by Damien Lewis
Reggie took a long slurp of his brew. ‘Thanks, buddy. Got it. Good point.’
‘Third, we’re supposed to infiltrate into the area covertly overland. By my reckoning that’s a seven-hundred-kilometre drive as the crow flies, so a lot further once we’ve navigated through, plus dodged around the enemy. From the maps it’s clear that the further north we go the more heavily irrigated and vegetated it becomes, so we’ll be channelled onto tracks and roads. That makes us highly visible.’
‘Okay. Okay, boy. I hear you.’ Reggie had a super-cool way of responding, and nothing ever seemed to ruffle him.
‘For those reasons I’d question the feasibility of the mission, at least as it’s presently constituted,’ Grey concluded. ‘I’m not saying I don’t want us to get in there and do this, boss. I’m just saying there must be a better way to go about achieving our tasking.’
Reggie smiled. ‘Thanks again, buddy, all points well made. I’ll have a think on that one. We’ll put our heads together in the Head Shed, and see where we get. But for now at least, boy, we’ve got to crack on.’
That pretty much silenced Grey’s objections – although he did wonder whether the OC would be quite as laid back about things if the 5th Corps proved somewhat less than keen to surrender when they hit the deserts of northern Iraq.
Sixty against one hundred thousand: it would take a real Ice Man to maintain his cool with the odds so stacked against them.
CHAPTER FIVE
Briefings followed briefings thick and fast now. The Americans had divvied up the territories in which each Special Forces unit could operate. The British, Aussie and Kiwi SAS had got the Western Desert, territory with which they were familiar from the First Gulf War. And in getting the north of the country the SBS had landed either the jackpot or the booby prize, depending on how you looked at it.
The more he learned, the more Grey reckoned that the mission they’d been given was actually a real peach. He knew his military history well, and the last time that British – hell, any – Special Forces had embarked upon anything like such a mission so deep behind enemy lines had been in the days of the Second World War.
Back then the SAS and the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) had penetrated the North African desert driving Chevrolet trucks and Vickers jeeps, carrying out recce, capture and sabotage missions, hitting enemy supply lines, fuel dumps, airfields and ammunition stores. In September 1942 they had launched perhaps their best-known and most epic of missions – Operation Caravan. Seventeen vehicles carrying forty-seven men had travelled 1,859 kilometres across the North African desert. On reaching their objective – the Italian-held Libyan town of Barce – the patrol had split up, one half attacking the enemy barracks and the other the airfield. During the airfield assault over thirty aircraft – mainly three-engined Italian Air Force bombers – had been damaged or destroyed.
If they could only pull it off, M Squadron’s Iraq mission would be up there with such legendary exploits. And when in the entire course of military history had one squadron of elite operators ever taken the surrender of an entire corps? Sure, the mission feasibility left a bit to be desired, as did the intelligence picture, but this was the kind of operation that would get talked about in the officers’ mess for years to come.
It was also going to be a massive personal test for each and every man on the Squadron. Sure, they were burned out after months of back-to-back operations. But equally, they were riding high on the success of the MV Nisha assault, not to mention their Afghan ops. So, while Grey had doubts about the specifics of the mission, he had every confidence in the individuals tasked to achieve it.
M Squadron also had an ideal opportunity to prove itself in Iraq. In the First Gulf War the SBS had never really got a look in, whereas the SAS had got decidedly down and dirty. This time around, the SAS was going to get similar taskings to the previous war – scouring the Western Desert for units that might be preparing to lob chemical weapons at US and British forces massing in Kuwait. By contrast, M Squadron had just landed a deep-penetration mission, one that would entail covering vast tracts of enemy territory to achieve an epic end.
As if to reinforce the hunger of the young guns to get going on this mission, Moth showed Grey a makeshift adaptation that he’d made to their Land Rover. Using bungee grips, gaffer tape and camouflage material, he’d cobbled together a cowboy-type sling for his Diemaco assault rifle. It lay to the right-hand side of the driver’s wheel, so the weapon was held barrel downwards against the dash.
