There was to be no let-up in our pace, we didn’t have time for a stand-down or anything like that. We had to be on the move as we needed to expedite all our efforts to meet the needs of the op that was unfolding before us. With our newly acquired knowledge we had gained a small advantage on the terrorists; we now needed to keep up with everything that was unfolding in real time. New intel, and a success already under our belts, bolstered everyone’s ego as we departed from our Israeli friends to push north and east in the 4x4 Toyotas. Smudge and Hugh were on the laptops sifting all the satellite and drone intel of all movements out of our sector, as well as deciphering the maps from the apartment. It was as though I were destined to spend half my life racing across barren landscapes in search of people on kill lists! Not such a bad thing as the banter between us usually passed the time very quickly. Piss-taking is a military form of humour that goes beyond anything that is socially acceptable in an office or any civilised workplace. There’s nothing much off limits and no one is exempt, it’s just another glue in the building blocks of strong friendships that will outlast time. It gives courage and strength to the team no matter how diminished the light becomes.
Leaving Israel, we took Route 40 back over into Jordan and on to Amman, where we had to part ways, as two possible targets had been identified. A new shipment arriving at Beirut had been identified, and a convoy heading east into Iraq had been seen crossing the border some 24 hours earlier. Owen, Keith, Cheesy, Smudge and I would race on to catch up with the Iraq convoy whilst the rest of the team headed north into Lebanon. Lebanon is a different game, home to a different breed of asshole; this terrorist cell which Keith had been monitoring was part of an Iranian effort to form a collective variety of militant Lebanese Shia groups into a unified organisation. It acted as a representation for Iran in the ongoing Iran–Israel Cold War. The conflict is bound in the political struggle of Iranian leadership against Israel and its declared aim is to dissolve the Jewish state, with the counter-aim of Israel to prevent nuclear weapons being acquired by Iran. This is where old intelligence of mine from the Moscow days identified Asad as the successor to his father Mohammed Al Zidjali, picking up the pieces after we completed Operation RIAR. Mossad had identified him residing in Beirut. The technical information from Russia may still have been flowing through a new generation after Eric, Alex and Anatoly, but we had no idea who was now supplying it. I was keen to enforce that I would need to ID Asad if Baz, Pierre or Hugh thought they had found him in Lebanon.
We were soon on Route 10 in Iraq and on our way to Rutbah. We would have a brief resting point and resupply at Rutbah as the city had been occupied by the Americans in an attempt to curb insurgent and criminal activity. The Yanks had constructed an eight-foot dirt berm along the city’s perimeter, ensuring insurgents could no longer freely travel in and out of the city, which had been a breeding ground for smugglers and foreign fighters making their way into Iraq for years. There was a safe American compound in which we could take refuge for a pair of hours. Rutbah is a strategic location for insurgents and smugglers alike, since it is located astride two main supply routes – one from Jordan, and one from Syria. Exit through Rutbah and travel east, and the supply routes lead to the heart of the Sunni Triangle – Ar Ramadi, Al Fallujah and Baghdad. This terrorist smugglers’ route was the very route we were travelling on and it was fucking exciting. Rutbah, unfortunately for its occupants, was strategically placed and very convenient for smugglers, terrorists and insurgents to operate in and out of, but now, with only three ways into and out of the city (through heavily armed US checkpoints), this made this activity all but redundant. There was an airport which was also of strategic importance and one of our escape-to-freedom options should shit go south. We were often of the mindset that we the hunters may actually become the hunted ourselves along this route. No travellers along this route would be safe or immune to an attack, even if to just rob them of their vehicles and their contents.
