Behind Iraqi Lines

SHAUN CLARKE

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1993

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1993

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover photographs © StudioThreeDots/Getty Images (soldier); Shutterstock.com (textures)

Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008141325

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008154837

Version: 2015-10-15

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES

About the Publisher

Prelude

Just after two in the morning the Kuwaiti Customs and Immigration officials playing cards at a table in the concrete administration office of the Al-Abdaly checkpoint were distracted by a rumbling sound approaching from the border of Iraq. Lowering their cards and removing their cigarettes from their lips, they glanced quizzically at one another as other officials, who had been dozing at their desks, were awakened by the increasing noise.

The floor began shaking beneath the men’s feet. At first bewildered, then slowly realizing that the unthinkable might be happening, the senior official, an overfed, jowly man in a dusty, tattered uniform, dropped his cards onto the table, stood up and walked to the door. By the time he opened it, the whole building was shaking and the distant rumbling was rapidly drawing nearer.

The Customs official looked out of the doorway as the first of a convoy of 350 Iraqi tanks smashed through the wooden barriers of the checkpoint. Shocked almost witless, he dropped his cigarette and stared in disbelief as one tank after another rumbled past, noisily smashing the rest of the barrier and sending pieces of wood flying everywhere.

Fear welled up in the official when he saw shadowy figures in the billowing clouds of dust created by the tanks. Realizing that they were armed troops advancing between the tanks, he slammed the door shut, bawled a warning to his colleagues, then raced back to his desk to make a hurried telephone call to Kuwait City, informing his superiors of what was happening.

He was still talking when the rapid fire of a Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle blew the lock off the door, allowing it to be violently kicked open. Iraqi troops rushed in to rake the room with their weapons, massacring all those inside and – more important from their point of view – blowing the telephones to pieces.

As the spearhead of Saddam Hussein’s military machine rumbled along the 50-mile, six-lane highway leading to Kuwait City, troops were dropped off at every intersection to capture Kuwaitis entering or leaving. Other troops disengaged from the main convoy to drag stunned Kuwaiti truck drivers from their vehicles and either shoot them on the spot or, if they were lucky, keep them prisoner at gunpoint.

Simultaneously, Iraqi special forces, airlifted in by helicopter gunships, were parachuting from the early-morning sky to secure road junctions, government buildings, military establishments and other key positions in the sleeping capital.

Moving in on the city, still out of earshot of most of those sleeping, were a million Iraqi troops, equipped with hundreds of artillery pieces, multiple-rocket launchers, and a wide variety of small arms. Stretched out along a 200-mile front, obscured by clouds of dust created by Saddam Hussein’s five and a half thousand battle tanks, they endured because they were motivated by months of starvation and their growing envy of Kuwaiti wealth.

In air-conditioned hotels, marble-walled boudoirs and lushly carpeted official residences, the citizens of Kuwait were awakened by the sound of aircraft and gunfire from the outskirts of the city. Wondering what was happening, they tuned in to Kuwait Radio and heard emergency broadcasts from the Ministry of Defence, imploring the Iraqi aggressors to cease their irresponsible attack or face the consequences. Those who heard the broadcasts, Kuwaitis and foreigners alike, went to their windows and looked out in disbelief as parachutists glided down against a backdrop of distant, silvery explosions and beautiful webbed lines of crimson tracers. It all seemed like a dream.

Thirty minutes later, as the early dawn broke with the light of a blood-red sun, the grounds of the Dasman Palace were being pounded by the rocket fire of the Iraqis’ Russian-built MiG fighters. Even as the Emir of Kuwait was being lifted off by a helicopter bound for Saudia Arabia, his Royal Guard, pitifully outnumbered, were being cut down by Iraqi tanks and stormtroopers. In addition, the Emir’s half-brother, Sheikh Fahd, who had nobly refused to leave, had been fatally wounded on the steps of the palace.

While Hussein’s tanks surrounded the British and American embassies, his jets were rocket-bombing the city’s airport, illuminating the starlit sky with jagged flashes of silver fire, which soon turned into billowing black smoke. Two guards died as Iraqi troops burst into Kuwait’s Central Bank to begin what would become an orgy of looting.

By dawn the Iraqis were in control of key military installations and government buildings in the capital, Kuwait’s pocket army was fighting a losing battle to protect the invaluable Rumaila oilfields and thousands of wealthy Kuwaitis and expatriate Britons, Americans, Europeans and Russians, trying to flee to Saudi Arabia, were being turned back by the Iraqi tanks and troops encircling the city.

Having returned to their homes, the expatriates heard their embassies advise them on the radio to stock up with food and stay indoors. Those brave enough to venture out to replenish their food stocks saw Iraqi generals riding around in confiscated Mercedes while their troops, long envious of Kuwaiti prosperity, machine-gunned the windows of the stores in Fahd Salem Street, joining the growing numbers of looters. Soon reports of rape were spreading throughout the city.

Before sunset, the invaders had dissolved Kuwait’s National Assembly, shut ports and airports, imposed an indefinite curfew and denounced the absent Emir and his followers as traitorous agents of the Jews and unspecified foreign powers.

No mention was made of the Iraqi tanks burning in the grounds of the fiercely defended Dasman Palace, the sporadic gunfire still heard throughout the city as loyal Kuwaitis sniped at the invaders or the many dead littering the streets.

Even as the sun was sinking, torture chambers were being set up all over the city and summary executions, by shotgun or hanging, were becoming commonplace.

By midnight, Kuwait as the world knew it had ceased to exist; the armoured brigades of the Middle East’s most feared tyrant stood at the doors of Saudi Arabia; and thousands of foreigners, including Britons, were locked in hotels or in their homes, cowering under relentless shellfire or hiding in basements, attics, cupboards and water tanks as Iraqi troops, deliberately deprived of too much for too long, embarked on an orgy of looting, torture, rape, murder and mindless destruction.

1

On 1 January 1991, almost four months to the day after Saddam Hussein’s bloody take-over of Kuwait City, an RAF C-130 Hercules transport plane secretly took off from RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. It was transporting members of the SAS (Special Air Service) and the SBS (Special Boat Squadron) to a holding area in Riyadh – the joint capital, with Jeddah, of Saudi Arabia – located in the middle of the country and surrounded by desert.

Though the SAS men were pleased to be back in business, the fact that they had been called back to their Hereford base on Boxing Day, when most of them were at home celebrating with family or friends, had caused some of them to voice a few complaints. Now, as they sat in cramped conditions, packed in like sardines with their weapons, bergens, or backpacks, and other equipment in the gloomy, noisy hold of the Hercules, some of them were passing the time by airing the same gripes.

‘My missus was fucking mad,’ Corporal Roy ‘Geordie’ Butler told his friends, in a manner that implied he agreed with her. ‘No question about it. Her whole family was there, all wearing their best clothes, and she was just putting the roast in the oven when the telephone rang. When I told her I’d been called back to Hereford and had to leave right away, she came out with a mouthful of abuse that made her family turn white. They’re all Christian, her side.’

‘Don’t sound so hard done by, Geordie,’ said Corporal ‘Taff’ Burgess. ‘We can do without that bullshit. We all know your heart was broken a few years back when your missus, after leaving you for a month, returned home to make your life misery. You were having a great time without her in the pubs in Newcastle.’

That got a laugh from the others. ‘Hear, hear!’ added Jock McGregor. ‘Geordie probably arranged the phone calls to get away from his missus and her family. Come on, Geordie, admit it.’

‘Go screw yourself, Sarge’. She’s not bad, my missus. Just because she made a mistake in the past, doesn’t mean she’s no good. Forgive and forget, I say. I just think they could have picked another day. Boxing Day, for Christ’s sake!’

