Escape from Baghdad

by James Ashcroft

  I tried to do the same but, when you try, when the guy next to you snores like a goods train, sleep evaporates and thoughts come whizzing in like rounds: the neighbours robbing Gabir’s house; Sammy’s silence; the metal embrace of twisted motor cars; Tanya squeezing my hand as she calmly told me how she had seen my friend Mad Dog shredded by shrapnel and flung so far across the road she thought he was dead even before he hit the ground.

  I got out of my sleeping bag with a curse. There was no sleep in me, just a restless thirst I could not quench. I went and had a quick shower in cold water, washed my hair and changed into clean clothes. I would sleep in them in my sleeping bag and then get straight up in the morning and just put my boots on, ready to go. I realized I hadn’t talked to my family that day. I dialled quickly. Tomorrow was going to be tricky and I wanted to hear their voices one last time.

  Before calling Krista, I opened the shutter. I stood to one side, you can’t be too careful, and peered out at a bleak landscape of rooftops. There was another power cut and the only light came from the moon rising over the Tigris, pale yellow like the last stages of a bruise. The clouds were slow and heavy with rain. Far out into the night the sounds of battle seemed muted, as if even the war was taking a nap. I knew this impression was deceiving and that, a kilometre or two away, desperate life-and-death struggles were taking place. With the callous pragmatism of the professional soldier, I had to admit that a selfish part of me was glad it was someone else out there and not me. I had a full belly, a warm sleeping bag waiting and I was about to talk to my wife and kids. Life was good.

  I remained staring from my position beside the shutters while I spoke to Krista.

  ‘You all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I am, actually, yes. I’ve got a nice view,’ I replied looking over the rooftops, absently scanning for any stealthy movement. There was a dull thump in the distance, and I thought it must have been big for me to feel the vibration halfway across the city. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Awful, James, it’s been raining like buckets.’

  ‘Like buckets,’ I repeated. Krista prided herself on speaking better English than me and it was so sexy when she made a mistake.

  ‘Here, someone’s dragging the phone out of my hand,’ she said.

  ‘Daddy, is it dangerous in Iraq?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘No, darling, I told you. It’s as safe as houses.’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Our house is safe.’

  ‘It’s still silly. When are you coming home?’

  ‘In time for your birthday. How old are you going to be?’

  ‘You know, seven. Seven sevens are forty-nine.’

  ‘Seven. Gosh, that’s very old. You’ll be getting married to some old man soon. Excellent. You’ll have to become an accountant and look after us all when you’re rich.’

  ‘Oh yuks, Daddy.’ She had already promised me she would never ever get married. Then: ‘What’s an accountment?’

  ‘Someone with lots of money.’

  Krista got back on the line. We did phone kisses and I went back downstairs to my room. I was calm now, and looking forward to the morning.

  CHAPTER 19

  SAMMY, NORMALLY CHATTERING and throwing out directions, was lost in his own thoughts. I could see his eyes mirrored in the windscreen, staring without focusing on the beams of light before us. Odd rounds carried on the wind, a distant fizz and thump, enough to remind you that nowhere was safe. Ever. Even if you and your loved ones had learned to manoeuvre your way through those streets where footsoldiers from a dozen different factions, plus the innocent civilians – either bystanders or chosen victims – had left their blood and guts, there was still the daily struggle to survive the anarchy, shortages, shredded nerves, shifting loyalties, old and new hostilities, new restrictions that were no compensation for the new freedoms like voting along tribal lines and Internet porn. Married men who had barely seen their wives naked were relieving the daily tedium with buff, shaved Romanian girls a breath from childhood.

  We had set off just before dawn. It was cold enough that my breath frosted and I was glad of my leather gloves. Les had sniffed in disdain. As a former Commando Arctic Warfare instructor in Norway, he had never let his men put on their gloves until it was minus ten centigrade. Sammy’s family had been in a complete state, and it had taken a mug of steaming chai each before we could get them out of the house into the courtyard. All the children had visited the toilet and the two women had cried as they left their last refuge for this unknown journey. To combat the cold, the whole tribe were bundled up like Eskimos.

