by Damien Lewis
The lone Pinkie and the quads nosed up the wadi floor for a short while, before rounding a bend that put the riverbed out of view of anyone using the crossing-point. It was as good a place as any to lie up for the night. They did an about-turn and headed back to rejoin the Squadron.
‘Zero, this is Zero Six Bravo,’ Grey spoke into his radio. ‘LUP is usable. Now making for the stop short.’
‘Affirm,’ came the OC’s reply.
Their wagon moved off heading east, the rest of the Squadron following. They pulled up some three kilometres distant from the wadi, in open terrain. Last light was all but upon them, and they’d wait here in their ‘stop short’ position until darkness had fallen. Only then would Grey lead the Squadron back into the LUP. That way, if anyone was watching they wouldn’t see exactly where the Squadron had taken refuge for the night.
It was around 1830 hours when the Pinkies plus the quad force crawled into the wadi, and took up their positions. Once all the wagons were well spaced along the riverbed, they cut their engines. For the next fifteen minutes the men did absolutely nothing but sit there and wait, watch and listen. They scanned their arcs with the heavy weapons, alert to any threat that might be out there in the darkness. If anyone had seen them go into the LUP, it was now that they were most likely to show themselves.
At last there was a squelch of static on the radios and the OC announced: ‘Stand down.’
The SSM followed on the heels of that radio message, doing a walk-about of the entire Squadron. His main task was to check on sentry duties and positions. Each Troop had set its own watch rotation, so that for the next twelve hours they had eyes scanning the desert 360 degrees all around them. The SSM also asked each Troop for fuel and water stats. The only way to get these was to remove the jerry-cans of diesel and water from the wagons, then check them by feel. Over time, it became second nature to know by the weight of a jerry-can how close it was to empty.
Due to their dwindling water supplies, the men decided to put themselves onto rations of three litres of water each per day. It was far too little for the kind of conditions they were encountering, for it was well over 100 degrees during the heat of the day.
Each time they removed the jerry-cans from a wagon, they had to unpack half its contents to do so. Lighter gear was piled on top of the jerries, for that was the only stable and secure way to pack a vehicle. On Grey’s vehicle they’d taken the bulky and cumbersome camo-netting and bungeed it to the rear bumper, like a frilly skirt. Otherwise, you had to pile it on top of all the gear in the wagon’s rear, which meant it was continually being unloaded and reloaded.
Grey had seen pictures of Vickers Jeeps – the open-topped wagons the SAS had used during the Second World War – with camo-nets similarly tied to the bumpers, and it was from there that he’d got the idea. As he slid the jerries back into the rear bin of his wagon he heard an envious snort from behind. He glanced round and it was Scruff. He was in the process of repacking the camo-netting into his own vehicle, having reloaded the jerry-cans.
‘First a bloody travel kettle,’ Scruff remarked. ‘Now a bloody Pinkie with a cam-net for a skirt. Don’t think we didn’t clock you lot getting some hot scoff on the go. Wankers.’
Grey smiled. ‘Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, mate. I got no problem if you want to copy us.’
‘Yeah?’ Scruff glanced around the darkened wadi. ‘And where do you suggest I find a travel kettle in this God-forsaken shit-hole?’
Grey shrugged. ‘Dunno, mate. I searched high and low for mine. Got it in the Bournemouth Caravanning Emporium. Cost me eighteen quid ’n’ all. Tell you what – make me a sensible offer and it’s yours.’
‘Man, you are not selling our travel kettle,’ came an unmistakable drawl from the wagon’s rear. It was the Dude, who was bent over the .50-cal doing some weapons maintenance. After each day’s move it was vital to clean the gun’s mechanism and dust off the ammo, to prevent stoppages. ‘Dude, that thing is freakin’ priceless. Whatever Scruff offers you, I’ll double it.’
As the men on the fighting wagons busied themselves with the evening’s tasks, HQ Troop were preparing to send the second sitrep (situation report) of the day. Right after first and last light the OC was supposed to radio in a ‘sched’, one of two daily sitreps. If one of those scheduled sitreps was missed, then Special Forces Headquarters would know that M Squadron was facing some kind of trouble, and was possibly on the run.
