Bravo two zero (12 page)

    I was leading when I saw something ahead. I stopped, looked, listened, then slowly moved closer.

    Four tents and vehicles were parked next to two S60 antiaircraft guns, indicating a setup of about platoon strength. All was quiet, and there didn't seem to be any stags. Mark and I moved slowly forward. Again, we stopped, looked, listened. We didn't want to get right on top of the position, just close enough to learn as much about it as we could.

    Nobody was sleeping on the guns or in the vehicles. The whole platoon must have been in the tents. We heard men coughing. The location wasn't an immediate danger to us, but what worried me was that antiaircraft guns are sited to guard something. If it was just the MSR that would be no problem. The danger was that it could be part of an armored battle group or whatever. Mark fixed the position with Magellan, and we headed north.

    We went for 2 miles without encountering anything, and came to the conclusion that what we had crossed earlier must indeed have been the MSR. Magellan gave our LUP position as a half mile north of where the map said the MSR was, which was nothing to worry about. The map stated that roads, pylons, and pipelines were only of approximate alignment.

    We now knew for sure that we had correctly found the bend in the MSR, but unfortunately we also knew that the area was full of population: we had plantations north and south of us, the civilians further down the road, and an S60 site to the northwest of our LUP. From a tactical point of view, we might as well have sited our LUP in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Still, nobody said it would be easy.

    We moved back to look around the buildings at the plantation to the north of the LUPI had planned to look at this last as it was the most dangerous location we knew about prior to the recce. We had a bit of a mince around the plantation and found that it consisted of just a water tower and an unoccupied building that sounded as if it housed an irrigation pump. There were no vehicles, no lights, no signs of life, so we were fairly pleased. It was clearly something that was tended rather than lived around.

    As we moved back to the LUP, we witnessed another Scud launch to our northwest, about 3 miles away. We seemed to be in the middle of a mega launch area. We were going to have a fluffy old time of it. Again, we got a fix.

    We patrolled back towards the LUP, found the marker, and walked due south towards the wadi. I approached, arms out in the crucifix position, as I came up to the lip of the watershed.

    Bob was on stag. I stood there and waited for him to come up. He grinned at me, and I went back and got the rest of the blokes. I checked my watch. The patrol had lasted five hours.

    It wasn't worth briefing the blokes at this moment because those not on stag had got their heads down, and to brief everybody at night just generates noise. It was important, however, that everybody knew what we had seen. Everything we had done and seen, everybody else had to know about. I decided to wait until first light.

    The stag stood us to, and we covered our arcs as first light came. After that, and before I did the brief, I wanted to check the dead ground again, even though we'd covered it last night. I knew we were definitely on the MSR, but I wanted to look for any form of identification which would give us the landlines. It was also a personal thing; I wanted to check that there had been no changes above us. Shielded from sound by the walls of the cave, we could have sat there with Genesis giving an open-air concert and we wouldn't have heard a thing.

    Chris covered me while I scrambled up the rocks and peered over the brim. It was the last time I'd risk doing this in daylight.

    I looked northeast and there, just on the far edge of the MSR, were another two S60s. They must have arrived during the night. I could see two wagons, tents, blokes stretching and coughing-all just 1000 feet from our position. I couldn't believe it. This was getting unreal. Our recce patrol must have missed them by about 150 feet. I came down and told Chris, then went to brief the rest of the patrol. Mark went up and had a quick squint to confirm that I wasn't hallucinating.

    I was not really impressed by this development. It was quite scary stuff, because these characters were right on top of us. They were going to inhibit us badly.

    I spread out the map and showed all the locations we had discovered-including the new S60 sites. We spent the rest of the day trying to transmit our Sit Rep again. The new S60s were obviously there to protect the MSR. There was no reason, however, why they should send out clearing patrols. They were in their own country and they had mutual support. We reassured ourselves that we could only be compromised from the opposite lip, and even then only if someone was literally standing on it, looking down.

