Bravo two zero

by Andy McNab

  "I see. How many of you were there on the helicopter?"

  It was the schoolteacher talking down to a kid he knows full well is lying-but he wants the kid to squirm before he confesses.

  "I don't know, because when we got on it was dark. Sometimes there's only four, sometimes there's twenty. We're just told when to get on and when to get off. It always happens so quickly. I didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. To be honest, I'm not really interested. I never take that much notice. They treat us like shit; we're just the soldiers who do the work."

  "All right. So what was your mission, Andy? You must know your mission because it's always repeated twice in your orders."

  It's standard British army practice to repeat the mission statement twice in orders. It astounded me that he knew. If he understood British military doctrine, he must have had some training in the UK.

  "I don't really know about my mission," I said. "It's just a case of: go here, go there, do this, do that. I know we're supposed to know the mission, but we are not told half the time what's going on; it's total and utter confusion."

  My mind was racing, good style, trying to do several things at once. I was listening to this character and I was trying to remember what I'd already said and what I was going to say in the future. The problem was, I was knackered, I was hungry, I was thirsty. This boy was sitting up there all rather comfy and contented, just having a bit of a waffle.

  He was far more switched on at this stage than I was because I was such a physical wreck.

  "Well, what were you going to do once you were on the helicopter?"

  "We're all drawn together from different regiments to form these rescue teams. We haven't been together long because we're all from different places. We haven't formed into teams yet. Look, we're here to save life, not to take life away. We're not that sort of people."

  "Hmmm."

  The colonel hadn't stopped staring at me since the blindfold was removed. Now he sparked up in passable English.

  "Where is your officer who commands you?"

  I was happy about this question. In the Iraqi system there's an officer in command even at the lowest level; it was good that they found it incomprehensible for a long-range patrol to be in the field without an officer. I'd been portraying myself as thick and confused, and maybe they'd been taken in. Now they wanted the officer: he was the man in the know. I decided to play on the deserted soldiery bit.

  "I don't know, it was dark. He was there one minute and gone the next.

  He must have stayed on the helicopter. He wouldn't bother coming out with us if he knew the helicopter was taking off again. He deserted us."

  "Do you think there could have been eight of you?"

  That meant they were aware of the problem at the MSR and were trying to make the connection-if they hadn't already done so. In my heart I knew it was only a matter of time.

  "I don't know, there were people running around everywhere. We're not trained for this sort of thing, we're trained to render first aid-and all of a sudden we're stuck in the middle of Iraq. There might have been eight, I haven't got a clue. I was confused and I just ran for it."

  "Where did the helicopter land?"

  "I really don't know. They just put us down. I don't know where it was. I wasn't map-reading on the aircraft; it's the pilots that do everything."

  Could they believe this shit? I felt I was flogging a dead horse, but I had no choice now-I'd gone down that path, and I had to keep going, right or wrong. I didn't know if they were just fishing or not. I'd just have to play the game out. Anybody else who'd been caught would be doing the same. No need to panic; the conversation was still all very nice.

  "Tell me about some of the equipment that you have, Andy. We are somewhat confused about it."

  I didn't know if he was trying to get me to talk about the berg ens which had been dropped or our belt kit. He was talking as if we were the eight-man patrol that had got bumped, and I was talking as if we were the search and rescue team.

  "It's just standard sort of issue-water, ammunition, and a bit of extra first aid kit and our own personal stuff."

  "No. Tell me about the explosives that you had in your packs."

  Hang about, I thought-it hasn't been confirmed yet that I was in this patrol.

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Come on, Andy, let's sort this out. There is no big problem. Just sit there, take your time, and it will all be done tonight. You were carrying explosives, Andy. We've followed you all the way since you were first found. We know it was you and your friends. We've been following your exploits."

  "I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean."

  "Well, you do really, don't you, Andy? Such a large quantity of plastic explosive. Did you intend to blow something up?"

