The Circuit (29 page)

When we got to the bureau I was relieved to learn that our driver had managed to restart the BMW and was en route to the Palestine. I asked the AKE ops desk to let me know when he arrived safely. I then went to have a word with the bureau chief. I found him sitting at his desk.

‘Can we talk?’ I asked.

He looked up at me and started rocking back and forth in his chair. ‘Why, Bob? Are you going to pick on me again?’

I was trying very hard to maintain a sense of diplomacy. I asked the bureau chief if I could have a word with him privately. Away from the prying eyes and ears of the rest of the bureau, I told him in no uncertain terms that enough was enough, and if he didn’t stand up to be counted and get a proper armoured vehicle in to replace the BMW then we were going to have some serious issues.

He continued to insist that the BMW had been serviced and it shouldn’t have broken down.

‘Grow up,’ I said.

I told him no matter how many times the BMW was serviced, it was too old and worn out to use operationally. By this point, I got the feeling he wanted out of the conversation. He told me he would see what he could do about getting a replacement vehicle.

I felt enormously frustrated. I’d never had a real problem with a client before – strained relations occasionally – but never a situation where I was unable to do my job properly. I can’t force a client to follow my advice. But if I’m out on the ground with them, I have a duty to maintain the highest possible security standards. I can’t allow a dangerous situation to fester simply to appease a client. Doing so would be unprofessional and that’s just not on.

CHAPTER 28

A week after the BMW incident, Diana Muriel asked if I’d join her on a military embed in Sadr City, a highly volatile, poor Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad. I’d been there several times during my first trip to Iraq, but by September 2004 the area had become far too dangerous for western media to visit unilaterally.

Sadr City was an insurgent’s haven for several reasons. A rabbit warren of densely packed buildings and narrow streets, the layout was ideal for guerrilla warfare. It was a natural base of support for the Mehdi Army, a heavily armed Shiite militia created by the firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr (Sadr City was named after his father). The Mehdi Army had been very active in Iraq that year, engaging coalition forces in a series of intense street battles. In Sadr City, the militia was proving to be quite a nuisance, hitting the Yanks regularly with rockets, IEDs and small-arms fire.

It was early morning when we arrived at the US military base on the central eastern outskirts of Sadr City. Diana checked in with the Public Affairs Officer to get our schedule for the next twenty-four hours. She was told we’d be joining two patrols; one that afternoon in the southern part of Sadr City and an evening patrol penetrating deep into the city centre.

Diana used the down time before our first patrol to shoot some general b-roll for her stories. The cameraman was getting pictures of APCs and tanks when insurgents fired a mortar round at the base. The rocket landed on a parked fuel truck which burst into flames. If that weren’t enough, the fire spread to three other fuel trucks. I don’t know what the Americans were thinking parking them side-by-side. No one was hurt in the attack but it was one hell of a bonfire.

Less visually engaging but of much more interest to me was the sight of a coalition sniper team dismounting a helicopter. I was full of envy when I saw .50 sniper rifles over their shoulders. I’d tested a variant of those weapons when I headed up the Regiment’s anti-terrorist sniper team. They’re very powerful; with the right bullet a sniper can smash an engine block from two kilometres away. I wondered where the lads were going. Wherever it was, the team was sure to be a huge asset to their deploying unit.

The first patrol of the embed was meant to be little more than a public relations excursion to showcase a US military reconstruction project in the south of Sadr City, an area perceived by the Americans to be softer than the city centre. Around 2 p.m. local time, we set off in a convoy of eight armoured Humvees. As we drove, the Americans staggered their vehicles at regular intervals to ensure that if one got hit by an IED the rest wouldn’t get caught up in the explosion. We wound our way through dusty, tapered streets past loads of locals, many of whom were young and unemployed. Their expressions were hard and unwelcoming.