But in truth, he’d been relieved. Geordie was a tough nut and he couldn’t stand being at home. He didn’t mind his wife – who had, after all, only left him for a month to go and moan about him to her mother in Gateshead – but he couldn’t stand domesticity, the daily routine in Newcastle – doing the garden, pottering about the house, watching telly, walking the dog, slipping out for the odd pint – it was so bloody boring. No, he needed to be with the Regiment, even if it meant being stuck in Hereford, doing nothing but endless retraining and field exercises. And now, with some real work to do, he felt a lot happier.

‘What about you, Danny?’ Geordie asked Corporal ‘Baby Face’ Porter. ‘What about your missus? How did she take it?’

‘Oh, all right,’ Danny answered. He was a man of few words. ‘She understood, I suppose.’

‘I’ll bet she did,’ Corporal Paddy Clarke said.

Sergeant-Major Phil Ricketts smiled, but kept his mouth shut. He knew Danny’s wife, Darlene, and didn’t think much of her. Danny had married her eight years earlier, just after the Falklands war. Having once spent a weekend leave with Danny and his parents in the Midlands, a few weeks before Danny proposed to his Darlene, Ricketts felt that he knew where Danny was coming from. Always intrigued by the contradiction between Danny’s professional killer’s instincts and his naïvety about personal matters, he had not been surprised to find that Darlene’s father was a drunken loudmouth, her mother a tart and Darlene pretty much like her mother.

Nevertheless, blinded by love, Danny had married Darlene and was now the proud father of two children: a boy and a girl, seven and six respectively. While Danny had never been one for talking much, it was becoming increasingly evident from his unease at the very mention of Darlene’s name that he was troubled by secret doubts which he could not articulate. The marriage, Ricketts suspected, was on the rocks and Danny didn’t want to even think about it.

No such problem, however, with the big black sergeant, Andrew Winston, formerly of Barbados, who was sitting beside Danny, looking twice his size, and crafting poetry in his notebook, as he usually did to pass the time. In fact, since the Falklands campaign, Andrew had become something of a celebrity within the Regiment, having had his first book of poems published by a small company based in London’s Notting Hill Gate, and even receiving a good review in the highly respected magazine Orbit. When most of the book’s print-run was remaindered, Andrew bought the books himself, and sold them off cheaply, personally signed, either to his friends in the Regiment or, more often, to their wives, who clearly were deeply interested in six-foot, handsome, black poets.

As the poems were about Andrew’s experiences with the Regiment, he had also sent copies of the book to the Imperial War Museum. When the curator wrote back, thanking him for his contribution and assuring him that the three signed copies would be placed in the museum’s library, Andrew was so thrilled that he rushed straight out and married his latest girlfriend, a beauty from his home town in Barbados. Now he too was a father – in his case, of three girls – and he appeared to have no complaints.

‘I used to spend so much time chasing nooky,’ he explained to Ricketts, ‘that I didn’t have any left for my poetry. Now I’ve got it on tap every night and I’m much more creative. Marriage has its good points, Sarge.’

In the intervening years, Ricketts had been promoted to sergeant-major, Andrew to corporal and then sergeant, while Jock McGregor, Paddy Clarke and the reticent Danny had become corporals. Geordie Butler and Taff Burgess, however, although experienced soldiers, had repeatedly been denied promotion because of their many drunken misdemeanours. Also because, as Ricketts suspected, they simply didn’t want responsibility and preferred being troopers.

As for Ricketts, now nearing 40, he was increasingly fond of the comforts of home, appreciating his wife Maggie more than ever, and taking a greater interest in his two daughters. It still surprised him that they were now virtually adults: Anna, 19, was working as a hairdresser in Hereford, while Julia, a year younger, was preparing to take her A levels and hoping to go to art school. Though he was proud of them, they made him feel his age.

Now, thinking about his family, and surrounded by his men in the cramped, clamorous hold of the Hercules, Ricketts was forced to countenance the fact that the battle for Kuwait might be his last active engagement with the Regiment. In future, while still being involved, he was more likely to be in the background, planning and orchestrating ops, rather than taking part in them. For that reason, he was looking forward to this campaign with even more enthusiasm than usual. It marked a specific stage in his life, and a very important one. After this he would settle down.

‘How much longer to go?’ Andrew asked no one in particular, suffering from a creative block and just needing someone to talk to.

‘About twenty minutes,’ Ricketts replied. ‘We’re already descending.’

‘Thank Christ,’ Andrew burst out. ‘I can’t stand these damned flights. You can burn me or freeze me or shoot me, man, but keep me out of these transports. I can’t bear being cooped up.’

‘You’re going to be cooped up when we land,’ Paddy gloated. ‘In a fucking OP in the fucking desert – hot by day, cold by night. How’s that grab you, Sergeant?’

‘I don’t mind,’ Andrew replied. ‘I’m a man who likes his privacy. Just stick me in a hole in the ground and let me live with myself. Since I’m the only man here worth talking to, I’d rather talk to myself.’

‘You might find yourself talking to an Iraqi trying to cut your black throat.’

‘Lord have mercy, hallelujah, I is ready and waitin’. Ever since that Saddam Hussein pissed on Kuwait City I’s bin dyin’ to come to the rescue. It’s part of my imperialist nature. My noble English blood, brothers!’

As the customary repartee – bullshit, as they always called it – poured from the other troopers, Ricketts thought of the march of events that had followed Saddam’s invasion. When the news broke, Ricketts had been sceptical about Saddam’s remaining in Kuwait City, assuming it to be a bluff designed to get him his way in other matters. Since then, however, Saddam had stuck to his guns. Because of his intransigence, the UN had imposed economic sanctions and a trade ban on Iraq; President Bush had ‘drawn a line in the sand’ and sent thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia; 12 Arab states, along with Britain and France, had done the same; over 100,000 refugees had crossed into Jordan; Saddam had used British hostages as a ‘human shield’, paraded others on television, and then declared Kuwait Iraq’s nineteenth province and released the hostages as a political gesture; and the UN Security Council had voted for the use of force against Iraq if it did not withdraw from Kuwait by 15 January.

By 22 December, shortly after the UN General Assembly had condemned Iraq for violating human rights in Kuwait, Saddam had vowed that he would never give up Kuwait and threatened to use atomic and chemical weapons if attacked. As he was still showing no signs of relenting, war was almost certainly on the cards.

‘Scuse me for asking, boss,’ Geordie said to Major Hailsham, ‘but is it true we’re not the first to be flown in?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Major Hailsham replied. He had been promoted shortly after his return from the Falklands, when Major Parkinson was transferred to another unit. With his sardonic sense of humour and excellent operational record, he was a popular commanding officer of the squadron.

‘You don’t?’

‘No, Trooper, I don’t. If any other members of the Regiment have been inserted, I wasn’t informed.’ Mike Hailsham was still a handsome schoolboy with a wicked grin. ‘But since I’m only the CO of this benighted squadron, they wouldn’t even think to inform me, would they?’

‘I guess that’s right, boss,’ Geordie responded, deadpan. ‘We’ll all have to accept that.’

In truth they all knew, and were envious of the fact, that other members of the Regiment had been working undercover in Iraq since a few days before the invasion, having flown incognito, in ‘civvies’, on British Airways flight 149 from London to Delhi, with a fuelling stop in Kuwait. Finding themselves in the middle of Saddam’s invasion, which had begun in the middle of that same morning – slightly earlier than anticipated by the ‘green slime’, the Intelligence Corps – the SAS men had melted away, dispersing in two directions, some to send back information from behind Iraqi lines, others to do the same from Kuwait itself, where they would now be hiding in a succession of ‘safe’ houses and operating under the very noses of the Iraqis. Naturally, their presence in Kuwait was unofficial and therefore remained resolutely unacknowledged.

‘We’re coming in to land.’ Hailsham observed needlessly as the overloaded Hercules began its shuddering descent. ‘Check your kit and prepare to disembark. I want no delays.’

‘Aye, aye, boss,’ Ricketts said, then bawled the same order along the hold of the aircraft.

Cumbersome at the best of times, though always reliable, the Hercules shuddered even more as it descended, groaning and squealing as if about to fall apart. Eventually it bounced heavily onto the runway, bellowed, shook violently and rattled as it taxied along the tarmac, before finally groaning to a halt.

