Zero Six Bravo

by Damien Lewis

  Moth offered a heartfelt thanks you for everything that the American pilots had done for them. They’d not been able to unleash their bombs or their cannon, yet to a man the blokes knew that without those warplanes they’d have been trapped in the lake bed and overrun.

  The three Pinkies pushed due west, the noise of the F16s fading to a faint rumble on the still desert air. Hardly had the skies above them fallen silent than the first lights blinked on to their rear. The enemy was on the move again, but whether they’d seen the British force bugging out no one knew for sure right now. As the three wagons careered onwards, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the lake bed, a chilling thought hit Grey: even if they could break out west, they mightn’t have the fuel to make it to the extraction grid.

  The last time Grey had checked on the diesel was at last light, shortly before the enemy had hit them, and it had been clear then that they’d need a resupply within the next twenty-four hours. He’d figured they had a hundred kilometres max of diesel on their wagon. That was seven hours ago, and without factoring in all the desperate driving since then, plus the extra weight of the blokes they were now carrying. And he had little idea of the fuel states of the other vehicles.

  He was dreading the moment when the first wagon shuddered to a halt, as its tank ran dry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The three Pinkies had made no more than five hundred yards from their last position when the enemy closed the noose. To their rear the lake bed they’d just vacated was transformed into a sea of fire, as the Fedayeen hosed it down with 12.7mm Dushka rounds.

  At the lip of the depression the enemy pulled to a halt, and their fighters piled off the Toyotas. They swarmed into the low ground, AK47s spitting fire – at which point they must have discovered that the British force had somehow evaporated into thin air. But a set of tracks led out of the wadi, and those could be traced and followed.

  As they pressed onwards, Grey did a quick check on ammo stats. He’d got two boxes of rounds left for the GPMG, so he was 800 down. Dude was in an even worse state. He’d just slung the last belt of .50-cal ammo onto the heavy machine-gun, which put him 500 rounds down. They’d each got their Diemacos, with 360 rounds apiece, but they were piss-all use against 12.7mm heavy machine-guns.

  A couple more up-close firefights with the Fedayeen, and they were going to get slaughtered. Grey was in no doubt that the Iraqis would be bringing up reinforcements, and they presumably had a hundred thousand troops plus their war machines to choose from. The British force had survived thus far only thanks to the terrain, the distance and the darkness, not to mention the battle-winning air cover.

  It was some five minutes later, around 0130 hours, that Grey’s vehicle drew level with the scorched and twisted wreckage, which was all that remained after the SLAR strikes. As their wagon pushed in amongst the inferno, they passed the gutted shell of a vehicle spewing out great gouts of oily black smoke. Its tyres were still burning fiercely, thick acrid fumes barrelling into the sky.

  The way ahead was all but obscured by the drifting, oily darkness. Visibility was down to near-zero, and Grey couldn’t tell if there were any enemy left alive in there. They were moving through the Iraqi lines more or less blind. There was one upside: now that they were in amongst the worst of the carnage, the dense smoke should hide their position from those to their rear.

  As the lead vehicle pushed ahead Grey, Moth and Dude pulled their shemaghs closer around their faces, to filter out the fumes. They were hyper-alert to any hostile presence, as was Raggy, who was still sprawled across the wagon’s bonnet. They crawled past the wreckage – the paint blackened and blistered from the scorching heat, the steel warped and twisted.

  The flames were red-hot on the exposed parts of Grey’s face, and the intensity of the conflagration had rendered the vehicles all but unrecognizable. He heaved up his shemagh still further, to better shield his skin. As he did so he said a quick prayer for the poor bastards who’d been caught in all of this. They may have been the enemy, but it was still a horrible way to die.

  They were in amongst the gutted skeletons of the vehicles, scanning the smoke to their front, when Grey chanced a quick look to their rear. His heart skipped a beat, and his pulse began to hammer away in his head ever more powerfully. He figured he could just make out a set of headlights probing the thick smoke.

  It had to be those bastard Fedayeen.

  He eyed Raggy on the bonnet, and took a sideways glance at Moth. ‘Fedayeen to our rear, guys. They hit us again, we’re fucked.’

