Deep Black (22 page)

We passed the tank and vehicle graveyard. Off-duty soldiers mooched around in the shade of their half-bombed homes. Davers turned a corner and passed a café furnished with an assortment of tables, sofas and chairs. The original Arabic sign had been crossed out and replaced with ‘Bagdad Café’ in crude white paint. The Whoopee Goldberg painting on the wall wasn’t much better. A couple of Hummers and AFVs were parked outside, alongside men and women drinking water and Coke, relaxing in the shade. Their body armour, helmets and M16s were piled on the ground at their feet.

‘Where we going?’ The fact that Frankenmeyer and the driver hadn’t bothered with their body armour and we were both in one vehicle had already given me the answer, but I thought I’d ask anyway.

He wiped the sweat from his shaved blond head with both hands. ‘Back gate, and that’s it – end of your ride.’

‘No chance of a lift back to the hotel?’

‘’Fraid not, man – you have to hail yourselves a taxicab!’ He liked the sound of that.

The driver gulped on a can of Minute Maid with such relish it made me feel thirsty. But there was no icebox in this wagon. There wasn’t even body armour on the doors, just sandbags on the floor.

We drove through the gate and turned right. The Tigris was to our left and the sandbagged sangar at the checkpoint was about two hundred metres ahead and on the river side of the road. Beyond that was the main drag, crossing the river via a big metal bridge.

The sangar looked like a square igloo built from hundreds of sandbags. As we approached I could see the rear entrance more clearly. Inside, three, maybe four soldiers were hurrying to put their belt-kit back on. They were supposed to keep it on at all times but that was a real pain in the arse. They probably just grabbed it whenever they saw a wagon coming; I’d done the same enough times.

Traffic boomed across the bridge. Trucks, cars, motorbikes stuck behind a military convoy, everyone hooting. They knew better than to try to overtake.

Awatchtower rose maybe fifty feet in the air just short of the sangar. It looked like something out of
The Great Escape
: four wooden pillars with crossed bracing and a little pillbox on top. Whoever was on stag up there wasn’t protected by sandbags, which seemed strange. They’d be a sitting target for any line-of-sight weapon, whether it was an AK or an RPG.

The Hummer kicked up the dust and rattled and groaned its way from pot-hole to pot-hole, so the first I knew of the attack were the dull thuds as three or four rounds slammed into the side of the cabin.

The radio crackled. ‘Contact, contact, contact!’

49

We swerved and everybody ducked. I hoped Davers wasn’t ducking as much as the rest of us when he hit the gas.

Frankenmeyer fumbled about, getting his helmet on. ‘Get to the checkpoint!’

Seconds later the wagon screeched to a halt by the sangar. I opened the door and pushed myself out on to the hot tarmac, checking for Jerry. ‘Get inside!’

The fire was coming in from the other side of the river. Soldiers poured out of the sangar, heading for the bank. Jerry slowed up and tried to pull the camera out of his bumbag.

‘For fuck’s sake, come on!’

The Americans opened up from behind a three-foot-thick wall as more rounds poured in from across the water, maybe three hundred metres away; long, sustained bursts, then individual shots. I could make out the distinctive heavy crack of the AKs’ 7.62, but couldn’t see any muzzle flashes coming from the jumble of six- or seven-storey tower blocks and concrete squares.

Jerry was still fucking about behind me, trying to get his camera working. I ran back, grabbed him and dragged him into the sangar. I saw immediately why the boys had needed to get out into the open: unbelievably, the place had been built without firing ports overlooking the water. They only covered the road to the bridge with a .50 cal.

For some reason, the floor was sandbagged. We threw ourselves flat as a couple of rounds thumped into the ones around the entrance. I looked out at the chaos along our side of the riverbank. The squaddie who’d been at the top of the watchtower was dropping down like a submariner from a conning tower. If there’d been a fireman’s pole they’d have been on it.

Frankenmeyer was trying to take control. ‘Can you see ’em? Can you see ’em?’

