The Tigris divides Baghdad like an orange, with sections fanning out east and west. The original city founded by the Abbasids in the eighth century was circular with high walls and a moat. Inside the walls they built magnificent mosques and the caliph’s palace with its celebrated green dome topped by mounted horsemen, a vision that moved poets to verse in ancient times.
An old friend of mine at Oxford once described Baghdad as the most beautiful city in the world. In medieval times, maybe. There are no stone quarries on the fertile plain where they raised Baghdad. The city was constructed from sun-dried bricks vulnerable to fires, floods and invasion. All that remains of the Abbasids are a few unexceptional ruins and an abundance of florid similes of Baghdad as heaven on earth, the mother of the world, the mistress of nations, dome of Islam, the city of peace.
Wishful thinking.
It was more like Stalingrad. The only time Krista had ever shown any discomfort in front of me was when watching some documentary about Iraq. The camera crew were in Baghdad and she noted out loud that every building seemed to be covered in bullet holes. I searched quickly for a witty reply that would explain this away, but in vain, and the next few minutes had been spent in an awkward silence.
I glanced at the time and shook my wrist to make sure my watch wasn’t broken. No, the seconds were clicking away like heartbeats and I thought how time and age are relative, that who we are and what we do is ill served when we measure time by the shifting hands of the clock.
It had just gone eight. It was still morning. The last hour had seemed like twelve hours, like twelve months, like a lifetime. Forty minutes on the train and I get only a little way through reading a book. Ten minutes pounding my shoulder with the recoil from a rifle and time stretches, reforms, rewinds the strands of your DNA. The firefight with the Mahdi had seemed like an eternity. I only appreciated how short-lived it had been once it was over. More than a hundred people had died in the suicide bomb and shoot-out that day. It would make three paragraphs on the wire services and flash around the world. Lives part-lived, snuffed out in a second. Scenes were flashing out of sequence through my head. I had to blink several times to get rid of them and focus.
Eight o’clock. We had eleven hours of light. We had to keep moving.
While I was directing Sammy, I pulled up my shirt to see where the ricochet had hit me. The skin was puckered closed, with little bleeding. On prodding, I could feel the lump of the round deeper inside than I liked. I liberally disinfected my thin-nosed Leatherman pliers with iodine, then probed into the wound site. I managed to get a grip on a corner and pulled out the bullet in a slow steady movement that brought sweat to my brow.
The round had struck under my SAPI plate – which was high in order to protect my heart and lungs – flattened almost to the same shape as a beer-bottle top, and dug itself deeply into my abdominal muscles. A minor if messy wound and I sighed with relief. I had delayed inspecting the damage in case I discovered something I didn’t want to.
I splashed on a little more iodine, then strapped on the smallest field dressing I could find in the trauma pack provided thoughtfully by the Green Berets. There was also a bottle of Augmentin and I slugged back a couple of prophylactic antibiotics to prevent any nasty infection that might preclude me from attending Sunday dinner. Job done.
Just in time, too.
‘Roadblock,’ Sammy said.
The general came to life. ‘Go right,’ he instructed.
Sammy immediately took his advice and we bounced over a cobbled street candy-striped with skeins of wool spread out and dyed dark red and blue and green. The road broadened into a plaza with arcaded shops where men worked giant looms below the shade of finished carpets, and I recalled that, in each, the weaver would have concealed an error because only Allah is perfect.
‘Left.’
We swerved around a donkey cart hauling burlap sacks, Abdul and Seamus behind us, turning like clockwork, and it occurred to me that even though we were trying to maintain a low profile, we obviously weren’t three Iraqi drivers. They would be thumping horns, flashing lights, trying to overtake even on roads barely wide enough to take one vehicle.
‘Fuck,’ I said as we edged around a corner.
Up ahead, a blue and white Kia with revolving lights occupied the centre of the junction. Two cops were slowing the traffic, eyeballing the drivers and lethargically moving them on.
Baghdad these days was covered in VCPs, both permanent and temporary like this one. I was amazed we had come as far as we had without being forced to stop again.