Letting out a united cheer, the men unsnapped their safety belts and stood up in a tangle of colliding weapons and bergens. After a lot of noise from outside, the transport’s rear ramp fell down, letting light pour in, and the men clattered down onto the sunlit, sweltering tarmac of Riyadh airport.

It was not the end of the SAS men’s long journey. Lined up along the runway of the airport were RAF Tornado F-3 air-defence aircraft which had arrived four months ago, shortly after the fall of Kuwait, flying in from the massive Dhahran air-base. There were also a dozen RAF CH-47 Chinook helicopters of 7 Squadron’s Special Forces Flight.

The Regiment’s recently acquired, state-of-the-art desert warfare weaponry, including Thorn-EMI 5kg hand-held thermal imagers, Magellan satellite navigation aids – SATNAV GPS, or Global Positioning Systems – laser designators and other equipment, was unloaded from the Hercules and transferred to the Chinooks. When the transfer was over, the men, who had been milling about on the tarmac, stretching their legs and breathing in deeply the warm, fresh air, also boarded the helicopters and were flown on to Al Jubail, an immense, modern port on Saudi Arabia’s east coast, some four hundred miles from Riyadh and about five hundred from Kuwait City. They emerged from the Chinooks a couple of hours later, glad to be back on solid ground.

Though originally built as a centre for oil and light industry, Al Jubail had never been developed properly and was now being used fully for the first time as a receiving port for the Allied equipment and supplies being brought in on more than a hundred ships, mostly from European ports, but also from Cyprus, Liberia and Panama. While some of the British servicemen in transit, mainly those of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars and the 7th Armoured Brigade, were billeted in huts and sheds originally intended for the industrial workers, most were housed in the enormous, constantly growing ‘Tent City’ located in the port area and already equipped with camp-beds, showers, chemical toilets and a field kitchen run by the Americans.

‘Home sweet home!’ Sergeant Andrew Winston said, dumping his bergen on the floor beside a camp-bed in the sweltering late-afternoon heat of the space allocated to the Regiment for the duration of its stay in Al Jubail.

‘Having just come down from the trees,’ Geordie replied, ‘you’d be used to living out in the open. That’s one up to you, Sarge.’

‘You don’t like it, Geordie? Too hot for you, is it?’

‘You could obviously do with sweating off a few pounds,’ Geordie replied, tugging experimentally at the ropes of his lean-to tent to check that they were tight, ‘but me, I’m as slim as a man can go, so I don’t need melting down in this fucking heat.’

‘I’m relieved,’ Taff Burgess said, laying his M16 out carefully on his camp-bed and gazing out over the rows of tents divided by paths that led in one direction to the port and in the other to the airstrip, other accommodations and the guarded compounds containing the armoured transport and tanks. Hundreds of thousands of troops, British, American and French, crowded the spaces between the tents, eating, drinking, writing letters, taking open-air showers and going in and out of chemical latrines. Their constant movement and the ever-present desert wind created drifting clouds of sand and dust that made them look ghostlike in the shimmering light.

‘I wouldn’t fancy being in one of those huts in this fucking heat,’ Taff said. ‘It must be like a Turkish bath in there. At least we can breathe out here.’

‘All I’m breathin’ is dust,’ replied Jock. ‘That and bloody sand. I’ve got sand in my boots, in my eyes, in my mouth, and even up the eye of my fucking dick. This place is just like Oman.’

‘You’re too old to remember Oman,’ Paddy ribbed him, stretched out languidly on his camp-bed, hands folded beneath his head, acting really cool in the sweltering heat. ‘Relax, boys, you’re gonna have a good time here. Compared to what’s to come, it’s probably Paradise.’

‘I doubt that,’ Geordie said.

He was right. Their accommodations were close to the Royal Corps of Transport’s Force Maintenance Area, or FMA, and the constant noise, combined with the heat, made for irritable days and sleepless nights. Since they were there for five days, waiting for the rest of their equipment to be brought in by ship, the lack of sleep was no joke. To make matters worse, they were ordered to take NAP tablets, which were meant to reduce the damaging effects of gas in the event of a chemical attack, but also gave everyone diarrhoea.

‘My shit comes out like piss,’ Paddy informed the others. ‘And I hear these tablets also contain a lot of bromide, so say goodbye to your sex life.’

Already running non-stop to the latrines, they felt even worse after the biological vaccinations against whooping cough, which they received at the same time and which knocked most of them out for twenty-four hours.

‘Say goodbye to your fucking sanity,’ Jock said groggily, as the others moaned and groaned on their camp-beds. ‘Christ, I feel dizzy!’

Scarcely recovered, they were nevertheless made to spend a large part of each day on the Jerboa Range of the training ground at Al Fadhili, inland from Al Jubail, where they shot at targets and markers while being bellowed and spat at by the aggressive camels of passing Bedouin.

‘Those bastards on camels are straight out of Lawrence of Arabia,’ Geordie announced to all within earshot. ‘A fucking good film, that was.’

‘I never wanted to be in the movies,’ Andrew replied, ‘and those camels stink. What the hell are we doing here?’

‘Waiting for the rest of our equipment, coming in with the Navy. Need I say more?’

‘Fucking Navy!’ Taff spat.

Soon sickened by the repetitive, useless training, which they had done many times before, they were all pleased when, on the fifth day, the despised Navy finally arrived at the port with their missing supplies.

By this time, with over half a million Coalition troops and the greatest air force ever assembled in history clogging Al Jubail, the space being used by the SAS was desperately needed. The Regiment was therefore hurriedly packed up and driven back to the airstrip. From there, Hercules transports flew the relieved men to a forward operating base, or FOB, located at a Saudi airport in the desert, a day’s drive from the border of western Iraq.

‘We operate from here,’ Major Hailsham told the men the minute they stepped off the planes into another sea of flapping tents on a flat, barren plain. ‘Welcome to hell.’

It wasn’t quite hell, but it was certainly no paradise. The FOB was a dense throng of lean-to tents divided by roads filled with brightly painted ‘Pink Panther’ Land Rovers, Honda motorcycles, Challenger tanks, and other armoured vehicles and trucks, many of which were being used to support the tents and their camouflaged netting. On all sides of the makeshift camp there was nothing but desert, stretching nine hundred miles from the Red Sea to Kuwait and the Gulf, southwards to the Arabian Sea beyond Oman – more than a million square miles in all. It was a very big area to cover. Also, it was surprisingly cold, especially at night.

The first thing the SAS men learnt was that they could not phone home, their mail would be censored and normal radio transmissions were restricted. And, of course, they could not drink alcohol – not even here in the desert, for the Bedouin still often passed the camp on their camels. Similarly, the men had to respect Muslim customs and not flaunt their Western habits or religious preferences, except in the privacy of their tents.

‘Should this make you resent the fact that we’re here to defend the Kuwaitis,’ Hailsham said, ‘I would remind you that we have our own interests at heart. In fact, we’re here to safeguard Arabian oil, which furnishes over two-thirds of the world’s needs, including ours. To lose it to Saddam would have devastating consequences for the West, including Great Britain. I’d also remind you that there are approximately thirty thousand expatriates in Saudi Arabia who need our protection. To give them that, we need the trust of the Bedouin. Please don’t forget it.’

In their view, the men were not compensated for such restrictions by being treated like lords. On the contrary, their living conditions were basic, with portable showers, chemical toilets and meals consisting mainly of sausages and baked beans, sometimes curry with rice, spooned up from mess-tins as quickly as possible to stop sand or dust from getting on it, then washed down with hot tea.

The freezing nights were long – about eleven hours of darkness – and the men, stretched out beside their tanks and armoured vehicles or huddled up in their slit trenches, could do little to pass the time other than listen to the restricted programmes of Forces Broadcasting or study the brilliant stars over the flat, featureless, seemingly endless black desert.

