We’d been living the dream in Africa – a pool, nanny, two cars – but we were having trouble getting Natalie into a decent enough school and were worried about both the girls getting malaria, and at the end of 2006 we moved back to London so she could go to kindergarten. It was the heady days of rocketing property prices and we got back on the property ladder with a ground-floor four-bedroomed flat with a big garden and a bigger mortgage. Huge. A telephone number. No worries, the agent said, it’ll double in value in five years.
We signed the agreement, the housing market promptly nosedived, and I headed back to West Africa to sign on with the Proelio Security Group to tidy up whatever mess they could find in the region, which looked like an eternal fount of well-paid work for as long as I wanted it. Central Africa in particular, from Guinea on the west coast all the way through to the Congo and Uganda, is plagued with bands of tribal, often drugged-up, cannibalistic militias, some of whom the Libyans helped set up in the 1990s. There are innumerable vicious organizations, of which only a few have achieved notoriety in the West, such as the Janjaweed in the Sudan and the child soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a complete shit-hole of a country when the Belgians were there and which, as far as I could see, has only gone steadily downhill since they left in 1960.
After a three-week close protection task in the DRC with a Red Cross team assessing some of the most ravaged and pitiful small towns and villages I’d ever seen in my life, it was like a holiday when I landed the maritime security contract policing the shimmering, if shark-infested, seas off Côte d’Ivoire.
Although technically we had an anti-piracy role, 99 per cent of the work involved interdicting poachers, by which I mean fishing vessels either unlicensed or from neighbouring countries.
The work was pretty easy. Very easy, actually. We had paid informants, or gardiens, up and down the coast, and whenever someone saw a boat they didn’t recognize, they would call us up with their location and a rough description of the target vessel. We would hit the water with our converted trawler carrying two high-speed, semi-rigid inflatable boats, known as RIBs, and intercept the poachers before they had a chance to head for home.
Government commissions on each arrest were generous, and the lifestyle was fantastic – lobster, squid, yellowfin tuna with plantains and aloko, fried bananas; white fish, swordfish, rainbow fish. They love fish in Côte d’Ivoire – they even put them on their postage stamps. We’d get the grill going at sunset and watch the sky turning pink with a beer or a glass of bangui, palm wine, the devil’s own brew. Most nights I’d call Krista as she was putting the girls to bed in London, before sleeping the sleep of the just in a hammock left behind by the French contractor I’d replaced.
We spent the rest of the time hanging around the beach, playing frisbee and volleyball when it was cool in the morning, and wakeboarding up the mouth of the river. I never did any wakeboarding in the sea, partly due to the choppy surf, but more so because I was sure I’d seen black fins breaking the surface, bull sharks, makos, tigers, you name it, they were out there, waiting.
I went back to London once a month and I’d been home with the girls for Christmas. It was now the beginning of spring 2007, and back in Iraq the crisis was about to peak; the so-called ‘surge’ had taken some twenty thousand extra American troops into the trouble spots of Iraq, and they were going at it hammer and tongs in the streets of Baghdad. For my part I was exceedingly happy to be 6,000km away reading about it in the newspapers, lounging smugly on the beach with Antoine pouring fresh coffee into my mug.
That’s when the call came in that a foreign trawler had been seen in our area.
The bad news was that one of our RIBs was out of the water with Philippe, an ex-legionnaire and my deputy, trying to sort out the engine. We always deployed with two boats for safety, but it was a still, sunny morning with clear weather reported by the local met office, and since the fishing boats rarely gave us any trouble, I returned the frisbee to Philippe with a curling back spin and told him I’d take out a single RIB for the intercept.
According to the phone list I had pinned to my planning board and map, the gardien who had called in the intruder was at one of the closest villages, only 3km away, and reported that the vessel was just a couple of miles offshore. This was unusual since they mostly hit the outer banks where the vast schools of fish were being legally plundered by trawlers from the European Union, but at the same time it was a bonus since there was no need to waste time loading up the RIB on to our mother ship, the converted trawler itself.
