Apache

A Pakistani station broadcasting at 900 kilohertz was often the clearest. I tuned into a mullah in mid rant. I had no idea what he was saying, but he sounded pretty angry about something; maybe he didn’t like having to whip up the faithful at ten to three in the morning.

‘Hey Carl, check out the ADF Preset 1. I think they’re onto us. “Come out and kill the mosquito pilots,” they’re saying. “The infidels are nearly here.”’

Carl remained unmoved. ‘I’m not listening to it, Ed.’

‘Okay buddy, suit yourself.’ I turned the volume back up in my helmet.

This was getting more surreal by the minute. The infidel-hater had been replaced by the opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. So there we were, armed to the teeth at the dead of night in The Land That Time Forgot on our way to give a whole load of Taliban a rude awakening, and an insomniac radio producer somewhere in Baluchistan had managed to provide us with the perfect soundtrack.

As we reached the holding area, Trigger put a call into the BRF’s JTAC. I turned off Beethoven as Knight Rider Five Six whispered, slowly and softly. We knew he was in position and perilously close to the enemy before he told us.

‘Ugly Five Zero, Knight Rider. I can’t get hold of Bone One One. Can you try to establish comms with him? We need his time on target.’

The Boss made several calls, each of them unanswered. Sometimes prearranged fast air left their arrival right to the last minute. We’d all just have to wait.

Two fresh icons popped up on the map page on my left MPD. Our Radar Warning Receiver had just pinged two other air assets over the battlespace, tens of thousands of feet above us. Their radar codes identified them as the Nimrod MR2 and a Predator UAV. We hadn’t been told about the Predator. We often weren’t.

Five minutes later, at 3.20am, a southern US drawl broke the silence.

‘Knight Rider Five Six, Knight Rider Five Six. This is Bone One Three. How do you read, sir?’

‘Bone One Three, Knight Rider Five Six, Lima Charlie. We were expecting to hear from Bone One One.’

‘Affirmative, sir. The pre-planned B1 has gone unserviceable in Diego Garcia. We are a B1 and we have been tasked to you as the airborne alert from the Afghanistan stack. How many targets do you have for us?’

The BRF JTAC whispered his reply. ‘Bone, Knight Rider. I have many targets. How many grids have you been given and how many bombs can you drop in one go?’

He could drop a maximum of ten in a oner and had not been given any of the pre-planned targets. Knight Rider asked him if he could have all ten.

‘That’s an affirmative.’

‘Okay. Stand by to copy…’

The JTAC read over each and every fifteen-digit grid and four-figure altitude in the same strained whisper. It can’t have been easy with Taliban sentries on the prowl and no wind to hide any noise.

‘Target Number One.’

Pause.

‘Priority target.’

Pause.

‘Forty One Romeo… Papa Quebec.’

Pause.

‘One Zero One… Three Two.’

Pause.

‘Two Double Four… Four Zero.’

Pause.

‘Altitude… Two Two Five Seven… Feet.’

Pause.

‘Target Number Two…’

It made for painful listening, and it took for ever. I copied the ten grids down as well and cross-referenced them on the map. Each of the three accommodation blocks was getting a 2,000-pounder and the middle one was getting two; one in each half. The four highest priority buildings would be on the receiving end of enough 500-pounders to flatten the Pentagon. The B1 could carry a total of twenty-four GBUs or sixteen thermonuclear gravity bombs.

‘Bone, Knight Rider. Read back.’

Bone had to repeat each and every grid and altitude correctly to ensure that he wasn’t going to rain down merry hell on innocent civilians.

There was a pause as the B1’s offensive systems officer tapped in the grids.

‘Bone, Knight Rider. Call Time on Target.’

It was 3.29am.

‘Knight Rider, Bone. TOT in four-zero minutes. I am nine-zero miles to your south.’

Bloody hell. He’s still in Pakistan, about to cross the border.

‘We haven’t got the fuel to wait all night for these jokers,’ Carl grumbled.

They’d slashed the time we’d have over the target by almost half. We’d started off with ninety minutes and now had barely fifty. And that was only if Bone dropped when he said he would. Bone’s problem was that he had to programme each bomb with the coordinates of the starting and finishing points of its journey. To ensure pinpoint accuracy, he also needed to radar map the ground beneath him and then commensurate the grids.

‘Let’s just hope they’re all still fast asleep.’

Many orbits later a third air icon flashed up on the map page, a jet heading towards us from the south. The B1 was now close by. Bone spoke again at 4.05am.

‘All stations, Bone One Three. Time on target in five minutes. Bone is running in.’