Zero Six Bravo (12 page)

“Too right,” Grey grunted. “But we’re asking for it, that’s for certain.”

“Boss, it goes against all we learned in Kenya,” came a quiet voice from beside him. It was Moth. “Remember Delta Jim’s advice:
Bug out of your LZ like as soon as possible. Make directly for a hidden LUP.”

“Yeah.” Grey shrugged. “But orders are orders. Tell you another thing, I’m bloody frozen.” He flexed his fingers around the GPMG’s icy grip. “Forget a bloody brass monkey, it’s cold enough to freeze my own balls off.”

“If this was a Delta Force mission they’d have dedicated air, wouldn’t they, boss?” Moth whispered. “They’d have air above them the whole time.”

“They would,” Grey confirmed. “U.S. Spec Ops types don’t go in unless they’ve got air power on call.”

Moth glanced toward the heavens. “Guess we can’t afford the fuel to fly any—”

Grey smiled. “Welcome to the poor man’s military. It’s like Dad’s Army . . . Don’t panic! Don’t panic!”

While it was important to allow the men to have a good moan, it was also vital to keep everyone’s spirits up. It struck Grey that Moth had just spoken the most he’d heard him say in one short burst. He’d unhooked his Colt assault rifle from where he had it lashed against the dash in its holster, and it was cradled in his lap. No harm in doing so, just in case they did meet an Iraqi hunter force. Grey sensed that perhaps it was now that the quiet man on his team was going to start sparking.

They’d been stationary for a good thirty minutes when Grey got down from the wagon, stamped his feet, and jumped about in an effort to bring some life back into them.

“You training for the Iraqi Olympics?” Scruff needled him.

Ignoring the comment, he ran on the spot for five minutes or so.

“Okay,” he announced, sliding behind his machine gun again. “Moth, you’re next. Feet-stamping duty.”

Two hours spent in the bitter cold, scanning arcs and staring down the freezing barrel of a machine gun into utter emptiness—it wasn’t anyone’s idea of fun. They couldn’t have tea, just in case a fleet of Fedayeen did decide to pitch up on the horizon. All they could do was sit and stare and try to keep alert as the icy cold seeped into them.

As they gazed into the void, each soldier in this eight-man force couldn’t help but wonder who exactly was out there. Might the enemy know already that a force of elite operators had put down deep inside their territory? M Squadron’s advance party was the furthermost Special Forces unit across the entire country. No one else was anything like this far in. They’d penetrated some 240 kilometers into Iraq, and there were still days to go before the war proper was scheduled to start.

“This is shit,” Moth complained as he blew into his frozen hands to try to get some warmth into them.

“Yep. It’s crap.” Grey confirmed. “That’s war for you. Long periods of complete boredom, interrupted by the odd moment of utter chaos.”

“Oh, I dunno,” came a quiet drawl from the wagon’s rear. “I mean, the scenery’s kind of wild. Reminds me of parts of the Nevada Desert back home. And I mean, you know, the company’s to die for—”

There was a chorus of “Piss-off, Dude!” from the others, and all fell silent again.

Then they heard it. Faintly, almost inaudibly, a burst of a juddering, thumping beat on the still desert air. The men strained their ears. The noise faded into silence, then drifted back in again, stronger and more audible this time as the Chinooks bore down on them. No doubt about it, they had the second flight inbound.

Despite the fact that they were heading in at treetop height, the pair of helos were evident from many miles away. Their rotors were kicking up a dust storm and creating a whirl of static electricity, which resulted in a distinctive blue-green “fairy dust” halo marking out their flight path. The eerie glowing forms were visible as a flash of light on the horizon, long before the machines themselves could be seen.

The aircrew knew to put down on the same LZ, and to expect Grey and his men to be just to the east of it. If there had been no warning radio call, they knew the LZ to be clear of hostile forces. Both the aircrew and those in the helos’ rear had what they wanted now—their own men on the ground with eyes on the area of the
drop—but it still wasn’t the way that Grey and his men would have wanted to do things.