As we came around the corner, another two police vehicles were parked up. There was also a little cluster of American soldiers and two Humvees. The presence of CF troops should prevent any funny business from the IP. Our CAC cards equated us to US forces and they would support us as such.
‘VCP ahead, mixed IP and Coalition Forces,’ I sent back over the radio.
‘Roger that,’ came Seamus’s deep voice. They were still around the corner.
Sammy eased up behind a truck piled about 6m high with old car tyres. We were six cars back in the queue and waiting. I thought about calling Cobus to see if the Task Force Fountain team had any influence with the CF units out in the west of the city, but on reflection I thought, probably not. Not without a full colonel to shout down the phone anyway. Instead I took the opportunity to call Davor, the officer in charge of the SF team.
‘Hello, mate, it’s Ash, you still on the job?’
‘Naw, man, we’re finished work for the day. We’ve been up all night – I’m beat and I’m going to hit the sack.’
‘Right . . .’
‘OK, man, let’s have it?’
‘Mate, I’m sorry to ask, but if there’s anything you can do to help us out of the city I’d really appreciate it.’
‘There was an incident out on the south gate. I’ve seen the intel.’
‘Ask no questions.’
‘I don’t intend to.’ But he asked, ‘Where are you?’
‘We’re nearly on to the Abu Ghraib highway.’ I glanced at my map. ‘Coming from the south, northwards up the boundary of security zones 28 and 54.’
‘Got it.’
‘We’ll join the highway about ten klicks west of the Green Zone. The local IP may well try and stop us leaving the city. I know you guys have direct comms lines to different units around the city . . .’
I let my voice trail off. I really had no idea what he could do, or whether this was pushing the limits of favours. If he told me to fuck off, I’d understand.
‘Shit, Ash, I’m not sure what I can do, man.’
‘No problem, mate. Just thought I’d ask. It’s not as if you can just call in an air-strike on any IP seen on the Abu Ghraib highway after all.’ I laughed, but I was thinking that actually that would be a fucking fantastic idea.
The line was quiet for a few seconds.
‘I don’t know if there’s anything I can do, buddy,’ Davor said again. ‘Good luck.’
‘Cheers, Davor.’
‘Be safe, brother.’
The file had gone through the checkpoint. It was our turn. One of the cops waved the truck in front forward and, as the jundhi turned left, the cop’s gaze settled on us. I leaned forward past the general and showed my CAC card. He glanced at it indifferently and then looked up at Sammy. He did a double-take and looked at him again, hard.
At that moment a US soldier walked up, a sergeant in desert ACU camouflage, looking alert and professional, as was the Humvee gunner covering him from over the road with a 240 GPMG.
‘How are you doing this fine morning, Sergeant?’ I grinned in faux bonhomie.
‘Pretty good, thanks, how are you guys?’
‘We’re good.’ I looked back and waved at the vehicles behind me. ‘Three vehicles in my packet, mate. The van and the car behind are with me.’
The sergeant looked back questioningly at the minibus, but then relaxed when he saw the Peugeot bringing up the rear. Les, Seamus and
Dai were all obviously Westerners in body armour and shades, all holding their CAC cards up. In the front seat, Les had also turned down his sun visor and in the weak sunlight the bright colours of the A4-sized American flag there were easy to see.
‘OK, come on through.’ He turned and held up three fingers. ‘These three coming through,’ he called to the other troops.
‘Thanks, stay safe.’ I waved.
Behind him, the Iraqi policeman glared daggers at Sammy.
We rolled through and rejoined the traffic. Behind us I could see the IP talking into his walkie-talkie, staring after us. That looked like trouble.
‘Sammy, don’t head up the highway. They’re watching us. Pull right into that street.’
We swung off the road into another street full of shops, and I got on the radio to tell the rear car we were taking a small detour to confuse the IP.
We were fine for two minutes, then we ran straight into a traffic jam that looked impossible to penetrate. Shit. Blue flashing lights appeared ahead of us. Then more, coming the opposite way. The only thing between us was 50m of Iraqi traffic jam.
