Bravo two zero (9 page)

    Dinger was straight on the intercom. "Well, fuck it, let's get over the border anyway, just to say we've been over there-come on, it's just a couple of Ks away: it won't take long to get there and back. We need to get over, just to stop the slagging when we return."

    But that wasn't the way the pilot saw it. We stayed on the ground for another twenty minutes while he did his checks and the refueling was completed; then we lifted off and headed south. Wagons were waiting for us. We unloaded all the kit and were taken to the half-squadron location, which by this time had been moved to the other side of the airfield. People had dug shell scrapes and covered them with ponchos and bits of board and cardboard to keep out the wind. It looked like a dossers' camp, bodies in little huddles everywhere, around hexy-block fires.

    The patrol were in dark moods, not only because of the anticlimax of not getting across the border, but also because we weren't sure what was going to happen next. I was doubly unimpressed because I had given my mattress away.

    All during the day of the 20th we just hung loose, waiting for something to happen, waiting for a slot.

    We checked the kit a couple more times and tried to make ourselves a bit of a home in case we had a long wait. We got some camouflage netting up-not from the tactical point of view, because the airfield was in a secure area-but just to keep the wind off and give us some shade during the day. It gives you an illusion of protection to be sheltered under something. Once we had made ourselves comfy, we screamed around the place in LSVs (light strike vehicles) and pinkies seeing what we would nick. The place was a kleptomaniac's dream.

    We did some good exchanges with the Yanks. Our rations are far superior to the American MREs (meals ready to eat), but theirs do contain some pleasant items -like bags of M&M's and little bottles of Tabasco sauce to add a little je the sais quoi to the beef and dumplings. Another fine bit of Yank kit is the strong plastic spoon that comes with the MRE pack. You can burn a little hole through the back of it, put some string through, and keep it in your pocket: an excellent, almost perfect racing spoon.

    Because our foam mattresses had been whisked away to a better world during the abortive flight, we tried to get hold of some comfy US issue cots. The Americans had kit coming out of their ears, and bless their cotton socks, they'd happily swap you a cot for a couple of boxes of rations.

    Little America was on the other side of the airfield. They had everything from microwaves and doughnut machines to Bart Simpson videos screening twenty four hours a day. And why not-the Yanks sure know how to fight a stylish war. Schoolkids in the States were sending big boxes of goodies to the soldiers: pictures from 6-year-olds of a good guy with the US flag, and a bad guy with the Iraqi flag, and the world's supply of soap, toothpaste, writing material, combs, and antiperspirant. They were just left open on tables in the canteen for people to pick what they wanted.

    The Yanks could not have made us more welcome, and we were straight in there, drinking frothy cappuccino and having a quick root through.

    Needless to say, we had most of it away.

    Some of the characters were outrageous and great fun to talk to, especially some of the American pilots who I took to be members of the National Guard. They were all lawyers and sawmill managers in real life, big old boys in their forties and fifties, covered in badges and smoking huge cigars, flying their Thunderbolts and whooping "Yeah boy!" all over the sky. For some of them, this was their third war. They were excellent people, and they had amazing stories to tell. Listening to them was an education.

    During the next two days we went over the plan again. Now that we had a bit more time, was there anything we could improve on? We talked and talked, but we kept it the same.

    It was frustration time, just waiting, as if we were in racing blocks and the starter had gone into a trance. I was looking forward to the relief of actually being on the ground.

    We had a chat with a Jaguar pilot whose aircraft had been stranded at the airfield for several days. On his very first sortie he had had to abort because of problems with a generator.

    "I want to spend the rest of the war here," he said. "The slagging I'll get when I fly back will be way out of control."

    We felt quite sorry for him. We knew how he felt.

    Finally, on the 21st, we got the okay to go in the following night.

    On the morning of the 22nd we woke at first light. Straightaway Dinger got a fag on.

    Stan, Dinger, Mark, and I were all under one cam net, surrounded by rations and all sorts of boxes and plastic bags. In the middle was a little hexy-block fire for cooking.

