Zero Six Bravo (7 page)
The brigadier had just stepped up to speak when this disheveled figure wandered in. It was Clive “Raggy” Clarke, who regularly won first prize for being the scruffiest guy in the entire Squadron. Raggy was actually super-hard and super-fit, but he was always the last to arrive for any training session or briefing. He’d drift in wearing his trademark black trench coat, mug of tea in hand, then realize that everyone was waiting.
“Oh, yeah, I was just checking all the buildings, and there’s no one else,” he’d remark. “I’m the last.” He’d carry on like that until he had the entire Squadron in stitches.
Brigadier Lamb did his best to ignore Raggy’s late entry and began speaking. His address was delivered in his typically laid-back yet überconfident manner. In simple terms he outlined the key developments regarding the coming conflict, the most notable of which was the decision by Turkey to deny U.S. and British forces the ability to open a northern front in the coming war. Little if any news of the wider war effort or its planning had filtered through to the men of M Squadron. But now, in this one instant, they understood that no forces were going into Iraq via the north of the country—or at least so they thought—which changed the entire road map for the coming war.
“The United Nations has more than had its chance in Iraq,” the brigadier told the assembled men. “It’s clear that Saddam is not going
to comply. That’s obvious, and that means it’s time to get you men in to do the job properly. It’s true that the north of Iraq is now closed to conventional forces, but I want you to know that it has just been assigned as Special Forces territory. It will be M Squadron’s area of operations for the coming conflict, and pretty much yours alone, although there will very likely be American elite operators working in the Kurdish mountains as well.
“Your mission is to move into the area where the Iraqi 5th Corps is situated,” he continued, “which is up around the northern city of Salah. The 5th Corps is tasked with the defense of the whole of the north of Iraq. They have recently moved location at night and under complete radio silence, although we understand them to be demoralized and we are expecting them not to put up any significant resistance. You are to find the Corps and make contact with them. Your task is to go in and take their surrender as they capitulate en masse.”
The brigadier paused and eyed the room. “You should know that the Turks have 130,000 of their own troops massed on the border. They are believed to be preparing to enter northern Iraq and to occupy Kurdistan, the territory of the Kurdish rebels. Needless to say, their presence would complicate your mission somewhat, but they are being offered several carrots to keep them out of the war—most notably European Union membership.
“Rest assured that Turkey will not be sending in troops, which gives you a free rein to achieve your mission.” The Brigadier was speaking with a reassuring degree of confidence. “Make no mistake, while northern Iraq may be closed to conventional forces, it is not closed to us. Yours is a mission that may well change the entire course of the war. I have every confidence in M Squadron, and I am expecting the extraordinary from you in Iraq. Good luck.”
As the briefing came to an end, Grey reflected on what he’d just heard. A corps usually consists of two divisions or more, plus support units, each division being 10,000-plus men-at-arms. At a minimum the Iraqi 5th Corps would be some 20,000 strong. Grey wondered how the sixty operators of M Squadron were supposed to take the surrender of such a massive force. Moreover, a corps
would be made up of infantry, artillery, and light and heavy armor, and M Squadron was going to be a few dozen men in thin-skinned Pinkies sporting machine guns. While Special Forces operators were used to being outnumbered and outgunned—it went with the territory—the odds on this one didn’t exactly look promising.
Another thing struck Grey. To move an entire corps by radio silence and at night was a seriously impressive undertaking. It required phenomenal discipline, training, logistical support, management, and control, not to mention extreme self-confidence on the part of the corps’ commanders. It didn’t sound to him like the behavior of a demoralized and ill-motivated force, one that was poised to surrender.
The key question was
why
had they chosen to move under radio silence and at night. The only possible answer was to hide such movement from watchful eyes. The 5th Corps could fear surveillance from only two possible sources. One was Saddam Hussein, and perhaps the corps commanders were trying to hide their movements from him, in preparation for their surrender. But the other source of surveillance was clearly the Americans, who owned the skies over Iraq. And if the 5th Corps was trying to hide its movement from U.S. forces, that suggested the opposite of a desire to throw their hands in the air.
