The fact that we’d have been even happier if we’d pulled the triggers ourselves tells you a great deal more. We were beyond the point of seeing the Taliban as people any more. They were the enemy. Plain and simple.

  And the sooner they were all dead, the better.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  STEER OFF

  In late August we had another visit from the CO and RSM. They came armed with cigarettes and welfare packages, but also with the news that we would be reassigned to 45 Commando RM operational command, as 42 HQ were relocating to Sagin with the US forces. This was significant as 45 were used to a different AO and had been able to employ successfully a hearts-and-minds policy; they were far less supportive of ‘use of force’ to which we had become accustomed. In my opinion this was when the frustrations reached boiling point.

  War tourist applications went through the roof after our Green 13 ‘victory’. One I didn’t expect was from our Sunray. I wasn’t sure if I was more grateful that he’d at last see how reduced to the bare bones we were, or that he’d be travelling with his own multiple of men. It turned out to be the latter. Those extra bodies on sentry and patrol meant that over the next few days my entire multiple could get at least one full night’s sleep – in every case the first since their R&R had ended. We had all the arms and armour in the world at our disposal but the one thing we craved – something that cost nothing – we were made to feel privileged to get.

  I think the OC saw this. I also think it hurt and frustrated him that he could do nothing about it.

  ‘Not even when you know that I sometimes have to work with eleven functional men?’ I said, in a moment of frank discussion. ‘Not even when that sometimes means leaving only three people to guard this CP while we’re out on patrol? Not even when it means that if something happens during a patrol we’re fucked because there’s no back-up?’

  ‘Not even,’ he admitted.

  The fact that we were too stretched to make any decent fist of ‘rebuilding’; or of pursuing the policy of ‘hearts and minds’ with any gusto, didn’t faze him. That’s when I knew things must be bad, and when I realised
that he was as frustrated as I was. The men he had at his disposal were spread just as thinly everywhere else. It was our misfortune that Daqhiqh was so much more active than the rest of the battle group. He soon saw it for himself. His chopper was shot at while it was trying to put down on a nearby HLS, which surprised none of us in the CP. Each night of his visit there were small-arms attacks and IEDs planted along our stretch of Cornwall. According to the ICOM chatter the Taliban were well aware he was there. They’d already claimed one Sunray and were pulling out the stops to nail another. He and his men managed to get in and out with their lives, but he was left in no doubt about what we were facing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  ‘I just wish there were more I could do,’ he said. So did I.

  With no sign of back-up from Bastion or beyond, September saw us coping as best we could. I lived in daily fear that the insurgents would discover just how paper-thin our resources were. To give the men the slightest chance of rest, we took to putting ‘fake’ marines inside the super-sangars. To anyone beyond the perimeter it looked like two or three men permanently on look-out. To anyone closer it looked like what it was: one tired bloke plus the silhouettes of a few hastily thrown-together uniforms on sticks.

  I also began running ‘dummy’ patrols. I’d lead a team of eight out in the morning then head back at lunchtime. We’d change our uniforms as much as possible, add the odd bit of distinctive kit plus one or two new faces, then head out again – for all the world, especially to the Taliban spotters, like a second patrol.

  I think all this was a sign of desperation, a desperation that began to show itself everywhere. After the horror that was Toki I’d started attaching all sorts of value to various inanimate objects. I wasn’t just hugging my pistol in those rare moments when I got to sleep, but I couldn’t patrol without the exact same pair of gloves or boots that I always wore. The more you cheat death the more you find yourself looking for a reason. I don’t believe in God, so that left my lucky uniform, my lucky rifle, my lucky pants – basically whatever I was wearing or carrying the last time I dodged a bullet. Or a grenade. Or an IED. The more contacts I survived, the more weight I ascribed to my superstitions. Crazy, really, but no more crazy than half the other stuff we were getting up to.

  September continued in the same vein as August: namely, shootings or bombings. We were in survival mode, plain and simple.

  I remembered how keen I’d been to escape early for my R&R in July. My emotions had said I needed to be with my troops. My instincts said I needed to get out. And fast.

  It would have been a different story if we hadn’t felt so damn exposed. The more times you jump out in front of the train the more chance you have of being hit. It felt like we were jumping out every damn day. If the Green 13 episode had proved one thing, it was that if we went out with the full weight of resources at our disposal – and a clear plan to eliminate the opposition – then a handful of amateur killers were no match for us. You might even argue that during our six-month tour we could, with the right back-up, have torn through the Taliban’s ranks. But we didn’t. The order to provide us with that level of support was never given, and 42 Commando took heavy casualties as a result – many of which could, in my opinion, have been avoided.

  A case in point: Green 13 had been a cesspit. It was by no means the only one. Over a period of weeks we worked out that another region, Green 23, seemed just as well defended. Whenever we got close, the level of attack would increase. Obviously, it became an area of massive interest.

  To me, anyway. To Sunray as well. Above him? Not so much.

  My logic was simple. We broke 13, we can break 23 as well. I would keep patrolling that way until I either cracked it or we got cracked. Day after day we were beaten back. This particular day looked like being like all the previous ones. I’d got tired of retreating so we’d pushed aggressively through the danger spots. We got close to the compounds that were giving us trouble when suddenly shooting came at us from both sides. It was a classic ambush – not even a pretence at a standing patrol. Totally illegal by our rules. Totally acceptable by theirs. Totally effective whichever way you looked at it.

