Bravo two zero Page 10

  I heard vehicles moving along the as yet unconfirmed MSR, but that was of no concern. The only way anybody could see us was if they were on the opposite lip looking down. No one on our side of the wadi could see us because of the overhang. They could only see us if we could see them.

  I went down and briefed everybody on what was above us. Only one man was needed on stag because from his vantage point he could look down the wadi as well as up on the lip. He had his back to us as I did the briefing, covering his arcs. I described what I'd seen on the high ground and went through our actions on if we had a contact during the day.

  It was time to transmit the Sit Rep (situation report) to the FOB. Until we did, nobody knew where we were or what state we were in. On this task we would try to send a Sit Rep every day, telling them where we were, everything we had learned about the enemy in the area or done with them, our future intentions, and any other information. They would come back to us with instructions.

  As I wrote it out, Legs prepared the radio. He encoded the message and typed it in ready for transmission. The patrol radio would transmit in a single, very short burst that was virtually undetectable by the enemy.

  The burst would bounce off the ionosphere, and we would wait for some kind of an acknowledgment.

  We got jack shit.

  Legs tried again and again, but nothing happened. It was annoying but not desperate, because we had a lost com ms procedure. The following night, we'd simply go back to the landing site and RV with a heli at 0400 to exchange the radios.

  For the rest of that day we tried different antennas-everything from sloping wire to half-wave dipole. All of us were signals trained and we all had a go, but without success.

  We each did two hours' stag, and half an hour before last light we stood to. The ideal conditions for an attack are just before last light and just before first light, so it is an SOP that everybody is awake at those times and everything is packed away ready to go. We got into the fire position with our weapons and prepared our 66s, removing the top cover and opening up the tube so it was ready to fire. Once last light had come, we closed everything up again and got ready for our recce patrol.

  I left with my gang at 2100. Our cutoff time was to be 0500. If we weren't back by then, it would be because we'd had a drama-we'd got lost, got an injury, or had a contact, which Vince's lot should hear. If they didn't hear a contact, they were to wait at the LUP until 2100 the following night. If we weren't back by then, they were to move to the heli RV. If there was a contact, they were to move back to the heli RV that night, and we'd make our way back there as best we could, to get there for the following 0400 pickup.

  Stan, Dinger, Mark, and I climbed over the lip of the wadi in total blackness. The task was to confirm the position of the Main Supply Route and to locate the landline. It's no good just sitting there on top of what you think is your objective unless you have checked. One mile further on for all we knew, there could be the proper MSR, so it had to be physically checked. We would patrol in an anticlockwise direction, generally heading north, using the lie of the ground, to see if we hit anything else which resembled the MSR.

  First, we needed to locate a marker that would guide us back to the LUP if we got lost. We would take a bearing due north until we hit the other side of the road, where we'd try to find a rock or some other feature. Then if we did get lost, we'd know that all we'd have to do was go along the high ground, find the marker, and move due south back onto the watershed.

  It was going to be difficult to map-read because there were no definite features. In most countries there's high ground that you can take reference points off, there are roads, or there are markers, and it's all quite easy. In the jungle, too, it's simple, because you've got lots of rivers and you can use contour lines. But here in the middle of the desert there was absolutely bugger all, so it was all down to bearings and pacing again, backed up by Magellan.

  We found a suitable marker, a large rock, and started heading west on our anticlockwise loop. Within minutes we spotted our first location of the night and immediately heard a dog. Bedu throw their hand in at night; when the sun's down, they go to bed. So if a dog barks, they know there must be something afoot. Within seconds, this one had been joined by two others.

  I had been the first to hear the low growling. It reminded me of patrolling in Northern Ireland. You stop and assess what's happening.

  Nine times out of ten you're intruding on a dog's territory, and if you back off, sit down, and just wait for everything to settle down, it will. Our problem was that we had to recce the location properly. The dogs could be part of a Scud site for all we knew.

  As we sat down we pulled our fighting knives from their sheaths. They would be called upon to do the business if the dogs came to investigate and either started barking in earnest or decided to attack. Either way, we'd kill them. We'd take the bodies with us, so that in the morning the owners would assume that their animals had run away or wandered off.

  They would find it strange, but that would be the best we could make of a bad situation.

  We listened, waiting for lights as people came to see what the dogs were barking at. Nothing happened. We started to box around the position, circumnavigating to see if we could get in another way to confirm what it was. We got around the other side and found it was just some local population. There were tents, mud huts, Land Cruisers, and a hash mash of other vehicles, but no military indication. We got a fix on it with Magellan so that when we returned to the LUP we could inform the others, then headed off northwest using the ground. We wanted to avoid until later the plantation that we knew to be to our north.

  I was leading when I saw something ahead. I stopped, looked, listened, then slowly moved closer.

  Four tents and vehicles were parked next to two S60 antiaircraft guns, indicating a setup of about platoon strength. All was quiet, and there didn't seem to be any stags. Mark and I moved slowly forward. Again, we stopped, looked, listened. We didn't want to get right on top of the position, just close enough to learn as much about it as we could.

