Operation Mayhem

by Steve Heaney MC

  I yelled at Grant to stay put and keep a grip on things from here. I grabbed my SA80 with my other hand, but I needed someone to bring the mortar rounds and act as my loader. Wag was busy sending the contact report, Tricky needed to stay on the comms, and Grant was here to make command decisions.

  That left only one possible candidate.

  I locked eyes with Captain Cantrill.

  He was lying on the ground, mouth hanging open. His expression said it all: I didn’t expect this when I came ashore!

  I tossed the daysack of mortars across to him. ‘Here you go, mate! Grab that and follow me!’

  I got into a belly-crawl and prepared to move. At night an attacking force tends to aim high, for they can’t see where the ground starts. Right now rounds were hammering past maybe four or five feet above us, for the rebels had yet to adjust their fire to ground. Cantrill and me had to remain below that level if we were to stand any chance of making it forward without being hit.

  I had the pistol-grip of the SA80 grasped in my right hand, the butt resting on my right forearm. The barrel of the 51 mm was gripped in my left hand, the base plate resting on my left forearm. Plus I had a bandolier of 150 extra rounds for the SA80 slung around my neck.

  I started the crawl – right arm forward, left leg up, and vice versa. I was on my belt buckle as I inched over the lip of the depression and into the more open, bullet-blasted terrain beyond.

  I glanced behind me for Cantrill. Sure enough he was on it. He was a foot away from my right boot. His SA80 was gripped in his right hand, plus the bag of mortars in his left, so he could drag its 40-pound weight behind him.

  I turned back to the front. My eyes traced the route ahead of us, but the trees and thick vegetation to either side were rocking and rattling with the weight of fire tearing into them. I found myself thinking: Fuck me, that’s accurate and sustained fire...

  Having crawled out of the cover of the depression the sound of battle came to me much more clearly now. I could hear H in his fire-rhythm, squirting out eight- to ten-round bursts. He was unleashing a volley, breaking fire, then letting rip with another. The barrel of the GPMG tends to climb to the left the more rounds that are fired, so after each burst he was bringing it back onto target.

  They didn’t call H the ‘Death Dealer’ for nothing.

  No doubt Tackleberry was in the zone right now, and his withering fire would be hammering into the waves of rebel fighters. All to his front they would be dropping like flies, but it didn’t seem to be having the slightest effect on their rate of fire.

  Beyond H’s trench I could hear blood-curdling screaming and shouting – but not the screams of agony that I’d been hoping for. This was very much yelling – in drugged-up, bulletproof, voodoo-frenzied attack mode. Long banshee howls echoed from the forest, as if we had the devil and all his minions at our front.

  I could hear this weird, wild chanting in the background, interspersed with what sounded like jungle drums. It sounded utterly crazed and fucked up.

  The rebels had a motto that they’d shout before battle.

  ‘What makes the grass grow?’ one would shout.

  ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ would come the answering chant.

  What makes the grass grow?

  Blood! Blood! Blood!

  What makes the grass grow?

  Blood! Blood! Blood!

  What makes the grass grow?

  Blood! Blood! Blood!

  By the time they’d got into their stride, most sane people would have fled in terror – those who could run. If the rebels had got a village surrounded, those trapped would have nowhere to flee, and they’d be imprisoned in their fear. Imagine that happening. Imagine if you were a mother or a father with children trapped in such a village. And that’s what the rebels had come to Lungi Lol aiming to do – spread sheer terror and savagery.

  Instead, they’d run smack bang into H on the Gimpy.

  As I listened to the light pop-pop-pop of our SA8os answering the rebel war cries, I cursed the fact that most of the blokes were using 5.56 mm. The British military had switched from 7.62 mm to 5.56 in 1987, when it became standard across all NATO forces. The Yanks had used 5.56 mm in Vietnam, and they were sold on the smaller calibre. The upside was that a man could afford to carry far more of the lighter ammo, but the downside was the sheer size and velocity of the round.

