Apache. Ed Macy

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СКАЧАТЬ bare, dark earth, making the search easier, but the Paras still had to move painfully slowly, looking for the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the two missing SBS men. Anything could help – a strip of clothing, spent ammunition shells, dried blood.

      We’d seen no sign of the KIA or MIA since our arrival. It didn’t bode well.

      Our flight had been scrambled at dawn to relieve the pair of Apaches up at Sangin before us. They – the Incident Response Team (IRT) – had been scrambled three hours previously. It had been a long night.

      We’d been given a quick update on the ground as we were firing up the aircraft.

      In complete secrecy, a small SBS team had lifted four Taliban organisers from a village near the northern Helmand town at 3am. The team were from Force 84, the British contingent of the Joint Special Forces command. They hadn’t notified the local Para garrison in Sangin’s District Centre about the mission – the usual SF drill to ensure total operational security. They were no different when I used to fly them around the Balkans during the 1990s.

      The arrest had gone without a hitch. But on the way home the snatch squad was ambushed by a large and very angry Taliban force who wanted their people back. The team’s lead Land Rover was destroyed by the first enemy RPG, kicking off a massive fire-fight and a desperate chase through the fields. The elite SBS team had been pursued by at least seventy Taliban.

      They only got out of there three hours later, thanks to a platoon of determined Gurkhas, who fought their way through the Talib lines twice, and close air support from two Apaches, an A10 jet and two Harrier GR7s. The Apaches stuck a Hellfire missile down the throat of their abandoned Land Rover to deny it to the enemy.

      In the chaos, the SBS team lost a couple of their prisoners. More importantly, two team members were separated from the main group: SBS Sergeant Paul Bartlett and Captain David Patten, attached from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Though their whereabouts were unknown, Patten was seen going down hard while sprinting across a field, and was already presumed Killed in Action.

      The battle over, our task was to escort a company of paratroopers carried by two Chinooks into the area and help them locate the KIA and MIA. Somehow we had been given a reasonably precise grid reference for the search.

      I was flying, and Simon, my Royal Navy co-pilot and gunner, was in the seat six feet in front of me. While the Paras combed the ground, we scanned the immediate landscape for enemy or hidden IEDs. Simon stared into his Target Acquisition and Designation Sight, constantly probing the treelines, bushes and shadows ahead of the Paras with the 127-times-magnification daytime TV camera lens.

      An Apache crew always worked as a team, so while Simon controlled the telescopic view I maintained the overall perspective from the back seat. That meant covering the Paras’ rear as well as keeping one eye on the second Apache in our flight. They were responsible for the outer security cordon, keeping their eyes peeled for any new threat coming into the area. Anything already inside the lads’ two square kilometre radius was ours.

      I had slaved the 30-mm cannon to my right eye. Its rounds would now zero in on any target in the crosshairs of the monocle over my right eye. All I needed to do was look at the target and squeeze the weapons release trigger on the cyclic with my right index finger. It left Simon free to scan. He’d be quick to pull his own trigger too if he spotted anything in the TADS’ crosshairs.

      We were in close to the Paras on this one, directly overhead. We wanted anyone in the area to know that we were ready to engage in an instant if the Taliban wanted to start something again. It was normally enough to put them off, but not always. They’d stood and fought here once already this morning. That’s why I was keen to speed things up.

      ‘The boys are about to cross into the second field. You sure that irrigation ditch is clear?’

      ‘From what I can see it is.’

      ‘Nothing else of note?’

      ‘No, nothing.’

      ‘Okay. I’m just watching the clock a bit, you know?’

      ‘Sure.’ Simon paused. ‘I’m going deep into the treeline on the far eastern end of the second field now. It’s the only place I haven’t yet been in detail.’

      It wasn’t just here. I never felt comfortable anywhere inside the Green Zone. Nobody did, not for a single minute. It should have been called the Red Zone. It was where the Taliban were, and we weren’t – a thin strip of well-irrigated land, no more than ten kilometres wide at its broadest point, on each side of the Helmand River. The great waterway snaked its way down the entire length of the province, through vegetation dense enough to make it a guerrilla fighter’s paradise.

      We preferred the desert which covered the rest of Helmand. There was nowhere to hide there, which was why the Taliban fought the battle in here instead. British forces had first entered Helmand and its Green Zone two months earlier. Only now though were we beginning to realise what a massive tough battle it was going to be.

      ‘I’ve got something,’ Simon said quietly.

      I eased the cyclic back a centimetre or so, to reduce our airspeed. That would make it easier for him to hold the image he wanted on the TADS.

      ‘I think I’ve got a body.’

      ‘Where, buddy?’

      ‘North-east corner of the second field. Just under the trees. No thermal off it, but it’s definitely a body. Lasering now for the grid reference.’

      I radioed the company commander on the ground, passed on the grid reference and gave him verbal directions as well. It would save them valuable time.

      A minute later, Simon spoke again. ‘There’s something to the north of it.’

      I knew what was coming.

      ‘I think I’ve got a second. Ten metres to the north of the first. Tucked under the trees this time; in a ditch, in the shade. No thermals off this one either.’

      My heart sank. Unless the second body was a dead Taliban fighter, one KIA and one MIA now sounded very much like two KIAs. We were too late to do anything for either of them.

      I radioed the Paras’ commander again. They had begun to protect the area around the first corpse, but one of his men seemed to have spotted the second body already and was moving towards it.

      A second crosshair on my monocle told me exactly where Simon was focusing his TADS. He was on the second body, and he hadn’t moved for a good thirty seconds. We couldn’t afford to concentrate on them; we still needed to look out for the boys. The dead weren’t going to be any threat. The threat was elsewhere.

      I gave Simon another ten seconds. He still hadn’t pulled out. Now I was seriously twitchy. A body might be the perfect come-on for another ambush, but we were never going to spot anyone like that. He needed to scan beyond the treeline now.

      ‘Si, pull out. You’ve been on the bodies far too long, mate. Look out for the boys.’

      ‘There’s something wrong.’

      ‘There’s a lot fucking wrong, mate – they’re dead. Just pull out.’

      ‘No Ed, you don’t understand. There’s СКАЧАТЬ