Sniper one

by Dan Mills

  In response, Abu Naji dispatched the entirety of the armoured QRF which was C Company. Now practically the whole battle group had been sucked into the city. But the more reinforcements we poured in to get to Captain Hooker's guys, the more they got smacked on their way in too.

  Hooker's guys finally made some progress at Blue 11. The soldiers stuck on the other side of the bridge had managed to get back across it. It was thanks to the enormous bollocks shown by a big Fijian private called Joe Natameru. In frustration, Joe had jumped up, run into the open, and taken up a highly exposed fire position. He dropped a pair of enemy that had been cutting them off on the other side but he took a bullet through his calf for his efforts.

  Being reunited with the rest of the patrol had given the men a much stronger firebase. Then, the Cimic Warriors, the Abu Naji resupply convoy and Featherstone's fighting patrol all arrived at about the same time. Together, they held the enemy at bay long enough to all extract. The Warriors weren't large enough to carry everybody, so some had to jog back alongside them. Black Hawk Down-style, they put rounds down all the way as they ran.

  I went down to the front gate to help them in. They were gasping, and there was a lot of 'fucking hell' and 'thank fuck for that'. Blokes had collapsed, and kit and weapons were strewn everywhere. It was a complete palaver and a very sorry sight.

  But there was still one sorrier sight to come. Back up on the roof fifteen minutes later, we heard an appalling grating noise approaching from a long way off. The grating noise appeared to attract gunfire wherever it moved. It sounded like a Warrior that had a full bag of spanners thrown into its engine. Swap spanners for a truckload of shrapnel, and that's exactly what it was. Around the corner from the direction of Blue 11 came four truly miserable looking Warriors. Christ knows where they had been. The lead vehicle was in a horrific state. It was the one making most of the racket. There were at least five RPG blast holes in it, smoke was pouring out of the back, and all its hatches were wide open. That included the driver's hatch. Most astonishing of all, the driver had his bonce stuck right out of it – and rounds were still coming in at him. His name was Private Johnson Beharry. Chris saw it first.

  'Look at the state of that! What the fuck have that lot just been through?'

  'Never mind that. What the hell is Beharry doing with his bonce right outside like that?' asked someone else.

  'What a waste of time slapping on all that armour,' I replied.

  The battalion's whole fleet of Warriors had been up-armoured for the tour. That meant attaching dirty great big chunks of it to the side to make the things RPG-proof. It had taken hours to do. Judging by Pte Beharry's recent experiences, it hadn't exactly worked.

  Because of its state, we didn't think Beharry's Warrior was going to make it all the way to us. It was unlikely he would either unless he pulled his head in. But it carried on creaking its way along Tigris's south bank at just a little faster than jogging pace. When it passed the back gate, it drew the inevitable volley of rounds from the OMS gunmen we had been playing hide and seek with up RPG Alley. But Beharry carried on in spite of it all and the machine eventually creaked to a final halt right outside the front gate.

  Beharry's Warrior was, unsurprisingly, full of casualties. There was a mad scramble at the front gate to get them all out and into safety. The snipers did their bit by getting the enemy's heads down. We rammed as many rounds into their positions as we could.

  Only when everyone was inside did it emerge what had happened. They were part of the C Company QRF, and had been sent into the city to rescue any one of a series of different call signs they could get to. Like everyone before them, all they had managed was a proper smacking of their own.

  Beharry was a shy young lad with a disarming smile from Grenada. He'd been in the battalion for a couple of years, and was driving for his platoon commander. They were hit as soon as they turned on to the Blue route that ran north through the eastern side of the city. The platoon commander and the Warrior's gunner in the turret were both knocked unconscious by a barrage of RPG direct hits. The explosions also knocked out all of Beharry's radios, and destroyed his periscope. If he wanted to see anything at all from then on, he would have to drive with his hatch open.