  His tone was still very pleasant and gentle, the GP enquiring about my general well-being. I knew it wouldn't last. In training, you are taught to try and take advantage of whatever you can whenever you can, because you don't know if it's ever going to come your way again. A golden rule is that if you can get something to eat, take it every time.

  They were trying to be the nice guys and help me as much as they could, so I felt it was time to try and take advantage of the situation.

  "Would it be possible to have anything to eat, please, because I haven't eaten for days and days," I said. "I've got stomach pains from hunger.

  It would be nice to have something to eat."

  "Of course you can have something to eat, Andy. It might be difficult to find, of course, because the sanctions mean that we have children starving in the streets. However, we will try to find you something. We are a good and generous people. We will look after you. If you help us, who knows what else you can get? You might be home soon. Think about that, Andy-home."

  The rice was hot and so was the bowl of delicious stewed tomatoes and two chap atis The water was refreshingly cool and served in a clean glass.

  At first one of the guards picked up the spoon and started to feed me.

  I said, "Would it be possible to undo one of my hands so I can feed myself?"

  The major said No, but the colonel Okayed it with a wave of his hand.

  One of my handcuffs was undone, and the release of pressure was absolutely splendid. The only problem was that I couldn't hold the spoon properly because of the numbness in my hand. I balanced it between my little finger and the finger next to it and then rested it above the web of the thumb as a sort of lever.

  The colonel pointed at -the picture of Saddam.

  "Do you know who this is?"

  I hesitated, as if trying to put a name to a face at a party, and said,

  "Yes, that's Saddam Hussein. President Hussein."

  "Yes it is. What have you heard about him?"

  What was I supposed to say? "I've heard about him all right. I've heard he's pretty good at gassing kids in Iran?"

  "I know that he's a man of power, a strong leader."

  "This is correct. Under his leadership we shall soon be rid of all you Westerners. We have no time for you. We don't need you."

  It wasn't rhetoric; his tone was still conversational.

  I finished the rice and got stuck into the tomatoes. I had great trouble eating them because my mouth was so swollen and numb. It was like coming back from the dentist after an injection and thinking you'll have a cup of tea, but it dribbles down your chin because you have no control. I was noisy and uncouth as I slobbered away, tomato juice trickling down my chin. The tomatoes tasted lovely, and I was just sorry that the sores in my mouth stopped me from chewing them properly and extracting all the flavor. The bread was a problem, too. I just gulped down big hunks without chewing. No matter: I wanted to get it all down my neck as fast as I could in case they started playing games and took it away from me halfway through.

  The colonel peeled an orange as he watched me. In contrast with the chimpanzee's tea party down on the carpet, he did it with studied elegance. With the aid of a sm
all knife he made four careful cuts down the skin, then peeled off each quarter in turn. He opened out the orange segment by segment.

  The fruit had been presented to him on an ornate china plate on a tray, with a silver knife and fork. There was a definite class system in operation, the jundies running around with a teapot pouring tea for these two lads, while they just sat there.

  Now and again the colonel would pick up a piece of orange and put it in his mouth. Down on the carpet his prisoner slobbered and slurped. Talk about Beauty and the Beast.

  My stomach was feeling really good, but it wasn't just the food that was making me happy: while I was eating they weren't asking me questions. It gave me time to think.

  Sure enough, as soon as I'd finished I was handcuffed again, and we carried on the conversation from where we'd left off. He was still talking as if we'd already agreed that the equipment found after the initial contact on the MSR was ours.

  "So, Andy, explain to me some more about the equipment. What else did you have? Come on, we need your help. After all, we have helped you."

  "I'm sorry, I'm getting all mixed up. I don't understand."

  "What were you doing with explosives?"

  The tone still wasn't aggressive.

  "We didn't have any explosives. I don't really know what you're on about."

  "Andy, you were obviously going to destroy something because you were carrying PE4, which is a high explosive that is designed to destroy things. You appreciate why I cannot really believe the story you are telling me?"

