Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  He jerked his head towards the front. ‘There’s a lot of movement about a kilometre ahead. It could be an enemy patrol.’

  I lifted my rifle and took a squint through the Kite sight, a night-viewing scope which attaches to an M16 or SA80* and works the same as a normal telescope sight – only in the dark. Then I took a long look through the MIRA, listening hard at the same time. I began to smile.

  ‘There appear to be a group of tents or other quarters over there and what might be a cooking fire,’ I said. ‘Which means they could be anybody. But I can also hear dogs barking and you don’t often get the Republican Guard taking pets on manoeuvres.

  ‘That means bedouin to me. Aim to clear the village by about five hundred to a thousand metres and they won’t give us any trouble.

  ‘Now let’s get moving or we won’t make our LUP by dawn.’

  True, there was a certain element of risk, but it was a risk I was prepared to take. The chances were that if whatever lay ahead was a military unit, then its sentries would probably think we were Iraqi troops on the move. And even if they did sight us and become suspicious, I counted on them waiting until dawn before trying to confirm those suspicions.

  If they were bedouin, however, as I was convinced they were, then they wouldn’t give a damn about us anyway. Most of the desert tribesmen almost certainly had very little idea of what was going on in the country, cared nothing for politics, and had no strong feeling of loyalty to country or leader. If aircraft were to start dropping bombs near them then they might move out of the way, but whether soldiers driving quietly by in the night were Iraqis or somebody else generally didn’t interest them in the slightest.

  We must have passed half a dozen such encampments during the night, some so close that a few of the villagers waved to us in the moonlight. We waved back. I suspect that, if they could make us out at all, then seeing us in our shemaghs and burnouses probably convinced them that we were Iraqis.

  ‘Who dares wins,’ I muttered our regimental motto to Mugger as we bumped and rattled past another village. ‘It’s amazing how many times that saying proves to be right.’ He gave me a quick grin and carried on driving. I am quite certain that if one of the villages had turned out to be a massive Iraqi ambush mounted by a full regiment of tanks, Mugger would have remained just as unflappable.

  At one point, just before midnight, when we were moving over higher ground, I ordered the convoy to halt and, using my Kite site, looked towards Baghdad. The sky was alight with the flash of explosions. Bomb after bomb, hundreds upon hundreds of them, made the sky to the east a spectacular sight, even at that distance.

  I almost felt sorry for the poor Iraqis who were getting such a royal pummelling that night. The chances were that most of the unlucky ones were civilians anyway. That, however, seems to be the pattern of modern warfare.

  * The army’s standard-issue rifle, a British-built 5.56mm automatic. It is disliked by the SAS, who distrust its reliability, especially in harsh conditions, among other faults – hence their preference for the US-built M16. Early in 2000 it was reported that some 300,000 SA80s and their derivatives in service with the British armed forces were to be recalled and modified, because of serious problems in certain conditions.

  Chapter Nineteen

  AT 0200 hours on the morning of 2 February we arrived at the top of a long, undulating slope that led down to the vast and sprawling military complex that was the Mudaysis airfield. In the thin moonlight I could make out through my Kite sight a number of massive, oval-shaped hangars, whose concrete sides and metal roofs and doors had been very effectively camouflaged, so that the huge structures seemed to blend in with the runways and aprons. They were probably extremely difficult to make out from the air even in daylight. There were other buildings on the airfield, which I assumed were admin and sleeping quarters, and these too were camouflaged.

  Headquarters had requested a daylight recce of all movements and an aircraft count, so I decided to send in a two-man team to establish a forward observation point (FOP). Meanwhile, I would keep the main unit well out of sight of any patrols the Iraqis may have had checking the perimeter and the areas around it. We fired up the vehicles and cut round to the north-west of the airfield. I selected an LUP for the patrol about three kilometres from the base, then detailed two men to use motorcycles to get down to within 1,000 metres of the perimeter fence and find a concealed spot from which to carry out a daylight observation of the complex.

  I chose Des and a corporal named Ken to carry out the recce. Ken was an ex-Para in his early thirties, not tall, but stocky and very fit; he was also, like Mugger, a first-class demolition man. Des had recommended him, which was good enough for me, but just watching him over the past few days I had noted him as a cheerful sort. I had marked him down as very ‘wilco’, meaning that he had a positive attitude and was likely to do anything I asked him to do quickly and competently.

  The two of them rode off on their bikes just before first light, each carrying a day sack of rations, a sleeping bag and their Ml6s. They established their OP within a kilometre of the airfield. It was a good choice, for the site had a panoramic view which allowed them to see all aircraft and vehicle movements on the base.

  When the Allies established air superiority – which they did almost immediately with the launch of the air offensive – the Iraqis decided either to leave all military aircraft in their hangars, which were bomb proof to a certain extent, or move them to hidden airfields; indeed, many front-line Iraqi aircraft were flown out to Iran and interned there for the duration of the war. Saddam had clearly decided that there was nothing to be gained by risking expensive warplanes in a one-sided contest against a vastly superior enemy. RAF Tornados had partially bombed Mudaysis in an attempt to destroy the airfield, but had caused little damage, and I later learned that they had lost one aircraft during the attack. Since we’d been tasked with the recce, it was clear that another bombing mission was under consideration at Allied HQ.