After a move like today’s, the sitrep would be short and sweet. It would give the Squadron’s coordinates, and report that the mission was progressing as planned. Fuel, ammo and water stats would be included only if there was a pressing need for a resupply. The Iraqi goat-herder of that morning wouldn’t even merit a mention, because for now at least there was zero evidence that they’d been compromised.
The OC would be hoping for some kind of update on the Iraqi 5th Corps – news of their position, and perhaps that lines of communication had been opened. It would make perfect sense for MI6, or another of Britain’s intelligence agencies, to have made electronic contact with the Corps’s commanders, who would be sure to possess cell phones. But so far nothing of that nature seemed to be happening, and the Squadron was heading in on the sketchy intel that it had first been given.
As he readied himself to stand his first sentry duty of the night, Grey wandered past Scruff’s wagon. He could tell that the bloke was preparing for his own stint on stag. The night was still as death, the atmosphere windless and brittle with the cold. They were the kind of conditions in which the faintest noise would travel for miles on the silent air.
Grey crouched down beside Scruff. ‘Mate, I got this feeling—’ he whispered.
‘I got it too,’ Scruff cut in. ‘Like we’re being watched.’
‘Yeah, watched or followed.’
‘I can’t figure out why,’ Scruff added, ‘but I got it.’
‘Maybe the goat-herder?’
Scruff shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘You seen anything? Anything at all?’
‘Nothing, mate. Not even some Iraqi bloke crouched behind a sand dune taking a dump.’
Grey eyed him for a second. ‘Weird, isn’t it? We’re throwing up a dust cloud like an atom bomb’s just gone off, yet where the hell are the Iraqis?’
‘Dunno, mate. But all the same I got the feeling.’
The two men parted company without another word being said.
After two hours staring into the empty abyss Grey felt totally finished. He got relieved, crawled back to his doss-bag, wriggled inside it without removing a single item of clothing, and was instantly comatose.
A few short hours’ kip later he dragged himself awake to do stand-to. Long years of soldiering had taught the British military that first and last light were the times at which you were most likely to face an attack. At first light there was enough illumination to launch an assault, but your adversary was likely to still be asleep, or at least fog-bound with recent sleep, and at last light they’d be looking forward to a good feed and bed.
Every day at these times the Squadron would do stand-to, just as it was doing now. Every man was in position with his weapon locked and loaded, scanning the terrain from which an attack might come. Stand-to was supposed to be a moment of utter alertness and silence. The only trouble was, the men of the HQ Troop weren’t required to do stand-to.
The desert at dawn was so quiet that the noise of Sebastian and one or two of the others dismantling their camp beds was deafening. They were clunky as fuck, which was one of the reasons that the rest of the guys only ever used a length of roll-matting to sleep on.
Grey glanced across at Moth and Dude, and rolled his eyes. ‘Where I come from one does not sleep on the floor,’ he whispered, in a mock-Sebastianesque accent. ‘Jolly good show, though, these camp beds.’
The two younger blokes tried to stifle their sniggers. Though Grey liked Sebastian, there were times when the man’s inexperience really did grate. Plus the fact tha
t the blokes on the HQ Troop had the sheer luxury of camp beds was starting to cause real aggravation. After a few days kipping on the hard, stony ground, such things could acquire a significance out of all proportion. Such was the intensity of living in close proximity to one another 24/7, under constant threat of attack, and with exhaustion levels rising.
The Squadron moved off just after first light. Very quickly they entered the vast wastes of the Ninawa Desert, where a series of massive dry wadis slashed through what seemed to be a never-ending plateau. The desert was utterly featureless and parched, and it stretched for a good three hundred kilometres north. It should take the Squadron to within a day’s drive of the 5th Corps’s position.
None of the men on Grey’s wagon had ever laid eyes on such godforsaken terrain. Here and there were massive sculpted seasonal lake beds that the vehicles had to skirt round, but they seemed to be baked dry and devoid of even the barest hint of water or of life. The advantage was that there were unlikely to be any Iraqis around to notice the Squadron’s passing. Not even the nomadic Iraqi Bedou people – who lived in tented camps and migrated across the desert – would find it easy to live here. But the biggest downside was the total lack of cover.
