Apache

Magowan didn’t just have the use of his own troops. Every asset in the UK inventory had been laid at his battlegroup’s disposal, from SBS teams specialising in close-target reconnaissance to aerial drones and a Nimrod MR2 spy plane. Fitted with a high-tech surveillance suite, the ageing jet followed vehicle and troop movements from 25,000 feet, for many hours and over hundreds of miles, totally unseen. Even the national intelligence agencies, MI6 and GCHQ, were tapped up for any SigInt or HumInt which might be of use.

‘The operation has made some good progress so far,’ the Ops Officer told us. ‘They’ve picked up a lot more than they expected to by this stage. They’ve got some valuable int hits on how the Tier Two fighters come in; to be frank – it’s because there are so bloody many of them.’

Huge numbers were coming through from Pakistan. They passed over the border at Baram Chah, a lawless opium trading town that straddled both countries. From there, they would be split into groups of three or four to avoid detection, put into single Toyota 4x4s, and driven at speed across the desert until they hit the Green Zone. The Helmand River ran from north to south until it bent west sixty klicks south of Garmsir into what we called ‘the fish hook’, and swept on into Nimruz. It was somewhere north of the fish hook that the Toyotas deposited the new combatants and the Green Zone MSR began. The exact location had yet to be pinpointed because the recce units hadn’t got down that far – but the battlegroup was confident it was only a question of time. We were impressed. It was a hell of an operation.

‘So where do we come in?’ Billy said. ‘Skip to the chase, sir – the suspense is killing me.’

‘Because we’re a bit too noisy to do masses of stand-off recce and we’ve got enough on our plates already, our bit kicks in with Stage Two. It looks like we’re getting written in big time for the kinetic assaults.’

There were grunts of approval from every attack pilot in the room.

‘But there are one or two little tasks they’ve asked for us to help with during Stage One as well…’

HQ Flight was given an Op Glacier job on our next Deliberate Tasking shift. The Brigade Reconnaissance Force had asked for Apache close air support for a tricky little spot fifteen kilometres south of Garmsir on the eastern edge of the Green Zone. They had some good intelligence that the place was a major Taliban hot spot. But the vegetation was particularly thick there, so they had to go in close to verify and pin down the enemy’s exact location. If it went badly for them and they got smacked, they wanted us to steam in and sort it out.

We were asked to go down late morning and stand off five klicks into the Red Desert so as not to give the game away. If the Taliban heard us clattering over them, they’d immediately go to ground.

I’d finally managed to wrestle the front seat back from Trigger, so I was mission commander for the sortie. It was a forty-five minute trip from Bastion, giving us about an hour on station.

We arrived at our desert spot and I checked in with their JTAC, Knight Rider Five Five. The Brigade Recce Force (BRF) had chosen their own callsign as well: they were clearly Hoff fans. They gave us their grid, and we pinged them 700 metres from the Green Zone, in a convoy of six WMIK Land Rovers and Pinzgauer trucks – a light, manoeuvrable and well-armed force, but without any protection when the rounds started coming in.

‘Ugly Five One, Knight Rider Five Five. Here’s the plan. We don’t want to go into the Green Zone because we think we’ll get cut up. We’re going to try and entice the Taliban to take a shot at us by going up on a ridgeline just before the Zone starts.’

‘Nightrider Five Five, Ugly. Confirm, you actually want the Taliban to shoot at you?’

‘Affirm. It’s the best way to assess their location and strength. That’s when we might need your help. Confirm you can see the ridgeline?’

‘Affirm. We have you visual on our optics. We’re due east; can you hear our rotors?’

‘Negative Ugly. We can see a couple of black dots through binos, but that’s about it.’

‘Good. We’re in dead ground to the Green Zone but we’ll have some fire down for you within thirty seconds of your call. Keep us updated on what you see and pass suspect grids regularly; it will cut down on our response time.’

‘Knight Rider Five Five, that’s a copy; stand by for some playtime.’

We orbited in oval-shaped ‘race tracks’ at seventy knots, keeping 100 feet off the desert floor to stay out of view. Either my TADS camera or Billy’s was on the marines at all times. Our downdraughts made wonderful patterns in the thick red sand beneath us.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. We’re moving up onto the ridgeline now. Get ready.’

We saw their vehicles cautiously ascend the 500 metre slope. I actioned the cannon.

‘Knight Rider, Ugly. We’re now presenting the vehicles to the Green Zone. Stand by for contact.’