Michael Asher (3 page)

luckily, slight, but Israeli Premier Yitshak Shamir came up fighting, and demanded the right to retaliate with a hundred aircraft and a com-mando attack, flying across Saudi Arabian airspace. Schwarzkopf's nightmare scenario was about to unfold right before his eyes. If the Israelis were to hit Iraq, the Coalition the Americans had worked so hard to build would be badly strained, or even shattered. `The Bear' had discounted the antiquated Scud as a tac�tical weapon, but had to concede that as a political threat it was ideal. The Coalition must be protected at any price, and the price was a diversion from its 'real' job of thirty per cent of Allied air power to execute what became known as the 'Great Scud Hunt'. Schwarzkopf was right in believing that the Scud was outdated. Based loosely on the German V2 of WW2 notoriety, these ballistic missiles had been produced in Russia in the 1950s and had been imported by the Iraqis in the 1970s and 1980s during the Iran�Iraq war. Flying about 30 kilometres above the earth, at a speed of 5,000 kilometres an hour, the Scud did not possess sufficient range for the Iraqis to hit Tehran, while Baghdad was vul-nerable to attack by Iranian missiles because it stood nearer the border. Consequently the Iraqis cannibalized their existing Scuds, extending their length and fuel capacity, but reducing the power of the warheads. The ploy was successful, and in 1988 Scud attacks on Tehran accounted for some eight thousand casualties. Saddam Hussein was now intending to bring Israel into the war by launching similar attacks on Tel Aviv. Though President Bush assured Shamir that evening that all known fixed Scud bases had been blitzed by Coalition sorties, most of the Israel-bound Scuds had been fired from mobile TELs (transporter-erector launchers) in western Iraq. Allied fighters could make mincemeat of these vehicles � if they could be located, and locating them was the problem. It was often beyond the scope of even the most sophisticated surveillance equipment when the TELs were hidden in bunkers, or even under a convenient motorway bridge. Though Bush eventually persuaded Shamir to desist, at least temporar-ily, it was clear that the mobile launchers had to be found. Here at last was a job that the Mk 1 human eyeball could do better than any machine � a job custom-built for the SAS, and one that the astute de la Billiere had considered a possibility from the beginning. On 20 January, 128 men of A and D Squadrons, already crossing the Iraqi border in search of opportunity targets, received official sanction from Schwarzkopf to hunt the Scuds. Only half of B Squadron had been deployed at al-Jauf, the others having been left in the United Arab Emirates on security detail, and that half � including McNab, Ryan and Phillips � was divided into three teams, Bravo One Zero, Bravo Two Zero and Bravo One Niner, which would be flown in by Chinook to three specified MSRs (Main Supply Routes) deep behind enemy lines. Bravo Two Zero consisted of eight men. The patrol com-mander, 'McNab', was a Londoner, the son of a Greek nightclub owner and his English mistress, who had been brought up by foster parents and had decided to join the army to escape a life of petty theft and delinquency Now a sergeant, with eight or nine years' service in the SAS, his main combat experience had been in Northern Ireland with the Royal Green Jackets � his parent unit �where he had shot and wounded one terrorist and killed another. Married, with one child from a previous mar-riage, McNab was a fast-talking, articulate Jack-the-lad who considered that every professional soldier deserved at least one proper war, and this was his. His second-in�command, Sergeant Vince Phillips, was older than the rest of the team � at thirty-six he had only a couple more years to serve. Phillips was the odd-man-out in Bravo Two Zero because, unlike the others, he belonged to A Squadron and had been posted in to fill a gap at the last moment. 'Ryan', a corporal, was a Geordie from the Tyneside region, a highly intelligent and determined man who had served in 23 SAS (V) before joining 22 SAS. Married, with one child, Ryan was the most experienced patrol medic in the team. 'anger' � a prodigious smoker and drinker � was a lance-corporal who had served in the Parachute Regiment prior to the SAS, as had his com�rade, Trooper Steven 'Legs' Lane, a relative newcomer to the Regiment, who was married with two children and who held the vital job of patrol signaller. Robert 'Bob' Consiglio was a small but powerful man of Anglo-Italian descent who had resigned from the Royal Marines to take SAS selection and had passed first time. The remaining two members of Bravo Two Zero were both Antipodeans. 