by Damien Lewis
In the meantime they were buying themselves some time, which should give Headquarters a chance to gather more intel on that Fedayeen force, and to pass it to the Squadron. Maybe the Fedayeen hadn’t been sent out to hunt down M Squadron, after all. Maybe it was just a coincidence that they were passing through the same patch of barren wilderness as the elite British force.
Maybe.
The one thing that troubled Grey about the OC’s orders was the thought of doubling sentry. By now many of the blokes – those on Grey and Scruff’s wagons included – had been on the go for six nights in a row. When they weren’t doing the airborne infils via Jordan into Iraq, they’d been driving and scouring the terrain for the enemy, or digging out trapped vehicles, or standing sentry, or trying to get some kip next to the wagons. In short, they were beyond bloody knackered.
It was a couple of hours before they found a wadi that was accessible enough for them to get the wagons and quads below ground-level and out of sight. By now they’d covered several hundred kilometres by air and land deep inside Iraq, and the constant strain of always being on the alert had taken its toll. It is when men are deprived of sleep and under relentless pressure that mistakes start being made. Here in the Ninawa Desert, and with a Fedayeen hunter force more than likely on their tail, they couldn’t afford even the slightest lapse.
Mercifully, that night’s sentry duty proved uneventful, or so it seemed. As far as the men of M Squadron could tell, there was no sign of any Fedayeen force – or of any human presence at all. But the following morning they realized that something vital might well have been missed during the depths of the night.
Grey was woken by the sound of a tense altercation. One of the Troop sergeant majors was bawling out Scruff. Apparently, at some stage during the night Six Troop’s watch had fallen over, and it was Scruff’s team that was responsible. In the early hours a sentry had dropped off to sleep. He’d failed to wake the next guy until 0500 hours, fully an hour after he was supposed to.
No one knew how long for sure, but for an hour at least one segment of the terrain surrounding M Squadron’s LUP had been left unwatched. Six Troop’s arc of fire – which stretched from the southeast to the southwest – had been left unguarded, and it was from the southeast that the Fedayeen force was most likely to make an appearance.
As soon as Scruff grasped that it was his lot that had messed up, he took full responsibility. There were four in his team, himself included, so one of them had to be responsible – but typically Scruff took it all on his own shoulders. Grey felt total sympathy for the bloke. It was the worst of things, having to stare into the formless desert night for hours on end when you were totally chinstrapped. Grey had found himself rubber-necking – falling asleep for an instant, feeling his head drop to his chest, which woke him with a start – during the night’s watch. And each time you were shaken awake for your next stag, or for stand-to, it felt as if you’d only just crawled into your doss-bag.
Even so, sentry duty was day-one lesson-one kind of stuff. The fact that Scruff’s watch had fallen over only reinforced the pressing need for sleep. If the Squadron was failing to get even their sentry duties right, it proved how utterly knackered they were. What chance did they have of evading the enemy if they couldn’t even get the stags working properly?
Worst of all, it was possible that the Fedayeen hunter force had slipped past them in the night, when the sentry had been sleeping.
The OC issued a set of orders. They were to remain in the wadi all that day, so the men could get some extra kip. They were to prepare to move off at last light, under cover of darkness and driving on NVG. By moving at night they would vastly decrease the Squadron’s visibility, making them less traceable by the Fedayeen force, wherever they might be.
With sentries placed in hidden positions around the rim of the wadi, the men of the Squadron tried to find some shade in which to sleep. Anything that offered a modicum of shelter from the sun was in high demand: the steep walls of the wadi, a rocky overhang, a boulder that was narrower at its base, or the lea of a vehicle.
Before Grey could get some kip, the OC tasked him with plotting the route north that the Squadron would take that night. He got his head together with Scruff and Raggy – two of the old and the bold – and together they studied the maps and the satellite photos. For the next eighty kilometres they should be able to dodge around a series of ever deepening wadis, making reasonable progress, but the terrain would work against them the further north they went.