  We’d learned all about the lack of stopping power of 5.56 mm in Northern Ireland and Iraq. It fires with a greater muzzle velocity and has less drag. It hits a target with such speed that it punches through tissue pretty cleanly. As a result it can take two or three rounds to stop a man, and especially one high on drugs and voodoo gibberish. By contrast, one round of 7.62 mm drops a man pretty much instantly, wherever he’s hit. With its lower velocity and larger head it rips flesh and shatters bone.

  With 5.56 mm you needed to score a head shot or hit a vital organ to be sure to stop a man. Facing 2000 drug-and-adrenaline-fuelled RUF rebels, how many bullets could we afford to waste trying to put each of them down?

  I forced myself onwards, getting into the rhythm of the crawl. Arms and legs were pumping. I bulldozed over tree stumps and whatever unidentified crap was jabbing into me and tearing at my combats. After all the torrential rain of recent days I could feel thick soggy dirt and shit under me. I tried to concentrate on keeping the barrels of the mortar and the SA80 out of the worst of it. With both weapons resting on my forearms, my points of contact were elbow, stomach and knees.

  Cantrill and me had made about twenty yards when I stopped dead. I’d sensed the fiery pshusshshh of an incoming projectile. Only one weapon makes such a distinctive sound – the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) – and we were well within the RPG’s maximum 500-yard range.

  I saw the projectile come flaming out of the darkness – like a road-cone laid on its side and trailing fire, but one packed with high explosives and wrapped in razor-sharp steel. It was flying high, but if it hit the branches above us it would detonate, peppering the ground below with a lethal spray of shrapnel and splintered wood – which would be me and Cantrill pretty much done for.

  I dropped my head as it tore past six feet to the right of us with a deafening whoooosh. Miraculously, it went roaring through the tree branches and on into the night without exploding. It continued across the village and didn’t appear to hit a thing. I figured it must have buried itself in the jungle somewhere out the back, where Mojo and his men would be positioned. That’s if they had got into their positions … But no point worrying about that now.

  I set off at a crawl again, eyes scanning the darkness for further RPGs. How that one hadn’t detonated I just didn’t know. The RPG-7 is designed with a ‘graze mode’, so that the minute the warhead touches anything it explodes. It doesn’t require full impact to do so. I glanced back at Cantrill, fearing that the Marine captain might have gone to ground. But he was right on my heels, God bless him, dragging the mortar pack behind him.

  So far, he was doing a sterling job.

  Rounds snickered off the vegetation to the left and right of me, as a rebel gunner hammered in a horribly accurate burst. Not for the first time I cursed the fact that none of us had body armour. It existed. The Yanks had the best body armour money could buy, plus the SAS lads had it. Just someone somewhere within the MOD had decided that the X Platoon could do without. In this kind of climate you’d never wear it all day long, but once the fire started you’d want to have it on.

  Cantrill and me had to push right forward if I was to get a grip on this battle. As the adrenaline pumped through the system, young lads not long into the Pathfinders would be tempted to let loose with the ammo, or even to break cover to try to better target the enemy. If we allowed ourselves to get carried away in the rush, we’d start running out of rounds and we’d get blokes killed.

  Cantrill and me needed to move as far and fast as we could, to have any chance of winning this one.

  16

  I belly-crawled ahead, arms scrabbling ami
dst the filthy undergrowth and the squelching dirt. My mind was a whirl of thoughts. What if this was just a probe, one designed to sacrifice a few hundred rebel fighters for the bigger prize? What if they’d sent hundreds more to one or both flanks, to encircle the village? They had enough men to do it, and it’s what I would have done if I’d been their force commander.

  I was trying to second-guess what was happening. Was this really only a tidal wave onslaught – hitting us with a human wave directly to our front? Or were they smart enough to use the railway track – this being a feint while they hit us from the side?

  Right now all I could be sure of was that it was dark, with bugger all ambient light, and it had to be tough as hell for the lads to ID their targets. I needed to get the illume rounds up, but I was still under the canopy of trees that surrounded the village. I figured I needed to push on for another thirty yards or so, at which point I’d hit open terrain.

  Every ten or twelve pumps of my elbows and knees I paused to check on Cantrill. No point reaching a position from where I could fire if I was minus a loader and rounds. He wasn’t breathing a word but he was right behind me, glued to my heels. I could hear the spud-gun pop-pop-pop of SA8os directly to my right now, which had to mean I was drawing level with Nathan’s battle trenches.