The Chinooks did a repeat performance, and fifteen minutes later there were four Pinkies and a similar number of quads gathered together to the east of the LZ. Grey took the opportunity to do a final map check. He was using a specialist flashlight that had a bendable straw-like tube coming out of one end, with a tiny light diode attached to it. With the map in his lap and the light diode cradled in one hand, he could map read with barely any illumination leaking out of the vehicle.

Having double-checked the location of their intended LUP, Grey gave a whispered order to Moth to move out. The wagon swung round until they were heading due south, moving out in the direction in which the Chinooks had flown in. They were going in the wrong direction for the mission, which required them to push northward, but it didn’t really matter much, for they couldn’t get on the move proper until the entire Squadron had been ferried in.

Grey and Moth had settled upon a prearranged modus operandi for desert driving at night. As long as the conditions remained clear and bright, Grey would map read, navigate, and scan for the enemy using his natural night vision, while Moth would rely on NVG to find a way through the terrain. From long experience Grey knew that if he used NVG, he’d have to focus them at distance to navigate, then refocus on his lap to map check, which was pretty much undoable. It was far better to rely on the diode flashlight and the naked eye.

Regular forces tended to use “red illume” at night, a dim red light that’s harder for an enemy to see. At its simplest, a red filter would be taped over a flashlight to create a beam of softer red light. But the men of the Squadron didn’t favor the method. Only soldiers used that kind of illumination, so it stood to reason that if you did see red light at night, it had to be a military force. Far better to use a source of light that could be civvy.

For thirty minutes Grey navigated the patrol across the open desert, the only noise being the soft crunch of gravel under tires and
the gentle purr of the diesel engines. Grey was heading for a reentrant, a dry channel cut into the flat terrain, one that would drain the desert of any rare rainfall. At its southernmost end the reentrant emptied into the Euphrates River. Grey brought the convoy to the northern end of the feature, whereupon he gave word to Moth and Dude to search for a natural entry point—ideally a shallow slope leading into the bed of the feature.

Predictably, it was Dude who spotted it. From his perch on the wagon’s rear he had the best all-round vision. He pointed them toward the opening, a place where the jagged rim appeared to drop away more gently and smoothly. Creeping ahead at dead slow, Moth edged the heavily laden wagon over the edge, large stones cracking and popping under the weight as the tires fought to retain their hold.

They crested the lip and began to descend, Grey getting his first glimpse down the length of the wadi. It was set maybe six feet below the surrounding terrain, the base smooth and sandy from where floodwaters had rushed along it in seething torrents, depositing sediment as they went. Here and there large boulders dotted the riverbed—ones that had proved too heavy and cumbersome for the floodwaters. It was easy enough for Moth to weave a route around them, and they pushed a good hundred meters down the wadi. They’d lowered the tire pressures to about half the recommended amount so they could better float across such soft, sandy terrain. Only if they hit any sand dune seas would they experience any real problems.

Moth nosed the wagon into a natural harbor in the wadi wall and cut the engine. Behind them the other Pinkies did likewise, one pulling in alongside them against the eastern wall of the feature, and two occupying the western slope. That way they could use the vehicle-mounted machine guns to cover the terrain to both sides of the wadi during the hours in which they’d remain here.

With first light fast approaching, M Squadron had sixteen men on the ground, plus four Pinkies and their sister quads. The vehicles were spread out a good hundred meters along the feature. They were within speaking distance of each other, but without being too
bunched together to present an easy target to any enemy. They organized sentry duty, each wagon’s weapons covering one of the four points of the compass.

Grey took first watch, a two-hour shift that would last until 0630. He mounted the wagon and slid behind the GPMG. Moth had positioned the vehicle in such a way that both machine guns could be operated. As old habits died hard, Grey preferred his seat behind the “Gimpy,” as the tried-and-trusted weapon was called.

He settled down to what he was certain would be two hours of complete and utter boredom. He felt certain that no one could have tailed them from the LZ to their place of hiding. They’d driven on black light the whole way, and they’d passed through the desert night as silently and unseen as ghosts. For the first time since their boots had hit the desert sand, he felt himself beginning to relax a little.

Here they were, safely through the complex two-stage air insertion, which had had all the makings of a galactic clusterfuck. They were safely out of the LZ, and well hidden. Now all they had to do was stay unseen for the next three days and nights, gather the Squadron and head north for several hundred kilometers, then take the surrender of the Iraqi 5th Corps.

