by Dan Fox
The Israeli driver had thankfully provided some basic food and water which was hungrily devoured and then one by one the team drifted into an uncomfortable sleep with Jackson taking the first forty minute watch with Steve due to take the next one. They had encountered no traffic at all during that first stint but due to the awful terrain and the age of the truck, they had not even done fifteen miles, but as far as Jackson could say, they would not have been seen by anyone, so far.
At the end of his watch Jackson nudged Steve who was instantly alert and grateful for his training. Rolling over and pressing the snooze button was not an option. Those who had tried it had often gone to sleep permanently.
Steve thanked Jackson sarcastically and then tried to start a conversation with the driver, but the response was a couple of unintelligible grunts so he gave up and concentrated on the road ahead. They were driving without lights and the driver was using a single lens night vision clip on. Steve used the more formal United States Special Forces goggles but the slightly greenish view of the terrain ahead showed nothing. Inside the truck you could only hear engine and road noise and the occasional grunt from the rest of the sleeping team.
The first hint of a problem was a muzzle flash about half a mile away to Steve’s right. It appeared to come from a distant small flat top building which didn’t seem to have any windows or lights. There was no impact noise and Steve wasn’t sure that the shot was even aimed at them. That far away the truck would be barely visible and there would be little or no noise due to the undulating and sheltered terrain. Nevertheless, whatever the risk was it needed to be dealt with and now.
Steve turned round and nudged Jackson and beckoned. He signalled to the driver to slow down a little and within a few seconds they had both exited the truck telling the driver to find a nearby hollow or park up around the next bend out of site of the building.
Still dressed in their Special Forces night gear they trotted towards the building keeping as low as possible. There was next to no moon, fortunately, and they were making good progress across the mixture of small rocks and sand with few hiding places. In daylight it would be virtually impossible to approach the hut without being seen. Another muzzle flash was followed a split second later by a low report. Steve began to think it was someone drunk on the local rot gut brew and firing randomly for a laugh. If that was the case they could back away and re-join the truck. No need for casualties. No need to draw attention to themselves. No need to leave bodies. Just back away and return to the truck and get on with their urgent journey out of Iraq. The place was dangerous enough without being side-tracked.
Stealthily they approached the building on its blind side with Steve signalling Jackson to stay low and go left. Steve approached a small window out of line of sight as Jackson would have been told to do. They could hear a tinny radio playing local music and a couple of voices which were loud and happy, almost certainly drunk. Steve was about to tell Jackson to back away when one of the occupants put his head out of the window, turned to his right and stared straight at Steve. The bullets from Steve’s silenced MP5 had already torn through the man’s throat before he could shout a warning, and his lifeless body hung half across the windowsill. Steve told Jackson to engage and a second or two later two slight coughs were heard as the second occupant met his maker because he was too drunk to react quickly enough.
Jackson searched the interior for anyone else but the two guys had been alone. It didn’t even make sense why they were there. They didn’t appear to be guarding anything. Why were two armed men in a dilapidated building in the middle of nowhere? They didn’t have any phones with them, which was worrying. It meant that someone would come back to them at any time. They had to move fast. They dug two shallow graves a distance away and flattened the sand down afterwards. Not perfect but it would hide the evidence for a while, hopefully long enough for the team to escape from Iraq. The deed done they made their way back to the truck at a pace. There was no time to lose. This distraction had already cost them dearly.
They arrived about ten minutes later. The truck had been parked just around a bend in the road hiding it from direct view of the hut. Everyone was awake now and anxious for news.
Steve checked out the area and deciding it was secure, he and Jackson got back in the truck. He signalled to the driver to move on and added, ‘As quick as you can for the next half hour. Let’s get as far away from here as we can.’
The truck managed to hover around the thirty mph mark for most of that time but the ride was extremely uncomfortable with the added bonus of exhaust smoke and the smell of burning oil permeating the extended cab. Steve breathed a sigh of relief when he knew they’d been travelling for half an hour away from the incident. It would be unlikely for them to be tracked now, although he thought they might anticipate a few more problems around the border. As Jackson was sitting in the passenger seat nearest the open window, he clambered half out of it every few minutes to check for anything that might be flying around above them.
Steve told the rest of the crew about the building and the two guards. Jean pursed her lips for a second and then said ‘We’re being watched or tracked. We can expect trouble of some sorts at the border, we need to be prepared.’ She looked at Smerkel for a moment and said to Steve, ‘Maybe they’re already looking for him. Maybe they’re more worried about him leaving Iraq.’
Steve sighed then he looked at Jackson and Jean who both nodded in agreement. ‘I guess you’re right, the explosion must have woken somebody up in the area, that’s for certain. They’re bound to know that Smerkel has gone. That’s probably more important than the chemicals’, he looked at Marcel and grinned, ‘mind you that was a terrific blast wasn’t it, one of your better ones I think.’ Marcel polished his imaginary medals.
That was the great thing about this small team. All different shapes and sizes, lots of different skills, but when it came to tactics they all thought along the same plane, which was probably why they were successful and still alive.
