by Damien Lewis
‘If this was a Delta mission they’d have dedicated air, wouldn’t they, boss?’ Moth whispered. ‘They’d have air above them the whole time.’
‘They would,’ Grey confirmed. ‘US Spec ops types don’t go in unless they’ve got air power on call.’
Moth glanced towards the heavens. ‘Guess we can’t afford the fuel to fly any—’
Grey smiled. ‘Welcome to the poor man’s military. It’s like Dad’s Army, but without the panic.’
While it was important to allow the blokes to have a good moan, it was also vital to keep everyone’s spirits up. It struck Grey that Moth had just spoken the most he’d heard him say in one short burst. He’d unhooked his Diemaco assault rifle from where he had it lashed against the dash in its holster, and it was cradled in his lap. No harm in doing so, just in case they did meet an Iraqi hunter force. Grey sensed that perhaps it was now that the quiet man on his team was going to start sparking.
They’d been stationary for a good thirty minutes when Grey got down from the wagon, stamped his feet and jumped about, in an effort to bring some life back into them.
‘You training for the Iraqi Olympics?’ Scruff needled him.
Ignoring the comment, he ran on the spot for five minutes or so.
‘Okay,’ he announced, sliding behind his machine-gun again. ‘Moth, you’re next. Feet-stamping duty.’
Two hours spent in the bitter cold, scanning arcs and staring down the freezing barrel of a machine-gun into utter emptiness: it wasn’t anyone’s idea of fun. They couldn’t brew up, just in case a fleet of Fedayeen did decide to pitch up on the horizon. All they could do was sit and stare and try to keep alert as the icy cold seeped into them.
As they gazed into the void, each bloke in this eight-man force couldn’t help but wonder who exactly was out there. Might the enemy know already that a force of British soldiers had put down deep inside their territory? M Squadron’s advance party was the furthermost Special Forces unit across the entire country. No one else was anything like this far in. They’d penetrated some 240 kilometres into Iraq, and there were still days to go before the war proper was scheduled to start.
‘This is shit,’ Moth complained, as he blew into his frozen hands to try to get some warmth into them.
‘Yep. It’s crap.’ Grey confirmed. ‘That’s war for you. Long periods of complete boredom, interrupted by the odd moment of chaos and drama.’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ came a quiet drawl from the wagon’s rear. ‘I mean, the scenery’s kind of pretty wild. Reminds me of parts of the Nevada Desert back home. And I mean, you know, the company’s to die for—’
There was a chorus of ‘Piss-off, Dude!’ from the others, and all fell silent again.
Then they heard it. Faintly, almost inaudibly, a burst of a juddering, thumping beat on the still desert air. The men strained their ears. The noise faded into silence, then drifted back in again, stronger and more audible this time as the Chinooks bore down on them. No doubt about it, they had the second flight in-bound.
Despite the fact that they were heading in at tree-top height, the pair of helos were evident from many miles away. Their rotors were kicking up a dust storm and creating a whirl of static electricity, which resulted in a distinctive blue-green ‘fairy dust’ halo marking out their flight path. The eerie glowing forms were visible as a flash of light on the horizon, long before the machines themselves could be seen.
The aircrew knew to put down on the same LZ, and to expect Grey and his men to be just to the east of it. If there had been no warning radio call, they knew the LZ to be clear of hostile forces. Both the aircrew and those in the helos’ rear had what they wanted now – their own men on the ground with eyes on the area of the drop, but it still wasn’t the way that Grey and his blokes would have wanted to do things.
The Chinooks did a repeat performance, and fifteen minutes later there were four Pinkies and a similar number of quads gathered together to the east of the LZ. Grey took the opportunity to do a final map check. He was using a specialist torch that had a bendable straw-like tube coming out of one end, with a tiny light diode attached to it. With the map in his lap and the light diode cradled in one hand, he could map-read with barely any illumination leaking out of the vehicle.