    Stan got a brew going from the comfort of his sleeping bag. Nobody wanted to rise and shine because it was so bloody cold. We lay there drinking tea, gob bing off, and eating chocolate from the rations. Our beauty sleep had been ruined by another two Scud alerts during the night. We were sleeping with most of our kit on anyway, but it was a major embuggerance to have to pull on your boots, flak jacket, and helmet and leg it down to the slit trenches. Both times We only had to wait ten minutes for the all clear.

    Dinger opened foil sachets of bangers and beans and got them on the go.

    Three or four cups of tea and, in Dinger's case, three cigarettes later, we tuned in to the World Service. Wherever you are in the world, you'll learn what's going on from them before any other bugger tells you. We take small shortwave radios with us on all operations and exercises anyway, because if you're stuck in the middle of the jungle, the only link with the outside world you ever get is the World Service.

    Everywhere you go, people are always bent over their radios tuning in, because the frequencies change depending on the time of day. We were going to take them out on this job as well, because the chances were that it was the first we'd know that the war had ended. Nobody would be able to tell us until we made com ms and that could be the day after Saddam surrendered. We took the piss out of Dinger's radio because it's held together with bits of tape and string. Everybody else had a digital one, and Dinger still had his old steam-powered thing that took an age to tune in.

    We had heard rumors that there was going to be some mail in that day, our first load since arriving in Saudi. It would be rather nice to hear from home before we went off. I was in the process of buying a house with Jilly, and I had to sign a form giving her power of attorney. I was hoping that was going to come through; otherwise, there would be major dramas for her to sort out if I got topped.

    The pilot and copilot came over, and we had a final chat about stowing the equipment. I went through the lost com ms routine and actions on contact at the OOP again, to make doubly sure we were both clear in our minds.

    We spoke to the two loadies, lads in their twenties who were obviously great fans of Apocalypse Now, because the Chinook had guns hanging off it all over the place. The only things missing were the tiger-head emblems on their helmets and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" coming out of their intercom speakers. For them, getting across the border was a once in-a-lifetime opportunity. They were loving it.

    The pilots knew of some more Roland positions and had worked out a route around them, but from the way the loadies were talking you'd have thought they actually wanted to be attacked. They were gagging to get in amongst it. I imagined it would be a huge anticlimax for them if they dropped us off and came back in one piece.

    I checked my orders at a table on the other side of the airfield, undistracted. Because the first infil had been aborted, I would have to deliver an orders group all over again that afternoon-not in as much detail, but going over the main points.

    We waited for the elusive mail. The buzz finally went round that it had arrived and was on the other side of the airfield about half a mile away. It was 1730, just half an hour to go before moving off to the aircraft. Vince and I got into one of the LSVs and screamed round and grabbed hold of the B Squadron bag.

    One of the blokes received his poll tax demand. Another was the lucky recipient of an invitation to enter a Reader's Digest draw. I was luckier. I got two letters. One was from my mother, the first letter from either of my parents since I was maybe 17. They didn't know I was in the Gulf, but it must have been obvious.

    I didn't have time to read it. If you're in a rush, what you can do is slit the letters open so that they appear to have been read, so as not to hurt anybody's feelings if you don't return. I recognized an A4 envelope from Jilly. Inside were some toffees, my favorite Pie 'n Mix from Woolies. Oddly enough there were eight of them, one for each of us in the patrol. There was also the power of attorney letter.

    The Last Supper is quite a big thing before you go out on a job.

    Everybody turns up and takes the piss.

    "Next time I see you I'll be looking down as I'm filling you in," somebody said, going through the motion of shoveling earth onto your grave.

    "Nice knowing you, wanker," somebody else said. "What sort of bike you got at home then? Anyone here to witness he's going to give me his bike if he gets topped?"

    It was a very lighthearted atmosphere, and people were willing to help out if they could in any preparation. At the same time, another lot of "fresh" turned up. The regimental quartermaster sergeant had got his hands on a consignment of chops, sausages, mushrooms, and all the other ingredients of a good fry-up. It was fantastic scoff, but one unfortunate outcome was that after being on rations for so long, it put us all in need of an urgent shit.