‘Sammy get this thing turned around now,’ I told him.
I leapt out of the back door and got on the radio.
‘Guys, we need to clear some traffic fast. IP is up ahead.’
Les and Dai immediately debussed with helmets and rifles. The three of us started trying to force the vehicles to move on to the pavement to clear a path behind us. Seeing that we were not soldiers or police, some drivers merely shouted back and waved their fists.
Seamus put his foot down and the Peugeot zoomed backwards, slamming into the car behind. He went forwards a metre and did it again. The driver got the message. Following Seamus’s lead, Sammy got into character as well. The powerful SUV had no difficulty shunting the smaller cars around us and, with Les, Dai and me gesturing with our weapons, we had soon cleared some space to move.
I was checking constantly on the IP up ahead. They were playing the same game. With flashing blue and red lights on the roofs of their Kias and half a dozen IP waving AKs, they were steadily hacking a way through the jam towards us in a slow-motion race to see who could clear a path first.
Les and Dai’s huge physical presence and the brutal application of rifle butts to car windows and doors was working a treat. Seamus nudged along a few cars that moved too slowly, but it was clear that we were moving away faster than the IP could move forward. The chaos we were leaving behind us was going to be harder for them to break through.
Suddenly, like rope untangling, we were clear. We mounted up and zoomed off to the sound of a rude cacophony of horns and angry voices. Even pedestrians leaned out on to the street and shouted in Arabic.
Sammy laughed. ‘They are saying many bad things about you, Mister James.’
‘None of it’s true, Sammy.’
‘Agh, but perhaps it is.’
He accelerated down a narrow avenue, manoeuvring the vehicle like a MiG-27 through the maze of jundhis, kamikazes, donkey carts, bicycles, women rolling butane canisters along the side of the road, all human life going somewhere. The general seemed to be enjoying this last scenic tour around his hometown. I was glad one of us was, because my nerves were getting shredded.
There were a couple of choppers way off, Kiowas probably, but they were too high for me to be sure. Were they following us? Did the Americans have comms with the IP? On the highway we made better time, but we were sitting ducks. In the backstreets we could easily get trapped. There was no clear and easy answer. Just intuition. Just kismet. Just put your foot down.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I moaned as more blue and red lights appeared 100m ahead at a traffic circle.
Sammy instantaneously hung a left, the other two vehicles followed, but the IP were soon on our tail, sirens howling like a baying mob. The road was wide enough for two vehicles to pass, but only just.
‘I go straight,’ said Sammy, and put his foot down.
The general glanced at me with what looked like approval, and I thought what a feisty old bugger he was to remain composed after an IED, the mother of all gunfights and now in a car chase with half of Baghdad’s finest hunting us down.
General Mashooen pointed at a tumbledown shop.
‘My tailor was here. I would come to see him, then take a taxi to Mutanabi Street to buy my books,’ he said, and added reflectively, ‘Saddam was an ignorant man, but even he showed respect for books.’
Mutanabi Street had vanished in a pall of smoke and dust on Friday 5 March, shortly before I left Côte d’Ivoire to return to Iraq. I’d read about it on the net. A bomb left in the Shabandr Café had killed thirty-eight people and destroyed a tradition dating back to the tenth-century poet who gave the street its name. For a thousand years Iraqis had wandered among the stalls and iron-shuttered shops, hunting down rare books in every language.
‘They say Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads,’ the general said. ‘They used to read. Now they learn about life from Al Jazeera.’
‘That’s incredibly interesting, sir,’ I said, then thumbed the radio. ‘Can you see them yet, guys?’
‘They’re 100m behind us, mate,’ said Seamus.
The wail of sirens was growing louder. I gestured. Sammy took another left and roared through a fish market where traders were setting up their stands, unloading iced trays of fresh fish from donkey carts and open trucks.
‘I can knock over some stalls, Mister James, slow them down.’
‘No, we don’t want to get a bad name now we’re leaving,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you may block the others.’
