‘I will if we can have some dets as well …’
Behind Mick, Wag was on his knees levering open boxes. He was laying stuff on the floor, piling up a ready-made war in a box. I tried to keep Mick occupied while Wag mounded up his heap of swag.
‘Mick, can we have this lot as well?’ Wag piped up.
Mick turned and saw what Wag was doing. He raised his arms and cut his hands across the air – like cut-it; cut it out; no more.
‘That’s it,’ he hissed. ‘The fucking shop is shut – go!’
I grinned. ‘Fair enough, the shop’s shut. Sold out. Cheers, Mick, anyway.’ I turned to Wag. ‘Mate, bag that lot up before he changes his mind and I’ll go get the patrol commanders. We’ll need a good few blokes to carry it all.’
I called the blokes over and we began to distribute the goodies around the patrols.
I would have liked to have got our hands on a few of the folding-stock Minimi light machine guns, which the SAS had in theatre, for the GPMG was big and clumsy when patrolling through thick vegetation. I’d have liked M203 grenade launchers, although the 40 mm rounds can get deflected by thick jungle and rebound to hit your own side. But most of all, I’d have liked M16 assault rifles as our main weapon.
Yet Blair was winging it, Colonel Gibson was winging it and Brigadier Richards most certainly was – so I figured there was no reason why the Pathfinders shouldn’t wing it alongside them. And with Mick’s help, at least we now had the kind of ammo and explosives we needed to take the fight to the rebels.
We loaded up the waiting Chinooks, each with the one Pinz-gauer strapped down in preparation for a seat-of-the-pants kind of a ride. The ‘Pinz’ is a four-wheel-drive all-terrain vehicle, with a cab sitting over the front wheels and an open rear. The two vehicles were there to provide us with a fast and mobile means to escape and evade, with greater reach than going on the run on foot. Wag, Grant and me got our heads together with the Chinook pilots over the air maps. There looked to be nowhere to land to the south or west of the village. The best bet seemed to be a small clearing to the northeast, adjacent to the road. We figured it was just about large enough to land the pair of Chinooks, but by anyone’s reckoning it was going to be a tight fit. We decided they’d go down as a pair facing northeast, ramps open towards the village.
We agreed actions-on if the LZ turned out to be ‘hot’. If the pilots encountered heavy ground fire, we’d abort the landing and search for an alternative LZ. If we put down, disgorged and took heavy fire, the helos would fly a holding pattern, providing cover with their door-mounted, six-barrelled Miniguns. We’d only call the helos back in to extract us if the resistance proved too fierce, and if they stood a decent chance of getting in and out without being shot down.
As the aircrew readied themselves to get airborne, Lewis, the 1 PARA Ops Officer, pulled me off for a last word.
‘Steve: over here, mate!’
‘Wag and Grant?’ I yelled back.
‘Yeah, bring ’em too.’
We gathered in a huddle, Lewis with a worried expression in his eyes. ‘Look, guys, just to warn you, ’cause you need to know: Donaldson’s still arguing to the CO to get you sent back to the UK. He’s saying he doesn’t see a role for the Pathfinders and that you’ve got training scheduled with air assets cued. Guys, you’re on the verge of being pulled out. Be wary.’
Having given us the warning Lewis split, leaving Wag, Grant and me to digest the news. Donaldson had seemed reinvigorated, our unit having landed the present mission. There was no way we could allow ourselves to get pulled off this one at the eleventh hour.
I eyed Grant. Wag was staring at him too. He held up his hands in a gesture almost of surrender. ‘All right, guys, it’s out of order and don’t I know it. But look, we’re flying out of here and once we’re airborne we’re committed …’
Donaldson was scheduled to fly in with us, this being a platoon-level op. The White Rabbit had drawn the short straw and was remaining here as our liaison with Colonel Gibson, along with one of our radio operators. We figured we needed to get Donaldson on the Chinook and airborne as quickly as possible, at which stage we were pretty much past the point of no return.
As we waited on the apron for the final ‘go’ an unmarked HOOK helicopter flew in low and fast. It looked exactly like the HIPs the UN were using, except it had a shorter body and was painted a dull khaki green. It landed beside us, and eight operators dressed in black jumpsuits dismounted, each carrying an AK47. The only clue as to who they were was the American flag sewn onto the shoulder of each of them.
