by Shaun Clarke
Ricketts looked to the front again, where the other adoo were still firing. He saw Parker jumping up to throw a grenade, ducking again as it sailed through the air and dropped behind the ridge. The explosion uprooted thorn bushes and sent up a column of soil and sand, and was followed immediately by the screaming of the wounded adoo.
Parker was up and running before the clamour died away, closely followed by his Arabs, some of whom were releasing macabre wailings and swinging their glittering kunjias. Ricketts gave them covering fire, aiming left of their advance, while the men beside him aimed to the right. Parker went up and over the rocks, jumping down on the adoo, firing his Lee Enfield from the hip as he disappeared over the other side, followed again by his firqats.
Ricketts saw a firqat swinging his gleaming kunjias, then jumped up and ran for the ridge without thinking about it. He reached the rim and stopped there for a short moment, aiming down with his SLR, but not firing immediately.
Parker was crouching low, holding his rifle in one hand, lunging upwards with his Fairburn-Sykes knife, to stab it into the stomach of an adoo who was trying to strangle him.
The firqats, still wailing in their strange, unearthly way, were slashing at the other adoo, whose jellabas were in tatters and soaked with blood.
Momentarily muddling the adoo with the firqats, Ricketts stood there, not firing, completely exposed, until he was pushed over the other side by someone behind him. Landing on his feet, he saw an Arab coming at him, swinging a kunjias, and he fired a burst that almost cut him in two. The adoo’s upper half leant forward – like an Oriental gentleman being very polite – as blood burst from his belly and mouth. His eyes, above the bloodsoaked shemagh, rolled up in their sockets.
Ricketts stepped back to let his victim fall forward, then Gumboot and Andrew jumped down beside him, followed almost instantly by Lampton and Jock, both of whom glanced left and right, at the dead, bloody adoo.
‘Oh, man!’ Andrew exclaimed softly.
‘A real slaughterhouse,’ Gumboot said.
‘Damned lucky you’re still in one piece,’ Jock told them, ‘let alone standing upright.’
‘Serves the bastards right,’ Bill said, ‘for what they did to my mate.’
As they stood there, glancing about them, seeing clouds of flies feasting, more firqats were gathering along the ridge to wail in triumph and shout blessings for this victory. Then, realizing that no more could be done here, they jumped down and raced on towards the Wadi Dharbat, following the redoubtable Parker, whose OGs, Ricketts noticed, were soaked in the blood of his adoo victims.
‘What the hell are you all standing here for?’ Lampton bawled. ‘Let’s head for the wadi!’
Shocked back to reality and instantly oblivious to the dead men lying about their feet, they all followed the sergeant away from the ridge and on to the eastern side of the Wadi Dharbat, where all hell was breaking loose.
Chapter 17
They advanced on the Wadi Dharbat in the late afternoon, when the sun was going down in the west, casting long shadows and turning the white hills a mellow golden colour. Lampton was leading his own group, but Parker and his firqats were well ahead of him, the latter now confident with victory and keen to fight again. More troops were advancing along the west side of the wadi, strung out in long lines that ran from the lowland to the crest of the high ground, appearing from behind rocks, disappearing, then reappearing, the sound of gunfire a clear indication that they were meeting resistance. Lampton’s group had seen nothing since leaving the ridge an hour ago, but the sound of gunshots up ahead, where Parker’s Arab fighters were merely part of a larger SAF force, including SAF and Baluchis, was an indication that they, too, were having to flush out adoo snipers as they advanced.
‘Take five!’ Lampton shouted, raising his right hand to signal that they could stop.
Sighing with relief, Ricketts used a smoothly rounded rock as a chair while he wiped sweat from his face and drank awkwardly from his water bottle, having to hold his hand over the spout to keep the frantic flies and mosquitoes out. After screwing the cap back on and clipping the bottle back on his webbing, he slid a stick of chewing gum into his mouth, hoping to get rid of the taste of sand and dust.
Gumboot lit a cigarette, inhaled luxuriously, then pursed his lips and blew a few smoke rings.