We arrived in the US compound and I met the commanding officer, a quiet very relaxed officer, not your typical Yank. We got supplies, cleaned up and had a hot meal before we convened in the command shelter, which was a converted shipping container. Arriving at the American base we must have looked like a group of armed homeless people, scruffy, dressed in pirate rig (a mix of local civilian clothing and our own kit), very tired, unshaven and just dirty I guess. We looked anything other than professional soldiers/intelligence operatives, but to an extent that was very deliberate. American bases offer everything a good hotel can: good food, a bed, hot shower and a laundry service! We took full advantage of all that we could. Americans are great, have all the kit but no idea how to use it properly. To be fair, they just gave us everything we asked for and more. It was good to just sit and enjoy different conversation with the regular soldiers and eat scran, which we took outside at picnic tables like you see outside pubs and in beer gardens. They were living a joyless and thankless life within the confines of the city barricades and their compound. They spent endless days at checkpoints waiting for an insurgent to just walk up to them and blow them up, or a child to hand them an IED pretending to offer a gift. No doubt they all had many stories to tell, but most wore them on their faces, tired and raw with the hallmarks of being policemen at war in a country that hated its freedom as much as it did its previous oppression.
In the American HQ we sat and studied intel on all passing traffic and aerial reconnaissance that the American support units had gathered. At the same time we took advantage of the comms cell and reported in our progress to the Steering Group and Marcus. We gained their permission to make calls home, which came as a surprise and a welcome morale boost. It didn’t matter where or what bullshit we said to our loved ones regarding what we were doing or what lies we made up, it was just important to have that call and feel the warmth of home transmitted down a telephone wire by a loving voice. Like all things, people don’t appreciate what they have until it’s taken from them, and the freedom to talk to your loved ones is a big take when you’ve signed up for the work we did for the Steering Group, or any serviceman for that matter. We were gaining on our target convoy so we didn’t spend the night; we left at dusk keen to gain some ground and catch up with the convoy, hungry now after many weeks to fully engage and get the job done.
Now, believe it or not all humans, including terrorists, get sloppy and follow the same old routines and routes where possible. They get comfortable and complacent at times; that’s not to say we should ever underestimate them. To not get lazy is a discipline and requires effort, a lot of effort, especially for us in the intelligence service never mind the terrorists. Changing such things as routes and stopping points becomes very difficult, especially if time pressures or other options become too costly or just plain inconvenient. That’s why our friends the Americans had built that fucking great big pile of dirt around the city of Rutbah. Not so much to protect the people within it, but more to fuck up all the travel plans, routes, layovers and resting places of all the dirty smugglers, terrorists and arms traffickers who needed to get from Jordan or Syria into Iraq. Simple piles of dirt were fucking all their shit up, and costing them time and money. This had made it easy for us to use drone and satellite imagery to spot genuine traders passing through Rutbah because they would go through the checkpoints, fill up with fuel within the city and get supplies or food before heading back out into the desert. Vehicles that by-passed the city were more likely to be up to no good and, watching satellite imagery of traffic movements, they stood out like a shit in a pint glass, because there’s fuck all out in the desert for 400km after Rutbah! So why wouldn’t they come through the city? Well, despite all things it narrowed our search down dramatically.
Our time in Rutbah had been very valuable, we had learned a lot from the Americans, and from Owen who had been out on the streets in Rutbah pretending to be a haulage salesman or some such shit. If you wanted to send freight bound for anywhere south of Bagdad that you didn’t want to drive through a US
military checkpoint then it was best to send it by boat, and most illegal cargos were being transported between Bagdad and Basra in this manner on shallow-draught boats on the Euphrates and on the Basra Canal. We knew that Basra was the end destination for our cargo because Keith already had hard intel first-hand from his Iranian days that Basra was a warehousing and staging point for terrorist activity as well as a pick-up/drop-off point for people smuggling. Basra Port was the terrorist equivalent of one of Amazon’s main distribution centres. Everything of serious value could be tracked moving through Basra, especially shipments to and from Iran. We were on our way, and some hours later we received comms from Baz that our cargo wasn’t bio weapons but explosives headed to the oil platforms in the Northern Arabian Gulf, whilst they were awaiting a shipment in Beirut that was possibly the WOMD(b) we had been searching for.