Suddenly we slid out into a clear, much wider street and Sammy gunned the engines. For a minute the road was empty and we zoomed ahead, every second a bonus taking us further from the police. Then I heard the roll of thunder as a four-rig patrol of Humvees stampeded towards us like bulls running the corrida in Pamplona.
‘Amerikeyeh,’ shouted Sammy in panic, his word both a warning and a curse.
He would have swerved straight off the street, but the curbs were a foot high along this section and there was nothing he could do but cling on to the steering wheel. With their turret rings mounted with .50 cals and Mk19s, if the Humvees took us as a threat, a few unhurried bursts from the gunners and we’d be toast, blackened relics like the railway yards and storage tanks we’d passed along the way, ruins left from the three-week blitz that had levelled half of Baghdad at the start of the war.
The seconds stretched; it was only seconds: our combined speeds had the velocity of a bullet.
‘Stop,’ I yelled.
Sammy slammed on the brakes, the motion throwing me forward and it felt like a fist had punched me right in the place where the bullet had entered my abdomen. Abdul braked, but half a second too late, the minibus grazing our rear bumper. I frantically dug out my day sack and my fingers were all thumbs as I worked the zip on the side pocket.
I ripped out the Stars and Stripes and threw it forward over Sammy and the general like a Technicolor blanket.
‘Hold it up to the windscreen,’ I directed.
The seconds did that stretching thing, creeping by. The Humvees roared. Sweat trickled down my back. I may have said a prayer, and let out my breath as the patrol charged by without so much as a glimpse in our direction.
‘Thought that was the long goodbye,’ I said as Sammy accelerated again.
‘They’re just racing home for some pizza,’ he replied. Sammy had always been fascinated that the CF had taken the time to build a Pizza Hut in the Green Zone immediately after the bombing stopped.
‘Make mine a pepperoni . . .’ said General Mashooen, and we burst out laughing.
Sammy slowed for a moment, then put his foot down again. He had seen a blue and white police truck on the next street over as we zoomed through a junction. They had turned off their sirens and had been paralleling us on the wide street to our right.
We burst out on to a large square with blocks of concrete barriers
set on the broken tarmac. On the far side, behind a row of buildings, was the ramp up on to the highway. The IP emerged on our right. The sirens went on again as they piled towards us past a whitewashed mosque that rose like a giant wedding cake on one side of the square.
Men in white dish-dashes were standing around clicking prayer beads and gossiping. We gave them something to gossip about, crossing the space at 100kph and shooting like an arrow down a narrow passage only wide enough for one vehicle. Pedestrians threw themselves against the side walls, hexing us with curses. There was a café below an arched arcade and, where the zinc tables spilled out into the street, they went flying. When the IP entered the passage, the noise of the sirens magnified between the mud-brick walls.
‘Now put your foot down,’ I said.
Sammy punched straight out of the alleyway into the stream of traffic going up the highway ramp, driving flat out, switching lanes, blasting his horn. Abdul was a metre from our rear, doing well considering he’d looked terrified when we first set out on the journey, Seamus a metre behind him, Les and Dai with weapons readied and eyes peeled on the cops weaving through the traffic in our wake. We clipped the side of a black Merc, bumped a slow-moving Toyota into the side barrier and Sammy almost lost control, swerving around a jundhi driving like a lunatic on the wrong side of the road.
The cop cars were coming but they weren’t getting any closer. We surged on to the highway proper and shot past a line of oil tankers. The highway turned in a long curve and I felt a snatch of relief when I caught sight of the cluster of blocky CF vehicles in the distance, marking the checkpoint.
The traffic slowed as vehicles joined from another ramp. More cops were coming up from the side as well. Stuck in the traffic I could only watch helplessly as our pursuers overtook the same line of oil tankers. The cops were going to catch up with us before we got to the checkpoint. I prepared myself to order Sammy to ram the vehicles in front out of the way, wondering if the CF would see us as a VBIED threat piling towards them and open fire.
Escape from Baghdad Page 26