From the BBC they learned that back in England Wing-Commander David Farquhar had lost secret documents and a laptop computer containing an outline version of the American war plan. The fact that this news was conveyed by the BBC even before it was known officially to the Coalition Forces in the Gulf caused much sardonic mirth among the men. They also learnt that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had been replaced by John Major, whom many thought would not be as supportive of them as had been the Iron Lady.

‘Not my cup of tea,’ Major Hailsham said, summing up the general feeling among the men, ‘but at least she always stuck by her guns. She also stuck up for the Special Forces. I don’t know that John Major will. This could be a bad blow to us.’

‘We’ll survive,’ Sergeant-Major Ricketts replied.

For the SAS, the first five months of the crisis had been a time of intense frustration. As Britain’s leading exponents of desert warfare, they were, by January, the only Regiment without a certain role in any war with Iraq, even though an FOB had been established in the Gulf since August, with D and G Squadrons carrying out intensive exercises in the desolate area of the Rub Al Khali, or the Empty Quarter, testing men and equipment. At that stage, their primary function was supposed to be the rescue of the hostages being used as a human shield by Saddam; but with the release of the hostages in the second week of December, that function had become redundant and left them with no clearly defined role.

‘At the moment,’ Hailsham explained to Ricketts, ‘with the cooperation of the American Special Operations Central Command, we’re working hand in glove with the 5th Special Forces Group, the Amphibious Sea Air Land, or SEAL, units, the US Air Force special force and the Psychological Operations and Civil Aid or, to be brief, Psyops and Civaid. Also, since it’s perfectly clear that the outcome of any war with Saddam Hussein will be determined by air power, we’re boning up on the use of lasers for target designation with the Tornado and similar bombers. Front-line reconnaissance, however, is still under the control of the 5th Special Forces Group and US Marine Corps recon specialists. This isn’t raising the spirits of the men to any great heights.’

‘Presumably we need the permission of our imposing US Commander-in-Chief, Norman Schwarzkopf, to take a more active role,’ said Ricketts.

‘Unfortunately, yes – though I have it on the best of authority that General Sir Peter de la Billière, our former SAS commander and now commander of the British forces here in Saudi Arabia, is putting in a good word for us.’

‘I should bloody hope so,’ Ricketts replied.

‘Apart from that we’re just twiddling our thumbs.’

‘There are worse vices, boss.’

Hailsham grinned. ‘Anyway, it’s bound to happen soon and I think we should consider our course of action. My view is that we should revert to the kind of campaign David Stirling ran during World War Two – deep-penetration, hit-and-run raids behind enemy lines, destroying their planes on the ground, attacking their lines of communication, ambushing their patrols and causing general disruption and mayhem.’

‘In armed Land Rovers.’

‘Right. The Pink Panthers. In and out in clouds of dust with all guns firing. Personally, I’d love it.’

‘Then let’s hope we get to do it,’ Ricketts said. ‘Come on, boss, let’s go for chow.’

They were just about to leave the tent when the telephone rang.

2

‘I’ve called you together,’ Major Hailsham addressed the troopers assembled outside his lean-to on the edge of the city of tents spread across the desert plain, ‘to tell you that plans for the liberation of Kuwait are already well advanced and the operation’s been codenamed “Desert Storm”.’

When the men burst into applause and cheering, it hit Hailsham just how frustrated they had been during the past few days, not knowing exactly why they were here and fed up with the repetitive lessons on survival in the desert or the use of the latest high-tech equipment. While this FOB was busy and noisy all day, with helicopters constantly taking off and landing, aircraft roaring overhead and Challenger tanks and armoured vehicles being put through their paces, the activity was purely of a time-filling nature, albeit masquerading as practice. Meanwhile, the ‘Pink Panther’ Land Rovers and motorcycles were sitting idly outside the tents. What Hailsham’s men wanted, he now realized, was more positive action and a clearly defined reason for being here. Now at last they were getting it.

‘The basic plan,’ Hailsham continued when the men had quietened down, ‘is for battleships of the US Navy to bombard the Iraqi coastal positions and offshore islands of Kuwait while US Marines make an amphibious landing from the Gulf. At the same time, Arab elements of the Coalition forces will head overland, straight for Kuwait. Meanwhile, US Marine Corps will be engaging the Iraqis due north of them. The Syrians and Egyptians will push to the north, make a right-handed swing, and come into Kuwait City from the west – hopefully, if things go as planned – meeting up with the Coalition Arab forces already there. No Western forces will enter the capital until it’s been cleared by Islamic troops.’

‘Very decent of us,’ Geordie said sarcastically.

‘Very sensible of us,’ Ricketts pointed out. ‘It shows that this war is for the Kuwaitis and we’re simply supporting them.’

‘Correct,’ Hailsham said. ‘The city must be liberated by Muslim forces to avoid accusations of exploitation or desecration by Christians. We’ll follow them in.’

‘So what’s the state of play at the moment?’ Sergeant Andrew Winston asked. ‘Are we ready to move?’

‘Not quite. As our heavy tank units haven’t arrived yet, all that stands between Saddam’s five thousand-odd tanks and the oil riches of Saudi Arabia are a few thousand US paratroopers and Marines…’ Jeers and farting noises from the SAS troops interrupted Hailsham, who went on, ‘…around twenty-four US Army AH-64A Apache attack helicopters, a few hundred Coalition aircraft, US special Forces Troops…’ – more derisory remarks and noises from the SAS troopers. – ‘…And, of course, us.’ Loud cheering. ‘However, while thousands more Coalition troops – British, American and French – are being flown and shipped in every day, the Gulf is filling up with aircraft carriers and their F-18 Hornet fighters, F-14 Tomcat attack fighters, A-6E Intruder bombers, and KA-6d tanker jets for mid-air refuelling. By the time the UN deadline for Saddam’s withdrawal is reached, the greatest army in history will have been assembled in Saudi Arabia and will be ready to move.’

‘What’s our new role,’ Danny ‘Baby Face’ Porter asked solemnly, ‘now that all the hostages have been released?’

‘A good question, Corporal. As you’re doubtless aware by now, on 2 December Saddam Hussein test-fired three ballistic missiles – similar to the Soviet-built Scuds – over four hundred miles of Iraqi territory, provocatively aiming them in the direction of Israel. It’s our belief that if the battle for Kuwait begins – which it will if Saddam ignores the Coalition’s demand for withdrawal by the fifteenth of this month – he’ll deliberately fire on Israel in order to lure it into the war.’

‘So?’ Paddy Clarke said. ‘We can do with all the help we can get and the Israelis are sharp.’

‘I agree about the Israelis, but in this particular theatre of operations we simply can’t afford to have them taking part. In fact, their intervention would be an absolute disaster, losing us the Arab members of the Coalition and maybe even turning them against us. Our new task, then, is to help prevent Saddam attacking Israel.’

‘And how do we do that?’ Jock McGregor asked.

‘By locating and destroying the Scud bunkers, trailer-erector launchers, mobile units and support systems hidden deep in Iraqi territory.’

‘Can’t they be located by satellite?’ Andrew Winston asked. ‘I’ve heard that the Yanks have two orbiting spacecraft that can sweep the launch areas with infrared detectors every 12 seconds.’

‘They’re not all that brilliant,’ Sergeant-Major Ricketts pointed out. ‘In fact, they even failed to spot Saddam’s so-called supergun at Jabe Hamryn, north of Baghdad. That barrel was 170 feet long and sticking into the sky like a big dick – yet the satellites missed it!’

‘Ricketts is right,’ Major Hailsham said. ‘Aerial reconnaissance can be flawed. The recent Scud test shot, from a base near Basra, was in the final stages of its flight before a US satellite detected the flare from its rocket motor. The satellites, it seems, can only pick them up when they’re in flight – and that’s often too late. Also, the Iraqis are switching off their Squat Eye guidance radar systems, which further reduces our chances of finding them – so we still need good old-fashioned eyeball recces.’

‘From OPs.’