Having double-checked the location of their intended LUP, Grey gave a whispered order to Moth to move out. The wagon swung round until they were heading due south, moving out in the direction in which the Chinooks had flown in. They were going in the wrong direction for the mission, which required them to push northwards, but it didn’t really matter much, for they couldn’t get on the move proper until the entire Squadron had been ferried in.
Grey and Moth had settled upon a pre-arranged modus operandi for desert driving at night. As long as the conditions remained clear and bright, Grey would map-read, navigate and scan for the enemy using his natural night vision, while Moth would rely on NVG to find a way through the terrain. From long experience Grey knew that if he used NVG, he’d have to focus them at distance to navigate, then refocus on his lap to map-check, which was pretty much undoable. It was far better to rely on the diode torch and the naked eye.
Regular forces tended to use ‘red illume’ at night, a dim red light that’s harder for an enemy to see. At its simplest, a red filter would be taped over a torch to create a beam of softer red light. But the men of the Squadron didn’t favour such kit. Only soldiers used that kind of illumination, so it stood to reason that if you did see red light at night it had to be a military force. Far better to use a source of light that could be civvie.
For thirty minutes Grey navigated the patrol across the open desert, the only noise being the soft crunch of gravel under tyres and the gentle purr of the diesel engines. Another key element of the vehicle mobility craft was being able to pack a wagon so that it could move noiselessly under a heavy load. Cargo had to be lashed vice-tight to the steel lugs on the wagon’s sides. Any metal objects – jerry-cans, shovels, steel sand ladders – had to be wrapped in hessian sacking, so as to prevent them clanging against the Pinkies’ alloy panels.
Grey was heading for a re-entrant, a dry channel cut into the flat terrain, one that would drain the desert of any rare rainfall. At its southernmost end the re-entrant emptied into the Euphrates River. Grey brought the convoy to the northern end of the feature, whereupon he gave word to Moth and Dude to search for a natural entry point – ideally a shallow slope leading into the bed of the feature.
Predictably, it was Dude who spotted it. From his perch on the wagon’s rear he had the best all-round vision. He pointed them towards the opening, a place where the jagged rim appeared to drop away more gently and smoothly than elsewhere. Creeping ahead at dead slow, Moth edged the heavily laden wagon over the edge, large stones cracking and popping under the weight, as the tyres fought to retain their hold.
They crested the lip and began to descend, Grey getting his first glimpse down the length of the wadi. It was set maybe six feet below the surrounding terrain, the base smooth and sandy from where floodwaters had rushed along it in seething torrents, depositing sediment as they went. Here and there large boulders dotted the riverbed – ones that had proved too heavy and cumbersome for the floodwaters. It was easy enough for Moth to weave a route around them, and they pushed a good hundred metres down the wadi. They’d lowered the tyre pressures to about half the recommended amount so they could better float across such soft, sandy terrain. Only if they hit any sand dune seas would they experience any real problems.
Moth nosed the wagon into a natural harbour in the wadi wall and cut the engine. Behind them the other Pinkies did likewise, one pulling in alongside them against the eastern wall of the feature, and two occupying the western slope. That way, they could use the vehicle-mounted machine-guns to cover the terrain to both sides of the wadi, during the hours in which they’d remain here.
With first light fast approaching, M Squadron had sixteen men on the ground, plus four Pinkies and their sister quads.
The vehicles were spread out a good hundred metres along the feature. They were within speaking distance of each other, but without being too bunched together to present an easy target to any enemy. They sorted sentry duty, each wagon’s weapons covering one of the four points of the compass.
Grey took first watch, a two-hour shift that would last until 0630. He mounted the wagon and slid behind the GPMG. Moth had positioned the vehicle in such a way that both machine-guns could be operated. As old habits died hard Grey preferred his seat behind the ‘Gimpy’, as the tried and trusted weapon was called.
He settled down to what he was certain would be two hours of complete and utter boredom. He felt certain that no one could have tailed them from the LZ to their place of hiding. They’d driven on black light the whole way, and they’d passed through the desert night as silently and unseen as ghosts. For the first time since their boots had hit the desert sand, he felt himself beginning to relax a little.
