Crossfire ns-10 Page 2

  There was never any doubt who was in command. I could hear Rhett right now, out on the VCP, giving shit to the platoon.

  It was easy to tell the guys at the sharp end from the rest of the army, even though they wore the same uniform. They were in shit state. Their boots were hammered and fell apart before they ever got a clean. Their uniforms were dirty and ragged, their camouflaged helmet covers and body armour so worn and ripped it was hard to see the pattern.

  The Challenger wasn't the only one with its engine running. All three Warriors had theirs idling so the big square boiling vessels inside could heat water.

  I pushed the button at the bottom of our BV and made three brews.

  'Here, mate.'

  Pete took his white, no sugar. Fuck knows why, but this lot called it a Shirley Temple. I passed the mug to him round Paul's legs.

  He took it without looking up and settled it on the steel floor beside him, pausing only to blow sand off his keyboard.

  The Kingsmen thought Pete was weird for not taking sugar. 'He worried about his figure or something?'

  Dom took sugar, but as far as they were concerned he was still from a completely different planet, not because he was a Pole but because he drank only three brews a day.

  To make up the shortfall, I threw Pete a Yorkie bar from the ration packs. He glanced at the wrapper and gave a little chuckle. Where it normally read 'It's Not For Girls', the army ration pack version had 'It's Not For Civvies'. Now that he'd been let in on the joke, it never ceased to amuse him.

  Paul's brew was next. Like the whole of recce platoon he took it NATO standard: white, two sugars. Me too. Not because I liked it that way any more but so I could join the others taking the piss out of Pete for being a girl.

  I tugged at his trousers and a leather-gloved hand whisked the plastic mug on to the roof.

  'Cheers, la'.' Pete's accent would always be more Bermondsey than Scouse, but he needed to level the score.

  Paul muttered something back and Pete laughed. The banter had been ricocheting between them for the last two days.

  Paul's tone changed suddenly. 'I got movement… in the wadi… three fifty. They're carrying…'

  Radios crackled and another Warrior from a VCP south of us opened up with its cannon.

  I watched through the rear doors as the ground round the bodies erupted in clouds of dust. The small figures scattered.

  Dom grabbed Pete's camera and almost fell out of the wagon. He was nearest the door and Pete still had his iBook on his lap.

  Paul got a lead on one of the runners. He kicked off a short burst and the empty cases cascaded on to Pete's head as he hunched over his screen.

  Then Rhett yelled, 'Check fire, check fire!'

  Paul froze.

  'It's kids!'

  3

  The radio net went ballistic as everyone was told to stop firing.

  Rhett paced angrily as the net commanded a call sign to go and check if any of them had been hit. 'Little shites!'

  Then he shouted into the camera, a finger jabbing at the lens with every word as Dom kept it stable on his shoulder. 'The little bastards shove a black sock over a water-bottle, put it on the end of a stick and play RPGs. It might be the only game they know, but it's going to get them killed. Or one of my guys, while he's trying to work out what the fuck's being aimed at him. It pisses me off. Why don't their parents grip the little shites?'

  He stormed away to give someone else a bollocking. Our driver walked past the open rear door with an SA80 in one hand and a big wheel wrench in the other. Our Warrior had had two wheels blown off a fortnight ago by an improvised explosive device dug into the side of the road. Now the nuts on one always seemed to be coming loose, and the driver liked to tighten them at every opportunity.

  ''Ere, Paul…' Pete gestured towards the driver '… you Scousers, you're always at it – your mate's nicking the wheels off your own fucking wagon…'

  The mouthful he was about to get back was interrupted as the net reported no bodies in the contact area.

  'Thank fuck for that.' In helmet, padded gloves and body armour, Paul was the next best thing to the Terminator. His ballistic glasses looked like untinted Oakleys. Like the leather gloves, they were worn to protect against fragmentation from RPGs and upblast from IEDs. The original issue had been ski goggles, but nobody wanted to wear them. Maybe it was the curvature or the Perspex, but they gave a weird perspective when you took aim. These ballistic gigs gave superior vision and far more protection.

  His Osprey body armour had two big plates front and rear, and a big collar that came right up to his ears to protect against upblast. I particularly liked the bat-wings – Kevlar pads extending from the shoulder to the elbow to give extra protection when he stuck his top half out of the mortar hatch, ready to back the three lads with his Minimi 5.56 machine-gun if things kicked off.

  I just wished Pete, Dom and I had the same protection, instead of the blue baby armour the media always minced about in. The theory was that we stood out from the military, but through the iron sights of an AK we'd be the only blue things in the desert.

