Zero Six Bravo

by Damien Lewis

  It was Scruff. Grey could only imagine his Pinkie – like the rest of the wagons – had been torn up by the 12.7mm fire and shrapnel, and that was what had made it finally give up the ghost. It was a miracle that the three Land Rovers had kept going thus far, but now they were going to have to get the blokes from the last wagon to cross-deck onto the two that remained.

  Grey ran back to Scruff’s position, to find out what the hell had happened. It turned out that the rear-most of the vehicles had in fact run out of diesel. For a moment Grey was frozen with indecision and then he made the call.

  ‘Fuck it, keep everyone on your wagon. We’ll refuel it from our jerry. We’ve got to keep the wagons going, or we’re fucked. They’ll catch us.’

  Bodies piled off the lead Pinkie, as Dude hauled out the last remaining jerry-can from the rear. He handed it to Grey. It had a five-gallon capacity, and it felt as if it was around one-quarter full.

  Under normal circumstances the Pinkies could manage twenty mpg across rough terrain. Overloaded as they were, that was probably down to fifteen. If Grey drained the entire can into Scruff’s wagon, he was giving it no more than thirty miles of fuel max. Either they got the Chinooks in pronto, or they’d be down to twenty-six blokes sharing two crippled vehicles.

  Grey lugged the jerry back to Scruff’s Pinkie, up-ended it and sloshed the diesel into the wagon’s tank. To their rear he could see scores of headlights probing through the gloom, as the Fedayeen fanned out across the desert. Maybe they too were running short of ammo, and they were holding their fire until they were close enough to see the whites of the eyes of their prey, and could be certain of their targets.

  He cursed as he tried to get the can to empty faster. As he finished draining the last of the diesel he noticed that his hands were shaking. Whether it was from the exhaustion, the adrenalin rush or the fear, he didn’t know. And in a sense he was past caring.

  He raced back to his wagon and set to working out a bearing to take them to the extraction grid. The wagons moved out. But after some nine hours of navigating through the darkness he was tortured with exhaustion, his eyes red-raw from staring at his map and into the hungry maw of the night. He was desperate for a break.

  They got Scruff’s wagon to take the lead. It made double sense, for their vehicle was arguably the most vulnerable now. It was better to have it up ahead where a problem could be instantly spotted. It hadn’t escaped any of them that a round might have gone through the Pinkie’s fuel lines, in which case it would piss out any diesel into the desert sands.

  Fifteen minutes’ hard driving later they reached the grid for the helo pick-up, with Scruff’s wagon still going strong. The blokes debussed and went into all-round defence. They were flat out on their belt buckles, but it was clear right away that this was a totally shit patch of terrain from which to mount a battle. Headquarters had chosen a featureless stretch of open desert: it was perfect ground for a pair of Chinooks to put down on, but useless for repelling an attack by scores of Fedayeen wielding 12.7mm Dushkas, let alone a marauding Iraqi T-72.

  They’d need a minimum of two Chinooks to lift them and their wagons out of theatre, but there was precious little cover the blokes could give the helos if they landed here. That would be the ultimate nightmare – seeing a couple of those giant twin-rotor helicopters blasted out of the sky. It would be a disaster for the RAF aircrew, who’d likely die – or get captured – if by some freak of chance they survived. And it would be a disaster for the twenty-six blokes waiting on the grid, for no one was kidding themselves that the British military would get a replacement pair of helos up and running in the few short hours before sunrise.

  Ed radioed Headquarters that the patrol was in position, and gave a warning about the lack of available cover, plus that enemy forces were all around them.

  He was told to stand by.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They’d been on the ground for ten horribly tense minutes when Ed got the word. The Chinooks were en route to their grid, but they were being diverted. Reggie, the Squadron OC, had just come up on the air with his own extraction coordinates.

  It made every sense to pull out the HQ Troop and all the extra blokes with them – and especially if they had seriously wounded. But it was still massively frustrating to have this happen right now, especially as it was their unit that had been drawing the bulk of the enemy fire.