  Leaderless, the whole platoon of four Warriors were now badly in the shit. They were taking furious incoming, they were boxed in by burning barricades, the radios were fucked and their commander might be dead. In a call that took balls the size of watermelons, Beharry decided he had only one option. He charged the barricades in front of him and smashed a path through for the rest of the platoon to follow. With rounds pinging off all around him and RPGs whooshing over his head, he continued to press on all the way with his swede sticking out until he eventually reached Cimic. When he got there, he then helped evacuate his casualties under the sniper fire until he himself passed out with heatstroke. After they dragged him in, a 7.62mm AK round was found embedded in his helmet.

  His platoon reorganized, rearmed and got some much needed water down them. They then evacuated the most seriously injured in Cimic back to Abu Naji. Once the resupply was finished, its Warrior convoy also made a beeline for Abu Naji. Even though the incoming they took on the way back was less it was still plentiful, and every vehicle still got a piece of it.

  Beharry's Warrior was going nowhere though. We kept a watch on it by the front gate until it could be moved safely the next day. Fitz put warning shots into the tree beside it every time scavenging teenagers got too close. Like Daz's Snatch a few weeks before, the Warrior still had the same highly classified radio equipment in the back and we couldn't lose that.

  Then one of the cheeky little sods crept up behind the Warrior out of Fitzy's sight and tried to scramble up on top of it.

  'Want me to put one on the turret to get that fella off, Danny?'

  'No, it might ricochet and kill him. Can you do the driver's optics? That's about the only thing that isn't metal.'

  'No problem.'

  The driver's viewing optics is a strip of thick glass, three inches high by twelve wide. At a distance of just over 250 metres, it was bread and butter to Fitzy. He put a 7.62 straight into the middle of it. It scared the hell out of the teenager, who jumped off the Warrior and sprinted for his life.

  When it started to get dark, we also had to shoot out the Warrior's headlights because the power in it had been left on in the rush to debug from it. They were facing right into the camp and screwed up the view through our night vision goggles. They were harder shots. Fitzy took both of them out, and then calmly moved on to its indicators and three identification lights. A total of seven targets, all at over 250 metres, each just measuring a couple of square inches. Like the legend he was, he hit all seven first time.

  As the sun dropped down over the horizon leaving a crimson-red sky, Chris slumped down against the sandbags in Rooftop Sangar next to me. He'd been down to the Ops Room.

  After a full day's excitement for the OMS, their pot shots on Cimic had started to die down too. But we were still on a sharp lookout for mortar teams. They'd caused us misery all day, and so far they had got away with it. They were a particular concern to us. On the roof all the time, we were the most exposed to their fire.

  'That's all of our call signs accounted for now, Danny. Everyone's safe inside here or Abu Naji.'

  'Christ, we got away with that one, didn't we, mate? May Day. That'll be right. More like Mayhem if you ask me.'

  'Too right. I tell you what. That Beharry boy deserves a medal for what he just done. Fucking astonishing effort. He's only twenty-four years old and all.'

  'Yeah. How are the casualties?'

  'Not great. We've got a lot of unwell people still, but they've all been passed down the medivac chain to Basra. It looks like they're all going to live.'

  Unbelievably nobody had been killed. Again, we had the typical Iraqi undisciplined fire to thank for that. The OMS with their macho promenading were particularly bad at it. If we had been in their place and they had b
een in ours, we would have massacred dozens of them. Thank God for Rambo films.

  As usual, we had spoken too soon.

  Thirty minutes later, a series of explosions rang out to our south again. They were followed by a huge weight of AK fire. It was too far away to see much through our sights. Bright yellow flashes intermingled with hundreds of red darts of tracer, and then a lot of smoke. It looked like it was coming from Red 11, the main Route 6 road junction on the other side of the Tigris opposite the OMS building – the OMS's favourite ambush spot.

  'Whoa, someone's getting fucking whacked over there. I thought you said all our call signs are back in base, Chris?'

  'They are. At least that's what the Ops Room told me. I don't know what the fuck is going on over there.'

  Chris radioed it down to the Ops Room. They checked with Abu Naji, and confirmed what they had already told him. The shooting continued for a further ten minutes. Another huge ball of flame shot up over the ambush site.