Moth demonstrated how he could reach for the weapon’s butt, draw it one-handed, and aim and engage the enemy out of the front of the vehicle while keeping his other hand on the steering wheel. His Diemaco had an M203 grenade launcher attached beneath it, and in theory he could lob off 40mm grenade rounds single-handedly as he drove with the other.
Grey smiled indulgently. He appreciated Moth’s keenness to engage with the enemy, but he reckoned the cowboy-style holster would be about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike once they got going in Iraq.
‘Mate, it looks super-cool,’ Grey told him. ‘But don’t worry about it too much. Just concentrate on your driving.’
With each man in the Squadron tasked with taking the surrender of over sixteen hundred Iraqi troops, it made sense to get some basic Arabic into them. This was going to be Sebastian’s baby. Trouble was, Sebastian had just been issued with a brand-new SBS beret, and no one seemed to have told him that you had to shape the distinctive headgear with hot – some argued boiling – water, so as to give it its distinctive, right-side-down skull-hugging profile.
When he walked in to the mess tent for the Squadron’s first Arabic lesson, there was a chorus of ‘Fuck me, I didn’t know the chefs did Arabic!’ Somehow, he seemed able to take all the piss-taking in his stride. It was like water off a duck’s back, and he certainly didn’t let it lessen his enthusiasm for banging some Arabic into the blokes of the Squadron.
He began by handing out some crib cards that he’d got printed up. They contained a list of common Arabic words and sentences, though oddly enough the phrase, ‘Would you like to surrender?’ appeared to be absent.
Sebastian was like a human dynamo as he talked the men through the basics of the language. He kept hopping about from foot to foot, and there was something about his boyish enthusiasm that was strangely infectious.
‘Now, here’s one you may have heard of – Insh’Allah, pronounced “Insha-a-lah”,’ he beamed. ‘It means “God-willing”, and absolutely everything is Insh’Allah in Arabic-speaking countries. Don’t you just love the sound of it? – try it, all of you, now: Insh’Al-lah. Insh’Allah – really rolls off the tongue, don’t you think?’
Seb was clearly playing to his audience, and playing up to the fact that all thought him to be some kind of mad, eccentric Englishman. ‘Try it, Raggy, try it!’ he enthused, as Raggy wandered in – his trademark five minutes late. ‘Insh’Allah. Insh’Allah. That’s it. Fantastic, Raggy! Marvellous, isn’t it?’
At the end of that first Arabic session Sebastian sidled up to Grey, as they joined the queue for a brew. ‘So, erm, what do you think?’ he ventured, a little self-consciously.
At first Grey figured he wanted some feedback on his Arabic teaching, but then he realized Seb was indicating the beret perched proudly atop his head. What on earth was there that he could say? He did some quick thinking. ‘Mate, I dunno if you’ve noticed, but no one’s wearing their berets much around here. OPSEC, mate. Operational Security. We don’t want to risk anyone getting a photo of us, and rumour has it there are a few press types around the base. If they get a pic of any of us lot in the beret, well – they’ll know SF types are off to Iraq, won’t they?’
‘Ahhh …’ Seb looked a little crestfallen. He whipped the beret off his head, and folded it into one of his pockets. ‘Oh well, wazoh. Don’t want to blow it that we’re off on a spot of foreign adventure, do we?’
After acquiring some Arabic, the other key priority was getting the N
BC (nuclear, biological and chemical) warfare defences sorted for the Squadron. Iraq had produced various chemical warfare agents over the years, including mustard, sarin, tabun and even VX – one of the most deadly nerve gases known to man – and the area the Squadron would be moving through was believed to harbour an underground chemical weapons plant.
Saddam had used chemical weapons extensively in the north of Iraq, both against both the Kurds and the Iranians, and the threat was seen as being very real. It was the avowed reason that the West was going to war. But it didn’t make NBC defence any more of a popular a topic amongst the men. Compared to Sebastian’s Arabic lessons, rehashing NBC drills was like watching paint dry.