To the far north of the Ninawa Desert lay the massif of the Jabal Sinjar, the Eagle Mountain. When it rained up there, a dry wadi here on the plain could change within seconds into a raging, boulder-strewn torrent. Flash floods from the Jabal Sinjar had carved out deep gouges in the plateau, and the Squadron was going to have its work cut out trying to avoid those, especially if driving at night.
As they left the northern end of the desert they’d hit the worst terrain of all, for the empty wilderness would be replaced by tracks, roads and populated farmland. Grey figured they could risk driving across a B-road on the approach to the Iraqi town of Tal Afar, to get them onto a minor track heading northeast for a good hundred kilometres, and maybe all the way to the approximate location of the Iraqi 5th Corps.
That was easily two days’ drive and more likely three, especially if they had to move at night. Grey plotted a route using the mapping and GPS coordinates, and referencing the stars. Wherever possible he chose a path that would avoid human habitation, but there were one or two villages at the very north of their route that they’d just have to drive right through. There was no way around them.
The route-mapping done, Grey bedded down with the rest of his team. It was late afternoon when he woke to see a flock of birds alighting upon a rock face further up the wadi. He figured here might be a chance to address the pressing issue of water. In the burning heat they needed to drink far more than they were rationing themselves to, and the cumulative effects of dehydration only exacerbated the men’s crushing fatigue.
He grabbed Scruff, leaving his team to check over the vehicle and weapons before tonight’s drive. They headed up the narrow riverbed on foot. At their approach the birds flew off, revealing where they had settled. The two men climbed the rock face, and in the shadow of an overhang they discovered a pool of water.
The water was brackish and full of bird droppings, but it was still potable. They dropped the end of their filter tube into it, and pumped up clear, fresh water. They extracted as much as they could carry, then returned to brief the rest of the Squadron. As word went round, those who were able sent out teams to replenish their water supplies.
There was no washing or shaving allowed for the entire duration of the mission. Both were major no-noes when on behind-enemy-lines operations, because the smell of cleanliness was a dead giveaway. There was little point going sneaky-beaky far behind enemy lines if the scent of soap or deodorant gave you away to the local stray dogs. Anywhere in Iraq with human habitation there were strays, and the Squadron would soon be heading into populated territory. The more you smelled like a freshly bathed human, the more alien your scent would be to the dogs, and the more likely they were to raise the alarm. The aim of every soldier was to blend in with his environment, and to take on the smell and look of a wild animal.
Also, the Iraqi military would have tracker dogs, ones trained to pick up the human scent, and those were perhaps the single most difficult thing for an elite force to evade.
After that evening’s stand-to the OC called an O-group (orders group). Headquarters had radioed through a less than encouraging update on the Fedayeen force. Somehow, they’d lost track of them. The Fedayeen fighters, plus their support vehicles, had disappeared off the face of the earth. It was ominous and unsettling.
Despite this, the OC made the call to move out. There was still no visible sign of the enemy, and the Squadron had a mission to achieve – the much anticipated surrender of the Iraqi 5th Corps.
A
s M Squadron prepared to head into the darkened desert, Moth was rummaging about in the wagon trying to locate a vital piece of JTAC equipment, one that enabled him to fix an enemy position and guide a warplane in to better hit the target. Grey was leading the Squadron out of the wadi, and Moth was driving, so no one was going anywhere until they were ready. The longer they waited the darker it was going to get, and the more suited to driving on night vision goggles, so Grey was hardly fretting.
Finally Moth got his JTAC kit sorted, and their vehicle crawled out of the wadi. The long line of vehicles formed up in the open desert, with Six Troop taking the lead and Grey’s wagon making the head of the snake. Their diesel motor purred softly as they waited for all the vehicles to get into position behind them. It was exceptionally still and clear, with almost too much light for covert night driving.
Grey glanced at Moth. ‘You good?’
Moth nodded an affirmative. ‘I’m good.’
Grey grinned. ‘Nice one, ’cause tonight’s drive is going to fucking kill us.’
