Bravo two zero (43 page)

    Vince was soon lagging behind. He stopped in his tracks at one point and called the other two back. He complained about his hands, muttering that they had turned black. Chris looked at them and saw that he was wearing black leather gloves. "They'll soon get better if you put them in your pockets, mate," he said.

    The next time they stopped, Vince was totally incoherent. Stan and Chris huddled around him, but it wasn't much use. They had to keep going or they'd freeze. They were on high ground, crossing bare rock and large patches of snow. Chris was in front with the compass, but the cold was getting to him. He was doing everything in slow motion.

    The three men spread out as they climbed a gradient at their different speeds. Stan stopped to let Vince overtake him; he wanted to keep an eye on him. But Vince didn't appear. Stan turned around; Vince was nowhere to be seen. Stan called to Chris and they both went back.

    Visibility was down to a few feet in the blinding blizzard as they retraced their footsteps in the snow. They got to a large area of bare rock. They couldn't find the trail the other side.

    They had to make a decision. They were both going down with hypothermia. It was agony standing still; they had to get moving again.

    In the end they just looked at each other, then turned and headed back up the hill.

    Stan and Chris walked all that night, coming off the high ground at about 0530. They came into a shallow wadi about three feet deep and cuddled together. As first light came the weather cleared; the sun came out, and for the first time in several days they felt warmth on their faces.

    The sound of goats came at about 1400, and sure enough they got compromised by an old herder. This one was wearing a tattered tweed overcoat. Stan couldn't help thinking how warm it looked and how good it would be to eat warm goat meat.

    The old boy seemed quite friendly as he pointed east. Drawing pictures in the sand, he indicated food, a house, a vehicle. Chris looked at Stan. Did they kill him? It would protect their concealment, but was there anybody else about who was expecting him?

    Stan was keen to investigate the vehicle. "I'll go down, bring it back, and we'll shoot off. We'll be at the border by tonight," he said.

    They made their RVs, actions on, and warning arrangements, and Stan set off due east with the old boy and his goats. He left his belt kit with Chris to look less conspicuous, and wrapped his shamag around his head.

    After a short while the goat herder wandered off at a tangent but again pointed east. Stan continued.

    The hut was exactly where the old man had said, but there were two vehicles parked outside instead of one. Stan OP'd it for about twenty minutes. Nothing stirred. If the keys were in the vehicle, he'd just take it there and then and go. If they weren't, he'd make a room entry on the house. He'd get to the door, kick it in, and take on whatever was there.

    As he started to approach the vehicles, an Iraqi soldier came out of the house. He looked as surprised as Stan was. He made for the first vehicle and tried to pull a weapon out. Stan downed him with his 203, and the body slumped over the driver's seat. The house was less than 60 feet away, and the door was open. Six or seven squad dies came flying out in confusion. Stan got three hits off, and then he had a stoppage.

    It was too late for stoppage drills. He ran to the nearest vehicle, the one with the body in. The soldier was still groaning. Stan pushed him aside. No key in the ignition. He was still fumbling for it in the man's pockets when he felt the muzzle of a rifle jab into his ribs.

    Stan turned around and stared at them. There were five jundies left.

    They appeared very undisciplined, screaming and shouting at each other.

    They fired into the air and into the ground each side of him. He wasn't expecting to survive. They came forward cautiously and then one of them summoned the courage to smash him with a rifle butt. The others piled in.

    They put him into the other vehicle and took him to a military installation near the Euphrates. Stan entered the tactical questioning phase. He was interrogated for most of the night, handcuffed and blindfolded. The interrogators spoke very good English. Some had trained in the UK. A major who had trained at Sandhurst said,

    "Everyone's very sad with you at the moment. They want to take your life."

    Stan denied everything except the Big Four. They beat him badly and only stopped when he fell unconscious. When he came to, he started to go into the cover story. He told them he had done a medical degree in Australia and gone to London. Because of his medical experience he had got roped in through the TA to become part of a search and rescue team.

    "I want to cooperate in any way I can," he said. "All I am is a doctor who dropped out."

    He was questioned on medical techniques, and they brought in a doctor to confirm his story. It went well, but the rest of his story was starting to fall apart. They searched the area in which Stan said the helicopter had crash-landed but could find no sign of wreckage. "Possibly the aircraft took off again," he said, but they looked dubious.

    Two or three days later, Stan was moved to an interrogation center. The reception party beat him with batons. He was made to kneel in front of the panel of interrogators. He was thrashed with hose pipes whipped, beaten with a pole. At one stage they pulled back his head and held a red-hot poker in front of his eyes. They didn't carry out the threat to blind him, but they did use the poker elsewhere on his body.

    We told Stan our stories and finally collapsed into sleep. I woke up in the night with my stomach tugging at me. We'd all had four or five liquid shits in the short time we'd been there. We were dehydrating drastically, but at least we could replenish the loss now.

    It was pitch-dark. Lying on the floor, feeling relatively safe, I started to think about home.

    There was another bombing raid in the distance. Flashes of light came through the high slit window. As ever the bomb blasts were rather nice, giving a sense of security, a feeling that we weren't the only ones there. And best of all, they also gave us a possible means of escape if we took direct hits.

    The main gate of the block was opened after first light. We heard chains rattling and keys going into locks, and then the sound of a metal, corrugated-type door the other side of our wall being opened and people talking and walking about. We heard the base of a metal bucket clanking on the floor, followed by the sound of the metal handle hitting the side.

    Then we heard, "Russell! Russell!"

