Bravo two zero (22 page)

    There were two big pools, oily and greasy. I was flapping, running around like the cornered rat that I was, trying to find a way out. The sides were sheer. I couldn't get up. I had to retrace my steps. I wasn't even looking now, I was just running. If they were behind me, knowing about it wasn't going to change anything.

    I got out of the immediate area and stopped at the road. My chest heaved as I fought for breath. Fuck it, I thought, just go for it.

    I got past the buildings. I was elated. I felt I'd cracked it. Just the border now. I didn't worry about Mark. I'd seen him go down. I didn't hear anything after that, and he didn't come with me. He was dead. At least it had been quick.

8

    I felt it was all behind me. All I had in front of me was a quick tab to the border. The mud built up around my boots. It was heavy going.

    My legs were burning. Physically I was wrecked. I stopped to get some scoff down my neck. It felt good. I drank some water and forced myself to calm down and take stock. Navigation was easy enough. The mast was right ahead of me. As I walked I tried to work out what had happened during the contacts. But there had been total confusion, and I couldn't make sense of it. There was still firing behind me.

    It was the early hours of the 27th, and I had about 2-3 miles to go. In normal circumstances I could run that in less than twenty minutes with my equipment on. But there was no point just running blindly towards Syria with only an hour of darkness left. I didn't know what the border crossing was like physically-if it was a fence or a high berm, if it was heavily defended or not defended at all. And even if I did get into Syria during daylight hours, what sort of reception could I expect?

    I was about a half mile south of the Euphrates and a half mile north of a town. The area was irrigated by diesel pumps at intervals along the river. The field crops were about eighteen inches high. I had kept off the tracks and moved through the center of the fields, putting my feet down on the root mounds of the plants. Even so, I knew I couldn't avoid leaving sign. My hope was that no one would be out in the fields the next day, tending what, apart from the frost, seemed to be a healthy young crop.

    I was feeling very positive. I'd survived the contacts, and that was all that seemed to matter. The last contact was like a big barrier that I'd got over and got away from, and now I was a free spirit.

    In many ways this was the most dangerous time. Probably since caveman times, people have been cautious when they plan an operation, aggressive when they execute it, and most open to error when it's finished and they're on the home straight. That's when people start to get slack and the major dramas occur. It's not over yet, I kept saying to myself-it's so near but also it's so bloody far.

    Adrenaline during the contacts and the constant roller coaster of the night's events had blocked the pain signals from reaching my brain. A soldier of the Black Watch during the First World War was shot four times and still kept charging forwards. When he finally took the position and had time to assess his injuries, he keeled over. You don't realize what's been happening to your body because your mind blanks it out. Now I'd calmed down a bit and the future was looking rosy, I was starting to realize how physically impaired I was. All the aches and pains of the last couple of days suddenly started coming through. I was covered with cuts and bruises. In contacts you're jumping and leaping around, and your body's taking knocks all the time. You don't notice them at the time. There were deep pressure-cuts on my hands, knees, and elbows, and painful bruising on the sides of both my legs. I had scratches and scrapes from thorn bushes and gashes from wire; the sting of them added to the ambient pain level. We'd tabbed close to 125 miles over hard bedrock and shale, and the leather was starting to fall off my boots. My feet were in a bad way. They were soaking wet and felt like blocks of ice. I just about had some sensation left in my toes. My clothing was ripped and torn, and my hands were covered with thick grease and grime, as if I'd been working on an engine for the last couple of days. My body was covered in mud, and as I walked along it was slowly drying out. Trickles of sweat fell down my back, and big clammy patches formed between my legs and under my armpits. My extremities were frozen, but at least my trunk was warm because I was moving.

    It was still very cold. The mud had a film of ice over the top. The first foot or so of any large pool of water was frozen solid. It was a beautiful crystal night. The stars were glittering, and had it been anywhere else in the world, you'd have gone out and marveled at it. But the clearness of the sky meant there were no clouds to obscure the full moon in the west, and no wind to disperse the noise.