    Again we all had a go with the radio, but to no avail. Our lost com ms contingency would have come into effect by now, and the helicopter would have been briefed to meet us the following morning at 0400.

    There was no concern. We were in cover, and we were an 8-man fighting patrol. When we met the aircraft we would get a one-for-one exchange, or get on the aircraft and relocate.

    In my mind I ran through the heli RV procedure again. The pilot would be coming in on NVG (night viewing goggles), watching for a signal from my infrared torch. I would flash the letter Bravo as a recognition signal. He would land 15 feet to my right, using the light as his reference point. The load master door was just behind the pilot, and all I would have to do was walk up to it, put the radio in, and receive the new radio that was handed to me. If there was any message for us, he would grab hold of my arm and hand me the written message. Or, if a longer message was involved, the ramp would come down and the lo adie would come and drag me round to the back. The rest of the patrol would be out in all-round defense. If I had to go and get them in, they knew the drills. If I wanted to get us relocated, I would grab hold of the lo adie and point to the rear of the ramp. The ramp would then come down, and we'd all get on.

    And that was the plan. No drama. We would move back that night and relocate.

6

    We'd been listening to vehicles bumbling up and down the MSR all day.

    They posed no threat. Around mid-afternoon, however, we heard a young voice shout from no more than 150 feet away. The child hollered and yelled again; then we heard the clatter of goats and the tinkle of a bell.

    It wasn't a problem. We couldn't be compromised unless we could see the person on the other side of the lip. There was no other way that we could be seen. I felt confident.

    The goats came closer. We were on hard routine, and everybody had their belt kit on and their weapons in their hands. It wasn't as if we'd been startled in our sleeping bags or caught sunbathing. Just the same, I felt my thumb creep towards the safety catch of my 203.

    The bell tinkled right above us. I looked up just as the head of a goat appeared on the other side. I felt my jaw tighten with apprehension.

    Everybody was rock still. Only our eyes were moving.

    More goats wandered onto the lip. Was the herder going to follow them?

    The top of a young human head bobbed into view. It stopped and swiveled. Then it came forward. I saw the profile of a small brown face. The boy seemed preoccupied with something behind him. He was half looking over his shoulder as he shuffled forwards. His neck and shoulders came into view, then his chest. He can't have been more than a 3 feet from the edge of the lip. He swung his head from side to side, shouting at the goats and hitting them with a long stick.

    I silently shouted at him not to look down.

    We still had a chance, as long as he kept looking the other way.

    Please, no eye-to-eye, just look at what you're doing…

    He turned his head and surveyed the scene.

    I slowly mouthed the words: Fuck… off!

    He looked down.

    Bastard! Shit!

    Our eyes met and held. I'd never seen such a look of astonishment in a child's eyes.

    Now what? He was rooted to the spot. The options raced through my mind.

    Do we top him? Too much noise. Anyway, what was the point? I wouldn't want that on my conscience for the rest of my life. Shit, I could have been an Iraqi behind the lines in Britain, and that could have been Katie up there.

    The boy started to run. My eyes followed him, and I made my move. Mark and Vince, too, were scrambling like men possessed in an attempt to cut him off. Just to get him, that had to be the first priority. We could decide later what to do with him-to tie him up and stuff his gob with chocolate, or whatever. But we could only go so far without exposing ourselves to the S60 sites, and the child had too much of a head start.

    He was gone, fucking gone, hollering like a lunatic, running towards the guns.

    He could do a number of things. He might not tell anybody because it would get him into trouble-maybe he shouldn't have been in the area. He might tell his family or friends, but only when he got home later. Or he might keep running and shouting all the way to the guns. I had to assume the worst. So what? They might not believe him. They might come and see for themselves. Or they might wait for reinforcements. I had to take it that they would inform others and then come after us. So what? If they discovered us, there would be a contact before dark. If they didn't discover us, there would be a chance to evade under cover of darkness.

    We had picked our LUP because it provided concealment from view-apart from the one place where the boy had gone and stood. We certainly hadn't picked it as a place to defend. It was an enclosed environment, at the top of a watershed, with nowhere to go There was no need to say anything: everybody knew we'd have to take it as a compromise.

