Hellfire Read online

  Part of me still couldn’t quite believe what I was doing. I felt like a circus performer who was about to put his head in the lion’s mouth.

  When I caught up with him, Palmer started to brief me on the admin task. As he did so, he glanced at my beret and told me something I already knew-that one of his boys was in the Parachute Regiment.

  ‘Is he in White Feathers One or Grungy Three, sir?’ I asked. 2 Para had sent 1 Para white feathers for missing the Falklands and 3 Para, quite frankly, needed to wash.

  He smiled. ‘That would make you Bullshit Two, I guess.’ He knew I was 2 Para from the blue lanyard I had wrapped around my shoulder.

  I was about to reply when I saw a shadow racing across the ground between the hangars. I looked up. The first aircraft to arrive at the show was a helicopter. I couldn’t tell what kind. I held up my hand and squinted against the sunlight.

  As the machine banked on its final approach, I got my first proper look at it. It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen-big, dark and angular, it resembled a menacing primeval insect. It came into a slow hover right in front of the tower and hung in the air. Then, nose down, nodding to a crowd of onlookers that had lined up to gawp at it, it crabbed towards a ground handler armed with two orange paddles before finally thumping down onto the ground.

  Chopper Palmer swore under his breath. All I caught was something about Yanks.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Fly like that with me, Macy, and I’ll mince you up through the fenestron of your Gazelle.’

  ‘What is it, sir?’ I wanted to get off the subject of going anywhere near a helicopter with him.

  ‘That,’ Chopper Palmer said, with a tinge of admiration in his voice, ‘is a United States Army AH Sixty-Four Alpha. You ought to be able to tell by the unorthodox approach that it isn’t from around here. It’s known as the Apache.’

  It was the first combat helicopter I’d seen up close. The Apache, I knew, was one of four helicopters competing for a UK MoD contract that would see the British Army equipped with a dedicated attack helicopter for the first time in its history.

  As things stood, the Army Air Corps was equipped with two kinds of rotary wing aircraft: the Gazelle and the Lynx (not including the special Gazelles and A109s used by the SAS).

  The Gazelle was generally employed for training, liaison and reconnaissance, but could be used for emergency casevac and move a couple of lightly kitted-out troops but that was about it-a valuable but limited asset.

  The Lynx Mk7 was an anti-tank helicopter armed with missiles on each side. It was seriously underpowered and suffered badly when it came to moving even small amounts of troops. It was also hindered by the fact it needed a door gunner, reducing its load-carrying capacity and restricting the access from one door. The choice was missiles or troops-it couldn’t handle both. And its Tube-launched Optically-tracked Wire-guided-TOW-missiles did not cut the mustard. It was supposed to be our first line of defence against enemy armour, but if it had ever taken on the massed ranks of Soviet T-72s on the West German plains, it would have been massacred. And the lessons of the recent Gulf conflict said that it wouldn’t have fared a whole lot better against some of the lesser equipped armies still out there. Waiting for the TOW missile to be manually tracked all the way to the target, it was a sitting duck.

  As a result, the impetus to equip the Army Air Corps with a dedicated attack helicopter, one that had been specifically designed for the role, had gained momentum, and the Apache was the main contender. It was battling for the contract, valued at upwards of £2 billion (and that was just for the airframe, not including the simulators or associated equipment), against three other machines: the German-Franco Eurocopter Tiger, an anglicised version of the US Bell Cobra called the Cobra Venom, and the Rooivalk, an ugly brute from South Africa. The Apache’s presence at the show was a sign that the competition was hotting up.

  I’d never seen anything like it. I was totally mesmerised.

  Later, I asked Mr Palmer if I could take a look at it up close. He did better than that: he walked straight up and asked if I could sit in it.

  The pilot, looking bored in a pair of mirrored Ray-Bans, was only too happy to oblige. Seconds later, I dumped my camera on the grass and was hauling myself into the rear cockpit-the pilot’s position.

  Glancing around the cockpit, I could see that it was a world away from the small, flimsy, plastic analogue world of my Gazelle. The Apache was huge, robust and instead of all of the normal instrumentation it had the bulk of its data displayed in the centre of the instrument console.

  ‘Smile, son.’ I looked out to see Chopper Palmer pointing a camera at me.

  I wasn’t sure what had made me happier-sitting in a machine I swore to myself I’d fly one day, or knowing that Chopper Palmer wasn’t the Dark Lord after all.

  The gunner’s position in the front was dominated by a big metal block jutting above the MPDs that looked like a cross between an inverted periscope and something you’d find at a coin-operated peep-show. ‘This,’ my tobacco-chewing Texan friend told me, ‘is something we call the ORT: the Optical Relay Tube. By lowering your eyes to the ORT it allows you to see the enemy using direct viewing optics.’ He showed me a pink lens that covered the right eye, ‘Look through that,’ and then pointed to the MPDs, ‘or at them, and you see what the Apache sees.’ He spat out some tobacco. ‘You can see the radar picture, the image projected by the gunner’s thermal imaging system or his daylight camera, the pilot’s thermal system…well shit, son…any one of ‘em, at any given moment, all at the flick of a switch.’