  I was counting on the early hour and the cold to help us. As ex-British soldiers we could shrug it off like just another ice-frosted morning in Brecon. If the local militias were anything like the Iraqis I had worked with, then a chilly 6a.m. start would see them dopey or unconscious at their posts. We Brits had briefly assembled on the roof to sight in our weapons on a distant watchtower. It had aiming marks painted on to its sides as if for that purpose. The iron sights and the optical sights on top were lined up on all of the rifles. The proof would come only on firing, but I didn’t want to have a quick couple of shots only to risk waking up any militia checkpoints that might have been set up just around the corner overnight.

  After the initial fugue, Sammy’s family moved quickly. Depressingly, most of their belongings had vanished with our cached vehicles in Gabir’s garage. They appeared from the house, eleven refugees with wretched bundles. Despite having feared and hated the Ba’athist Party, the Mashooens had always been close to power. Now the ancien régime was being swept into exile. I recalled that London after the Second World War had been awash with banished aristocracy – from Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and the Balkans – a chessboard of kings, knights and courtiers.

  It had rained overnight, and around the palm tree at the end of the passage was a puddle they had to step through to reach the cars. Baghdad is cooled by mini-monsoons mid-season when the heavens open up and wash the dust off the streets.

  Fara, like Ayesha, was discreetly dressed in a grey abaya that didn’t suit her but matched her appearance. She was ashen. I had never seen such a complete change in a person so quickly. Her eyes had lost their colour and sunk into her head. She was gaunt, her hands trembled faintly and her hair, always neatly held in a chignon, fell loosely about her cheeks.

  ‘I am so sorry, Fara. There is no news.’

  ‘It is what I expected, James. Thank you.’

  She shook my hand and joined her children in the bus. I had hoped to get some news of Zahrah for her from our SF friends, but a quick phone call from them to various IP commanders had shown no log of Gabir’s execution, nor the seizure of three vehicles from his shop in Karada, nor the arrest of Auntie Zahrah, who was undoubtedly dead by now. At least, for her sake, I hoped so.

  Sammy was wearing a red and white shemagh and carried an old AK, his gold-plated Tariq stuffed into his belt.

  ‘Mister James, Mister Dai, good morning.’

  ‘Morning, matey,’ said Dai. ‘You’ve chosen a good day for it.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything else better to do,’ said Sammy, and we laughed.

  ‘Well, the waiting is finally over. Next stop, Amman,’ I said.

  ‘We say patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,’ the general added.

  He translated for Abdul and Ayesha. The children were like spectators at a tennis match, their gaze moving from face to face.

  ‘Make no mistake, Sammy, we’re going to get you out,’ I said.

  Sammy nodded his big head slowly up and down. ‘We are more grateful than I can express,’ he said. ‘It only makes me unhappy that, while you save my family, there are other families who will be left behind and they will be less safe.’

  We were quiet for a moment. I then told them how I wanted them sat in each vehicle, and how Qusay or Fara would have to take over driving the bus in an emergency.

  ‘This is just back-up,’ I said.
‘I don’t expect anything to happen.’

  ‘In Iraq you must always expect the unexpected,’ said General Mashooen.

  He was right, of course, but I didn’t want to spook them before the off. I glanced at Fara. Her dead eyes seemed to have come back to life.

  ‘It is OK, James,’ she said. ‘I am sad because it is my fault Auntie Zahrah has been taken. But I am strong. I am strong for my children.’

  Her eldest son was sitting close as if to protect his mother and nodded as if to confirm what she had said. He was only fifteen but in Baghdad was already regarded as a man with his faint shadow of a moustache. If anything happened to Sammy, he would be the man of the family; even Fara, his mother, would be relegated to an advisory role. Our eyes met.

  ‘I am ready,’ he said in English, and I was startled, hearing his father’s voice coming from him, though he had the more refined looks of his mother.

  Jesus, is the world ready for another Sammy? I thought.

  ‘You will have to look out for the little ones,’ I told him.