  Moth grunted an acknowledgement and kept focused on his driving.

  Raggy forced an exhausted grin. ‘Yeah, don’t I know it, mate.’

  They were maybe forty kilometres short of the border with Syria, and that way lay their only hope of sanctuary. It would be a massive embarrassment should twenty-six elite British operators get hauled into custody in Syria. But it could hardly get a great deal worse: they’d lost scores of vehicles blown up, with more than likely a couple captured intact, and God only knew what specialist kit had fallen into enemy hands.

  The Squadron OC plus his Headquarters troop had been forced to go to ground, and they’d lost contact with one element of the Squadron completely – the lone Land Rover plus the clutch of quads, with however many blokes crammed onto those vehicles. Plus they’d got one quad on the run two-up, which would be crashing across the border into Syria if Gunner had his way, or falling into enemy hands if he didn’t.

  Either way, the Squadron had been well and truly scattered, so now probably was the time to head for the Combat RV. But before they could try for Syrian territory, they’d have to cross the N253, a main road that runs along the Iraqi side of the border. And if Grey had been the commander in overall charge of the Iraqi forces, it was there that he’d have the main body of his armour and infantry positioned. That way, he could use the Fedayeen to drive the British patrol onto their guns.

  The lead wagon was rocketing ahead as fast as it could go, when Grey caught the ominous growl of a powerful engine just to the north of their line of march. He locked eyes with Raggy. They’d both recognized the sound. There was a tank on the prowl out there not far ahead of them, and it sounded like a monster.

  Moth gunned the Land Rover, pushing it ever harder. But the terrain here was far harsher than the Ninawa Desert in terms of navigating at night and at speed. It was a flat, rocky plain, crisscrossed in every direction by dry, shallow gullies. Mostly they were oriented in a southeasterly direction, and when it rained here they’d channel the floodwaters towards the seasonal lake of the Kabrat Sunaysilah, lying on the northern border of the desert. The easiest thing would be to head for the cover of one of those gullies, yet that would channel the patrol in the opposite direction to the way they needed to go.

  Syria lay west: the gullies would funnel them south and east. Instead, Moth found himself having to search for a route across the narrow, steep-sided obstructions, while the blokes clung on to the wagons for all they were worth.

  As the lead Pinkie crawled down the friable slope of the next gully, Moth made the snap decision to pull up in the cover of its walls. The throaty growl of the approaching tank was growing ever louder, as it churned through the smoke and the fumes.

  The two wagons behind pulled up alongside them, and the blokes piled off in all-around defence. With LAWs held at the ready and the heavy machine-guns freed for action, they were now in a snap ambush. Almost as an afterthought, Moth reached forward and unleashed his grenade launcher from its cowboy holster. If that Lion of Babylon came charging over the wadi’s edge, they’d mallet it with everything they had.

  The more modern Asad Babils had laminated armour to the front and rear, to provide extra protection against HEAT (high explosive anti-tank) armour-piercing projectiles, so there was little the men were likely to achieve against one of those. But it would be better to go down fighting.

  The clatter of the tank tracks could be heard clearly now, as it hunte
d through the smoke and the wreckage. From behind them they caught the odd snarl of a speeding Toyota, but it was the howl of that T-72’s massive 12-cylinder diesel engine that had them transfixed. No point going anywhere until that had been shaken off, or dealt with.

  The most advanced Lions of Babylon had been fitted with Belgian-made thermal imaging sights for the 125mm smooth-bore main gun. That would explain how the enemy had been able to track the Squadron through the dark and the thick smoke as they escaped from the first LUP. If the battle tank now bearing down on them was fitted with such a system, it should be able to see through the drifting smoke.

  The clanking of the approaching behemoth became ever more deafening, as the men present prepared to open fire. For an instant its squat, desert-grey form came looming out of the shadows, its nearside track tearing along the western lip of the ravine, and throwing down rocks and sand into the bed of the wadi.

