by Chris Ryan
The searchlights were blinding. I didn’t know if they lit me up or not, and I didn’t bother to find out. I let loose a single round, which smashed straight into the face of the middle of the three searchlights. The machinery exploded.
‘Go right,’ I told Rabbit, before turning my aim towards the spotlight to my left. Less than a second later I’d taken it out, and Rabbit had done the same to his. But my eyes were dazzled and blinded, so I pulled myself back down below the line of fire until my vision returned.
I could hear Voodoo and Dusty laying down fire to my left and right, and amid the noise of gunfire came the tiny explosions of tyres being taken out. There was more shouting – I couldn’t decipher it, but I could sure as hell tell they weren’t talking about retreating. That was the trouble with these AQ fighters – half of them didn’t care if they lived or died. It would have been madness for me to try to lay down rounds with my vision fucked, so I pulled two fragmentation grenades from my waistcoat, removed the pins and lobbed them towards the enemy.
‘Frag out!’ I shouted, then hunkered down, waiting for the explosions.
They came seconds later, and with them a terrible scream. One of the enemy had been hit by shrapnel and from the noises he was making, he wasn’t long for this world. I blocked out the noise – not because it was distressing, but because it was distracting. I needed to keep my attention on the guys who could kill us, not the ones on the way out.
My vision restored, I got back into the firing position. I could see the wounded man about twenty metres in front of me. Half his face was gone and he was kneeling towards us. One of my patrol mates – I don’t know who – put him out of his misery with a direct headshot that flung him back two metres in a frenzy of brain matter. The other targets had retreated from the area where the grenade had exploded, back towards their technicals. Each of the vehicles, though, still had a gunner at its mounted machine-gun. They had to be our next priority.
‘Hit the gunners,’ I told Rabbit. ‘You go right, I’ll go centre and left.’
Rabbit didn’t reply. There was nothing to say. We just started laying down rounds together. My first burst took out the gunner of the middle technical. His body juddered to the back of the vehicle, but by that time I already had the vehicle to the left in my sights. Another burst and the second gunner was down.
We’d disabled the machine-guns but there was nothing to stop other members of the enemy crew from taking up position at the weapons, so we had to keep the firefight intense to discourage them from getting brave. Voodoo and Dusty each hurled out a grenade. A shout went up from the remaining enemy who, wherever they were, hit the deck seconds before the frags exploded. Rabbit and I didn’t give them a chance to regroup: we just kept laying down rounds – short bursts, but frequent.
It was high-intensity and it kept the enemy at bay. But there was a limit to how long we could go on like this before we killed our ammo. ‘Voodoo!’ I shouted. ‘We need that chopper!’
Bang on cue, I heard a noise in the distance behind us – like a fast-approaching wasp. I fired a final burst, catching a guy in the chest who was struggling towards the machine-guns. He was flung back in a shower of blood so hard that he disappeared over the back of the technical. I ducked back down below the firing line to reload my weapon when, lit up by the moon, I saw a cloud of dust in the desert. Two choppers were speeding towards us, one of them skirting low, only a few metres above the ground, the other above it and slightly to its fore. The lower chopper was an MI-8 – the same one that had set us down about five hours previously. The other was an MI-24 Hind, and that was extremely bad news for the AQ fighters who were trying to put holes in us at that very moment.
The Hind was an impressive beast even on the ground. In action, it was awesome. The pilot and co-pilot sat in tandem in tiered pods, one above the other. Two short wings sprouted from the side with rocket launchers fixed to the underside. At the front was a nose cannon that was controlled by the movement of the pilot’s head. He just had to look where he wanted to fire, then press the button. When the Russians first brought these Hinds to Afghanistan, the only way the Mujahideen could down them was by getting up onto very high ground and firing on to the top of them. Eventually the Americans armed them with stinger missiles, but even then these choppers were hard to bring down – and had the capability to rain seven kinds of hell on to anyone who tried.