As the night drew on they looked carefully for the road marker which told them to turn off the highway. They were now very near the official border crossing between Iraq and Jordan and had no intention of using it. Too many armed guards, too many questions, not enough passports or papers. They would take the goat trail on foot and use the valleys and hills of the area to shield them. They needed to be over the border before dawn if at all possible and they didn’t have a lot of spare time thanks to the random shots excursion. Most of all they would need to keep an extremely sharp lookout for any patrolling guards.
Chapter 5
Iraq – continued
Jackson acting as lookout spotted the marker on the road from about fifty yards, tapped Steve on the shoulder and pointed. The driver also noticed, nodded and slowed down. The drop off the main road was a sharp dip of about a foot or so. It would be very bumpy going down the drop but not easy to get back up if they got it wrong. Fingers crossed time again.
The driver made the drop without too much trouble luckily and rolled slowly along the very rocky path with the truck bouncing and clanging as it went. It would be a most uncomfortable ride for a half mile with a chorus of curses and threats coming from within the vehicle. This would not be pleasant going until they were well out of sight of the main road and would probably take another ten minutes.
The driver eventually stopped the truck to silent cheers from the team. Steve checked his map and compass and told the crew that they were just under two miles east of the border and the path they were to use would take them a couple of miles to the south of the official border post. That was enough leeway. The driver then used his mobile to send a brief message, ’07.00’ and showed Steve who nodded. That should be the call for the next chopper to arrive.
The initial plan was to walk the path through the hills during the cover of darkness, then rest for a few minutes giving them a chance to eat, and check and clean their weapons. Sand got everywhere. Their problem was the rapidly approaching da
wn which would turn night into day in a matter of minutes. They needed to move quicker, scout the rest of the area and then walk across the border to their rendezvous as fast as possible. Jackson set off ahead with the rest of the crew following about five hundred yards behind. Steve had asked Marcel to hold back for the same distance to check their rear, just in case. What a wise move that turned out to be.
So the remaining crew turned out to be Steve, Jean, the truck driver and Smerkel. Three onto one, or Steve, still suspicious as ever, thought maybe it’s two against two. At an opportune moment he whispered his concerns in Jean’s ear. She gave him a knowing wink, and thereafter she made sure that the driver was always between her and Steve. They’d know the truth soon enough.
After they had gone about a mile, it being a lot closer to daylight now, Steve’s earpiece chirped and Marcel said, ‘We have company, bandit at three o’clock.’
‘Everybody take cover, chopper incoming, likely hostile’ shouted Steve. They hid behind rocks or the odd coarse bush and waited. Jackson was on his way back towards the group taking as much care as he could but he must have been seen. The Chopper used its powerful searchlight to pick up the movement and changed direction and sped away towards his position. It was hostile. Steve called Jean for the sniper rifle which Steve had set up to fire in a few seconds. He knew the P37 chopper was particularly vulnerable to a shot just where the rotor shaft met the engine cover. There was said to be an inherent weakness there. He would probably only get a couple of shots in before the chopper crew realised they were under attack and took evasive action.
The chopper was hovering at around fifty feet searching for Jackson who had dived into a hollow and was for that moment out of sight and safe. It would move on after a few seconds if its pilot had had any defensive training. Stay too long in one place and you become a sitting target. At that moment the chopper shifted and wobbled and started to descend with a loss of power. Steve had hit the target twice in rapid succession and disabled the craft.
Jackson needed to take the advantage whilst the chopper crew were in panic mode and descending rapidly. As the chopper neared the ground shaking violently and pitching and yawing, Jackson came towards the cockpit from the pilot’s side and shot a hole in the Perspex cover just above the pilot’s head. The pilot ducked but his co-pilot drew a pistol and had almost raised it in Jackson’s direction when a sheet of blood fell over his helmeted face courtesy of a bullet hole in the side of his head.
The chopper landed awkwardly, smoking badly, the pilot instantly had his hands in the air. Jackson shot out the radio and hoped that the crew had been too preoccupied with their impending death to send a distress signal. That would give them a little extra time. At this point Steve raced up, surveyed the scene quickly and asked Jackson to extract the pilot. They removed his helmet, took his weapon and mobile phone, chopper keys and a few other personal belongings and then plasti-cuffed his wrists.
By this time the others had arrived and Marcel began to question the pilot. He had nothing to say, at least initially until Jean took out her evil looking hunting knife and unzipped his fly. He was scared, but even more so when she smiled at him as she prodded his genitals with the knife point. At that point he began to talk and talk and talk. Jean looked disappointed but they got the info they needed. They were indeed under surveillance, or someone was, but no-one knew exactly who or what they were looking for. The pilot only knew what his instructions were which was to confirm any suspicious sighting back to his base near the border post. He had never got that far being just about to call in when the chopper became disabled.
Steve got the team in a group and asked for opinions. Get over the border now, as fast as possible, was the unanimous response, which of course was what he wanted them to say. There wasn’t really much of an alternative.
Marcel taped the pilot’s ankles and only left him a bottle of water. Jean looked back disappointedly as she sheathed her knife. It would take him at least half an hour to get free and at least an hour to get back to the main road, by which time they’d be over the border.