  His mention of PE4 was another indication that he was UK-trained, but I ignored it. "I really don't know what you're on about."

  "We have some of your men in hospital, you know."

  That one got me. I tried not to show any shock or surprise; I wasn't supposed to be connected with any villains from the MSR.

  "Who are they?" I asked. "What condition are they in?"

  My mind was racing. Who could it be? What might they have said? Was he just bluffing?

  "They're Okay, they're Okay."

  "Thank you very much for looking after them. Our army would be doing the same for your injured."

  If they had anybody in hospital, it must mean they were interested in keeping them alive.

  "Yes," he said casually, "we know everything. A few members of your group are in hospital. But they are fine. We are not savages; we look after our prisoners."

  Yes, I know, I thought-I've seen the footage of the Iran-Iraq war; I've seen how you look after your prisoners.

  There was nothing I could do about it, but I had to respond the way I thought they wanted me to. It's all a big game, one that you start training for as a kid. You learn how to lie to your mother or teacher, and turn on the tears whenever you want.

  "Thank you for helping them," I said, "but I don't know anything that I can tell you."

  "Well, we agree that you were with the group that abandoned its packs, and that we followed you all the way along."

  "No-you're confusing me. I don't understand what you mean about abandoned packs. We don't use packs. We were deserted; we were stuck in the middle of your country. I'm just a soldier; I go where I'm told and I do what I'm told to do."

  "But, Andy, you have not explained to me what you were told to do. You must have had a mission."

  "Look, I'm on the lower echelon of the military system. As you know yourself, we work on a need-to know basis. We are only told what we need to know, and because I'm so low down on the chain I get told nothing."

  Bingo-this seemed to strike a chord. At the top of the card which gives the sequence for an orders group it says: Remember Need To Know.

  He had obviously had some sort of teaching from the Brits, probably at Sandhurst or Staff College: the Iraqis had been in the Western powers'

  Good Lads Club for a number of years.

  The colonel looked puzzled and asked the major something in Arabic. The junior officer gave a lengthy explanation. I felt good about this. I'd actually come back at him with something that they seemed to accept.

  Maybe they thought I really did know jack shit. Maybe they could equate my situation with their own. We were all soldiers. Obviously he was a major and the other one was a colonel, but they would still receive orders from brigadiers and generals. The long shot was that they'd take a certain amount of pity on us, or think that we were really not worth the trouble of trying to get any more information out of because we were just a bunch of bonehead squad dies who'd screwed up.

  "That is fine, Andy. We will see you later on. It is time for you to go now."

  He sounded like a therapist winding up a session.

  "Thanks very much for the food. I am trying to help, really I am, but I just don't know what's required of me."

  They put the blindfold back on and, rather surprisingly, took the handcuffs off. I felt the blood rush back into my hands. They lifted me and took me outside. The cold hit me. It had been so warm in the office, scoffing tomatoes, bread, and rice.

  I was quite happy that this was another major hurdle over with, and that I'd got some food out of them. Chances were they'd been going to give me some anyway as part of the good-guy routine, but it just made me feel better to have asked for and received it. I was fairly confident at this time that my story was holding up, even though I wasn't entirely happy with the performance I'd given. At the end of the day, whether they believed it or not, as. long as they had me down as thick and ignorant, it didn't really matter to me. Hopefully I'd just be pigeonholed as totally irrelevant and too thick to get any creditable information out of.

  I still hadn't got my boots, and I couldn't walk properly on my raw feet. But I was mentally fit, and that was all that mattered. They can break any bone in your body that they choose, but it's up to you whether or not they break your mind.

  I hobbled down a long, cold, damp corridor with lino floors, and they sat me down at the end. It was completely dark-not a flicker of light came through my blindfold. From time to time I could hear the echo of footsteps moving along other corridors and crossing this one. Perhaps it was an office complex.