'Stan' � the only university graduate in the patrol � had served in the Rhodesian army, but had emi-grated to Australia, where he had trained as a dentist. He had given it all up to move to Britain and join the SAS. Finally there was Mike Coburn, 'Mark', a New Zealander who had originally served in the Australian SAS. All eight men were highly trained professional sol�diers, the best of the best Special Forces unit in the world. On the evening of 22 January 1991, Bravo Two Zero was flown to a point about 187 miles north of the border, within striking distance of the most northerly of the three MSRs. Touching down at around 2000 hours that night, they lay in the cold desert in all-round defence until the Chinook had disappeared, then picked up their massive burdens � 95 kilos, about 209 pounds of equipment each � and began to lug it towards an LUP (lying-up point) they had chosen somewhere near a kink in the road. To find that LUP � the first identifiable point in the Bravo Two Zero story � was my own objective when I arrived in Anbar, a little more than ten years on. CHAPTER four FROM � STANFORD'S IN THE Haymarket, I had obtained a 1:500,000 air chart of Iraq. It was similar to the ones Bravo Two Zero had been issued with, but of a smaller scale � theirs was the 1:250,000 scale version, which was not available to the public. Luckily, though, in The One That Got Away Ryan had reproduced a section of his own map with Bravo Two Zero's routes marked on it, and McNab had supplied a sketch-map drawn to scale at the end of his book. By painstaking protractor work I had been able to transfer the routes to my own larger-scale map with some accuracy. The patrol's lying-up point �their 'first base' � had been in sight of a main road, so assuming McNab and Ryan had put it in the right place, it would be relatively easy to find by simply driving out along that road a measured number of kilometres from the nearest town, al-Haqlaniya. Just before we reached al-Haqlaniya, Ali, in the lead vehicle, turned off sharply down a road to the right. Wondering what on earth he was doing, I had my driver overtake and I flagged him down. 'Where are you going?' I demanded. He announced majestically that there were some Bedouin living in this direction whom he thought might know something about what happened in the Gulf War. A red light started blinking in my head; I knew this tendency had to be nipped in the bud. If the minders intended to guide me and show me where I had to go, then the story would immediately lose its credibility. I had no intention whatsoever of playing pawn to Iraqi propaganda � I had to be certain that anything I discovered was absolutely independent. I stopped the convoy and called everyone over to me. Now listen,' I told them in Arabic. 'I have come here to do a job, and I know what I'm doing. I know where I am going and to whom I want to talk. I speak Arabic and I am familiar with deserts, and if there are places to be found and witnesses to be talked to, I will find them myself, or I won't find them at all. I am sure you know your jobs, but on no account must you interfere with mine. We must do it my way, and go where I want to go, even if I am wrong. As I understand it, you are here only to make sure I don't enter a restricted area or film forbid�den items, not to tell me where I should go. I don't want to be told to go here and talk to someone there, and unless that is understood, we can go back to Baghdad right now.' I had said it rather too pugnaciously, and for a moment there was a strained silence. Then Ali grinned nervously and said he had worked with news film-crews before and knew what was required. He had only been trying to help. Abu Omar sneered and turned away, but neither of the minders ever tried to interfere directly again. We turned back to our original route and, bypassing al- Haqlaniya, moved south of west along the road that led to the pumping-stations H1, H2 and H3, and eventually to Jordan, running parallel with the great watercourse known as the Wadi. Hawran. To our north was a line of electricity pylons which angled sharply away across stony, flat desert after a few kilometres. I was following our progress on my Magellan � a hand-held global pos-itioning system unit (GPS) the size of a mobile telephone, which gave my latitude and longitude within a few metres. It was a slightly more sophisticated version of the GPS unit the Bravo Two Zero patrol had carried with them on the operation itself. Now, I experienced a sudden burst of excitement. This was definitely it, I thought, the Main Supply Route that had been Bravo Two Zero's objective on the night of 22 January 1991. As we sped along, I found myself wondering what McNab's patrol had really been doing here in the first place. In his book, McNab relates that the Officer Commanding B Squadron specifically tasked his patrol with locating and cutting communications landlines, and locating and destroying Scuds. The duration of the oper-ation was to be fourteen days, and the patrol was to range 250 kilometres along this very road, seeking out and bumping opportunity targets � an active and aggressive role. But though McNab