What could be easier than that? he asked himself wryly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A faint sound of snoring drifted up from the cold bed of the wadi. Moth, Dude, and Mucker were lying prone on the hard ground, each man cocooned in a sleeping bag. They’d brought synthetic bags, as down-filled ones were useless if they got wet. There was no need for mosquito nets: the bone-dry Iraqi desert was devoid of water, without which mosquitoes couldn’t thrive.

It was good the guys were getting some rest, for come sunup the wadi would become a roasting furnace. The Iraqi sun would quickly burn off any chill, and by mid-morning the temperature would be pushing one hundred degrees—which was about the time that Grey would be trying to get his first rest following sentry.

The men had barely slept for two nights now. Over the coming nights they’d need to be back at the LZ, securing it for the further Chinook rotations. Somehow they’d have to grab whatever sleep they could during the heat of the day. It was far from ideal, and Grey worried that by the time the Squadron was assembled and ready to move, his team and Scruff’s—the advance party—would be well and truly exhausted. Already he could feel his eyelids sagging. But he forced himself to stay focused and keep his eyes on his weapon’s stark iron sights as he scanned the empty night for the enemy.

On missions such as this one, space and weight were at an absolute premium. Those who were sleeping were lying on a length of
roll mat that they’d cut down so that it cushioned only the torso and the head. Anything else was an unnecessary luxury. But at least they were wrapped up snug and warm in their sleeping bags.

After the experiences of the First Gulf War, it was well known how cold and inhospitable the Iraqi desert could get. Having been forced to go on the run, the Bravo Two Zero patrol had hit appalling weather conditions: sleet, snow, and freezing winds. That lesson had been well learned across British Special Forces, and before deploying to Iraq the men of M Squadron had been issued with a full set of Arctic cold-weather gear.

It was left to the guys to make their own choice of which items of cold-weather gear to take with them, and Grey had balked at the idea of the neoprene ski mask. It was a kind of deformed wetsuit hood, a rubberized balaclava that left just the eyes showing. But he regretted not having it now. After a couple of hours on watch his head felt frozen stiff, and his eyes were watering. His hands had seized up, and he knew he’d have trouble operating his weapon if the enemy did put in an appearance.

He heard a few whispered words from behind him. “All right, mate? How’re your lot doing?”

He turned to find it was Gav Tinker, the Squadron sergeant major, doing the rounds—but right now the man resembled some kind of nightmare apparition. He had opted to bring his ski mask. It squeezed up what could be seen of his face into a bulging, wrinkled blob, his eyes like little piggy slits in the middle. Still, at least the SSM was warm, whereas Grey felt as if his neck was about to snap in two with the cold.

Grey couldn’t help but crack up laughing. “Do you know what the fuck you look like?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Pumbaa the warthog. Heard it all before, mate,” the SSM grunted. “Still alive, are you? Your feet dry? Whatever, whatever. Fuck off and see you all later then.” He turned to go. “Oh, yeah, almost forgot: time you switched sentry. Want me to kick the next bloke into life?”

The hidden force remained where it was all that day, without the slightest sign of any enemy presence. If they’d put down on the
surface of Mars it couldn’t have been more devoid of life. The terrain had been baked utterly dry and lifeless and there didn’t even seem to be any scorpions, or the hated Iraqi camel spiders.

At last light the men prepared to move out and retrace their steps to the LZ. The next force to fly in would be Reggie’s HQ Troop, the nerve center of the Squadron. With sixteen men and their machines safely on the ground, it was seen as being secure enough to risk inserting the OC. Even so, Grey felt it wise to run through the JTAC procedures one last time with Moth, in case they did hit trouble and needed to call in some air support.

With no dedicated air cover, British Special Forces had to request air on the radio net. What warplanes did exist would be held in an orbit over central Iraq, so that whatever unit needed air could call it in. That was the theory. In practice, aircraft would be busy carrying out preplanned air strikes against strategic targets prior to the ground forces going in. A unit requiring air cover would have to compete with whatever air missions the warplanes orbiting the area were flying.