Bravo two zero

by Andy McNab

  "This car is his occupation," the son said in good English. "He has to feed his children."

  Bob came storming over and said, "I've fucking had enough of this."

  Sticking the end of his bayonet up one of the driver's nostrils, he walked him over to the ditch.

  We left them all there. We had no time to tie them up; we just wanted to get going. We needed to put in some miles.

  "I'll drive," I said. "I saw Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver."

  It was an old column gearshift, and I couldn't work it. To the accompaniment of jeers and much slagging, I did a six-point turn to get us facing west, and off we lurched. Legs was in the front to do the compass bearings; the other three were crammed into the back. The way our luck had been going I fully expected the compass to pack in and the next sign we saw to be "Baghdad Welcomes Safe Drivers."

  We had no shorts (pistols); they were all longs, and it was going to be almost impossible to bear them if we were compromised. Nevertheless we were happy as Larry. This was make-or-break time. We'd either make it tonight or we'd be dead.

  It was unfortunate that we were committed to going on roads but we'd just have to make the most of it. We had just over half a tank of fuel, which was plenty for the distance we had to cover. We were going at quite a fuel-efficient pace anyway because we didn't want to look conspicuous or get involved in the slightest accident. We'd just drive as far as we could, dump the vehicle, and go over the border on foot.

  We tried to make up game plans for what we would do if we got caught in a VCP (Vehicle Checkpoint). We didn't know what we'd do. We couldn't try to barge through a checkpoint barrier on the road. That might happen in films but it's fantasy stuff; permanent VCPs are made to stop that sort of thing. The vehicle draws fire every time, and we'd end up as perforated as Tetley tea bags I'd probably just have to brake as fast as I could, and we'd pile out and do a runner.

  Unfortunately, we were reading air charts, not an AA road atlas. The roads were very confusing. Legs directed me to take junctions that went generally west, and I constantly checked the mileometer to see how far we'd gone.

  The first major location we came to was the pumping station area. There were military vehicles and blokes milling around, but no checkpoint.

  Nobody took a blind bit of notice of us as the cab chugged past.

  We had to look as though we knew where we were -going. If we looked lost it would arouse suspicion, and people might even come over and offer to help.

  We came to yet another set of junctions. There was nothing going west and the best we could do was to turn north. It was a normal two-way road instead of the single-track ones we had been moving on. It was busy with convoys of oil tankers. We pulled out to overtake, but military vehicles were coming the other way. Nobody else was doing it so we had to play the game to blend in. At least we were moving, and the heater was going full blast. It was blissfully warm.

  The convoy stopped.

  We couldn't see why. Traffic lights? A broken-down vehicle? A VCP?

  Legs jumped out and had a quick look but could see nothing in the darkness. We started inching forward. We stopped again and Legs got out.

  "Military vehicles at the front of the convoy," he muttered. "One of them has crashed or broken down."

  Squaddies were hanging around on foot and in Land Cruisers, and cars and trucks were maneuvering around them. We started to drive past, and I held my breath. One of the blokes directing the traffic spotted us and started to wave us on. Mark, Bob, and Dinger pretended to be asleep on the back seat; Legs and I grinned like idiots inside our shamags and waved back. As they disappeared in the rearview mirror, we laughed ourselves silly.

  We hit a built-up area. Statues of Saddam stood outside public buildings and pictures of him were plastered on every available space.

  We drove past cafe bars with people milling around outside. We passed civilian cars, armored cars, and APCs. Nobody turned a hair.

  Sometimes the roads and junctions funneled us in totally the wrong direction. We did a touch of north, then east, then south, then west, but ensured we were generally keeping west. Mark had the Magellan on his lap in the back and was making attempts to get a fix so that if the shit hit the fan, we would each have the information we needed to get us over the border.

  Dinger was smoking like a condemned man enjoying his last request. I was considering whether to join him. I'd never had a cigarette in my life, and I thought: By tonight I could be dead, so why not try one while I have the chance?