devotes several pages to describ-ing how the patrol intended to knock out the Scuds, Ryan's description of the OC's briefing is entirely differ�ent. He quotes the same officer as telling the patrol that their job was to gather intelligence � to find a lying-up point, set up an observation post on the road and report back to the forward operating base (FOB) on enemy traf�fic movement, especially Scuds. In Ryan's account the task is essentially passive. He maintains that the patrol would remain hidden, manning the OP for ten days, after which it would be relocated by air. He mentions nothing about `destroying Scuds', or patrolling 250 kilometres along the MSR, but does state that a subsidiary task was to blow up any fibre-optic cables the patrol might happen to find while going about their principal task. Though McNab's version is the more dashing and romantic, the road-watch OP is classic SAS procedure, with a history going back to the Long Range Desert Group. In 1942 LRDG patrols set up OPs along the Via Balbia � the main German supply route along the coast of North Africa � to watch and report enemy movements in order to verify the decrypts British Intelligence had obtained through crack�ing the Enigma code. They had succeeded brilliantly, hiding their vehicles behind dunes or in wadis, rotating two men out each night to man the OP, which was often little more than a rock or a clump of grass. Later, throughout the Cold War, it was the main task of 21 and 23 SAS, the territorial units, to dig and operate similar OPs in Europe � a fact that Ryan knew well, having orig�inally served in 23 SAS. Of the three road-watch patrols sent out from B Squadron, two elected to go on foot. Why send foot patrols to knock out highly mobile and heavily protected Scud launchers, I wondered? A mobile patrol could do the job far more efficiently with its Milan missiles, and as Schwarzkopf had rightly said, a Stealth fighter could do it even better. Even the A and D Squadron patrols that had gone out on 20 January had been directed to locate rather than destroy Scuds, trans-mitting their locations to the Air Arm so that they could be taken out with ease. Expecting a foot patrol to destroy Scud erector launchers with the whole of the desert to hide in seemed to defy military logic, while going in on foot if you intended to lie hidden in one place for ten days and be relocated by aircraft at least made some kind of sense. Ryan states clearly that if the patrol sighted a Scud convoy on the road, their task was not to attack it, but to relay the information back to base by both satcom and patrol radio, upon receipt of which an aircraft would be vectored in to take the missile out.6 That the patrol planned to put in a hide is also indicated by the tremen�dous weights they were hefting, which Ryan puts even heavier than McNab, at 120 kilos per man. Although McNab emphasizes the large amount of ordnance they had with them � plastic explosive, Claymore and Elsie anti-personnel mines, timers, detonators, primers and det�onating cord � the patrol was also carrying hundreds of fibre sandbags, camouflage nets and full-sized shovels, the function of which can only have been to put in an OP. Though Ryan states that they intended to dig into the bank of a wadi, McNab maintains that the shovels were for digging up fibre-optic cables. The road climbed a low escarpment, passed buildings and plantations and descended through a series of bends into a valley, with a fifteen-foot ridge of crumbling basalt to our right and, to our left, the bronze-green folds, fur�rows and ripples of the desert. I stopped the car and looked around. According to my best assessment from the map and the Magellan, we were now within a few hundred metres of Bravo Two Zero's LUP. I jumped out and looked around. To the south, the rocky table-land fell away suddenly about 250 metres from the road into a sys�tem of deep-sided wadis, and as I climbed down to investigate the various re-entrants I wondered if the LUP would be recognizable: both Ryan and McNab had described a sort of cave or overhang, divided in the mid�dle by a detached, wedge-shaped rock. One re-entrant I followed ended in a narrow cleft wide enough only to hold a single man; this could not be the place in which eight SAS men had holed up. A second branch-wadi terminated in a bowl-shaped depression, with signs of erosion and tiny caves cut into the rock walls. I looked at McNab's and Ryan's descriptions again � Ryan's in particular was very specific, recording that the overhang went back well under the wadi wall, and that the detached rock stood about seven feet high. I was cer�tain this couldn't be it � the caves were no more than eroded apertures, too small to have hidden even a dog. I was beginning to think that either I had made an error in my map-reading or there had been no LUP here at all when I stumbled on a cul-de-sac at the end of a third branch-wadi. I stared at it, amazed at
