Hellfire (38 page)

Jake and Jon were silent. I used the Longbow radar to keep tabs on them to the south of the Shrine.

After a few minutes we were pretty sure our boys would be under cover; they were used to being mortared and it never took them long.

We started our attack run again. Simon identified the banana, then the bakery.

‘Wildman Five One. Confirm we are clear hot on that target?’

‘Widow Seven One. My ground commander wants to know the safety distance.’

I cringed.

I carried the safety distances for bombs on a small card in my black brain, but there was nothing for Apache munitions.

Simon muttered, ‘We don’t have one, do we?’

‘No. Stand by, buddy.’

I switched radios. ‘Widow Seven Zero, Wildman Five One-there isn’t one. Just get your north-east sangar to wear a helmet; it’s not that spectacular.’

‘Stand by.’

We were still running in, but I was slowing up. I needed his green light.

Come on, let us go!

Jake came on the inter-aircraft: ‘We’re chicken and they’re not happy. Don’t fire without clearance. Break off.’

‘Does he really think I’m going to fire without clearance?’ I snapped.

‘He’s just doing his job, mate,’ Simon said quietly.

The JTAC finally came back to us.

‘We’re less than 200 metres from the target and more than a little bit concerned about the safety distance.’

‘You sure they’ll be okay?’ Jake asked on the inter-aircraft frequency.

My frustration bubbled over again. ‘For crying out loud, mate, I’m the army’s Hellfire guru!’

‘And he’s the patrol commander,’ Simon replied.

I got a grip on myself. ‘Yeah, I know.’

I switched radios.

‘Wildman Five Zero and Widow Seven One this is Wildman Five One breaking off.’

I leaned the stick and we flew a graceful arc that would take us back over the DC on the way south.

Simon said, ‘It’s the right call, mate. It doesn’t look as though they want this to go down.’

‘It’s going to have to happen some time, buddy.’

Jon and Jake were circling to the south. I picked up their heat source in my monocle.

‘Wildman Five Zero, roger. Widow Seven One, we’re out of gas and we’re RTB.’

Widow Seven One came back on, his tone urgent: ‘My commander wants that firing point destroyed.’

There was an overly long silence. No one knew what to do. They didn’t want a Hellfire and we had nothing else that could do the job. Jon was critical on fuel and we were running out fast. We were just passing south of the Shrine and needed to decide if we stayed or ran.

‘This is becoming farcical,’ I said to Jon and Jake on the inter-aircraft radio.

‘What’s the risk to them?’ Jake asked.

‘There isn’t any risk.’

‘Go for it then, but be quick.’

‘Widow Seven One, Wildman Five One. Trust me, you’ll be fine. If you’re worried, get your men under cover. I will attack south to north, so the blast is away from you. Do you want it destroyed?’

In other words, make your bloody mind up: you either want it taken out or you don’t.

‘Widow Seven One. A-firm, clear hot.’

Fucking brilliant!

I turned the aircraft hard round and rolled it out. We were running in. We were pointing straight at Now Zad’s centre. The DC was low and left of us on my thermal picture. We were going to fire the missile long of the base.

I glanced down at my MPD. I wanted Simon to fire from as far away as he could and that meant as soon as possible. We had to turn 180 degrees after firing to begin the journey home. We’d already hit chicken fuel and every minute in this direction was an extra minute getting back.

Simon said, ‘I can’t ID it.’

I nodded at the screen. ‘It’s about thirty metres along the top of the building.’

Then I realised: Simon hadn’t been with us when we orientated to find the bakery the other day.

‘Keep coming right, keep coming right-ON!’

The Turret looked completely different from this angle because it was sited at the front of the roof. The thermal contrast on it was very poor too. From the east or west it stood proud of the roofline; from here it merged with the buildings behind it.

‘Are you sure, Ed?’

‘One hundred per cent. I can see the bakery and the banana to its right. It’s the only three-storey set-up here.’

Simon tried to lock it up with the Image Auto-Track (IAT) but was struggling to capture the image against the backdrop.

We were getting closer and closer.