  A contact kicked off in the distance, probably at a VCP on the other side of town. Tracer rounds bounced into the sky.

  The VCP set-up was simple. Two Warriors parked about fifty metres apart, on opposite sides of the road and angled at forty-five degrees to it, forming a chicane. One had its 30mm cannon facing out-of-town traffic, the other facing traffic coming in. Every vehicle, even donkeys and carts, was stopped by whichever Warrior it came to first and fed through into the safe area to be searched. The rest of the platoon was spread out in fire positions as all-round defence.

  We'd had a big rush out of town to start with, as the locals tried to leg it, but then it died down when they realized no one was going to escape with their hauls of weapons, explosives and drugs.

  The problem was, no vehicles meant no locals the insurgents had to worry about killing by mistake, so we were an unprotected target. 'Open season,' Pete muttered.

  Dom climbed back in and the two of them got back to work.

  I sat down with my brew near the open doorway and watched as a battered 4x4 crept into the VCP.

  4

  Many of the vehicles I'd seen looked brand-new. Some had Kuwait or Dubai numberplates. All flew a white flag. This one was a Land Cruiser, and its best days were behind it. Paul's feet shifted as he shadowed it with his Minimi. I watched as it moved into the safe ground. A white pillowcase hung from its aerial.

  Five males of fighting age got out with their hands in the air. They knew the drill; they'd been doing it for nearly four years now.

  I stretched my legs along the seat. Pete tapped away at the keyboard, preparing to send TVZ 24 the latest report from its star correspondent.

  It was Poland's first twenty-four-hour news channel. I'd watched a few of Dom's pieces. It looked like Sky, News 24 or CNN with additional gobbledegook; they were all the same format, lots of primary colours, rousing music, girls with big hair and white teeth. Their headquarters were in Krakow, but TVZ 24 didn't only beam out to Poland: plumbers and builders all over Europe were regular viewers on satellite or cable. Dom and Pete worked out of the Dublin office. There were better tax breaks in the Republic than in the UK.

  It wasn't only the Poles who knew our hero. Dominik Condratowicz was a bit of a celeb in reporting circles, the golden boy of war journalism with platinum-plated bollocks. He was one of those people who believed he would never get shot or damaged, the sort, Pete said, who walked into nothing but good. He wore a memory stick on a chain round his neck. Maybe it was to ward off evil spirits.

  He was tall and annoyingly good-looking, even when a thick layer of dust had given him a horror-film face. His Top Gun-style dark brown hair, blindingly white teeth and firm jawline were featured most weeks next to his wife's in Poland's answer to Hello!. As far as I knew, he lived in Dublin with Siobhan, his Irish wife, and her son. He kept things close to his chest, did Platinum Bollocks.


  Pete was getting pissed off with the dust billowing off Dom's jacket. 'Here, Dracula, you going to take your fucking cloak off or what?' Dom's mother was from Transylvania. When he'd found out Pete obviously thought he'd died and gone to heaven. He was laughing so much he had to close his iBook to stop his own dust getting on the keys.

  Dom cocked an ear as Pete went back to his edit. 'Talking of creatures of the night…' His English had an accent, but it was a whole lot better than mine. This guy had education behind him.

  An unmanned aerial vehicle – the battle group's eyes – buzzed overhead in the brilliantly clear sky. Like a large model plane with a huge wingspan and a couple of cameras in the body, the UAV was flown by remote control from one of the Warriors.

  Pete took the final bite of his Yorkie, pulled a can of compressed air from his Bat-belt and gave the laptop keys a few bursts. As he treated himself to a blast down the front of his shirt, I spotted a memory stick like Dom's round his neck. I hadn't realized superstition was so rife in this business.

  Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq. They'd been there, seen it, done it together, and Pete had filmed Dom wearing the T-shirt. He never lost an opportunity to remind Dom it was his camerawork that had won them all their awards. They'd picked up an Emmy last year for a documentary on women's rights in Afghanistan – almost non-existent under the Taliban, and not much improved, apparently, under new management.

  5

  A couple of cars and trucks were still being held at either end of the chicane, waiting to be fed into the safe ground.

  Pete was about to upload the report. He joined Paul in the mortar hatch and plonked his sat phone on a flat stretch of hull. The BGAN Explorer 500 looked more like a George Foreman grill than a mobile. Lying on its side with the lid open, it was pointing straight at Paul.

