Apache

As we passed over their heads, Carl pulled back hard on the cyclic, virtually standing the aircraft on its tail and catapulting me hard into my straps. He needed to go from 161 mph to nothing on a sixpence; if he didn’t we’d overshoot the fort by a mile in a matter of seconds. He banked gently to the left as Billy and Geordie banked right and we began a lazy three-quarter wheel circuit. A white object flew a few hundred feet over the fort and across my TADS screen. We weren’t the only people watching.

‘Keep our height up Carl; there’s a UAV flying around low-level, buddy.’

‘I see it. Don’t worry; you won’t get me low-level over that place.’

Billy and I broke up the ground we needed to search.

‘Let’s start at the last known sighting. Mate, can you take everywhere north of the wall? Carl and I will take the southern side in case he’s crawled down to the river.’

‘Affirm,’ Billy said. ‘We’re on it.’

The radios were going ape-shit now. Even though it had only just been announced, Ford had been officially MIA for thirty minutes and word had spread. Every man and his dog were asking what was going on. Widow Eight Three, a second JTAC working with the gunners, was asking for sitreps to better his targeting. Then there was Nick’s voice calling urgently for more fuel and ammunition on the FM.

I could make out at least three different levels of command on the mission net, including Zulu Company’s OC, Colonel Magowan, and the brigade HQ in Lashkar Gah. It was a given that the CO of 45 Commando would be listening in, and Trigger, who should now be back at Bastion.

A Predator UAV and a Nimrod MR2 circled somewhere way above us. Their downlinks were being pumped into every HQ, fuelling the frenzy. Every rubberneck within reach would be crowded around the feed screens. With an MIA, everyone wants in. Over a hundred minutes had passed since the initial contact; they’d be hanging on every word.

Yup, the mission now bore all the hallmarks of a classic cluster-fuck. The cascade of voices in my ears made it almost impossible to concentrate. They all had a job to do, but I wished they’d all shut up.

I focused the TADS on the corner wall. The image gleamed in the bright sunshine. I moved the camera slowly down the towpath south; in the direction which Mathew Ford would have aimed to withdraw. Carl saw where my TADS was headed in his monocle and tracked east towards the crater.

Twenty seconds later: ‘Ed, I’ve got an unusual shape. It’s about forty metres along the wall, on the southern side.’

‘Okay, stand by.’

I shifted the TADS onto Carl’s line of sight. A large, S-shaped blob lay sprawled on a raised bank about ten metres shy of the crater, two feet away from the wall – exactly where the JTAC said the marines had been contacted.

It looked like a body, lying on its side. I felt a surge of excitement – then got a grip on myself. This wasn’t the time or the place for an outburst of wishful thinking.

Carl continued the wheel turn, bringing us perpendicular to the blob. I swept the surrounding area. There were no more bodies; this one was on its own.

I flicked the TADS’s Field of View button on the left ORT grip with my thumb and magnified the picture nearly five times. It filled a third of the screen. It was definitely a human body. But was it one of theirs, or one of ours? Let it be him. Please let it be him…

‘Good spot, Carl. We have a body. Drop us down to 2,000 feet, mate.’

‘That puts us in RPG range of the fort, Ed…’

‘We can take it. Just twenty seconds at 2,000; that’s all I need.’

‘You’ll have to make it fifteen. Then I’m going to have break right because of the artillery.’

We dropped and I studied the body throughout Carl’s 180-degree turn to the north-west. It was lying on its left side, thighs up at ninety degrees to the torso, feet slightly apart, arms outstretched. It was a natural position to lie in, not contorted, and that was a good sign. The chest looked bulky, another good sign… Osprey body armour and an SA80 rifle? Looked like it. I waited for a better view as we turned. Shit – the camera couldn’t pick it up in the shadow. It was only 8.44am and the sun was still low.

‘Five seconds left, Ed.’

Now square-on to the body, I flicked the TADS into the largest zoom. Final confirmation: trousers and jacket were a similar shade to the ground, and patterned exactly like mine – British DPM.

‘Breaking off, Ed. Sorry. We’ve got to turn out of the guns.’

‘No problem, Carl. It’s him. We’ve got the MIA.’

We’d found our man. But was he still alive? The moment I announced we’d found him the whole world would want to know.