Zero Six Bravo

by Damien Lewis

  The Dude kept his finger hard on the trigger, unleashing a long and savage burst in the direction of the enemy. So much for Grey’s fears for how the Dude – the Squadron’s newbie and combat virgin – would react under fire. In spite of the fact that he’d had a solid stream of Dushka rounds practically ripping his head off, he was firm and steady and sparking.

  Perched that much higher on the wagon, the Dude had to have a clearer view of the enemy, and Grey was able to follow his rounds in to the target. To his right, other blokes from Six Troop were struggling into their body armour, but not Grey. An instant before opening fire, he made a grab for the one bit of kit he needed above all else right now – his tactical hearing protectors. The .50-cal unleashing in his ears had rendered him deaf as a doughnut, and as the vehicle commander he needed to be able to hear any orders radioed in from the OC.

  The hearing protectors consisted of a headset designed to cut out loud noises – like explosions and gunfire – but still retaining low-level acoustics. He slapped them on over the top of his radio earpiece. They would filter out all noise bar verbal communication from those near at hand, while at the same time enabling him to hear any incoming radio calls.

  The moment he had the headset on, Grey was immersed in a weird and disembodied world where he could clearly see the flash and thump of weapons firing all around him, and the streams of tracer hammering in to smash them, but could barely hear any of it happening.

  He fixed the distant, muted silhouette of the enemy gunman in the glowing metal V of the Gimpy’s sights, squeezed the trigger and opened fire. Moments later, rounds from both his weapon and the Dude’s .50-cal were slamming into the target and ricocheting high into the desert sky.

  The men of M Squadron weren’t using tracer, for the fiery trails laced across the night would lead an enemy gunman to them. Even so, Grey sensed his rounds were falling a fraction short. They were sparking wildly, as they rebounded off the ridge lying between him and the enemy gunner. He raised himself on the balls of his feet, leaned his weight on the weapon and brought the barrel up a fraction, and fired again. He saw his rounds spark and flare as they tore into the metal of the enemy vehicle – and, he hoped, ripped the enemy to pieces.

  To his left lay the shadowed entrance to the wadi, and Grey had to keep one eye on that in case any hostile forces came thundering through. God only knew how many of them were out there in the darkness, but already he’d detected a good half-dozen streams of tracer arcing in to hit the Squadron. And with every passing second, more Dushka gunners seemed to be joining the party.

  To his right the fellow wagons of Six Troop were pounding out heavy machine-gun fire and unleashing grenade rounds. Each Troop possessed several grenade launchers, but they weren’t Grey’s preferred weapon to have on his vehicle. While grenade launchers were perfect for directed fire against an identified enemy, the .50-cal was accurate up to a far greater range. Right now, the grenade launchers were being used at the very limit of their reach, and if the enemy were operating from lightly armoured vehicles only the .50-cal’s armour-piercing rounds could deal with those.

  As soon as Grey got a bead on a Dushka operator, the driver of that vehicle seemed to move a few yards to the rear so as to get into better cover, before the gunner recommenced firing. Several times Grey was forced to reacquire the target and readjust his aim as he pounded out the fire, fighting a deadly duel across a kilometre or more of blasted desert.

  As far as he could tell at such a distance, the enemy vehicles looked like Toyota pick-ups with 12.7mm Dushkas bolted to their rears. Perthaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, but he figured he could just make out that the Dushka operators were sporting the distinctive red-and-white checkered headscarves that marked them out as being Fedayeen.

  More than likely, these were the Boys from Bayji – the Fedayeen hunter force. He guessed that they had been stalking the Squadron for several days, got ahead of the British force and gone to ground. They must have been lying up in hiding, and waiting for the Squadron to stumble into their trap, and most likely using one or two civvie-looking wagons to keep eyes on the British force.

  From the headlights that he could see criss-crossing the desert, Grey figured there were scores more enemy vehicles converging on their position. It didn’t escape his notice how fast and nimble they seemed to be. Not only was the Squadron very likely outnumbered, it was in danger of getting itself surrounded by a force driving vehicles far more manoeuvrable than their heavily laden Pinkies.