  'Shit. That looks like an oil tanker going up. Who are those fuckers?'

  Chris had been right. The ambush was not on any of the battle group. It was only when a fleet of Warriors reached the scene that anyone managed to work out what on earth had happened.

  It was a giant convoy of US Army engineers. Specifically, the 84th Engineer Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division. They were passing through on their way out via Kuwait. It was the end of their year-long tour and they were going home to their base – in Honolulu, Hawaii. You can just imagine how happy they must have been.

  At least 60 OMS gunmen were lying in wait in drainage ditches on both sides of the main road to smack anything painted in desert khaki that passed by. They couldn't give a stuff if it was the Yanks or us. They probably didn't even realize.

  When the rounds started coming in, the American soldiers had bomb burst all over the town in a desperate bid to get away from the gunmen. Two were killed, a 32-year-old staff sergeant from Chicago and a 22-year-old private from California. Eight others were wounded. Most made it to nearby police stations. But two were missing in action.

  The battle group launched a massive search operation for them. That meant coming back into Al Amarah yet again and drawing yet more OMS fire. Helicopters were also sent up. But the soldiers had ducked into the southern estates, and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They were on the run for hours.

  At first the engineers hid, but were soon spotted. In a desperate flight for their lives, crowds chased them through the back streets and shit-filled trenches of the estates. They wanted to lynch them. Eventually, around midnight, they ran out on to a main road and straight in front of a passing Iraqi police patrol car. Normally in Al Amarah that would have meant curtains for them. But they'd got a lucky break. The two coppers inside happened to be some of the very few honest policemen in the city. They ran them down to Abu Naji's front gate and dropped them off.

  Half of the engineer convoy's thirty-four vehicles had been totally burnt out. They were abandoned where they were hit and left a charred and mangled line of metal almost a kilometre long up the Red route.

  We also heard that there were so many OMS gunmen firing on the convoy that the idiots even managed to waste four of each other in their own crossfire. We thought that was exceptional.

  The battle group had known absolutely nothing about the convoy. That meant nobody had been given any chance to warn them about what a nest of hatred they were about to stroll into. It was dark when they came over Yugoslav Bridge. So with us busy spotting for mortar teams, we hadn't seen them either. Nobody should have been operating in Al Amarah without all of us knowing about it. You pass through another unit's AO, you fucking well tell them. Otherwise, this happens.

  But it looked like the engineers weren't to blame either. Before they had set off from Baghdad, they told the CO in Abu Naji that they had been briefed that there'd been no trouble in Al Amarah for ten days, and no coalition forces were based here. Now two of their men were dead. A lot more had holes in them, and millions of dollars in equipment had gone up in smoke. Somebody in Baghdad had fucked up, big style.

  With the Americans' drama over, most of Cimic's now burgeoning occupancy crashed out wherever they could. It had been a seriously long day. But it wasn't finished yet for the snipers.

  12

  Nightfall only saw the mortaring against us intensify. On top of the nine during the day, we were on the receiving end of eleven more mortar strikes that night too, some of them frighteningly accurate. It had become pretty obvious to us that there was a new team in town. They were good. And they were the ones with the whopping great 82mm mortar tube.

  A mortar needs to be fired on a flat hard surface to be sure of any accuracy. To relocate repeatedly and still get the rounds reasonably accurate is not an easy business. We'd always plot the coordinates of their firing position. But by the time we'd done and got all our sights lined up, they'd be off again to another location. The new team also used smoke rounds first to spot whether they were on target or not. When they were, it would be five or six high explosive rounds straight down the tube at us. It was good drills and we were impressed. It also meant they'd had some good military training. A rumour went around that they were Iranian.

  After a while, I sent most of the lads to bed. There was little we could do about these fuckers in the darkness and without the ability to send an ambush patrol out. Unless we got very lucky. Three of us stayed up in Rooftop Sangar to mount the usual watch. Fitz and I were on the longs and Des was spotting. Dale had also come up on the roof to keep us company. It had been a busy day. He knew everyone was fucked, so he had volunteered to do the night commander's shift. He'd even brought us out a brew.