‘Break off and run in again, Ed. I’m not doing this manually,’ Simon said. ‘I need this locked up. He’s freaking about it as it is. If we miss we’ll never get permission to use a Hellfire again.’

‘Okay, mate. No problem.’

I didn’t blame him for wanting to lock the target up properly. Neither of us had ever fired a Hellfire out of training. We already had people shitting themselves on the ground. So if we were going to make this happen, it had to go like clockwork, no matter what the fuel gauge read.

I broke off right to come round again.

The IAT was an awesome TADS tool which grabbed the target and held it. You looked for a thermal contrast and centred the crosshair on the brighter or darker constituent. When you engaged the IAT’s gates they closed in on the contrasting shape and centred the crosshair on it. From then on, no matter what you did with the Apache, the gates would hold that target dead centre.

You could fire the missile without locking up the target by holding the crosshair over it with your right thumb, pulling the laser with your right index finger and squeezing the trigger with your left, keeping the crosshair and laser in place throughout the missile’s flight. But if something momentarily interrupted your aim, you’d have to fight to get the crosshair back on what was already a difficult target to ID. And this wasn’t a stationary vehicle or a remote outpost in the middle of nowhere that we had all the time in the world to hit-and no worries about where the missile might go if we fucked up. This was a hard target to ID, close to troops, in the middle of a town, at night. And we were rapidly running out of fuel.

It was also going to be the first Hellfire that had ever been fired in anger-but nothing angered me more right now than the AA gun sitting in the Turret.

I broke off and set up. Jake came on the radio as we turned. ‘We need to RTB
now
; we’re short of gas.’

‘One more run…Setting up…’ I didn’t quite know whether I was asking him or telling him.

No answer; he wants us to fire

I banged it around. ‘We’re running in.’

I begged he wouldn’t say stop.

We were a lot further out this time and Simon needed every available second to ID the target.

The thermal contrast on the Turret was poor. The gates wouldn’t hold the centre of it. Simon moved his crosshair to the left, where the edge was dark enough to engage the IAT. The gates grabbed on and the crosshair centred itself on the left extreme.

Simon flicked the offset button which gave him a certain amount of authority over his crosshair when it was held by the IAT. We were closing fast and virtually running on air. I kept quiet. Simon was doing a brilliant job. As he applied pressure to a thumb-force-controller the crosshair moved to the centre of the Turret while the gates still held the lock to the left. He’d done it.

‘It’s the right-hand missile,’ I said, ‘and I’ve stepped on it so it doesn’t break your lock.’ The nose was pointing slightly right so the Hellfire wouldn’t fly across his TADS image.

‘Confirm we’re still hot,’ he barked. He was right to call it one more time. Everyone was jumpy as hell. He wanted to make sure the Widow hadn’t changed his mind.

‘Wildman Five One,’ I said over the radio, ‘confirm we’re cleared hot.’ Simon couldn’t change frequency; he was using every finger and thumb to hold his aim. I bet he hadn’t blinked either.

‘Clear hot.’

‘Fire, Simon!’ I yelled.

And then he must have pressed the trigger.

I heard the
whoosh
from the right-hand side of the aircraft, and the missile glowed as it shot off the launcher, clearing the aircraft without cutting through Simon’s line of sight.

‘Climbing.’ My job was to build Simon’s mental image of what was happening every step of the way. If something odd happened-
like a woman or child suddenly appearing beside the target-he needed to know where the missile was, not just how much time remained before impact.

‘Climbing…Levelling…And dropping.’ I glanced down. Simon still had his crosshair smack in the middle of the target. I looked back up.

‘Dropping,’ I confirmed. I watched the glow of its heat source shrink to a pinpoint as it sped towards Now Zad.

‘Three…Two…One…Impact…’

The whole MPD screen went white and Simon’s IAT gates lost their lock in the blossoming explosion.

Simon immediately zoomed the FLIR picture out to the widest field of view. All I could see was 500 metres of Now Zad town and this big ball of heat in front of it. A second later everything was black again.

I looked through the front of my window and saw an orange glow give way to darkness.

‘Breaking off,’ I called to Jake and the JTAC on the Mission Net. I threw the aircraft onto its right side and brought it round hard.