  Already they had fire coming in from three points of the compass. Only due south, where their entry point to the wadi lay, did there appear to be a gap in the enemy forces converging upon their position.

  For an instant, Grey considered their options if they did have to bug out of the lake bed. The escape point lying due north was clearly a no-go: there were enemy positioned there in strength, and it would lead them into flat, open terrain, which would provide zero cover. Only the southern exit point offered them any chance of making a getaway.

  But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe the enemy had left the southern exit seemingly unguarded, but had a hidden force waiting out there in the darkness to ambush them.

  Grey knew better than to underestimate the capabilities of the enemy they were up against. Whether or not they were Fedayeen, they clearly knew their stuff. Somehow, they’d managed to sneak up on the Squadron during stand-to, when the men were locked and loaded and scanning the terrain all around them. They’d kept themselves hidden, and secured positions from where they could lob in pinpoint-accurate fire.

  They would have had no more than three feet or so of the Pinkies at which to aim their rounds, for that was all that was visible above the rim of the wadi, and they were doing so from a good kilometre away. Despite that, they’d got the fire lancing in right on top of the Squadron. They’d got the British force nailed, and all before they’d even detected the noise of their engines.

  If the enemy had managed to hit the Squadron some fifteen minutes earlier, the blokes would still have been sorting their positions, as opposed to doing stand-to. As it was, the Squadron was perfectly placed to put down return fire, but still the men hadn’t had the faintest clue that the enemy was out there gathering for an attack.

  From behind him Grey heard the .50-cal cease firing. The Dude ripped off an empty ammo box, kicked it into the back of the wagon’s rear, heaved up another, and an instant later he was feeding the belt into the weapon’s breech and opening fire again. Already he was a hundred rounds down, and they were barely a couple of minutes into the firefight. If they continued at this rate of ammo consumption they’d be all done on the heavy machine-guns in fifteen minutes flat, at which point things would start to get very bloody serious indeed.

  Grey himself was rapidly chewing through his first belt of two hundred rounds on the GPMG. He hunched over his weapon and concentrated on his aim, knowing how vital it was to make every bullet count. He saw rounds tear in to the nearest of the Dushka gunners, who was just visible above the ridge line. The figure slumped forward over the big machine-gun, and for an instant it fell silent. But a split second later a second fighter had climbed onto the weapon, and the Dushka’s gaping muzzle began spitting fire once more.

  By now there had to be six or more 12.7mm weapons to the south and west of their position, and an equal number to the north and east where the enemy seemed to have positioned their greatest concentration of firepower. That meant a dozen heavy machine-guns were hosing down an area a quarter the size of a football pitch, and the Squadron was getting blasted from all sides.

  As they had learned during their Kenya training, it was standard operating procedure when you were ambushed in a good defensive position to stay put and fight it out, and to hold known terrain. But Grey sensed they were going to have real problems if the OC planned on remaining where they were.

  For an instant he risked a glance behind him, to try to check on the command vehicles and get a sense of what the OC mi
ght be planning. All around the HQ Troop wagons 12.7mm rounds were smashing into the ground. Where the big tracer bullets were hitting the soft dirt of the lake bed it was laced with furrows of spurting flame. It looked as if a series of thick wires strung with blazing fire were being pulled up through the sand by some irresistible force. Grey had never seen anything remotely like it, and the HQ Troop’s wagons had to be taking murderous hits.

  For an instant he caught a flash of a white-faced figure crouching in the back of one of the Pinkies. He wondered what it must be like for Sebastian right now – a bloke who’d been brought along solely for his Arabic skills and who didn’t even have a machine-gun with which to return fire. It had to be an absolute fucking nightmare.

  At least the OC, his SAS 2iC and the signallers would be busy as hell trying to get a contact report radioed through to Headquarters. Plus they’d be checking for any available air power, and presumably figuring out what on earth they were going to do to defeat the enemy. By contrast, Sebastian was sat there with absolutely no means of taking the fight to an enemy who were doing everything in their power to kill him – bar shouting insults at them in Arabic.

