With sharp features, beady piercing eyes, a tall taut frame, and reddish blonde hair, Prince Albert was well-known for his cheeky grin, youthful cannabis indulgence and pub-crawling, and his healthy disdain for the formalities of royal title. Despite endless Al-Qaeda and Taliban threats against his life, Albert thrived in the warzone.
Although he had once harbored dreams of becoming a painter or writer, his royal station, as well as a rigid father who respected no such silly pursuits, pushed him to armed service. After successfully completing general infantry and flight training, he had no intention of sitting by as his mates deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. As Coróna Principem — Crown Prince — there were no allowances for Albert to be in such danger. Only after many heated arguments and emotion-laden threats to abdicate his title, had his father, the King, relented. With Afghanistan deemed safer than insurgent-ridden Iraq, Albert had been permitted to deploy on condition that he have his own security detail, that he assume a nom du guerre, and, should intelligence indicate the enemy had become aware of his presence, that he return home immediately. Therefore, Prince Albert — Captain Albert Talbot — became Captain Albert Smith, and deployed to Afghanistan where he was paired with his beloved Apache, as well as his vetted cockpit mate, co-pilot/gunner Lieutenant Donnan Bruce.
With bright blue eyes, a round face, ruddy skin, and a balding head that, in patches, was covered by black razor-hewn stubble, Donnan stood as a stocky Scotsman from Inverness, and a hardened veteran of the Gulf War. He was also one of the few to know ‘Captain Smith’s’ true identity. Segregated on base with Albert, Donnan had come to enjoy the private meals, cushy barracks, and ample supplies that came with living with a Prince. He often joked he should get a title, suggesting it as ‘Donnan, Count of Helmand’ with a coat of arms made up of two darts crossed before a bottle of beer. When at work, however, Donnan became deadly serious, a ruthless gunner who never hesitated to kill. In the Apache’s tandem cockpit, these two men played their control panels, and went through the pre-flight checklist.
Albert looked outside for a moment. The sun had set the sky ablaze in reds and oranges. In the purple-tinted blue on-high, white streaks marked where American B-52s had made their way on some nameless bombing run against mountain redoubts. He sighed and made inputs to the three digital displays arrayed before him. He also checked the flight systems and programmed the navigation computer with destination coordinates and flight-path waypoints. He lowered and adjusted a helmet-mounted monocular lens — what American Apache pilots affectionately called the ‘Colonel Klink’—and centered it before his right eye. With an electronic flicker, imagery filled the monocle and flooded Albert’s view.
The Apache’s nose turret sported an unblinking mechanical eye that fed the monocle with an inhuman view of the world: Even in the last of the hot day’s sunlight, body heat and vehicle engines appeared as bright white against a dark-grey background. Albert turned his head and cockpit sensors detected the movement of his helmet, tracking the nose turret in unison. He watched as a ground technician strolled up and signaled readiness. He was to guide the Apache into the sky. Beginning to sweat, Albert started the cockpit fans. Although the blown air was filtered, aviation gas fumes and the dry stink of Afghanistan’s air — what they all called the ‘Big Latrine’ for its sun-stewed aroma — was sucked inside.
“Is that roses I smell, mate?” the helmet speaker crackled with Donnan’s thick accent.
“Smells like Highlander to me,” Albert rebutted.
As usual, Donnan’s laugh was deep and hearty. The quips sent at each other had a calming effect, and counteracted the shakes-inducing adrenalin. Albert often jabbed at his cockpit companion just to hear that laugh; a laugh that sounded like it belonged to a ten-foot giant. Donnan snorted and reported: “All ready.” They got a thumbs-up from the man outside, too. Albert did a final scan.
Electronics, hydraulics, and other parameters for the Apache’s two big Rolls-Royce Turbomeca turbo-shaft engines were all in the green. Albert took the aircraft’s collective and cyclic controls in his gloved hands and engaged the main and tail rotors. The helicopter, anxious to take flight, vibrated excitedly. Shimmering heat blew out of the exhausts mounted either side of the fuselage, and the rotors began to rotate, rhythmically chopping at the air. The ground technician twirled an arm. The gesture signified good spin-up. The technician then indicated the Apache was clear of any ground obstructions and had authorization for departure. Albert lifted the collective.
The neutral rotor blades articulated and bit into the air, pushing air down and creating lift, the phenomena Albert called the ‘power of up.’ The Apache leapt off the tarmac, rose to 50 feet, hovered, turned, and dipped its nose toward the craggy hills that lined the northeastern horizon. The man on the ground saluted, and Albert contacted the tower.
Albert was assigned a departure lane that would get his aircraft safely through other inbound and outbound American, Australian, and British air traffic. Once outside the wire, the brightly-lit base perimeter fell behind. Donnan and Albert found themselves swallowed by the stone-age darkness of Afghanistan.
Scanning ahead with night vision, Albert spotted the heat forms of a camel caravan, fires from a small village, and a man on a hill. This man, dismissed as just another peasant in the mountains, reported the helicopter’s departure and general heading to his Taliban buddies. Albert flew the Apache along the line demarked by the navigation computer. They were on their way to support an assault on the centuries-old Jugroom Fort.
Albert checked the mission computer. He noted that his flight was on-course and on-time. Their Apache was tasked to rendezvous with an American armed scout helicopter — a Kiowa — and be under the control of one of their Forward Air Controllers already dug in on the heights above the ancient fortress.
Dry mud bricks comprised Jugroom’s outer wall. Upon a central earthen motte, there stood a collection of fortified buildings that the Taliban and foreign fighters — mostly Arabs and Chechens — used to store weapons caches, to feed and house fighters, and to protect the season’s opium crop until it could be moved out by donkey. Tonight’s assault was dual purpose: confiscate or destroy the drugs, and capture or kill as many insurgents as possible. Also, intelligence had indicated the presence of an Al-Qaeda leader. This leader was not high on the totem pole, though worthy of interrogation if caught. The American colonel who delivered the mission briefing had remarked, “No one would cry if this Al-Qaeda fucker happened to be killed;” adding, “Guantanamo’s all full up.”
Albert flew his Apache nap-of-the earth, a very low-altitude mode of flight utilized to avoid enemy detection in a high-threat environment. He consulted a tactical diagram strapped to his knee, and noted symbols that represented the small village that sat in the shadow of the old fort.
A mere collection of hovels and shacks, the village relied on the fort’s spring for drinking and irrigation water, and splayed just beyond a rampart built around Jugroom’s brick perimeter wall. The village was danger-close and civilians were at home. As always, and since the village could not be warned beforehand, briefings included a caution against collateral damage. While Albert knew this was for purposes of ‘hearts and minds,’ his avoidance of the village would be for the women and children; the same women and children the Taliban had a tendency to shelter behind when threatened.