by Shaun Clarke
‘No argument there, Sergeant.’
‘So what happens when we locate bunkers or mobile launchers?’
‘Either we call in air power or we relay the info to Intelligence HQ in Riyadh. Patriot surface-to-air missiles will then be alerted automatically to the Scud’s course and speed – a process that only takes a few minutes.’
‘Our parameters?’
‘As of this moment, we’re the only ones allowed to cross the line ahead of other ground forces.’ This caused whistles of approval and sporadic clapping, which tailed off when Hailsham waved his hand for silence. ‘We have a secondary reason for being allowed to go in ahead. The Coalition is greatly concerned about Iraq’s chemical-warfare capability. At the moment we know very little about the types of chemical agents Saddam has in his arsenal. We do know he has mustard and nerve gas and is likely to arm his Scuds with them. So one of our jobs may be to infiltrate the contaminated areas and collect samples of the agents being used. The samples will then be flown back to Porton Down for analysis and, hopefully, the creation of an antidote.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Andrew said. ‘I don’t like them chemicals, man.’
‘Nor do I, Sergeant.’
‘How do we insert?’ Danny asked.
‘The Regiment will be broken up into two sets of mobile teams: one for deep-penetration ops in Iraq; the other for hit-and-run raids in the desert, using Land Rovers – just like they did in Africa during World War Two.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Geordie said. ‘I’ll buy that, boss.’
‘Me, too,’ agreed Jock. ‘Are you going to throw in some motorbikes?’
‘Yes,’ Hailsham said.
‘I haven’t been in a Pink Panther since Oman,’ Andrew said, glancing back over his shoulder at the brightly painted Land Rovers and motorcycles on the dusty tracks between the lean-to tents. ‘Look at ’em! As pretty as a picture.’ He turned back to grin at Major Hailsham. ‘Count me in, boss.’
‘I have your name and number, Sergeant Winston.’
‘When do we move out?’ asked Taff Burgess.
‘We have to be gone by the night of the twenty-second. If Saddam doesn’t withdraw from Kuwait on the fifteenth, hostilities will begin on the twenty-ninth. That gives us seven days to do as much damage as possible before Desert Storm commences.’
While talking to the men, Hailsham frequently had to shout against the noise of the RAF Chinooks that were taking off and landing in billowing clouds of sand on the nearby airstrip. Even noisier were the Tornado F-3 air-defence planes roaring frequently overhead, going to or returning from practice flights out in the desert. Also churning up clouds of sand and creating a lot of noise were the Challenger tanks being put through their paces on the sands surrounding the camp. This was a large, busy FOB.
‘What are the negatives?’ Andrew asked.
‘Local beliefs, sand and water.’
‘That’s not too clear, boss.’
‘As you know, the men here call the desert the GAFA, or “Great Arabian Fuck All”.’ The explanation copped a few knowing laughs. ‘It’s amusing, but accurate,’ Hailsham said when the laughter had died down. ‘Out there, where we’ll be going, the desert appears to be empty of everything except sand and gravel. That appearance, however, is deceptive. Even the most barren stretch probably belongs to somebody and will be highly valued as grazing for the camels still maintained here by the Saudis, particularly those of high rank. As it is with their religion, so it is with their property: we have to be careful not to give offence.’
‘And the other problems?’
‘Too much sand and too little water,’ Hailsham replied. ‘Sand ingestion gives us severe mechanical problems. Even with filters, the life of helicopter engines is reduced to about a tenth of normal usage. The power-packs of the Challenger tanks are failing so often that 7th Armoured Brigade’s desert training had to be curtailed. Other supply vehicles that were perfectly fine in Europe, when loaded here sink into the sand. And container trucks are particularly useless here. In fact, we’ve had to borrow a lot of M453 tracked vehicles from the Yanks. We’ll be using them in conjunction with wheeled vehicles for staged resupply journeys. A further problem is that the desert is mostly flat, featureless terrain, which makes direction-finding difficult for the supply trucks. They can also get bogged down in the sand, thus becoming exposed.’
None of the men showed too much concern at that.
‘Water?’ Danny asked.