It was almost upon us when it rose higher into the air and hovered over our position, while the MI-8 held back about thirty metres, waiting for its attack helicopter chaperone to do its work. I was momentarily dazzled for a second time that night by the Hind’s searchlights, so I couldn’t see the pilot in his pod, moving his head to direct his weapon. I sure heard it, though – the characteristic chug-chugging of a nose gun as it showered rounds into the heart of the enemy. It fired continuously for thirty seconds, during which time Rabbit and I scrambled back down to ground level. I heard a massive explosion as one of the technicals’ fuel tank ignited. And when the nose cannon finally stopped firing – and the Hind spun in mid-air and hovered threateningly while the MI-8 came down to land on flat earth about twenty metres behind us – there was no sound of enemy weapons. We all knew what that meant.
The four of us doubled it back to the MI-8, heads low to protect ourselves from the downdraught, before flinging ourselves up the tailgate. The flight crew didn’t fuck around. The tailgate was up and we were in the air within seconds and as I looked back over the village of Pajay I saw the lights of a third chopper descending on the southern edge near the wadi. It looked like they’d come in to scoop up Malouf. Give it a few minutes and he’d find himself on the wrong end of a Tier 1 field interrogation, but that was nothing to do with us now.
We had less than three hours till dawn, and we still had a job to do.
03.17 HRS.
Voodoo had clearly apprised base of the situation when he called in air support. We were barely off the ground when one of the flight crew handed us a map of the area. Pajay was marked in the centre. To the north, a mess of contour lines that indicated the sharp peaks of the mountain ranges. Someone had circled in pen an area approximately five klicks northwest of the village as the crow flew, where the markings clearly indicated a steep-sided valley. In clear capital letters was a single word: BAKHAROV.
The loadmaster approached us. ‘We’re setting you down two klicks to the east of the valley,’ he shouted over the roar of the chopper’s engines. ‘We need to approach from the east so your target doesn’t hear us flying over. There’s a small plateau we can use as an LZ, but it’s separated from the valley by a ridge about 300 metres high. You’ll have to scale it before you can get into position.’
I glanced at the three others. Not even a flicker of concern. No sign that the contact from which we’d just been extracted had rattled them. Just looks of steely-eyed determination.
The loadie turned away from us for a moment, then returned with something in his hands. It was a rectangular box, about eight inches by five by two, and a small, sturdy tripod – a laser target designator. Nobody had to explain to us what that was for. Voodoo took hold of the LTD and stashed it in his Bergen, while I took delivery of a stash of mountain gear from the loadie. Then I gave myself a few moments to gather my thoughts. It had been a long night already, but it wasn’t over yet.
From the side of the helicopter I could just see the tips of mountain ranges. The pilot was flying blind so there was no light from the aircraft, but the peaks had a silvery glow in the moonlight, broken up by the dark lines of deep ravines and hidden valleys. If Malouf was to be believed, somewhere down there, camouflaged by that forbidding landscape, was an important AQ operative called Al-Zaranj. He could hide wherever he wanted. But we were coming to get him.
Five minutes later the aircraft starting losing height. Voodoo, Dusty, Rabbit and I got our gear together and stood by the exit, ready to alight the moment we touched down. Blackness surrounded us as we lowered into the shadow of a deep valley, an
d there was a gentle bump as the helicopter hit the ground.
‘Go!’ shouted the loadie, and we were out. Seconds later the chopper was off. The pulsating sound of its rotor blades melted away, leaving us alone in the darkness and the silence.
We waited thirty seconds for our eyes to grow accustomed to the blackness and gradually our surroundings became clearer. The flat area where we had landed was small – about twenty metres square. On two sides were steep slopes, which disappeared up into the darkness, beyond which the amazing canopy of the night sky gleamed brightly.
I was aware of movement from Voodoo. He was unfolding the map the loadmaster had given us and removing a torch from his pack. The torch had a thin, highly directional beam to stop any light spill from illuminating our position, and it had been fitted with a red filter so that white light wouldn’t wreck our night eyes. It took Voodoo less than a minute to get his bearings. He pointed up one of the slopes. ‘North,’ he said curtly. ‘Let’s get climbing.’