  "What's the score on these fags?" I asked Dinger.

  "Do you drag all the smoke down, or what do you do?"

  "You've had one before, have you?"

  "No, mate-never smoked in my life."

  "Well, you ain't going to start now, you wanker. You'll flake out and crash the car. Anyway, do you have any idea how many people die of lung cancer each year? I can't possibly expose you to that sort of risk.

  Tell you what, though-you can have a bit of passive."

  He blew a lungful of smoke in my direction. I hated it, as he knew I would. When we were on the Counter Terrorist team together, Dinger used to drive one of the Range Rovers. He knew I loathed cigarettes so he'd be at it all the time, keeping the windows wound up. I'd go berserk and open them all, and he'd be laughing his cock off. Then the windows would go up and he'd do it again. He had a tape called something like "Elvis-The First Twenty Years." He knew I hated it so he'd put it on at every opportunity. We were driving along the M4 one time, and I'd wound down the window because he was smoking. Dinger put the cassette on and grinned. I pressed Eject, grabbed the cassette, and chucked it out of the window. War was declared.

  I had my own tapes which I took with us on long drives, but the difference was that it was good music-Madness, usually, or The Jam. One night, many weeks later, I put one of them on and closed my eyes as I complained about his smoking and farting. Before I realized what he was doing, he ejected the tape and sent it the way of Elvis.

  I waved away the cloud of Iraqi cigarette smoke.

  "I hate it when you do that," I said. "Do you know, for every nine cigarettes you smoke, I'm smoking three of them?"

  "You shouldn't honk," he said. "It's cheap. You're not paying, I am."

  The road signs were in English as well as Arabic, and the blokes in the back had a map spread out on their laps, trying to work out where we were. Nothing actually registered. The built-up area stretched all along the Euphrates, and there were no place-names.

  All things considered, we were doing rather well. The mood was quietly confident but apprehensive. They must have found the people at the hijack site by now and would be on the lookout for the yellow cab.

  Compared with what we'd been through in the last few days, it was quite a funny time, and at least it was warm. The car fugged up, and our clothes started to dry.

  There were more convoys, consisting of about twenty vehicles at a time.

  We tagged on behind. There were civilian cars everywhere. There was no street lighting, which was rather good. We tried our best to hide our weapons, but there had to be a compromise between concealment and being able to get the weapons up to bear in the event of a drama.

  We rounded a corner on the open road and got into another slowly moving jam. Vehicles had come up behind us, and we were stuck. This time Legs couldn't get out or he'd be seen by the people behind. We'd just have to bluff it out.

  A soldier with his weapon slung over his shoulder was coming down the queue on the driver's side, the left-hand side as we were looking.

  People were talking to him from their cars and trucks. There were two more squad dies on the right-hand side. They were mooching along more slowly than their mate, weapons over their shoulders, smoking and chatting.

  We knew we were going to get compromised. The moment the jundie stuck his head inside and had a look at us, he'd see we were white eyes. There was no more than a 1 percent chance of us getting away with it.

  Big decision: What
did we do now? Did we get out straightaway and go for it, or did we wait?

  "Wait," I said. "You never know."

  Very slowly we tried to get our weapons up to bear. If we had a drama, we would have to get out of the car. Every handle had a hand on it, ready for the off.

  Mark quietly said, "See you in Syria."

  We'd try to keep together as much as possible, but there was a strong chance we'd get split. It would be every man for himself.

  We waited and waited, watching these people slowly working their way down the line. They didn't look particularly switched on: they were just killing time. Mark tried to get a fix on the Magellan to find out how far we were from the border, but he ran out of time.

  "Let's just go south, and then west," I said.

  That meant jumping out on the left-hand side of the road, firing off some rounds to get their heads down, and running like mad. As far as I was concerned, this was our most dangerous moment since leaving Saudi.

  The blokes at the back had got their weapons up. Legs had his 203 across him with the barrel resting on my lap.

  "If he comes up and puts his head through, as soon as he ID's us, I'll slot him," he said.

