Kicking Bombs

by Barry Stevens

  Again I heard the roller door open, and what seemed to be at least three cars came into the warehouse, the door crashing down behind them. I heard a bit of mumbling in Arabic and a few random car doors closing. Not long after that the door to my cell opened and Safi walked into the room. This time he had my old friend Ali with him and two of the normal guards. Ali was carrying a black cotton sack and a piece of rope. He told me to stand up and turn around. I did as he wanted without saying anything in an attempt to keep the situation as calm as possible. He tied my hands behind my back and of course he had to tie the rope directly over the top of my wounds on my wrists. I let out a deep sigh of pain as he tightened them up and looked at me as if he was getting some pay back out of the situation.

  As soon as the ropes were tight Ali pulled the sack over my head and led me out of the room. We walked for a few metres and I was shoved back onto what felt like the side of a car. Ali then said in his broken American accent, ‘Here is your man. I hope he burns in hell when you are finished with him.’

  I then heard another man with a deep American accent ask, ‘Where can we take this man, Colonel?’

  ‘Follow me!’ said Safi. Two men grabbed my arms on either side and led me back up into what I knew was the same old interrogation room up the stairs.

  Once we were up the stairs I was backed up against a chair and told to sit down. I felt that the two men who escorted me up the stairs weren’t the two normal goons but I was baffled about what was going on. Here was a man who was obviously an American apparently leading the interrogation process.

  As I sat down I saw a pair of boots from beneath my black hood. They were definitely US Army issue. Now I was in complete confusion. What the hell was going on here? I thought to myself. But I decided it was best not to let on that I recognised the boots just in case it led to something far worse.

  ‘So Colonel Safi and Ali tell me that you claim to be an ASIO spy! Is that correct?’ said the man with the American accent.

  ‘Not completely!’ I answered. ‘I told them the truth. I’m only a low grade employee tasked to record the numbers and makes of ammunition we destroyed.’

  ‘Destroyed from where?’ he asked.

  ‘From wherever we went to gather them up from!’ I said.

  ‘Name some of these places,’ he said in a calm and deliberate voice.

  I started the list with Najaf, Al Diwaniyah, Al Amara, Tikrit and Babylon and went on with a dozen or so other areas when he stopped me.

  ‘You mentioned Babylon,’ he said. ‘What ammunition did you find there?’

  ‘From memory we found a lot of old ammunition warehouses built about 20 kilometres north of Babylon. I am fairly sure they were originally built by the British after World War II.’

  ‘I didn’t ask what buildings were there! What ammunition did you find there?’ he asked, but this time in a stern voice.

  ‘We found a lot of old British grenades and 122 millimetre spotting rounds that were painted red and filled with sawdust. We also found a lot of small arms and small mortar ammunition. I can remember that there was heaps of dangerous ammunition spread all over the area from where some warehouses were blown up previously by someone who had just spread fused ammunition everywhere. The locals were in there taking every brick and piece of building material they could get their hands on and carrying it off with hundreds of donkeys pulling carts.’

  ‘I didn’t ask about anything other than the ammunition! What sort of ammunition did you destroy? Did you see any missiles, for instance? And if you did were they destroyed?’

  It was then that I remembered. There were some Soviet-style missiles there but they were only the shells. They were all painted up and placed around what looked like some sort of training facility, I told him.

  ‘Did you see any live missiles that were not destroyed?’ he asked.

  ‘No I did not!’ I said. ‘They were all dummy training missiles. There were none with live warheads.’ Hopefully he didn’t pick up on the fact that again I was lying my arse off. There was a training facility as I’d said. But what I didn’t tell him was that there was an intact missile loaded onto a launch platform on a specially designed truck; we left it parked in a building exactly where we found it so the US military intelligence people could look it over.

  ‘Tell me more about this training facility,’ he said.

  ‘It looked like it was an Iraqi Army missile training school. There were training documents spread everywhere and personal notepads all over the place,’ I said.

  ‘What were in these documents and notepads?’

  ‘How the hell would I know!’ I said. ‘They were all in Arabic. A few of them had photos and drawings of missile components so I assumed they were related.’

  ‘Was your team the first to arrive at this location or had there been military troops there before you?’ he questioned.

  ‘By the looks of it there had been thousands of people there before us,’ I said. ‘All of the furniture and electrical wiring was gone. The whole place was ransacked. There was definitely nothing but junk left behind.’ ‘You told me you were just an employee. Is this correct?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course it is,’ I told him.

  ‘Then how could you consider that anything remaining was junk? Unless you were a trained intelligence officer everything left behind in an area like that would look very important. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I spent 22 years in the Australian Army,’ I explained. ‘I suppose I have a better understanding of what would be considered important than most people.’

  ‘So during your time in the Australian Army how long did you spend at Canungra?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose I went there for training a few times,’ I said.

  ‘What sort of training?’

  ‘Jungle training, of course. What else?’ I said.