  There was a horrible moment when it seemed as if the lip of the wadi above them would collapse, bringing the 41.5-tonne armoured monster down on top of them. And then it had roared past, the long neck of its main cannon swinging this way and that as it scanned through the drifting smog. Getting the three wagons below ground and out of sight had more than likely saved them. But how many more times were they going to get this lucky?

  The noise of the battle tank faded, and finally Moth fired up the Pinkie and nosed out of the ravine, setting a course westwards for Syria. As they pressed onwards through the relative quiet of the night a thought struck Grey: for the first time in many hours they were no longer under direct attack.

  He glanced at the faintly luminous dial of his watch. It was 0200. No more than three hours left until first light. He didn’t doubt that come sun-up they’d be pretty much out of options. Most likely they’d find some kind of an LUP, but Grey wasn’t kidding himself that they’d be able to lie low all day long without being discovered. There were scores of enemy vehicles out there combing the terrain, and he was not even sure that they could manage to evade them during the hours of darkness, and more seemed to be joining the hunt with every passing hour.

  Either they had to make it across the Syrian border, or they got the Chinooks in sometime within the next couple of hours – and all before the wagons ran out of fuel. He glanced at the gauge. The needle was hovering at just above the reserve-tank level. As overloaded as they were, they’d get maybe thirty klicks out of that – possibly less, depending on the terrain. Plus he knew they had a few glugs of diesel left in the one remaining jerry-can that hadn’t been exhausted. They needed to get to a hot-extraction grid or cross into Syria bloody quickly, and before the tanks ran dry.

  The lead wagon emerged from the final ghostly whips of smoke remaining from the SLAR attack, and pushed into the open. Grey put a call through to Ed on the radio.

  ‘We’re running low on fuel and there’s precious few hours left of darkness. Let’s stop for a Chinese.’

  ‘Got it.’ Ed confirmed. ‘Pull over when you can find some cover.’

  The lead Pinkie rolled to a halt in a shallow depression and Moth cut the engine. The two other wagons pulled up, one to either side. The top gunners covered their arcs as the extra blokes tumbled off the vehicles and gathered round. The wagons were close enough so all twenty-six could hear what was to be said.

  ‘This is how I see it,’ Grey began, speaking into the tense silence. He was one of the most battle-experienced of the lot, and he’d largely been navigating the patrol ever since they left the wadi of death. He had the skills and the experience to speak and to be heard. He outlined the patrol’s predicament, then asked for any suggestions from those present. No one had much to say, so he ploughed on. He was stating the obvious, but it needed to be said so they could make the toughest of decisions.

  ‘There’s no way we can lie up around here, come daylight. We’ve seen enough of the enemy to know they can scour just about every inch of the terrain, and if nothing else the tracks we leave will lead them right to us.’

  Raggy grunted in agreement. ‘Time’s fucking tight now. There’s only three hours left until first light. One way or the other we’ve got to get ourselves gone.’

  ‘Right, so let’s go firm on a grid and get the Chinooks in,’ Grey continued. ‘Or let’s get a grid passed from Headquarters, one we can make this side of the N253, and let’s rendezvous with the helos there. That’s Plan A. But if there’s no helo pick-up possible by 0330, we need to face the fact that we’re not getting pulled out of here. We’ll need to run west and make a break for the Syrian border, ’cause there’s no way we can hide around here, come sunrise.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Ed. ‘We go for the helo pick-up, and if not for Plan B – which is to make for the Combat RV before—’

  His last words were cut off by a sharp burst of small-arms fire. About a kilometre to the east, tracer rounds went arcing into the sky. There was no way the fire had been aimed at the patrol, for it was well wide of the mark. It looked more like some kind of a signal, and there were no guesses as to who the signal was intended for. Everywhere to their east and south there were headlights stabbing the darkness.

  Half a dozen sets of lights turned towards that burst of fire, and began to converge on it. For a moment it crossed Grey’s mind that it might have signalled that the Fedayeen had found one of the scattered elements of the Squadron. It was possible they’d cornered Gunner and his rupert passenger, as they tried to evade and escape on the quad. There was just no way of knowing.

  ‘What about the rest of the guys?’ he asked Ed. ‘Any news on Gunner? Or the third force – the lone Pinkie and the quads?’