  All I needed to do was keep my head out of the way. Legs would just bring the barrel up and do the business. - "We'll take the other two,"

  Bob said.

  I leaned forward to hide Legs's weapon.

  The jundie got to the vehicle in front of us. He leaned down to speak to the driver, laughing and gob bing off, not a care in the world. He waved his hands as he spoke, probably moaning about the weather. With our Arabic we wouldn't have much to talk about when he got to our car. I could ask him the way to the market, but that was about it.

  He said his goodbyes to the vehicle in front and sauntered towards our cab. I leant forward and fiddled with the dashboard controls.

  He did one tap on the window. I put my head right back and in the same motion pushed my legs out and pressed my body against the seat. The squaddy's face was pressed expectantly against the window. Legs lifted the barrel of the 203. One round was all it took. There was an explosion of shattered glass, and the car doors flew open. We were out and running before the body had even hit the ground.

  The two other squad dies started running for cover, but the Minimis took them down before they'd taken half a dozen paces. The civvies were straight down into the foot wells of their vehicles and quite rightly so.

  We ran at right angles to the column of cars until we came into line of sight of the VCP and were illuminated by the spill from headlights. They opened up, and we returned a massive amount of rounds. They must have been wondering what the hell was going on. All they would have heard was one round, then a couple of short bursts, followed by the sight of five dickheads in shamags legging it into the desert.

  The first people over the road put covering fire down on the VCP until the others got across. Once there, we all moved. The whole contact lasted no more than thirty seconds.

  We ran south for several more minutes. I stopped and shouted, "On me!

  On me! On me!"

  Heads dashed past me, and I put my hand on them and counted one, two, three, four.

  "Everybody's here. Okay, let's go!"

  We ran and ran, making the best of the confusion we'd created behind us.

  To my right, I heard the sound of Dinger laughing as he ran, and before long we'd all joined in. It was sheer bloody relief. None of us could believe we'd got out of it.

  We headed west. From Mark's last fix on the Magel lan we estimated we had maybe 8 miles to the border. Eight miles in over nine hours of darkness-a piece of cake. All we had to do was take our time and make sure we got there tonight. There was no way a group this big could lie up the next day.

  We came to an inhabited area. There were pylons, old cars, rubbish tips, dogs howling, the lights of a house. Sometimes we had to get over fences. There were vehicle headlights on roads. Behind us in the area of the VCP there was still an incredible amount of noise. People were still hollering, and there were sporadic bursts of small-arms fire.

  Tracked vehicles screamed up and down the road. It was just a race now, a matter of the hares keeping in front of the hounds.

  The moon started to come out. A full moon, in the west. It couldn't have been worse. The only good thing was that we, too, could see more and move faster.

  We landed up paralleling another road. We couldn't avoid it. We had a built-up area to our left and the road to our right. We didn't have time to fart-arse around. We were going for it big style. We had to hit the border before their initial confusion died down and reinforcements arrived.

  Every time a car came from either direction we had to take cover. We were climbing fences, avoiding dogs, avoiding buildings. There were houses everywhere now, lights on, generators going. We picked our way through without incident.

  Vehicles started to move along the road without their lights, presumably hoping to catch us out. There was still shooting way off in the distance. In our desert camouflage, against an almost European background of plantations and lush arable land, we glowed like ghosts in the moonlight.

  We were spotted from the road. Three or four vehicles came screaming along, and blokes jumped out firing. We were down to a few mags each by now, and there was bound to be lots more drama before the night was over. All we could do was run. There was no cover. They kept on firing and we kept on running, the rounds zinging past us and into the built-up area.

  We sprinted for 1,200 feet. We passed through little clusters of houses, expecting at any moment to be slotted by people coming out, but the local population kept themselves to themselves, bless their cotton socks. I was sweating buckets, panting for breath. Adrenaline gets hold of you and you clock Olympic times, but you can't sustain it. Then the firing sparks up again and you find a bit more.

