Deep Black

by Andy McNab

  They had a buff-coloured folder that they passed between them as if they were reading our medical notes. I couldn’t tell what unit they were from. Americans wear badges like the Russians wear medals. It’s hard to know where to start.

  The Texan broke the silence. ‘We’re all busy people. Let’s move this along.’ He sounded like a bank manager.

  Jerry still wasn’t quite with the programme. ‘Why have we been brought here?’

  The bank manager was getting a little frustrated. ‘Jeral, please, don’t make this hard on yourself. Just listen to what we’re about to say, because it’s only coming your way once.’

  He pointed to me. ‘You’ve been asking military contractors about Bosnians in Baghdad. Correct?’

  What was the point of lying? ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are these Bosnians here?’

  I was racking my brain, trying to remember exactly what I’d said to Jacob. I’d leave the ayatollah part out of this conversation. ‘We don’t know. It just sounded like a good story. You know—’

  Jerry couldn’t help himself. ‘We’re journalists and covered the Bosnian war and I heard about a—’

  The bank manager didn’t bother glancing at him. ‘Jeral, was I talking to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Therefore continue, Nick.’

  Thank fuck for that. Jerry would have given them chapter and verse.

  ‘The way we saw it – Bosnians coming here, from one war-torn Muslim country to another. We covered that war, and thought, Why not see if we can get the next chapter in the story? What brings them here, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You know their names?’

  ‘Not a clue. That’s why we’re just sniffing about.’

  As his mate jotted notes in the folder, he thought about what I’d said. ‘You telling me you decided to just turn up and see what they had to say?’ He tapped my passport on the palm of his hand. ‘Don’t mess me, now. Remember, you’re in my world.’

  ‘Well, OK, we thought maybe they might have something to do with the sex trade. The papers love that stuff. We heard there’s a few in town.’

  He smiled at me. He’d got what he was after. ‘That accent of yours doesn’t sound much like home to me.’

  ‘I’m from the UK. Moved to the States a year or so ago. The date’s in my passport.’

  He took a breath and adopted the kind of expression you’d use if you were about to refuse an overdraft. ‘Well, people, I’m going to level with you. My job is to be the clearing-house for you kinda guys. We just don’t like freelancers that maybe turn out to make us look bad. What we like are stories about getting the lights back on in the city. Even better, stories about the water supply being restored to a grateful local population. What we like most of all are stories about Iraqi children being cared for in American-supplied hospitals.

  ‘So . . .’ He paused, looked at Jerry, then back at me ‘. . . both of you are to leave Iraq today. I don’t care how you do it, but go. Be advised: if you fail to do so, the consequences of your actions could be fatal. It’s a real bad world out there. Upon this subject, gentlemen,’ he focused on Jerry for this one, ‘I do not jest.’ He levelled a finger at Jerry. ‘Understand?’

  ‘Oh, I understand. Sex trafficking’s a sensitive issue, especially after the shit hitting the fan in Bosnia last year. You remember, Nick – US executives buying underage girls for playthings. Some of the fat fucks even got involved with selling them on as part of a deal. No one got prosecuted, just big payoffs to keep everyone quiet. The same corporation’s now been awarded contracts here in Iraq?’

  I didn’t know what he was on about, but it must have been true. The two remfs didn’t say a word.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I? Well, fuck you.’

  This wasn’t the best way to the bank manager’s heart.

  ‘We’ll go north.’ I didn’t just say it, I shouted it, so loud a couple of the guys by the door reacted and moved closer. ‘We’ll go north,’ I shouted again. ‘We’ll drive to Turkey today.’

  ‘Thank you, Nick. Jeral, please . . .’ The Texan pointed at Jerry’s wedding ring. ‘It seems you have people back home who care for you. Think about that. I’m trying to get you both out of a dangerous situation that, quite frankly, is of your own making.’

  They both stood up. I kept my eyes down and watched four very clean and unscuffed boots until they disappeared behind me.

  48

  As he cut through my plasticuffs with a pair of scissors, the guy I’d shared a smile with spoke to the back of my head. ‘You got a ride waiting.’

