Apache

The other thing I knew about Special Forces was that an awful lot of their missions never went down – but I didn’t want to piss on Nick’s bonfire. He wouldn’t have wanted to believe me anyway.

It was a fifty-minute flight to Kandahar. Around the halfway mark we passed ten klicks to the south of a remote little town called Maiwand. The Boss pointed it out. ‘We studied it at Sandhurst.’ It was the site of the British Army’s second great Afghan disaster: 969 officers and men were massacred there during the Second Afghan War in 1880. A massively superior 25,000-strong native force wiped out the 1st Grenadiers and 66th Regiment of Foot, throwing the nation into shock and precipitating a campaign of bloody revenge. ‘A grim lesson,’ Trigger said. ‘They were betrayed by their local allies.’

It was always odd coming back to Kandahar after a week or so at Camp Bastion. Its giant runway and line of helicopters stretched almost as far as the eye could see, dwarfing our tiny sideshow 100 miles away. Dozens of Blackhawks, Chinooks and Apache AH64As jostled for space. Beside the military colossus of the United States, we were a bunch of pygmies. The Special Forces compound was set discreetly to one side of the sprawling base’s main thoroughfare. Its Hesco Bastion walls were ringed with razor wire.

Bob, the SBS officer running the operation that night, waited for us at the front gate with a couple of colleagues. They both introduced themselves as Bob, too. Three Bobs. The normal SF drill. One of the other two Bobs was the operation’s JTAC. We never found out what the third Bob did.

The Bobs walked us swiftly to a nearby building and down a short corridor. Framed photographs of Sergeant Paul Bartlett and Captain David Patten hung from the wall, their names typed neatly beneath their smiling faces.

‘Sorry about your boys,’ I said. ‘We found them the following morning.’

‘Thanks. It was a crying shame.’

We were led into a briefing room completely devoid of furniture and decoration, except for one table and a handful of chairs. A room for visitors like us, sanitised of all useful information. We would only ever know from the Special Forces what they needed us to know. It was how SF always worked. Officer Bob plonked a laptop and projector down on the table, connected them and began the brief.

The mission was to kill or capture a senior Taliban player called Haji Mullah Sahib. In his mid-fifties, he was the former governor of Helmand province. He was believed to be holed up in Siah Choy, an isolated area of the Panjwayi, in a major Taliban command post. Officer Bob showed us maps of the target area and aerial photographs of the compound. Other Taliban commanders were expected to be joining him that night.

The operation was going to go one of two ways. We’d know which by a certain time that night before we took off. If the right intelligence came in to establish Sahib was definitely in the compound, they would bomb it. There was no point in risking boots on the ground unnecessarily. If the intelligence didn’t come in, a ground assault would be launched.

‘You’ll only be needed for the second option,’ Officer Bob said. ‘But the second option is looking likely at the moment.’

The second option would go like this. A large ground force of SBS would be dropped some distance off, move in and surround the compound, then give it a ‘hard knock’. Nobody expected Sahib to come quietly, so the SBS force had prepared some backup. (JTAC Bob took over, and Officer Bob leaned back against the wall.)

A vast air stack would position itself above them, from a Nimrod MR2 at the very top to an array of fast air in the middle and then us at the bottom. Each aircraft was given its own height parameters so we would all deconflict; ours was from 3,000 feet down to the ground. The assault teams could also call in fire from 81-mm mortars and 155-mm artillery guns if they needed it. I’d never seen so much firepower concentrated on one small place in all my time in Afghanistan.

‘It’s immediate and intimate fire support that we’re looking for from you. We’d like you to hang around to the south of the target area so you’re ready to tip in whenever I call.’

He showed us on a map where he wanted us, asked if we had any questions, and then wrapped up the brief with one final to me, as the lead front-seater on the mission.

‘Can you confirm which close-in fire support card you’re using, mate? Mine might be out of date…’

Billy knew he’d ask me that. It detailed the criteria he needed to give us, so we could bring weapons to bear. I flicked through my Black Brain to the close-in fire support card, and there he was… From Rocco, With Love. x.

JTAC Bob saw Rocco immediately. ‘What the fuck’s that?’

‘Er, it’s Rocco. A squadron joke… you see…’ I tried to explain Rocco.