The blokes had to learn the effects individual agents had on a victim, so as to recognize the symptoms and know when someone had been hit. They had to learn to suit up in all-enveloping gloves, suit and mask. They had to learn to use a special ‘sniffer’ device that sampled the air for deadly droplets, and how to employ fuller’s earth – a talcum-powder-like decontaminant – to soak up and neutralize an agent. And, somehow, they had to work out how the overloaded Pinkies were going to carry the bulk of all the NBC defensive equipment.
The procedure that the Squadron hit upon for dealing with an NBC attack was designed to balance workability with defence. In truth, the British NBC suits made you look and feel like an oven-ready version of the Michelin Man. They were suffocatingly hot and impossibly bulky. Trying to operate vehicles or to move on foot was next to impossible while wearing one, let alone under a burning Iraqi sun. As to using a weapon, forget it.
The men would operate dressed as they saw fit, which meant T-shirts and combat trousers for the most part. The NBC suits and masks would be stowed on the wagons, ideally somewhere within reach. If a cloud of agent was spotted heading towards the Squadron, or if someone was seen going down with symptoms, the alarm would be raised via the radios. The first priority was to suit up and to save the lives of those not affected.
A chemical cloud would contaminate everything it touched, including the vehicles, and there was no way they could be decontaminated in the field. If the Squadron was hit, the entire mission would have to be aborted, and the wagons rigged with explosives and blown. The surviving men would radio for extraction by Chinooks, hopefully getting pulled off the ground and decontaminated safely at a forward mounting base.
The prospect of being hit by a chemical agent was not a pleasant one, and the men did their best to force it to the back of their minds – especially those who were going to be first onto the ground in Iraq.
*
It was 7 March 2003 when Reggie, the OC, decided on the Squadron’s initial, probing insertion into Iraqi territory. Using satellite photographs the HQ Troop had identified a remote airfield at Al Sahara, way out in the Western Desert of Iraq. It looked to be largely deserted, and it offered an ideal forward mounting base – a stepping-stone – into the territory of northern Iraq.
The intel assessment on Al Sahara was that there were a couple of Iraqi Army trenches to either side of a dirt airstrip, but they were either unoccupied or ill-maintained by whatever force might be stationed there. The plan was to fly a lead element into the open desert some thirty klicks offset from the airfield, from where they would drive in under cover of darkness to recce and secure it. That done, the remainder of the Squadron would be ferried in by C130 Hercules transport aircraft, and the mission to take the 5th Corps’s surrender would be well and truly under way.
If M Squadron were simply to drive across the Iraq border, the nearest point at which they could do so was from Jordan, to the west of Iraq. That would place them south of the main impediment to the Squadron’s move into the north of the country – the mighty Euphrates River. The Euphrates runs from Syria southeast towards Baghdad, and the few bridges that crossed it would be heavily guarded. There was no easy way across the river, and it represented a major block to M Squadron’s move overland.
But if they could seize Al Sahara, they could leap-frog the Euphrates and shave a good 250 kilometres off their journey. And in taking a working airstrip, they could get the big C130 transport aircraft to fly in the entire Squadron, as opposed to using the far smaller Chinooks. There weren’t enough of the heavy-lift helicopters to ferry in an entire Squadron in one go, and Al Sahara offered them the only quick and covert way of getting onto the ground.
The team chosen to insert into Al Sahara consisted of Sean Timms, the Sergeant Major of Four Troop, with three highly experienced blokes under him. Like Grey, Timms had been attached to the SAS for two years, learning surveillance and recce ops, which made him an obvious choice for the job. All four men would be mounted on quad bikes, for maximum stealth, speed and manoeuvrability.
With the team going in on quads, a lone Chinook was able to ferry them all in. It dropped them in the open desert just over the Iraq side of the border, and under a night sky that was blissfully overcast and dark. Once the Chinook had disappeared in the direction from which it had come, the team bugged out from the dust-enshrouded drop zone. They searched for and found an LUP (lying-up point), and by first light they were safely hidden from prying eyes, their quads shielded by the rocky walls of a ravine and covered in camo-netting.
*
Back at their tented camp, the bulk of the Squadron were just finishing their breakfast. As he exited the cookhouse tent, Grey ran into the Squadron OC.
Reggie put out a hand to stop him. ‘Okay, boy? All good?’