  He nodded gravely. ‘Yes, I will,’ he said, patting his AK.

  On an impulse I shrugged off my tactical vest and indicated that young Qusay should take off his coat. My tacvest was a plate carrier and already had heavy SAPI plates in front and back. The soft Kevlar vest I normally wore underneath it I took off and strapped on to Qusay. He was a little tubby, like his father, but even so the Velcro straps nearly doubled around him. At least that way he would be protected from shrapnel. He put his coat back on over the top, looking very pleased with himself, and I put my tactical vest back on. Sammy started to thank me but I motioned him to be quiet.

  ‘OK, let’s go. Everyone mount up.’

  Sammy made sure everyone was safely aboard the bus, before swinging himself into the driver’s seat of the SUV. The Brits were already in the Peugeot, at the rear, engine purring, heater on, faces grim. I looked at them again through the windscreen, not as familiar friends but as an image of how they would appear to the enemy. I was glad that I was on their side.

  Les saw me looking and made obscene hand gestures, indicating that I was a wanker.

  I shook hands with the general before I sat behind him in the back seat of the SUV. The events of the last twenty-four hours seemed to have put an extra decade on his features and I realized with sudden shock just how old he was. It would be a gruelling enough journey for him across the desert even without the enemy. I suddenly felt the full weight of responsibility for Sammy’s family hit my shoulders, an almost physical sensation. No turning back now, this was it. We pulled out of the safe house on to the street and drove off, leaving the gate open behind us.

  A hint of light slid along the horizon. We hissed through the wet empty streets with the cry from the mosques calling the faithful to the first of the day’s five sessions of prayers. The words echoed from tinny speakers from one minaret to the next, penetrating every corner of the city, every aspect of life. The voices sounded urgent, blending into an unintelligible stream, and I thought with sudden paranoia that the muezzin were throwing a curtain down around the city to warn their brothers-in-arms that we were on our way.

  We moved through Karada without meeting any other traffic, but as soon as we turned south to try to get on to the Dora highway, there was a steady stream of vehicles changing lanes and edging into every available space. Abdul stayed a yard from my tail and I knew that Seamus, Les and Dai would be carefully watching over us from a few cars back. I grinned, knowing that well before we even left the city Dai would be bugging the others to let him have a fag if he wound the window down.

  The traffic picked up speed. I kept my eyes glued to the rooftops, the windows, the overpasses, the husks of abandoned cars, the piles of masonry.

  Weak sunlight lit the grey sky. Every shadow suggested danger. Every car that passed could hold fundamentalists appalled by my lack of facial hair, ghouls drawn out at dawn by the coppery tang of fresh blood. In the Green Zone, you could always catch it from a stray mortar if you were very unlucky. But ‘outside the wire’ the highways, residential streets, markets and mosques were a gauntlet of booby-traps, roadside bombs, lone gunmen, militiamen with grenades that came in wooden crates with ‘US ARMY’ stencilled along the side. Just as they say when it comes to money everyone has the same religion, when it comes to urban terrorism, the mujahideen were not prejudiced against using the weapons of the enemy. US-Zionist fragmentation grenades will do very nicely, thank you. Certainly more trustworthy than the crap being produced by the Libyans.

  The Shia cops weren’t out in the streets searching for bandits, jihadis or Shia brothers in the Mahdi Army, they were running around like headless chickens, inexperienced, disorganized, not bringing order but spreading horror, their job in the madness to hunt down Sammy Mashooen, a national hero, an innocent, a man the former water guards knew, and knew to be innocent of everything except the will to survive.

  I kept my commentary over the net to Seamus’s vehicle to a minimum. Abdul wouldn’t have understood it anyway. We slowed. A military checkpoint was up ahead, joint US and Iraqi forces. I was impressed with how professional and with-it the Iraqis appeared to be. Long gone were the days of the half-hearted ICDC troops, often as much a danger to the Coalition troops as they were unreliable. Cars peeled off into the suburbs. We joined the jundhis queuing to get through the VCP, the vehicles jamming up tight as we inched forward. Fumes filled the air. Drivers started leaning on their horns. Iraqis are always impatient and never in a hurry.