  Their force was to remain static on the present grid for as long as they could possibly manage. Headquarters would try to get the helos in to pick them up, once they’d lifted out the HQ Troop. If the patrol needed to bug out, they’d set another RV point further west, and try to marry up the helos and the patrol that way.

  They held firm for a further five minutes, but time was dragging painfully slowly. Each second felt like a bloody lifetime, as the thought of the hunter force that would be drawing ever closer gnawed into each of the operators’ minds. Eyes stared out anxiously into the dark night, keeping watch on the scores of headlights tracking back and forth across the desert.

  The Fedayeen were out there not that far away, driving what looked like a series of search grids. It stood to reason that sooner or later, they’d stumble upon the force that was static at the hot-extraction grid. Grey knew it was suicide to stick around for much longer. If they did, they were going to be caught in the open with their pants down.

  He had this ghostly, creepy feeling, like ice running down his spine: it was his sixth sense screaming Danger! From long years of elite soldiering, he knew when his instinct was telling him that the enemy was close, and it was doing so right now. He’d learned to trust that instinct, for it had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  He caught the snarl of a revving motor to the east, and a Toyota SUV crawled out of a deep river gully not three hundred yards away. Grey knew that steep-sided ravine well, for it was one Moth had had real problems getting their heavy wagon out of as he’d headed for the extraction grid. The powerful, lightly loaded Toyota suffered no such difficulties as it hauled itself onto level ground.

  The Fedayeen must have used the gully to push northwest, the terrain masking their engine noise until the very last moment. There was no way that the fighters riding in it could fail to spot the British vehicles. Grey saw the lead Dushka gunner swing his weapon round, scanning his arcs. It was simply a question of who got the drop on the others first and opened fire.

  Grey swivelled the GPMG round, found his target, pulled the trigger and let rip. An instant later the heavy .50-cal snarled and roared from behind him, as Dude spotted the threat and opened up. Big, chunky rounds went pumping over Grey’s head and slamming into the enemy vehicle.

  Bursts of fire punched a neat line of holes through the wind-screen of the Toyota and tore through the bodywork, chunks of metal spinning off in all directions. Within seconds the vehicle had exploded, as heavy rounds sliced through the fuel tank, igniting the diesel in a ball of boiling flame. Figures stumbled from the burning wagon, the clothes of one of them a sheet of raging fire.

  The surviving Fedayeen piled off the vehicle’s rear, and dived for cover. AK47s were raised and muzzles sparked as they started unleashing on automatic. To his right Grey saw Moth raise his Diemaco-mounted M203 grenade launcher and open up, pumping 40mm grenades into the enemy position. Within seconds, they’d blanketed the surviving Fedayeen in murderous fire.

  Moth had proved himself ten times over as a driver, and he more than shown his mettle on the M203. He might have been the wild card on their team, but with Moth, Grey reckoned he had hit solid gold.

  As the Toyota popped and burned, Grey detected the grunts of powerful engines from further down the wadi. Further Fedayeen were moving through. Where there had been one enemy vehicle there were soon going to be a whole lot more, for it sounded as if the first Toyota must have been leading a sizeable convoy.

  That first vehicle continued to burn fiercely, throwing off clouds of thick, black smoke. The extraction grid had been compromised big time, t
he firefight ensuring that it was visible for miles around. It was like a magnet now, drawing in the bad guys. No way were they about to bring any Chinooks in here.

  Voices broke out over the radios. ‘Fucking mount up and move out!’

  ‘Move it! Move it!’

  ‘We’re out of here!’

  Figures sprinted across the terrain and hurled themselves into the rear of the Pinkies. Moth slipped his weapon back into its holster and fired up the wagon’s engine, as Raggy dived onto his place on the bonnet, wrapping his arms around their M72 LAW in an effort to hold on.

  ‘Head west!’ Grey yelled. ‘And let’s fucking move it!’

  They were seriously on the run now, and within seconds Moth had their Pinkie thumping its way across the rough ground, as he accelerated away from their extraction. But they’d made no more than five hundred yards when the first savage burst of 12.7mm fire tore out of the darkness, hammering overhead.