The seasonal lake beds offered perilous terrain in which to go to ground, for some consisted of a hard-baked crust beneath which lurked treacherous mud and quicksand. The occasional wadi they came across was a V-shaped slash cut deep into the earth, making entry a risky undertaking when navigating the steep, boulder-strewn sides. The only real option if they were attacked here was to stand and fight, or to try to outrun the enemy over open ground.
The name of this desert – ‘Ninawa’ – is an Arabized version of the original name for the area, the biblical ‘Nineveh’. Grey had studied its history before deployment, and was well aware how densely populated it once had been. Nineveh is mentioned in the Old Testament as being a great commercial trade centre, and a junction between the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, linking East and West some four millennia ago. The Old Testament says that God wanted to make of ‘Proud Nineveh … a desolation, parched like the wilderness’, to punish its people for worshipping earthly gods. As far as Grey could tell, God had pretty much succeeded in getting what he wanted, for Proud Nineveh had been rendered an empty wasteland.
With the sun creeping towards the vertical on day two of their drive north, M Squadron received an unexpected message from Headquarters via the signals wagon’s skywave-type radio antennae – a length of wire cable slung across the vehicle’s rear – which allowed it to receive secure data messages while on the move. The data burst from Headquarters alerted the OC to the urgent need to make voice communications.
The HQ Troop pulled up in a patch of open terrain, the wagons of Four, Five and Six Troop moving in to surround them with a ring of steel. Being static under the blinding sun was unbearable. At least when on the move the air passing through the open wagons offered a modicum of relief. Moving air dried the skin, and evaporating sweat served to cool an individual down a little. Whatever the message might be, Grey figured they wanted it over and done with quickly and to get on the move again.
The comms with Headquarters done, the Squadron 2iC and the SSM moved around the vehicles spreading the word. With sixty men in the Squadron it was often too difficult to organize a Chinese parliament, and now was neither the time nor the place to do so. Stuck in the open with zero cover, the priority had to be to get the message spread, appropriate action taken, and the Squadron moving again.
Captain Andy Smith, the SAS 2iC of the Squadron, approached Grey’s wagon. ‘We’ve just had warning from Headquarters,’ he announced. ‘There’s a force of Iraqi Fedayeen moving out from Bayji in our general direction. They’re vehicle-mounted, and they have further vehicles in support. That’s about as much as Headquarters was able to tell us.’
Grey glanced at the map in his lap. Bayji was one hundred kilometres due east of the Squadron’s present position. ‘Any sense of their intentions?’ he asked.
‘Not from Headquarters, no. But they’re on a rough bearing to intercept the Squadron, so go figure.’
‘How many?’
‘Fifty, minimum. But likely a whole lot more with the vehicles in support.’
Grey let out a long, low whistle. ‘That’s serious shit. They’ll not be coming just to have a butchers. If they’re Fedayeen, they’ll be heading out to have a good poke at us.’
The 2iC nodded. ‘Yeah. Looks like it. That’s if they find us.’
Grey gestured at the map. ‘Rather than waiting for the Boys from Bayji to hit us, why don’t we make the first move? If we can work out the routes they’ll likely take, we can put a couple of forces in overwatch and ambush ’em.’
‘Which way d’you think they’ll come?’ the 2iC asked.
Grey ran his eyes over the ground due east of their position. The trouble was, it was more or less an open book. By the time the Boys from Bayji had reached the Ninawa Desert, they could take their pick in terms of routes to come in and hit the British force.
Grey glanced at the 2iC. ‘Do we know how far they’ve got? Are they into the Ninawa Desert yet?’
‘We know as much as Headquarters told us, no more.’
‘If they’ve hit the desert there’s no way of knowing which way they’ll come.’
The 2iC shrugged. ‘In that case, we can’t guarantee to get the jump on them.’
There was a moment’s heavy silence, then the 2iC indicated he was moving on to the next wagon.