So gathering up Smerkel and their equipment, and dampening the smoke from the chopper by covering the offending parts in sand, they set off at a pace. Just under a mile to go. Jackson raced ahead to scout the area just by the border. He was to get within four hundred yards and give them a sit rep.
Ten minutes later Steve’s earpiece buzzed and Jackson said ‘We are all clear, all clear.’
‘Give us ten said Steve and urged the crew on at a pace.
They dropped behind some rocks to the side of Jackson as they reached his position with Jean pulling a struggling Smerkel down with her. Steve took his night vision binoculars and surveyed the area to the border. It looked clear, perhaps too clear. This was an old pathway for goats and goatherds since time immemorial. He should be able to see something. It was too quiet. They had to move, so as quickly and stealthily as they could manage, they started to approach the border line which would be just marked in the distance with the occasional small white post. Because of the chopper incident they needed to get over the border faster than the proverbial speeding bullet. They could not see the official border crossing as that was some distance to the north which under their current circumstances was just as well.
Dawn was rapidly approaching and at this point the terrain dropped into a shallow valley and the path with it. Small hills developed on either side of the valley affording anyone hostile a magnificent vantage point from which to operate. Steve looked at Jackson, Marcel and Jean. They knew what he was thinking. Team work is great when everyone knows just what to do by instinct. Jean went up the hill to the left and Marcel to the right using the remaining cover of darkness. Nothing had been said.
Ten minutes later Marcel called the all clear. Steve waited for Jean. Five minutes later Jean scrambled down the valley side and with a smile on her face, wiped the edge of her knife across the scrub grass leaving bloody marks.
‘Sniper’, she said, ‘only one, no spotter. I removed the battery from his mobile.’
Great thought Steve, anyone calling him will get a ‘phone may be switched off’ message in Arabic. He shivered involuntarily at the thought of them all trundling along the valley floor completely exposed with no cover. This would be yet another tick in the box for Jean’s peculiar skills. With that they raced along dragging Smerkel with them.
When they were at least a mile the other side of the border into Jordan they stopped to rest behind a small hill, and consumed the remainder of their meagre rations. In the meantime the truck driver had suggested he bring the rendezvous forward, Steve agreed and they now had only half an hour to wait. Perhaps he was one of the good guys after all.
Marcel perked up when he could hear the approaching chopper’s loud ‘whup, whup’ sound from a distance away. From the sound it was a large, probably ex-military bird. Its approach confirmed that. It landed about fifty metres away and the dust blown up by the rotors was horrendous.
As the rotors slowed the team made their way over and onto it. With doors closed and all belted in, the chopper rapidly took off travelling west towards Amman the capital of Jordan some two hundred miles away. They would be landing at a private airfield a few miles out of the city to the east where they would collect their new passports and papers, transfer to a minibus and head towards the international airport. Scheduled flights from there to Tel Aviv would be fairly frequent and at least they would have proper tickets.
Smerkel had been pretty quiet and manageable for most of their journey. Perhaps now he sensed he was close to civilisation and possible freedom, he started to be a nuisance insisting on his human rights, wanting to call a lawyer, just acting the noisy prat. Jackson punched him heavily in the solar plexus which had the unsurprising impact of quietening him down a little. When he looked up at Jackson, gasping for breath and with tears in his eyes, he quickly realised that the next punch would be even harder and hurt a lot more. He would complain about his treatment to the auth
orities when he was handed over and away from this cruel, insensitive bunch. He must have believed in the tooth fairy.
Now in Jordan, a ‘friendly’ Arab nation, they were relatively safe and took the opportunity to rest for a while. Soon enough they were descending onto the far end of a small private airstrip. Steve gave the thumbs up to the pilot as they all exited the chopper and made their way to an old and crumpled VW minibus. They’d changed out of the Special Ops gear into more casual attire. All their Military equipment was left on board the chopper. They would get the personal bits they needed later. Thanking the chopper pilot for the good job he’d done, he smiled as he lifted off to who knows where.
The minibus, which had definitely seen better days but fitted in marvellously with the rest of the vehicles on the road, struggled through the crazy traffic towards the Queen Alia International Airport twenty miles south of the city. Smerkel had been given a shot in the upper arm to subdue him. He just sat very still wearing a village idiot smile. He’d be just fine until he was rudely awoken by the CIA on arrival in Israel.
There was a high security control post on the entrance into the airport which demanded that they all exit the vehicle, get patted down and run around with a metal detector. Passports and papers were checked. All was in order but the team breathed that involuntary sigh of relief as they were allowed to pass through the fortified gates. They made the main car park a couple of minutes later and holding Smerkel steady between them, said thanks and goodbye to their minibus driver. Steve noting to himself that a small bonus was in order.
The flight to Tel Aviv was on an old turbo prop Fokker F27 which was only about half full and should take no more than forty-five minutes all told. Jean sat next Smerkel who had a window seat. He didn’t know a lot about it but if he had been alert he would have seen her fingering her heavily serrated and mightily sharp ceramic knife just hoping for him to be a pain in the arse.
