by Damien Lewis
Grey had heard no orders issued via the radios, so he presumed they’d follow SOP (standard operating procedure) for pulling out of the LUP. The HQ Troop would lead, followed by Four and Five Troop, with Six taking up the rear. As Grey’s was the vehicle in Six Troop nearest to the exit point, he figured they’d have to be last out of the LUP.
They’d chosen this LUP carefully and they’d chosen well. It was a great defensive position. By bugging out, they were breaking all SOPs. But Grey didn’t doubt for one moment that the OC’s decision was the right one. With the Squadron getting hosed down by Dushka fire, RPGs and now large-calibre shells, they had no option but to leave.
As the command wagon roared through the narrow exit point, Grey knew it was up to Six Troop, and his wagon in particular, to provide vital covering fire. The exit lay to the south of the wadi, which was within their arc of responsibility, and it was Grey’s vehicle that lay closest to it. They’d need to remain where they were, putting down rounds until the rest of the Squadron had got safely out of there.
They had been first into Iraq on the Chinooks, and they were going to be last out of the ambush.
So be it.
All the Six Troop vehicles were smashing rounds towards the enemy positions, throwing out a concentrated wall of fire so as to cover those escaping from the LUP. Grey could see the empty cartridges spewing out of the Gimpy’s breech, each a glowing cylinder of metal lit up golden-red in the muzzle flash of the .50-cal behind him.
As he kept his finger hard on the trigger, the spent shell cases went tumbling onto the wagon’s floor in one long, hot torrent of smoking metal. Already, there was a slough of spent bullet cases down there, and it was greasy and treacherous under foot. Grey had to keep booting the used brass out of the way, so as to stop himself from losing his footing as he ramped the weapon around to hit new targets.
He could only imagine that their Pinkie was riddled with fire, but the deafening noise of battle – plus the tearing impact of enemy bullets – was silenced by his ear-protectors.
As the adrenalin surged through his veins, the sense that he was cut off and insulated from the world all around him deepened, taking on a vice-like grip. Time seemed almost to freeze. It felt as if every second lasted for an age, and every action seemed etched into his mind in impossible detail and clarity.
In his heightened state of consciousness he’d become hyper-aware of every minute detail of the battle. With dreamlike lucidity, he sensed the individual movements of the machine-gun as it sucked in the rounds, punched the detonation cap and powered each bullet down the length of the barrel, spitting out a spinning projectile of death travelling at some three thousand feet per second.
It was almost as if his eyes were following those rounds as they left the barrel and rippled through the air separating him from those he wanted to kill. His knotted shoulder muscles burned and ached from the tension of hunching over the juddering weapon, and ramping out a near-continuous and deadly accurate stream of fire. But his mind blanked any pain.
As his brain processed a tumult of thoughts at the speed of light, he zeroed in on the one overriding priority right now: how to find, target and kill the enemy, and get the Squadron out of there. It burned his mind into a pure, crystal-clear focus in which nothing else in his life seemed to matter. His family back home, the mortgage, the unpaid bills, the recent arguments with his wife – it was all an irrelevance when faced with the kill-or-be-killed reality of full-on combat.
Grey had never known anything like the level and intensity of fire they were up against. Despite the solid wall of rounds that he and Dude were pouring out, the enemy seemed undaunted, and he could sense their bullets tearing metal all around him. He just prayed that none of the damage was terminal, and that none of his blokes took a direct hit.
From behind him the Dude kicked away a third empty ammo box and slammed his fourth belt onto the .50-cal. They were eating up the ammunition at a furious rate. The Dude had already burned through half of his 600 rounds, and Grey was well through the Gimpy’s second belt of 200.
Standard operating procedure when going on the run was to follow the OC’s lead, and to try to keep the Squadron together for as long as possible. Things started to move very quickly now. To the east of the wadi Four Troop broke fire, and one by one their Pinkies followed the OC’s lead. Moments later Five Troop ceased firing, abandoning their positions to the north of the sunken terrain so they could head for the exit point.
To the far right of Grey’s position the guns on Scruff’s wagon were the first of Six Troop’s to fall silent. Scruff’s Pinkie reversed away from the edge of the lake bed, turned in a cloud of dust and kangarooed its way across the ground, which had been churned up by the passing wagons, not to mention the enemy fire.