what I had found. The space was perhaps ten metres wide and filled with vegetation and stones. On the eastern side was a deep rock overhang, like a shelter, enclosing a pocket of shade. There was a smaller overhang to the right, divided from the larger one by a vast, detached boulder, almost pyramid-shaped, behind which a group of men huddling together might have been completely hidden. I went over the descriptions yet again and knew there could be no possible doubt. I was standing on one of the sacred sites of late-twentieth-century Special Operations. I had found Bravo Two Zero's LUP. As cover from view, the wadi-end was perfect, but as a defensive position, as McNab himself says, it left much to be desired. I searched the place thoroughly, thrilled by the knowledge that I was almost certainly the first Westerner to visit this spot since Bravo Two Zero had holed up here in January 1991. This had been the place where the patrol had been compromised and where Vince Phillips had spent his last peaceful night. My search revealed nothing but the rim of a canvas bucket, tucked between some stones, but I pulled at it gingerly, knowing there could still be booby traps here, even ten years later. Luckily, there was no flash-bang, and when I examined it I couldn't be certain whether it was British army issue or some Bedouin thing. Letting it go, I scrambled out of the wadi on the northern side, trying to match my view against what McNab and Ryan might have seen as the day dawned on the morning of 23 January 1991, ten years before. Although McNab's MSR could not be seen from here because of the dead ground, I knew it was there, no more than a stone's throw away, because our convoy of four orange and white GMCs was parked up there, on my side of the granite ridge that cut across the desert to the north. Due east lay a rambling clutch of what appeared to be farm-buildings and a water-tower among sparse bushes and shrubs, standing on a flat-topped hill. Curiously, McNab does mention seeing a house with trees and a water-tower, but due south of this position rather than east, where I could see none. Even more curiously, he cites an almost identical settlement � trees, water-tower, a building � as having stood due east of the point where the patrol had been dropped by helicopter, which, according to him, lay twenty kilometres south of here. Ryan does not report having seen the farm at all, but recalls having heard dogs barking within 500 metres of the helicopter drop-off point, which he says was only two kilometres south of the place I was standing. If I had come here expecting to get a clear picture of what had really happened, I was disappointed. The only thing I could be sure of was that I had found the LUP. CHAPTER five THE MORE I LOOKED AT THE farm-house, the nearer it appeared. I could have sworn it was less than a kilo�metre away. Of course, it might not have been there at all ten years ago, but even so, it was still possible that some�one there might at least be able to give me hearsay information, or even put me in touch with a witness. I decided to go up to the house, pacing out my way with the Magellan as I did so. The ground was flattish and stony, interspersed with patches of baked clay, but there was another plunging wadi between me and the house which had signs of cultivation in its bed. As I slithered down the slope into it, dogs began to bark. I came up into a dusty .driveway set among withered stone-pine, euca�lyptus and mesquite trees that were obviously having a hard time coping with moisture loss. The house was exactly 600 hundred metres from the lying-up point, and close up it was huge and spartan, with concrete pillars supporting a wide verandah that ran the whole length of its fa�e. In the shade of the verandah stood a huge earthenware pot full of water, and on the wall was what looked like the stuffed head of a wolf. There were other outbuildings hidden behind it that I could not see prop�erly, but the water-storage tank I had noticed from the wadi was obviously an antique � rusted to pieces and full of holes. A veiled woman in loose brown robes was work�ing around the corner of the verandah, and when I called out to her, As-salaam alaykum � Peace be on you,' she returned my greeting and invited me to come into the shade and sit down. Soon children of every age, dressed in dishdashas and shamaghs, were buzzing around me like flies. Carpets were rolled out on the verandah and cushions brought, and soon I was being offered cool water from the earthenware pot and, very shortly, glasses of sweet tea. The reception was familiar to me and although I was a complete stranger here I felt at home. I knew instinctively that these people were Bedouin � there were a thousand tell-tale signs: their graciousness, the way they dressed and moved, their spontaneous welcome to a guest. Bedouin customs are universal all over the Middle East and North Africa, and one of the most sacred is hospi�tality. Their