    Everything happened in quick time. However, that wasn't to say we just got our kit on and ran, because that would have been totally counterproductive. It's worth taking those extra few minutes to get yourself squared away.

    Everybody rammed chocolate down as well as water. We didn't know when we would next be able to eat. We checked that our pouches were done up, that the buttons were fastened on our map pockets so the map didn't fall out, that our magazines were on correctly. Check, check, check.

    Vince put Stan and Bob out with the Minimis. As soon as two other men were ready, they'd swap places and let the two stags get themselves sorted out. Everybody else automatically carried out tasks that needed to be done. Vince went through the cached kit. He pulled out a jerrican of water and helped everybody fill their bottles. If we got into a contact, we were going to lose our berg ens and all that they contained. People took great gulps to get as much water on board as they could, draining their bottles, then refilling. Even if there was no contact, we all knew we were in for a fearsome tab.

    We checked our belt kit, making sure all pouches were done up so that we didn't lose anything as we ran. Mags on tight? Check them again.

    Safety catch on and weapon made ready? Of course they were but we checked them anyway. We closed down the two tubes of our 66s and slotted them together to make them easy to carry. We didn't bother to replace the end-caps or sling, just slipped the weapon between our webbing straps, ready for quick use.

    We checked that spare magazines were ready to pull out. Pick them up the wrong way, and you waste a precious second or two turning them around. Put them in your belt kit with the curve the right way up, and they're ready to slap into place. A lot of people put a tab of masking tape on the mag to make it easier to pull out. When my mags were empty, I'd throw them down the front of my smock for refilling later. We could use the rounds from the belts of the Minimi.

    All this took a couple of minutes, but it was time better spent than just getting up and running. They knew we were there, so why rush? The stags would tell us if they were coming.

    Legs had got straight onto the radio. He went outrageous, running out all the antennas, trying different combinations that he hadn't been able to try while we were concealed. Now we were compromised, he could do anything he wanted. If the message got through, they could send some fast jets over. We could talk to the pilots on TACBE and get some fire down, which would all be rather pleasant.

    Legs's water was done for him. While he was bent over, the radio blokes opened his belt kit, took the water bottles out, and let him drink before they filled them up again, and threw more food into his belt kit.

    When he sensed that we'd run out of time, he dismantled the kit and packed it at the top of his bergen.

    "Instructions are in my right-hand map pocket in my trousers," he told everybody. "Radio's on top of my bergen." All of it was a well-established SOP so that if he went down we'd be able to retrieve the equipment quickly, but he was going by the book to ensure that everybody knew.

    When he was ready, Legs replaced Bob on stag. There was an air of acceptance by everybody, the calm of well-practiced drills being followed to the letter. Bob, who'd done nothing but sleep since we'd arrived, was worried about having to move again so soon.

    "We ought to have a union," he said. "These hours are scandalous."

    "Food's fucking crap and all," said Mark.

    The jokes were good to hear because they relaxed the situation.

    Dinger got his fags out. "Fuck it, they know we're here. I might as well have a smoke. I could be dead in a minute."

    "I'll put you on a fizzer!" Vince shouted as he went out and took over from Stan on the Minimi. It was a standard piss-taking joke, referring to a piece of army slang that people think is said but which in fact is never heard.

    Everybody was ready to move if necessary. It had taken us a total of three minutes. There was about an hour and a half of daylight left. Our best weapon had been concealment, but the boy had disarmed us. Where we were, we couldn't fight. It was such a closed environment that it would take just one or two HE rounds to hose us down. The only option was to get out into the open and fight, or maybe get away. We were in the shit if we stayed where we were, and we were in the shit if we were out in the open because there was no cover. It was out of the frying pan into the fire, but at least in the fire we had a slim chance.

    The rumble of the tracked vehicle came from the south. We couldn't get out of the wadi now; it was too late. Our only exit was blocked by this armored vehicle. We would just have to stand there and fight.