There now remained two .50-cals, one grenade launcher, and three GPMGs putting down rounds on to the enemy, but the amount of fire they were taking in return was devastating. A second vehicle ceased firing, and turned to leave. Now it was only Grey’s wagon and one other remaining, and they were fast becoming the focus of all the incoming. It was total murder.
Sgt Dave ‘Jamie’ Jamieson was the commander of the other vehicle, and the Six Troop Sergeant Major. He was a wiry, fit-as-fuck Scouser, and Grey knew him to be as wily as a fox and as fierce as a lion. For an instant Jamie leaned across towards Grey, and signalled for him to get his wagon out of there.
‘YOU LEAVE!’ Jamie yelled. ‘WE’LL COVER YOU!’
‘WE’RE NEAREST THE EXIT!’ Grey roared back, and without taking his trigger finger off the juddering, smoking-hot weapon. ‘WE’RE LAST OUT! GET THE FUCK ON YOUR WAY!’
Grey gestured for Jamie to pull his wagon out while he still could, and with their Pinkie providing covering fire. Jamie hesitated for an instant, then signalled his thanks, and his driver finally got their vehicle under way. When the shit hit the proverbial fan, the men of the Squadron would fight to the death for each other. That was the Special Forces ethos, and the spirit that bound such elite warriors together.
Jamie’s wagon reversed, powered forwards and made a mad dash for the narrow exit. Only when it was clawing its way out of the sunken lake bed did Grey finally give the order.
‘FUCKING CEASE FIRE! LET’S GET MOVING!’
Moth gunned the engine on their wagon and ramped it into a screaming turn. As he did so Grey and Dude remained hunched over their weapons, but they eased their fingers off the triggers. For the first time in what felt like an age the guns of M Squadron had fallen silent.
As Moth slammed the Pinkie into first and floored the accelerator, Grey took one last look at the position they were evacuating. It was pure Armageddon in there. Streams of 12.7mm tracer rounds were slamming into it from all directions, transforming the lake bed into a raging sea of fire.
Moth raced for the exit, weaving the Pinkie through savage bursts of 12.7mm. For an instant, Grey saw a massive explosion engulf the area where the command vehicle had been positioned, throwing a fist of blasted sand high into the air. It left behind a huge smoking crater, where a few moments earlier the HQ Troop had been positioned. They’d got out of there not a moment too soon.
The nose of Grey’s Pinkie was thrusting its way into the narrow neck of the exit when he sensed a massive shadowed form behind him. He turned to see the hulking great shape of an armoured beast come thundering over the far side of the lake bed. For a moment it teetered on the six-foot-high lip of the wadi, then it tilted forward and the tracks of the vehicle slammed down onto the soft sand, the wall of the lake bed half collapsing under its weight.
As the Iraqi armour hit the level ground of the lakebed, Grey’s wagon powered ahead and careered around the corner at the high end of the exit point. The worry now was what awaited him and his men on the far side, when they hit the open desert.
To the east Grey spotted a thick dust trail snaking off into the darkness. That had to be the route the other wagons had taken.
‘FOLLOW THAT DUST TRAIL!’ he yelled i
nto Moth’s ear. ‘WHATEVER IT TAKES – DON’T FUCKING LOSE IT!’
As Moth accelerated in that direction, their wagon rounded the eastern side of the wadi. Grey glanced towards the position they’d just evacuated, and in amongst the dust and the smoke rising from the lake bed he spotted three indistinct silhouettes. They were vehicles, perched on the very rim of the lake bed and occupying the high ground overlooking it.
For a moment he wondered whether they were some of M Squadron’s wagons, which had somehow doubled back to the LUP. But when he took a closer look, the reality hit him like a steam train: they were far too large to be Pinkies.
Even in the gathering darkness those indistinct forms looked like Kraz 225s – a Soviet-era six-wheeled steel monster of a truck, one that was in widespread use with the Iraqi military. The Kraz 225 was a fantastic off-road vehicle, capable of 75 kph over just about any kind of terrain.
