Apache

‘We covered them as much as we could with Hellfire and cannon, but it wasn’t enough. With five serious casualties they were in a whole world of pain, and had no chance of continuing the attack. It was now light and the Taliban had already begun to encircle them. The order was given to withdraw. We put down everything we could to protect them on the way out. I used all my cannon rounds…

‘The first we knew of the MIA was a few minutes ago, after we pulled off target. He was one of the casualties. We’ve no idea where he is or how it happened.’

‘That’s all copied. Thanks, Nick.’

‘Ford – that’s the MIA’s name. Lance Corporal Mathew Ford. Good luck guys. I’m sorry.’

He had nothing to apologise for. Getting the marines out of that hornets’ nest without any more casualties was a miracle in itself. Tony and FOG would have been flying harder than ever to keep up with the thrust of Nick and Charlotte’s offensive.

Colonel Magowan now faced every commander’s worst nightmare. There was no point in the marines going back in without knowing where Lance Corporal Ford was. With the weight of fire from the fort and the surrounding villages, it would have been suicide. The marines were still firing from the ridge in a desperate attempt to suppress the enemy. It was all they could do for Ford until they knew where he was.

15. FINDING MATHEW FORD

We rounded the gun line as all three 105s sparked up together. A series of concentric pressure rings surged out of each barrel across the desert floor, then disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke. Inside our air-conditioned chariot, I didn’t hear a whisper.

Carl threw the aircraft into a hard left turn, and then righted her again a second later. The Power Meter Indicator flashed up in my monocle as we pulled G. The torque was up so high we were within 10 per cent of blowing up the engines. Carl kept milking them for everything he could get. We were going balls out now. If the Taliban hadn’t got Ford, every second counted. At times like this, Carl was the man to fly with.

‘Eight klicks to run. On target in two and a half minutes.’

‘Thanks Carl. Keep south and east of the fort. The guns are firing onto the village west of it.’

Plumes of dark smoke were now clearly visible on the horizon directly in front of us. It was time to go to work. I pressed TADS on the ‘Sight Select’ switch on my right ORT handgrip, and the camera inside the nose turret jumped into life. I hit the ‘Slave’ button; the Apache knew where Jugroom was. As quick as a flash, a black and white image filled the MPD: smoke spewing from the fort. The river ran north–south in the distance. A hodgepodge of bushes, trees, walls and buildings was shrouded in a billowing cloud of dust. Every few seconds, a shell or heavy-calibre tracer round exploded with a tiny flash of light and a fresh puff of smoke.

The Taliban would try to get Ford into a building and obscure him from our optics as soon as they could. But searching for something outside, in a Green Zone battle, was already a nightmare from this distance.

‘Ugly Five One is ready for a talk on. Where exactly was the MIA last seen?’

The JTAC was quick. ‘There is a major bend in the river, with a tributary to the east and a canal running north off it…’

I zoomed in closer.

‘Copied. Confirm it’s the one running into the smoke?’

‘Affirm. There’s a track on the eastern side of the canal running north. It is then bordered by a canal on the west and a wall on the east. That wall is the beginning of the fort. Copied?’

‘Copied. Visual with the wall.’ The adobe and stone battlement glowed in the low sun.

‘The furthest our friendly callsigns got was about a hundred metres along that track. Stand by for a grid.’

Grid 41 R PQ 1142 3752 Altitude 2257 feet. I punched the info into the system as he gave it to me then slaved the TV camera to it. The screen showed the fort’s south-west corner, next to the towpath.

I looked for a unique feature to confirm I had the correct starting point for the search; I still needed to be 100 per cent sure. ‘Ugly Five One is visual with a wall at the grid. About fifty metres east, away from the canal, is a bomb crater where it has been demolished. Confirm I am looking at the correct wall?’

‘Affirm. That was their limit of exploitation. We believe they were in the vicinity of that crater when they got contacted.’

‘Copied. We’re searching now.’

Carl relayed to Geordie. We were closing fast now, so I zoomed out as wide as I could on the TADS to get a better overall picture. We were almost at the edge of the desert. The marines’ firebase sat on top of a berm, beyond which the ground plummeted to the river. Dozens of commandos were in position, in WMIKs, Vikings or on their belt buckles, all of them desperate to do their bit to get their mate back. Light Dragoons’ Scimitars were lined up alongside them.