‘It normally comes from the desalination plant at Al Jubail, but if we miss the REME supply columns, or if we’re out on patrol, we’ll have to drink the fossil water from the prehistoric aquifers beneath the desert floor. Of course the sappers will also be prospecting the best sites for artesian wells, but they have to negotiate with local landowners, who aren’t always keen.’
‘I’d rather drink my own piss,’ big Andrew said. ‘It won’t be the first time.’
‘As it is with the flight crewmen,’ Hailsham continued when the laughter had died down, ‘you’ll all be given approximately £800 worth of gold, to help you if you’re caught or find yourselves cut off and faced with non-friendly civilians who want their palms greased. You’ll also be carrying a chit written in Arabic, promising that Her Majesty’s Government will pay the sum of £5000 to anyone who returns you safely to friendly territory or persons. If nothing else, I trust that makes you feel important.’
‘I’m important enough without that,’ said Andrew without hesitation. ‘You can look me up in the Imperial War Museum. I’m in there with the greats.’
‘You do us all proud, Sergeant Winston. Any questions, men?’
‘Yeah,’ Paddy said. ‘What do we do between now and the twenty-second?’
‘We prepare,’ Hailsham said.
The men dispersed and went their separate ways, most of them looking a lot happier than they had done for the past couple of days.
Ricketts put his thumb up in the air. ‘Very good, boss.’ Hailsham just grinned.
Chapter 3
On 19 January, five days before the planned date, the Squadron was kitted out with weapons, survival equipment and battle clothes especially modified for desert conditions, before being flown from the FOB to a landing zone (LZ) somewhere deep in Iraq.
Since the briefing in early January, they had all undergone special training and weapons testing in the Empty Quarter, a vast, uninhabited region some distance from Al Jubail, with an emphasis on desert driving, survival in dust, sand, fierce heat and freezing cold, the protection of weapons from the same, and direction-finding by the moon and stars in case of compass failure. They were also trained in the use of laser designators for marking targets. All were looking forward to finishing the training and being airlifted to the LZ on the twenty-second.
They were therefore taken by surprise when, at 0001 hours Zulu – one minute past three local time, or one minute past midnight Greenwich Mean Time – on Thursday 17 January, two days after the deadline given for Saddam’s withdrawal from Kuwait – which he ignored – eight US Apaches of the 101st Airborne Division, equipped with laser spot trackers and range-finders, attacked Iraqi radars with Hell-fire missiles, rockets and 30mm cannon shells, destroying two command centres and their Soviet radars, Tall Spoon and King Rest, thereby creating a safe corridor for Allied aircraft.
Simultaneously, Tomahawk Cruise missiles from the Coalition aircraft-carriers in the Gulf rained down on Baghdad while British Tornadoes skimmed at low level across the desert at 800kph, also heading north for Baghdad. These were followed almost instantly by another wave of ‘jammer’ aircraft intent on suppressing enemy defences, top-cover fighters, more Tornado bombers, reconnaissance planes, AWACS early-warning, intelligence-gathering and target-identification aircraft, and the deadly, delta-winged F-117A Stealth fighter-bombers. The latter, invisible to enemy radar and often mistaken for UFOs, were likened by many to ‘ghost’ planes.
In no time at all, nocturnal Baghdad was illuminated by
the greatest fireworks display in history and covered by an enormous umbrella of turbulent black smoke.
In the first 24 hours of this incredibly complex, computer-controlled war, over a thousand sorties were flown and over a hundred missiles launched against 158 targets, including communications centres and Scud launching sites, with as many as twelve combat aircraft being refuelled in-flight simultaneously by tankers stacked six deep in the air.
During the day, the first Allied casualty was the loss of a single Tornado. During the night of the seventeenth, however, from Iraqi airfields and secret bases in the west of the country, Saddam’s military commanders unleashed a volley of eight Scud missiles at Israel. Two landed in Haifa and four in Tel Aviv. They were followed immediately by more Scud attacks on Riyadh, where the War Room and main communications of the Coalition effort were located.
Even as the citizens of Haifa, Tel Aviv and Riyadh were donning NBC suits, designed for use during nuclear, biological or chemical attack, or placing gas masks over their heads, Patriot anti-missile missiles were taking off with a deafening cacophony. These were followed rapidly by an equally loud din overhead as the incoming Scuds were hit and exploded, filling the sky with great flashes of silvery light, mushrooms of black smoke and spectacular webs of crimson tracers and downward-curving streams of dazzling white, yellow and blood-red flame.