Instead of a day-long haul out to the banks, this would be a quick outing. I was interested as to why this particular ship was hugging close to the shore rather than hitting the rich fishing banks, and eager to relieve the boredom of an uneventful morning. Later on I would kick myself and remember how much I loved boredom.
I wandered back to the shed, dumped my coffee on to the sand, dunked the mug in a bucket of sea water before rinsing it straight from a bottle of Evian, and stuck the mug back on the shelf. I pulled on my low-silhouette flotation vest and on top of that my chest rig holding a SAPI bulletproof chest plate, the satphone, eight AK mags and my pistol already holstered. My sunhat, polarised Oakleys – a Christmas present from Krista and the coolest shades money can buy – and fingerless sailing gloves completed my stunning fashion ensemble.
Within two minutes of receiving the call my crew and I were casting off from the jetty. We were in an 8m, deep-V hull RIB with solid pontoons of air-filled honeycomb synthetics; with our twin 250hp Evinrude outboard engines we would be on top of the target boat within ten minutes of the call being made, easy.
I breathed deeply, filling my lungs with the salty sea air and let myself be thrust back into the seat as the helmsman in front of me pushed the throttles wide open. The Evinrudes roared and we surged forward across the clear blue water, the canvas of the sunroof snapping above our heads in the wind. On beautiful, sunny days like this, I loved my job.
I flipped on the RIB’s VHF, and got a positive radio check back from the ops room at the beach. The GPS beeped cheerfully when I turned it on, and while that was booting up, I busied myself putting some extra sun block on my nose, cheeks and arms. With that important task over, I reached up and unstrapped my AK47 from the rack, pulled it out of its plastic bag and slung it across my chest.
There were three of us on the RIB, one on the helm, one gunner for the GPMG mounted just in front of the helmsman, and the third man to act as boarder for the target vessel if required.
My helmsman was Maxime, a tall, skinny, coffee-coloured half-caste; my gunner was Antoine, with skin as black as coal, nominally from a Muslim tribe up north, but not averse to sinking a few beers with the team at the end of a hot day. Both men were local Ivorians with murky histories, but during our training rehearsals and drills it was obvious that they were both trained professional soldiers and had clearly gained a great deal of experience in the country’s recent civil war.
Antoine and I both sat astride the central bench behind the helmsman, but when we got to the target area we would get into our ready positions.
I shouted over the roar of the big motors. ‘Ça va avec votre femme?’
His wife was eight months pregnant and had been sick with hypertension and diabetes. She had been for a recent check-up and was resting at home. Antoine leaned forward and a smile broke on his lean face.
‘She goes well. The baby will come any day.’ He pointed at himself. ‘I’ll be there with her.’
It reminded me that I hadn’t been there when Veronica was born. Or Natalie, come to think of it. At least my school French was getting a workout.
‘Good man,’ I grinned, and we high-fived.
The RIB reared up against the swell. I threw my weight forward and the prow thumped down again into the surf. As we rose up again, what I assumed was the suspect vessel came into view over the horizon.
I gave the order to load.
Antoi
ne moved forward and put a belt of 7.62mm on the GPMG, cocked it and applied the safety catch. I put a magazine on my AK, took off the safety but did not cock it. I then did the same for Max’s rifle, which was in the rack at the side of the helmsman’s position. He also had a pistol on his belt. Both of us racked and de-cocked our pistols before re-holstering them. In the unhappy event you ever need to draw your secondary weapon, it needs to be ready to go immediately.
The other vessel did not respond to my radio challenge on the standard frequency, but then again if it was not a commercial trawler it might not even have a radio. We started to move in closer to voice range.
Boats and the sea are a noisy environment, and I clanked and bonged as I scraped forward past the other two men before perching in the bow with a megaphone and a pair of binoculars. We flew the Ivorian flag high and in good view, so that other vessels would not mistake us for pirates ourselves. In addition Antoine was a deputised official of the Ivorian Ministry for Animal Production and Fisheries, so we had some official paperwork, laminated and stuck to the helm, that we would wave about when we boarded.