  ‘So you deny doing your military intelligence training there,’ he said with a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘Look!’ I said. ‘I’ve told your mates here before; I was in an infantry battalion. An infantry battalion! I was never ever posted to, or did anything with military intelligence.’

  ‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘how did you get into ASIO if you had never had any past experience or qualifications?’

  ‘They required someone who had experience working with unexploded ordnance,’ I told him. ‘They wanted someone who had past experience working in harsh conditions. So I suppose I qualified.’

  ‘So why then did your friend Boof tell me you were a spy?’ he demanded. ‘Why would he make something like this up? It most certainly would not have been able to help him at all.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Maybe he was getting me mixed up with someone else.’

  ‘Look,’ he said to me. ‘I have a way we can all get to the bottom of this and ascertain who exactly you are. We have your American identity cards. Is Craig Jackson your real name?’

  ‘Yes it is,’ I told him.

  ‘Okay!’ he said. ‘Tell me your old military number and rank. Tell me your old regiment and units you served with and I will have my men see if they can get anything off the internet. Surely there would be mention of you somewhere. If they can’t download any information, then I will take that as proof that you are lying to me. What do you think about that?’

  ‘That is the best idea I have heard in ages. I have nothing to lose,’ I replied.

  ‘Take him back to his cell,’ the American said to whoever else was in the room.

  As they placed their hands on my arms to stand me up I asked, ‘Why is an American working with terrorists?’

  There was a sudden quiet. Then he replied, ‘If only you knew, boy. If only you knew.’

  I was taken downstairs and led, still covered with the sack, back towards my cell. I heard the American say to Safi that he would be back tomorrow. I then clearly heard Safi reply, ‘Yes, sir.’ If Safi was an ex-Iraqi Colonel and I believe he may have been, then this American would have been at least a general. What th
e fuck is going on here? I thought to myself again. What the hell am I in for?

  As I was pushed through the doorway into the cell by Ali he untied my wrists, squeezing hard on my injuries and with a smile on his face said, ‘Maybe you won’t live long enough to see Ramadan, my Aussie friend. But in the end you will still be dead.’

  He pulled the sack off my head and left the room.

  24

  Escape

  PMN Anti-personnel Mines

  The design of the PMN 1 mine dates from the late 1950s. It was first manufactured by the Soviets and is undoubtedly the most common landmine worldwide. Eventually the PMN 2 came into production around 1970. They are both particularly deadly because they contain an unusually large explosive filling when compared to most other anti-personnel landmines. Most anti-personnel blast mines contain around 50 grams of high explosive, which typically destroys all or part of a victim’s foot. A PMN, however, contains almost 250 grams of explosive, which can easily destroy a victim’s entire leg and almost always inflicting severe injuries on the adjacent limb as well. The majority of anti-personnel mine victims other than those who step on a PMN have a very high probability of survival, even though they still suffer a crippling disability for the duration of their lives. However, the amount of explosive inside a PMN mine is so large that the risk of victims dying is most likely unless they have immediate access to a competent medical facility. Assuming that they do survive their injuries, the degree of disability they have to live with is much more severe. As well as the Soviets the Chinese, Burmese, Hungarians and Bulgarians all produce them by the millions.

  The rest of the day was quiet. Some cars came and went from the warehouse but no-one came into my cell.

  A short time after the evening prayers Ali came into my room with a piece of flat bread. He looked at me sitting on the floor leaning with my back against the wall and threw the bread into the toilet tin. ‘Your dinner, Mr Aussie man,’ he sneered.

  My heart sank. Would he notice the bricks? I decided to get his attention away from the tin.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for? You bastard!’ I screamed.

  He smiled and just walked out, locking the door behind him, leaving me in instant relief.

  I waited for what seemed to be hours into the night. I couldn’t hear any noise coming from outside so I presumed everyone was sleeping. I had never heard a night guard or sentry walking around; I presumed they thought I wasn’t able to get out of my cell so one wasn’t needed. I hoped I was right!

  I slowly slid the toilet tin away and removed the loose bricks. I quickly scraped the mortar away from more around the bottom near the floor and a couple from the top to make a hole large enough for me to escape through. It didn’t take long and I had a total of ten bricks out of the wall on my side.

  I decided this was enough. I could crawl through a hole this big. As soon as I started to slowly scrape away at the mortar on the other wall the bloody lights went out again leaving me in the dark.

  It was eerie. It seemed that every sound I made regardless of how small was amplified throughout my cell. I was scared shitless that someone would hear the noise as well and come to investigate.

  Regardless, I decided I had no option. I had to keep digging. The hole was too big to cover with my toilet tin now so if I stopped they would definitely see it in the morning.

  I kept on scratching as quietly and slowly as I could until I finally had completely surrounded one of the bricks in the centre of the hole on the other wall.

  I gently levered the brick so it came into my cell and didn’t fall on the floor in the other room. I still had no idea what was in there. For all I knew it may have been the goons’ sleeping area so I had to be real quiet. As soon as I got the first one out it was easy to remove the rest. They were exactly the same as the bricks on the inner wall and now I had an advantage; I could pull back on each one of them and jar them out of place. Soon I didn’t need to scrape away any mortar at all. They were simply pulling loose.

