Spare

What on earth was he banging on about? Afghanistan was worlds more dangerous than Iraq. At that moment Britain had seven thousand soldiers in Afghanistan and each day found them engaged in some of the fiercest combat since the Second World War.

But who was I to argue? If Colonel Ed thought Afghanistan safer, and if he was willing to send me there, great.

What job would I do in Afghanistan, Colonel?

FAC. Forward air controller.

I blinked.

Highly sought-after job, he explained. FACs were tasked with orchestrating all air power, giving cover to lads on the ground, calling in raids—not to mention rescues, medevacs, the list went on. It wasn’t a new job, certainly, but it was newly vital in this new sort of warfare.

Why’s that, sir?

Because the bloody Taliban is everywhere! And nowhere!

You simply couldn’t find them, he explained. Terrain was too rugged, too remote. Mountains and deserts honeycombed with tunnels and caves—it was like hunting goats. Or ghosts. You had to get the bird’s-eye view.

Since the Taliban had no air force, not one plane, that was easy. We British, plus the Yanks, owned the air. But FACs helped us press that advantage. Say a squadron out on patrol needed to know about nearby threats. The FAC checked with drones, checked with fighter pilots, checked with helicopters, checked his high-tech laptop, created a 360-degree picture of the battlefield.

Say that same squadron suddenly came under fire. The FAC consulted a menu—Apache, Tornado, Mirage, F-15, F-16, A-10—and ordered up the aircraft best suited to the situation, or the best one available, then guided that aircraft onto the enemy. Using cutting-edge hardware, FACs didn’t simply rain fire on the enemy’s heads, they placed it there, like a crown.

Then he told me that all FACs get a chance to go up in a Hawk and experience being in the air.

By the time Colonel Ed stopped talking I was salivating. FAC it is, sir. When do I leave?

Not so fast.

FAC was a plum job. Everyone wanted it. So that would take some doing. Also, it was a complex job. All that technology and responsibility required loads of training.

First things first, he said. I’d have to go through a challenging certification process.

Where, sir?

At RAF Leeming.

In…the Yorkshire Dales?

5.

Early autumn. Drystone walls, patchwork fields, sheep snacking on grassy slopes. Dramatic limestone cliffs and crags and scree. In every direction, another beautiful purple moor. The landscape wasn’t quite so famous as the Lake District, just over to the west, but it was still breathtaking, and still inspired some of the great artists in British history. Wordsworth, for one. I’d managed to avoid reading that old gent’s stuff in school, but now I thought he must be pretty damn good if he spent time around these parts.

It felt like sacrilege to be standing on a cliff above this place and trying to obliterate it.

Of course it was pretend obliteration. I didn’t actually blow up one single dale. Still, at the end of each day I felt I had. I was studying the Art of Destruction, and the first thing I learned was that destruction is partially creative. It begins with imagination. Before destroying something you have to imagine it destroyed, and I was getting very good at imagining the dales as a smoking hellscape.

The drill each day was the same. Rise at dawn. Glass of orange juice, bowl of porridge, then a full English, then head into the fields. As first daylight poured over the horizon I’d begin speaking to an aircraft, usually a Hawk. The aircraft would reach its IP, initial point, five to eight nautical miles away, and then I’d give the target, signal the run. The aircraft would turn and commence. I’d talk it through the sky, over the countryside, using different landmarks. L-shaped wood. T-shaped dike. Silver barn. In selecting landmarks I’d been instructed to start big, move on to something medium, then pick something small. Picture the world, I was told, as a hierarchy.

Hierarchy, you say? Think I can handle that.

Each time I called out a landmark, the pilot would say back: Affirm.

Or else: I am visual. I liked that.

I enjoyed the rhythms, the poetry, the meditative chant of it all. And I found deeper meanings in the exercise. I’d often think: It’s the whole game, isn’t it? Getting people to see the world as you see it? And say it all back to you?