‘Yes, Corporal Porter, that’s the idea.’

‘How many Scuds do they have?’ Danny asked, as solemn as ever.

‘Present estimates vary from four hundred to a thousand missiles on thirty to thirty-six sites and maybe two hundred mobile launchers.’

Andrew gave a low whistle. ‘That’s a lot, boss.’

‘No argument there, Sergeant.’

‘So what happens when we locate bunkers or mobile launchers?’

‘Either we call in air power or we relay the info to Intelligence HQ in Riyadh. Patriot surface-to-air missiles will then be alerted automatically to the Scud’s course and speed – a process that only takes a few minutes.’

‘Our parameters?’

‘As of this moment, we’re the only ones allowed to cross the line ahead of other ground forces.’ This caused whistles of approval and sporadic clapping, which tailed off when Hailsham waved his hand for silence. ‘We have a secondary reason for being allowed to go in ahead. The Coalition is greatly concerned about Iraq’s chemical-warfare capability. At the moment we know very little about the types of chemical agents Saddam has in his arsenal. We do know he has mustard and nerve gas and is likely to arm his Scuds with them. So one of our jobs may be to infiltrate the contaminated areas and collect samples of the agents being used. The samples will then be flown back to Porton Down for analysis and, hopefully, the creation of an antidote.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Andrew said. ‘I don’t like them chemicals, man.’

‘Nor do I, Sergeant.’

‘How do we insert?’ Danny asked.

‘The Regiment will be broken up into two sets of mobile teams: one for deep-penetration ops in Iraq; the other for hit-and-run raids in the desert, using Land Rovers – just like they did in Africa during World War Two.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ Geordie said. ‘I’ll buy that, boss.’

‘Me, too,’ agreed Jock. ‘Are you going to throw in some motorbikes?’

‘Yes,’ Hailsham said.

‘I haven’t been in a Pink Panther since Oman,’ Andrew said, glancing back over his shoulder at the brightly painted Land Rovers and motorcycles on the dusty tracks between the lean-to tents. ‘Look at ’em! As pretty as a picture.’ He turned back to grin at Major Hailsham. ‘Count me in, boss.’

‘I have your name and number, Sergeant Winston.’

‘When do we move out?’ asked Taff Burgess.

‘We have to be gone by the night of the twenty-second. If Saddam doesn’t withdraw from Kuwait on the fifteenth, hostilities will begin on the twenty-ninth. That gives us seven days to do as much damage as possible before Desert Storm commences.’

While talking to the men, Hailsham frequently had to shout against the noise of the RAF Chinooks that were taking off and landing in billowing clouds of sand on the nearby airstrip. Even noisier were the Tornado F-3 air-defence planes roaring frequently overhead, going to or returning from practice flights out in the desert. Also churning up clouds of sand and creating a lot of noise were the Challenger tanks being put through their paces on the sands surrounding the camp. This was a large, busy FOB.

‘What are the negatives?’ Andrew asked.

‘Local beliefs, sand and water.’

‘That’s not too clear, boss.’

‘As you know, the men here call the desert the GAFA, or “Great Arabian Fuck All”.’ The explanation copped a few knowing laughs. ‘It’s amusing, but accurate,’ Hailsham said when the laughter had died down. ‘Out there, where we’ll be going, the desert appears to be empty of everything except sand and gravel. That appearance, however, is deceptive. Even the most barren stretch probably belongs to somebody and will be highly valued as grazing for the camels still maintained here by the Saudis, particularly those of high rank. As it is with their religion, so it is with their property: we have to be careful not to give offence.’

‘And the other problems?’

‘Too much sand and too little water,’ Hailsham replied. ‘Sand ingestion gives us severe mechanical problems. Even with filters, the life of helicopter engines is reduced to about a tenth of normal usage. The power-packs of the Challenger tanks are failing so often that 7th Armoured Brigade’s desert training had to be curtailed. Other supply vehicles that were perfectly fine in Europe, when loaded here sink into the sand. And container trucks are particularly useless here. In fact, we’ve had to borrow a lot of M453 tracked vehicles from the Yanks. We’ll be using them in conjunction with wheeled vehicles for staged resupply journeys. A further problem is that the desert is mostly flat, featureless terrain, which makes direction-finding difficult for the supply trucks. They can also get bogged down in the sand, thus becoming exposed.’

None of the men showed too much concern at that.

‘Water?’ Danny asked.

‘It normally comes from the desalination plant at Al Jubail, but if we miss the REME supply columns, or if we’re out on patrol, we’ll have to drink the fossil water from the prehistoric aquifers beneath the desert floor. Of course the sappers will also be prospecting the best sites for artesian wells, but they have to negotiate with local landowners, who aren’t always keen.’

‘I’d rather drink my own piss,’ big Andrew said. ‘It won’t be the first time.’

‘As it is with the flight crewmen,’ Hailsham continued when the laughter had died down, ‘you’ll all be given approximately £800 worth of gold, to help you if you’re caught or find yourselves cut off and faced with non-friendly civilians who want their palms greased. You’ll also be carrying a chit written in Arabic, promising that Her Majesty’s Government will pay the sum of £5000 to anyone who returns you safely to friendly territory or persons. If nothing else, I trust that makes you feel important.’

‘I’m important enough without that,’ said Andrew without hesitation. ‘You can look me up in the Imperial War Museum. I’m in there with the greats.’

‘You do us all proud, Sergeant Winston. Any questions, men?’

‘Yeah,’ Paddy said. ‘What do we do between now and the twenty-second?’

‘We prepare,’ Hailsham said.

The men dispersed and went their separate ways, most of them looking a lot happier than they had done for the past couple of days.

Ricketts put his thumb up in the air. ‘Very good, boss.’ Hailsham just grinned.

3

On 19 January, five days before the planned date, the Squadron was kitted out with weapons, survival equipment and battle clothes especially modified for desert conditions, before being flown from the FOB to a landing zone (LZ) somewhere deep in Iraq.

Since the briefing in early January, they had all undergone special training and weapons testing in the Empty Quarter, a vast, uninhabited region some distance from Al Jubail, with an emphasis on desert driving, survival in dust, sand, fierce heat and freezing cold, the protection of weapons from the same, and direction-finding by the moon and stars in case of compass failure. They were also trained in the use of laser designators for marking targets. All were looking forward to finishing the training and being airlifted to the LZ on the twenty-second.

They were therefore taken by surprise when, at 0001 hours Zulu – one minute past three local time, or one minute past midnight Greenwich Mean Time – on Thursday 17 January, two days after the deadline given for Saddam’s withdrawal from Kuwait – which he ignored – eight US Apaches of the 101st Airborne Division, equipped with laser spot trackers and range-finders, attacked Iraqi radars with Hell-fire missiles, rockets and 30mm cannon shells, destroying two command centres and their Soviet radars, Tall Spoon and King Rest, thereby creating a safe corridor for Allied aircraft.

Simultaneously, Tomahawk Cruise missiles from the Coalition aircraft-carriers in the Gulf rained down on Baghdad while British Tornadoes skimmed at low level across the desert at 800kph, also heading north for Baghdad. These were followed almost instantly by another wave of ‘jammer’ aircraft intent on suppressing enemy defences, top-cover fighters, more Tornado bombers, reconnaissance planes, AWACS early-warning, intelligence-gathering and target-identification aircraft, and the deadly, delta-winged F-117A Stealth fighter-bombers. The latter, invisible to enemy radar and often mistaken for UFOs, were likened by many to ‘ghost’ planes.

In no time at all, nocturnal Baghdad was illuminated by the greatest fireworks display in history and covered by an enormous umbrella of turbulent black smoke.

In the first 24 hours of this incredibly complex, computer-controlled war, over a thousand sorties were flown and over a hundred missiles launched against 158 targets, including communications centres and Scud launching sites, with as many as twelve combat aircraft being refuelled in-flight simultaneously by tankers stacked six deep in the air.

