Apache

Rigg and I grabbed Mathew under the shoulder straps of his body armour. It was now a straight forty-five metre line to the aircraft, but through all of that appallingly soft earth. We raised his torso and backside to create as little resistance as possible and took up the strain. His neck and chin sank into his body armour. He really was heavy. Jesus, at least twenty stone with all his kit on.

Another roar of 30-mm cannon; at least five hard bursts and a hundred rounds. Tony flew low over my left shoulder whilst Charlotte slapped it all straight into the treeline barely 200 metres to our north-east. It was the closest support fire they’d needed to put down yet.

Keep pulling that trigger, Charlotte…

I looked up to see Carl, still in the Apache’s back seat, finish saying something into the radio mike. He gave me a thumbs down, then a scooping gesture with a curved hand. He repeated it, quicker, and then pointed vigorously behind him.

Army sign language: thumbs down means the enemy, and scooping means flanking. The enemy was flanking to the east of us. That’s who Charlotte and Tony must have been hosing down. The east; I knew it. And they were obviously closing fast.

‘Guys, the Taliban are trying to get through the trees over there. We’ve got to step on it.’

Rigg and I lurched forwards in unison. I realised how hard it was going to be. We couldn’t run with him; we couldn’t even walk with him. To get any movement at all, we had to lean hard into each step, and yank Mathew alongside us. As we did so, our leading feet sank deep into the earth, pivoting us off balance. We stopped, took another step and pulled, pulled, pulled again.

The deeper we sank, the higher we had to hold Mathew to stop him from disappearing into the bloody stuff too. We were holding him practically at chest height, but couldn’t keep him there for long because our arms were burning. He slipped back down at the end of every lurching stride. It was totally ball breaking.

I snatched another glance at the aircraft. Carl was pumping his fist up and down, a manic expression on his face. I knew exactly how he felt. We’d moved, but not far, and at this rate it was going to take us all fucking day. It was also getting lighter; the dust was starting to clear. Bad news. We needed all the cover we could get.

We had no choice but to press on. After five more metres or so of chaos, Rigg and I established some semblance of a rhythm. Up, lean, take a step, heave, down. Up, lean, take a step, heave, down. Rivulets of sweat gathered beneath the brow pad of my helmet and rolled down into my eyes. My nostrils stung with the cordite. My arms felt like lead and there were daggers in my thighs. But we were doing it. We had twenty metres to go.

Then I realised the supporting fire into the treeline to our left had stopped. The noise had shifted behind us.

‘There’s AK fire the other side of the wall…’ Fraser-Perry strained to see whatever was going on in there. ‘Sounds real close…’

A few seconds later, an Apache’s 30-mm opened up again 100 metres away, high and to our north. Billy and Geordie. They were obviously in serious trouble; Charlotte must have switched her fire to support them. It left us without any cover, but there was no point in sitting around thinking about it.

I used the momentary pause to change my grip; my arms weighed a ton and my hands were shaking. I rammed one under Mathew’s body armour and out the other side by his collar, then grabbed my own wrist to form a tight noose.

Despair was starting to flood through me. For the first time I thought we might not be able to do it. I didn’t know where I was going to summon the energy for the last few metres.

The Apache’s rotor blades battered the air close by. I needed some Para aggression to get me through this. ‘Right,’ I roared. ‘Come on!’

At that moment, plumes of soil and sand erupted like a series of mini volcanoes about a dozen metres to the left of us. I stared at them, momentarily transfixed, unable to work out what the hell was going on.

Then I caught sight of at least six bright orange flashes 150 metres away, perfect star shapes spread out along the treeline. Muzzle flashes. Automatic fire.

The earth continued to erupt only two or three metres away now and the air crackled as bullets whipped above our heads. A huge weight pulled on my right side. Mathew’s whole body mass pressed down on my pistol holster, dragging me onto the ground, and then my heel was trapped under his torso and I collapsed back on top of him. Rigg had let go of him entirely. As my head turned, I saw him go down, face first.

I was now pinned to the dirt by Mathew, momentarily powerless to do anything but watch the muzzle flashes approaching through the haze.

And Rigg’s hit. Oh fuck. This wasn’t how I wanted us to die…

I ripped my right arm out of Mathew’s body armour and scrabbled for my pistol. But it was no longer there.