It didn’t matter: everybody seemed to be cabbying away regardless. The squaddie reached the bottom of the ladder. Frankenmeyer shouted, pointing to the sangar, ‘Get the fifty! Get the fifty!’

Jerry had his bumbag open. ‘Bastards! They’ve taken my memory cards!’ He scrabbled in his jeans for replacements as more rounds thwacked into the sandbags. The .50 cal was above him, its barrel facing the main, with the legs of the tripod straddling the firing port. It would have been useless even if it had been pointing the right way. The tripod was unsupported; it should have been weighted down with sandbags. If they started firing it, it would bounce all over the place and fall off the sill.

The soldier from the watchtower was coming full pelt towards the sangar, head down, M16 in hand. Her brown hair was long and had been up in a bun, but had now mostly fallen across her face and neck. There was a guy, a zit-faced nineteen-year-old, hot on her heels. I moved out of their way as they plunged through the entrance, pouring sweat, kicking Jerry’s camera out of his hands, as more bursts hit the sangar and the Hummer. She yelled at Zit-face as they tried to lift the .50 cal at the same time as shouldering their own weapons. It wasn’t going to happen: the slings weren’t slack enough to fit over their helmets.

I wanted these two out of here. They were flapping; their barrels banged together as they fucked about and there were too many made-ready weapons flying about in this tight space for my liking. ‘Cradle your weapons, hold the fifty by the tripod. Get the fucking thing out there!’

More rounds thudded into the sandbags and they flinched as they dragged out the heavy weapon, one holding the barrel, the other the tripod. They half ran, half stumbled with it towards the riverbank, the belt of thirty or so rounds on the weapon dragging behind them in the sand.

The command radio in the sangar was going apeshit. Everybody was being stood to. Jerry was still reloading, cursing the guys who’d dared to confiscate his precious cards.

I watched them rigging the .50 cal. Hadn’t they ever fired one of these things? They’d done their usual trick with the tripod legs straddling the wall.

I turned to Jerry as another barrage of rounds headed our way. He was lying on his side, camera pointing across the river like a weapon.

‘Keep an eye on the .50. When that fucker starts firing you’re going to get a great picture!’

50

A stream of tracer shot high over our heads. Now and again I saw a weapon flash inside a building.

The .50 cal responded with short bursts, its one-in-four tracer rounds curving just slightly over the river before making splash marks on the concrete and spinning away. The Humvee took another couple of rounds and so did the sangar. Whoever was manning the .50 cal was screaming and shouting, the voice so high-pitched I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!’

The bursts got longer and the tracer started to clear the lower buildings. The tripod was moving backwards and the barrel was getting higher and higher. The gunner didn’t seem to notice. He or she was too far gone.

Jerry kept his finger on the button. There was nothing I could do and, besides, this wasn’t a war I was getting paid to join. I looked around and spotted a white polystyrene cool-box. Small half-litre bottles of water floated in melting ice. I took two and held one out for Jerry. He waved it away. He had bigger things on his mind. He got to his feet and crouched in the sangar entrance, as if he was about to make a run for it. I grabbed hold of him. Tracked vehicles rumbled out of the camp gate. ‘Whoa, whoa. We’re not here for that. We’re off to Turkey tonight, remember?’

Any reply he might have made was drowned by the roar of rotor blades, very low, coming from the bridge.

The .50 fired again, and so did an AFV moving up the road. Its turret gunner had a more stable platform and was getting rounds on target.

I watched the helicopter swoop towards the riverbank, heading straight over the precariously balanced .50.

‘It’s going to get hit! Get the picture!’

The .50 fired and there was a groaning sound, like the rolling of massive chains on a drum. The helicopter must have been at its very limits as the pilot took evasive action.

I looked out of the firing port. It had banked hard right, back over the bridge. Traffic was still crossing. The .50 cal was still firing, at least seventy degrees into the air. The gunner probably didn’t have a clue how close he’d come to fucking up big-time.

