Apache

Carl swung us west, back to the main Taliban complex, to film the battle’s aftermath with our TADS cameras for the battlegroup to analyse. The first rays of sunlight dusted everything below us a delicate pink, then bright, flaming orange as the sun’s crest popped over the horizon. I looked out of my right-hand window as we passed over the complex. It was only then that I realised the full extent of the devastation we’d caused.

It looked like the old pictures of Hiroshima. The earth was still smouldering; the wisps of battlefield smoke hung low in the chill morning air, giving the place a strange, dreamlike quality. The trees that had survived were charred and skeletal. The huts we’d Hellfired were mounds of darkened rubble; the 2,000- and 500-pounders had reduced everything in their path to powder.

Trigger’s leaker lay where he’d fallen, the huge hole in his chest now a dark ring. His first sentry was still slumped in his guardhut, but the one hiding behind the tree hadn’t died immediately; he’d crawled nearly forty metres towards the mosque.

‘Check out east, Ed. Here comes the burial party.’

A long line of women and a few unarmed men began to fan out from the far irrigation channel and made their way slowly towards the complex. We’d seen this before. After a battle, the Taliban forced the locals to scour the ground for their dead. One or two members of the burial party were probably Taliban directing the operation; they knew they were safe as houses.

Behind them two local women emerged from a domed wicker hut, halfway up the path where I’d gunned down the runner. A jumble of legs and feet stuck out of its arched entrance. They must have been piling up the corpses inside. A man in a black dishdash ducked down and crawled into the hut. When he backed out he wiped his hands on the ground before he stood up.

Fifteen minutes later, the Boss told Lashkar Gah we had everything.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, after Billy had awarded Trigger his DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) via text, the graveyard humour ran riot on the flight back.

As we passed Garmsir, the Boss said he’d check in with the incumbent JTAC to check all was still quiet with them. It was the opportunity I’d been waiting for all night. I jumped in before he could make the call.

‘Ugly Five Zero, Five One. I had a message passed into the cockpit during the upload. The JTAC in Garmsir has switched to the alternate frequency due to atmospheric interference on primary.’

‘Copied. What’s the frequency?’

‘Don’t know. I can’t find my comms card. Sorry.’

Cue the Boss flicking through his Black Brain to the frequencies page. And there it was. Do you suffer from erectile dysfunction? Put the pleasure back in your life with a little blue pill… Below the headline there was a photo of a good-looking middle-aged man staring disconsolately into his Y-fronts. Geordie had torn the Viagra advert out of a magazine.

‘Very funny, Elton.’

I couldn’t believe it had taken the whole night for Trigger to look up a radio frequency.

Rocco hadn’t been seen for three weeks and we were worried that he’d been taken prisoner. The conspiracy theory had it that the Boss had hidden him because he was so alarmed by the stunt during General Dannatt’s visit, but nobody could prove it. Two days before Glacier 1 was launched, Geordie and Darwin came up with a plan to smoke Rocco out. We’d Rocco Trigger relentlessly by other means until he had the Italian Stallion released.

We had a strong cup of coffee back at the JHF, courtesy of Billy, who’d lost Apache Triv on an excellent HIDAS question from Carl. Then it was into the debrief. The Ops Officer had crunched a few stats during our second sortie.

‘Well, Mr Macy, aren’t we Flash Harry this morning. Not only was that the fastest pair of Hellfires ever fired by the British Army, it’s also the first time we’ve had two in the air from one Apache at the same time in combat.’

I was so consumed by the mission, I’d had no idea.

‘As for you, Boss, Kev Blundell tells me you’ve passed your £1 million of Hellfire marker. And for all of you: that’s the most Hellfires ever fired in one mission. But I imagine you don’t need me to tell you that.’

We debated the one aspect of the mission that had puzzled us all – the identity of ‘Higher’. Maverick Zero Bravo was a new callsign on all the pilots, as well as everyone in the JHF.

‘I tried to look it up,’ the Ops Officer said. ‘It’s not in any of the battlegroup’s orders and it’s not on the Air Plan. It’s not Colonel Magowan; you spoke to his JTAC. And it wasn’t Brigade either; they were Widow Seven Zero. I can’t find any reference to Maverick Zero Bravo anywhere.’