If the Fedayeen were heading out to hit the Squadron, Grey could well imagine the sequence of events that had led them onto their line of march. Two days back a young Iraqi goat-herder had fled to his village with news of a strange and unknown danger lurking in a wadi. Villagers had driven out to investigate. They’d come across the tracks of thirty vehicles, and realized they could only come from a sizeable military force. In turn they had reported it to the local Fedayeen, who had taken it from there.
Grey turned to Moth. ‘Batten down the hatches, mate, the Boys from Bayji are coming.’
‘Shit happens,’ Moth muttered.
‘Yeah, but this is far from being everyday kind of shit.’
Grey glanced around at their utterly exposed and defenceless position, the wagons gathered in a circle and lacking even the slightest suggestion of any cover.
‘You know what this reminds me of?’ he remarked. ‘It’s like the Wild West, and we’re the wagon train waiting for the Indians to come and whack us.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The thing that worried Grey most was a distant ridge of high ground. About five hundred yards to the east a line of low hills dominated the skyline. If the Boys from Bayji got in amongst those, they could rain down fire onto the Squadron, and keep doing so for as long as it took the British vehicles to try to effect an escape.
There was little they could do to fight back, for the enemy would have perfect cover as well as the high ground. Grey just hoped the Fedayeen were still a good distance away, and that the Squadron would be on the move again soon. In the meantime, he did what he could to prepare for war. He got out three boxes of 200-round link ammo for the GPMG and clipped the belts together. That way, he was good to rock and roll for 600 rounds without having to make a belt change.
He got Dude to do the same on the .50-cal, and Moth to check that all was good to go with his JTAC kit, in case they needed to call in any air strikes. That done, there was bugger all else they could do right there and then to ready themselves for the Fedayeen.
The Dude had six boxes of ammo for the .50-cal, some 600 rounds in all. The ammo box sat on a cradle beside the weapon’s breech, and when the first was exhausted he’d have to throw the empty case off and lug up another. Grey had more ammo – seven boxes of 200 rounds each – for the GPMG, but it had a faster rate of fire. You could easily squirt off 500 rounds in five minutes, so there was only really enough for three sustained firefights.
A third of the wagons were
equipped with a grenade launcher, and they’d be carrying six boxes of 100 rounds each. But the volume of those 20mm grenade rounds made for a massive bulk of kit to carry in the vehicle’s rear.
The wait under the burning sun dragged on and on. Grey’s head felt like it was getting roasted in a giant oven. The golden sand all around them threw back the sun’s rays so that they were being blasted from all sides. Grey only wore his gloves in the cold of the desert night, and his bare hands were wet and sticky where they grasped the hot grip of the GPMG.
How the hell did Headquarters know about this Fedayeen hunter force? he wondered. Did they have humint there – a source of human intelligence on the ground in Bayji – feeding back information? And if so, who might that source be? After all, Bayji lay at the heart of the Sunni Triangle, where Saddam had his hardcore followers. If they did have a man on the ground in Bayji, why didn’t MI6 – or whoever was operating the humint – have a similar source in amongst the Iraqi 5th Corps, someone who could tell them exactly where they were positioned?
There was little connection in Grey’s mind between the 5th Corps and the Fedayeen. In their briefings they’d been told that the Fedayeen and Iraqi regular forces were totally separate units, and they rarely worked in conjunction with one another. If the Boys from Bayji did put in an appearance, there would be no taking a mass surrender from that lot, that was for sure.
Finally, Reggie issued a set of orders via the radios. The Squadron was to push northwards until it found a decent LUP. They’d hole up there for the remainder of the day and the coming night, and they’d double sentry duty. Plus they’d try to make the remainder of their move northwards under cover of darkness. That way they had a far greater chance of evading the Fedayeen, and making it to their mission objective – the rendezvous with the 5th Corps – undetected.
Grey felt a massive sense of relief as they got under way. It was great to be moving again. He reflected on the orders, which made perfect sense. If only they could find a decent LUP, they could lie low in a good defensive position. If the Fedayeen did track them to it, they’d be far better placed to repulse an attack. They’d be fighting at a place – and maybe even a time – of their own choosing.