    There was a mumbled reply.

    Further down the corridor there was the same banging of buckets. Then "David! David!"

    This one was definitely American. When he heard his name called, he replied with a resounding "Yo!"

    The guards were shouting at this David character. They shut his door and came down the corridor to our cell. The door opened and we got to our feet. We didn't know what to expect. There were three of them: one little bloke who said we were to call him Jeral, one big fat thing with glasses, and a really young kid with curly blond hair. Jeral carried a bucket while the others covered him, pistols drawn. They seemed keen to throw their weight around with the new blokes on the block.

    "Names?" the fat one demanded.

    "Dinger. Stan. Andy," Dinger said.

    He handed us three small plastic bowls, into which he tipped a small ration of rice and water mixture from the bucket. We were issued with two more mugs and given a brew of cold black tea from a battered old teapot. I thought it was Christmas.

    When they left we had our first chance to look around the cell in daylight. There was a nail high up one wall, sticking out a couple of inches from the cement surface. Deciding it might come in handy, I as the lightest was given a leg up and jiggled it until I managed to prize it free. Dinger used it to mark where the light was shining on to the wall, as some sort of check on the passage of time.

    We sat down and ate the rice, licking the bowls clean. We took sips of cold tea as we pondered what might happen next. The same three guards returned ten minutes later with the major.

    "You're in my prison now," he repeated. "I want no misdemeanors from you. If you cause me trouble, I will return the compliment. You're only together because the officer yesterday decided to put you together.

    He says to inform you that we know that you are dangerous men, and that if we have any trouble with you, we are to just shoot you."

    It must have been a reference to the COP platoon story, which made us an unknown quantity compared with the airmen they were used to. Either that, or because we looked like wild men of the north with our matted beards, scabs, and bruises.

    "Any attempt to escape or to aggravate us and we'll shoot, it's as easy as that," he said.

    "Is there any possibility of emptying our bucket, sir?" I asked. "We have bad stomachs and it is filling up."

    He gob bed off to one of the blokes and said, "Yes, take the bucket."

    Stan picked it up and followed a guard.

    The major said, "You will be fed, and you're lucky to be fed because you've come over here to kill our children. There is to be no noise-no talking, no shouting. Do you understand?"

    While he was talking, Dinger spotted the outline of a cigarette packet under his shirt.

    "Excuse me, sir, is it possible that I can have a cigarette?"

    Dinger was smiling away. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We were trying our hardest to come over as friendly, nice, polite, and courteous. The major unbuttoned his shirt and took the pack from a pocket in a T-shirt underneath. He handed Dinger a cigarette, but he didn't give him a light, so that was Dinger fucked. He spent the rest of the day looking at it wistfully and holding it under his nose.

    Stan had tried to gather as much information as he could. All he could tell us was that there were a number of cells, with the doors sealed with blankets or rice-sack covers that were marked, ironically,   
FROM THE AMERICAN RICE BOARD TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ.

     At the bottom of the corridor there was a gate, and another corridor that led out into a courtyard, with yet another metal gate beyond that. That was as far as he had been able to see. Everything seemed to be self-contained within the one unit, with only one way in and out.

    It appeared that we shared the ablution block with the guards. Their washing was hanging on lines. In one corner was a large oil barrel which was filled with water. There was a long concrete sink with about four or five taps coming off it, and normal Arab toilets which were blocked as usual. According to Stan the whole place stank.

    A week passed. Sometimes they would come into our cell three times a day, sometimes twice, sometimes six or seven times. We could hear squad dies continually toing and froing, doing their washing, and just generally mooching about.

    We were fed irregularly as well. Sometimes the bucket would come at breakfast time, sometimes in the late afternoon, sometimes at last light. Meals always consisted of rice soup or boiled rice, real dreggy stuff with grit and mud in it. They always told us we were lucky to have it. One time we were given bones that people had been chewing. We tucked in hungrily.

    They must have watched one of those prison films where you get indoctrinated by radio, because every morning at first light they turned on a radio that then blasted away outside our window. It was like having a loudspeaker blaring into the cell, aggressive rhetoric punctuated by the occasional English word like "Bush" or "America." Then there would be prayers, then the rhetoric would start up again. It only stopped at last light, and it drove us all crazy.

    We were bombed every night. There had always been sporadic firing around the city from antiaircraft guns, some of which were sited in our compound. We'd feel the shudder of the guns on our roof and hear the sounds of the gun crews arguing and shouting. What they never seemed to realize was that by the time you've heard an aircraft it's out of range anyway.

    On the night of the 13th there was a massive amount of small-arms fire in the streets around the prison, which went on for twenty to thirty minutes.

    "What the fuck's going on here?" Dinger said.

    He and Stan lifted me up to the slit window, and I just managed to pull my head up high enough to see tracer going horizontal. It was bouncing everywhere.

    "Must be some form of revolution or coup going on. That is one major firefight."

    A few nights later we decided that we'd try and make contact with the characters in the other cells. We knew that the bloke next door was called David and was an American. We weren't sure about Russell. We decided to initiate some form of contact with them. We risked a beating or worse if we were caught, but we decided it was worth it. If they were released or escaped, they could report our names.

    Last thing at night, when the guards finished their duty, they would close up the main gate from the corridor and then go out to the courtyard. It was a fair assumption that once we'd heard the final gate close, they would be out of earshot. I got right up to our door, covered by its rice bag, and called for help. If a guard responded, I would just say that one of us was really ill and needed attention.