Our first stop was a forward operations base where Diana was invited to interview the commander in charge of the reconstruction project: a damaged water pumping station the US military was repairing. After the interview the Humvees escorted us to the station to film the fruits of the Yanks’ labour. When we reached the pumping station, the Humvees parked up in tactical defensive mode; a circular formation for mutual support. We dismounted our vehicles along with a small foot patrol while the rest of the soldiers stayed with the convoy.

I took note of the locals gathered on the streets around us. They seemed friendly enough, though their attitude may have been influenced by the heavy US military presence. Either way, I was fairly certain they were looking forward to running water regardless of who was providing it.

The pumping station was housed in a one-storey building. The cameraman got a few shots of the exterior before we all headed inside with the foot patrol. The station still wasn’t up and running and there were no engineers on site doing repair works; just an old Iraqi man keeping watch over an idle pump. The patrol was shaping up to be a real snooze. Then we heard gunfire. It was very close – right outside the building. It began with AK fire, presumably from insurgents. A few seconds later the Americans responded with small-arms fire and the heavy thud of a .50 heavy machine gun.

The foot patrol that had escorted us inside the pumping station appeared at a loss as to how to respond. They just stood there, slack-jawed, looking at one another. I told the sergeant in charge that we needed to get the CNN crew back to the Humvees. I asked him to radio the soldiers outside and let them know we were coming out and needed cover. In seconds, we were out of the building and into the Humvees. When the shooting stopped, I asked our military hosts for a quick overview of what had happened. Apparently, a car carrying four men had fired on the convoy with AKs and the convoy responded to the threat. All four insurgents were killed in the contact.

We had only been at the pumping station a few minutes, but in a densely populated area like Sadr City that’s all it takes for an incident to happen. I bet as soon as we pulled up to the station a tout was on his way to inform the insurgents that a target was in situ. If the militants were Mehdi Army, which I believe they were, they would definitely possess the organizational skills to mount an impromptu attack. As we drove back to the main base I told Diana that the contact was an example of how the Americans were failing to dominate the ground. Had the Americans been winning the war for Sadr City, the touts would have come running to them, not the Mehdi Army.

Early that evening, we attended a detailed briefing by the colonel in charge of the night patrol. He explained that we’d be going deep within Sadr City with a large armoured convoy of approximately thirty vehicles backed by helicopter gunships. The purpose of the patrol was to flush out members of the Mehdi Army and engage them.

The main patrol wouldn’t get under way until after midnight. In the meantime, we were to deploy early with a small group of Bradley Fighting Vehicles to a forward operations base and wait while the convoy assembled. The armour was coming from locations all around Baghdad, so we were warned that we’d be spending up to five hours at the FOB.

After the brief, I asked the colonel how many OPs they had (covert observation points stationed further out from the FOB).

‘None,’ he told me.

I thought that was a huge mistake both operationally and strategically. There are half a million people crammed into Sadr City and the potential for collateral damage on any patrol is high. OPs can engage the enemy more accurately than troops operating as part of a large armoured convoy and limit the likelihood of civilian casualties. If you want to keep the local population on side, best to not hit them accidentally.

About an hour before last light, we linked up with a column of four Bradleys and drove to the FOB: a small, two-storey local council complex approximately two miles west of north central Sadr City. I felt very insecure about the location. There was a group of small houses and shops thirty yards across the road from where we’d parked. It would take nothing for an insurgent in one of the shops to lob a grenade at the Bradleys while people were mounting and dismounting.

Our military hosts quickly ushered us inside the building. Within ten minutes, insurgents were firing on our position. The Americans responded with a thunderous volley of gunfire. It was around 8 p.m. local time. We weren’t scheduled to mount up with the rest of the convoy until 2 a.m.

As soon as the shooting started Diana was on the phone filing live reports. They must have sounded quite exciting with mortars, RPGs and small-arms fire blasting away in the background. While Diana was between ‘phoners’ I took a walk upstairs to get a better view on the situation. When I got to the first floor, I was delighted to discover the .50 sniper team I’d seen earlier that day. Not only where they keeping the enemy at bay, but they looked like they were having a ball doing it. They asked me who I was. When I told them I was with CNN, they asked me not to film them. I told them not to worry as we’d respect their anonymity.

