Zero Six Bravo (23 page)

The Iraqi soldiers must have been trucked across the open desert to the very lip of the wadi under cover of the Dushka fire. They were now going in to finish off the Squadron in a ground assault—only, the British force had just bugged out of there. This had been a textbook deliberate attack, one executed by an extremely well-coordinated, and professional force.

The men of M Squadron had been briefed that the Iraqi infantry were conscripts lacking in morale. They’d been told the Iraqi forces were ill trained and ill equipped, and that they were not up for the
fight. From where Grey was sitting, it certainly didn’t bloody look that way.

Automatically, his GPMG had swung round to face the new threat. His gun moved wherever he was looking, following his line of sight. That way, if he spotted an enemy position, he could open fire on it instantly. Such vehicle-borne combat was often won or lost in the split second it took one side to recognize the other and open fire, which was why Grey had drilled and drilled to keep his weapon shadowing his range of vision.

But right now he forced himself to ease off his trigger finger and hold his fire. With the flash of a hand signal he indicated for Dude to do likewise, for the American operator had swung the big .50-cal around to nail the Iraqi trucks and their infantry. If they opened up, they’d have three truckloads of Iraqi soldiers returning fire, to say nothing of whatever else there might be lurking out there in the desert. Hence the need to hold their fire.

As the Iraqi troops surged over the rim of the wadi, Grey just had to hope that none of them spotted their fleeing vehicle. All it would take was one AK-47 round in a tire and they’d be toast. The Pinkies had tubeless tires fitted with some kind of run-flat self-sealing solution, which should give a shot-up tire enough usability to get a wagon out of the immediate killing range. But with three KrAZ-225s parked no more than two hundred yards away, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that they’d be rapidly pursued and hunted down. The last thing they needed was for those monster Iraqi army trucks to come steaming and snorting after them. They were big enough and nasty enough to run right over a Pinkie and squash it flat as a tin can.

A fleeting thought flashed through Grey’s mind. He’d heard somewhere about a sister patrol to Bravo Two Zero, one that had gone into the western desert during the First Gulf War. They were mounted on vehicles and they stumbled on a mass of Iraqi infantry camped up in the desert. It was the dead of night, and somehow those SAS wagons sneaked right through the enemy lines.

They’d been close enough to see the glow of the Iraqi sentry’s cigarette, and to catch the distinctive smell of burning tobacco.
But they held their nerve, and held their fire, and managed to slip through. Grey hoped and prayed their lone vehicle could do the same right now. In Special Force operations, knowing when not to engage the enemy was as vital as knowing when to open fire and smash seven bales of shit out of them.

“Keep after that fucking dust trail!” Grey urged Moth. “Whatever you do, don’t fucking lose it!”

Moth put his pedal to the metal, and within seconds the Pinkie was practically airborne as it bucked and cannoned its way across the rough terrain. Grey leaned forward and grabbed a smoke grenade from the dash, ripped the pin out, and let the arming lever fly. He raised himself in his seat, half turned round, and hurled the grenade out of the wagon’s rear. If he could lay down enough smoke, it might buy them some much-needed time. If nothing else it should make it difficult for the enemy to follow their trail, at least for the few minutes it took the grenades to stop gushing out their thick, choking smoke.

Grey kept on hurling the smoke grenades until his very last was gone. The Dude was perched on the wagon’s back, the .50-cal sweeping the terrain to their rear as he covered his arc of fire and waited to see if any of the Iraqi forces were following them. If any emerged from the smoke screen, the Dude was poised to unleash hell with the big machine gun.

At the same time Grey was urging Moth to keep his speed up and to catch the rearmost vehicles. If they lost the Squadron’s tail end they’d never find it again, of that he was certain. They’d be on their own—three men in one soft-skinned wagon that had fired off more than half of its ammo and exhausted all of its smoke grenades. It wouldn’t take long for the forces gathered in and around that lake bed to realize that the Squadron had made their exit, and come roaring after them.

Night had well and truly fallen by now. Above them was another overcast sky, and it was as black as pitch out there in the desert. These were great conditions in which to try to shake off an Iraqi hunter force, but they were also perfect for losing the rest of the Squadron.