  I flicked my gaze in their direction, and I could see the blokes of 33 Alpha hunched over their weapons, pouring fire back at the enemy. I just knew for sure we were burning through the ammo, and I hoped Nathe could keep a grip on the fire discipline. There was no shouting or cries of alarm yet, and there was no panic in the air – which was reassuring. But I could tell the lads were waiting for me to put up the light, and I knew I had to cover more ground more quickly.

  I had to get further forward. I needed to be somewhere where I could see the enemy and use the mortar to best effect, but most importantly where the lads could see and hear me, so as to take my lead. I needed them to slow the rate of fire, get one shot to equal one kill, and get the fire discipline tight. But I was tiring under the exertion. The sweat was pouring off me in bucket-loads. I was soaked with it, and my arms and shoulder were sore and burning with agony, my breath coming in sharp gasps.

  I paused to wipe the slick of sweat from my eyes. It was half blinding me. I glanced forward and I could just make out a glint where the darkness of the foliage was broken by moonlight filtering through. That was where I had to get to. Once I was out from under the trees I’d be in the clear to send up the mortars. But it didn’t escape me that once I left the cover of the foliage I’d be completely exposed: the rebels would be able to see me, and target me with fire.

  There was bugger all I could do about that. You can’t put mortars up when you’re under tree cover, or they’ll very likely burst in the branches above you – end of story.

  There was a solid stream of bullets hammering past just inches above me now, and I could feel the pressure waves thrown off by the rounds thumping into the back of my head. The rebels were bloody good: they were adjusting their fire, dropping it to meet ground level, leaving Cantrill and me less and less of a margin for error.

  No ifs or buts, I was fucking terrified, but adrenaline was driving me forwards. More to the point, I’d been here for days readying myself for just such a battle. Poor bloody Cantrill had flown in on a short recce jolly, and now this. He had to be totally shitting himself. I knew I was basically pulling him forward with the sheer effort of my concentration and my force of will.

  I crawled on for another ten yards, dragging Cantrill with me. I was 60 yards to the south of the track, with H’s trench lying to my front left. We had to be on our own front line now, and this was as good a place as any to set up the mortar. But as I glanced upwards I cursed. Above me there was still thick vegetation – the spreading canopy of a grove of fruit trees – and that meant I couldn’t use the mortar.

  If I sent up rounds here they’d detonate in the branches, which would be no good to anyone but the enemy. I steeled myself. Gritted my teeth. We needed twenty more yards, maybe thirty, and we’d be out from under the branches … and right under the enemy guns.

  I paused for an instant longer. I needed to gather my thoughts, get a sense of the battle space, and orientate myself to make sure we didn’t crawl off at a tangent. We’d come forward maybe sixty-five yards. I knew Wag would be back there with Tricky and Grant, getting the message through to headquarters. Already the gears would be turning at Lungi Airport to rack up the QRF. The 1 PARA duty signaller would be waking Gibbo, so he could issue the order for them to launch. In my mind’s eye I could see a platoon of paratroopers gathering their weapons, the fire in their eyes. Fuck it, let’s go!

  We just had to hold out for long enough to get the QRF in. We’d then be sixty-odd blokes facing a couple of thousand rebels – so odds down to 33–1 – which was much more like it.

  To my left I heard H screaming out targets. ‘Right of bent tree, two o’clock, a hundred and fifty yards!’

  To my right Nathe was yelling out similar fire orders to his blokes, and Cantrill and me were sandwiched in between. I couldn’t hear Dolly, Ginge or Taff, but their voices were very likely drowned out by the horrendous rate of fire going in both directions.

  Then I heard the cry: ‘CHANGING BELT!’

  H was yelling out a warning, so the lads could keep the fire going with the SA8os as he changed a belt on the GPMG. That meant he was 200 rounds – or a third of his ammo – already gone.

  Nathe and the lads from 33 Alpha opened up with long bursts from their SA8os. And then I heard that worst of cries: ‘STOPPAGE!’