Frankenmeyer was running around the team, screaming at the top of his voice. ‘Stop, stop, stop!’

The radio burst back into life. ‘Red Dragon four-one, we’ve got one hundred and fifty in contact. Repeat, that’s one-five-zero
hajis
!’

Same as gooks for the Viet Cong, I supposed. It never took an army long to get derogatory about their enemies.

Jerry spun round. ‘Let’s get over there and have a look!’

I threw the water bottle at him. ‘Dickhead, do you really think there’s a hundred and fifty over there?’

He gulped from the bottle, letting the water pour down the side of his mouth. His eyes were glued to the chaos outside.

The attack seemed to have stopped. The loudest noises now came from the traffic and the command radio.

I looked out through the door. The soldiers behind the wall were getting to their feet, cheering with relief that no one had been hit. Now they could concentrate their energies on honing it into a good war story to tell the folks back home.

I took a swig of water. It was boiling in here and the sweat poured down my face. No wonder the guys had taken their belt-kit off.

There was a box of muesli energy bars in the corner and I helped myself to a hot, soggy blueberry one as about a dozen AFVs thundered past at warp speed to get over the bridge and in among the AK guys. They would have melted into the city by now.

I munched as Jerry put away his camera and zipped up the bumbag, then tipped the rest of his water over his head and down the back of his neck.

‘You weren’t serious about heading north, were you?’

The soldiers outside were shouting their versions of the contact to each other now, all claiming they’d made hits. Jerry dropped his empty bottle on to the sandbags. I stared at him as he packed his camera. ‘You soft in the head or something? Those boys back there weren’t fucking about. This isn’t one you can stick your fingers up at. Fuck the pictures. Let’s just bin it, and get to Turkey. All right?’

He didn’t look up at me, just over-concentrated on packing his kit. ‘I’m staying. It’s really important to get to Nuhanovic. I mean, this guy’s so cool, everywhere he walks there’s a draught.’

The zip got closed on his bumbag.

‘Come on, Nick, there must be a million things you want to ask him. I know there are, you’re interested in him. Your face told me back in DC. I knew you were going to come. Seriously. Think about it. Wouldn’t you want to ask him stuff?’

I threw my empty bottle at him. ‘You’re talking bollocks. But I’ll stay with you.’

He grinned.

‘We’ll have to disappear, like Nuhanovic and the boys the other side of the river.’

‘Booking yourself a few rapid tanning treatments?’

‘No need.’ I started to pull myself up off the sandbags. ‘There’s Rob.’

51

It took a while, but Jerry eventually managed to flag down a rusting Passat taxi on the main. The driver was in his fifties and spoke perfect English. He said he used to be a chemist until the sanctions bit and the economy started to collapse.

The al-Hamra was only a ten-minute ride away, and would be easy to spot from the main. Stark white and six or seven storeys high, it had a billboard on the roof that was big enough to read from several blocks away.

We turned off the dual carriageway and down a side road, past neat, concrete middle-class homes set in small green gardens. Security was more lax here than round the Palestine. A steel barrier blocked our route, manned by a solitary Iraqi with an AK in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Kids did wheelies on their bikes or ran in and out of the surrounding houses. A shop opposite sold fruit, bottles of water, buckets and mops.

The guard sauntered across and held the barrier open as we drove through. The pot-holed drive ran in a semicircle to the front of the hotel, which was surrounded by a high concrete wall. White soldiers with Australian flags on their uniforms patrolled in its shade, their Steyr assault weapons looking like something out of a sci-fi movie. I didn’t have a clue what they were doing here, and they probably didn’t either. They watched from behind their Oakleys as we got out of the cab.

A few fixers hung around outside the main entrance, hassling what I guessed was a news crew unloading alloy boxes and rolls of cables from three 4x4s. Inside the wagons I could see mixing consoles, laptops and satellite-phone sets. Two of the crew had been injured. One had fresh bandages around his arm. Another, the German gun stud, had one round his head. A wounded reporter? He was going to score big-time when he got back home.