Hellfire. Ed Macy
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Название: Hellfire
Автор: Ed Macy
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007342921
isbn:
A few weeks later, when I was due to go back to the UK, I’d asked the 2i/c if he’d finished tarting it up; he told me he still needed to do some work on it. He’d let me know when it was done.
That was the last I thought about it until we were practising multiple support procedures over Yorkshire a few months later and my co-pilot mentioned that there was an excellent document on the subject he’d read while deployed in Northern Ireland. ‘It covers all this stuff, Ed. I’ll give you a copy.’
As I flicked through it, I was delighted to see that 95 per cent of what I’d written had been left alone-it really had just had its i’s dotted and t’s crossed. Then I saw the 2i/c’s name and signature at the bottom.
I gave a rueful smile. The important thing was that it was out there.
It would have a particular resonance almost ten years later in the dusty wastes of Afghanistan.
Then the UK MoD went and ordered the Apache.
It had won out against its rivals in a massive procurement deal-for a cool £4.13 billion, the Army Air Corps would acquire sixty-seven AgustaWestland-built machines, simulators and equipment to operate them. They’d look the same as their American counterparts, but would be very different on the inside. Instead of the standard General Electric turboshaft engines of the Boeing-built originals, the WAH-64D, as the British variant was known, would be equipped with RTM322s-built by Rolls-Royce-with almost 40 per cent more power. The Apache that Chopper Palmer had organised for me to sit in at the International Air Tattoo, which was impressive enough, had been revamped as a total thoroughbred.
What to do?
The Apache was due in AAC service in 2003, which technically gave me time to deploy with the SAS and still left time to apply for Apache selection. The latter, not surprisingly, had become the hottest ticket in the Air Corps. Every pilot with half an eye on the top rung of the ladder would put his name down for a place on the conversion course. To ensure I got there, I knew I’d need to be way ahead of the curve.
Fortunately, I had a plan.
11 SEPTEMBER 2000
British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS), Alberta, Canada
My Gazelle was parked in the middle of the Canadian prairie. The sun was high and the sky was clear blue. Somewhere above me I could hear a lone bird calling. Lying on my back, I scanned the heavens, trying in vain to locate it. No matter. I popped another piece of straw between my teeth, closed my eyes and tried to doze, but I was out of luck there too.
Fuck me, I thought, didn’t these Pathfinders ever put a sock in it?
Next to me was a Special Forces Land Rover filled with three lads from the Pathfinder Platoon-a small unit designed and trained to fight behind enemy lines; 16 Air Assault Brigade’s equivalent of the SAS.
They were swapping stories about how they’d have solved the previous year’s Kosovo conflict. It was full of harmless machismo-but it went on endlessly. Two of the guys favoured covertly parachuting behind the lines; the third was adamant that an ‘infil’ by land was better. Both ended with a bloody assault on Slobodan Milosevic’s heavily armed Belgrade headquarters. The outcome, needless to say, was a foregone conclusion: Brits one, Serbs nil.
I was in 3 Regiment now, on a two-month exercise fighting a tank battalion, day in day out to get ourselves onto a war footing.
My flight commander, co-pilot and co-ABFAC, Dom, groaned beside me. ‘Can’t they just shut the fuck up for a moment? Some of us didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘Paras,’ I told him. ‘A gobbier breed you couldn’t hope to meet. I used to be one.’
‘Don’t I know it, Staff?’ Dom said. ‘And your gob is going to get us into trouble one of these days.’ He rolled over and blocked his ears.
Dom was a captain and I was a staff sergeant, the 2i/c of our flight. Dom was public school, vertically challenged and took no shit from anyone, not even me. He was a soldiers’ officer and always considered his men before himself. He wasn’t the most gifted pilot, but he more than made up for that in the brains department.
We were having a break from kicking tanky arse and were concentrating instead on the fine art of Forward Air Controlling-FACing, as it was politely known in the trade. The Pathfinders were FACs-Forward Air Controllers. Dom and I were Airborne FACs or ABFACs. We did exactly what they did, but from the comfort of our Gazelles. The Pathfinders thought we were a couple of soft pussies, but I’d done the stripped-down Land Rover routine before my accident and knew where I’d rather be.
The radio sparked into life. ‘Any callsign, any callsign, this is Starburst Two Four. How do you read?’ The accent was Canadian. The ‘how’ came out sounding like ‘hoe’.
The Pathfinders’ game of Belgrade-or-bust ground to a halt before they could inflict further damage on any other rogue states.
‘Okay, who’s up first?’ one of them yelled in our direction.
I offered it to them. In a six-month period, a FAC needed to control a certain number of jets and hit the target to remain qualified. In the past two months alone, I’d notched up more than twenty ‘controls’-easily enough to remain in business. It was only polite to let them have a go.
Dom and I listened as they contacted Starburst Two Four and brought it in for a practice bombing run. Aiming for the only man-made edifice on a plain the size of Kent was hardly Krypton Factor material. The second Pathfinder directed a further T-33 at a tank hulk approximately 200 hundred metres from the building.
Dom started to snigger.
One of the Pathfinders, a little lad with a Freddie Mercury moustache, asked us what was so fucking amusing.
‘Nothing, mate,’ Dom said. ‘Really. Excellent work. Bravo.’ He gave him a slow handclap.
Freddie dropped over the side of the vehicle and looked like he wanted to do to Dom and me what he and his mates had talked about doing to Slobodan Milosevic. I jumped to my feet. Dom, the chicken, retreated behind me.
‘Looks like you guys need to get some more “controls” under your belt,’ I said, trying to sound helpful.
Well done, Macy; that came out beautifully.
‘Funny guy,’ Freddie said. ‘Dodge, put this arsehole out of his misery will you?’
His mate picked up the handset. ‘Your target,’ he said to the inbound jet, ‘is a helicopter…’
‘He’d have to be half blind to miss my little green sports car on the top of this hill,’ I said.
The T-33 was built under licence by the Canadians and renamed the CT-133 Silver Star but the name never stuck. It looked like something from Thunderbirds as it flew in towards us. The big, cigar-shaped СКАЧАТЬ