By the second day of the war, RAF aircrews were attempting to trap Iraqi aircraft hidden in hardened aircraft shelters, or HASs, by bombing the access tracks and taxiways leading from the shelters to the runways. At the same time, US giant B52s were carrying out round-the-clock, high-altitude attritional bombing raids designed to demoralize, exhaust and daze the Iraqi troops by denying them sleep, when not actually killing them.
By Day Three, however, it had become clear that the major threat to the Coalition was the Scuds, particularly those on mobile launchers.
‘Which is where we come in,’ Major Hailsham told his assembled troopers outside his tent in the FOB in Al Jubail. The difficulty in tracking mobile Scud launchers is complicated by Saddam’s use of dummy rockets that look realistic from the air and contain fuel that explodes when hit by a bomb, thereby encouraging our pilots to report more strikes than they’ve actually made. They also use dummy mobile launchers with real crews and they, too, look genuine from the air.’
‘You mean the crews of the dummy mobile launchers have to drive around the desert, deliberately trying to be spotted, in order to misdirect the fire from our aircraft?’
‘Correct,’ Hailsham said.
‘Some job!’ Geordie exclaimed. ‘Rather them than me! Driving around just to be picked off by any passing aircraft and become another statistic on their kill counts. No, thanks. Not my cup of tea!’
‘As if those Air Force bastards don’t already come out with enough bullshit when they’re doing their sums,’ Andrew said, flashing his perfect teeth. ‘The day I find an honest Air Force kill count I’ll eat my own cock.’
‘If you can find it,’ Geordie said, which brought the house down.
OK, men, that’s enough,’ Hailsham admonished them, continuing when he had regained their attention: ‘It’s becoming clear that because of these dummy sites and launchers, the number of Scuds taken out by the aircrews is considerably less than at first anticipated. And as the real ones can’t be seen from the air, eyeball recces and personal contact are needed. So, my good fellows, we’re going to take them out ourselves, with particular emphasis on those within range of Israel, located in the desert round two Iraqi airfields known only as H2 and H3. So far, the Israelis are refusing to be drawn into the war. We therefore have to stop the Scud attacks on Israel before their patience wears out.’
‘What’s the terrain like around H2 and H3?’ Ricketts asked.
‘Fortunately a lot of it’s less flat and open than most parts of the desert,’ replied Hailsham, using his pointer to indicate the area on the map behind him. ‘The demarcation line is between the British and US territories on the most distant of the three MSRs [military supply routes] running north-east from Baghdad to Amman. If the Americans operate mostly to the north of it, in the area they call Scud Boulevard, or the northern “Scud box”, as they call it, and we keep to Scud Alley, south of the main road, there’ll be no danger of us fighting each other accidentally. Our territory, Scud Alley, is the Jordanian lava plateau, a relatively high, hilly area with deep wadis that are often flash-flooded after storms. Loose rock instead of sand, though dense sandstorms are blown in from other areas. Lots of rain instead of burning sun. Freezing cold at night. In fact, it’s more like the Falklands than it is like Oman, so you shouldn’t find it too strange.’
‘I remember the Falklands well,’ Paddy said. ‘Rain, hail and snow.’
‘Right,’ Jock concurred. ‘OPs always flooded with water. Fucking wind every day. I thought this place would be a pleasant change – balmy nights, lots of sunshine.’
‘You just want to look like me,’ Andrew teased him. ‘Suntanned and beautiful.’
‘Spare me!’ Jock retorted.
‘That’s enough,’ said Hailsham, with a wave of his hand. ‘Let’s get back to the business in hand.’
‘Yes, boss,’ Geordie said, grinning mischievously at each of his mates in turn and cracking his knuckles.
‘Good.’ Glancing outside the lean-to tent, Hailsham saw the sun sinking towards the flat horizon, casting its crimson light on the white plain as darkness crept in. Helicopters and fighter planes were silhouetted in its huge, fiery eye like ink-black cut-outs suspended on invisible threads. From where he stood they looked beautiful. ‘The Regiment will undertake three lines of attack,’ he continued. ‘Some teams will stake out static, covert road-watch patrols to report the movement of Scud traffic. Others will then vector F-15 strike aircraft onto the Scuds to destroy them.’