  Rubbing our wrists, Jerry and I were escorted out into a palatial corridor. We walked past carved stone columns, under vaulted ceilings and fluted domes. If the arches hadn’t been sealed off with plywood to make office space, and the walls and marble floors hadn’t been covered by miles of metallic grey duct tape, wires and cables, I’d have expected Louis the Fifteenth to appear at any moment.

  We approached a large pair of double doors next to a ping-pong table. Two soldiers jumped up from the ornate chairs they’d been sitting in and opened them wide.

  We stepped out into the sun. I had to squint to protect my eyes. Heat bounced off the top of my head. With a soldier either side of each of us, we were guided to a Hummer and ushered into the back. This wasn’t one of the MP vehicles. It belonged to Captain D. Frankenmeyer. His name was stencilled on the right-hand side of the windscreen, as if it was a jazzed-up P-reg Ford Escort. Our kit was already inside. I checked my bumbag. My passport was safe. The rest of it didn’t matter, but I was happy to find the three thousand-odd dollars in twenties and smaller.

  The soldier behind the wheel wasn’t wearing body armour and his helmet rested on the steel hump between the front seats. There was another helmet on the spare front seat, with two rank bars. The captain it belonged to jumped in and threw on his Oakleys. As he slammed the door, I saw the very long nametag on his breast pocket. It was the Hummer’s owner.

  The driver threw the engine into gear and we set off past the Smiley face. Frankenmeyer swivelled round to face us. ‘Kinda cool, ain’t it?’ If he’d been a few years younger, Frankenmeyer could have come straight from playing college football. Big shoulders, toned body, white teeth, golden tan: he should have been in films. I smiled back at him – or, rather, at the reflection of myself in his mirrored lenses. There was no point in being surly. These boys were just doing the best they could.

  He pointed up at Smiley. ‘You know what? We got fifteen of them painted around town before we had to pull them down. What you guys do to get people so pissed?’

  Jerry took a breath and I put a hand on his arm to shut him up. ‘I think we were asking the wrong sort of questions. He’s a reporter.’

  Frankenmeyer turned back towards the windscreen. ‘We get a lot of them here. You been told to leave town today?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You’re the third this week. Those guys like to keep things sweet around here. I just wish they’d do the same for us. They said we were going to be here no more than four months, period.’ He punched the driver’s arm. ‘How long ago was that, Davers?’

  Davers didn’t bother to look at the captain: he was busy checking a junction left. ‘Fuck, that was Christmas, sir. And I joined the National Guard for the dental plan, not this shit.’

  Davers wasn’t on his own. A lot of small-town America joined the National Guard for the medical insurance and education credits. Most saw the weekend training camps as a box to be ticked before they got to the real benefits. No one really expected to get sent away to war, let alone for a year or more.

  That wasn’t the only problem. The National Guard deployed as independent units. The guy who ran the corner store back home might now be your commanding officer on operations. Everybody was a part-timer, and that always spelt trouble for command and control, and the standard of professionalism in contact. That was why most other countries integrated their part-timers into regular units.

  We pa
ssed the tank and vehicle graveyard. Off-duty soldiers mooched around in the shade of their half-bombed homes. Davers turned a corner and passed a café furnished with an assortment of tables, sofas and chairs. The original Arabic sign had been crossed out and replaced with ‘Bagdad Café’ in crude white paint. The Whoopee Goldberg painting on the wall wasn’t much better. A couple of Hummers and AFVs were parked outside, alongside men and women drinking water and Coke, relaxing in the shade. Their body armour, helmets and M16s were piled on the ground at their feet.

  ‘Where we going?’ The fact that Frankenmeyer and the driver hadn’t bothered with their body armour and we were both in one vehicle had already given me the answer, but I thought I’d ask anyway.

  He wiped the sweat from his shaved blond head with both hands. ‘Back gate, and that’s it – end of your ride.’

  ‘No chance of a lift back to the hotel?’

  ‘’Fraid not, man – you have to hail yourselves a taxicab!’ He liked the sound of that.