  Then I saw in the rear-view mirror, a dozen cars or more behind me, a door open and a woman get out.

  She shuffled slowly to the side of the road and I assumed that she was going to buy something from one of the market stalls, but she ignored them and just walked up the pavement towards the distant checkpoint. I kept scanning the rest of the traffic. There was no movement whatsoever. Each car or lorry that reached the checkpoint was directed off to the side into an inspection bay between concrete blast walls, inspected and then released on to the highway beyond. Grim-faced Iraqi and American soldiers clearly had no interest in cutting any corners and were doing the job properly.

  The faces of the drivers around me did not show any stress or emotion, other than boredom and impatience at the slow pace of the traffic. The sun was above the horizon now, and a couple of Iraqi soldiers had wandered down between the cars, raising one hand palm upwards with all the fingers and thumb pursed together at the tips, the Iraqi gesture which translated into ‘patience’ or ‘wait a minute’. Some of the drivers had wound down windows to talk to them, the rest monged in their cabs, still sleepy and not in the mood for anything. Many of them smoked. I could see the silvery blue curls coming out of some windows. I smiled, again thinking of Dai going through nicotine withdrawal. There was no way the two marathon runners would let him light up.

  ‘Seamus, all OK back there?’ I sent over the radio.

  ‘Yes, mate. Reckon we should have gone the other way, though. This is taking fucking ages.’

  ‘Better an American checkpoint than a Mahdi Army one.’

  ‘Yeah, roger that.’

  We lapsed into silence and I scanned around again.

  The same woman I had seen earlier was level with us now, still walking slowly towards the checkpoint. I looked at her curiously. She was much younger than I had previously thought, no more than a girl, her face drawn and thin, far too thin for the large bulk of body humped up under her black coat.

  And then I realized why her coat was so bulky.

  My blood ran cold.

  CHAPTER 20

  MY STOMACH FLIP-FLOPPED with dread. I could see the girl making her way towards the checkpoint and knew what was going to happen next.

  We were probably only 50m from the gate, maybe 15–20 cars in front of us, the curve through the chicanes allowing me direct line of sight to the American and Iraqi soldiers standing around in a cluster having a smoking break.

  Sammy leaned back to look at me. �
��Just like the old days, always lining up,’ he said. ‘Now we have to line up to get out of the city as well as line up to get in.’

  I didn’t respond. I was watching the girl. She hurried, paused, hurried again. Did she have a moment’s doubt? Did the words of the imam ring hollow all of a sudden?

  I felt nauseous. I lowered the window. Sammy did the same. My eyes focused completely on the girl, every step seemed to me to be tremendously significant. This was the twentieth-last step this body would ever take. This was the nineteenth-last step she would ever take, the eighteenth.

  Training? Instinct? Hard to say.

  A dozen scenarios ran through my mind. I had already looked around. The traffic was solid. We wouldn’t have time to drive out. Debus? No. I couldn’t even consider getting the nine family members out of the bus behind us and herding them off the road in time. We had only a moment left. I was too far from the checkpoint to even shout a warning to the soldiers manning it.

  A random crazy thought occurred to me that I should fire a warning shot over their heads and make them duck, but I discarded that one straight away, imagining the response. Or I could call the SF or Cobus in the Green Zone and get someone to look up the local Brigade Combat Team headquarters and warn the checkpoint that a suicide bomber was approaching them. But we had about ten seconds, not the twenty minutes that might entail even if it were possible.

  Sammy started to say something but stopped, seeing my face. He followed my gaze and saw the girl. He looked back at me and there was a void behind his eyes.

  ‘Sammy, get back to the bus, tell them to get on the floor now, get them as low as they can. All of them. Run.’

  Sammy was gone, his door swinging shut.

  ‘Seamus, contact, contact. There’s a suicide bomber on foot approaching the VCP. Take cover, take cover. Wait, out.’

  I could hear some shouting behind me and presumed it was Sammy.

  ‘General, sir, there is going to be an explosion, please get down as low as you can.’