For a good two minutes the men pushed onward in a tense and nervous silence. Grey ripped off his ear protectors so he could better hear what was happening. He scanned the night for the noise of vehicle engines, straining to catch the distinctive note of a Pinkie’s diesel motor reverberating out of the dust cloud before them. And from behind, he was dreading catching the throaty roar of a KrAZ-225 powering its way forward.

Moth was ramping the Pinkie across the rough terrain at breakneck speed. It was on the tip of Grey’s tongue to warn him to slow down a little, for if they hit a rock or a significant drop they’d be sure to smash up the wagon. And if they lost their vehicle at a moment like this, there was no way in the world they’d be able to evade the kind of force that was coming after them on foot.

They’d gone a good three kilometers, and it looked increasingly likely that they had lost contact with the Squadron. If so, they’d have to try to use the radios and hope some of the wagons were still within range. They’d have to ask them for a grid, and for the rest of the squadron to remain stationary on that grid while their own vehicle tried to reach the others. But with the Iraqi force at their backs, the request to remain static would likely go down like the proverbial turd in a punchbowl.

To be able to use the radios, they’d have to be stationary, for they were unworkable with Moth tearing across the desert like this. The wind noise alone drowned out any words spoken into the mouthpiece and made it impossible to hear anything in return. But the last thing Grey wanted right now was to call a halt. They needed to put more distance between them and the enemy, and they needed to meet up with the Squadron so they had some real firepower again.

If they couldn’t make contact with the Squadron via the radios, they’d have to go to ground in some kind of a hide, then use the satcom to call up SF Headquarters and try to locate the Squadron that way. And if that failed, they’d have no option but to call for a hot extraction—a rescue by Chinook under the threat of enemy fire. There was no way that a lone Pinkie was about to fight its way out of this one.

Finally, after what felt like an age, the vague form of a vehicle began to emerge from the dust and gloom up ahead. Grey strained his eyes, trying to work out if it was a Pinkie or one of the Fedayeen Toyota pickups. From a distance, and in such conditions, it would be very easy to mistake one for the other.

The vehicle ahead was showing no lights, so it was more than likely friendly. But maybe the Fedayeen had switched to operating on black light themselves, now that the ambush had been sprung and the hunt was well and truly on.

Grey leaned across toward Moth: “Slow the fuck down, ’cause it may be the bad guys. Don’t close the gap until we’re sure.”

Moth nodded his assent and eased off the gas. The wagon decelerated to something more like a more normal patrol speed. As they crept closer, the image up ahead finally resolved itself into that of an open-topped Land Rover. It was one of the most welcome sights that Grey, Moth, and the Dude had ever seen.

Grey figured they’d covered a good four kilometers from the LUP. At the pace Moth had been doing, he should have won the Land Rover speed record.

The rearmost vehicle was Raggy’s. Grey could see the familiar form of Ragbag chucking smoke grenades out of the back. He was doing so in typical Raggy fashion, using a lazy lob to wing them over his shoulder. Grey could see the spare grenades lined up on their Pinkie’s dash.

Throwing smoke was a fine way for the Squadron to lose any pursuers, but it had done absolutely zero to help Grey and Moth find the tail end of the convoy. As their wagon closed the distance with Raggy’s, Grey caught the distinctive fireworks smell of the fumes put out by the grenades. Now that their wagon had finally caught up with the Squadron, Raggy’s smoke screen should aid their escape no end.

More vehicles loomed out of the darkness. The nearest one was stationary, and it had the unmistakable whippy antennae of one of the HQ Troop vehicles. As Grey neared it, he saw the OC standing up in the front seat and counting the wagons of his Squadron. His
face broke into a broad smile of relief as he spotted Grey’s wagon—the last out of the LUP, and the last to emerge from out of the smoke and the dust.

As they approached Grey saw the OC give a thumbs-up. “Okay, buddy?” he mouthed at them.

Grey returned the greeting and got a wink from the OC in return.

But at that very instant he saw a burst of tracer fire tear through the darkness and slam into the desert barely yards to the rear of the OC’s vehicle. More rounds followed, and from the crack and thump that they made as they tore past Grey’s wagon, he could tell that they were 12.7mm. Somehow, those bloody Dushka gunners were on their tail again.