During the day, the first Allied casualty was the loss of a single Tornado. During the night of the seventeenth, however, from Iraqi airfields and secret bases in the west of the country, Saddam’s military commanders unleashed a volley of eight Scud missiles at Israel. Two landed in Haifa and four in Tel Aviv. They were followed immediately by more Scud attacks on Riyadh, where the War Room and main communications of the Coalition effort were located.

Even as the citizens of Haifa, Tel Aviv and Riyadh were donning NBC suits, designed for use during nuclear, biological or chemical attack, or placing gas masks over their heads, Patriot anti-missile missiles were taking off with a deafening cacophony. These were followed rapidly by an equally loud din overhead as the incoming Scuds were hit and exploded, filling the sky with great flashes of silvery light, mushrooms of black smoke and spectacular webs of crimson tracers and downward-curving streams of dazzling white, yellow and blood-red flame.

By the second day of the war, RAF aircrews were attempting to trap Iraqi aircraft hidden in hardened aircraft shelters, or HASs, by bombing the access tracks and taxiways leading from the shelters to the runways. At the same time, US giant B52s were carrying out round-the-clock, high-altitude attritional bombing raids designed to demoralize, exhaust and daze the Iraqi troops by denying them sleep, when not actually killing them.

By Day Three, however, it had become clear that the major threat to the Coalition was the Scuds, particularly those on mobile launchers.

‘Which is where we come in,’ Major Hailsham told his assembled troopers outside his tent in the FOB in Al Jubail. ‘The difficulty in tracking mobile Scud launchers is complicated by Saddam’s use of dummy rockets that look realistic from the air and contain fuel that explodes when hit by a bomb, thereby encouraging our pilots to report more strikes than they’ve actually made. They also use dummy mobile launchers with real crews and they, too, look genuine from the air.’

‘You mean the crews of the dummy mobile launchers have to drive around the desert, deliberately trying to be spotted, in order to misdirect the fire from our aircraft?’

‘Correct,’ Hailsham said.

‘Some job!’ Geordie exclaimed. ‘Rather them than me! Driving around just to be picked off by any passing aircraft and become another statistic on their kill counts. No, thanks. Not my cup of tea!’

‘As if those Air Force bastards don’t already come out with enough bullshit when they’re doing their sums,’ Andrew said, flashing his perfect teeth. ‘The day I find an honest Air Force kill count I’ll eat my own cock.’

‘If you can find it,’ Geordie said, which brought the house down.

‘OK, men, that’s enough,’ Hailsham admonished them, continuing when he had regained their attention: ‘It’s becoming clear that because of these dummy sites and launchers, the number of Scuds taken out by the aircrews is considerably less than at first anticipated. And as the real ones can’t be seen from the air, eyeball recces and personal contact are needed. So, my good fellows, we’re going to take them out ourselves, with particular emphasis on those within range of Israel, located in the desert round two Iraqi airfields known only as H2 and H3. So far, the Israelis are refusing to be drawn into the war. We therefore have to stop the Scud attacks on Israel before their patience wears out.’

‘What’s the terrain like around H2 and H3?’ Ricketts asked.

‘Fortunately a lot of it’s less flat and open than most parts of the desert,’ replied Hailsham, using his pointer to indicate the area on the map behind him. ‘The demarcation line is between the British and US territories on the most distant of the three MSRs [military supply routes] running north-east from Baghdad to Amman. If the Americans operate mostly to the north of it, in the area they call Scud Boulevard, or the northern “Scud box”, as they call it, and we keep to Scud Alley, south of the main road, there’ll be no danger of us fighting each other accidentally. Our territory, Scud Alley, is the Jordanian lava plateau, a relatively high, hilly area with deep wadis that are often flash-flooded after storms. Loose rock instead of sand, though dense sandstorms are blown in from other areas. Lots of rain instead of burning sun. Freezing cold at night. In fact, it’s more like the Falklands than it is like Oman, so you shouldn’t find it too strange.’

‘I remember the Falklands well,’ Paddy said. ‘Rain, hail and snow.’

‘Right,’ Jock concurred. ‘OPs always flooded with water. Fucking wind every day. I thought this place would be a pleasant change – balmy nights, lots of sunshine.’

‘You just want to look like me,’ Andrew teased him. ‘Suntanned and beautiful.’

‘Spare me!’ Jock retorted.

‘That’s enough,’ said Hailsham, with a wave of his hand. ‘Let’s get back to the business in hand.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Geordie said, grinning mischievously at each of his mates in turn and cracking his knuckles.

‘Good.’ Glancing outside the lean-to tent, Hailsham saw the sun sinking towards the flat horizon, casting its crimson light on the white plain as darkness crept in. Helicopters and fighter planes were silhouetted in its huge, fiery eye like ink-black cut-outs suspended on invisible threads. From where he stood they looked beautiful. ‘The Regiment will undertake three lines of attack,’ he continued. ‘Some teams will stake out static, covert road-watch patrols to report the movement of Scud traffic. Others will then vector F-15 strike aircraft onto the Scuds to destroy them.’

‘What kind of teams?’ asked Danny.

‘Lurp teams – eight men. To be inserted by chopper at an LZ about 140 to 180 miles behind the enemy border, without any transport other than desert boots and a strong will.’

The ‘Lurp’ teams Hailsham referred to were LRRP, or long-range reconnaissance patrols.

‘A strong will,’ Andrew echoed with a devilish grin. ‘That whittles it down to one man – me – and that isn’t enough.’

‘In parallel,’ Hailsham said when the anticipated scorn had been poured on Andrew, ‘there’ll be fighting columns of up to a dozen well-armed Land Rovers carrying one and a half tons of war matériel each, manned by a half squadron of thirty men or more. We’ll have four such columns. Their job will be to penetrate one of two major areas in the west, near the border with Jordan, from where the Scuds are launched. This “Scud box” is a well-defended area of desert of approximately 240 square miles, including the motorway linking Baghdad with Amman. Around twelve to fourteen mobile launchers are thought to be in or near the area.’

‘Do we move by day or night?’ Ricketts asked.

‘It’s not the Empty Quarter, so we’ll mostly move by night. According to Intelligence, Bedouin come and go constantly. There’s also a surprising amount of civilian traffic, much of it generated by fear of Western vengeance on Baghdad. Last but not least, because it’s a critically important military zone, it’s filled with Iraqi military personnel of all kinds, including Scud crews and the militia.’

‘How do we insert?’ said Andrew.

‘Two of the OP patrols will go in on foot. Another will be lifted in by RAF Chinooks. The rest will drive in on stripped-down Land Rovers and motorbikes. We cross the border on the twentieth – tomorrow.’

‘Who does what?’ asked Danny.

‘Allocation of duties is being drawn up right now and you’ll all be informed within the hour. Any more questions?’

‘No, boss,’ was the general response.

‘OK, men, go and have some chow. Get as much rest as possible. You’ll get your allocations later. Departure time will be the afternoon or early evening. That’s it. Class dismissed.’ As the men turned away, heading for the mess tent, Hailsham indicated that Ricketts should remain. ‘I have a special job for you,’ he said. ‘Pull up a chair, Sergeant-Major.’

Ricketts sat in a wooden chair on the other side of the trestle table Hailsham was using as a desk. The major placed two cups on the table and removed the cap from a vacuum flask. ‘Tea?’ he asked. When Ricketts nodded, he poured two cups of hot, white tea, then pushed one over to Ricketts. ‘Sorry, Sergeant-Major, no sugar.’ He glanced out over the sea of tents, now sinking back into a crimson twilight streaked with great shadows. After sipping some tea, he turned back to Ricketts. ‘Before anyone goes anywhere,’ he said, ‘we have to cut Iraq’s links with the outside world. They’re in the shape of a complex web of communications towers known as microwave links, set up in the desert, dangerously close to main roads and supply routes.’

‘Should be easy to find,’ Ricketts said, trying his hot tea.