  When Des and Ken returned just before last light, however, they reported very little activity on the base. Apart from a couple of light aircaft there were no others to be seen. It was almost like a ghost airfield. Since we had done what we’d set out to do, I radioed in our sitrep and informed HQ that I intended to return to MSR3, which the Iraqis were using to bring supplies in from Amman in Jordan. In reply I learned that Corporal ‘Ryan’, one of the missing members of Bravo Two Zero, was safe in the British Embassy in Damascus. He had become separated from the others and had successfully escaped over Iraq’s border with Syria, after an epic journey on foot through heavily guarded areas. The news gave the guys something to smile about, and once again we left our LUP on a high note.

  The first part of our drive that night was uneventful – except for a minor disaster that struck one unfortunate member of our team. He had failed to make sure his bergen was securely strapped to the back of his Land Rover, and somewhere along the way it had fallen off, unnoticed. In it were his sleeping bag, his personal kit and almost everything he needed in the field except weapons. It meant that until we were resupplied he was going to have to go without most of his kit.

  Still, the incident probably served to make the others more careful when it came to tying their bergens on the Land Rovers. Luckily for the trooper we had a resupply due in three days’ time, and over the radio I was able to order him up a new bergen and kit.

  Shortly after midnight we hit a major road. Running roughly north-south, it proved to be the road that linked MSR3 with Nukhayb. Since I couldn’t imagine that much Iraqi traffic would be heading down into Saudi Arabia at the moment, I figured it was safe to use the road for a few kilometres. Travelling on a surface that didn’t cause the Land Rovers to buck and lurch every second or two was pure bliss. So too was the silence, for without all the bumping the constant din we had all grown used to disappeared.

  All too soon it was time to strike off into the desert again and return to our usual punishing form of travel. As we went to
turn off, however, Mugger suddenly pointed off to his right. We could just make out a square shape, visible only because it was a different shade from the surrounding surface, lying flush with the ground about twenty metres from the road itself. I told him to stop and sent a message forward by one of the motorbikes to Pat, ordering him to turn back. By the time his 110 had turned around and the other vehicles had closed up from behind, Mugger and I were out of our wagon and looking down at what turned out to be a four-foot-square steel manhole cover. A steel bar ran across the cover from a heavy metal hinge at one side to an equally sturdy bracket at the other, where the bar was secured by a large padlock. I stared at this arrangement, wondering what on earth could be underneath that needed to be protected like that.

  ‘They obviously don’t want our kind taking a sneaky look at their sewage,’ I said to Mugger. ‘I’ve never seen a manhole cover sealed up like this before.’

  ‘It must be protecting a fibre-optic cable,’ he replied. He was tugging at his earlobe, obviously deep in thought. ‘Which means,’ he continued, ‘that there should be another little darling just like this one down the road a-ways.’

  Telling the others to stay put with the vehicles I walked with Mugger along the roadside, which was clearly lit by the moon. After I had paced out exactly 200 metres we came across another of the manhole covers, just as securely sealed.

  ‘That clinches it,’ said Mugger. ‘The cable probably links that airfield, and other places, to Baghdad.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’d better locstat this location on the Trimpack so we can inform HQ. Meanwhile let’s get clear of this road while our luck holds out, and before the whole Iraqi Army comes rolling down it.’

  We hurried back to the others, mounted up and quickly got moving again, slipping northwards across country, away from the deserted road. As we clocked up the kilometres I noticed that the going gradually became easier, the landscape becoming less rolling and the surface less rocky. By the time we reached the site I had picked out the previous afternoon we were on a huge plateau, almost completely flat, from which we could see for about five to ten kilometres in every direction. After the last of the Land Rovers had joined us I told the lads, ‘This is our LUP. We’ll spread the vehicles out in pairs as usual, where I tell you, and post the usual sentries.’

  I could see, though, that some of the others were none too happy about lying up in a location with so little cover.

  ‘What if any Iraqi armour comes along?’ someone asked. ‘What happens then?’

  ‘Simple,’ I told him. ‘We call the jets in to wipe them out. In an emergency we can use our satcoms and have the aircraft here in under half an hour. So let’s get on with it.’

  ‘What about cam nets?’ came a final question. ‘Surely we’re going to use them when we’re this exposed?’

  ‘When we’re this exposed is all the more reason to let our chaps know who we are,’ I told them. ‘Now, I’ve already told you once what we’re doing, so let’s do it.’

  Up to this time, with the exception of Mudaysis, we hadn’t spotted any enemy locations. As has been said, the Iraqis were no longer capable of putting more than a handful of aircraft into the sky, if that, and had no reason to be moving troops across country this far away from a major road and in this direction. As far as I was concerned we were as safe on that beautiful gravel plateau as we would have been in a twenty-foot ditch. Nor was I going to worry about it – it was far more important to pass our information on to Al Jouf as quickly as possible. As soon as I had set the Land Rover pairs heading into their positions I told Harry to get the radio cranked up. When that was done I gave HQ our sitrep on Mudaysis and our new location, and then informed them that we had located a probable fibre-optic cable and asked their OK to cut it. The answer came back within minutes. Mission granted. Give it priority.