  The next moment Grey saw the flare of a rocket come tearing out of the darkness to the far side of the lake bed. It roared across the wadi and smacked into the rear of the signals wagon, detonating in a blinding flash around the level of the exhaust pipe and blasting the Pinkie into the air. The stricken vehicle slammed back down again, rocking wildly on its suspension, a cloud of smoke engulfing it.

  The rocket had impacted no more than thirty feet from Grey’s position, and he’d seen the signals wagon take a direct hit. The flaming projectile was more than likely an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). Upon impact, the RPG is designed to fragment into hundreds of shards of razor-sharp steel, which are blasted forward from the point of the explosion in a whirlwind of death.

  The signals wagon would have been raked with shrapnel, and Sebastian would more than likely have been right in the line of its blast. It looked as if they’d just lost one of their HQ vehicles, plus God only knew how many blokes. Unless the OC got his Troop moving pronto, Grey feared that every man amongst them was going to be very fucking dead very fucking quickly.

  But there was bugger all that he could do about that right now. He had 12.7mm rounds smashing into his position directly from the gunners to their front, and from ricochets to their rear. He was sure their wagon was taking murderous hits, only the ear-defenders were blanketing the noise. Unless he felt himself take a bullet, or saw a round tear through a part of the wagon he could see, he’d not know what damage they’d taken until they tried to move.

  The Squadron desperately needed to start winning this firefight. He raised himself on the balls of his feet and began malleting the enemy gunners, ramping the GPMG left and right, targeting muzzle flashes as they sparked in the shadows. In an arc to his right, he saw gunners on the other wagons doing likewise. They were hammering out a solid wall of fire and Grey knew they had to be finding and killing their targets.

  But the enemy was good. Very good. And there were more of them than there were of M Squadron. As soon as an enemy gunner was hit he was ripped away from his Dushka position and another fighter took his place, and that made it all but impossible to reduce the level of fire the Squadron was taking.

  Still, Grey felt certain they could win this firefight. They had a dozen .50-cal machine-guns and grenade launchers plus a similar number of GPMGs blasting away, which was an awesome amount of firepower. Right now, they were well able to give as good as they got. Plus they were in positions of great cover. And while the Squadron might be new to vehicle mobility work, they were the best in the business at putting down sustained and deadly accurate fire.

  Grey’s main worry was the limited supply of ammo the wagons carried. With unlimited ammo, they could stay put and smash the Fedayeen force until every last one of them was dead. They’d surely take casualties, but the Squadron would win the day. Yet the Fedayeen force was supposed to have vehicles in support, which would mean heavier trucks carrying spares, fuel, weaponry and ammo. In terms of who could sustain this level of fire the longest, it was more than likely the enemy.

  As if to underline his worries, the Dude kicked a second empty ammo tin out of the way, and reached for a third. The barrel of his heavy machine-gun was glowing red from the heat of constant firing, and smoking like a dragon. The Dude had slammed two hundred bullets each the size of a child’s wrist into the enemy positions, but still the attackers kept coming back at them with a murderous barrage of fire.

  Grey felt a dull click from his own weapon. He’d reached the end of his first 200-round belt. He flung the breech open, reached for a replacement belt, dragged it across and slammed the breech closed. An instant later he was in the aim and pumping rounds into the nearest enemy positions. He saw a lucky burst rip into a Dushka gunner, the impact flinging him backwards off his vehicle. But an instant later another had taken the dead man’s place.

  Grey was starting to wonder whether they could win this firefight with sheer force and accuracy of fire alone. They could keep smashing the enemy until their machine-guns ran dry, then resort to their personal weapons. But there were too many of the enemy, and he figured they were too well armed. They also appeared to be oblivious to the casualties they were taking, their fighters near-suicidal in their desire to take the fight to the British enemy.