code holds that anyone is welcome in a Bedouin home for three days, and in that time the host is duty-bound to give him the best of what he has to eat and drink, and to protect him from harm, even against his own family. This code holds even if the guest is an enemy with whom the family has a blood feud, and in that case, even when the guest has left, the host and his family can�not pursue him until the bread and salt he has eaten in the house is reckoned to have passed out of his system. One of the worst insults that can be lodged against a Bedouin is that he 'did not know a guest', and since the Bedouin live by the cult of reputation rather than possessions, fam�ilies and individuals actually compete with one another to gain renown for open-handedness. Eventually a rugged-looking young man with curly hair and a blue stubble appeared and shook hands. He looked about twenty years old, and wore a dirty white dishdasha with no headcloth. We exchanged greetings and he sat down next to me self-consciously. No Bedouin will ask directly what your business is, but as the polite small talk petered out I explained that I was British, and had come to enquire about a gun-battle that I thought had taken place near here ten years ago. The youth grinned at me, showing crooked teeth. 'There was such a battle,' he said at once. 'I was only a boy then, but my family was living here at the time.' A pulse of hope shot through me. If this boy's family had been here in 1991, there was a good chance they knew all about Bravo Two Zero. 'Can you tell me what happened?' I asked. He shook his head. 'There were some foreign comman�dos hiding in the wadi,' he said. 'And my uncle saw them.' `Your uncle? I understood it was a shepherd-boy who saw them.' `All I know is that there was shooting � I only heard about it from my Uncle Abbas. He isn't here today but he will be back tomorrow. He can tell you all you want to know' It was tantalizing, but for the moment I had to be content with that. AFTER DARK, WHILE THE MINDERS, film-crew and drivers put their tents up on a patch of flat ground near the road, I made my way to the LUP and rolled out my sleeping-bag and poncho, intending to spend the night there. Perhaps no one, not even a shepherd, had slept here since 24 January 1991, when this place had last been home to Bravo Two Zero. As I lay in pitch darkness, on the same patch of rock Vince Phillips or one of the oth-ers must have lain on, I tried to imagine them all around me, and the subtle interplay of energies that characterizes any human group. Although SAS men are selected partly for their ability to get on with others in closed environ-ments, given their highly competitive nature, personality clashes are inevitable. McNab's description in his autobi-ography of how satisfied he was to see others failing on selection, since it meant he was doing well, is probably typical: 'There are more schemers in the SAS than an outsider might think,' Peter Ratcliffe has written. 'Guys just hoping you'll fall, and not at all unwilling to give you that little shove if they can get away with it!' Vince was an outsider who had been posted in from A Squadron to take the second-in-command's slot that would otherwise have gone to Ryan, as the next senior in rank after McNab. Although SAS men feel great loyalty to the Regiment, and a sense of brotherhood that is born of a common mystique and shared hardship, in practice it is the squadron to which they feel their deepest loyalty � a loyalty that has been described by some as taking the place of religion. There is a certain xenophobia against While McNab was proud to have served in the Royal Green Jackets, Ryan had no real parent unit at all. As an entrant straight from the TA, he was � to a greater extent than McNab even � one hundred per cent proof SAS, but to his mates in B Squadron he would probably always remain 'the weekend soldier'. That Ryan felt the need to live this down is suggested by the description of the way he asserts himself in his book, noting that he emerged as the natural 2i/c because he was 'more positive' than Vince on the ground, and that he took up the position of lead scout simply because he 'didn't trust anyone else to go first.8 As well as his critical attitude to Phillips, he also points a derogatory finger at his patrol commander, McNab, hinting that on first arrival he was 'semi-stunned' by the enormity of the task, and later, that he was so des�perate to prove himself that he devised a madcap plan to bump an anti-aircraft position that had no relation to. their task, and from which Ryan had to gently dissuade him. McNab does not mention the plan, nor does Ryan, in McNab's book, seem to have played the dominating role in decision-making he appears to do in his own. In fact, McNab refers to Vince Phillips as a major player far more than he refers to Ryan. There is an air of knowing best about Ryan's attitude, a sense of the perfectionist loner, 'the