    I couldn't understand why they were bringing an APC down in this small, confined space. Surely they would take it for granted that we'd have anti armor weapons?

    We snapped open our 66s and ran around to find a decent firing position.

    Chris pranced around with his old German Afrika Corps hat on, pointing at our 66s and talking to us like the world's most patient instructor.

    "Now boys, remember the backblast! Do, please, remember the backblast!

    This face has got to go downtown on a Saturday night. The last thing it needs is a peppering!"

    Stan stared down the sights of his cocked Minimi at the line of the watershed, towards the sound of the tracked vehicle. It trundled closer. There was a glint of metal as it came into view. What in hell's name was it? It didn't look like the APC I had been expecting.

    Stan shouted: "Bulldozer!"

    Unbelievable. A major drama was about to erupt and this idiot was pottering about with a digger. It came to within 500 feet of our position, but the driver never saw us. He was dressed in civilian clothes. He must have been there quite innocently.

    "Don't fire," I said. "We've got to take it as a compromise, but what sort of compromise we don't know yet."

    The driver's attention seemed focused on finding a way out of the wadi.

    He maneuvred this way and that for what seemed an eternity.

    "Fuck it," I said to Vince, "we need to go. We just can't sit here."

    The ideal would have been to wait for last light, but I sensed that the situation was going to get out of hand.

    The bulldozer disappeared suddenly, and the engine noise faded. The driver must have found the gap he was looking for.

    It was time to go. I told Stan to bring in the blokes on the Minimis so everybody could hear what I was going to say. We huddled around with our belt kit on and our berg ens at our feet. It was a vulnerable time because everybody was so close together, but it had to be done: everybody had to know what was going on.

    I started by staring the obvious. "We're going to move from here," I said. "We're going to go west, try to avoid the AA guns, and then head south and go for the RV with the helicopter. The helicopter RV will be at 0400 tomorrow."

    "See you in the Pudding Club," Chris said.

    "Fuck that," Dinger said in his terrible W. C. Fields voice. "Go west, young man, go west."

    We shouldered our berg ens and rechecked our belt kit. The rest of it was left behind. Even the claymores remained because we didn't have time to pick them up.

    Because of the S60 sites, there was only one way out. West, then south, using dips in the ground as much as we could. But we wouldn't rush it.

    We didn't want to make mistakes. We had loads of time to make the heli RV, if we could only get out of this shit and get under cover of darkness.

    I was feeling apprehensive but comfortable. We deserved better after all the hard work of planning, tabbing in, locating and confirming the MSR, and just the bad luck of lost com ms I'd thought we'd cracked it: we only had to wait until 0400 the next morning and we'd be back in business. But at the end of the day, we were an 8-man fighting patrol, we had guns, we had bullets, we had 66s. What more could a man ask for?

    "Come on," said Mark, "let's make like rag heads."

    We pulled our shamags over our faces. The sun was in our eyes as I led us out in single file. We patrolled properly, taking our time, observing the ground.

    The wadi petered out and became flat plain. We came out west, using the lie of the ground, then turned left, heading south.

    I kept checking to the north because I didn't want us to get in line with the antiaircraft guns. With every step I expected to hear a 57mm round zinging past my head. What was keeping them? Didn't they believe the boy? Were they waiting for reinforcements? Or just waiting to get up the bottle to attack?

    We patrolled further west for another five minutes, keeping distance between each man to minimize casualties in the event of a major drama.

    It was the correct thing to do, but if a contact happened up front, the man at the rear would have to run maybe 200 feet to catch up if required, depending on the action taken.

    As we turned south there was a touch of high ground on the left-hand side that went up to the MSR. We were still in dead ground from the guns, which were further up the other side. As we started heading south, we couldn't believe our luck. Nothing happened. Then from the east, our left-hand side, we heard the sound of tracked vehicles.

    Adrenaline rushed, blood pumped. We stopped. We couldn't go forwards, we couldn't go back. Where else was there to go? We knew it was going to happen.