Bravo two zero (49 page)

    After they'd been walking for about an hour, a Land Cruiser pulled up alongside, and the driver offered them a lift into town. They sat in the back, and the driver and the boy exchanged a few pleasantries, but for most of the journey they drove along in silence. From time to time, Chris caught the driver staring at him in the rearview mirror.

    Just as they were coming, into the town, the vehicle stopped outside a house, and the driver shouted to somebody inside. An Arab in his late thirties came out, dressed from head to toe in black. The two of them had a long discussion, at the end of which the driver told Chris's friend to get out. He reluctantly did as he was told, and Chris noticed as he said goodbye that he looked very worried.

    They drove on, and the driver, who appeared to speak more English than he had let on, started gob bing off about the war. He got quite agitated about it.

    "You should not be here," he said. "This is not our war." Basically the drift was: "Fuck off back to Iraq, white eye."

    Chris showed him his indemnity slip, which stated in Arabic that anybody guiding the bearer to a British Embassy or to the Allied forces would receive a reward of 5,000. The Arab glanced at the piece of paper as he drove, then stuffed it into his shirt pocket. Chris explained that the paper was no good on its own; there had to be a live body to go with it.

    Just to let him know that he meant it, he gave the Arab a bit of an evil look.

    They pulled up outside a garage. Another Arab who appeared to know the driver came out of the workshop, went around to the passenger side of the Land Cruiser, looked at Chris, then turned on his heels and ran back inside. It seemed to Chris that he was going to get slotted here, and he started to pull the weapon out of the bag. The driver grabbed his arm, and Chris responded with a bit of good news with his elbow. He jumped out of the vehicle as the Arab lolled across the seats with his head sticking out Chris's side. Kicking the door so that it slammed on the man's neck, Chris did a runner-or rather, a fast hobble.

    He rounded a corner and spotted a man in uniform, armed with an AK47, who was on guard outside a bungalow.

    "Police?" Chris shouted.

    "Yes."

    "British airman!"

    The man hustled him inside the building, which turned out to be the police station. Officers were lounging around the room in leather jackets and sunglasses, doing the sinister bit.

    Minutes later, the driver of the Land Cruiser came in, holding his neck and cursing the British. Chris grabbed the indemnity slip from the man's pocket and showed it to the police. They laughed at what it said.

    Chris began to get the feeling that he had a problem on his hands. Just as he was contemplating fighting his way out of the station, one of the policemen went over to the driver and smacked him hard across the head.

    Others jumped up and dragged him from the building.

    "Stupid twat," Chris grinned at them, "he's just done himself out of five grand." They searched Chris's kit before taking him to the chiefs office. The senior officer didn't speak a word of English-none of them did-but he got Chris to write down his name and details on a sheet of paper. Chris supplied his correct name but stated that he was a medic with an air rescue team.

    The chief picked up his phone. He spelled out to somebody everything that Chris had written, letter by letter. Then he made another call, which Chris guessed to be internal by the number of digits dialed. One of the policemen appeared with a dish-dash and face veil and told Chris to put them on. He was hustled out to a vehicle, a policeman either side of him. Chris was left in no doubt that he was their prisoner, and he didn't have a clue where they were taking him. For all he knew they could have been heading back to the border.

    They drove for about an hour along a desert highway and eventually pulled up behind a couple of Meres that were parked at the roadside. Six heavies lounged against the black limos, all wearing sunglasses. One of them had a Makharov in his hand.

    Chris was blindfolded and made to kneel on the tarmac. His head was pushed forward and he thought: Here we go, it's topping time. He was severely pissed off with himself for falling into the trap.

    For several seconds, nothing happened. Then they hauled him to his feet and pushed him into the back of one of the cars. They must just have been having a bit of fun. They ' drove for another two hours, and Chris saw a big sign with an arrow and the word Baghdad.

    One of the men in sunglasses said, '"Yes, we are going to Baghdad. You are prisoner of war. We are Iraqi."

    It was coming to last light, and the sun was setting in front of them.

    Chris was so confused by this stage that he couldn't remember whether the sun set in the west or the east. He thought back to his childhood in Tyneside and the times he'd watched the sun coming up over the coast in the morning. If it came up in the east, he reasoned, then they must be heading west.

    He knew he was right when he started to see signs saying Damascus. It was dark when they hit the outskirts of the city. The heavies put out their cigarettes and started straightening their ties. They pulled up behind another car. A man got out and came and sat in the passenger seat of Chris's vehicle. Middle-aged and smartly dressed, he spoke excellent English.

    "Are you all right?" he asked.

    "Yes thanks, I'm fine."

    "Good. Don't worry, it won't be long now."

    It was clear to Chris that the other two blokes in the car were practically shitting themselves with fear of this fellow. When they reached a compound and stopped, both men jumped out and opened the man's door for him. Chris tried to get out and fell onto his knees. His feet had given up the struggle. The man snapped his fingers, and Chris was carried into the building.

    He was shown into a large office and greeted by a man in a navy blazer, striped shirt, and tie. The man shook his hand and said something.

    "Welcome," an interpreter translated.

    The office had all the mod cons: teak furniture from Har rods, gold-plated AK47 on the wall, the lot. He worked out that they were in the headquarters of the secret police.

    Through the interpreter, the top man asked if Chris would like a bath.

    Chris nodded and was ushered through a door into a bedroom, with bathroom and gym en suite. The man put a new blade in his razor and unwrapped soap and shampoo and put them on the bath as he left.

    Chris was just starting to strip off when a young lad came in with a tape measure. He put it around Chris's chest, then took his other measurements. Chris hoped it was a suit he was being measured for, and not a coffin.