Our journey skirted Bagdad and we were all geared up psychologically and physically ready for a firefight, each of us surveying every passing car or person standing on the roadside, fearful of an IED or roadside attack. Nothing materialised but the sights we saw were nothing short of astounding. From the open wastelands littered with the debris of annihilated escaping convoys, to the still-occupied cars and houses of outlying villages where burnt and charred bodies remained still waiting to be rested from this life, led us on to the result of mass bombing campaigns closer to the city and death on a larger scale being revealed to us. There we witnessed the utter destruction of outlying towns, bridges and roadways. We ourselves often had to veer off the highway to get around a crater or a busted tank disassembled from overzealous expenditure of ordnance. The smell of fuel oil, smoke and death scorched into the very dust and sand we now breathed. It was a sick smell that coated your lips and your tongue; a drink of water wouldn’t ever wash that taste away but simply stretch its stench to the back of your throat. It was a taste that, when ingested, combined with the sights and smells of the undertakings of men at war that stained not only everything on the outside but on the inside of your mind and your very soul. These images are saved into your brain’s hard drive for repeated viewing much later, when you thought you had forgotten.
I have never experienced such a combination of emotions. This was different to Bosnia. Emotions that should never be combined, as different as oil is from water. Forbidden amalgamations, yet strangely interfaced into combinations defined by expressions of an almost forbidden survival seen in the faces of those who passed us by. Fear with joy, compassion with hatred, I became irritated but understanding of all the sights, forcing me to look again and again into the liberated eyes of the homeless, the desperate, the hungry and the angry. To see into the eyes of your enemy walking in the dirt barefoot and to feel hopelessness on their behalf, yet fear them because trust has long since diminished into lawlessness through the terror of war – this made each and every person both your liberated friend and your hidden terrorist assailant all at the same time.
We were silent for most of that drive, only passing information to each other regarding possible targets. A woman with a heavy basket or a shaped charge? A man pushing a moped, or an IED? A donkey pulling a cart or an explosive device? Everyone was a potential target. Yet simultaneously people were cheering and welcoming the uniformed American soldiers, no doubt shitting themselves every time they were approached by the genuinely innocent and the suicide bomber intent on their destruction.
Many hours later I remember arriving at Basra Port. After Bagdad and the wastelands in between, we approached with caution. Smoke trails streamed across the horizon, fires from explosions or bombing from coalition forces, no one interested in extinguishing such fires, no one caring. I think these fires served as a reminder that the fires of hatred had in fact been re-lit. New enemies trod the bloodstained ground where old foes lay dead or abandoned after their ill-fated campaigns or escape attempts. The sky was saddened and dark with the tears of what everyone wanted to be the break of a new day and freedom of a new nation. What hopes these people once had must have been in turmoil and disarray as the change and metamorphosis of democracy took its chance to convince simple people they were in safer hands. I don’t think the people I saw or encountered had hope in any form, or maybe they did. Someone once said you have to keep breaking hearts to open them. Maybe that was what the West was trying to do, open their hearts to democracy. My mind wandered in and out of such thoughts the entire time we were on that road as I witnessed the cost of freedom being paid for mile after mile after mile.
Basra is like any other port really – the cargo berths busy with loading and offloading full of eager swarms of people keen to complete their tasks and release the hulks back to the sea from whence they came. Here the ships were old and tired, stained yellow and brown from years in service with no care for their husbandry, no pride in the work they undertook, just a means to an end. The warehouses formed a natural blockade from the main road, and the endless activity to and from them distracted me. Man and machine each moving containers and loose cargo from place to place, any one of them our target. The hum of activity felt normal and comforting to me, almost a reassurance that I was safe in some obscure way, a reminder of the walks with my dad along the docks in Newcastle, asking to go aboard random ships for a chat and a smoke. Now, I knew what we were looking for wouldn’t be on an IMO-registered vessel but on a dhow, an unregulated mode of shipping, because they are considered to be historical vessels and as such exempt from international regulations and so never inspected and never normally stopped, overlooked as being insignificant or unimportant. Such vessels transport all manner of cargos to countries bordering the Arabian Gulf, everything from camels to weapons and everything in between.