‘Well, Gumboot,’ Andrew said, wiping sweat from his glistening black forehead with a handkerchief and grinning mischievously, ‘you’ve got to hand it to Parker’s firqats – they fought like demons back on that ridge and proved they had courage.’
Gumboot looked carefully at Andrew, not too sure of his grounds here. ‘I never said they didn’t have courage,’ he replied defensively. ‘I just said the fuckers weren’t dependable and I stand by that.’
‘Admit it, Gumboot, they’re OK.’
‘They may have been OK back on the ridge, but that doesn’t make them dependable. All whooping and hollering when we took out the adoo, but I’d still like to see them in a tight spot. I wouldn’t exactly sit back with a smoke, letting them get on with it, I can tell you that, mate.’
Ricketts noticed that Bill was sitting slightly apart from the others, blowing thin clouds of cigarette smoke and looking decidedly unhappy, still shocked by the death of his friend. Lampton, who had been keeping his eye on him, said, ‘Are you OK?’
Bill just stared at him, as if not understanding.
‘I asked if you were OK,’ Lampton repeated.
‘Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘I know that Tom came as a shock. It always is the first time.’
‘Are you telling me it gets better, boss?’
‘You get used to it,’ Lampton said.
Bill snorted derisively. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You get used to it.’ He inhaled and blew another thin stream of smoke. ‘His head,’ he said, as if talking to himself. ‘I keep seeing his head. I never thought …’ He trailed off into silence, glanced left and right, blinked, then inhaled and exhaled, trying to keep himself steady.
‘That’s a form of self-indulgence,’ Lampton said, ‘and we haven’t time for it. Put all thought of Tom out of your mind and concentrate on the task at hand. If you don’t, you could make a mistake and endanger us all. Is that understood?’
‘I’m OK,’ Bill said.
‘Good. Glad to hear it.’ Lampton was just about to stand up and wave them all forward when he heard a distant, familiar, hollow thudding sound. ‘Mortars!’ he bawled and dropped into a crouch as the shells came whistling in from a great height.
The others either looked up automatically or threw themselves to the ground as the first of the explosions erupted about twenty feet away, hurling soil and sand high in the air and deafening the men with its roar. As the afterblast struck and debris rained down on them, two more shells exploded, even closer than the first, and Lampton, already obscured by the smoke, bawled, ‘Let’s go!’ He advanced on the run, away from the swirling smoke, and the men did the same.
It was clear, as they ran, that a fire fight had broken out ahead, where the SAF, Baluchi and firqat troops were spreading across the irregular, rocky terrain at the crouch, with mortar explosions erupting between them. Before Lampton’s group reached that area, however, a Shpagin fired on them from the high ground, making them take cover behind some rocks. They returned the fire with their SLRs and M16s, but as such weapons were largely ineffective at such a range, the adoo machine-gun kept firing, turning the terrain around them into an inferno of boiling dust and flying debris, including hot gravel and pieces of barbed thorn bushes.
‘Set up the mortar!’ Lampton shouted at Bill as sand, dust and gravel showered them. ‘Take that bastard out!
The rest of the troop kept up a hail of return fire as Gumboot and Bill mounted the 7.62mm mortar on its steel baseplate. While they were doing so, Andrew ran up the lower slopes of the high ground, zigzagging from rock to rock, ignored by the machine-gun crew, still concentrating on the main group, though fired on by FN rif
les from the same location. Eventually settling down behind some large boulders about halfway up the slope, south-west of the enemy position, he wrapped the GPMG sling around his body and waited for Bill and Gumboot to give him an opening.
From his position on high, Andrew was able to see both the enemy position on the high ground – revealed by the curling blue smoke from its roaring machine-gun – and the rest of his troop on the low ground, temporarily protected by a natural circle of rocks that was being devastated, and gradually torn apart, by the adoo machine-gunner.
Within the convulsion of sand and smoke created by the machine-gun fire, Bill and Gumboot had put the mortar together and were adjusting the alignment; Ricketts was giving covering fire with his SLR; and Sergeant Lampton was covering his left ear with one hand, blocking out the atrocious noise, while shouting into the radio mike.