We’d had no warning they were inbound and I presumed they had to be either Delta Force or from the CIA’s Special Activities Division (SAD), its paramilitary wing. I figured they’d be here to help deal with any US nationals holed up in Freetown. Being Pathfinders, we’d trained with Delta, but there was zero time to go have words with the new arrivals. Our priority was to stay on the helos and get out of Lungi Airport before anyone could put a stop to us.
At 1500 we got the final ‘go’. The Chinooks’ giant twin rotors spooled up to speed and finally we were airborne. We were whisked over the thick jungle that fringed the runway, clipping the treetops in an effort to avoid being detected by the rebels or getting hit by any ground fire. I felt this massive surge of elation as we left Lungi Airport behind us: at least now the mission was a go.
We had fourteen Pathfinders on our Chinook, ranged in two ranks of seven, seated to either side of the aircraft’s hold. The Pinz was fastened to the metal lugs at the front of the hold, tight against the metal compartment that sealed off the cockpit. Beside me the Chinook’s loadmaster was strapped to the aircraft’s side, hanging out of the two-part rear ramp, the upper half of which was folded inwards to offer a view over sky and jungle.
As the Chinook gathered speed the ground sped past beneath the open ramp. I gazed out. The terrain below looked utterly horrendous – patches of thick, dense forest interspersed with wide expanses of tropical swamp and mangroves. Here and there water glinted in the blinding mid-afternoon light, revealing the bend of a river, a lagoon or a quagmire. Away from the one dirt highway there looked to be no easy way through such terrain.
I’d plugged into the Chinook’s comms system via a set of headphones, ones that linked me to the cockpit. I could hear the pilot and co-pilot calling out landmarks and flight details to each other plus the navigator, who was perched on a fold-down seat to the rear of the cockpit crouched over his air maps.
Pilot: ‘Boomerang-shaped turn in dirt track, port side of aircraft, three hundred metres.’
Navigator: ‘Check. Thirty klicks out of village.’
Pause.
Co-pilot: ‘Speed: a hundred and fifty knots. Direction of travel: zero three five degrees.’ Pause.
Pilot: ‘Passing moon-shaped lagoon to starboard side of aircraft, two hundred and fifty metres.’
Navigator: ‘Check. ETA LZ twenty minutes. Look for bend in track five hundred metres on left, then clearing a hundred and fifty metres ahead of that.’
Pilot: ‘Roger that.’
By now I’d pretty much realised there was no end to the swamp, wetlands and mangrove forests flashing past below. This wasn’t the odd, isolated patch of waterlogged terrain that you could skirt around. I’d trained and operated in the lowland forests of Belize, Brunei and elsewhere, so I’d experienced wet jungle ground before – but I’d never set eyes on anything like this.
With the terrain to either side of the road being impassable, the only viable escape route was going to be that one dirt highway. It snaked south, passing through a series of villages, ones that were totally uncharted territory: they could be friendly or they could be rebel bases. Even if we got the Pinzgauers going on the road and could get through the villages okay, we couldn’t load all twenty-seven of us onto the wagons, because they couldn’t carry that many.
It would be easy enough to get into the dense, waterlogged terrain to either side of the road and disappear on foot. We
could go to ground and hide, but what then? No one was about to come into that kind of terrain to lift us out, and at some point we’d be driven to leave – by hunger, disease, or the snakes and crocodiles that would infest the badlands. In the meantime the rebels would be able to motor ahead on the dirt road and get us outflanked and surrounded.
We were twenty-seven against God only knew how many thousand rebels, and we were heading into a green hell.
6
We closed in on the LZ. There was a high-pitched whine and the bottom half of the helo’s ramp folded down, hot jungle air and burning avgas fumes barrelling in through the opening. On the port side of the Chinook the hatch was open, the door-gunner manning the six-barrelled .50-calibre Gatling gun readying himself for action. If there were hostiles on the LZ we were relying in part of his firepower to provide cover for our extraction.