Scores of figures were leaping off the backs of the trucks, and within moments Grey had spotted the distinctive silhouettes of Iraqi Army forage caps, plus AK47 assault rifles. There was no doubt in his mind any more: the trucks were carrying a regular Iraqi infantry unit.
The Iraqi soldiers must have been trucked across the open desert to the very lip of the wadi, under cover of the Dushka fire. They were now going in to finish off the Squadron, in a ground assault – only, the British force had just bugged out of there. This had been a textbook deliberate attack, one executed by a highly mobile, extremely well-coordinated and professional force.
The men of M Squadron had been briefed that the Iraqi infantry were conscripts lacking in morale. They’d been told the Iraqi forces were ill-trained and ill-equipped, and that they were not up for the fight. From where Grey was sitting, it certainly didn’t bloody look that way.
Automatically, his GPMG had swung round to face the new threat. His gun moved wherever he was looking, following his eye-line. That way, if he spotted an enemy position he could open fire on it instantly. Such vehicle-borne combat was often won or lost in the split second it took one side to recognize the other and open fire, which was why Grey had drilled and drilled to keep his weapon shadowing his line of sight.
But right now he forced himself to ease off his trigger finger and hold his fire, and with the flash of a hand signal he indicated for Dude to do likewise. If they opened up, they’d have three truck-loads of Iraqi soldiers returning fire, to say nothing of whatever else there might be lurking out there in the desert.
As the Iraqi troops surged over the rim of the wadi, Grey just had to hope that none of them spotted their fleeing vehicle. All it would take was one AK47 round into a tyre, and they’d be toast. The Pinkies had tubeless tyres fitted with some kind of run-flat self-sealing solution, which should give a shot-up tyre enough usability to get a wagon out of the immediate killing range. But with three Kraz 225s parked up no more than two hundred yards away, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that they’d be rapidly pursued and hunted down. The last thing they needed was for those monster Iraqi Army trucks to come steaming and snorting after them. They were big enough and nasty enough to run right over a Pinkie and squash it flat as a tin can.
A fleeting thought flashed through Grey’s mind,. He’d heard somewhere about a sister patrol to Bravo Two Zero, one that had gone into the Western Desert during the First Gulf War. They were mounted on vehicles and they’d stumbled on a mass of Iraqi infantry camped up in the desert. It was the dead of night, and somehow those SAS wagons had sneaked right through the enemy lines.
They’d been close enough to see the glow of the Iraqi sentry’s cigarette, and to catch the distinctive smell of burning tobacco. But they’d held their nerve, and held their fire, and managed to slip through. Grey hoped and prayed their lone vehicle could do the same right now. In Special Force operations, knowing when not to engage the enemy was as vital as knowing when to open fire and smash seven bales of shit out of them.
‘Keep after that fucking dust trail!’ Grey urged Moth. ‘Whatever you do, don’t fucking lose it!’
Moth put his pedal to the metal, and within seconds the Pinkie was practically airborne as it bucked and cannoned its way across the rough terrain. Grey leaned forward and grabbed a smoke grenade from the dash, ripped the pin out and let the arming lever fly. He raised himself in his seat, half turned round and hurled the grenade out of the wagon’s rear. If he could lay down enough smoke, it might buy them some much needed time. If nothing else it should make it difficult for the enemy to follow their trail, at least for the few minutes it took the grenades to stop gushing out their thick, choking smoke. Grey kept on hurling them until his very last was gone.
At the same time he was urging Moth to keep his speed up and to catch the rearmost vehicles. If they lost the Squadron’s tail end they’d never find it again, of that he was certain. They’d be on their own – three blokes in one soft-skinned wagon that had fired off more than half of its ammo and exhausted all of its smoke grenades. It wouldn’t take long for the forces gathered in and around that lake bed to realize that the Squadron had made their exit, and come roaring after them.
Night had well and truly fallen by now. Above them was another overcast sky, and it was as black as a witch’s tit out there in the desert. It was great conditions in which to try to shake off an Iraqi hunter force, but it was also perfect for losing the rest of the Squadron.