  The driver gulped on a can of Minute Maid with such relish it made me feel thirsty. But there was no icebox in this wagon. There wasn’t even body armour on the doors, just sandbags on the floor.

  We drove through the gate and turned right. The Tigris was to our left and the sandbagged sangar at the checkpoint was about two hundred metres ahead and on the river side of the road. Beyond that was the main drag, crossing the river via a big metal bridge.

  The sangar looked like a square igloo built from hundreds of sandbags. As we approached I could see the rear entrance more clearly. Inside, three, maybe four soldiers were hurrying to put their belt-kit back on. They were supposed to keep it on at all times but that was a real pain in the arse. They probably just grabbed it whenever they saw a wagon coming; I’d done the same enough times.

  Traffic boomed across the bridge. Trucks, cars, motorbikes stuck behind a military convoy, everyone hooting. They knew better than to try to overtake.

  Awatchtower rose maybe fifty feet in the air just short of the sangar. It looked like something out of The Great Escape: four wooden pillars with crossed bracing and a little pillbox on top. Whoever was on stag up there wasn’t protected by sandbags, which seemed strange. They’d be a sitting target for any line-of-sight weapon, whether it was an AK or an RPG.

  The Hummer kicked up the dust and rattled and groaned its way from pot-hole to pot-hole, so the first I knew of the attack were the dull thuds as three or four rounds slammed into the side of the cabin.

  The radio crackled. ‘Contact, contact, contact!’

  49

  We swerved and everybody ducked. I hoped Davers wasn’t ducking as much as the rest of us when he hit the gas.

  Frankenmeyer fumbled about, getting his helmet on. ‘Get to the checkpoint!’

  Seconds later the wagon screeched to a halt by the sangar. I opened the door and pushed myself out on to the hot tarmac, checking for Jerry. ‘Get inside!’

  The fire was coming in from the other side of the river. Soldiers poured out of the sangar, heading for the bank. Jerry slowed up and tried to pull the camera out of his bumbag.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, come on!’

  The Americans opened up from behind a three-foot-thick wall as more rounds poured in from across the water, maybe three hundred metres away; long, sustained bursts, then individual shots. I could make out the distinctive heavy crack of the AKs’ 7.62, but couldn’t see any muzzle flashes coming from the jumble of six- or seven-storey tower blocks and concrete squares.

  Jerry was still fucking about behind me, trying to get his camera working. I ran back, grabbed him and dragged him into the sangar. I saw immediately why the boys had needed to get out into the open: unbelievably, the place had been built without firing ports overlooking the water. They only covered the road to the bridge with a .50 cal.

  For some reason, the floor was sandbagged. We threw ourselves flat as a couple of rounds thumped into the ones around the entrance. I looked out at the chaos along our side of the riverbank. The squaddie who’d been at the top of the watchtower was dropping down like a submariner from a conning tower. If there’d been a fireman’s pole they’d have been on it.

  Frankenmeyer was trying to take control. ‘Can you see ’em? Can you see ’em?’

  It didn’t matter: everybody seemed to be cabbying away regardless. The squaddie reached the bottom of the ladder. Frankenmeyer shouted, pointing to the sangar, ‘Get the fifty! Get the fifty!’

  Jerry had his bumbag open. ‘Bastards! They’ve taken my memory cards!’ He scrabbled in his jeans for replacements as more rounds thwacked into the sandbags. The .50 cal was above him, its barrel facing the main, with the legs of the tripod straddling the firing port. It would have been useless even if it had been pointing the right way. The tripod was unsupported; it should have been weighted down with sandbags. If they started firing it, it would bounce all over the place and fall off the sill.

  The soldier from the watchtower was coming full pelt towards the sangar, head down, M16 in hand. Her brown hair was long and had been up in a bun, but had now mostly fallen across her face and neck. There was a guy, a zit-faced nineteen-year-old, hot on her heels. I moved out of their way as they plunged through the entrance, pouring sweat, kicking Jerry’s camera out of his hands, as more bursts hit the sangar and the Hummer. She yelled at Zit-face as they tried to lift the .50 cal at the same time as shouldering their own weapons. It wasn’t going to happen: the slings weren’t slack enough to fit over their helmets.