‘Like how, boss?’ Moth queried. ‘The Fedayeen?’
‘Not that. Or at least, not chiefly that. Mate, we may have got a few good hours’ kip, but we need to take it easy, ’cause we’re fucked.’
Moth nodded. ‘Don’t I fucking know it.’
Grey paused to check the night sky above him, picking out the familiar constellation of the North Star. He traced vertically downwards from that, finding the point on the horizon that was due north. Having located that, he moved his gaze east, coming to rest on the unmistakable form of Orion, also known as ‘the Hunter’. No matter where you were in the world, Orion would rise on the horizon due east, and set due west. For night drives such as this one, Orion was the key navigational marker.
‘Head northeast on a bearing of 060 degrees,’ he told Moth. ‘For the first thirty kilometres keep two fingers to the left of Orion – there.’
Orion consists of a row of three very bright stars, known as Orion’s Belt, with constellations dotted all around it that represent the hunter’s body and his sword. By holding his hand in front of his face and steering at a point two fingers’ width to the left of that, Moth would keep the Squadron on a rough northeast bearing. Grey’s priority was to keep Moth’s eyes-front and scrutinizing the terrain. If he was forever glancing down at his compass or GPS, he might miss a rocky outcrop or a ravine. With a star as his reference point, Moth would always have his gaze forward of the vehicle. The terrain here was far worse than anything they’d experienced during their Kenya training. There it had all been flat sand and savanna. Here, it was a maze of bare rock slashed through with deep ravines.
Once Grey had given Moth his navigational instructions, it was up to the younger man to feel his way ahead and seek out the best route. But this was a team effort, and it was the Dude who had the best all-round view from his position high on the rear. As they moved off he kept a stream of helpful advice coming.
‘You’re clear to the left, Moth, mate. Clear directly ahead for a good hundred yards or so.’
For forty minutes Moth wove the vehicle through the darkened landscape, the entire Squadron following behind and showing not the faintest pinprick of light. At one stage they ended up doing a complete circle. Grey and Moth had chosen a path that had offered them no route through, and they came back to exactly where they had started.
As Grey studied the map and tried to work out an alternative route, a stream of voices came up on the radios. ‘Where the fuck are we going …?’ ‘Looping the bloody loop …’ ‘What are we, the Red Arrows …?’ ‘Welcome to Sergeant Grey’s Ninawa Desert Tours …’
Grey smiled to himself. He recognized most of the voices giving it some on the radio, but he didn’t rise to the bait. In a way it was good to see that the rest of the blokes in the Squadron were still sparking, in spite of the crushing burden of fatigue.
The temperature dropped rapidly, and soon it was hovering around five degrees. With the wind-chill factor on the open vehicles, Grey figured it had to be well below freezing. They’d been kipping at night wrapped in doss-sacks and Gore-Tex bivi-bags, for the extra warmth. But while on the move they needed their bodies free – to drive, to keep watch, to navigate and potentially to fight. Moth’s hands gripped the steering wheel encased in leather gloves for the added warmth. But those manning the machine-guns like Grey and Dude could wear only the thin air-crewman’s gloves, for they needed the added dexterity.
Between 1 and 5 degrees was the temperature bracket in which snow would fall, and it struck Grey that if it rained right now over northern Iraq it would fall here in the Ninawa Desert as snow. It was bizarre. A few hours ago he’d felt as if his head was being boiled in a cauldron. Now, it was as if he was suffering from severe brain freeze.
Grey reached forward and flicked on the wagon’s heater. He had the fan set to zero, so it made almost no noise, but still the hot air should waft into the footwell and seep up around him and Moth. As for the Dude, heaven only knew how the poor bastard wasn’t freezing to death, perched up there on the .50-cal turret.
Grey couldn’t afford for his mind to seize up. He had a thousand and one things to think about, leading the Squadron on a night drive such as this. As well as all the obvious navigational issues, he had to try to map out in his head a series of escape routes, should they get hit from out of the darkness by the enemy. He checked his map again, and issued a fresh set of navigational instructions. A dry ravine had pushed the convoy too far eastwards, and he needed Moth to compensate. He told him to steer a route due north whenever he could, using the North Star as his celestial fix.