I took one last look at the terrain as we thundered in. We were hammering along at fifty feet above the jungle canopy, below which there was an endless seam of glistening swamps and rivers feeding into the Freetown Estuary. I glanced around the faces of the men, trying to give them the kind of reassuring look that I figured they expected from their platoon sergeant. The lads were utterly silent, and I could feel the tension and apprehension sparking in the air.
No one was breathing a word, but we all knew. It was a waterlogged, jungle hell down there and we had not the slightest idea of what we were going to encounter at the LZ. But over and above the fear and apprehension, I sensed something else – a real confidence and self-belief. Every man aboard the Chinook shared a unique bond: each of us had made it through the brutal Pathfinder Selection course, bonding us as brother warriors. There was an inner strength, one grounded in the conviction that we could take care of ourselves come what may.
We were also acutely aware of how Colonel Gibson had shown absolute belief in us by sending us on this mission: Your force is on its own, but I have every confidence in you, Pathfinders. Those words were balanced by what we could see of the ground now, but we were determined to prove the colonel right in putting us out here as his vanguard.
He could have sent another unit forward. He could have chosen to use the SAS boys operating out of Lungi Airport. He hadn’t. He’d chosen us.
That was what we had to live up to.
The loadie raised two fingers and waved them in front of the faces of the blokes: we were two minutes out from the LZ. The guy allotted to drive the Pinz mounted up the vehicle and the engine coughed into life. To either side of him, guys prepared to loosen the quick-release straps and get the wagon rolling.
The loadie held up his thumb and index finger in a sideways U-shape, signalling we were half a minute out.
‘Thirty seconds!’ he yelled above the noise of the screaming turbines.
The guys were on their feet now, ready for the go.
I could feel the Chinook descending through the hot and humid air, the arse-end of the helo dropping more quickly than the front. The pitch of the turbines changed as the pilot feathered back on the rotors, the beat going from a rhythmic thwoop-thwoop-thwoop, that sliced the air apart, to a crazed brrrrrrrrrrrzzzz, as we flared out to land.
As the Chinook dropped, I felt a series of powerful, juddering shock waves reverberating through the airframe. For a moment I feared we were taking fire, before I realised what it was: the rotor blades were slicing into the jungle at the outer edges of the LZ, the space was so tight. This weird, rhythmic ripping sound bounced back at us – as if some giant chainsaw were tearing into the vegetation to either side of the aircraft.
I prayed the rotors held up. If they hit any major trees then they’d shear, sending us into the hell of a crash-landing. All of a sudden there was a massive Bang! – as if the rear rotor had struck a tree trunk. An instant later I realised it was our back wheels slamming into the deck as we landed. I felt the aircraft pivot forwards, and then the front pair were down.
The instant they were the loadie was screaming: ‘GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!’
We piled off in two sticks, those on the left-hand side of the aircraft going left, and those on the right going right, until we had a ring of blokes strung around the Chinook, guns levelled at the jungle to their front, the twin rotors thrashing in the air above us. The Pinzgauer followed on our heels, roaring out of the Chinook’s belly and onto the rough ground, the two blokes who had released the fixing straps piling down the ramp last-out.
Thirty seconds after touching down the loadie yelled into his intercom: ‘Troops off! Ramp clear!’ It was the call for the pilots to get airborne. Turbines screamed into a deafening howl as the pilots hit full throttle, and the pair of Chinooks rose as one, rotors tearing at the air as they clawed skywards, banking towards the east. We were left in a wind-whipped chaos – vegetation, grass, leaves, rotten wood and dirt howling all around us.
The bellies of the helos were swallowed up by the dust storm. We stared down the barrels of our weapons into a blinding whirlwind of debris.
I couldn’t see a bloody thing.
Gradually the air cleared, revealing the wall of vegetation that surrounded the clearing, rotor-strikes clearly showing in the white scars of shattered branches.
The helos weren’t taking any fire above us.
We weren’t taking any fire on the ground.
Not a muzzle sparked amongst the shadows.
Right now, there was zero sign of the enemy.
As far as we could tell there wasn’t a thing moving out there. We were down on our belt buckles 300 yards to the north of the village of Lungi Lol, and there wasn’t a soul to be seen – villager or rebel fighter.