One thing did make very clear sense now as Grey reflected on the mission they’d just been given. His eyes came to rest on the distinctive form of Sebastian March-Phillips. He was sitting with Reggie, the Squadron OC, and the rest of the men from the “Head Shed” (the Squadron’s Headquarters Troop). It was blindingly obvious now why they needed a terp. How else were they to go and take the surrender of an entire Iraqi corps if they couldn’t even speak to them?
The DSF’s briefing was followed by one from the Army Intelligence Corps guy attached to the Squadron. Due to the unit’s distinctive laurel-green beret, they’d earned the affectionate nickname of “the Green Slime.” He outlined the key background to the coming mission. The area of northwestern Iraq had been assessed as
being “relatively benign”; in layman-speak, that meant that no hostile forces were known to be present in the region.
The main area of concern was Bayji, an Iraqi city situated on the main road to Salah. Bayji was an important industrial center and the site of major oil refineries, chemical plants and weapons factories. It lay at one end of the “Sunni Triangle,” an area providing the bedrock of support for Saddam Hussein. M Squadron would need to give Bayji a wide berth, for neither the local inhabitants nor the military based there were reckoned to be friendlies.
“The Iraqi 5th Corps,” the briefer continued. “During the 1991 Gulf War the 5th Corps fielded some 120,000 men-at-arms. In the aftermath of that conflict, dozens of senior 5th Corps commanders were executed by Saddam, for trying to topple him. There have been further attempted coups by senior 5th Corps commanders, the most recent being in 1998. From this and other intelligence we assess the corps as being a hotbed of resistance to Saddam’s rule, and ripe for capitulation. As of today, the 5th Corps is thought to number anything up to 100,000 men-at-arms, but we do not have absolute numbers.”
One hundred thousand men-at-arms.
Grey did a quick flash of mental arithmetic: 100,000 divided by sixty equaled 1,666.66. Somehow, each soldier on the Squadron was supposed to take the surrender of over sixteen hundred Iraqi troops.
“The 5th Corps Commander is one Lieutenant General Yasin Al Maini,” the briefer continued. “Normally, his forces are based at Salamieh, Salah. However, as you know the entire corps has recently moved under strict radio silence, and we are just now trying to tie down exactly where they are. We understand the men of the corps to be underfed and not to have been paid for months. As a result, morale is low and there is little cohesive intent.
“The corps consists of several infantry divisions and mechanized—armored—divisions. In terms of weaponry, the corps is equipped with the Iraqi-manufactured version of the Russian T-72 main battle tank—which the Iraqis call the Asad Babil, the ‘Lion of Babylon’—plus light armor, artillery, and mortars. I’m sure
you are all familiar with the specs of the T-72, and we’ll be giving you a refresher on your AFV recognition drills before you deploy.”
AFV stood for “armored fighting vehicle,” military-speak for tanks, armored cars, armored troop carriers, and whatever else the 5th Corps might boast in terms of heavy firepower.
“The weather window for your mission is prior to the end of March, by which time the short Iraqi winter will be coming to an end. Right now, daytime temperatures are just about bearable, and workable. There is a slight danger of rain, even in the deserts of northern Iraq, which brings the added risk of flash floods, especially in desert wadis. But we assess the risk as minimal, and more than compensated for by the lower temperatures during daylight hours.”
With the briefing from the Green Slime done, the men of the Squadron lined up to grab a cup of tea. Grey found himself next to Scruff, and the two exchanged knowing glances.
“Us lot taking the surrender of an entire Iraqi corps,” Scruff snorted. “They’re having a laugh.”
“Yeah, sixty against a hundred thousand,” Grey remarked. “Nice one.”
“Tell me, if you were tearing around the Iraqi desert in T-72s, would you want to surrender to a handful of scruffy tossers like us, driving Pinkies?”
“Not a chance.” Grey paused. “What makes the Green Slime so sure they want to surrender, anyway? Remember Qala-i-Jangi?”
“Fucking surrender? At Qala-i-Jangi? Not a chance. Not a sniff of it. Not in Afghan, anyway. So why the hell should Iraq be any different?”
In late 2001 six hundred Afghan and foreign prisoners cooped up in the Qala-i-Jangi fortress near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif had turned on their captors. They overpowered and killed Johnny Mike Spann, an operative from the CIA’s Special Activities Division (SAD), its paramilitary force. That was the trigger for an epic uprising, one in which the so-called prisoners seized the fort’s weapons store and armed themselves to the teeth. Against
the six hundred were ranged one troop of SBS operators—Grey and Scruff included—plus a bunch of U.S. 10
th
Mountain soldiers.