  When I removed enough to get my head through I slowly slid forward and looked into the darkness of the room beside me. It was still as black as ever and I couldn’t even see the wall I was passing through. I slid back and quickly continued to remove the rest of the bricks and placed them all quietly to one side.

  I placed the wire in the pocket of my overalls and took a few deep breaths as I started to slide myself through the hole into the unknown when suddenly the lights came back on, lighting up my cell and the room in front of me.

  To my great relief I saw an abandoned office with a few old pieces of furniture piled against a wall. I pulled myself right through the hole and looked around while I was still at ground level. There were no windows and the door that led into the office had been removed leaving nothing but a few hinges attached to an empty door frame.

  I hesitantly stood up with my back against the wall in the now brightly lit office and peeked around the door frame into an open corridor that looked like it led into the warehouse itself. I was slowly making my way down the corridor with my back sliding softly against the wall when I heard loud snoring coming from a closed room ahead of me. This Iraqi bastard may have been my saviour. His snoring may have been what covered the noise I made scrapping the mortar away.

  When I got to the door I slowed so as not to make a noise when suddenly someone yelled out from the inside of the room. The snoring suddenly stopped as I heard the springs of an old bed squeak as the snoring man rolled over. A second passed and he was at it again as loud as before, unknowingly giving me some covering noise to assist with my escape. I quickly moved past the door and down to the end of the corridor near the entrance of the warehouse. I noticed some power switches on the wall so I took a gamble and turned them all off. To my great relief all of the warehouse and hallway lights turned off.

  I didn’t think this would make anyone suspicious simply because the power was often coming on and off. Hopefully they would just think it was normal and wouldn’t even get out of bed to investigate.

  As soon as the lights were off I moved across the warehouse floor as quickly as I could and into the open fountain area at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the blanket-covered doorway of Sami’s room and the explosives I was heading for. The night was fairly overcast and there wasn’t much moonlight so I started up the stairs as quietly as I could.

  When I got to the top I ran into something I hadn’t planned on. The door was closed. If this is locked I am in deep shit, I thought to myself. I slowly placed my hand on the knob and rotated it. To my relief it turned and I was able to slowly swing the door inwards. I left it slightly ajar so I could get a bit of light into the dark room. I gradually made my way across the room to the blanket covering the doorway.

  As I pulled the edge of the blanket aside I noticed Sami lying asleep on a bed mat on the floor in the centre of the room. It was dark but the small amount of moonlight entering from the other room made it possible to make out the layout of the room. I slowly let the blanket fall back and removed the wire from my pocket. It was obvious I would have to kill him if I wanted to go any further.

  With the wire in my left fist I pulled the blanket aside again and entered the room. As soon as I got in the blanket fell back throwing the room into complete darkness again. I could just make out the shadow of Sami, who was lying with his back to the desk that contained his tools and the TV set.

  As I crept around the back of him I saw in the dim light a large, long, green-handled screwdriver lying on top of other tools in a tray on his desk.

  I placed the wire down on the desk and took the screwdriver firmly in my left hand as if it were a knife. I slowly made my way over and knelt down onto the floor beside Sami’s back.

  I ran what had to happen next over and over in my head. I have to stab him in the heart but he can’t make any noise or I’m stuffed. I have to cover his mouth with my right hand and stab him with the screwdriver in my left hand both at the same time. I’ll have to have my legs u
p near his back or he will roll over and he may get free for just enough time to scream.

  Fuck! I thought. If I don’t do it soon he may wake up!

  I knelt there for a few seconds more going over it in my mind again and again until suddenly I did it. I quickly placed my hand over his mouth as I slid my right knee up against his back near his shoulders. I swung down as hard as I could with the screwdriver and pushed it all the way down to the handle through his shirt and into his chest. Sami let out a deep groan. Keeping my hand on his mouth I pulled the screwdriver out and stabbed him again and again. Each time there was another deep groan until eventually there was no noise at all.

  I got up as quickly as I could and pulled the blanket down from the doorway. As soon as I did I noticed a large pool of blood seeping onto the floor around Sami’s bed roll.

  I knew I had no time to waste now so I quickly went over to Sami’s desk and had a look at what tools he had. In the corner was all of the ammunition and mines that the men unloaded a few days before. Thank God he hasn’t used them yet I thought.

  I quickly looked around to see what I could do. I had no time. The morning prayers were due but I had no real idea when. I did know that if Sami didn’t attend the morning prayers someone would be right up to kick his arse so I had to hurry. I grabbed the TM-62 anti-tank mines two at a time and carried them into the interrogation room. These had no detonators so I needed something to set them off. I went back into the room and looked over the remaining ammunition. To my surprise only one of the PMN mines had a detonator in it. The others only had shipping plugs screwed into their side. I picked up the mortars and two of the PMN anti-personnel mines and lay them on top of the larger anti-tank mines. I went as fast as I could back into the room and returned with the roll of red detonation cord.