Hellfire. Ed Macy

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СКАЧАТЬ foreboding deepened. I thought of everything I’d been through-grading, a whole year spent learning how to fly-and it had come to this: cramped in a tiny cockpit with a gargantuan instructor who seemed hell-bent on failing me.

      Somehow, as we made our way over the Hampshire countryside, I forced myself to concentrate. I simply had to do my best; I had to hold it together. For most of the rest of the flight I was somehow able to zen out Chopper Palmer’s brooding presence, despite the fact that I remained squashed into my side of the cockpit by the man’s enormous bulk.

      Bit by bit we completed the test, until, right at the end, we came to the clincher: Practice Forced Landings. I carried out several PFLs that I thought were pretty good. Then, as we were approaching the airfield with the test minutes from completion, he suddenly said, ‘I have control’, chopped the engine and we plummeted earthwards.

      As emergency landings and autorotations went, it was the best I’d ever seen; so expertly done, in fact, that he bled away the last reserves of energy in the Gazelle’s freewheeling blades in a beautiful flared landing that ended in the helicopter’s skids literally kissing the grass.

      As we slid to a standstill I was so awestruck by this textbook display that I failed to take on board what he said next. It was only when my mind replayed the instruction that I realised he’d asked me to take off again and given me a grid reference.

      I’d missed it.

      He’d suckered me, the old bastard. I’d thought the test was over.

      I was summoning up the courage to ask him for the grid reference again when he turned to me. ‘Farrar-Hockley’s fallen off a ladder in his greenhouse. He’s got a pitch-fork up his arse. We’ve got to get him to hospital, pronto. I take it you know who I mean by Farrar-Hockley, Corporal Macy…’

      ‘Farrar the Para,’ I answered as I checked the grid I thought he’d said.

      General Farrar-Hockley was a bigwig who’d retired a decade earlier and looking at the grid Chopper bloody Palmer had just given me was apparently living in Harewood Forest, a few minutes’ flight-time away.

      What I didn’t know was whether this medical emergency was for real.

      I pointed the nose in the direction of the general’s house.

      On the way, I checked the map and noticed that the general lived in an area that the instructors used for confined areas-a place that was extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, for a helicopter to land in-though it wasn’t on the cheat-maps.

      I flew cautiously around the outside of a clearing that constituted the confined area. Every time I looked down, it looked smaller and smaller. I drew this to the big man’s attention.

      ‘So get me in there before we run out of fuel,’ he demanded. ‘Farrar’s in a bad way.’

      I stared at the tiny gap in the trees, hoping for inspiration. It was touch-and-go. I didn’t know what to do.

      ‘Are you going in or what?’ Half-drowned by the crackling comms and the scream of the Gazelle, Palmer’s voice still managed to sound like a megaphone.

      Make-your-mind-up time, Macy. Palmer wasn’t interested in debates or discussions. He wanted decisiveness and action.

      What was the right answer? What was I supposed to do?

      I took a deep breath. ‘No sir. I’m not going to make it.’

      There was a pause, then: ‘Nor could I. Take me home.’

      I breathed a sigh of relief. But Palmer hadn’t finished with me yet. As we approached the airfield, he reached forward and chopped the engine on me.

      Suckered again…

      I applied my autorotation skills, dumping the collective lever I had in my left hand to store the energy in the blades so I could use it to cushion the landing. We dropped like a stone and the tone of the blades rose an octave as they freewheeled faster and faster.

      At about fifty feet I pulled up the nose to slow the speed and as we dropped through twenty-five feet I gave the collective a sharp pull to arrest the rate of descent. The speed was now about thirty knots and we’d dropped to five feet as I levelled her off by pushing forward on the cyclic between my legs and pulling up slowly on the collective, using up the stored energy. I could hear the blades slowing and at the point we would have fallen out of the sky we touched down. We were running fast and bouncing around a bit but I’d got her on the ground before finally skidding to an untidy halt; scraping a slight zigzag in the grass in the process. Engine-off landings were not my strongest point.

      With sticky palms, I sat there waiting for Palmer to issue me with fresh instructions. Instead, he pulled on the rotor brake, threw off his straps and opened the door. This time, he really was finished. Just before he unplugged his helmet he said, ‘Do you have any points for me?’

      Me? Points for him? I just wanted him to get out before he produced another hoop for me to leap through.

      ‘I’ll let you into a little secret, Corporal Macy. If you keep that up you might live long enough to fly the Apache. No debrief points. Well done.’

      With that he bounced me off my door one last time before gently closing his and taking off across the grass. When he was several strides from the helicopter, it dawned on me that I’d passed.

       BOOBY-TRAPPED IN NORTHERN IRELAND

       MAY 1997

       1,500 feet over Crossmaglen, South Armagh, Northern Ireland

      ‘Gazelle Five, this is One Zero Alpha. All callsigns are now firm, over.’

      I pulled the transmit button on the cyclic. ‘Gazelle Five, roger, wait out.’

      I put the Gazelle into a shallow turn and turned to the guy on my right. ‘Look down now, Scottie, and you can see where each brick in the multiple is. The most important element of working with foot soldiers is to identify where each and every man is. If the IRA kick off you need to know exactly where to look.’

      Scottie peered down through the bug-eyed canopy. ‘Hellooo,’ he said, pretending to wave to the men on the ground. Not that they stood a hope in hell of seeing us; we were stooging around above them at 1,500 feet. A ‘brick’ was half a section-four men-the British Army’s standard unit in Northern Ireland. A multiple is three or more bricks.

      I was sitting in the left-hand seat, the commander of Gazelle 5, an aircraft with 665 Squadron, 5 Regiment Army Air Corps. 5 Regiment was the AAC’s Northern Ireland Regiment to which I’d been posted for five months the year before.

      Scottie, my pilot, was sitting in the right-hand seat. My job today was teaching him how to support foot multiples, a skill I’d acquired during my first posting to Northern Ireland four years earlier. As laid-back as Scottie appeared to be, he was also a damn good pilot. We were both sergeants and had known each other since I’d arrived in Dishforth after graduating from Middle Wallop. Scottie was a ‘posh jock’. He had a soft accent and a high-pitched voice that got even higher whenever he got excited. He spent most of his money on cars, clothes and watches.

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