‘Not that easy, Sergeant-Major. The towers may be visible, but the fibre-optic cables are buried well below ground. So far, even the US National Security Council’s combined intelligence and scientific know-how hasn’t been able to bug them or tap into them – let alone destroy them.’

Ricketts spread his hands in the air, indicating bewilderment. ‘So how do we knock out Iraq’s whole communications system? It’s too widespread, boss.’

‘We don’t necessarily have to knock the whole system out,’ Hailsham said. ‘According to the green slime, it’s the communications system coming out of Baghdad that controls Saddam’s trigger-finger. Like the rest of the system, that network is a mixture of microwave link towers, in which telecom messages are transmitted short distances by air waves, and by fibre-optic cables buried in the ground and capable of carrying an enormous amount of data. We’ve received enough info from Intelligence to enable us to concentrate on the fibre-optic cables. Those lines carry Baghdad’s orders to the Iraqi troops responsible for Scud operations. They also run Saddam Hussein’s diplomatic traffic to Amman, Geneva, Paris and the UN, thus increasing his political credibility. It’s our job to destroy that credibility as well as the Scuds – and we have to do it immediately.’

‘You mean tonight?’

‘Exactly. I want you to pick 40 of your most reliable men and have them ready to be airlifted before midnight. I’m coming with you. Our LZ is an area approximately sixty kilometres south of Baghdad, near the main road that leads to Basra. According to Intelligence, the highest density of Baghdad’s fibre-optic cables are buried there and the ground is relatively easy to dig. We’re going to dig down, remove a sample of cable for analysis, then blow up the rest – so we need a couple of demolition experts. Any questions, Ricketts?’

‘No questions, boss.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. Have you finished your tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then go to it.’

Ricketts grinned, finished his tea, then stood up and left the tent. Heading back to his own lean-to, he was enthralled by the sight of so many tents on the dark plain, under the desert’s starlit sky, but even more thrilled – indeed almost ecstatic – to be back in business at last.

It was what he and most of his mates lived for.

4

At approximately midnight, two of the RAF’s CH-47 twin-blade Chinooks lifted Ricketts’s chosen team of 40 men off the airstrip of the FOB and headed through the night sky for the LZ. The men, packed into the gloomy, noisy interior of the helicopter, were wearing the normal beige beret, but without its winged-dagger badge and now camouflaged under a shemagh, or veil, that could also be wrapped around the eyes and mouth to protect them from dust and sand. (The same kind of veil was used to camouflage the standard 7.62mm SLR, or self-loading rifle.) The standard-issue woollen pullover was woven in colours that would blend in with the desert floor and matched the colouring of the high-topped, lace-up desert boots.

‘I feel like an A-rab,’ Geordie said. ‘What do I look like?’

‘Real cute,’ Paddy replied.

‘I always knew you adored me.’

Most of the men were armed either with the ubiquitous semi-automatic SLR or with 30-round, semi- and fully automatic M16s and their many attachments, including bayonets, bipods for accuracy when firing from the prone position, telescopic sights, night-vision aids, and M203 40mm grenade-launchers. Some had Heckler & Koch MP5 30-round sub-machine-guns. A few had belt-fed L7A2 7.62mm general-purpose machine-guns, or GPMGs, capable of firing 800 rounds a minute to a range of up to 1400 metres. All had standard-issue Browning FN 9mm high-power handguns on their hips, capable of firing 13 rounds in a couple of seconds.

These weapons and their bulky ammunition belts, combined with the standard bergens and camouflaging, made the men look awkward and bulky, almost Neanderthal. However, those weapons were only part of their personal equipment, and other, heavier weapons were taking up what little space they had left between them.

In case they were approached by tanks during the operation, the men were also carrying heavy support weapons, including the 94mm light anti-tank weapon, or LAW 80, which fired a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rocket and could be used on bunkers as well as armoured vehicles; the portable FIM-92A Stinger anti-aircraft missile system, capable of firing a heat-seeking missile 8000 metres and fitted with a friend or foe identification, or FFI, system; and two different mortars: the 51mm mortar, which, though carried and operated by one man, could launch an HE bomb to a range of 750 metres, and the larger, heavier 81mm mortar, which required three men to carry it, but could fire HE bombs 5660 metres at a rate of eight rounds per minute.

‘Tell me, Alfie,’ Andrew said, bored out of his mind, and deciding to have a bit of sport with Sergeant Alfred Lloyd, who was sitting beside him, ‘how come you’re almost as tall as me, but only half of my weight?’

‘I’m taller than you, fella, by half an inch. I can tell when our eyes meet.’

A dour Leicester man and SAS demolition specialist who had formerly been a Royal Engineer, then an ammunition technician with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Lloyd had unkempt red hair, a beakish, broken nose, and a lean face veined by booze and scorched by the sun.

‘I’m always willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt,’ Andrew said, ‘so how come, since you’re even taller than me, you only weigh half my size?’

‘I’ve sabotaged ships, aircraft, every type of armoured vehicle, power stations, communications centres, supply depots, railways and roads. It required a lot of climbing and running, which is why I’m still slim.’

Alfie Lloyd was indeed still as thin as a rake, though now heavily burdened like the others and divided from big Andrew by the boxes packed with explosives, charges, detonator caps and the many other tools of his dangerous trade. Andrew stared at them sceptically.

‘Those bloody explosives, man, are they safe?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ve heard that explosives go off real easy.’

‘Bullshit. Most explosives are safe unless they’re deliberately set off. You can hammer TNT into powdered crystals and it still won’t explode. That’s why it can be delivered by parachute. No problem at all.’

‘Mmmmm,’ Andrew murmured, not totally convinced. ‘So what exactly is explosive, man? Give it to me in simple words.’

Alfie thought for a while, wondering how to reply, not being a man of great eloquence and aware that Andrew was a poet, slick with his tongue. Finally he said, ‘You tell me.’

Andrew nodded and beamed.

‘A solid or liquid substance which, under the influence of a certain stimulus, such as an exploding detonator, is rapidly converted into another substance with accompanying high pressure, leading to the outburst of violence and noise known as an explosion. What say you, Sergeant?’

‘Is that fucking Swahili?’

‘I’m from Barbados,’ Andrew replied, ‘where they only speak English.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ Alfie said, shaking his head. ‘I thought I spoke English!’

‘They only think they speak English in Barbados,’ Paddy Clarke said. ‘All that molasses and rum goes to their heads and makes them think they’re white men. We should hand Andrew over to a missionary for a little correction.’

‘The Paddy from Liverpool has spoken,’ Andrew intoned. ‘Let us bow down and throw up.’

‘Can it, the lot of you,’ the RAF Loadmaster barked at them as he materialized from the gloom. He glanced through one of the portholes in the passenger hold and announced: ‘We’re coming in, if we’re lucky, to the LZ, so prepare to offload.’

‘Yes, mother!’ Taff chimed in a high, schoolboy’s voice, though he quickly made a great show of checking his gear when the Loadmaster gave him a baleful stare.

‘Hey, Moorcock’ Paddy said, turning to the new man beside him, eager for a little sport. ‘Where did you say you were located before you were badged?’

‘The Welsh Guards,’ Moorcock answered, giving his kit a great deal of attention.

‘See any action?’ Paddy asked him.

‘A brief tour of Northern Ireland,’ Moorcock said, sliding his arms awkwardly through the webbing of his bergen. ‘Though I didn’t see much there.’

‘Know much about the Iraqis?’

‘No.’

‘They’re fuckin’ murderous bastards. Don’t on any account let yourself be caught. There’s things worse than death, kid.’

‘What’s that, Corporal?’ Trooper Stone asked with a grin, being less impressionable than his friend. Although he, like Moorcock and Gillett, had only recently been badged and was serving his probationary period, he wasn’t about to take any bullshit from the older hands. ‘What’s worse than death, then?’

‘They’ll pull your nails out,’ Paddy said.

‘They’ll gang-bang you,’ Jock added.

‘They’ll chop your cock off and make you eat it with couscous,’ Geordie put in. ‘Then they’ll cut your eyeballs out and make you suck them until you go gaga.’