    Scattered here and there were little outhouses, some with a light on, some with a generator going. I could see lights from the town to the south. Dogs barked; I skirted around buildings, hoping that nobody would pay attention to them.

    Car lights in the distance made me flap. Were they part of the follow-up? Were they going to start searching the fields now? It wasn't a very good place for me to be. There was only half an hour of darkness left-not enough for me to get around the town or even go straight through it and get into the curls on the other side.

    As the lights gradually faded I made a quick appreciation. Like the old Clash song, should I go or should I stay? Did I hide up or did I go for the border and try to get over before first light? What were the chances of the Iraqis following up during the day? There certainly hadn't been any follow-up so far. Perhaps they thought I'd already crossed the border and was away.

    The houses looked so inviting. Should I get into one of these small buildings where you've just got the old boy and his fire and stay there with him for the day? I'd have shelter, and the possibility of food and water -and in theory a better chance of being concealed. But you never use isolated or obvious cover. It's a natural draw point for any hunter force. In films you see all these characters living in hay barns. It's pure and utter fantasy. If you're there they'll find you. None of this hiding under a straw bale business, just narrowly being missed by a probing bayonet.

    My best chance was in the open but concealed, preferably from the ground and air. I had to assume the worst scenario, which was that the Iraqis would have spotter aircraft up. I found a drainage ditch that was about 3 feet wide and 18 inches deep, with water coursing through under gravity. I got in and moved along, pleased not to be leaving sign in the muddy water. The water was moving from east to west, my direction of travel.

    I looked at my watch, checking off the minutes till daybreak. I stopped every few feet and looked around, listening, planning the next movement, planning my actions on: What if the enemy moved in from the front? What if I had a contact from the left? I remembered the ground I'd been over and planned the best escape route in each contingency.

    After 900 or 1,200 feet I saw a dark shape ahead. It was either a small dam or. a natural culvert. When I got closer, I saw that a track running north-south from the Euphrates to the built-up area had a steel plate over it as a makeshift bridge, the sort of thing you see at roadworks in the UK. It was just coming up to first light. I had to make a decision. I could go further along the ditch and hope to find something better, or I could just stay put. On balance, I thought I was better off where I was.

    The only problem with the culvert was that when you look at things in the dark and under pressure, they can look pretty good, but in the daytime the picture can be totally different. You have to be so careful choosing an LUP at night in an area that is virgin to you. When I was in the battalion at Tidworth we had mirror image barracks, the Green Jackets in one, the Light Infantry in the other. One night, I came back from town with a bag of chips and curry sauce, pissed as a fart. I stumbled into my room, dropped my trousers, and got into bed. Sitting up eating my chips with my head spinning and the bedside light on, I couldn't understand it when a bloke called out, "Turn the light off, Geordie." I looked up and saw a Debbie Harry poster, and I didn't like Debbie Harry. "Who the fuck's that over there then?" the voice demanded, but by then I had realized what I'd done. I abandoned my chips, grabbed my trousers, and ran for my life from the Light Infantry barracks.

    I belly crawled under the steel span. The culvert wasn't as deep as the drainage ditch itself because it hadn't been cleared, but the prospect of resting my limbs far outweighed the discomfort of lying in the cold mud.

    I retrieved the map cover from the pocket on my leg and tried to use it as some sort of insulation, but to no avail. My mind strayed to food. I might be needing it later on, but then again I might be captured. It was better to get it down my neck than to have it taken away. I pulled my last sachet-steak and onions-from the pouch on my belt kit and ripped it open. I ate with my fingers and stuck my tongue into the recesses for the last of the cold, slimy gunge. For pudding, I put my lips to the level of the water and sucked up a few mouthfuls. I got the map on top of me, ready to look at when there was enough light, and just lay back and waited.

    As dark turned to light, I heard trucks in the distance and isolated bits of hollering and shouting, but nothing near enough to cause alarm.