  Only a Fedayeen force would be fighting with such fanatical intensity, and with such disregard for loss of life on their own side. Grey also feared that with every passing second hidden numbers of the enemy might be advancing through the darkness towards the Squadron’s LUP.

  To his rear a flash of movement caught his eye. It was followed by a shattering explosion. A second projectile had smashed into the lake bed, this one right on the OC’s wagon’s heels. Unlike the RPG, it had left no fiery rocket’s trail. It blew the entire vehicle into the air, engulfing it in a thick cloud of smoke and blasted sand.

  As the air cleared, Grey saw the heavy wagon sitting where it had landed: it had been thrown almost at right-angles to its original position. Only an artillery round – or, God forbid, a tank shell – would have the power to hurl a Pinkie around like that.

  Grey figured the shell must have ploughed deep into the lake bed, burying itself in a layer of soft sand, which had served to mask the blast. But it was only a matter of moments before a round like that scored a direct hit, and pulverized a Pinkie – especially if an Iraqi battle tank had joined the battle.

  Grey’s mind was racing, the grey matter churning out dozens of thoughts per second, as he pulled the GPMG closer into his shoulder and traded fire with fire. Heavy armour was the one thing that the Squadron was ill equipped to take on. If they’d had some Milan, they could have used those wire-guided missiles to blast a battle tank asunder. More the pity then that they didn’t have any.

  Of course, it was blindingly obvious that the Iraqi Fedayeen didn’t operate artillery or battle tanks. Only the regular Iraq Army was equipped with those types of hardware. And the only Iraqi army unit known to be operating in this area was the Iraqi 5th Corps.

  Had M Squadron just been ambushed by the very unit whose surrender they were supposed to be taking? And if so, had the Fedayeen shadowing the Squadron somehow called in the 5th Corps to join the battle?

  Either way, their only option now was to get the hell out of the LUP. With heavy shells slamming into the limited terrain of the lake bed, they had to bug out and hope to lose the enemy in the dark. At least then they’d have the advantage of night-vision equipment. The cloak of night should serve to hide them, and if they could navigate their way south into the open desert, the Squadron might be able to evade and escape from the enemy that way.

  A second massive shell went screaming across the lake bed and ploughed into the soft ground on the far side of the HQ Troop’s vehicles. Whatever it was that was lobbing in those rounds, it had dropped the first slightly short and the secon
d slightly long. That meant that the gunner had the HQ Troop bracketed, and the next shell was likely to land right on top of their position.

  None of the Pinkies had the space to carry any extra passengers, least of all any wounded.

  If they lost a wagon or two, things would be getting desperate.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  From behind him Grey could hear engines revving wildly and smell the acrid stench of tortured, burning rubber. He turned to see the OC’s wagon spinning its wheels as it struggled to haul itself out of the soft sand and onto firmer ground. It looked as if the OC was trying to move his Troop away from the heart of the lake bed, the epicentre of the killing ground.

  His open-topped Land Rover was peppered with bullet holes, and great rents had been torn in the aluminium bodywork by shrapnel. Grey could hardly believe that it was still drivable. Behind it, and nose to tail with the OC’s wagon, the signals vehicle was also on the move. For a long second Grey figured that the lead wagon was trying to tow the other out of the kill zone, which was a fucking desperate set of straits to be in.

  One crippled Land Rover dragging a second stricken vehicle: this was worse than the blind leading the blind. But then he realized that both wagons had somehow got moving under their own steam, and were making for the exit to the lake bed. How both Pinkies could still be in action Grey didn’t know, but at least the OC seemed to have woken up to the fact that either they got the hell out of there, or they were dead.

  As the lead wagon headed for the exit point, Grey could see that the OC had his ear-defenders on, which meant he had his radio working. A clutch of quad bikes roared past the OC’s wagon, with Gunner at the head. Like sheepdogs shepherding a flock, they would be first out, scouting the way ahead and searching for the enemy. If the Boys from Bayji were out there lying in ambush, the quads might be able to radio back a warning.