  More SUVs were powering up from the riverbed, and they were onto the British vehicles almost instantly. Less than eight hundred yards separated the two forces as the Fedayeen gave chase, their convoy charging across the desert terrain. Short bursts of probing Dushka fire sparked over the blokes’ heads, as the enemy gunners tried to gauge the range and fire accurately from their fast-moving Toyotas.

  Blokes hanging off the rearmost Pinkie began trying to return fire with their assault rifles and grenade launchers, as others held them fast in an effort to keep them aboard. But it was all but impossible to put down accurate fire from a speeding wagon weaving through horrendous terrain. The only way to do so would have been by means of the tripod-mounted heavy weapons, and they were unusable with so many blokes clustered around them.

  Yet for some reason the Fedayeen seemed to be hanging back, instead of closing for the kill.

  As their wagon fought its way across the uneven ground Grey was desperately trying to check his maps. He figured the Syrian border had to be no more than eight kilometres away. It seemed impossible that they’d make it – but hell, they had at least to try.

  He glanced at Moth. ‘We got to make that break for Syria, like now! Keep going due west as fast as you can go, mate.’

  Moth floored the accelerator and the wagon ripped ahead, practically going airborne as it smashed through a patch of broken ground. Grey flicked his eyes down to their fuel gauge. Their reserve tank was half gone: they should have enough diesel to make it across the border – that’s if they could head straight through. Too much of a run-around, and in no time they’d be sipping on fumes.

  He glanced up and into the far distance, scanning the route that would take them to the border. As he did so, he almost had a heart attack on the spot. Due west of their position he’d spotted lights in a long, linear formation – ones that had just become visible on the near horizon. Up ahead they had a convoy of vehicles spread out at regular intervals on what had to be a road.

  It was at the limit of his sight, so maybe three kilometres away. But via his natural night vision he figured he could just make out army trucks, and the squat forms of armour. It had to be an Iraqi military convoy on the N253. It was static, and this was where Grey figured the commander of the entire Iraqi battle effort had to be positioned. Doubtless, it was from here that he’d been overseeing the hunt for M Squadron.

  It struck Grey that they were being herded into the final trap. This had to be what the Fedayeen were trying to drive them onto – this solid front of Iraqi armour and guns. He felt the wagon slow, as Moth woke up to the new threat. It was clear as day that there was no way through to the Syrian border any more. Even that doubtful promise of sanctuary was now suddenly closed to them.

  Grey flicked his eyes down at his map. ‘The border kinks east, and the 255 with it!’ he yelled at Moth. He grabbed the receiver, ‘They’re trying to herd us onto the 255. Steer north-northeast to take us away from the fuckers!’

  With the Fedayeen on their heels it was the only route left open to them – though somewhere to their north lurked the hunter force of Iraqi battle tanks. Moth spun the steering wheel through his hands, and the nose of the wagon swung ninety degrees northeast.

  As they came around to the new bearing, Grey could just make out the faintest trace of a fine, duck-egg blue painting the horizon due east – the first hints of the coming dawn. They’d just run out of escape options, and they were fast running out of time.

  They had an Iraqi military convoy bang west of them; Fedayeen to the south and east; T-72 tanks to the north; plus a shedload of Iraqi infantry somewhere in the middle. They were totally boxed in, and they’d been left with nowhere to run or to hide. They needed some air cover – like now – or they were totally fucked.

  ‘Where the fuck’s that Spectre gunship?’ Grey yelled.

  Moth pointed to the comms handset bolted to the Pinkie’s dash. ‘Fire that up, and dial up the air. How many satellites is it showing?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Not enough. Needs three.’

  The wagon careered ahead at breakneck speed, with the odd burst of tracer fire tearing through the night. Grey got their grid sorted, and then there was an audible bleep as a third satellite icon flashed up on the screen.

  ‘Three!’ he yelled. He grabbed the satcom’s receiver. ‘Zero Six Bravo, calling Ghost One Six, d’you copy?’

  A beat. Then: ‘Zero Six Bravo, this is Ghost One Six. I got you good and clear. How you doing down there?’

  ‘Not fucking great! We’re three jeeps with a shedload of Iraqi SUVs on our tail. We need you to smash them. Our grid is 98463782, and we’ve heading northeast at roughly thirty kph. The enemy is six hundred metres to the south of us and closing.’