  Nobody was sleeping on the guns or in the vehicles. The whole platoon must have been in the tents. We heard men coughing. The location wasn't an immediate danger to us, but what worried me was that antiaircraft guns are sited to guard something. If it was just the MSR that would be no problem. The danger was that it could be part of an armored battle group or whatever. Mark fixed the position with Magellan, and we headed north.

  We went for 2 miles without encountering anything, and came to the conclusion that what we had crossed earlier must indeed have been the MSR. Magellan gave our LUP position as a half mile north of where the map said the MSR was, which was nothing to worry about. The map stated that roads, pylons, and pipelines were only of approximate alignment.

  We now knew for sure that we had correctly found the bend in the MSR, but unfortunately we also knew that the area was full of population: we had plantations north and south of us, the civilians further down the road, and an S60 site to the northwest of our LUP. From a tactical point of view, we might as well have sited our LUP in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Still, nobody said it would be easy.

  We moved back to look around the buildings at the plantation to the north of the LUPI had planned to look at this last as it was the most dangerous location we knew about prior to the recce. We had a bit of a mince around the plantation and found that it consisted of just a water tower and an unoccupied building that sounded as if it housed an irrigation pump. There were no vehicles, no lights, no signs of life, so we were fairly pleased. It was clearly something that was tended rather than lived around.

  As we moved back to the LUP, we witnessed another Scud launch to our northwest, about 3 miles away. We seemed to be in the middle of a mega launch area. We were going to have a fluffy old time of it. Again, we got a fix.

  We patrolled back towards the LUP, found the marker, and walked due south towards the wadi. I approached, arms out in the crucifix position, as
I came up to the lip of the watershed.

  Bob was on stag. I stood there and waited for him to come up. He grinned at me, and I went back and got the rest of the blokes. I checked my watch. The patrol had lasted five hours.

  It wasn't worth briefing the blokes at this moment because those not on stag had got their heads down, and to brief everybody at night just generates noise. It was important, however, that everybody knew what we had seen. Everything we had done and seen, everybody else had to know about. I decided to wait until first light.

  The stag stood us to, and we covered our arcs as first light came. After that, and before I did the brief, I wanted to check the dead ground again, even though we'd covered it last night. I knew we were definitely on the MSR, but I wanted to look for any form of identification which would give us the landlines. It was also a personal thing; I wanted to check that there had been no changes above us. Shielded from sound by the walls of the cave, we could have sat there with Genesis giving an open-air concert and we wouldn't have heard a thing.

  Chris covered me while I scrambled up the rocks and peered over the brim. It was the last time I'd risk doing this in daylight.

  I looked northeast and there, just on the far edge of the MSR, were another two S60s. They must have arrived during the night. I could see two wagons, tents, blokes stretching and coughing-all just 1000 feet from our position. I couldn't believe it. This was getting unreal. Our recce patrol must have missed them by about 150 feet. I came down and told Chris, then went to brief the rest of the patrol. Mark went up and had a quick squint to confirm that I wasn't hallucinating.

  I was not really impressed by this development. It was quite scary stuff, because these characters were right on top of us. They were going to inhibit us badly.

  I spread out the map and showed all the locations we had discovered-including the new S60 sites. We spent the rest of the day trying to transmit our Sit Rep again. The new S60s were obviously there to protect the MSR. There was no reason, however, why they should send out clearing patrols. They were in their own country and they had mutual support. We reassured ourselves that we could only be compromised from the opposite lip, and even then only if someone was literally standing on it, looking down.

  Again we all had a go with the radio, but to no avail. Our lost com ms contingency would have come into effect by now, and the helicopter would have been briefed to meet us the following morning at 0400.

  There was no concern. We were in cover, and we were an 8-man fighting patrol. When we met the aircraft we would get a one-for-one exchange, or get on the aircraft and relocate.

  In my mind I ran through the heli RV procedure again. The pilot would be coming in on NVG (night viewing goggles), watching for a signal from my infrared torch. I would flash the letter Bravo as a recognition signal. He would land 15 feet to my right, using the light as his reference point. The load master door was just behind the pilot, and all I would have to do was walk up to it, put the radio in, and receive the new radio that was handed to me. If there was any message for us, he would grab hold of my arm and hand me the written message. Or, if a longer message was involved, the ramp would come down and the lo adie would come and drag me round to the back. The rest of the patrol would be out in all-round defense. If I had to go and get them in, they knew the drills. If I wanted to get us relocated, I would grab hold of the lo adie and point to the rear of the ramp. The ramp would then come down, and we'd all get on.

  And that was the plan. No drama. We would move back that night and relocate.

  6

  We'd been listening to vehicles bumbling up and down the MSR all day.

  They posed no threat. Around mid-afternoon, however, we heard a young voice shout from no more than 150 feet away. The child hollered and yelled again; then we heard the clatter of goats and the tinkle of a bell.

  It wasn't a problem. We couldn't be compromised unless we could see the person on the other side of the lip. There was no other way that we could be seen. I felt confident.