‘Wildman Five Zero and Wildman Five One are RTB, send BDA.’ Jake was all over it like a rash. He was keen to get out of there.

I could see Simon manually tracking the target for as long as he could to get the Battle Damage Assessment himself. As we passed 120 degrees, his TADS hit its left stop. He couldn’t get any further back. We’d lost it. The last image was of intense heat and a devastated building.

‘Widow Seven One-stand by.’

We were running back and once again the Apache told me exactly what speed to fly at to maximise our distance. Jon was forward and right of us by about four klicks. He’d set off before the impact so I could only guess he was on fumes.

‘Widow Seven One-Delta Hotel, Delta Hotel, firing point destroyed.’

I tried hard not to give out a whoop.

Jake asked: ‘Wildman Five Zero-was there any collateral to you?’

‘Widow Seven One-negative, just a bang.’

‘Wildman Five Zero-pass that information onto the rest of the JTACs and copy.’ He wanted tonight’s
lessons identified
to be
lessons learned
.

‘Copied-and I hope not to see you again tonight.’

Jake, ever the cool guy, replied: ‘Don’t hesitate if it kicks off again.’

We headed south over the desert and past the mountains. I felt fantastic. We’d fired our first Hellfire. But I also felt drained. We couldn’t go through this nightmare again. I resolved to go and debrief the Widow Tactical Operations Cell when we got back. We had to be clear about this on future sorties. The guys on the ground could say what effect they wanted: I want that man killed. I want that building destroyed. I want that area suppressed. But how any of those things were achieved had to be up to us. We were the only ones qualified to know which weapon matched the target. I didn’t ever want to go down this route again. We called it the long screwdriver; someone else, detached from us, tinkering with what we were doing in the cockpit, fine-tuning our attack.

We knew the risk to the troops on the ground and we’d tell the JTAC if it wasn’t safe to fire. Normally it was the JTAC’s responsibility to make sure there was separation and distance, but he worked with fast jets that dropped bombs. They had all the distances worked out-Apaches didn’t. We’d been firing just ten metres from our own troops this morning and we’d swapped initials, so surely they must know that if we were prepared to do that, we weren’t talking danger close?

I could understand this ground commander’s concerns. He’d never seen a Hellfire go off before.

I could understand the Widow’s concern too. Charlie Alpha had been out in Oman with us, staying miles away from the target in case something went wrong. Now all of a sudden he was just 200 metres from it, shitting himself.

The dropping of a bomb is a fine art. JTACs work with the expectation of a hit, so they have all the safety distances worked out. With an Apache, it was more fluid. We’d bring it as close as we needed to without killing our own troops. And we’d always let them know how bad it was going to get.

This was another evolution in the rules of engagement, in how we employed our weapons and integrated with the ground force with intimate fires. We could get in close, like we had in the run-in earlier, to narrow down our arcs. If need be, we’d fire 100 metres from them. We’d do whatever we could to help them, but they had to understand they couldn’t tell us which weapon to fire. They just had to tell us what the target was, what effect they wanted, and we would do the rest.

We were not Close Air Support. We were Intimate Support.

I admitted to Simon on the way back that I was dog tired. He was too. We weren’t getting much sleep, we weren’t eating regularly, and we were taking far too many risks. They were escalating with every sortie. No matter what we planned for, we would always get something blindside that we didn’t see coming.

We’d gone up there and we’d achieved our objective. Now Zad was resupplied with men and materials. Above all, they’d taken us on with a double A and we’d won.

We refuelled, rearmed with 30 mm and Hellfire, and called Ops for permission to shut down.

We were about to go in and debrief the sortie. As the Squadron Weapons Officer, I was becoming increasingly unpopular, debriefing every shot, but it was a very steep learning curve for everyone.
I wasn’t there to be popular and I was going to have to tell our Apache pilots that they were responsible for their own weapons and there were no guidelines. We must have had the only weapon system in the UK arsenal that didn’t have any safety parameters.

I gathered them all before we went into our debrief to explain what I meant.

‘Simon. How close to our own troops can you fire a Hellfire?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.

I asked a few others and they were just as stumped. I told them what we’d just done and explained about the angles we used to limit collateral.