  We took cover and returned fire. I radioed a sitrep to Shazaad. It was war by numbers. We’d had so much practice we could have done it in our sleep – if we had ever had any. What usually happened at that point is that Sunray or his 2ic would have told us they were monitoring the situation. On this occasion he said something else.

  ‘You have air support near by. Go firm.’

  Well, that was unexpected.

  I ran the info down the line. The lads were as shocked as I was. Grateful, though. We had enough ammo for now. It wouldn’t last. At some point we would need to be retreat. We didn’t want to be doing that having to count our rounds.

  It turned out that aerial surveillance had clear pictures of us, of the ambush – and of another group of men assembling in a nearby compound with what looked like some serious artillery. In total there were about fifteen men within a tiny area. Throw in the weaponry and an airstrike could take out a significant chunk of Taliban personnel and resources.

  There was a natural lull in the shooting. At the same time the OC gave his final prep to the pilot.

  ‘Here we go, lads,’ I said. ‘Get ready for the main event.’

  We all stared at the compound, waiting for it to disappear. Any second now. Any second now. Any. Second …

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What is it?’ Fergie asked.

  ‘It’s the air strike,’ I said. ‘It’s not coming.’

  ‘What the fuck’s Sunray playing at?’

  ‘It wasn’t him. He was overruled.’

  I heard it with my own ears. One minute the OC was giving the go-ahead to remove fifteen bad guys and a shitload of guns from the playing field, the next he was told to stand the chopper down. An analyst at Bastion had decided that the compound was too near crucial ‘infrastructure’. They didn’t want the collateral damage.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eleven Lima,’ Sunray said. ‘They said we’re meant to be rebuilding the region not blowing it up.’

  ‘Tell them from me it’s a damn sight easier to rebuild something when you’re not being shot at.’

  It was a kick in the teeth. I felt abandoned. All the lads did. There had been a gilt-edged opportunity right in front of us to make tomorrow a safer day for everyone in 42 Commando and beyond, and we hadn’t taken it. The lives of murderers were considered more valuable than ours. That’s how it felt.

  The march back to Daqhiqh was glum. As far as we were concerned the only people with a true picture of what was going on in Helmand were those of us on the ground. We had radios but no one was listening. We were fighting for our lives, literally, on a daily basis, but the planners at Camp Bastion were treating the operation like a theoretical exercise. They seemed to have no will to win.

  * * *

  You always hope tomorrow will be better. Even Bill Murray in Groundhog Day did. Every day he woke up in Punxsutawney, listening to that same song by Sonny & Cher, he thought he could change things. It was only when he realised he couldn’t that he did. Our HQ was a long way off working that out.

  The day after air support was called off we could have sat around Daqhiqh moping but I guarantee that would have invited a storm of grenades and small-arms fire in our direction. The only reason our camp had not been overrun, I firmly believed – and still do – is because the Taliban thought we had far higher staff levels than we did. If they’d got an inkling that sometimes just two or three fit men were manning all the defences while the rest of us were out, there’s no way they wouldn’t have come against us mob-handed. If they had known how tired we were they might have had a go as well. The way to dispel any hint of weakness was to keep the patrols going. Even when we knew HQ couldn’t give a damn what we discovered.

  I decided to push back towards the same territory. Knowing that fifteen pairs of eyes that should have been closed for ever might be staring at
us, plotting our downfall, didn’t exactly fill the lads with confidence. We’re marines, though: we do what we’re told.

  If we were going to make inroads, I knew, it would have to be with our own skills and our own wits. If that meant taking out fifteen terrorists one at a time, so be it. We had a couple of weeks left of the tour to do it. By a stroke of luck, this was the day a local decided to help. He was furtive as fuck, desperate not to be seen talking to us, but he revealed that a senior insurgent would be planting an IED on Cornwall early the following morning. He was telling us not because he liked us but because his family used that route – and so did he. Whether he was the first Afghan I met that actually cared about his children or whether it was the threat to his business that concerned him more, I couldn’t say. The intel was all that mattered.

  The spot he mentioned was about 1,000 metres south of us and therefore about the same distance north of Omar – in other words, the most difficult place for the two CPs to monitor. That wasn’t to say we couldn’t. I tasked our surveillance cameras to pick up that section of Route Cornwall and got on to Shazaad to request that they focus on the same length of track.

  Even at the crack of dawn on a normal day there would always be a fair few shifty-looking people, mostly zooming around the province on their mopeds. Suspicious is suspicious, though. About an hour before sunrise we hit pay dirt. A young man stopped his moped and, brazen as you like, began burrowing into the track.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘He’s laying the IED.’

  Based on how quickly we’d been set upon in the past, I knew he could get the device in the ground and operational within ten minutes. Which gave us a maximum of that long to reach him. We could do it, but not safely. Luckily we didn’t have to. HQ were bringing the remote missile system online.

  I know that decision would not have been an easy one to get made. Just getting a cup of tea at Bastion took three signatures and a blood sample. A request to bomb a Taliban member had to go up and down numerous authorisation channels before being green lit.