Here they were, safely through the complex two-stage air insertion, which had had all the makings of a galactic bugger-up akin to the Eagle Claw debacle. They were safely out of the LZ, and well hidden. Now all they had to do was stay unseen for the next three days and nights, gather the Squadron and head north for several hundred kilometres, then take the surrender of the Iraqi 5th Corps.
What could be easier than that? he asked himself wryly.
A faint sound of snoring drifted up from the cold bed of the wadi. Moth, Dude and Mucker were lying prone on the hard ground, each man cocooned in a sleeping-bag. They’d brought synthetic bags, as down-filled ones were useless if they got wet. There was no need for mozzie nets: the bone-dry Iraqi desert was devoid of water, without which mosquitoes couldn’t thrive.
It was good the guys were getting some kip, for come sun-up the wadi would become a roasting furnace. The Iraqi sun would quickly burn off any chill, and by mid-morning the temperature would be pushing one hundred degrees – which was about the time that Grey would be trying to get his first rest following sentry.
The men had barely slept for two nights now. Over the coming nights they’d need to be back at the LZ, securing it for the further Chinook rotations. Somehow, they’d have to grab whatever kip they could during the heat of the day. It was far from ideal, and Grey worried that by the time the Squadron was assembled and ready to move, his team and Scruff’s – the advance party – would be well and truly knackered. Already he could feel his eyelids sagging. But he forced himself to stay focused, and keep his eyes on his weapon’s stark iron sights, as he scanned the empty night for the enemy.
On missions such as this one, space and weight were at an absolute premium. Those who were sleeping were lying on a length of roll-mat that they’d cut down, so that it cushioned only the length of the torso and the head. Anything else was an unnecessary luxury. But at least they were wrapped up snug and warm in their doss-bags.
After the experiences of the First Gulf War, it was well known how cold and inhospitable the Iraqi desert could get. Having been forced to go on the run, the Bravo Two Zero patrol had hit appalling weather conditions – sleet, snow and freezing winds. That lesson had been well learned across British Special Forces, and before deploying to Iraq the men of M Squadron had been issued with a full set of Arctic cold-weather gear.
It was left to the blokes to make their own choice of which items of cold-weather kit to take with them, and Grey had baulked at the idea of the neoprene ski mask. It was a kind of deformed wetsuit hood, a rubberized balaclava that left just the eyes showing. But he regretted not having it now. After a couple of hours on stag his head felt frozen stiff, and his eyes were watering. His hands had seized up, and he knew he’d have trouble operating his weapon if the enemy did put in an appearance.
He heard a few whispered words from behind him. ‘All right, mate? How’re your lot doing?’
He turned to find it was Gav Tinker, the Squadron Sergeant Major, doing the rounds – but right now the bloke resembled some kind of nightmare apparition. He had opted to bring his ski-mask. It squeezed up what could be seen of his face into a bulging, wrinkled blob, his eyes like little piggy slits in the middle. Still, at least the SSM was warm, whereas Grey felt as if his neck was about to snap in two with the cold.
Grey couldn’t help but crack up laughing. ‘What the fuck do you look like,’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pumbaa the warthog. Heard it all before, mate,’ the SSM grunted. ‘Still alive, are you? Your feet dry? Whatever, whatever. Fuck off and see you all later then.’ He turned to go. ‘Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Time you switched sentry. Want me to kick the next bloke into life?’
The hidden force remained where it was all that day, without the slightest sign of any enemy presence. If they’d put down on the surface of Mars it couldn’t have been more devoid of life. The terrain had been baked utterly dry and lifeless and there didn’t even seem to be any scorpions, or the hated Iraqi camel spiders.
At last light the men prepared to move out and retrace their steps to the LZ. The next force to fly in would be Reggie’s HQ Troop, the nerve centre of the Squadron. With sixteen men and their machines safely on the ground, it was seen as being secure enough to risk inserting the OC. Even so, Grey felt it wise to run through the JTAC procedures one last time with Moth, in case they did hit trouble and needed to call in some air support.
