by Damien Lewis
It had already become a standing joke among the SBS soldiers that CIA Bob would eat almost anything. He even seemed to like the British Army ration biscuits. These were dry, tasteless lumps of cardboard, which were pretty universally despised. But CIA Bob always seemed to be munching away contentedly from an open packet. As they were impossible to eat without water, the SBS lads were more than happy to unload all their biscuits on to him. The men were trying to stick to their daily 1.5-litre water ration, but the heat and the altitude was making it impossible to do so. Mat knew that soon he would somehow have to replenish their water supplies. He kept thinking about that tiny spring that he’d discovered some 3,000 feet lower down the mountain. At some stage they’d have to use it, regardless of the risk.
By lunchtime that day they had observed another of the early-morning PT sessions. Mat and CIA Bob were now ready to send in their first sitrep to JSOC headquarters. That first sitrep contained several transcripts from CIA Bob’s intercepts, reports of the enemy movements in the region, a detailed description of the PT sessions and photos to illustrate. The report concluded that so far, at least, the Naka Valley looked to be bang on target for the planned air strikes. And in sending that report, Mat, Sam and CIA Bob had pretty much given the go-ahead to bomb the Naka Valley back into the Stone Age.
As first light touched the mountain peaks above Balkh a golden yellow, Ali shook himself awake. It was time. He joined his brothers for pre-dawn ablutions and prayers. It was still dark all around them. Despite the hardship, it was exhilarating being on the front line – especially on a morning like this, when a counter-attack was about to get underway. The previous day, Commander Omer, Ahmed, Ali and the rest of their unit had ‘surrendered’ to the Northern Alliance forces. Only, it had been a mock surrender, a ruse. And just as the brothers had expected, the NA had taken the brothers at their word, as honourable Muslims, and accepted their so-called surrender at face value. In keeping with Afghan tradition, they had even allowed the brothers to keep their weapons.
The fools, Ali was thinking, as the brothers prepared for their treacherous attack. We will take no prisoners. The fools – we will show them no mercy and we will annihilate them.
During the night, Commander Omer had related the story of the seven hundred Jews of the Bani Quraiza tribe who were beheaded in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. According to Omer here was proof that it was justified in Islam to kill prisoners. ‘Remember what it says in the Koran,’ Omer had told them. ‘“It is not for the Prophet that he should take prisoners of war until he has made a great slaughter in the land.”’ As far as Ali was concerned, the Northern Alliance had sided with the infidels, and so they deserved no mercy anyway. He would happily slaughter them all and needed no encouragement from Omer to do so.
Last night, Omer had put the final touches to their plan of attack. It would be a lightning raid across the valley, the brothers deliberately launching their assault through a minefield. This would be practically suicidal, which is why the enemy would never expect it of them. It would give the brothers the vital element of surprise. Ali was disappointed that he had not been placed in the vanguard of the assault, but he knew that in some ways his role was even more dangerous. He was to create the diversion, so that the brothers would have a clear run of things as they launched their surprise attack.
As they finished their prayers, brothers from other units started to file silently into their positions. Omer had sent word out that they would be starting the counter-attack at first light. Soon, there were some hundred fighters gathered together with Ali’s unit. Shortly before the start of the attack, Ali moved off with Sadiq, his Saudi brother, to the far end of the group of mud-walled buildings where they were being held ‘prisoner’. They settled down behind a large rock and Ali prepared the RPG launcher for action – the weapon that he would use to create the diversion. Sadiq squatted down next to him with a rucksack stuffed full of RPG rounds.
Ali was glued to his watch as the second hand swept round towards 0600 hours, the pre-arranged time for the attack to start. By then he figured it would be just about light enough for him to aim and fire the RPG. He checked for one last time that the launcher was properly loaded and that the fuses were set on the first round. He flipped up the sight and made sure that it was clear of grit and mud. Then, in a hushed whisper, Ali ran through the battle plan one more time with Sadiq.