Max slowed right down, only keeping enough power on to maintain our station. Without the full acceleration of the engines, the RIB took on a dramatic, if slow, rhythm, as we settled into the rocking swell of the ocean. We stood off at about 100m to have a look at the target vessel.
It was a standard 12m fishing boat, about the same length and width as a long school bus and almost the same shape, with a primitive, unstreamlined look. It had been knocked together out of dark timbers, with only a tiny wheelhouse at the back.
I told Max to bring us in closer, and picked up the megaphone to call out our challenge. The vessel had not yet deployed its outrigger poles for nets, which I thought strange. But then again I supposed they were miles off the usual fishing areas. I also noted that only two men were in view, both at the wheel. They were black Africans, dressed simply, no tribal symbols, with nothing to indicate that they were anything but local fishermen. I was slightly annoyed that they had not cast nets yet since, if they had taken a large catch, we would have got a quantity of fresh fish added to our commission for the arrest.
The guys on board didn’t seem to be alarmed and were also just idling their engines. They too rolled in the swell. I could hear the slap of the waves against their hull.
I tapped Max to stop us and brought the megaphone up to my lips. At that moment the man in their wheelhouse shouted an order and four men popped up on the side rail. I had just enough time to realize that they were armed, when the man at the bow fired his RPG with a colossal and blood-freezing bang.
Almost immediately the rocket hit the water between the two boats without exploding but drenching us in a wall of spray.
I flinched backwards, bouncing off the pontoon behind me in stupefied shock. Fortunately my hands knew what they were doing. By the time I finished blinking stupidly I had reflexively cocked my rifle and had it up in the ready position at my shoulder.
‘Feu! Feu! Tirez!’ Fire! Fire! I screamed at Antoine as I took aim and squeezed off a burst.
He was already ahead of me and had started firing even as my mouth opened. Unfortunately, with the RIB bobbing up and down, his first burst went all over the place, stitching up the water and the stern of the other boat.
I cursed as I realized that without thinking I had shot the RPG man. Having already fired his rocket he was out of action until he reloaded and was now the least dangerous of the enemy crew. If I had been a little more switched on, I would have aimed at the guy on the machine-gun. What can I say? Sometimes it’s just not your day. I can only put it down to the fact that I had not finished my morning coffee.
I put down another three rounds to distract the others before looking up at Maxime to see what the hell he was playing at. He should have already rammed the throttles open to get us out of there. I also wondered who the hell these guys were – pirates, I assumed, although extremely rare in this area. The civil war was supposed to be over, and all the rebels were up in the northern half of the country, above Yamoussoukro, the capital.
My mind went into overdrive and seconds seemed to stretch into endless minutes, though scarcely a couple of heartbeats had passed. Maxime hit the throttles with one hand while the other hand held the VHF mike to his mouth as he sent a terse contact report. I heard the reply. Good. At least Philippe would know we were in trouble. The beached RIB only had one engine off-line. He could still use the other one to get out here with his crew.
We started to move. I was still looking back at the fishing boat. The two men by the wheelhouse had disappeared. I didn’t know if they had been shot or were taking cover.
There were still two others left facing us at the rail, and to my horror one of them had an MG42. Although manufactured under various model names all around the world over the last sixty years, this was essentially still the same superb killing machine that the Wehrmacht had used to decimate Stalin’s hordes on the Eastern Front. It has a ferociously high rate of fire, nearly twice that of most other automatic weapons, pumping out twenty bullets a second. Places in Africa where there was no food or water, there was always plenty of high-class weaponry. I had no idea how so many MG42s had found their way to West Africa but the Yugoslav versions, the M53, were seen regularly in the hands of local militias, along with soviet PKMs and FN MAGs just like the one on our RIB.
Here she comes.
The beast burped once and a wall of bullets hit our RIB, shredding a huge section of pontoon and the hull at the waterline. Antoine and I fired back as fast as we could but we were at a disadvantage, firing from a moving and far less stable platform than the enemy.