    It was almost peaceful. I started to shiver, and the trembling became uncontrollable. My teeth chattered. I took a deep breath and tensed all my muscles as tightly as I could. I stayed like that for two hours.

    I had my fighting knife in my hand and my watch out on my chest so I didn't have to keep moving my hands. I studied the map to make an appreciation of where I was. If I had to leg it the last thing I wanted to do was map-read. I wanted to know that, as I came out, to my left would be the built-up area, to my right would be the Euphrates, and that I had however many miles to run to the border. I wanted to store as much information in my head as I could.

    I went through different scenarios, fantasies really. What if I was already in Syria? I knew I hadn't crossed the border: the two countries were at war; there had to be some physical barrier between them, but that didn't stop me daydreaming.

    It must have been about eight o'clock when I heard the scuffle of goats' hooves coming from the direction of the town. I tensed. We hadn't had the world's best luck with goats on this trip.

    I didn't hear the goat herder until he was right on top of the metal plate. I took a deep breath, a really deep breath. Straining my neck, I saw the ends of two sandals and a set of big, splayed toes. One foot came down into the mud. I gripped my fighting knife. I wouldn't do anything until he put his head down and actually saw me, and even then I didn't know what I was going to do. Did I just bring the left hand up and stick him one in the face? If he started running, what then? I could tell by the big choggie, splayed feet that he wasn't military, so hopefully he wasn't armed.

    He stooped to pick up a small cardboard box I hadn't noticed in the ditch. It was a discarded ammunition box for 7.62 short, the round that AKs fire. He disappeared from view. The box landed back in the water.

    He must have looked at it and decided it was of no use.

    A couple of goats came and stood on the bank. I didn't want to breathe, I didn't want to blink. The goat herder made his way back on to the bridge and stood with his toes dangling over the edge of the steel. He coughed up a massive grolly out of the back of his neck and flobbed it into the water. It drifted down to me like a slimy green jellyfish and lodged itself in my hair. I was in such a mess anyway that it shouldn't have bothered me, but it did.

    I was sure that one of the goats would get into the water and make the old boy come and rescue him, but nothing happened. The goats all trundled over, and the goat herder followed. I started to scrape the slime out of my hair.

    I lay listening to noises. Looking out from my tomb, I could see that it was a crisp winter's morning with not a cloud in the sky. It was a view of the countryside, not at all a desert scene. All it needed was cows, and it could have been the fields around Hereford. There's a small footpath which follows the banks of the River Wye, and from a certain point you can look over to the other side at a dairy which has its own cows. Kate used to love being taken there. It looked nothing at all like the scene I was looking at now, but I imagined cows mooing and the sound of Kate giggling. The sun was out, but I was out of range of its warming rays. I felt like a lizard stuck where I was. It would be so nice to be out in the open, warming the bones.

    I could hear vehicles in the distance-the springy, old me tally jangly sounds of them trundling along. Kids and older people hollered and shrieked. I was desperate to know what was going on out there. Were they looking for me? Or were they just going about their normal business? In one way it concerned me greatly that people were in the vicinity, but in another it just sounded nice and comforting to hear human voices because it meant I wasn't alone. I was cold and exhausted.

    It was good to have some kind of reassurance that I was on earth, not Zanussi.

    Sometimes a vehicle would come nearer and nearer and nearer, and my heart would start skipping beats.

    Are they going to stop?

    Don't be so stupid-no drama, they're going to the river.

    They must be looking.

    But not intensively-it's too near the border.

    The noises were scary. By the time they got to me my mind had magnified them a hundred times. I flapped about the kids being curious. Kids must play. Did they play in the water? Did they play with the goats?

    What did they do? A kid is shorter than an adult and would get a better perspective when looking at the culvert. Instead of seeing daylight a kid was going to see my head or my feet, and he wouldn't need to have passed his eleven plus to know that he should raise the alarm.

    I wanted so much not to get caught. Not now. Not after so much.

    I kept looking at the watch lying on my chest. I looked once and it was one o'clock. Half an hour later I checked again. It was five past.