‘You remember Omer’s instructions, brother? We fire the first rocket from here at six o’clock dead. Then we get back down the rock. Then we make for a position higher up the hill, behind those buildings. After thirty yards or so, we stop, reload and fire again. Then we move again, and fire again, drawing the enemy fire as we do so. For as long as we have rockets left we keep firing – so that we give the brothers as much diversionary cover as possible. You got it?’
‘Al-hamdu Lillah,’ Sadiq replied. He had given up so much to come and join the jihad. But the fact that Sadiq had a family back home in Saudi Arabia hadn’t seemed to hamper his performance as a holy warrior. Sadiq had more than proven himself steadfast under fire. He took risks and fought as hard as any of the brothers, Ali included. And he made an excellent RPG loader, of that much Ali was certain.
A few seconds before 0600 hours, Ali hauled himself up from cover, bracing one foot on the rock in front of him. He already had the launcher on his shoulder. It always felt so strangely front-end-heavy with the grenade attached. He began searching for the target that he and Sadiq had identified. There was an army truck some three hundred yards away across the valley – well beyond the accurate range of the RPG. It would be a miracle if Ali managed to hit it. Taking his time, he lined up the metal sights on the truck, which was just visible through the dawn stillness. He braced himself for the recoil and squeezed the trigger gently. Even if he could just get a couple of shots close enough it would create the desired diversion. On the dot of 0600 hours the RPG let out a great whoosh and gout of flame and the rocket streaked out in front of Ali towards the target.
Without even stopping to check if the rocket had struck home, Ali jumped down and suddenly he and Sadiq were running hell for leather up towards the higher ground. Now he could hear the loud crackle of a Degtyarev (a 7.62mm light machine gun fed by a circular magazine) just to their backs, where another of the brothers was providing covering fire for their RPG attacks – one more element of the planned diversion. Then Ali heard the answering clatter of a Degtyarev starting up from across the other side of the valley, and bullets spattered into the sand and rocks where he and Sadiq had just been standing. The enemy had woken up to the attack.
They raced up to the cover of a low building and then stopped. As they reloaded, Ali could see that Sadiq was excited, the adrenalin coursing through his veins. His hands were shaking, fumbling as he tried to slot the second rocket on to the launcher. Come on Sadiq, come on, Ali urged, as he imagined the other brothers charging down into the valley below them. It wouldn’t take the enemy long to work out that far from surrendering, the brothers were launching a massive counter-attack and battling for their very lives.
Finally, the rocket clunked home. As Ali leapt up to fire, the first mortar round slammed into the buildings some thirty yards away, and machine-gun bullets started kicking up the dirt all around him. ‘Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!’ Ali began yelling as he lined up the sights, fired and dropped down again, all in the space of a few seconds. This time, Ali heard the crump of the rocket exploding across the valley. As they broke cover and ran further up through the village, the mortar barrage seemed to chase their very shadows. They reloaded, aimed and fired again in a frenzy of activity, and then they heard a heavy diesel engine starting up from across the valley. Sound travelled well in the early-morning stillness, and Ali and Sadiq knew that the enemy must have started up the truck to move it out of the range of the RPG. Their diversion was working.
Ali heard the clatter of a third Degtyarev machine gun opening up now, this time out in the no man’s land lying between their posi
tions and those of the enemy. In his mind’s eye he could see Ahmed, his huge Yemeni bear of a brother, spraying the Degtyarev in front of him as he led his unit in a crazed charge across the minefield. Back in the training camp the brothers had been taught how to use the Degtyarev to pour machine-gun fire into the ground as they ran forward. The Degtyarev could put out four hundred rounds a minute. At that rate, rounds shot into the ground some thirty feet ahead of a runner would detonate any mines without harming him. At least that was the theory. It was a method of surprise attack that the mujahidin had perfected over the years spent fighting the Red Army. But it was a pretty basic technique and it often went wrong.
Ali knew he had to keep firing the RPG, drawing the enemy’s attention away from the main thrust of the attack. It was about four hundred yards across the no man’s land before Ahmed and the sixty brothers with him would hit the enemy positions. Ali figured it would take the brothers a good minute to cross that terrain. Another rocket was ready. Ali leapt up, aimed and fired, and as he did so one of the enemy tanks opened up, a heavy shell slamming into the earth just behind him.