CIA operative Johnny Spann was the first allied casualty of the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. A savage battle had ensued as the six hundred “prisoners” fought to the last man and the last round. They resisted repeated air strikes called in by the British and American forces, not to mention sorties by T-55 main battle tanks operated by the Northern Alliance.
Scruff and Grey had fought a desperate battle from the fort’s battlements, in which they used GPMGs and assault rifles to mow down waves of fighters attempting to rush their position. Many of the enemy sported suicide belts cobbled together from grenades, and they tried to blow themselves up right on top of the British operatives. Those repelling the assault—Scruff and Grey foremost amongst them—believed they were going to die in that fort, so unwinnable had the battle seemed.
With two dozen ranged against six hundred, the odds had been horribly stacked against them. The brutal siege had lasted eight bloody days, at the end of which a rump of enemy fighters remained barricaded in the fort’s dungeon. The only way to force them to surrender was to pour diesel fuel into the underground chambers and burn them out. But even that wasn’t enough to force the last diehards to give up. Thousands of gallons of cold water had to be pumped belowground before the few survivors were forced to surrender or face death by drowning. It took that level of base medieval brutality to force a few dozen survivors to surrender in Afghanistan; the grim reality of Qala-i-Jangi was forever burned into Grey’s and Scruff’s minds.
If there was one lesson they had learned from the siege of Qala-i-Jangi, it was that battle-hardened Muslim males weren’t generally up for surrendering to the infidel.
In light of that experience, the idea that a 100,000-strong Iraqi corps might choose to give themselves up to sixty lightly armed British soldiers seemed to stretch the bounds of credulity.
“Still, ours not to reason why, eh, mate?” Scruff remarked.
Grey forced a smile. “Yeah, once more into the breach and all that yada, yada, yada.”
In truth, Grey figured, there wasn’t a man in that tent who didn’t want to get on the ground in Iraq on this mission. Sure, Mucker, his quad biker, looked his usual grumpy self. And Gunner—the quad force commander—threw him a look that said:
This is all total bullshit.
But one glance at Moth and the Dude, and some of the other young guns, and he could tell they were right up for it. Even Sebastian—their highborn terp—had an expression on his face like Christmas had come early.
Grey knew he had a reputation for being a real grouch in the Squadron, and he didn’t always want to be the naysayer. He had to lead a number of the young guys, which meant that he had to enthuse and inspire, and he couldn’t forever be the downbeat voice. Plus there was a part of him that thrilled to the prospect of this mission. It was the kind of epic undertaking that he had trained for tirelessly over two decades of elite soldiering. Being in a Special Forces squadron was a little like being a top boxer: you could hit the bag all your life, but there was nothing to beat getting into the ring to fight for real.
Yet, once they got into the nitty-gritty of how to plan and execute the mission, he was going to have to air a note of caution and raise some of the key issues with Reggie, the squadron OC. That was the least he owed himself and the rest of the men that he was leading into war.
The men gathered for a more informal mission-planning session. Reggie opened things, signature mug of coffee clutched in one hand. He started by outlining their mission in more detail: they were to cross the border from Jordan into Iraq at full Squadron strength and drive north as one unit for several hundred kilometers. The plan when they finally reached the 5th Corps position was pretty loose: it was to drive up to them and ask to speak to their general.
The men scrutinized the maps as the OC talked them through the options for their route in. The Squadron’s passage into northern Iraq would take them through the Ninawa Desert, a vast area of
sunbaked wasteland a good three hundred kilometers or more from end to end. It would offer them open driving in a terrain devoid of human presence and with little chance of being compromised.
But once the Squadron neared the Jabal Sinjar—the Mountain of Eagles—on the northern border of the Ninawa Desert, that bleak and impassable range of hills would serve to funnel the vehicles eastward, whereupon they’d start to hit roads and more built-up farmland. By then the Squadron would still be a good hundred kilometers short of Salah and the Iraqi 5th Corps’s positions, and they’d have to find a means to sneak through undetected. It was crucial that they did so.