After two hours of leading the Squadron Grey was feeling totally bollocksed. As for Moth, he was hanging out of his hoop. They stopped to do a map change, Grey using the tiny pen-light on his torch to scrutinize the maps in his folder, and to select the right sheet for the terrain they were moving into.
A wagon pulled up beside them. ‘How’re you blokes doing?’ a voice whispered. It was Scruff. ‘We’re frozen solid.’
‘Still alive,’ Grey whispered back. ‘Mate, we’ve had the heater on full blast the whole time.’
‘Shit. Didn’t think of that one.’ Scruff leaned forward and flicked the switch to activate his wagon’s heater. ‘We’re freezing our bloody nuts off.’
They pushed onwards, Grey tensing himself for the attack he felt certain was coming. If the Fedayeen had slipped past them when the previous night’s sentry had fallen over, they could have set an ambush anywhere up ahead. The jumbled, chaotic terrain certainly offered them the perfect opportunity to do so. The Squadron was making around 15 kph, and at such a slow crawl it would make the perfect target to any watching gunmen.
It’s standard operating procedure if hit in an ambush to keep driving. If you attempt to turn round or to stop you only make yourself a sitting target. It’s far better to keep moving and fight your way through. If that Fedayeen force did hit them, Grey would have to rely on speed and the cover of darkness, plus the firepower of the Squadron, to smash their way past.
But being at the head of the snake, Grey’s wagon would be the first onto the enemy guns.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Several hours into that night drive, Moth reduced their speed to a dead slow crawl. If the lead Pinkie actually stopped, the rest would come to a halt behind it, and it generally took an age to get the convoy moving again. It was better to keep moving than to stop completely, which was why Moth had them inching ahead at no more than walking pace.
Regardless of breaking light discipline, Grey needed to use the GPS to get an exact fix on where they were, so as to take them through a series of ravines that slashed like knife cuts across their intended path. Right now the danger of going over one of those and rolling the wagon far outweighed the risk of the light thrown off by the GPS compromising them.
Even if they survived going over the edge of an unseen wadi, most were six feet or more in height and more or less vertical-sided, so getting out would pr
esent a real problem. If there was no natural exit point, the only way would be to dig a slope by hand and drive the wagon out, and that could take all night. With the men dismounted and the wagons trapped, it would present an ideal moment for the Fedayeen force to hit them.
As the convoy crept ahead, Scruff’s vehicle pulled up alongside them to provide some extra cover. Grey was punching the buttons on his GPS, and he could hear Scruff cursing under his breath.
‘Still freezing our bloody nuts off,’ he hissed. ‘Bloody heater isn’t working. The last thing we thought of bloody checking before deploying.’
Grey smiled grimly to himself. While his feet and legs were reasonably toasty, his face felt frozen to the touch, his lips cracked and sore. But at least having the heater working meant he wasn’t in danger of getting his nuts frozen off.
By the approach of first light the men in the lead vehicle had horribly red and bloodshot eyes – the result of staring into the artificially boosted luminosity of night vision for hours on end. Trying to find a way through an increasingly pockmarked and ravine-strewn terrain would be nightmarish in broad daylight, yet they’d been doing just that with only the fluorescent green glow of NVG to guide them.
Grey figured the patrol had made sixty kilometres max. By now they were entering the badlands of the far north of the desert, where the plateau broke up into a confusion of all but impassable terrain. It made for horrendous going, and for long stretches Moth had been managing little more than 10 kph. As the coming dawn lit the horizon to the east of them, Moth led the Squadron into a narrow ravine. It was one of the few patches of cover he could manoeuvre the wagons into. With the vehicles snaking out along the dry riverbed, they could just about keep the whole Squadron hidden from view. They pulled up in their concealed position and cut the engines.
