Apache

It was our cue. Billy and Carl held back for another sixty seconds to ensure we didn’t catch any of the blast, and pointed the aircrafts’ noses hard down for Koshtay. The two Apaches were neck and neck, fifty feet from the ground and going max chat. Trigger and Billy were 500 metres to our left. We’d divided up the workload by splitting the target area in two. They’d take the northern half of the site, working north to south; we’d take the south, working south to north.

‘Ugly callsigns, Knight Rider Five Six. You are cleared hot to engage any leakers on the bombs’ impact.’

I shifted forward and hunched over the gunning grips. The moment that lazy Texas voice told us his bombs were in the air, Carl and Billy would climb hard to our engaging height. We should hear Bone when we had around five klicks to go. We didn’t. Bone came on at the four-kilometre mark instead.

‘Bone is off. No drop, repeat no drop. Resetting.’

Fucking hell.

‘Steady tu –’ Billy began.

‘Slow turn,’ Carl unintentionally interrupted.

God only knew why Bone didn’t drop. It could have been for any one of a dozen reasons. It wasn’t the time to ask. We needed to reset immediately. We were less than 4,000 metres from the target. Any closer and they’d hear our rotors. A gentle 180-degree turn was crucial to stop the blades chattering and why both pilots made the same call: we could blow this big style.

‘Ugly, Knight Rider. I can hear you. Move back, move back.’

We cruised back towards our holding area. Shit. More time down the drain. It would take Bone at least five minutes to reset, and another five to run in. We were down to forty minutes of combat gas. One more delay and we’d have to go home. It was already agonising, and about to become humiliating. We’d have to tell Knight Rider that he’d have to drop with no follow-up, or delay ninety minutes so we could gas up back at Bastion.

The next time there was no mistake; Bone was early.

‘Bone One Three is off hot. Twenty-six seconds to impact.’

I hit record on the left grip; I didn’t want the rest of the squadron to miss this. But we were still six kilometres out. ‘Climb, climb, climb!’

Keeping their speed up, both pilots heaved on their collectives to max torque and began a rapid climb. We soared up to 2,500 feet and I slaved my TADS straight onto the Taliban camp. I made out the line of seven tall, bushy trees directly in front of the complex, then the canal in front of the trees. No movement from what I could see. That was good. It was still pitch dark.

‘BUSTER,’ the Boss ordered. Our nose tipped forward momentarily before the big stabilator wing on the back of the Apache levelled us out again. We couldn’t risk any delay between the bombs’ impact and our arrival over the target.

But where were the bombs? My clock: they’d been in the air twenty seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I looked out of a side window and my left eye made out flicks of tree below. My right confirmed the desert was ending and the Green Zone about to begin. Jesus, we only had a few klicks left to run. I looked back at my MPD. A pattern of tiny pinpricks of heat fell towards the earth, angled towards the seven trees.

At 4.13 on the dot, all ten of the B1’s GBUs exploded directly in front of us. A series of stroboscopic flashes melted into one blindingly bright light, followed a split second later by cylinders of angry orange flame. The biggest explosion I had ever seen played out in total silence; we still couldn’t hear a thing in the cockpit. The whole complex had turned white on my FLIR.

‘Did you see that?’ Billy was beside himself.

‘Awesome.’ So was Carl.

‘And then some!’

‘Kick right, Carl.’

We couldn’t make it out in the dark and the FLIR would see right through it, but it would be there – the fallout from the blast site: earth, brick and humanity, all vaporised.

‘Ugly Five Zero is looking for the northern sentry,’ Trigger said, as Billy banked their Apache away from us. Then: ‘I’ve got him, he’s still there. Engaging now.’

The sentry must have been sheltered within the mosque’s safety distance. Trigger opened up with his cannon, but his quarry had slipped into the small, roofless outbuilding through a doorway on its northern side. ‘He’s taking cover in the sentry post… Engaging…’

He squeezed off two further bursts. The second threw the sentry around like a rag doll until he finally slumped motionless against a wall. The smoke and dust was starting to clear at ground level, though it still hung high above us. As we circled I scoured the complex for any sign of movement.