I asked them if they were having fun. One of the lads said if they hadn’t been there, the insurgents would have overrun the location. I didn’t doubt it. For the rest of the evening, a smile spread across my face each time I’d hear the thud of a .50 round leaving the barrel of a rifle. It was tremendously reassuring knowing that those lads were up there working in support of the Yanks.

While we waited for the convoy to assemble, I spoke with some of the soldiers who’d accompanied us in the Bradleys. I was particularly interested in talking with the patrol medic. I wanted to get his opinion on QuikClot, a granular substance that stops massive haemorrhaging. QuikClot was still relatively new, but AKE supplied it in all its medical packs. I’d heard a lot of pros and cons about using it, but never from a frontline medic.

The medic swore by it. He’d used QuikClot on many occasions and in his view it was the best way to stop massive blood loss, the main cause of battlefield deaths. The down side was that in a theatre of war it’s not always possible to get a wounded soldier to a medical facility immediately and QuikClot isn’t supposed to be left in a wound over a long period of time. The young medic told me that some of the surgeons in the military hospitals thought that if QuikClot is left in a wound too long it can cause limb loss. But as far as the medic was concerned, when the choice was between possible limb loss in the long term and the loss of a life on the ground, he’d apply QuikClot every time.
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I later learned that the young medic was up for a bravery award. Apparently, he’d scrambled up to a rooftop to treat a wounded soldier whilst under fire. Though I’d seen some horrendously stupid decision-making during embeds with the US military, I had no doubt that at ground level there were some outstanding young soldiers like that medic doing exceptional deeds.

By 1.45 a.m. the entire convoy had assembled and was ready to depart the FOB. The colonel in command invited Diana, her cameraman and me to ride with him in his Bradley. The colonel rode up front while we piled into the back with two other soldiers. It was a very tight squeeze. The air con wasn’t working and it was sweltering inside. I braced myself for a very long, very uncomfortable night.

We were all given headsets to speak with one another and to listen to the colonel commanding the convoy. Unfortunately, the colonel could control which conversation we could and could not hear. But he couldn’t edit what we could see. The back of the Bradley was kitted out with a computer screen that allowed us to see what was going on outside and the clarity of the image captured by the night vision camera was outstanding.

The convoy must have looked like a giant armoured crocodile snaking its way towards the centre of Sadr City. It was slow going. Each time we encountered an IED everything would grind to a halt. Five IEDs exploded, causing damage to the convoy but no injuries. On a few occasions, the patrol spotted command wires in advance. Command wires link an IED at one end to the insurgent initiating it at the other. Several times we heard the colonel instruct his gunners to fire at wires and sever them. He told the gunners to make sure their rounds didn’t hit civilians or surrounding buildings. Good for him. One of the command wires we encountered led to a mosque. The gunners observed it for several minutes before firing to make sure they were spot on. Had they missed, it would have inflamed local sensibilities.

The helicopter gunships backing the convoy were less discriminating. On the computer screen we could see missiles firing into what the colonel told us were suspected IED locations situated at a major crossroads in the city. I saw two of the gunships fire four missiles each; they landed in a beaten zone measuring between 600 and 800 metres in length and a couple of hundred metres in width; not exactly pinpoint accuracy.

As the hours dragged on, the IEDs became the least of my worries. The heat inside the Bradley had grown unbearable, especially when we were static. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air. The fact that we were packed in like sardines with helmets and heavy body armour didn’t help. I’ve wrestled with claustrophobia since I suffered a bad drowning situation during a diving exercise in the Regiment. I’ll sail along fine for years at a time, and then Bam! something happens that takes me back to the moment when my lungs filled with water.

It took every ounce of willpower I had not to hit the door lever of the Bradley and run wild into the streets of Sadr City. I stayed in control by focusing on the activity unfolding on the monitor. It also helped that there was a large cool box opposite me with chunks of ice which I kept piling onto the back of my neck.