  I wanted these two out of here. They were flapping; their barrels banged together as they fucked about and there were too many made-ready weapons flying about in this tight space for my liking. ‘Cradle your weapons, hold the fifty by the tripod. Get the fucking thing out there!’

  More rounds thudded into the sandbags and they flinched as they dragged out the heavy weapon, one holding the barrel, the other the tripod. They half ran, half stumbled with it towards the riverbank, the belt of thirty or so rounds on the weapon dragging behind them in the sand.

  The command radio in the sangar was going apeshit. Everybody was being stood to. Jerry was still reloading, cursing the guys who’d dared to confiscate his precious cards.

  I watched them rigging the .50 cal. Hadn’t they ever fired one of these things? They’d done their usual trick with the tripod legs straddling the wall.

  I turned to Jerry as another barrage of rounds headed our way. He was lying on his side, camera pointing across the river like a weapon.

  ‘Keep an eye on the .50. When that fucker starts firing you’re going to get a great picture!’

  50

  A stream of tracer shot high over our heads. Now and again I saw a weapon flash inside a building.

  The .50 cal responded with short bursts, its one-in-four tracer rounds curving just slightly over the river before making splash marks on the concrete and spinning away. The Humvee took another couple of rounds and so did the sangar. Whoever was manning the .50 cal was screaming and shouting, the voice so high-pitched I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!’

  The bursts got longer and the tracer started to clear the lower buildings. The tripod was moving backwards and the barrel was getting higher and higher. The gunner didn’t seem to notice. He or she was too far gone.

  Jerry kept his finger on the button. There was nothing I could do and, besides, this wasn’t a war I was getting paid to join. I looked around and spotted a white polystyrene cool-box. Small half-litre bottles of water floated in melting ice. I took two and held one out for Jerry. He waved it away. He had bigger things on his mind. He got to his feet and crouched in the sangar entrance, as if he was about to make a run for it. I grabbed hold of him. Tracked vehicles rumbled out of the camp gate. ‘Whoa, whoa. We’re not here for that. We’re off to Turkey tonight, remember?’

  Any reply he might have made was drowned by the roar of rotor blades, very low, coming from the bridge.

  The .50 fired again, and so did
an AFV moving up the road. Its turret gunner had a more stable platform and was getting rounds on target.

  I watched the helicopter swoop towards the riverbank, heading straight over the precariously balanced .50.

  ‘It’s going to get hit! Get the picture!’

  The .50 fired and there was a groaning sound, like the rolling of massive chains on a drum. The helicopter must have been at its very limits as the pilot took evasive action.

  I looked out of the firing port. It had banked hard right, back over the bridge. Traffic was still crossing. The .50 cal was still firing, at least seventy degrees into the air. The gunner probably didn’t have a clue how close he’d come to fucking up big-time.

  Frankenmeyer was running around the team, screaming at the top of his voice. ‘Stop, stop, stop!’

  The radio burst back into life. ‘Red Dragon four-one, we’ve got one hundred and fifty in contact. Repeat, that’s one-five-zero hajis!’

  Same as gooks for the Viet Cong, I supposed. It never took an army long to get derogatory about their enemies.

  Jerry spun round. ‘Let’s get over there and have a look!’

  I threw the water bottle at him. ‘Dickhead, do you really think there’s a hundred and fifty over there?’

  He gulped from the bottle, letting the water pour down the side of his mouth. His eyes were glued to the chaos outside.

  The attack seemed to have stopped. The loudest noises now came from the traffic and the command radio.

  I looked out through the door. The soldiers behind the wall were getting to their feet, cheering with relief that no one had been hit. Now they could concentrate their energies on honing it into a good war story to tell the folks back home.

  I took a swig of water. It was boiling in here and the sweat poured down my face. No wonder the guys had taken their belt-kit off.

  There was a box of muesli energy bars in the corner and I helped myself to a hot, soggy blueberry one as about a dozen AFVs thundered past at warp speed to get over the bridge and in among the AK guys. They would have melted into the city by now.