None of our shots hit the two remaining pirates, and as the MG42 gunner hunched his shoulders, ready to fire again, Antoine’s eyes met mine for a split second, then we both threw ourselves gracelessly backwards over the side of the RIB.
Just before I hit the water I saw Maxime launching himself over the back of the engines. That same moment, the helmsman’s post disappeared in a spray of plastic. The GPS, the radio, the turbo and temperature gauges, the rev counter, the emergency flares, the whole lot sprayed into metal and plastic confetti as three hysterical bursts pounded into the centre of the RIB and exploded out the other side.
I now had more immediate problems, like sinking. My flotation vest was not a purpose-designed military version that could provide buoyancy for a soldier with fighting equipment, just a thin windsurfer’s vest, and I was being pulled down by the weight of my chest rig. I was treading water frantically as I unclipped the satphone from the rig and stuffed it down the front of my vest. Next came my Sig Sauer pistol – hard to replace and even harder to fill in the police paperwork for, if I lost it – which I threw with a shout to Antoine, who had just surfaced next to me.
The pirate machine-gunner was still firing away at the RIB and I cringed, thinking about the cost of replacing the equipment, especially the engines, maybe even the whole boat. It was insured, sure, but getting replacements out here was going to be a nightmare. The engines alone could cost nearly $18,000 each. Philippe, an emotional Frenchie and our de facto engineer, looked after the Evinrudes as if they were his babies. He was going to go completely mental.
These thoughts were slipping inanely through my mind as I continued to struggle with the weight of the eight mags and the SAPI plate in my chest rig dragging me down. I took a deep breath and let myself sink as I unsnapped the quick-release buckles and wriggled it off.
The AK was slung around my neck and banged gently against my elbows and face as I took two full mags out of a pouch and then let the chest rig slip into the depths of the ocean. I shoved one mag down the front of my flotation vest and clutched the other as I kicked hard and swam back to the surface.
I blinked salt water out of my eyes. It seemed as if I’d been sinking for a long time, but only a few seconds had passed and nothing had changed. The MG42 was still busy turning the RIB into Swiss cheese as it moved off around
the front of the fishing trawler. Both Antoine and Maxime appeared to be fine, treading water next to me. I wasn’t sure if the pirates had realized that we had all baled out, but once they did it would be very easy for them to take their time and gun us down.
As often happens in a contact, my thoughts raced along at lightning speed. I knew we would only have one chance – or one good chance, anyway – and I instantly changed out my half-empty magazine for the full one in my hand. I let go of the half mag, pulled back the bolt slightly to check chamber to see that I had a round up the spout, and let the water, if any, trickle out of the barrel.
I was squinting in the bright sunlight and realized with dismay that I’d lost my new Oakleys. Shit. I’d need to buy a new pair exactly the same and not tell Krista I’d lost the ones she’d given me. I pushed the bolt firmly back into place.
At the same time for some reason I remembered on my close-quarter battle course the thickly accented Irish colour sergeant gravely showing us a film clip of Robert De Niro checking the chamber of his pistol. The colour sergeant then switched off the video and turned to us, solemn and threatening, to say, ‘If Robert De Niro checks chamber . . . then YOU will check chamber!’
Since we were all just swimming with nothing but our shorts and sea water between us and an enemy machine-gun at point-blank range, I was also wondering how much water it took to slow down a bullet. I was sure I’d seen some documentary where someone had tested it out, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember.
I vaguely recalled in my Arctic training the preparation of bunkers out of packed snow, which by the way is astonishingly bulletproof – not that I had ever had the chance to put this knowledge to practical use in the deserts of Iraq or in the steaming jungles of Africa.
Then I snapped back into the present and very real danger. I focused on slowing my breathing. I kicked my legs, making the most of my vest’s buoyancy, and turned the sights of my rifle on the machine-gunner.
Escape from Baghdad Page 2