It was a steep slope, which made the going hard, especially with the weight of our equipment, and the ground underneath was covered with loose rocks, which meant we had to tread carefully in the darkness. We’d been ascending for about thirty minutes, when the terrain changed and a sheer rock face loomed up in front of us. Difficult in the dark to tell how high it was. Thirty-five metres. Maybe forty. We scouted left and right, trying to see if there was any other way up. Nothing. We were going to have to scale the cliff.
‘OK, fellas,’ I told the others. ‘I’ll lead.’
Mountaineering was my bag. I’d spent a year in Germany on the Alpine Guides Course, and while the arid mountains of Afghanistan were different to the peaks of the Alps, the principles were the same.
I removed my Bergen and started going through the mountaineering gear I’d taken from the loadie: a stash of friends – essential pieces of equipment that could be wedged into cracks in the wall so that I could get a line up – and a forty-metre fixed line; a roll of webbing tape; everything I needed to get a line up to the top of the cliff face so the others could follow. I put the end of the line round Rabbit’s waist, who had a carabina attached to his belt loop, then slung the rest of it round my waist and engaged my NV goggles. ‘See you at the top, guys,’ I said.
I moved as quickly as possible, hunting out cracks in the wall where I could wedge in my friends before threading the line through them. It took twenty-five minutes to reach the top and throw down a second line so that I could haul the Bergens and other equipment up before Voodoo, Dusty and Rabbit made their ascents. They climbed quickly, using with ease the line I’d set up. They were up in less than fifteen minutes – an impressive feat, though I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
But there wasn’t time for backslapping. Time check: 04.37. Less than two hours till sunrise. We had to press on.
We continued scrambling upwards. Sweat was pouring from my body even though our altitude was increasing and it was not yet daylight. My muscles burned, but I just focused on the job ahead. We reached the top of the ridge at 05.02. There was no time to stop. Voodoo studied his map, lying low so nobody could see the tiny amount of light coming from his torch. He pointed down into the valley below us. ‘That’s Bakharov.’
‘Let’s get closer,’ I said, ‘then find ourselves a lying-up position. Sunrise in about an hour. We haven’t got much time. And guys, go soft. Al-Zaranj might have spotters out. Let’s not warn them we’re on their case, huh?’
We scrambled down the slope – slowly and carefully so we didn’t alert anyone with our noise, or with loose rocks tumbling down into the valley. We covered about 600 metres in twenty minutes, and by this time we could see the base of the valley with the naked eye. It was 200 metres away and snaked north to south.
Voodoo raised a hand and we all stopped. Thirty metres off to the left there were two jagged boulders – each of them five metres wide and a couple high – that appeared to be leaning against each other. There was a triangular gap between the two, half a metre in width at its base and a metre high, angled slightly so it faced northeast along the valley. A bunch of other boulders were dotted around at irregular intervals too, so these two larger ones didn’t stick out too badly. The hiding place they created was the biggest we could see – not ideal, but it would serve as an OP, so we made for it.
Voodoo, Dusty and Rabbit took up position behind the boulders, checking their weapons and prepping the LTD, while I scoped out the valley. The grainy-green picture was hard to decipher because there wasn’t much ambient light in the valley for the Kite to magnify.
‘What you getting, Jock?’
I scoped for another twenty seconds before replying. ‘No sign of habitation,’ I reported. ‘Malouf said there was a cave system. I can’t make anything out, but the far side of the valley’s in deep shadow. We’ll have to mark time till dawn.’
‘Roger that.’
Waiting can be a dangerous game. It’s easy for your attention to wander, your readiness to drop. There was none of that those last few minutes before dawn. I continued to scope with my night sight; the others were armed and ready. We all kept absolutely still. If no one knew we were here, it was unlikely that we’d be seen; but the second they detected movement, we’d be compromised.
