Bravo two zero (32 page)

    The skinny runt's shirt was dirty and the collar a good four sizes too big for him. He wore a big kipper tie and trousers that were turned up at the bottoms. He looked as if he'd borrowed his wardrobe from Stan.

    He gob bed off some orders in a dull monotone to the guards. They picked up Dinger before we could get any eye-to-eye.

    They left and I was on my own in the semidarkness with three or four guards. Some were in olive drab uniforms. Iraqi NCOs wear their insignia on their collars, very much like the Americans, and I could see that one of these guys was a warrant officer, class 1 equivalent, with two stars. He spoke fairly good English.

    "You-look up," he growled.

    This was great. Now I could have a proper look around. I looked up with an obedient expression on my face, trying hard to appear pitiful.

    He was in front of me with two cronies in uniform and one who was dressed in traditional Arab dish dash, nothing on his head, and a pair of canvas pumps.

    "What is your name?"

    "My name is Andy, sir."

    "American?"

    "No, I am British."

    "You're American?"

    "No, I'm British."

    "You're lying! You're lying!"

    He hit me hard across the face. I rolled with it and went down.

    "Sit up. You're British?"

    "Yeah. I'm British."

    "You're lying. You're Israeli."

    This wasn't interrogation as such; he was just having his fun.

    "Tonight, many people died because your country is bombing our children.

    Our children are dying in their schools. Your country is killing thousands of people every night, and it is time for you to die."

    I was sure he was right and I was going to be topped. But they were not the ones who would do it. These weren't the teddies in charge; these were dickhead administrators doing a bit of freelance.

    "What do you think about that?"

    "Well, I don't want to die."

    "But you're killing thousands of people. You're killing them, not us.

    We don't want this war."

    "I don't know anything about that; I'm just a soldier. I don't know why we're at war. I didn't want to go to war; I was just working in England, and they made us join the army."

    I spouted off any old bollocks, just to show I was confused and didn't really know what was going on or why I was there. I was hoping they might take a bit of pity and understand, but obviously not.

    "Mitterrand is a pig. Bush is a pig. Thatcher is a pig. She is making the children die of starvation."

    "I don't know anything about that; I'm only a soldier."

    I got another slap around the head and went down.

    The other two came up and had their fun. One was walking up and down.

    He'd come and put his face up close and shout, then pace up and down and come up again and twat me around the head.

    The warrant officer said: "This man wants to kill you. I think I'll let him kill you now." I could tell they were just getting rid of their frustrations. With luck they'd eventually get bored. It was no big problem.

    I saw that our belt kit had gone. It must have been taken when they took Dinger away. I was concerned. Had we been split up for good? Was I never going to see him again? It was a disheartening thought. It would have been so nice to have seen him one last time before I died.

    They were starting to get more confident. They'd had their little slaps and everything, and now they were recycling all the propaganda that they had been fed-all the wonderful things that were going to happen when they finally kicked the imperialist Western powers out of the Middle East.

    "The Americans and the Europeans are taking all our oil. It is our country. The Europeans divided our country. The Middle East is for the Arabs: it is our land, it is our oil. You bring your culture in, you spoil everything."

    I said I knew nothing about it: I was just a soldier, sent here against my will.

    They started punching me in the head. One came up behind me and kicked me in the back and around the sides of the trunk. I went down and crawled into a ball, my knees right up to my chin. I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, just waiting for it, but they lifted me up and straightened me out.

    "Why are you here, killing our children?" they asked again, and it was sincere stuff. Obviously kids were getting killed in the bombing, and it had got to them. This wasn't the "You bastards!" and good kicking that I was used to; these guys really had the hump. The kicks were from the heart.

    "Why are you killing our children?"

    "I was sent here to save life," I said, glossing over the fact that this statement did not entirely reflect our activities of the past few days.

    "I'm not here to kill."

    I started to bleed as the old wounds reopened. My nose was pouring blood, and my mouth started to swell up all over again. And yet I got the feeling there was a bit of control here. One of the boys must have said, "That's enough for. now," because they stopped. They'd obviously had some instruction not to go overboard. They obviously wanted us to be able to talk. And that could only mean that things were going to get a whole lot worse.

    "We've been fighting wars for many years, do you know that?"

    "No, I don't. I don't know anything about that sort of thing. I'm all confused."

    "Yes, my friend, we have been fighting wars for many years, and we know how to get information. We know how to get people to talk. And, Andy, you will talk soon…"

    He coughed with a long, loud bronchial rumbling of the chest, and the next thing I knew-whoomph, splat- I got a big green grolly straight in the face. I was really pissed off at that, more than I was at getting filled in. I couldn't wipe it off, and it was all over my face. I had visions of contracting TH or some other outrageous disease. The way my luck was going, I'd get through all the interrogation and imprisonment shit, get back to the UK and find out I'd got some incurable form of Iraqi syphilis.

    The rest of the blokes thought this was a good one, and they started gob bing as well, lifting my face right up so they had a bigger target.

    "Pig!" they shouted, pushing me down onto the floor and spitting more.

    The kickings you accept, because you can't do anything about it. But this-this really got to me: the fact that it had been snorted up out of their guts or their nose and was now on my face and trickling into my mouth. It was just so disgusting. They kept it up for about ten minutes, probably the time it took to exhaust their supplies.