    The bath water was black almost as soon as he got into it, so he ran another one. Yet another boy appeared. He presented Chris with a cup of coffee. It was good stuff. He started to feel more secure. If they were going to top him, they wouldn't waste good coffee on him.

    The interpreter came back and asked him questions. Chris responded with the cover story. The Arab looked dubious, but made no comment. Chris got out of the bath and looked at himself in the mirror. He couldn't believe how much weight he'd lost. His biceps were the size of his wrists. Somebody else came in with clean clothes for him. It felt fantastic putting on fresh skivies then a white shirt and tie, socks, shoes, and-the piece de resistance-a brand new pin-stripe suit that must have been run up in the last half hour, when he was in the bath-in the middle of the night. The trousers were a little too big around the waist, and the chief gave the lad with the tape measure a fearsome bollocking. The boy gestured for Chris to take them off again and disappeared with them over his arm.

   A doctor was brought in. He dressed Chris's feet and bandaged them up.

    As he was finishing, the boy came back with the trousers. This time they were a perfect fit.

    The chief asked Chris if he'd care for a little food and led him to his dining room. The table was groaning under the weight of steaks, kebabs, vegetables, fruit, freshly baked bread. Chris knocked back a liter of water and then got stuck into a steak. He could manage only a few mouthfuls.

    The chief was really getting into it now and offered him a night on the town.

    "I'm sorry," Chris said, "but I think I should go to the British Embassy as soon as possible."

    The chief looked really disappointed as he telephoned the embassy and arranged for somebody to come and collect Chris. He'd probably been looking forward to a night out on expenses.

    When the driver from the British Embassy arrived, he, too, bowed to the chief. Then he picked up Chris's dirty kit and carried it to the car while Chris shook hands with his new bosom buddy.

    The embassy sent messages at once to Joint Headquarters at High Wycombe and to Riyadh, and made arrangements for Chris to fly out the next evening. It was the first news anybody had had of Bravo Two Zero since the night of the infil.

    Chris had walked more than 180 miles in the eight nights of his E&E. In all that time he'd had nothing to eat except the two small packets of biscuits that he had shared with Vince and Stan, and he'd had virtually nothing to drink. He had lost an enormous amount of body weight, and his survival was attributed to his system feeding on its own meat.

    It was two weeks before Chris could walk again properly, and six weeks before he got any sensation back in his toes and fingers. The location where he reported finding the water that burnt his mouth turned out to be a uranium-processing plant. He had a severe blood disorder and problems with his liver from drinking dirty river water, but he was back on operations very soon afterwards. It was one of the most remarkable E&Es ever recorded by the Regiment, as far as I am concerned, ranking above even the legendary trek through the desert of North Africa by Jack Sillitoe, one of David Stirling's originals, in 1942.

    There had been many more troops than we'd expected in the area. In fact, we now learnt that what we had gone into was one large military holding area: two Iraqi armored divisions were positioned between the border and our first LUP. As if that wasn't bad enough, every man, woman, and child in the area had been told to be on the lookout for us.

    Children were given the day off school to join in the hunt. All the same, we gave a good account of ourselves: it was established by intelligence sources that we had left 250 Iraqi dead and wounded in our wake.

    The FOB received our Sit Rep of January 23, but in a very corrupt mode, which must have confused the hell out of them. On the 24th, at 1600 local time-the time of the compromise-another unintelligible signal was received. Later they picked up a faint TACBE signal and realized then that we were in trouble. And that was all they heard until Chris turned up in Syria on January 31.

    Two rescue missions were mounted as a result of our lost com ms procedure and the corrupt signals. The first, on January 26, had to turn back soon after crossing the border as the Chinook pilot was violently ill. It was just as well after all that we hadn't hung around for it. A second attempt was made on the 27th, and this time it was a joint US and British effort. Misled by the location of the weak TACBE signal, they flew up the southern corridor, but of course with no result. American intelligence reports were also coming in of an Israeli attack on the Syrian border, but because it was assumed that we were heading south a connection with Bravo Two Zero was not made.

    What had gone wrong with the patrol radio? Nothing. In any area of the world only certain frequencies will work, and even then they have to be changed during the day to take account of changes in the ionosphere. The frequencies we were given were wrong, which was most unfortunate. It was a human error that you have to hope will never happen again.

    And what of AWACS and the much-vaunted 15second response time? For whatever reason, we were almost 200 miles out of range. There was a little hiccup in communication somewhere along the line, and it was just another thing that it was hoped would not happen again. The American pilot that we made contact with on TACBE reported the incident, but the report did not reach our people at the FOB until three days later.

    One thing we got right was my decision to head for Syria rather than go back to the heli RV. The word "compromise" came through intact.

    However, with out any other information what did it mean? Were they to read it as a possible compromise or a definite compromise? And whichever, should they take it to mean a compromise in contact or out of contact? There was simply not enough information for the colonel to act on, but he had to sit and decide whether or not to send a helicopter out to the RV, and he decided not to, even though the boys in the squadron were queuing up to go and giving him a hard time. But he was right. Why risk eleven men-the aircrew and the boys in the back-plus an aircraft, going into they knew not what? I was glad I hadn't had to make the decision. As we discovered from our interrogators, the infil Chinook had been compromised when it landed, so it was just as well another wasn't sent for the RV. The only thing we could have done with at the time of the compromise was a fast jet fly over We could have spoken to them on TACBE and guided them onto the S60s, and then arranged an orderly exfil.

    For the next few weeks we did debriefs to all and sundry. We gave a one-hour, edited-highlights version to Lord Bramall, colonel in chief of the Regiment, who entertained us to lunch afterwards. He struck me as a very switched-on man-deaf as a doorpost, but very switched on.