‘Yeah, boss, it’s all good.’
‘I heard your concerns, buddy, and similar from the other OAB.’ OAB was slang for ‘the old and the bold’. ‘The Al Sahara mission should answer some of ’em. It tests the waters. Probes the Iraqi defences. We’ll see if there’s any will to fight. Plus it shaves a good three hundred klicks off our infil, and should firm up the intel all round.’
‘Nice one, boss,’ Grey replied. ‘They’re a good team of blokes you’ve sent in. If anyone can do it, they can.’
All that day the four-man quad team remained in hiding, observing the desert terrain. Nothing seemed to be moving out there in the empty, barren landscape. By last light they were ready to move the two dozen kilometres to the outskirts of the airfield. The journey across the night-dark desert went without a hitch. They found the airfield easily – a clutter of decrepit buildings standing out like a dog’s bollocks on the flat, featureless horizon. It looked to be long-abandoned. Even so, the four men probed the outskirts of the airbase first on foot, for maximum stealth.
Finding no sign of any hostile force, they mounted up their quad bikes to do a three-sixty-degree recce. They moved in to the airfield and were just about to turn across the airstrip itself when all hell let loose. A hidden force of Iraqis had spotted the small British force. Worse still, they were equipped with heavy machine-guns, plus vehicles.
The Squadron’s Honda quad bikes could really shift, and one of the team had his machine airborne for several seconds as they powered out of there. But the Iraqis were no slouches. They chased the British vehicles with fierce tracer fire, hosing down the escape routes with long blasts from their heavy weapons. Others mounted up their vehicles and prepared to follow. They were using Toyota-type 4WDs – powerful, fast and highly manoeuvrable – and each was equipped with a mounted machine-gun.
As fast as the quad bikes were, right now they had a hunter force coming after them that was only marginally slower and by which they were heavily outgunned. The four M Squadron operators were armed only with their personal weapons – Diemaco Colt 7.62mm assault rifles, plus their pistols. They had no firepower to engage the Iraqis, let alone the range.
Timms led his team towards the open desert, where he planned to call in a Chinook to lift them out, but the Iraqis seemed well aware of the British soldier’s intentions.
Each of M Squadron’s Land Rovers was kitted out with a fixed radio antenna, one that resembled a horizontal crucifix and via which it was possible to call in a rescue force while on the move. But
not the quads. The quad-borne force carried a satcom – an encrypted radio satellite communications system, one that the enemy would be hard-pressed to intercept. But the satcom worked on ‘spider antennae’, a Christmas-tree-like latticework that took time to erect and yet more time to find enough satellites to be serviceable. And each time the four-man force stopped to erect the kit and make a satcom call, the enemy were quickly onto them.
No sooner had they gone static and called through a set of coordinates for a hot extraction – a helo pick-up under threat of enemy attack – than the first bursts of enemy fire would come slamming into their position. Repeatedly, the four men were forced to mount up their quads and bug out, to try to get some distance between themselves and their pursuers, before repeating the process all over again.
They did this several times as they were hunted across the desert, and each time the hot-extraction point had to be abandoned. By the approach of first light the blokes were running low on fuel and ammo, not to mention options. By now they were pretty much surrounded by the Iraqi hunter force, and about to lose the cover of darkness. There was one upside. In the last few minutes they’d managed to get an American F15 warplane – call-sign Irish – flying top cover for them.
But the battle space below was so confusing, with vehicles charging about in all directions, that the F15 pilot refused to carry out any air strikes, for fear of hitting the quad-bike team. The one thing he could do in all safety was to get a laser onto the British force, so that the rescue Chinook could lock onto the hot point of the laser beam – the spot where it bounced back from the ground – and home in on that for the pick-up.
As the helo headed in with its tail ramp already lowered, it was audible from many miles out and the dust thrown up by its flight left a telltale trail. It powered across the desert towards the quad team’s position, but so too did the Iraqi hunter force. They were drawn in by the Chinook’s flight path, and were closing fast. Just as the giant helo put down, the enemy guns opened up, the Iraqis firing from their Toyotas as they wove at breakneck speed through the desert sands.