Diving back behind cover Ali couldn’t believe that he and Sadiq were still alive. They had mortars and heavy machine-gun fire pouring down on them, and now a tank had opened up with both its main cannon and heavy machine gun. The supporting fire of the Degtyarev to their backs had been silenced: perhaps the gun had jammed, or maybe the brother had achieved glorious shihada. All Ali knew for certain was that they’d drawn a murderous barrage of fire down upon themselves. For a split second, he felt pinned down, unable to move, trapped in the ebb and flow of the explosions. But he forced himself to his feet, grabbed Sadiq and they ran, bent double, along a drystone wall towards a nearby bunker, red-hot lead and shrapnel thrumming the air as they passed. Ali wanted to get in one last shot before the brothers reached the enemy positions and attacked.
As they reached the bunker a tank shell slammed into the wall where they’d just been crouching. They loaded the RPG again. Then they heard a new noise, a series of dull flat crumps from across the valley. Ali and Sadiq didn’t know it yet, but this was the sound of mines exploding. One of the brothers had just had his legs blown off as he charged across the minefield. It was Mohamed al-Jihadi, Ali’s Algerian doctor friend, the brother whose name signified that his only allegiance was to the Umma, the world Islamic community united under Islam. Ironically, he had just died while charging down positions occupied by the Northern Alliance troops – who themselves were fellow Muslims.
Ali was just about to jump up and fire again, when he heard the frenzied cries of, ‘Allahu Akhbar! Allahu Akhbar!’ drifting across the valley. The brothers must have reached the enemy lines already. There were the sharp reports of AK47s being fired and the crump of grenades going off. Then Ali was up again, above the parapet, and firing the RPG. He was sorely tempted to take a look to see how the attack was going, but he knew that it would be suicide to do so.
As the incoming fire rained down on their new position, Ali and Sadiq dived into the bunker to take cover. They knew now that their diversion had worked. Ahmed and the other brothers had taken the enemy by surprise and were across the valley, getting in among them.
6
VILLAGE PEOPLE
BY THE EVENING of day three in the Naka Valley, Mat and his team were becoming increasingly aware of just how inhospitable it was up on that mountain summit. They had more or less acclimatised to the altitude now. The remnant symptoms of AMS were little more than a mild headache and persistent nausea. But they were becoming badly dehydrated, and the cold was sapping their strength and alertness. Bundled up in all their Arctic survival gear they were still feeling the chill, and their ability to operate effectively was being compromised.
Nothing else was living up there on that barren peak. The goatherds stayed down in the valleys. Even the wildlife kept away. The only other living thing seemed to be the eagles that occasionally soared overhead. Apart from the one enemy patrol, the SBS team seemed to have the mountain all to themselves. As they prepared for their third long night on the summit, each of the patrol members checked their weapons, just to make sure that no water had got into them during the day. This had become a regular ritual before bedding down for the night. If any moisture had got into the gun barrel it would freeze overnight, which could cause the gun to explode upon firing.
On the morning of day four, Mat decided that they had to risk breaking cover and head down to the spring at the bottom of the mountain. They were desperately low on water, and they needed to stay in the OP for three more days at least, until the scheduled air strikes went in. As he was bored stiff of staying in one place, Mat volunteered himself to go, with Sam as his support man. They set off at 8 a.m., glad to be on the move again. At first they retraced their steps uphill, keeping off the ridgeline. They skirted the mountain summit and began the descent, keeping some ten yards apart so as not to make an easy target if they ran into any enemy. Suddenly, as they were descending the bare escarpment, a lone figure appeared from nowhere. Mat, who had taken point, spotted him first, and dropped to a crouching position. As soon as he did so Sam followed suit.