The Squadron had shaken itself out into a linear formation stretching a good kilometer from end to end. Now that Grey’s wagon was within range, he tuned in to the radio chat. Gunner and his quad force were at the tip of the spear, and Grey could hear him banging on about the need to find a new lie-up point so as to get out of the line of enemy fire.

The wagons thundered ahead into the darkness, the odd burst of 12.7mm fire chasing them through the night. They’d made about six kilometers when the OC called a halt, and they pulled up in a broadside position. No one dismounted. It was too hot to do so.

They were now strung out in linear fashion, but with the wagons parked side-on to the enemy. It was a perfect position from which to open up on the forces in pursuit, using every gun of the Squadron in synchrony. Grey figured the OC was preparing to brass up the enemy big time. In which case, the OC and the rest were likely oblivious to the fact that there was some seriously heavy firepower coming after them.

There was a quick head count, just to make sure that everyone was present and correct. Grey figured they had to have wounded, but as no one was making a big deal out of that right now it looked as if no one’s injuries could be life-threatening.

There followed a general exchange between vehicles on the radios, so everyone got a heads-up on what the others had seen.
Grey shared the news that he’d positively identified an Iraqi infantry unit, which had presumably been led to the LUP by the Fedayeen force. He described the Iraqi soldiers that he’d seen pouring into the LUP, complete with their monster KrAZ-225 trucks, and the glimpse he’d got of their heavy armor.

For a second the radio net fell silent as the news sank in.

When a Special Forces unit was deep behind enemy lines and acting on sketchy intel, the plan had to evolve as it went along. It was continually being adjusted to take account of what each of the men in the unit had witnessed. Grey’s warning about the kind of force they had coming after them completely altered the game plan. There was no limit to the hardware the Iraqi Army might bring to bear—all except for air power, for the Coalition controlled the skies over Iraq.

Gunner’s voice was the first up on the net: “Fuck it, in that case we’ve got to find a new LUP like yesterday!”

As if to stress the point that he’d made, a savage stream of 12.7mm tracer hammered in toward the wagons, groping for a target. The Squadron was clearly a long way from being out of the shit just yet. The OC gave the order to move out. For now, at least, any plans to use the broadside position to smash the pursuing enemy had been abandoned.

“Go Four, Five, Six!” Gunner yelled over the net.

“Go Four, Five, Six!” voices echoed. “Go Four, Five, Six!”

When in escape-and-evasion mode, the standard orbat (order of battle) for the Squadron was for Four Troop to lead, with Five following and Six Troop bringing up the rear. Once again it would be Grey’s vehicle last in line and closest to the pursuing enemy.

It seemed to take an age to get the Squadron on the move as one cohesive linear force. In the seconds they had to stay put as the tail-end Charlies, Grey and his men scanned the silence of the night searching for the enemy. Grey’s mind was churning as he tried to make sense of exactly who had hit them in that LUP.

The enemy had mounted a carefully planned and deliberate attack; there could be no arguing with that. It involved a strike force
of highly cellular Fedayeen sporting Dushkas. They’d provided covering fire for truck-mounted infantry and at least one armored vehicle to move in. All of that had been coordinated in the gathering darkness, so that all units acted in tight partnership with one another and avoided hitting each other with friendly fire.

Grey was gobsmacked: the enemy had achieved a tight and lethal attack, which was absolutely covert in nature until the trap was sprung. If the Squadron had remained in that LUP, trading fire with the Dushka gunners for a few minutes more, they wouldn’t have seen the armor, or the Iraqi infantry, until they were right on top of them. It was sheer luck—combined with the OC’s foresight—that had got them out of there. Had the Squadron stayed, all of the wagons would have been smashed, and the men would have been killed, captured, or forced to go on the run on foot.

To coordinate getting those troops and armor in so swiftly, all the time keeping the Squadron under such a blistering barrage of fire, required an incredible level of military professionalism. It was a superbly conceived set of attack orders, and brilliantly executed.

Contrary to what the intel briefings had told them, the Fedayeen and the Iraqi Army clearly did work in close conjunction with one another. Here they were acting as one well-oiled machine. And, contrary to the intel briefings, these were far from being the actions of an enemy that was unmotivated and lacking in morale. Not a man amongst that attack force seemed likely to surrender, and Grey was more suspicious than ever now that they were up against the forces of the Iraqi 5th Corps.