‘What kind of teams?’ asked Danny.
‘Lurp teams – eight men. To be inserted by chopper at an LZ about 140 to 180 miles behind the enemy border, without any transport other than desert boots and a strong will.’
The ‘Lurp’ teams Hailsham referred to were LRRP, or long-range reconnaissance patrols.
‘A strong will,’ Andrew echoed with a devilish grin. ‘That whittles it down to one man – me – and that isn’t enough.’
‘In parallel,’ Hailsham said when the anticipated scorn had been poured on Andrew, ‘there’ll be fighting columns of up to a dozen well-armed Land Rovers carrying one and a half tons of war matériel each, manned by a half squadron of thirty men or more. We’ll have four such columns. Their job will be to penetrate one of two major areas in the west, near the border with Jordan, from where the Scuds are launched. This “Scud box” is a well-defended area of desert of approximately 240 square miles, including the motorway linking Baghdad with Amman. Around twelve to fourteen mobile launchers are thought to be in or near the area.’
‘Do we move by day or night?’ Ricketts asked.
‘It’s not the Empty Quarter, so we’ll mostly move by night. According to Intelligence, Bedouin come and go constantly. There’s also a surprising amount of civilian traffic, much of it generated by fear of Western vengeance on Baghdad. Last but not least, because it’s a critically important military zone, it’s filled with Iraqi military personnel of all kinds, including Scud crews and the militia.’
‘How do we insert?’ said Andrew.
‘Two of the OP patrols will go in on foot. Another will be lifted in by RAF Chinooks. The rest will drive in on stripped-down Land Rovers and motorbikes. We cross the border on the twentieth – tomorrow.’
‘Who does what?’ asked Danny.
‘Allocation of duties is being drawn up right now and you’ll all be informed within the hour. Any more questions?’
‘No, boss,’ was the general response.
‘OK, men, go and have some chow. Get as much rest as possible. You’ll get your allocations later. Departure time will be the afternoon or early evening. That’s it. Class dismi
ssed.’ As the men turned away, heading for the mess tent, Hailsham indicated that Ricketts should remain. ‘I have a special job for you,’ he said. ‘Pull up a chair, Sergeant-Major.’
Ricketts sat in a wooden chair on the other side of the trestle table Hailsham was using as a desk. The major placed two cups on the table and removed the cap from a vacuum flask. ‘Tea?’ he asked. When Ricketts nodded, he poured two cups of hot, white tea, then pushed one over to Ricketts. ‘Sorry, Sergeant-Major, no sugar.’ He glanced out over the sea of tents, now sinking back into a crimson twilight streaked with great shadows. After sipping some tea, he turned back to Ricketts. ‘Before anyone goes anywhere,’ he said, ‘we have to cut Iraq’s links with the outside world. They’re in the shape of a complex web of communications towers known as microwave links, set up in the desert, dangerously close to main roads and supply routes.’
‘Should be easy to find,’ Ricketts said, trying his hot tea.
‘Not that easy, Sergeant-Major. The towers may be visible, but the fibre-optic cables are buried well below ground. So far, even the US National Security Council’s combined intelligence and scientific know-how hasn’t been able to bug them or tap into them – let alone destroy them.’
Ricketts spread his hands in the air, indicating bewilderment. ‘So how do we knock out Iraq’s whole communications system? It’s too widespread, boss.’
‘We don’t necessarily have to knock the whole system out,’ Hailsham said. ‘According to the green slime, it’s the communications system coming out of Baghdad that controls Saddam’s trigger-finger. Like the rest of the system, that network is a mixture of microwave link towers, in which telecom messages are transmitted short distances by air waves, and by fibre-optic cables buried in the ground and capable of carrying an enormous amount of data. We’ve received enough info from Intelligence to enable us to concentrate on the fibre-optic cables. Those lines carry Baghdad’s orders to the Iraqi troops responsible for Scud operations. They also run Saddam Hussein’s diplomatic traffic to Amman, Geneva, Paris and the UN, thus increasing his political credibility. It’s our job to destroy that credibility as well as the Scuds – and we have to do it immediately.’