  After an hour or so there was again the sound of footsteps, but they were more irregular and shuffling than usual. Shortly I heard the sound of labored breathing. A guard took my blindfold off, and I watched him walk away. The corridor was about 8 foot wide, with tiled walls and doors every 15 feet or so. Down to the right there were two other intersections with corridors coming off, and that went down maybe 100 or 125 feet. It was dark. There was a Tiny lamp right at the other end of the building, glowing at the junction.

  I looked to my left and saw Dinger. He had a huge grin on his face.

  "Come here often, wanker?" he said.

  The guard came back with our boots and went out and joined his mates who were sitting a few feet away, keeping an eye on us.

  "Muslim or Christian or Jew?" one of them said.

  "Christians," I said. "English. Christians."

  "Not Jew?"

  "No. Christians. Christians."

  "Not Tel Aviv?"

  "No, not Tel Aviv. English. Great Britain."

  He nodded, and gob bed off to his mates.

  "My friend here," he said, "he's a Christian. Muslims and Christians are Okay in Iraq. We live together. No Jews. Jews are bad. You are a Jew."

  "No, I'm a Christian."

  "No, you are a Jew. Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv no good. We don't want Jews.

  We kill Jews. Why you come in our country? We don't want war. War is your problem."

  He was just talking, rather matter-of-factly, and seemed quite sensible.

  Iraq has a large Christian population, especially around the port of Basra.

  "We are not Jews, we are Christian," I said again.

  "Aircrew?"

  "Not aircrew. Rescue."

  If he'd wanted us to be Muslims or members of the Church of the Third Moon on the Right, that's what we would have been. I was just nodding and agreeing with everything, apart from the
Jew bit. It was the early hours of the morning and we could sense the guards' attitude: "We're bollocksed, you're bollocksed, we have to look after you, let's just do it without any problems." Dinger was rubbing his feet. "Is it all right if I help him?" I said. They gave a wave that said: Yeah, do what you want. Dinger and I leant forwards to examine his feet. "Bob?" I whispered in his ear. "Don't know." "Legs?" "Probably dead. What about Mark?" "Dead. When did you get caught?" "Mid-morning. I heard you being brought in in the afternoon." "Are you all right?" I said. I couldn't believe I'd asked such a bone question. What a dickhead statement. He eyed me with a look that said: You knobber! The guards suspected that we were communicating, and one of them came over to stop it.

  Dinger asked him for a cigarette. The guard spoke pretty good English, but Dinger said, "Cig-ar-ette?" as if he was talking to a lunatic, and made the motions of smoking. It didn't get him anywhere. We both had a slightly better idea now of what was going on. I knew that Legs was probably dead. I still didn't know about Bob. We sat there for about an hour, but couldn't communicate any more.. My body was aching all over, and I was falling asleep. Your body gets so psyched up when you are being filled in, but when there is a period of calm, all the little aches and pains get magnified because you have nothing else to worry about. The feeling reminded me of school. When you have a fight as a kid, you're all sparked up, and it doesn't hurt so much initially. It's a couple of hours later that the pain comes out. My lips were still bleeding. My mouth had been split in several places during the beatings, and the wounds kept trying to congeal. But even the slightest movement made them reopen. My arse and lower back were sore from sitting all day on the hard concrete. The injuries made me feel even more exhausted, and I wanted to get my head down. I nodded off, my head lolling on my chest, then jerked awake a minute or two later. This went on for about half an hour. Then Dinger and I leant against each other and dozed.

  We were woken by the slamming of doors and the sound of talking. The glow of a Tiny lamp appeared at the bottom of the corridor and got bigger and bigger. Finally the lamp appeared, with lots of bodies behind it. We knew we were off again.

  We were handcuffed and blindfolded-not aggressively, rather nonchalantly. We stood up and shuffled together along the corridor and out into the open air. A Land Cruiser was waiting with its engine running.