For a good two minutes the men pushed onwards in a tense and nervous silence. Grey ripped off his ear-defenders, so he could better hear what was happening. He scanned the night for the noise of vehicle engines, straining to catch the distinctive note of a Pinkie’s diesel motor reverberating out of the dust cloud before them. And from behind, he was dreading catching the deep throaty roar of a Kraz 225 powering its way forward.
Moth was ramping the Pinkie across the rough terrain at break-neck speed. It was on the tip of Grey’s tongue to warn him to slow down a little, for if they hit a rock or a significant drop they’d be sure to smash up the wagon. And if they lost their vehicle at a moment like this, there was no way in the world they’d be able to evade the kind of forces that were coming after them on foot.
They’d gone a good three kilometres, and it looked increasingly likely that they had lost contact with the Squadron. If so, they’d have to try to use the radios and hope some of the wagons were still within range. They’d have to ask them for a grid, and for the rest of the squadron to remain stationary on that grid while their own vehicle tried to reach the others. But with the Iraqi force at their backs, the request to remain static would likely go down like the proverbial turd in a punchbowl.
To be able to use the radios they’d have to get stationary, for they were unworkable with Moth tearing across the desert like this. The wind noise alone drowned out any words spoken into the mouthpiece, and made it impossible to hear anything in return. But the last thing Grey wanted right now was to call a halt. They needed to put more distance between them and the enemy, and they needed to marry up with the Squadron so they had some real firepower again.
If they couldn’t make contact with the Squadron via the radios, they’d have to go to ground in some kind of a hide, then use the satcom to call up SF Headquarters and try to locate the Squadron that way. And if that failed, they’d have no option but to call for a hot extraction – a rescue by Chinook under the threat of enemy fire. There was no way that a lone Pinkie was about to fight its way out of this one.
Finally, after what felt like an age, the vague form of a vehicle began to emerge from the dust and gloom up ahead. Grey strained his eyes, trying to work out if it was a Pinkie, or one of the Fedayeen Toyota pick-ups. From a distance, and in such conditions, it would be very easy to mistake one for the other.
The vehicle ahead was showing no lights, so it was more than likely friendly. But maybe the Fedayeen had switched to operating on black light themselves, now that the ambush had been sprung and the hunt was well and truly on.
Grey leaned across at Moth: ‘Slow the fu
ck down, ’cause it may be the bad guys. Don’t close the gap until we’re sure.’
Moth nodded his assent, and eased off the gas. The wagon decelerated to something more like a more normal patrol speed. As they crept closer, the image up ahead finally resolved itself into that of an open-topped Land Rover. It was one of the most welcome sights that Grey, Moth and the Dude had ever seen.
Grey figured they’d covered a good four kilometres from the LUP. At the pace Moth had been doing, he should have won the Land Rover land speed record.
The rearmost vehicle was Raggy’s. Grey could see the familar form of Rag-bag chucking smoke grenades out of the back. He was doing so in typical Raggy fashion, using a lazy lob to wing it over his shoulder. Grey could see the spare grenades lined up on their Pinkie’s dash.
Throwing smoke was a fine way for the Squadron to lose any pursuers, but it had done absolutely zero to help Grey and Moth find the tail end of the convoy. As their wagon closed the distance with Raggy’s, Grey caught the distinctive firework-smell of the fumes put out by the grenades. Now that their wagon had finally caught up with the Squadron, Raggy’s smoke screen should aid their escape no end.
More vehicles loomed out of the darkness. The nearest one was stationary, and it had the unmistakable whippy antennae of one of the HQ Troop vehicles. As Grey neared it, he saw the OC standing up in the front seat and counting in the wagons of his Squadron. His face broke into a broad smile of relief as he spotted Grey’s wagon – the last out of the LUP, and the last to emerge from out of the smoke and the dust.
As they approached Grey saw the OC give a thumbs-up. ‘Okay, buddy?’ he mouthed at them.
Grey returned the greeting, and got a wink from the OC in return.
But at that very instant he saw a burst of tracer fire tear through the darkness, and slam into the desert barely yards to the rear of the OC’s vehicle. More rounds followed, and from the crack and thump that they made as they tore past Grey’s wagon, he could tell that they were 12.7mm. Somehow, those bloody Dushka gunners were on their tail again.