There was no real cover to be had, so Mat signalled to Sam that they should stay down and wait out. They remained in a squatting position, their eyes glued on the lone figure as he made his way towards them. As the man approached Mat could see that he was shooing a herd of scraggy goats ahead of him. The Afghan looked to be as ancient as the hills and he was armed with nothing more than a stout stick. There were no standard operating procedures governing what to do in a situation like this: it was down to the individual operator’s choice on the day. Mat remembered the written brief they’d been given on the locals back at Bagram: ‘Avoid – treat as hostile.’ But there was no way that he was going to shoot this old boy. If he spotted them, then they would take him prisoner. If he failed to spot them, they’d let him go on his way.
As the old man herded his goats up the slope, he was humming gently to himself, seemingly lost in a world of his own. Eventually, he ambled past some thirty yards away, seeming oblivious to Mat and Sam’s presence.
‘Dozy old bugger,’ Mat said, once the old goatherd was well out of earshot.
‘You reckon he didn’t see us, bud?’ Sam asked.
‘Nope. Reckon he can’t see sod all,’ Mat answered. ‘The poor bloke looked deaf as well as blind.’
‘You sure?’
‘Anyhow, even if he did see us he’d have thought he was bloody hallucinating,’ Mat replied. ‘You seen yourself recently? You look more like a mountain goat than you do an ace US Navy SEAL.’
‘You ain’t lookin’ too hot yourself, bro,’ Sam retorted. ‘If I’m a goddam mountain goat then you’re the yeti himself.’
On the day of their departure for Afghanistan, the lads had stopped shaving, and Mat and Sam had two weeks’ facial growth by now. In addition to which, both of them were wearing a dirty shamag – a traditional Arab scarf – wrapped around the lower half of their faces, with a black woolly hat perched on top. Dressed in civvy-style combat trousers and jackets, they were far from easily identifiable as being from any conventional military force.
‘You think we should just let the old guy go?’ Sam added, as they watched him meander his way up the mountainside.
‘Yep. Even if he did spot us, from thirty-odd yards away he’d have trouble telling us from a bunch of Talibs. Sure, they don’t carry Diemacos. But they have got some pretty weird ex-Soviet kit – like that fuck-off radio set. I reckon the old boy’d be none the wiser.’
Mat and Sam continued down the mountain and some twenty minutes later the two men reached the spring. As Mat provided cover, Sam began to pump the filter, the clean mountain water spurting out the exit pipe into their bottles. The Katadyn filter was newly purchased out of the SBS’s war fund, and it made short work of the little pool of spring water. Mat thanked his lucky stars that he’d remembered to bring it with them. It was going to prove a lifesaver on t
his mission.
The climb back up the mountain was uneventful. Once they were safely back at the OP Mat decided that they could allow themselves no more water resupply runs. Although he felt pretty certain that the old man hadn’t spotted them, any foray down the mountain greatly increased their chances of being compromised. They would have to survive on the twenty-one litres of extra water that Mat and Sam had between them managed to carry back to their position. That was an extra three litres per person. On present rates of consumption it was not enough to last them through to the day of the air assault. But somehow they’d have to make do.
Once Mat and Sam had dumped the water in the OP, CIA Bob called them over to the sentry point overlooking the Naka Valley.
‘Take a look at this, guys,’ he said, quietly.
Down below them a large crowd of people was milling about in the mid-morning dust. The whole population of both villages seemed to have gathered together on the parade ground. Mat reckoned there had to be a couple of thousand or so in total. At the far end, a large black banner with white Arabic writing was displayed between two poles. Beneath the banner a wooden table had been set up, and a couple of elders in white robes and turbans were seated at it, addressing the crowd. Every now and then a lot of wild chanting and wailing would go up from the crowd. Pretty clearly, something important was taking place in the Naka Valley that day.
‘What’s the banner say, mate?’ Mat asked CIA Bob.
‘It’s a verse from the Koran about the path from death to the afterlife, followed by an exhortation, “Allahu Akhbar” – “God is Great”.’
‘Reckon it’s a recruitment drive for AQT?’ Sam asked. ‘You know, like advertising the glory of being martyred fighting the enemy?’