  The goats came closer. We were on hard routine, and everybody had their belt kit on and their weapons in their hands. It wasn't as if we'd been startled in our sleeping bags or caught sunbathing. Just the same, I felt my thumb creep towards the safety catch of my 203.

  The bell tinkled right above us. I looked up just as the head of a goat appeared on the other side. I felt my jaw tighten with apprehension.

  Everybody was rock still. Only our eyes were moving.

  More goats wandered onto the lip. Was the herder going to follow them?

  The top of a young human head bobbed into view. It stopped and swiveled. Then it came forward. I saw the profile of a small brown face. The boy seemed preoccupied with something behind him. He was half looking over his shoulder as he shuffled forwards. His neck and shoulders came into view, then his chest. He can't have been more than a 3 feet from the edge of the lip. He swung his head from side to side, shouting at the goats and hitting them with a long stick.

  I silently shouted at him not to look down.

  We still had a chance, as long as he kept looking the other way.

  Please, no eye-to-eye, just look at what you're doing

  He turned his head and surveyed the scene.

  I slowly mouthed the words: Fuck off!

  He looked down.

  Bastard! Shit!

  Our eyes met and held. I'd never seen such a look of astonishment in a child's eyes.

  Now what? He was rooted to the spot. The options raced through my mind.

  Do we top him? Too much noise. Anyway, what was the point? I wouldn't want that on my conscience for the rest of my life. Shit, I could have been an Iraqi behind the lines in Britain, and that could have been Katie up there.

  The boy started to run. My eyes followed him, and I made my move. Mark and Vince, too, were scrambling like men possessed in an attempt to cut him off. Just to get him, that had to be the first priority. We could decide later what to do with him-to tie him up and stuff his gob with chocolate, or whatever. But we could only go so far without exposing ourselves to the S60 sites, and the child had too much of a head start.

  He was gone, fucking gone, hollering like a lunatic, running towards the guns.

  He could do a number of things. He might not tell anybody because it would get him into trouble-maybe he shouldn't have been in the area. He might tell his family or friends, but only when he got home later. Or he might keep running and shouting all the way to the guns. I had to assume the worst. So what? They might not believe him. They might come and see for themselves. Or they might wait for reinforcements. I had to take it that they would inform others and then come after us. So what? If they discovered us, there would be a contact before dark. If they didn't discover us, there would be a chance to evade under cover of darkness.

  We had picked our LUP because it provided concealment from view-apart from the one place where the boy had gone and stood. We certainly hadn't picked it as a place to defend. It was an enclosed environment, at the top of a watershed, with nowhere to go There was no need to say anything: everybody knew we'd have to take it as a compromise.

  Everything happened in quick time. However, that wasn't to say we just got our kit on and ran, because that would have been totally counterproductive. It's worth taking those extra few minutes to get yourself squared away.

  Everybody rammed chocolate down as well as water. We didn't know when we would next be able to eat. We checked that our pouches were done up, that the buttons were fastened on our map pockets so the map didn't fall out, that our magazines were on correctly. Check, check, check.

  Vince put Stan and Bob out with the Minimis. As soon as two other men were ready, they'd swap places and let the two stags get themselves sorted out. Everybody else automatically carried out tasks that needed to be done. Vince went through the cached kit. He pulled out a jerrican of water and helped everybody fill their bottles. If we got into a contact, we were going to lose our berg ens and all that they contained. People took
great gulps to get as much water on board as they could, draining their bottles, then refilling. Even if there was no contact, we all knew we were in for a fearsome tab.

  We checked our belt kit, making sure all pouches were done up so that we didn't lose anything as we ran. Mags on tight? Check them again.

  Safety catch on and weapon made ready? Of course they were but we checked them anyway. We closed down the two tubes of our 66s and slotted them together to make them easy to carry. We didn't bother to replace the end-caps or sling, just slipped the weapon between our webbing straps, ready for quick use.

  We checked that spare magazines were ready to pull out. Pick them up the wrong way, and you waste a precious second or two turning them around. Put them in your belt kit with the curve the right way up, and they're ready to slap into place. A lot of people put a tab of masking tape on the mag to make it easier to pull out. When my mags were empty, I'd throw them down the front of my smock for refilling later. We could use the rounds from the belts of the Minimi.

  All this took a couple of minutes, but it was time better spent than just getting up and running. They knew we were there, so why rush? The stags would tell us if they were coming.

  Legs had got straight onto the radio. He went outrageous, running out all the antennas, trying different combinations that he hadn't been able to try while we were concealed. Now we were compromised, he could do anything he wanted. If the message got through, they could send some fast jets over. We could talk to the pilots on TACBE and get some fire down, which would all be rather pleasant.

  Legs's water was done for him. While he was bent over, the radio blokes opened his belt kit, took the water bottles out, and let him drink before they filled them up again, and threw more food into his belt kit.

  When he sensed that we'd run out of time, he dismantled the kit and packed it at the top of his bergen.