  There was the stark steel-on-steel clatch-clatch as whoever it was tried to clear their weapon. I just hoped to fuck another of our SA8os didn’t go down. We’d kept the assault rifles scrupulously clean and rust free. We’d never stopped polishing and oiling the fucking things. But the SA80 was just a heap of shit whichever way you treated it.

  An instant later H had sparked up the GPMG again, which meant the worst of the moment was over. He’d have one further belt of ammo laid out next to his weapon, on a waterproof poncho to keep it off the dirt. As he fired he’d keep one eye on the ammo level, to check how close he was to needing to do another belt change. But all we needed was H’s GPMG to run out of rounds and we were going to be seriously buggered.

  H was pushing the weapon to the very limits. The normal rate of battle fire on the GPMG is twenty-five rounds a minute in short, three-round bursts. The rapid rate of fire is a hundred rounds a minute, in four- to five-round bursts. H was unleashing in eight-to ten-round bursts, so he’d upped the fire to cover the mass of rebels he was facing. The GPMG pumps out rounds in a cone-like spray, and is ideal against bunched-up targets at shorter ranges. H had to have the enemy charging down his very barrel right now, with the rate of fire he was unleashing.

  Trouble was, under heavy fire you are supposed to change the barrel of the GPMG, or it gets red-hot and you get a cock-off, or breech explosion. The working parts get so hot that when you feed a round into the breech it ignites with the heat, exploding in your face. With the rate of fire H was putting down he knew what he was risking – but no way could he afford a barrel change any time soon.

  If H tried that, he’d be overrun.

  Likewise, if he ran out of rounds.

  Right now the blokes were targeting whatever they could see: muzzle flashes, the glint of moonlight on gunmetal; movement; rebel war cries. It was far from being the best way to use up our limited supplies of ammo.

  We needed the light.

  I forced myself to cat-crawl onwards into the face of the enemy. Above the gunfire, I could hear blood-chilling rebel yells coming from all directions. It was as if they were getting us surrounded and deliberately taunting us.

  I was thrusting forward with my elbows when all of a sudden I sensed the ground in front of me give way. I half-tumbled into a stinking, muddy ditch. For an instant I feared I’d fallen into one of our own punji pits. Those fields of sharpened bamboo spike
s were just forward of our front positions. I’d figured the nearest one lay off to my right, but maybe I’d miscalculated.

  Fuck, the punji fields are just around here.

  Fuck, I’ve drifted too far right into the punjis.

  I felt around myself gingerly, but no spikes had pierced my combats or torn into my flesh, so I figured the punjis had to be a fraction further forward and off my line of march. Rolling half around, I checked on the canopy of vegetation above me. As I did so I realised I was lying in twelve inches of stagnant, shitty, putrid water that filled the bottom of the ditch. Doubtless, it was infested with every kind of sucking, biting, slithering thing the jungle had to offer, and right now they were having a good feed.

  I cursed. We were still under the bloody trees.

  There was no option but to push on.

  I elbowed ahead through the dark and fetid water.

  I must have cat-crawled a good thirty yards beyond our line of battle trenches when I finally emerged from under the trees. Glancing behind, I saw Captain Cantrill was still with me, though he was hanging back a good few feet, the poor bastard.

  Directly to our front lay the enemy.

  The ragged fringe of jungle was dead ahead, and I didn’t doubt that the rebels were getting right in amongst us. Just to my right lay this dark, shadowed mass – the sweep of the nearest punji field. It was good to know that it was there. To my left I could just make out H’s silhouette, crouched in his lone battle trench adjacent to the main highway – which showed as a barely-visible yellow slash cutting through the darkness.

  From where I was lying I could hear figures thrashing about in the bush ahead of me, and blood-curdling cries. All around there were the flashes of weapons firing, as unearthly shadows and shapes flitted through the darkened terrain.

  I heard cries from behind me, voices tinged with panic. ‘STOPPAGE! STOPPAGE!’

  They were coming from Nathe’s position. Like H’s, it was right in the line of the rebels’ mass attack, and it had to be in danger of being overrun. The priority was to get the light up now, but that meant raising myself into the level of the rebels’ fire.