Hellfire. Ed Macy

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СКАЧАТЬ to the OPs, catching the vehicles at the very end of their route, here…’

      The two instructors scribbled away furiously. This was my big departure from the routine suggested by the cheat-maps. The instructors’ preferred Observation Positions for viewing convoys moving through this area were a few miles to the east, on a wooded ridgeline with an unrestricted view of the B3042. In my book, they also allowed unrestricted views of our helicopters. We would be skylined while the enemy blended in with their surroundings-absolutely the opposite of what I felt we needed to achieve. The eye is drawn to movement and I knew that positioning our Gazelles on top of a ridgeline in combat would be suicide-an open invitation for an artillery barrage. And if the convoy stopped we would be heard; the wind would carry the noise of our aircraft directly towards it. They were shit positions.

      I’d done a thorough map-study (something they called ‘intervisibility’ in the Paras) and had found a spot at the bottom of a valley with an equally good field of view. We could see the convoy easily, and wouldn’t miss them since they’d be at the end of their route. I could pop myself and Mick between the trees beside the river, and a huge hill behind us would provide a stealthy backdrop; our green recce helicopters would blend perfectly with our surroundings. In the unlikely event we were seen, we had a fantastic escape route that would allow us to melt away in a heartbeat. Bonzer.

      ‘As soon as we’re at the FRV, both our aircraft will point towards each other and we’ll carry out our drills,’ I continued.’Anti-collision strobes, navigation lights and transponders will be switched off. We will not emit at all. A full 360-degree turn will signal that I’m ready to move. I will know you’re happy, Mick, when you turn your nav lights off. I will then depart and you will follow me to our OPs.’

      To get to our OPs we would manoeuvre through the trees until we ended up eyes-on the road. We would wait there, masked by the trees and our backdrop, until the convoy appeared. We’d count the vehicles, wait until we were sure we had the lot, then skedaddle back for the debrief.

      ‘Any questions?’

      Baxter still looked like he’d swallowed a yo-yo. The instructors said nothing. Like driving test examiners, Herbert and Bateman would sit silently beside us until we got back to camp. They’d only tell us how we’d done when we were back on the ground.

      By way of chit-chat, I asked Herbert what he’d done before joining the Army Air Corps.

      ACC, he said, in some place I’d never heard of.

      Army Catering Corps. If we fucked this up, at least we could count on a Full English.

      We took off just after the sun came up and headed out towards the exercise area. The wind dropped; Devon spread out before us in all its glory and the sea twinkled behind us. We slipped under the wires together fourteen klicks from the FRV, barely six feet off the ground, either side of the river, and began nap of the earth flying-at tree-top height, using the low ground for cover, to keep below the radar horizon. With a final klick to run I dropped down to fifteen feet and began to weave between the trees. I could see Mick a tactical bound behind, following me nicely.

      We were as stealthy as any helicopter could be both from the ground and the air-small, camouflaged, and very hard to spot at this height unless we had to fly around someone out walking his dog.

      The Gazelle wasn’t always quiet. It was difficult to pick up rotor sound from a distance because it was light and had a fenestron tail rotor-thirteen blades housed in a Venturi-but its gears and bearings did emit a high frequency whine when it was in the hover.

      The sun had crested the hills to the east of the FRV point. My goldfish bowl of a cockpit was beginning to warm by the time Mick’s lights were finally extinguished, signalling he was ready. I led the way, a few feet off the ground, climbing for fences and gates.

      As an ex-Para, I knew the value of terrain-masking ingress and egress within an area of operation-no matter whether you were on foot, in a tank or a helicopter.

      I wound us through the belt of trees until we arrived in the OPs. I spotted the road in the distance, uphill through the gaps in the trees-sunlight glinted off a handful of cars threading their way along the dual carriageway towards the Cornish border. The OPs were awesome. The trees cast their shadows across us; even God wouldn’t know we were here. We were nice and early and all we had to do now was sit and observe.

      Mr Herbert took over the controls and I grabbed the pistol grip of the Gazelle Observation Aid, a sight like a periscope built into the canopy above the left pilot’s seat. I peered through its rubber browpad and positioned its field of view on the road nearly a mile away. Eventually I spotted the headlights of the first of the four-ton lorries as it crested the hill to our south-east.

      For the purposes of the exercise, the four-tonners represented main battle tanks; the Land Rovers that accompanied them were supposed to be armoured personnel carriers (APCs). We had been told roughly when to expect the convoy but not how many vehicles would be in it. After five minutes, I counted five fourtonners and six Land Rovers. Now I just had to wait and see if it was a split convoy or if there were any stragglers. Five minutes passed, then ten. Glancing through the trees to my left, I could almost feel Mick’s frustration. No matter. I was doing this by the book. As a soldier, I knew that battlefields weren’t neat and ordered-that you should always expect the unexpected. I didn’t want to get back to Fremington to be told I was on Strike One because we’d missed a second convoy travelling a few miles behind the first.

      Only when we were approaching our fuel ‘bug-out’ point did I decide that it was safe to return. I led Mick back to the FRV and he led us back to the camp. We landed with just enough fuel to have coped with a diversion should we have come face to face with unexpected enemy on our return.

      After shutting down the Gazelles we were directed into the improvised briefing room while our instructors checked in with the convoy to see if we’d been spotted.

      ‘How did you think it went?’ Herbert asked as he closed the door.

      I knew that my flying was okay, so the only thing he could fail me for was the mission itself. ‘We achieved our mission, sir,’ I replied. ‘We got there in plenty of time and concealed ourselves before the enemy turned up. We counted the vehicles and I’m confident we didn’t miss any. I’m pretty damn sure we remained undetected throughout, and on the egress. I don’t think it could have gone much better, to be honest.’

      Herbert arched an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

      Uh-oh…

      ‘How do you think it went, Corporal Baxter?’ Bateman said.

      Mick took his face out of his hands and glanced at me before replying.

      ‘We achieved our mission,’ he said without blinking.

      Herbert let rip. ‘Your choice of OP was piss poor. You waited far too long and the information you brought back was untimely.’

      Mick’s face disappeared into his sweaty palms again and I could feel my blood begin to boil.

      ‘What you should have done is find an OP further to the east so you could have picked the convoy up sooner,’ he barked. His slightly ruddy face was turning a deeper shade of crimson.

      He walked over to the map. ‘If you’d chosen one of these two positions in this area here’-he indicated the points I’d been advised to use by my peers-‘you’d have detected the vehicles a lot quicker. Then you could have carried out the task and returned to camp a great deal sooner. But you СКАЧАТЬ