‘Go fuck yourselves,’ Trooper Stone said.

‘Leave these poor probationers alone,’ threatened Andrew, ‘or I’ll personally chop your cocks off and shove them, all shrivelled, up your arses, which will then need some wiping.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ Trooper Moorcock said, tightening the straps on his bergen and looking serious while his two friends, Stone and Gillett, grinned at each other.

‘We’re touching down,’ the Loadmaster said. ‘Hold on to your balls, lads…Three, two, one, zero…Touchdown!’

The transport landed with a lot of bouncing, roaring and metallic shrieking, but otherwise no problems, on an LZ located about half a mile from the main road that ran one way to Basra, 40 miles the other way to Baghdad.

The men disembarked even before the two Chinooks’ engines had gone into neutral, spilling out of the side into dense clouds of sand whipped up by the twin-bladed rotors. When the billowing sand had subsided, the first thing they saw was a fantastic display of fireworks illuminating the distant horizon: immense webs of red and purple anti-aircraft fire, silvery-white explosions, showers of crimson sparks and streams of phosphorus fireflies.

‘Baghdad,’ Hailsham explained to those nearest to him. ‘The Allies are bombing the hell out of it. Rather them than us.’

As their eyes adjusted to moonlit darkness, they saw the nearest two microwave links, soaring high above the flat plain, about a quarter mile apart, but less than twenty yards from the road. Spreading out and keeping their weapons at the ready, the men hiked across the dusty, wind-blown plain until they reached a point equidistant between the two towers. From here, the road was dangerously close – a mere twenty-odd yards.

‘It’s pretty dark,’ Ricketts said, glancing in every direction, ‘so if anyone comes along the road, we should be OK if we stay low. We need sentries on point in both directions, with the men not being used for digging keeping guard in LUPs.’

‘Right,’ Hailsham said.

Ricketts gave his instructions by means of hand signals. With the Chinooks waiting on the ground a quarter of a mile away, their rotors turning quietly in neutral, the bulk of the men broke into four-man teams, then fanned out to form a circle of LUPs, or lying-up positions, from where they could keep their eyes on the road and defend the diggers and demolition team if anyone came along.

Meanwhile Hailsham and Ricketts accompanied Sergeant Lloyd as he checked the alignment between the two communications towers and gauged where the fibre-optic cable was running between them, hidden under the ground.

‘This is it,’ he said, waving his hand from left to right to indicate an invisible line between the two towers. He turned to the dozen troopers selected to dig. ‘I want a series of four holes about twelve foot apart, each six foot long and as deep as you need to go to expose the cable. That should be about four feet. If you see any transport coming along that road, or if we call a warning to you, drop down into the hole you’re digging and don’t make a move until given clearance. OK, get going.’

The men laid down their weapons, removed spades and shovels from their bergens, and proceeded to dig the holes as required. As they did so, they and the others – now stretched belly-down in LUPs on the dark ground, their weapons at the ready and covering the road in both directions – were able to watch the fantastic pyrotechnics of crimson anti-aircraft tracer fire and silvery bomb bursts over distant Baghdad, which was being bombed by wave after wave of British, American and Saudi jets, as well as Tomahawk Cruise missiles fired from ships in the Gulf, flying in at just under the speed of sound at heights of 50–250 feet, to cause more devastation and death.

‘Wow!’ Andrew whispered, looking at the lights over the distant city. ‘That’s just beautiful, man!’

‘Beautiful from here,’ Hailsham replied. ‘Hell on earth if you’re there.’

‘You men,’ Sergeant Lloyd said to two of his eight sappers, both of whom had various explosives, charges and timers dangling from their webbing. ‘I want you to take out those towers, one to each man. Fix enough explosives to the base to make sure the whole caboodle topples over. Use electronic timers that can be fired from here by remote control. Don’t make any mistakes. When this lot goes up, those towers have to go up at the same time. Understood?’

‘Yes, boss,’ the men nodded.

Then they headed off in opposite directions, towards the tower each had selected, the explosives on their webbing bouncing up and down as they ran.

‘You see that?’ Geordie whispered to Trooper Gillett, having decided to pass the time by winding him up. ‘Those explosives are liable to go off any second, taking us out with him.’

‘Aw, come off it, Geordie!’

‘No, kid, it’s true! I’d be pissing in my pants if I was you. He’ll blow up any minute now.’

‘That’s bullshit, Geordie,’ Trooper Stone retorted. ‘We all heard what Sergeant Lloyd said in the plane – explosives don’t blow up easily.’

‘Besides,’ Trooper Gillett added, ‘that sapper’s practically out of sight already. If the stupid bastard blows himself up, we’re well out of range. Pull the other one, Geordie.’

‘Shut up, you men,’ Sergeant Lloyd said, glancing down at the men digging the holes, ‘these men have to concentrate. If you’ve got nothing better to do, I can always hand you a shovel.’

‘No, thanks,’ Geordie said, edging away. ‘I have to go and stand out on point. Have a nice day!’

‘Fucking nerd,’ Sergeant Lloyd said.

The digging alone took forty-five minutes. During that time two vehicles, about half an hour apart, came along the road, heading away from Baghdad, their headlights cutting a swathe through the darkness but not picking out the men who were concealed in LUPs, guns at the ready, only twenty yards or so away. The first vehicle was a Mercedes saloon filled with white-robed Arabs; the second was a soft-topped army truck packed with Iraqi soldiers. Both passed by and disappeared into the night, their drivers and passengers, probably fleeing from the air attacks on Baghdad, not knowing how close to death they had come in what they thought was an empty, safe area.

About twenty minutes after the army truck had passed by, one of the men uncovered a fibre-optic cable.

‘That’s it,’ Sergeant Lloyd said, glancing down into the hole as the trooper who had reached the first cable wiped sweat from his brow. ‘I want that whole stretch of cable cleared, Trooper, so get back to your digging.’

‘Right, Sarge,’ the trooper said. He continued his digging. When the length of cable running across the bottom of the hole was completely exposed, he jumped out to let Lloyd jump in. Ricketts glanced left and right, checking the road in both directions, but there was no sign of any more movement. Satisfied, he knelt beside the hole in which Lloyd, unpacking his boxes, was already at work.

‘Cable!’ a trooper called from the next hole.

‘Me, too!’ someone else called, to be followed by a third, then a fourth.

‘Tell them to clear the whole length of cable,’ Lloyd told Ricketts, ‘then get out of the holes. My men will do the rest.’

‘Right,’ Ricketts said, then stood and went from hole to hole, passing on Lloyd’s orders.

‘I’ve reached mine,’ a man in the fifth hole told him. ‘There it is,’ said a man in the sixth hole, looking down and pointing.

By the time Ricketts had passed on Lloyd’s instructions, the first men had completely uncovered their cables and were clambering gratefully out of the holes to wipe the mud off their hands and have a drink of hot tea from a vacuum flask. As they did so, Lloyd’s assistants, all former sappers, jumped down into the holes to fix explosive charges to the cables.

Major Hailsham was kneeling on the rim of Lloyd’s hole, looking down as Lloyd worked, so Ricketts, just as interested, knelt beside him.

Even as Iraqi MiGs and Mirage F-1s flew overhead, heading away from the battered airfields of a spectacularly illuminated Baghdad, Sergeant Lloyd and his men coolly continued what they were doing. With Hailsham and Ricketts looking on, Lloyd sliced through a cable and slipped a piece into his bergen, to be shipped back to England for examination. He then packed C3/C4 plastic explosive around and between the exposed cables, fixed it in place, and attached a non-electrical firing system with a time fuse connected to a blasting cap in a thin aluminium tube, which he embedded carefully in the explosive charge. To the blasting cap he attached a detonating cord of reinforced prima-cord – a small, high-explosive core protected by half a dozen layers of material – which in turn was taped together with two primers and a detonator fixed to a timing device. He glanced up at Hailsham.

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