Jock, though nominally in charge of the radio, was keeping watch with his M16 resting in the cradle of his left arm. Cocky as always, he waved at Andrew and then stuck his thumb up in the air.
An adoo sniper put a bullet through Jock’s hand, making him scream and fall backwards, curling up and holding the wrist of his wounded hand with his free hand, amazed at the amount of blood pouring out.
Bill fired the mortar. The elevation was too low and the shell fell well behind the adoo’s machine-gun emplacement, though close enough to cover the gunners in a rain of soil and sand. As Bill and Gumboot increased the mortar’s elevation, Ricketts kept up the covering fire with his SLR and Lampton took his first-aid kit out of his bergen and bandaged Jock’s hand.
‘It’s bleeding a lot,’ he said, wiping Jock’s blood from his face, ‘but the bullet went clean through and out the other side, so there’s no lasting damage. You’ll be in a lot of pain for a long time, but you won’t be permanently damaged.’
‘I’m fucking bleeding to death!’ Jock responded, still holding his wrist and looking at the bloodstained bandage around his hand.
Lampton squeezed his shoulder. ‘No, you’re not. You’re just bleeding a lot. It’ll hurt and you’ll have restricted mobility for a long time, but the hand will get better in due course. Now make sure that bandage stays tight – and keep in contact with the forward group through the radio. You can still work that, Jock.’
‘OK, boss,’ Jock said, then twitched when the mortar fired a second time. This time the shell fell even closer to the adoo sangar, but it still did not damage it. Jock rolled his eyes in mock despair. Lampton again squeezed his shoulder. ‘You’ll be OK,’ he said, then turned away to do the leopard crawl up to Bill and Gumboot. ‘You two couldn’t hit a barn door,’ he said, ‘if the damned thing was stuck on your pricks. What the hell’s going on?’
‘We don’t have a forward observer,’ Bill said, ‘so we can only guess the correct calibrations. But this time we’ll get the cunts.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes, we will.’
‘I depend on it,’ Lampton said.
Ricketts was still blasting the hell out of the ground around the adoo sangar – not doing much damage, but keeping their heads down – when Lampton crawled up to him and said, ‘Good man. Keep it going.’ Ricketts did not reply. He was too busy firing. Bill fired the mortar, making another awful racket, filling the vicinity with smoke, and the shell, which was clearly visible leaving the tube, arched over the hill at a very high elevation, then dropped down, like a bird shot in flight, on what seemed like the very heads of the adoo.
The explosion blew the stones of the sangar out a long way. When the smoke cleared, one dead body was clearly revealed, hanging over the remaining stones, his jellaba torn and bloody, with the bent and smouldering barrel of the machine-gun lying on top of him.
Some others, however, were clearly still alive and one of them stood up, screaming wildly, firing his Kalashnikov in a wide arc. Andrew stood up too, forgetting the rule book, supporting the GPMG with the sling around his body, holding the weapon in his right hand, the belt feed in his left, and spreading his legs to fire from the hip. The recoil pushed him back, but he leant forward, shaking visibly, and his sustained burst tore the remaining stones apart, exploding the sand and dust, then moved upwards to savage the adoo sniper and throw him back out of sight, his body riddled with bullets.
‘Keep firing!’ Lampton shouted and raced up the hill, followed instantly by Ricketts, while Bill and Gumboot, forsaking the mortar, gave covering fire with their M16s.
Andrew kept firing, left and right, up and down, only stopping when Lampton and Ricketts almost reached the position. They raced into boiling dust, swirling smoke, the stench of cordite, and found Arabs slashed by shrapnel, scorched by the blast, peppered with bullets, pouring blood everywhere, with one of them still holding his kunjias, as if about to attack them. The bent barrel of the exploded machine-gun had crushed the skull of a gunner.
Lampton turned away and looked back down the hill, then he raised and lowered his right hand from shoulder level to hip, indicating, ‘Follow me.’
‘These diversions are holding us back,’ he said to Ricketts. ‘Let’s catch up with the forward group.’