  'Mighty fine of you that is, Dale,' I said, as I took a long hard slurp of hot sweet tea. 'Cor, I needed that.'

  'My pleasure, Danny boy. Mind you, it should be you giving me the presents really.'

  'Why?'

  'It's my birthday today. I'm thirty-five.'

  'Really? I didn't know that. Happy fucking birthday, mate!'

  'Thanks. I'd forgotten all about it too. Don't worry; you can save the faarkin' cake till later.'

  The adrenalin of regular mortar incoming was enough to keep us awake through the long hours. Then, just after 3 a.m. Des spotted some heat signature through the SOFIE binos. It wasn't too far away from us on the north bank amid the Iraqi Army camp ruins. He looked again through a SIMRAD night sight. It was a flat-bottomed truck moving slowly with its lights off.

  'Hold on, Dan. I think I've got something here.'

  We lined up our sights in the direction where Des was looking and found the truck too.

  Eventually it stopped. Five blokes got out and started unloading equipment from the back of it. Des started getting excited.

  'Hey, did you see that? It looks like they're setting up a fucking mortar here. They're all armed too by the looks of it. AKs slung on their backs.'

  Then Des got very excited indeed.

  'Dan, Dan, Dan! I can see the fucking mortar tube. There it goes out of the truck now! Long fat fucker. It must be the 82 mil. Hey, we've really got the fuckers now. We're going to fucking waste them!'

  'OK Des, keep your voice down. Range them.'

  'I've done that already – 550 metres.'

  The mortar team had made a mistake. They'd got cocky with all their success. In their desire to get closer to us, they'd set up in a direct line of sight. Just because it was three in the morning didn't mean we weren't still watching them like a hawk.

  'Dan, this is really fucking it, you know?' Des had started to pump his fist under the sandbag wall.

  'Yes I know. Right, we need to get some illume up. Dale, can you get on the 51mm mortar and do that?

  'Sure thing. Leave it to me.'

  'Think of it as your birthday present, mate.'

  'Gladly received.'

  We took a few more seconds to get our weapons ready. Because there were so many of them in the team, a couple of longs w
ouldn't be enough for the job. They were also close enough for us not to need them. They were going to get the Gimpy from me.

  'Fitz, you grab that Minimi. As soon as the illume goes up, open fire.'

  'Roger that.'

  Crump, crump. The team had got their first two rounds off at us. Nothing to worry about. Probably just smoke anyway.

  Calmly, we rested the machine guns' barrels on the lip of the sandbag wall, and pressed our feet into its base for support. Then we looked through the weapons' iron sights. The mortar rounds thumped into the river just to our left. Then Dale let rip.

  They were caught like rabbits in our headlights. Right out in the open with nowhere to hide. Two of the crew were crouching down tinkering with the mortar and its base plate. The other three were humping mortar rounds from the flatbed to them.

  Fitz and I opened up at the same moment. After a couple of rounds, the GMPG had a stoppage. So I threw it out the way without even safety-catching it, and grabbed a second Minimi lying beside me. With Fitzy already blazing away with long fully automatic bursts, I opened up again for all I was worth.

  We aimed for the two men around the mortar tube first. I went for the one on its right, Fitzy the left. For a few seconds, they were all frozen to the spot staring up at the illume with disbelief. The tracer rounds, one in every four, did a great job in bringing us on to the targets. The bloke on the right went down first. He collapsed in a series of spasms as my rounds ploughed into him. In panic, all the bloke on the left could think of was to ram a round down the tube as quick as he could. He went down with the round still in his hand thanks to a long burst from Fitzy right into his guts. We made sure they both stayed down too, just in case. Both were riddled with another long burst.

  The other three mortar men weren't so noble. They dropped the rounds they were carrying on the spot and just legged it. After 50 metres or so, one thought he was out of the shit enough to show a little bravado and put a few rounds back at us. Pulling the AK off his back, he turned and raised it in our direction. Bad mistake. It was just the justification we needed to engage him too, so he was the next to get the good news.