  ‘No word on Gunner,’ Ed replied. ‘But I was onto Headquarters as we moved out of the last LUP, and the third force has just come up on comms.’

  ‘Nice one!’

  ‘Fucking result!’

  ‘So what’s the score with that lot?’

  ‘There are twenty-four blokes with them,’ Ed said. ‘They’ve got one Pinkie and half a dozen quads, so they’re hopelessly overloaded, worse than us. They’re into some difficult terrain – rocks, boulders and ravines. But they’ve gone to ground as best they can and they’re playing hide-and-seek with the enemy—’

  Grey whistled. ‘Fucking hell, and we thought we had it bad. The quads must be double-bagged, maybe more, and they’ll be burning up the juice. Plus they’ve got fuck-all heavy weapons.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s the quads that saved the Squadron,’ Scruff cut in. ‘Far more of them got through the swamp than the Pinkies. If the lead Troop had all been riding Pinkies, they’d have been finished.’

  ‘They taken casualties?’ Grey asked. Clearly, that third group was the most vulnerable.

  ‘Headquarters is seeking casualty stats right now,’ said Ed, ‘but it’s a hellishly confused picture. They’ll try to marry us up with that lot, so they can extract us as one force from the same grid. But Head Shed says don’t worry about them right now. Our job it to get ourselves out of the shit. That’s our priority.’

  ‘Presumably, Headquarters are still looking to pull the OC out first?’ Grey queried.

  ‘Yeah. We may get a bit of a run-around as they try to pull the boss out, but that’s just how it is. He’s the last person we want getting captured or killed.’

  ‘One thing,’ remarked Moth. ‘Let’s try to get some air. We need something that can sit above us, looking nasty and ugly and ready to mallet the enemy if they get too close. That’s the only way to get the Chinooks in.’

  ‘Try for some air,’ Ed confirmed. A pause. ‘So, we’re decided?’

  There were terse nods all round.

  Grey glanced at the blokes. Their faces were caked in mud and dust mixed with cordite burn marks and streaks of smoke. In their ripped and bloodied combats and with self-administered bandages slapped on here and there, they looked like a band of total desperadoes. Which right now was exactly what Grey figured they were, especially when considering their chances of getting out of this one alive
.

  Moth got on the satcom and put out an all-stations call to any available warplanes, while Ed dialled up Headquarters to get a usable extraction point. It was a few moments before he was able to pass the grid of the new helo pick-up to Grey.

  He also had news for Moth. Headquarters had promised an AC130 Spectre gunship to be orbiting in their overhead within the next hour. The Spectre had been scrambled from the nearest friendly airbase, and was flying in specifically to give top cover to the scattered remnants of M Squadron. Having a Spectre above them would sure make all the difference right now.

  The Hercules AC130 Spectre is the cream of air cover, being an armoured behemoth that can loiter in the air for several hours flying orbits above the battlefield. It boasts a 25mm GAU-12 Equalizer cannon, a 40mm Bofors auto-cannon and a 105mm M102 howitzer. It has unrivalled night-vision optics, pinpoint targeting systems and a crew of thirteen to fly and fight her – including pilots, a navigator, fire-control officers, sensor operators, loadmasters and the all-important gunners.

  In short, it was the perfect air asset to de-conflict a complex and confused battle space – identifying friend from foe – and to target and hit hostile forces. The likelihood of it being unable to do any attack runs – as with the F16s – was pretty much zero. Its call-sign was Ghost One Six, and it would be above them in sixty minutes’ time.

  Grey punched the coordinates of the new helo pick-up point into his GPS, and worked it through the mapping.

  ‘RV point with the Chinooks is five kilometres due west of our present position,’ he announced, ‘plus five klicks short of the N253. It’s doable.’

  ‘Right, let’s get moving,’ Ed confirmed.

  The men mounted up the vehicles. Moth fired up their wagon and prepared to move off. But as he did so, there was a furious cry from one of the wagons to their rear.

  ‘The wagon’s fucking dying! Bastard fucking wagon’s fucking died on us!’