We set to work as a team to find out what had passed through the port and where. We went door to door through the port, before becoming more forceful, looking into manifests and cargo movements and the like, not caring for the complaints of local officials who we simply brushed aside in their own offices. Keith adopted a fierce and aggressive approach with absolutely no interaction with any of the port workers, whereas Owen was offering bribes and cash for information. We eventually ended up in a deserted warehouse that we had been directed to by some stevedores and ran into some US soldiers fucking around playing basketball – the warehouse was empty because it was being cleaned after housing DGs (dangerous goods). The Americans had seen a lot of munitions and stores being unloaded from US supply ships and from road trains, for onward distribution to bases out in the desert. No doubt a lot of supplies were being moved legitimately, but in my experience the more normal and the more obvious things looked, the more likely something was amiss. I was getting agitated in the heat. We were close but not close enough, and my gut feeling was that our cargo had already been deployed.
After a lot of fucking around and dead-end investigations and interrogations, we established that a pair of dhows had been seen leaving the city heading slowly south just an hour or so ahead of us. We set up a comms link with the Steering Group. We needed to get out on the water. It would have been a near on impossible task to identify and target a specific dhow from the air. Brown came back to me to give directions to a deserted Iraqi naval base, the maritime academy at Al-Dawoodi, where there was a possibility that a serviceable vessel which had been abandoned may be of some use to us. We left the port and the team soon commandeered an old Iraqi patrol boat at the academy berth. Now we were hard against the clock as we were sure now that the intent for the explosives was for the destruction of the oil platforms in the NAG, especially the ABOT (Al Basrah Oil Terminal) oil platform, which for some technical reason could never stop pumping. The ABOT platform usually fed a minimum of two supertankers to keep the flow at a controllable pressure. The oil flowed 24/7 and it wasn’t unusual to see four tankers slowly sinking with the weight of oil being delivered at this platform. It was a fucking miracle the whole thing hadn’t collapsed into the sea years ago but the rust was still holding it together with the help of some crazy engineers and a handful of Iraqi
soldiers to protect it.
Dhows laden with explosives were the preferred method to wreak havoc on oil platforms, merchant shipping and coalition warships – they were cheap, hard to follow, hard to detect and were fucking everywhere pretending to be local fishing vessels. But our superiors back in London were getting very nervous about the possible strike against the ABOT oil platform, which supplied something like 15% of the world’s oil at the time, or so I was led to believe. By us tracking this supply route we were also beginning to fully understand the supply of ordnance to various settlements and munition dumps along the Euphrates, the scale of which hadn’t been fully realised. This distribution network was where explosives would be either distributed inland from Basra or loaded onto fishing dhows or smaller faster dhows, completing the supply chain to the end user. This was the new order of how we the intelligence service operated with SF all over the world: to react, prioritise and adapt to unfolding live intelligence on the back of a main operation at short notice. Well, I guess that’s the political way of saying make it up as you go along but make sure you don’t fuck up.
We had been successfully following old and new intel to track and understand our terrorist friends’ organisations through the whole fucking stink trail that spanned Eastern Europe, Jordan, Israel, Syria and Iraq, uncovering supply routes, terrorist and government links and the relationships between different groups to try and eliminate the threat against the supply of oil, and no less importantly our primary objective: to stop the flow of arms into the underworld of the Middle East, Iran and into the Death Triangle. We wanted to put a full stop to the demand and the entire supply chain. The Death Triangle (not to be confused with the Triangle of Death – Baghdad) is an imaginary area between Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia. Dhows were hard to track especially in open waters; they didn’t have an AIS (automatic identification system) or a heat plume that could be tracked by satellite and could easily transport arms and weapons relatively undetected. Our Arabian friends had made use of old fishing dhows that were now simply floating phasmids – they all looked like innocent fishermen or traders but beneath the decks were far more deadly cargos bound for terrorist cells or the side of a coalition warship but if possible an oil platform in order to get the biggest headlines in Western newsrooms.
The Steering Group Page 46