Bravo two zero (46 page)

    Well, there you go, I said to myself. So much for getting released: we're going to get topped. I took a deep breath and waited for it.

    Nothing happened. We stood there for five minutes in total silence, everybody holding their breath.

    I was feeling more and more ill as we stood against the wall, and finally I buckled, collapsing on to my knees.

    "I've got to go to the toilet," I called out.

    Somebody grabbed my arm and propelled me away, but by the time we got there I'd sprayed myself with runny stuff. I was taken back and put in the queue.

    They took us one by one into tiny cells. The handcuffs were removed, and I could touch either side with my hands. But there were three blankets, a real luxury, and a little window. I needed to bang on the door every five minutes during the night. A guard appeared each time and dragged me down to the toilet, then stood over me while I dropped my arse. We spent the whole night toing and froing.

    At first light we were given a good breakfast of egg, jam and bread, and hot, black tea. It was rather encouraging. I looked out of my cell and saw piles of old uniforms arranged on the floor, and yellow prison POW pajamas with pumps. I thought, this is the ticket.

    An hour after breakfast, my cell door was opened, and I was led along a corridor to a room where there was a chair, table, mirror, water, and a razor.

    The "barber" started to shave me, so clumsily that he ripped small chunks out of my face. Blood trickled down my chin.

    "Can I do it myself?" I asked.

    "No, you are a dangerous man." They wouldn't let me rinse my face afterwards, either. I just had to wipe the soap and blood off with my shirt.

    I was taken back to the cell by two soldiers who told me to strip. They presented me with one of the yellow uniforms and took my clothes away. I said a sad, silent farewell to my escape map and compass.

    "Name?"

    "McNab."

    "You'll be going home today. Very soon." The blindfold was put back on.

    The cells were opened one at a time. A soldier checked our names, removed the blindfolds, and we came out and got in line. Somebody came up to the left of me and grabbed my hand enthusiastically. "My name's John Nichol," he beamed.

    I shook his hand. He noticed me looking at the green R.A.F polo neck under his yellow top.

    "Fifteen Squadron," he said. "Tornadoes."

    He was a really happy bloke, but not as delirious as the Americans. They were behaving as if they were already back in the States, and a few of the guards were getting twitchy about it. I was still keeping myself in check. The light was at the end of the tunnel, but who was to say it wasn't just another guard with a Tiny lamp coming towards us?

    We were blindfolded yet again and marched off in a big crocodile. After a few meters they stopped us again, and a soldier walked up and down the line spraying us with women's perfume. I gritted my teeth. I could live with the smell, but the alcohol stung my badly shaved face.

    We boarded a bus and after half an hour or so were told that we could take our blindfolds off. The bus had curtains, but I managed to look out through a gap and saw bombed bridges and buildings. Daily life was still very much going on, however. It was quite a happy time on the coach. The pilots were saying "Hi" to each other, and the guard at the front just sat there and let them get on with it.

    It could be the world's biggest bluff, however, and I decided to keep myself to myself.

    We pulled up at the door of the Nova Hotel. The place was teeming with soldiers and camera crews, and there was a fleet of Red Cross vehicles.

    I began to feel slightly more at ease.

    The main foyer was crowded with what I at first thought were Iraqis, but who turned out to be Algerian medical staff. Part of the trade-off between Saddam and the Red Cross had been that they provide medical staff for Baghdad. The Algerians lived in the hotel and helped in the local hospitals.

    We were taken into one of the reception rooms and segregated by nationality for documentation. The hotel had no heating, no hot water, no lifts. There was lighting, but the Red Cross had brought everything else with them, including their own food.

    This was the first time that the Red Cross had had any news about any of us from the Iraqis. Even then, the lists being handed over were corrupt. It was a breach of the Geneva Convention, but a rather minor one compared with the rest of our experiences as POWs.

    I was keen to find out about Dinger and Stan.

    "Have there been prisoners released before us?" I asked one of the women.

    The Red Cross personnel appeared to range from women in their mid-twenties to men in their late fifties. They were incredibly brave and professional people. I wouldn't have done their job.

    "Yes. They got out via Jordan."

    "Is there any chance you can give me the names of the Brits?"

    She checked a list for me and found the surnames of Dinger and Stan.

    There were no other names that I recognized.

    The girl confirmed that we were the last batch. So we had been the only three all along, I thought. All the stuff about wounded signals operators was a load of bollocks-a good bluff that had got me to gob off. Legs had probably been dead from the time Dinger left him.

    Once the administration was done, we were given a little Red Cross ticket and a number, and the Europeans were taken upstairs to the third floor. I noticed that the fire escapes were boarded up, leaving only one way in and out through the central staircase.

    Everything we needed was on the third floor. A Red Cross waiter brought us anything we asked for-if he had it. We got boiled eggs that weren't boiled properly. When we opened them they ran, but they were the best eggs I'd had in my life. The others followed theirs with croissants and chocolate, but by that time I was in the toilet, bulking up. I started again with an empty stomach and settled for a bottle of beer and some bread. We sat around talking, and I listened to everybody saying, "Well, that's it, we're away."

    I couldn't believe what I was hearing. After all that we'd been through, people were taking the Iraqis at their word.

    It seemed the intention that we were going to be held in the hotel for a couple of hours and then taken away to an airfield. One of the Red Cross blokes asked if anybody was cold.

    "Fucking right," came the reply.

    Two hours later he came back with a jumper for each of us that somebody had gone and bought downtown. The patterns were weird and wonderful, but they were warm.