5

    The ground crew had been up all night re camouflaging the Chinook a splashy desert pattern that drew wolf whistles and applause from the blokes who'd come to see us off.

    It was time for passing on last minute messages again. I saw my mate Mick and said: "Any dramas, Eno has got the letters. Make sure you look after the escape map because it's signed by the squadron. I don't want that to go missing: it would be nice for Jilly."

    I overheard Vince saying: "Any drama, it's down to you to make sure Dee's sorted out."

    Mick had a camera round his neck. "Do you want a picture?"

    "Madness not to," I said.

    We posed on the tailgate of the Chinook for the Bravo Two Zero team photo.

    The blokes were busy taking the piss out of the aircrew, especially the loadies. One of them was a dead ringer for Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet, even down to the 1980s sideboards. Two or three blokes from the squadron were standing by a wagon doing the old shu-wap, shu-wap routine, singing "You are gold…" The poor lad was getting well embarrassed.

    Some blokes got together and-practiced doing the pallbearer bit, humming the death march. Others did a takeoff of the Madness video "It must be love," where the singer is standing over a grave and the undertaker's jumping up and down and across measuring him.

    Interspersed with the banter was the odd muttering of "See you soon" and "Hope it all goes well."

    The aircrew came round for a final quick chat in their body armor, and we climbed aboard.

    Nobody flies Club Class in a Chinook. The interior was spartan, a bare hull with plastic coating over the frame. There were no seats, just nonslip flooring to sit on. The deck was littered with sand and grease.

    A large inboard tank had been fitted to allow us to carry extra fuel.

    The stink of aviation fuel and engines was overpowering, even at the back near the ramp. It was like sitting in an oven. The loadies kept the top half of the tailgate down to circulate air.

    The engines sparked up, coughing fearsome clouds of fumes to the rear.

    From our position on the ramp we saw blokes dropping their kecks and mooning in the heat haze, and the Spandau Ballet gang were giving it some again. As the Chinook lifted, its downwash created a major sandstorm. By the time the dust had settled we had reached a hundred feet, and soon all we could see were the flashing headlights of the pinkies.

    It was hot and I started to sweat and stink. I felt tired, mentally as well as physically. So many things were running through my mind. The infiltration worried me because we had no control over it: we'd just have to sit there and hope for the best. I've never liked it when my life was in somebody else's hands. There were Roland antiaircraft missiles along our route, and the bigger the machine, the bigger the chance of getting shot down. Chinooks are massive. There was also the added risk of getting hosed down by our own aircraft, since we were going in with the cover of three air raids.

    I looked forward to getting on the ground, however. It felt good to be in command of such a classic SAS task. Everybody hopes for a major war once in his life, and this was mine, accompanied by a gang that the rest of the squadron was already calling the Foreign Legion.

    The berg ens were strapped down to stop them flying through the air and landing on top of us if the pilot had to take evasive action or crashed.

    Just before last light, the loadies cracked cyalume sticks and put them around the kit so we could see where it was, mainly to prevent injury.

    The sticks are like the ones kids buy at fun fairs-a plastic tube that you bend to crack the glass phials inside and bring two chemicals together to make a luminous mixture.

    I put on a pair of headsets and talked to the pilot while the rest of the blokes rooted through all the R.A.F kit, sorting out the crew's sandwiches, chocolate, and bottles of mineral water.

    We had a brief recap on the landing scenarios. If we came into a contact as we landed, we should stay on the aircraft. If we were getting off the aircraft, we should jump back on. But if the heli had already taken off and we had a contact, the Simplex radio gave us about a range of a mile to talk to him and summon him back.

    "I'll just turn the aircraft and come screaming back in," he said, "and you just get on it however you can, fuck all the kit."

    The R.A.F are sometimes thought of as glorified taxi drivers, taking you from point A to point B, but they're not: they're an integral part of any operation. For a pilot to bring in a Chinook like that would be totally outrageous. It's a big machine and an easy target, but he was willing to do it. Either he had no idea what would be happening on the ground, or he was blase because that was his job. He obviously knew what he was talking about, so he was blase\ And if he was willing to do it, I wouldn't give a damn: I'd jump back in.