  To carry out the operation meant splitting my unit into two, since it would be foolish to risk compromising the entire patrol for a simple demolition job, and we would be very exposed down by the manhole covers on the road. I would take care of the fibre-optic cable along with Mugger and Harry, Des and his wagon, and Ken on a motorcycle. I told Pat to take the Unimog and the other six wagons and motorcycles and locate an LUP and a desert landing area for our resupply chopper, which was due in either the following night or in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

  I took out my air map, which clearly defined the wadi system, and picked out a spot on one of the wadis. Having made sure that Pat had copied the coordinates on to his own map I told him to rendezvous with me there at 0400 hours the following morning.

  ‘If I don’t show up on time, go to the LUP without me and return to the rendezvous location at eighteen hundred hours tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, okay,’ he said. He moved off towards his vehicle. At last light that evening I pulled out with my two vehicles and the motorcycle and headed back towards where, about thirty kilometres to the south, we had located the access covers for the buried fibre-optic cables. I had told Des to lead the way – for a very good reason. He had with him a Magellan global-positioning system (GPS), a satellite-navigation device which is both extremely accurate and very reliable. I didn’t have a clue how the thing worked, never having trained on it, but Des was able to work its magic, and within a couple of hours brought us to the section of the road where we had spotted the manhole covers.

  My plan was to blow two of the manholes and the cables beneath them. We parked a few metres away from the first and while our demolition experts, Mugger and Ken, prepared a charge, Des and I used crowbars to break the padlock and remove the security bar that held the metal cover down. Once the cover was lifted clear we were faced with a hole some six feet deep and four feet square. By the light of my torch we could see three cables running across the bottom of the hole from a pipe on one side to an identical pipe on the other. Another wire, separated from the three main cables, also ran through the pipes.

  I called Mugger and Ken over to take a look and check if the charge they were preparing was big enough to do the job. Mugger carefully examined the cables in the torchlight and told me, ‘The three larger cables are fibre optics. I don’t know what the other one is. But the charge we’re putting down there is not only going to cut the command link, but will fuse it back along the tunnels for hundreds of yards in both directions. They’re going to have to do a lot of digging to reconnect these beauties.’

  ‘Perfect,’ I grinned at them. ‘In the words of the song, “Who could ask for anything more?”’

  We had already agreed to a thirty-minute delay on the explosive charges to give ourselves time to get well clear of the area. The charge comes in a plastic-covered case, which makes it easier to handle, and within a couple of minutes Mugger and Ken had the first one ready. As timers we were using time pencils which, when broken, start a chemical reaction. Depending on the pencil you have selected, that reaction lasts for a carefully computed length of time before it produces a spark. At the end of the selected delay this would ignite the safety fuse, which would then ignite the detonator cord, which in turn would ignite the detonator pressed into the explosive charge. It sounds complicated, but once the time pencil has produced a spark, the chain reaction that follows is pretty much instantaneous.

  The two demolition men decided between them that Ken, who was the slimmer, had better be the one we lowered into the manhole to place the charge. We did this using a loop line which I fetched from my Land Rover. A loop line, as its name implies, is a piece of strong nylon cord some thirty feet long with loops at each end. Using our karabiners, which are small metal clips with spring-loaded gates used by mountaineers, we could string these lines together to form a rope which we could abseil down. We could even use them to tow vehicles, since they are immensely strong. Ken put a foot in one of the loops, and we lowered him down to the bottom of the shaft. He placed the charge alongside the cables and snapped the pencil timer, whereupon we hauled him out.

  Immediately Des and his crew, with Ken, sped
to the next manhole cover, 200 metres away, while Mugger, Harry and I replaced the cover on the first one, snapped the security bar back in place and carefully arranged the forced-apart padlock so that it would at least pass a casual inspection. We then brushed the area around the cover with sacking to obliterate any signs of our having been there and headed after Des.

  He and his team already had the cover off the second manhole, Ken had prepared the charge, and we were able to lower him down straight away. In less than three minutes the cover was replaced and we were cleaning off the area. Then Mugger grabbed my shoulder.

  ‘We have company, Billy,’ he said quietly. I looked up and immediately spotted three sets of headlights zig-zagging slowly down the road towards us, about a kilometre away.

  Suddenly we were all on full alert. There was no chance of our visitors being bedouin this time. This was the enemy, and they were heading straight for us. We were almost certainly outnumbered, although I doubted we were outgunned. I was weighing up the odds and risks involved when the three vehicles stopped. Then, within a couple of minutes, they came on again at the same steady pace.

  ‘They’re checking the manholes,’ said Mugger. ‘That spare wire must have been a trembler. We’ve tripped the alarm system and they’ve come to see what’s going on.’

  Between where we had left the vehicles and the edge of the road there was a small berm running parallel to the roadway. If we brought the bike and Land Rovers across it, we would be able to use the metalled road to make a fast getaway. Even though we would then be on the roadway with the enemy vehicles, I decided that this was our best option.