    The main man of the Red Cross appeared and said, "Is there an Andy McNab here?"

    "Yes."

    "Somebody downstairs wants to see you."

    As he led me down the staircase I said, "We fly out this afternoon?"

    "We don't know yet because of the weather. We could also be delayed because we can't get the aircraft back from Saudi. It's very difficult to get communications -the Iraqis won't let me set up my own satellite com ms It's all third-hand information, so I'm just sitting here and waiting. It's a terrible setup: they won't give me any help at all. We brought all these Algerian medical teams to help them with the civilian victims of the bombing, but they've moved the civvies out of the hospitals in Baghdad and told them to go home, to leave hospital beds for soldiers who are coming home from the front. There's so much unrest they have to give priority to the soldiers.

    "That's why you are on the third floor. We put the Algerians at the bottom because they are in no danger.

    We have the Red Cross personnel next, and then you right at the top, because they are after you. They want some of you for hostages and bargaining power. If you come down these stairs, you must only come down with me or another Red Cross member.

    "We can't get the badly wounded up to the third floor because the lifts do not work and we can't maneuver them around the staircases.

    Unfortunately they've got to stay downstairs. It's quite possible that they'll raid the place and take people. The only defense we have is our Red Cross status."

    We went into the main foyer, and I spotted two sinister-looking Arabs sitting by the reception desk.

    "Secret police," he warned.

    If they hadn't posed such a threat, they would have looked laughable in their big, baggy suits with turnups, white socks, and swept-back hair.

    "Believe it or not," the official went on, "the soldiers out there are protecting you."

    It was ironic. I saw the soldiers stop two other men in suits from coming in. You could tell by the body language that there was obviously some friction between them. Rumors were already circulating that fifty generals had been executed after a failed attempt to change the system of power.

    We walked through the foyer.

    "When you go into this room," the official pointed, "you must stay there. If you want to move outside, one of us must be with you."

    A Red Cross girl was sitting in a chair, blocking the door. She was quietly reading a book, and on the floor by her side she had a small bottle of wine, a bit of bread, and some cheese. Brave, unbelievably brave.

    Four or five people were on stretchers. I recognized Joseph Small and Troy Dunlap and waved. Then, looking along the line, I saw Mark.

    "I gave them everybody's name to see if any of you were here," he grinned.

    I wanted to hug him and say "Great to see you," but the words wouldn't come out. I shook his hand instead.

    "What happened to you?" I said, hardly containing my amazement.

    He was wearing a dish-dash. His body looked wasted, and he still bore the bruises and scars of severe beatings.

    "When we had that last contact and we both went down, I went left and got caught up in fire. There were people all over the place. I ended up lying in a small drainage ditch. They were following up and were a foot away from me at one stage. Then I moved off a bit, trying to edge my way out of it. After about half an hour I saw some torches, and as they were fanning about, they caught me in the beam. There was a big cabby, and I got shot through the foot and across the elbow. Look."

    He lifted the dish-dash. The round had skimmed all the way around his elbow. He was incredibly lucky. A 7.62 round could have taken his arm off.

    "The foot wound fucked me up," he said. "I couldn't move. They gave me a good kicking, dragged me onto a truck, and took me to a location. It was fucking hideous. My foot was just bouncing up and down on the wagon floor because I had no control of it, and I was screaming my head off.

    They thought it was hilarious. They were laughing their bollocks off."

    Mark lost a lot of blood and thought he was going to die. He received no medical attention for his foot; the gaping wound was just bandaged and left to heal by itself. He was handcuffed naked to a bed all the time he was in prison, and basically left to rot. He went through the same system of interrogation as the rest of us, the only difference in his case being that the interrogation took place in his room.

    "They'd dig at my foot," he said, "and shake my leg so my foot rattled around. It was grim. But one funny thing was, they'd piled my clothes on the floor by my bed. Every day I looked down at the gold, wrapped up in the masking tape, and the fuckers never found it until halfway through my capture. I still had my escape map and compass and all."

    He had two blokes that used to come in and take him out for a shit. He called them Health and Hygiene because they were such dirty, minging old things. When he was on his own, he used to get the pitcher of water and try to clean his wound. The actual hole was clogged up with human skin and gunge, trying to heal itself over. His foot was swollen to the size of a marrow.

    "Sometimes I'd call out that I needed a shit, and they'd come in and put a bowl under my arse and leave me for hours. Piss was going everywhere because I can't organize myself, and there was shit up to the brim of this little bowl."

    He got filled in by the guards quite a few times. The blokes would come in and play with his foot and generally give him a hard time. All along, he kept up the same old story as the rest of us. During one interrogation, somebody recognized his New Zealand accent. He was accused of being a mercenary, working for the Israelis.

    I told him that Dinger and Stan were away and should be in the UK soon, and gave him our theories of what we thought had happened to the others.

    As we talked about events, he reckoned he could have been in the same prison as us: it certainly took direct hits at exactly the same time.

    The Red Cross were knocking out sheds of coffee for us, and then a cooked dinner turned up.

    Mark had lice, like we all did, and generally stank. But his stink was something special, and he was worried that it could mean gangrene. We talked about the possible scenarios that could happen now, but kept drifting back to swapping horror stories, each of us trying to cap the other.

    I was just telling Mark about the situation outside with the secret police when one of the Red Cross guys came around and said that there was a delay. We couldn't go until the next day because of the aircraft: it had gone to Saudi to pick up prisoners for an exchange, but because of adverse weather it wouldn't be coming back until the following morning.