  ‘Fun’s over, Corporal Macy,’ Chopper said. ‘We have some marshalling to do.’ He walked off, forcing me to run after him again.

  Three days after the show ended, we were back in the classroom again, preparing for our last few sorties before the dreaded Final Handling Test.

  Before we knew it, it was late June. WO2 Bateman was putting the flying programme together. He was attempting to avoid pairing particular students with a particular Aviation Standards Officer if they had a good reason for not wanting to fly with him. The floor erupted. ‘Not Chopper Palmer, sir, he hates me…’ ‘Don’t give me Darth Vader, I’ll pay you any money…’

  I hadn’t shared my belief that Palmer’s bark was worse than his bite; I knew no one would have believed me. I stuck my hand up and announced that I wanted to fly with Chopper on my Final Handling Test.

  The laughter was immediately replaced by a silence you’d only expect to find in libraries and monasteries.

  ‘That’s good, Corporal Macy,’ Mr Bateman replied, ‘because Mister Palmer has asked to fly with you.’

  Catcalls, wolf-whistles and cries of ‘teacher’s pet’ bounced off the four walls and Sammy called me a brown nose.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so quick, marine,’ Bateman said. ‘You must have been right up Mr Palmer’s arse with your Para mate here, ‘cause he’s asked for you too.’

  The lads had seen me getting on with Darth Vader, but Sammy hadn’t been within thirty yards of him. Sammy called what he thought was Bateman’s bluff.

  Bateman replied, ‘I think Mr Palmer said it was something to do with “Para Para in the sky”…’

  I was off like a shot with Sammy hard on my heels, calling me every name in the matelot’s dictionary of profanities.

  I walked out to the aircraft nice and early on the day of the test. It was a beautiful summer’s morning. An old Battle of Britain airfield, Middle Wallop had remained the largest grass airfield in the country and was as perfect a setting for an air base as you could imagine. The sun was just poking through the trees on Danebury Ring, the site of an ancient hill fort to the east.

  I usually loved this time of day, but I felt troubled. It wasn’t simply that this was the day I’d find out whether I had what it took to become an army helicopter pilot; I was seriously worried that I’d underestimated Palmer. Moments earlier, as I’d been briefing him on the flight, he seemed to have reverted to his old ways. As I’d scri
bbled away on the whiteboard in the briefing room, recounting what I’d be doing on the sortie, Darth Vader had just stared at me-the laser stare that everybody had been so alarmed by when we’d first arrived. Gone was the genial bloke who’d opened up the Apache for me and taken my picture. In his place was a big, taciturn bear that looked like he was eyeing me up for breakfast.

  ‘Any questions, sir?’ I’d asked when I’d finished the briefing.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the aircraft then, sir.’

  ‘You will, Corporal Macy, you will.’

  After walking around the aircraft, I clambered into the cockpit and tried to focus on my pre-flight checks. When I’d got all my maps ready, I set about programming my navigation aid. When I’d done that, I went over everything all over again.

  Glancing back at the hangar, I spotted Palmer, larger than life, helmet on, visor down, striding across the grass towards me.

  His gait, his whole demeanour seemed to be saying: don’t screw with me; don’t even talk to me.

  My name’s Chopper Palmer and I’ve got a reputation to protect.

  A reputation he’d flexed only yesterday morning when he failed one of our course before they’d even taken off.

  You arsehole, I said to myself, you requested this guy-and now he’s going to fail you.

  He walked round the aircraft, opened up the flimsy little door and began to position himself in the commander’s left-hand seat. He was so big that he bounced me out of mine, but he didn’t seem to notice. He squashed me against the perspex as he leaned over to put on his straps and he didn’t notice that either. How was I supposed to fly this thing?

  As I continued with my checks two things dawned on me.

  The first was why he’d been nicknamed Darth Vader. He sat completely immobile, head forward, visor down, and had the scariest breathing I’d ever heard: a long, slow, deep, throaty breath in, a pause too long for a mere mortal to survive, and then a rush of air out.

  The second was why he chopped more students than the rest. I was nervous, worried and my hands were visibly shaking. If we were having a fight I’d be in my element, but sitting here in this cramped cockpit knowing that he held the power to end my long quest was becoming unbearable. I was about to fail because I was struggling to hold it together. He was a chopper because students just dissolved in front of him.

  I fired up the Gazelle’s single engine-no problems there-but my first real test came when I needed to check behind me to ensure no one would be decapitated when I engaged the blades. Palmer was so big I couldn’t see past him.

  I spoke into my intercom. ‘Can you check left please, sir?’

  ‘No.’ Palmer continued to look directly in front of him, his visor hiding any expression he may have had.

  Parts of me were starting to die. What the fuck was this? ‘Unless I check left, sir, I can’t start the blades. I might chop someone’s head off.’

  He squashed me again as he grudgingly looked left. ‘Clear.’

  My sense of 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 tha
t 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.