    They moved me into the corner of the room and made me face the wall, looking down. I was cross legged, my hands still handcuffed behind my back. They blindfolded me again.

    I stayed in that position for maybe forty-five minutes with not another word said to me. I could hear low voices and the sounds of people moving around. A Tiny lamp hissed on the other side of the room. It was very cold and I started to shiver. I felt the blood on my wounds begin to clot, and it was a very strange sensation. When you're bleeding it actually feels nice and warm. Then it starts to go cold and clots, and it's viscous and unpleasant, especially if your hair and beard are matted with it.

    My nose was blocked with solid blood, and I had to start breathing through my mouth. It was total agony as the cold air got in amongst the stumps of enamel and pulp that had once been my back molars. I began to hope for an interrogation, just anything to get lifted out and taken somewhere warm.

    I didn't have too much of a clue about what was going on. All that I knew was that we'd been handed over to a man in a Burton suit that was five times too big for him and he seemed to be in charge. I said as little as I could get away with, just waiting to see what was going to happen. I worried about Dinger. Where had they taken him? And why?

    The runty bloke had left with him. Were they going to have a go at him first? When he came back, was I going to have to look at Dinger battered and bleeding, and then get dragged away myself? I don't want that: I'd rather get taken away without seeing Dinger come back kicked to shit.

    The door opened and the guards came in again. There was a brief exchange with the lads in the room, and they had a good giggle about the gob all over my face. They picked me up and dragged me outside. We turned right as we came out of the door, then followed a pathway and turned 90 degrees left at the end. I couldn't walk properly, and they had to prop me up under the armpits and half carry me. It was very cold. We went over more cobblestones, and I was in real trouble. The tops of my toes had been scraped away in the town, and I was frantically trying to get on the balls of my feet and sort of pigeon-toe along so I didn't scrape the lacerations.

    It was only another 20 or 30 feet to where we were going. The heat hit me straight away. It was beautifully warm, and the room was full of aromas-burning paraffin, cigarette smoke, and fresh coffee. I was pushed down to the floor and made to sit with my legs folded. Still blindfolded and handcuffed, I put my head down to protect myself and instinctively clenched my teeth and muscles.

    People were shuffling around, and through chinks in the blindfold I could see that the room was brightly lit. It seemed a furnished, used room, not a derelict holding area like the one I had just come from. The carpet was comfortable to sit on, and I could feel the fire really near me. It was all rather pleasant.

    I heard papers being shuffled, a glass being put on a hard surface, a chair being moved across the floor. There were no verbal instructions to the guards. I sat there waiting.

    After about fifteen seconds the blindfold was pulled off. I was still looking at the floor. A pleasant voice said, "Look up, Andy: it is all right, you can look up."

    I brought my head up slowly and saw that I was indeed in a plush, well-decorated, quite homely room, rectangular and no more than 20 feet long.

    I was at one end, near the door. I found myself looking directly ahead at a very large, wooden executive type desk at the other end. This had to be the colonel's office, without a doubt. The man behind the desk looked quite distinguished, the typical high-ranking officer. He was quite a large-framed person, about 6 foorish, with graying hair and mustache. His desk was littered with lots of odds and bods, an in and out tray, all the normal stuff that you would associate with an office desk, and a glass of what I took to be coffee.

    He studied my face. Behind him was the ubiquitous picture of old Uncle Saddam, in full military regalia and looking good. Either side of the desk and coming down the room towards me against the walls was a collection of lounge chairs without arms, the sort that can be put together to make a long settee. They were crazy colors-oranges, yellows, purples. There were three or four of them each side with a coffee table between.

    The colonel was in olive drab uniform. On the left hand side from my view, and about halfway up the row, was a major, also in olive drab and immaculately turned out-not boots but shoes, and a crisply pressed shirt. You can tell staff soldiers no matter what army they come from.

    The major was paying no attention to me at all, just flicking through what appeared to be papers from the han dover making the odd note in the margin with a fountain pen. He started talking in beautifully modulated, newscaster English.

    "How are you Andy? Are you all right?"

    He didn't look at me, just carried on with his paperwork. He was mid-thirties, and he wore half-moon glasses that made him tilt his head back so that he could read. He had the Saddam mustache and immaculately manicured hands.

    "I think I need medical attention."

    "Just tell us again, will you, why are you in Iraq?"

    "As I said before, we're members of a search and rescue team. The helicopter came down, we were all told to get off, and it took off and left us; we were abandoned."

    "How many of you were there on the helicopter, can you remember? No problems if you can't at the moment. Time is one commodity your sanctions have not affected."

    "I don't know. Alarms were ringing inside the helicopter. We were told to get off, and then everything got very confused. I'm not too sure how many were left on and how many were off."

    "I see. How many of you were there on the helicopter?"

    It was the schoolteacher talking down to a kid he knows full well is lying-but he wants the kid to squirm before he confesses.

    "I don't know, because when we got on it was dark. Sometimes there's only four, sometimes there's twenty. We're just told when to get on and when to get off. It always happens so quickly. I didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. To be honest, I'm not really interested. I never take that much notice. They treat us like shit; we're just the soldiers who do the work."

    "All right. So what was your mission, Andy? You must know your mission because it's always repeated twice in your orders."

    It's standard British army practice to repeat the mission statement twice in orders. It astounded me that he knew. If he understood British military doctrine, he must have had some training in the UK.