    As we were flying across Saudi, we started to appreciate the lie of the ground. It looked like a brown billiard table. I'd been in the Middle East lots of times, but I'd never seen anything like this.

    "We're on Zanussi," Chris said into his headset, using the Regiment term for somebody who's so spaced out and weird you can't get in touch with him; he's on another planet.

    And Zanussi was what this looked like-another world. Our map studies told us the ground was like this all the way up. We were going to have problems, but it was too late to do anything about it. We were committed.

    Now and again there'd be a bit of chat on the headphones as the pilots talked to AWACS. I loved watching the two lo adie warlords getting ready for the Big One, checking their guns and hoping, no doubt, that they would get shot at soon.

    All the time, there was the deafening zsh, zsh, zsh of the rotor blades.

    Not much was said between ourselves because of the noise. Everybody was just pleased that they weren't rushing around any more, that we were just lying around on the kit drinking water or pissing into one of the bottles we'd just emptied. I was wondering if my life might have been different if I'd stayed at school and got my CSEs. I might have been sitting up in the cockpit now, chatting away, looking forward to a pie and a pint later on.

    The front lo adie door was half open, like a stable door. Wind rushed through it, cool and refreshing. The straps hanging off the insides of the Chinook flapped and slapped in the gale.

    We got to the same refueling point as before. Again, the pilot kept the rotors turning. An engine failure at this stage would mean canceling the operation. We stayed on the aircraft, but the back lo adie was straight off into the darkness. The Yanks, God bless 'em, have so much kit they just throw it at you. He returned with Hershey bars, doughnuts, and cans of Coke. For some unaccountable reason, the Yanks had also given him handfuls of Biros and combs.

    We waited and waited. Bob and I jumped down and went for a dump on the side of the tarmac about 100 feet away. When we got back the lo adie motioned for me to put on my headsets.

    "We have the go," the pilot said, with just the faintest detectable hint of excitement in his voice.

    We started to lose altitude.

    "We're over the border," the pilot said matter-of factly I passed the message on. The blokes started putting their webbing on.

    Now the aircrew really started earning their money. The banter stopped.

    They were working with night viewing goggles, screaming along at 80 knots just 70 feet off the ground. The rotor blades had a large diameter and we knew from the map that we were flying in amongst a lot of power lines and obstructions. One lo adie looked out the front at the forward blades, and the other did the same at the rear. The copilot continuously monitored the instruments; the pilot flew by visual and instructions received from the rest of the crew.

    The exchange between pilot, copilot, and loadies was nonstop as they flew low between features. The tone of the voices was reassuring.

    Everything was well rehearsed and well practiced. It was all so matter-of fact they could have been in a simulator.

    Copilot: "100 feet… 80 feet… 80 feet." Pilot: "Roger that, 80 feet." Copilot: "Power lines one mile." Pilot: "Roger, power lines one mile. Pulling up." Copilot: "120… 150… 180… 200. That's half a mile. 500 feet now." Pilot: "500 feet. I have the lines visual… over we go-"

    Loadie: "Clear." Pilot: "Okay, going lower." Copilot: "150… 120… 80 feet. 90 knots." Pilot: "Roger, staying at 80 feet, 90 knots."

    Copilot: "Reentrant left, one mile." Pilot: "Roger that, I have a building to my right." Loadie: "Roger that, building right." Copilot:

    "80 feet. 90 knots. Power lines five miles." Pilot: "Roger that, five miles. Breaking right." The loadies were looking at the ground below as well. Apart from watching for obstructions, they checked for any "incoming."

    Copilot: "80 feet. Metal road coming up, two miles." Pilot: "Roger that. Metal road, two miles." Copilot: "One mile to go. That's 100 knots, 80 feet." At anything below 80 feet the blades would hit the ground as the aircraft turned. Meanwhile, the load masters were looking for obstructions and trying to ensure the blades had enough room to rotate as we hugged any feature that would give the heli some protection.

    Pilot: "Break my right now. That's nice." Copilot: "Right, that's 70 foot, 100 knots. 70 foot, 90 knots."