voice of reason', as McNab himself puts it. Ryan probably looked down on McNab � an ex-boy sol�dier � as someone who had been institutionalized by the army, had missed out on the realities of life, and was too `gobby' � a flaw that had, in fact, very nearly cost him the SAS selection � 'words came out of him so fast,' Ryan said, 'that you never quite knew where you were.' 9 As I lay there in the LUP, staring at the stars, I also thought about the tremendous loads the patrol had brought in with them, which McNab says they had car-ried twenty kilometres to this LUP. Each man had a Bergen rucksack � the standard SAS issue, with a capac�ity of about a hundred litres, packed with at least twenty-five kilos of sandbags and OP equipment per man, rations for ten days, spare batteries for the radio, demolition gear, mines, jerrycans of water, and intra�venous drips and fluids for emergencies. The most vital piece of kit was the PRC 319, a state-of-the-art patrol radio with a burst capacity, which meant that encrypted messages could be sent in a fraction of a second and thus reduce the risk of being DF'd (direction found) by enemy tracking-stations. The set was an improvement on the old ones only from the point of view of security � the system of using vocabularies and coding the messages on a one-time pad remained as time-consuming as always. The 319 worked on a duplex antenna, a coil of wire that was nor�mally hidden in trees, but would also work when laid on rocks, the length of which had to be adjusted according to the frequency. Spare antennae were carried so that if the patrol had to move quickly the set could be detached and the antenna in use dumped. The patrol also had with it a field telephone system designed for use between two OPs, and four TACBEs, miniature radio beacons that, when primed, could send a signal to AWACS � the air�borne warning and control systems aircraft that coordinated the communications networks and were recognizable by their mushroom-shaped antennae. TACBE was supposed to be able to elicit a response from AWACS within fifteen seconds, and could also be used for contacting aircraft or for ground-to-ground contact at close quarters. In addition to their Bergens, the patrol had belt-kit containing emergency rations, cooking gear and ammunition, and each man had two sandbags filled with extra rations and the crucial NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical warfare) suits comprising two hermetically sealed sets of charcoal-lined smocks and pants, and a gas-mask, overboots and gloves. Mobile toilets were not forgotten � in the form of a 'piss can' into which the patrol would urinate, and plastic bags into which they would defecate, carrying all their waste products with them until they could be disposed of safely. Four of the team had M16 Armalite rifles with underslung 40mm grenade-launchers known as M203s, and the others car�ried Minimis: Belgian-made light machine-guns firing 5.56mm ammunition from both belt and magazine. All had one-shot disposable LAW 66mm rocket-launchers capable of taking out armoured vehicles, L2 High Explosive grenades and white phosphorus grenades. Vince Phillips had a Browning 9mm pistol. Most of the patrol had a poncho or space-blanket, but none had a sleeping-bag � a potentially fatal omission in the icy con-ditions they encountered. Though McNab states that a sleeping-bag was a luxury item, such macho aplomb runs counter to everything taught in the Regiment, where no detail of personal morale is neglected. A man who is freezing to death and unable to sleep because of the cold is hardly likely to be able to carry out his task, no matter how many millions of dollars-worth of technology is at his disposal. In the Iraqi desert in winter, a sleeping-bag was definitely not a luxury, but a relatively cheap and light piece of equipment that could have saved lives. The reason Bravo Two Zero did not carry them was not because they were considered luxuries, but because they had not learned the lessons of T. E. Lawrence: they believed that the desert was a hot place, and thought they would simply not need them. With such a vast amount of equipment to carry about, of course, Bravo Two Zero were at a tremendous disad-vantage as a foot patrol. According to ex-RSM Peter Ratcliffe, they had forgotten the Regiment's tradition of travelling fast and light: 'I admit to being the traditional kind of practical soldier who believes you don't need much equipment to operate efficiently,' he wrote, `and that you should go in as light as possible. But they were taking twenty or thirty bulging sandbags in addition to the rest of their gear.' The day before the operation, Ratcliffe had attempted in vain to try to get McNab to reduce the amount of kit. 'I knew to a certainty they were taking too much,' he wrote. `I gave them a dozen paces maximum � yet McNab expected them to move freely, as circumstances demanded. An SAS unit, to misquote Mohammed Ali,