  ‘No can do, Zero Six Bravo. We’re a good thirty minutes out from your location. It’s that kind of time before we’ll be within range and we can light those fuckers up for ya.’

  ‘Stand by.’ Grey cut the line. He let out a string of curses. The adrenalin was pumping in bucketloads, and despite the icy cold of the desert night his combats were soaked in sweat. ‘They’re thirty minutes out. There’s no air cover. What the fuck?’

  Moth shrugged. ‘We need an extraction grid, like yesterday.’

  As if to reinforce what he was saying, from just beneath where Raggy was lying across the bonnet the Pinkie began to emit this tortured whine. The engine sounded as if it was about to shake itself to pieces. It was hardly surprising. There were more bullet and shrapnel holes than bodywork on their wagon, and the damage to the internal components had to be terminal. The fact that it was still moving at all was little short of a miracle.

  Ed’s voice came up on the radios, thick with tension and urgency. ‘We’ve got a new extraction grid! 14657389. Repeat: 14657389.’

  Grey plotted it. ‘Just to the north of here, and well away from the 255. It’s doable. But make sure the fuckers get the Chinooks in this time, ’cause we ain’t going to get a second chance.’

  ‘It’s a one-ship,’ came Ed’s reply. ‘They’ve split the Chinooks so the other can lift out the OC. It’ll be standing-room only, and we’re gonna have to blow the vehicles.’ A ‘one-ship’ was military-speak for a lone aircraft. They were still trying to pull the HQ Troop out, so they’d been forced to separate the two Chinooks.

  Grey glanced at the cloud of steam that was boiling up from their engine, and presumably scalding Raggy’s balls off. ‘No fucking loss there. Ours is about to fucking pile in on us.’

  ‘The helos are coming in with top cover from fast air,’ added Ed. ‘That should keep the fucking Fedayeen’s heads down.’

  The Chinooks would be fitted with internal fuel bladders, to give them extra range. And for sure they’d need it, given the run-around from grid to grid they’d been getting as the scattered forces of M Squadron tried to outrun and evade the enemy. The bladders sat in the hold, cutting down the space for men and cargo. With a lone helo in-bound, there would be precious little room for the twenty-six blokes, let alone all their kit and the wagons.

/>   As Ed’s voice went off the air, Grey double-checked the grid on his map. They had five klicks to go, and if the fast jets could drive off the Fedayeen they might just make it. If not, there was no way they could hold that grid, fight off the Fedayeen, and get the lone Chinook in safely.

  If Grey were the Iraqi commander sitting in that convoy on the N253, just as soon as the British force went static he’d start dropping shells onto their grid. He’d get the Fedayeen to talk the rounds in, walking the 125mm tank shells and their artillery right onto the British position. Basically, any helo crew putting down amidst all of that would be committing suicide.

  Grey glanced towards the heavens, and he fancied he could just about make out the faint roar of a couple of jets in-bound. That, he hoped, was the fast air escorting the lone Chinook in.

  Moments later the lead pilot came up on the air. Moth gave him the talk-on, as he continued to coax their ailing wagon through the horrendous terrain. He was having to yell to make his voice heard above the screaming whine from just beneath the bonnet, to which had now been added a deafening steel-on-steel clanking sound.

  ‘This is the sketch: we’re making for an extraction grid two kilometres north of here, but we’ve got enemy wagons in hot pursuit. We need to go firm on that grid, and wait for a Chinook to extract us. Can you keep the enemy off our backs and away from that RV point, until we’re pulled out of there?’

  ‘Roger that,’ came back the crisp tones of the lead RAF pilot. ‘It’s a very confused battle space down there, so we’ll come in first in a low-level pass. If that doesn’t do it, we’ll start hitting enemy targets. Either way, we’ll keep a good watch over you.’

  Moments later a pair of Tornadoes came screaming out of the darkness to the southwest, tearing over the N253 and practically kissing the desert as they thundered across the Fedayeen positions. More or less the instant the jets roared past overhead, the enemy vehicles in pursuit slowed to a halt and their lights went dark.