    We had to cross a major obstruction that ran east west across this part of the country.

    Copilot: "Okay, that's the dual carriage way 5 miles."

    Pilot: "Let's go up. 200 foot." Copilot: "Okay, got it visual."

    Us passengers were just sitting there eating Hershey bars when all of a sudden the front lo adie manned his guns. We grabbed our rifles and jumped up as well. We didn't have a clue what was going on. There wouldn't be much we could do because if you put the barrel of your gun out into the slipstream, it's like putting your hand out of a car traveling at 100 mph. We could have done jack shit really, but we felt we had to help him.

    There wasn't actually a drama. It was just that we were getting near the road and the lo adie was hoping that somebody was going to fire at us so he could have a pop back.

    It was the main carriage way between Baghdad and Jordan. We crossed it at 500 feet. There were a lot of lights from convoys, but we were unlit and they certainly couldn't hear us. It was our first sight of the enemy.

    Sighting the road gave us a location fix because we knew exactly where it was on the map. I was just trying to work out how much longer we'd be in the air when I heard a Klaxon.

    Dinger and I both had headsets on, and we looked at one another as we listened to the crew.

    "Break left! Break right!"

    All hell was let loose. The helicopter did severe swings to the left and right.

    The loadies jumped around, torches on, pressing buttons all over the place as chaff was fired off.

    The pilots knew where most of the Rolands were, but they obviously hadn't known about this one. The ground-to-air missile had "illuminated" us and set off the inboard warnings. To complicate matters, we were going fairly slowly when it locked on.

    I saw the expression on Dinger's face in the glow of the cyalume sticks.

    We'd been lulled into a false sense of security listening to all the confident banter. Now I had the feeling you get when you're driving a car and you glance down for a moment and look back up and find that the situation ahead has suddenly changed and you have to jump on the brakes.

    I didn't know if the missile had actually fired, or locked on, or what.

    "Fuck this!" he said. "If it's going to happen, I don't fucking want to hear it!"

    Simultaneously, we threw our headsets on the floor. I got down and crunched up into a ball, ready to accept the landing.

    The pilot threw the aircraft all over the sky. The engines groaned and strained as it did its gymnastics.

    The Chinook leveled out and flew straight ahead. The look on the loadies' faces told us that we'd got away with it.

    I put the headphones back on and said, "What the fuck was that?"

    "Probably a Roland, who knows? Not the best of things. It's all right for you lot: we've got to come back this way."

    I wanted to get off this aircraft and be back in control of my own destiny. It's nice getting chauffeured to a place, but not like this.

    And it wasn't over yet. If the Iraqis on the ground reported a lock-on, their aircraft might come looking for us. Nobody knew if the Iraqis were getting aircraft into the sky, or if they had night flying capability, but you have to assume the worst scenario. I was sweating like a rapist.

    Half an hour later, the pilot gave us a two-minute warning that we would be landing. I held up two fingers to the blokes, the same warning as for a parachute drop. The rear lo adie started to undo the straps that held down the kit. The red glow from the penlight torch that he held in his mouth made him look like the devil at work.

    Four of us had 203s, the American M16 Armalite rifle with a grenade launcher attached that fires a 40mm bomb that looks like a large, stubby bullet; the others had Minimis, a light machine gun. For our purposes, the Armalite is a superior weapon to the Army's new SA80. It's lighter and is very easy to clean and maintain. It's a good, simple weapon that has been around in different variants since Vietnam days. The Regiment tried SASOs in jungle training when they came out, and found it not best suited to its requirements. With the M16 everything's nice and clean; there are no little bits and pieces sticking out. The safety catch is very simple and can be operated with the thumb-with the SA80 you have to use your trigger finger, which is madness. If you're in close country with the M16, you can flick the safety catch off easily with your thumb, and your finger is still on the trigger. What's more, if the safety catch will go to Automatic on your M16, you know it's made ready: this means it is cocked, with a round in the chamber. You see people patrolling with their thumbs checking the safety catch every few minutes; the last thing they want is a negligent discharge within earshot of the enemy.