Without waiting for a reply, he waved to Andrew, still farther down the hill, then pointed forward with his forefinger. Understanding, Andrew waved back and started humping the GPMG onto his shoulders. Ricketts followed Lampton as he made his way obliquely down the hill, gradually falling back in front of the group on the rocky flatland that ran between the two sides of the wadi. Gumboot and Bill had broken the mortar down into its component parts and were now marching heavily burdened, holding their M16s at the ready. Bill looked less troubled now.
The fire fight was continuing where the forward group was located, with explosions from 81mm mortars and LAWS causing devastation. Though the sun was still sinking, painting the white rocks with gold, the troops were painfully advancing through an immense cloud of sand and dust. More accurately, they were moving left and right, between the eastern and western sides of the wadi, like men who did not quite know what to do. Though being devastated by adoo mortars and machine-guns, they still could not advance. Banked up behind them, spread across the flatland between the two sides of the wadi, were SAF and Baluchi soldiers, together with the SAS men who had advanced along the western side with their Land Rovers, Saladin armoured cars, and Omani suppliers with heavily laden donkeys. They had all stopped to find out what was happening.
‘What the hell …?’ As he often did, Lampton asked the question of no one in particular, then went off to look for an answer. In this case, he went no farther than another hundred yards, where, with Ricketts by his side and his other men behind him, he found Greenaway in heated consultation with Worthington and Parker.
‘I’m sorry, boss,’ Parker was saying, ‘but they’re adamant about this. They say it’s the beginning of the religious festival of Ramadan, when they’re forbidden to eat or drink between dawn and dusk. They’re also forbidden to fight.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ the CO replied, his face purple with rage. ‘We know all about Ramadan, planned for it, discussed it, but because of the importance of this operation, the firqats were given a dispensation – not only by their religious leaders, but also by the Sultan himself. So they’ve no reason to lay down their arms.’
‘Sorry, boss,’ Parker replied, pointing to the mass of firqats who were leaving the assault force and heading back to the Ain watering-hole, ‘but they aren’t concerned with their religious leaders or the Sultan. Come what may, they’re going to show proper respect for the religious festival of Ramadan. That means no eating, no drinking … and no fighting. They’ve already laid down their arms.’
‘Damn it, Sergeant …!’
‘Sorry, boss.’
‘They can’t desert us at this stage! We’ve already cleared most of the adoo off the plateau and driven them into the wadis around it. The Sultan’s forces can now control the area. If the firqats desert us at this point – just when we need to flush the remaining adoo out of the surround
ing wadis – we’ll have to abandon some of our positions and let the adoo come back in. If they do that, they’ll mount a counter-attack.’
‘They’ve just done it,’ Worthington said, pointing towards the western hill.
Everyone looked automatically towards where he was pointing. They saw a vast, frightening number of adoo coming up over the rim of the western side of the wadi, all framed by a blood-red sun that appeared to be melting and dripping over them, painting the whole landscape in crimson. Even as the adoo marched down the hill, the dull thud of their firing mortars was heard.
‘Damn!’ Greenaway snapped.
The first shells exploded at the base of the western hill, throwing bodies into the air, shredding the flesh from some of the donkeys with flying red-hot shrapnel and obscuring those nearby in billowing sand and spiralling smoke. The bellowing of the donkeys did not drown the dreadful screams of the wounded men.
‘We need the firqats,’ Greenaway said.
‘You won’t get them,’ Parker replied. ‘Sorry, boss, they won’t wear it.’
‘I should have known,’ Greenaway said.
‘We live in hope,’ Worthington told him. ‘We either stand here and fight or make a tactical withdrawal and regroup where we have more support. What say you, boss?’
Greenaway looked at the western hill. The adoo were swarming down it. Their mortars were landing all along the base of the hill, killing animals and men, and clearing the way for an adoo advance back along the wadi, regaining what they had just lost. Greenaway scratched his nose, watched the mortar shells exploding, then turned to the radio operator beside Worthington. ‘A tactical withdrawal,’ he said, ‘for the Western Group and its support teams, to regroup at the Ain watering-hole and wait for our instructions. The Eastern Group will …’