  We started to move over a crest. We looked down on the lights of Abu Kamal and Krabilah, the two built-up areas that straddled the border. It was just a sea of light, as if we'd run on to the film set of Close Encounters. And there were the masts, the taller one on the Iraqi side.

  The boys in pursuit kept firing.

  "Fucking hell," Bob shouted, "look at this, this is good news! We're nearly there!"

  Like a prat, I said "Shut the fuck up!" as if he was a naughty schoolboy. I regretted it as soon as I said it. I was thinking exactly the same thing myself. Those lights, Abu Kamal, that tower-they weren't in Iraq, they were in Syria. I could almost taste the place. I was as sparked up as Bob was.

  We ran over the crest. But the moment we came down from the higher ground we were sky lined to some boys stationed below. They turned out to be antiaircraft battery. They greeted us with small-arms fire, and then opened up with triple A. We ducked north to get across the road, committing ourselves to going through the built-up area that lay between us and the river. Vehicles were revving up near the AAA battery, and to top it all some jets screamed over. They must have been ours because the S60s diverted their fire. In the chaos we slipped away.

  There was firing left, right, and behind us, but we just kept going, heads down. Heavy tracer went up vertical, then horizontal where the Iraqis were just firing at anything that was moving. It was outrageous of them because there were civilian buildings all about. We were deafened by AAA gunfire. We had to scream our instructions and warnings to each other.

  We got up to a road, made a quick check, and were straight over. We stopped on the other side and took a deep breath to sort ourselves out.

  Going into a built up area is a totally different ballgame; it's something you always try to avoid, but we had no choice. There was a plantation to the right, but it was protected by a high fence.

  There was about 900-1,200 feet meters of habitation to get through, a big amalgamation of houses with perimeter walls. Two-inch plastic irrigation pipes ran along the ground from the houses to the plantation.

  We moved down, trying to use the shadows as much as possible, walking
with our weapons facing out, safety catches off, fingers on the trigger.

  We were moving north, and the moon was in the west. I was in front. If anybody appeared I'd give it to him with my 203, and Mark would come out two or three steps and give it a burst with his Minimi. Then we'd withdraw around the first corner and reorganize ourselves, or move forward, depending on what we had been firing at.

  People were shouting their heads off in the houses, lights were going off, doors being slammed. We walked: we couldn't be arsed to run. If it was going to happen there was nothing we were going to achieve by running.

  From the end of the buildings there were pathways and large pipes running down to the Euphrates about 450 feet away. Diesel pumps chugged. There was mud and shit all over the place which had iced over.

  We got into the corner of a plantation for a bit of cover and stopped.

  The first priority was to fill up our water bottles. Two of the lads went down to the river's edge while Mark got a fix on the Magellan.

  "Exactly lOKs from the border' he whispered.

  All the chaos was over the other side of the road. Tracked vehicles were maneuvering and firing, and the AAA guns were still pumping away.

  In the middle and far distance there were bursts of small-arms fire.

  They must have been shooting at dogs and anything else that moved-including each other. We were almost past caring. There were six miles to go, and we would have to fight for every mile.

  We sat with our backs against the trees, watching the two lads filling the bottles.

  "Ten Ks," Dinger said. "Fucking hell, we could run that in thirty minutes."

  "Pity about the full moon," Bob said.

  "And the desert camouflage," Dinger said. "And the fact that every man and his dog is out looking for us."

  When Mark and Legs came back with our bottles we considered the options.

  There seemed to be four. We could cross the river; move east to avoid the border and attempt to cross on the following night; keep going west; or split up and try any of the three as individuals.

  The river was a fearsome sight. It must have been about 1,600 feet across, and after the torrential rainfall it was in full flood, flowing fast and furious. The water would be freezing. We were weakened by the long tab and lack of sleep, food, and water. We couldn't see any boats, but if we found one it would become an option. That left swimming, and I doubted we'd last more than ten minutes. And who was to say there wouldn't be troops waiting on the other side?