It was around 05.40 that I started to detect a slightly different quality to the darkness as dawn approached. The Kite detected it too as gradually the details on the far side of the valley floor opened up. It was arid and boulder-strewn and I could just make out deep rivulets in the floor. Water clearly ran through here in the winter, but now, at the dog end of summer, it was desert-dry. And on the far side of the valley floor, 250 metres from our position, I saw it. The cave mouth was only a small opening, some two metres wide and three high. And just as I’d clocked it, I picked up movement. A figure emerged into the valley.
‘I’ve got someone,’ I breathed.
‘Take your time, Jock. Let’s have a positive ID before we start making decisions.’
He was right. Nobody wanted to start getting heavy with a bunch of innocent Afghan hermits. Just because a guy had walked out of a cave, it didn’t make him an AQ target. I examined him through the Kite. He was wearing robes and had a shamag wrapped round his head, which obscured his features. No weapon that I could see.
The figure stopped outside the cave and looked round. The guys were totally still as I watched him for a good minute. Silence all around. Like hunters stalking their prey.
The guy moved. His hands went up to his shamag and he started to peel it off from round his head. I zoomed in on him, so that his face filled the field of my Kite, and I had to steady my hand to stop that hazy green image from juddering now that I was focused so far in. He unwound the shamag three times before revealing his face.
He looked young. Only a hint of a beard.
‘Negative ID,’ I breathed. ‘It’s not Al-Zaranj, fellas.’
Dusty, Voodoo and Rabbit didn’t reply. They didn’t even move. They knew that right now patience was their best friend, and I could sense that they, like me, were wound up like tightly coiled springs.
I zoomed out. The guy looked around again, then slung his shamag over his shoulder and walked back into the cave.
I lowered the scope and looked up. The inky sky had become steely, and the stars were receding. No sign yet of the sun, but dawn was upon us. Keeping my movements to a minimum, I stashed the Kite and replaced it with an ordinary day-vision scope, before settling down to watch again.
We didn’t have to wait long for more movement. Five minutes, perhaps, before five men walked out. This time they were armed. Three of them had what looked like regular AK-47s slung across their backs, but two others carried the Krinkov variant with its short barrel.
It was one of these that I recognized.
I’d only seen one picture of Al-Zaranj, back at the FOB the previous evening. But one was enough. We’d all been trained to take mental snapshots. And there was no doubt about it. Al-Zaranj, our high-
value AQ target, was there. He was talking to the other man with the Krink and they were pointing along the floor of the valley. It was impossible to hear what they were saying, of course, but they looked like they were discussing their departure.
‘We’ve got him,’ I whispered.
There were no sudden movements. Shielded by the boulder, Rabbit set up the LTD on its sturdy little tripod, directing it towards the cave through the triangular space between the boulders, while Voodoo got on the radio to base. ‘Zero, this is Voodoo. We have positive ID. Repeat, we have positive ID.’
I maintained eyes on the target. Al-Zaranj disappeared back into the cave, leaving the remaining four outside. Thirty seconds later three more men appeared. They were carrying crates, which they set down outside the cave mouth. I couldn’t tell for sure what was in them, but I reckoned it was ammo.
Voodoo updated us. ‘They’re sending in Hellfires. Rabbit, laze the target. We’ve got ourselves a UAV in the vicinity.’
‘Roger that,’ Rabbit replied.
It would be a clinical strike. The UAV, controlled from thousands of miles away at MacDill, would be circling high in the sky, out of sight. Once we’d lazed the position of the cave, the UAV would be able to dispatch Hellfires, which would pick up the laser signal and be guided on to the cave with pinpoint accuracy. At least that was the idea. We all knew how great the potential was for a fuck-up. If the coordinates transmitted were wrong by just a whisper, the Hellfires could be taking us out, not Al-Zaranj. No one wanted a blue on blue, and I could sense the tension in the unit.
‘Take your time, Rabbit,’ Dusty murmured. ‘This ain’t a good moment for mistakes.’
Rabbit barely acknowledged him. His mind was clearly on doing the job right, not on worrying what might happen if he got it wrong. There was a whirring sound as the LTD warmed up. Rabbit looked through the viewfinder. ‘Lazing target now,’ he reported quietly.