With no dedicated air cover, British Special Forces had to tender for air on the radio net. What warplanes did exist would be held in an orbit over central Iraq, so that whatever unit needed air could call it in. That was the theory. In practice, aircraft would be busy carrying out preplanned air strikes against strategic targets, prior to the ground forces going in. A unit requiring air cover would have to compete with whatever air missions the warplanes orbiting the area were flying.
A Special Forces request for air cover should be given top priority, but there were never any guarantees. Air power was where small elite units normally had the upper hand, when on the ground in hostile territory. Tasked to penetrate several hundred kilometres behind enemy lines, it would have been nice to have something big, punchy and lethal orbiting over M Squadron, but that clearly wasn’t happening on this mission.
Apart from air power, one of the few other advantages M Squadron had over the enemy was the secret comms system that each wagon also carried – a military-issue satellite phone system used when speaking to air cover, as well as being the lost-comms fall-back option. If a troop or a team was compromised and on the run, the satcom allowed secure encrypted voice comms. With a satcom antenna built into each wagon, it could even be used while on the move.
As their team’s JTAC, Moth would speak to the warplanes using the satcom, but with a ‘donkey dick’ aerial attached to it. In that configuration it became a line-of-sight comms system via which he could talk directly to the aircrew, and guide them onto target.
The second night’s airborne infil went pretty much like clockwork, and by now a third Chinook had joined the airlift. At the end of the flights in, there were some forty men and their machines gathered on the ground. The part-formed Squadron moved off from the LZ, and Grey led it to an LUP a good distance from the one of the night before. It was a golden rule of such ops never to return to an LUP if you could possibly avoid it. No matter how careful you might be, it stood to reason that the more you used one, the more telltale signs of your presence you’d leave.
By the approach of first light Grey’s team were preparing to get a good hot meal down them – the first they’d had for several days. They’d been living off British Army ration packs and mostly on ‘hard routine’, which meant no brewing up or hot food was allowed. But with the firepower now gathered around them, those who were first onto the ground could afford to treat themselves to a little luxury.
Grey fished out a foldable hexi stove – one that utilizes small solid-fuel blocks a lot like household firelighters – and began to cook up for his entire team. He asked the blokes what they fancied from the menu – corned beef h
ash, chicken casserole, beef stew, Lancashire Hotpot, or the pasta.
‘I’ll have anything bar the corned beef hash,’ Dude volunteered. He was taking the first sentry duty, and he’d eat his meal perched atop the .50-cal heavy machine-gun. ‘Dunno what it is about that corned beef, but it sure blocks me up real bad, if you’ll forgive me talking about my bowel movements.’
Grey glanced up at him. The young American was always so polite, and there were times when he wondered if he was secretly taking the piss. But invariably he wasn’t – it was just the good clean American kid inside him shining through.
‘Dude, we’ll be spending weeks shitting in cling film, wrapping it in plastic bags and carrying it on the wagons,’ Grey remarked. ‘I’ll know all there is to know about your bowel movements by the time we’re done here.’ He fished out one of the boil-in-the-bag meals. ‘You good with a Lancashire Hotpot?’
Dude smiled. ‘Kind of a Brit version of Dunkin’ Donuts? Yeah, that’ll do me just fine.’
Grey smiled. Anything more unlike Dunkin’ Donuts he couldn’t quite imagine. As far as he was concerned, the Lancashire Hotpot was the foulest thing the British Army catering department had ever managed to concoct. It was an eye-of-newt, claw-of-bat, foul-as-fuck brew, one cooked up by a coven of witches cackling over a cauldron. But if the Dude was partial to it, who was he to argue?
He handed the steaming bag across. ‘Here you go, mate. All yours. Tuck in.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Dude, with a one-hundred-per-cent genuine smile of gratitude.
‘You finish that lot, I’ll bung you a couple of my private supply of Hobnob biscuits. How’s that for a deal?’
‘Fantastic, boss,’ Dude remarked, through a mouthful of dumpling like congealed glue.
Grey settled down to a steaming bag of chicken pasta, his favourite.