The patch of ground that we’d put down on looked as if it had been cleared via slash-and-burn – a method by which locals cut the jungle, leave it to dry, fire the vegetation and plant crops in the ash-rich residue. The first things to move off were the Pinz-gauers, bumping and lurching across the uneven ground. They made for the dirt highway some thirty yards from where we’d landed.
We joined the Pinzgauers on the main track. They began chugging their way towards the village, as we skirmished through the jungle to either side on foot. All the while I was thinking: Where the hell is everyone? The locals must have heard the Chinooks come in, so where the hell are they?
We hit the northern edge of the village. I noticed the first of these mud-walled and grass-thatched huts lining the road, interspersed with cleared areas for gardens and patches of thicker vegetation. Then I spotted the first of the locals. Here and there wide, frightened eyes peered out of a shadowed hut doorway. They were staring at us like the Martians had just landed.
We reached the T-junction of dirt tracks that marked the centre of the village. I gave orders to the patrol commanders to take up positions facing the wall of jungle to the northeast of us – the most likely line of any rebel attack.
We went firm.
To the east I could hear the pair of helos flying their prearranged holding pattern. They’d orbit there for five minutes, in case we needed to call in their fire support. We checked the vegetation to our front for anything untoward: the glint of sunlight on gunmetal; a muzzle flash; urgent or rapid movement through the trees. Our eyes scanned for targets, all the while knowing that just as the villagers had heard us fly in, so would any rebels – that’s if there were any hereabouts.
While the villagers wouldn’t have a clue as to who we were or where we’d come from, one thing would be crystal clear: we weren’t rebels. We were clearly foreigners and we were clearly soldiers, but that would be about as much as they could know right now. It was no surprise that they were keeping to the cover of their huts: in a country such as this, men with guns were so often the bad guys.
For a good five minutes we scanned silently for targets. It was starting to look like ours had been an unopposed landing, as if the rebels hadn’t reached this far south yet. We’d touched down at 1530 hours, so we had around three hours remaining until last light. The village was now loosely secured. We were in o
ccupation, we’d yet to get shot at and we were not aware of any immediate threat.
Wag, Grant, the OC and me decided to do a walkabout, to get a sense of the lie of the land. We got the Pinzgauers parked up on an open area of hard-packed dirt, one ringed with huts, just to the west of the T-junction. I figured this was something like the village square. There was a clutch of ramshackle wooden stalls ranged down one side, which had to be the marketplace.
A smaller track branched off from the main highway, slicing south through the jungle. That had to be Donaldson’s intended E & E route. The track ran for 12 kilometres, before it reached a dead end – the sea. Our flight over the jungle had only reinforced in my mind how defunct was any escape plan based upon heading that way. We’d be hemmed in on three sides – by sea and impenetrable jungle – and with the rebels at our backs.
Walkabout done, Wag and me began siting the individual patrols, while Tricky, Grant and Donaldson established comms with headquarters back at Lungi Airport. All we had to go on when choosing patrol locations was the lie of the land. We needed maximum cover from view and from fire – from being seen and being shot at – while at the same time being able to put down rounds on the most likely avenue of enemy approach – the dirt highway. With the terrain being impassable off-road, we presumed the rebels would have to come at us straight down the main drag.
We sited the HQ patrol in a couple of shallow craters, some thirty metres to the east of the village square. That way, we’d be pretty much at the heart of things so we could co-ordinate any action. We put Nathe and H’s patrol – 33 Alpha – some ninety yards to the east of us, facing down the throat of the dirt track. From there they could put down accurate fire onto the road, as far as we could see to the front of us.
Dolly’s patrol – 33 Bravo – we sited in a patch of thick bush a hundred yards or so to the far side of the highway, so protecting our left flank. The patrol commanded by Dale ‘Ginge’ Wilson – 33 Charlie – we placed a hundred yards to the south of Nathe’s patrol, with 33 Delta – Taff Saunders’ patrol – a hundred yards to the south of that. We now had the entire front of the village covered by our defensive positions.
Operation Mayhem Page 8