  'Mind the old family jewels, mate.' Pete grinned from ear to ear. 'You know what they say about them microwaves…'

  Pete used a little inbuilt button compass to point it towards the satellite, then ran the USB lead back down through the hatch and into his iBook. The power lead was plugged into the vehicle supply.

  'All set?' Dom closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable.

  Pete tapped away. 'On its way.'

  A shaft of early-morning light shone through the mortar hatch and on to my face.

  'Back in your coffin, Drac.' Pete wasn't missing a trick this morning.

  Dom kept his eyes shut but couldn't stop a grin.

  'What now, Pete?' I shifted a day sack out of the way. 'You going to go and talk tanks with your new mates?'

  He shook his head. 'Had enough of that shit when I was in. I never liked the fucking things even then. Besides, Tallulah wants me to give Ruby a virtual bollocking.'

  Pete logged on to BT at least once a day and checked his emails. The ones he got from seven-year-old Ruby and her step-mum Tallulah always raised a smile with him. They did with me, too, but only because Ruby and Tallulah sounded more like a Eurovision Song Contest entry than real people.

  Emails were OK, but no one out here was allowed to use a mobile phone to call home. The insurgents had infiltrated the phone companies, and if a soldier was allowed to waffle to his family they could triangulate the signal, get a fix on his location and an early warning of any troop movement across the desert. Which meant they could scatter – or they could attack.

  Pete was in his late forties, and had been a squaddy himself for four or five years when he was younger. Hussars, dragoons, lancers – some tank regiment, I'd never understood who was what. I liked him a lot, and it wasn't just because of his accent. The moment I'd heard it at Amman airport, I'd known we had a lot more in common than an army past.

  What we didn't share was his almost obsessive-compulsive approach to organization. Pete had to be the most fastidious man on the planet. Maybe that wasn't so surprising, after being cooped up for the whole of his army career with a crew who farted every five minutes and pissed in empty plastic bottles. He washed his socks and underwear every night, even though he had a fortnight's worth in his bag, and spent so long with the Colgate and floss I thought he was going to wear his teeth out.

  ''Ere, Nick… You want to get online before the Prince of Darkness here hogs the fucking thing?' He looked across at Dom and the smile evaporated.

  Dom seemed to spend longer on the phone and email than a lovestruck teenager, and it never seemed to be to his wife. His hours online were to Moira, his producer back in Dublin.

  'The price of fame.' I raised an eyebrow.

  'Rather him than me,' Pete said. 'She's an arsehole.'

  It was true. The only decent person I'd spoken to in the whole office was Kate, her PA.

  He went back to his laptop. It still felt strange to me that they were able to maintain contact with the outside world and conduct their lives almost normally while sitting in the back of one of these things in the middle of a war zone. It wasn't just the technology that amazed me. It was sustaining the relationship.

  An RPG kicked off somewhere in the city. A 30mm fired up and gave it a few rounds back.

  Dom opened his eyes and reached for a bottle of water. He took a few swigs and offered it to Pete, who looked at him in disgust. 'After you've had your fangs round it?'

  Dom finished it off. I could almost hear his mind ticking over as he drank. 'Did the two of you see the trackmarks on their arms last night?'

  We'd got called forward at dark o'clock to check out the aftermath of one of the house attacks. There were four dead, all in their twenties. Two had had AKs, the others RPG launchers.

  Pete gave me a here-we-go-again look. 'I keep telling you, Drac. There's loads of these fuckers on the gear. It's even worse than at home.'

  Dom dropped the empty bottle on the floor. 'I understand that, Peter, but the ones at the bottom of the food chain, why do they fight? Ideology, or just to earn their next fix? Iran is supplying them with heroin, along with the weapons and ammunition they fight with.'

  Pete gave me another glance. We'd been over this ground many times. Dom had obsessed about the heroin trade ever since we'd got here, and Pete was worried.

  'Listen, Drac, Iran has the worst drug problem in the world. Two million of the fuckers are hooked. It's the law of averages that the locals are on the gear. You can spit at the border from here.'

  Pete punched Dom on the arm and gave him a 500-watt grin. 'I bet even that little git Ahmadinejad shoots up. Probably what stunted his growth…'

  Dom couldn't raise a smile. 'Those young guys last night, and these…' He pointed at Paul's legs. 'Guys like this are fighting a war while people make fortunes trafficking heroin. Using the very wars they're fighting as cover.' He turned to me. 'What if we could prove there are people in Afghanistan and Iraq who are using the wars to move heroin into Europe and who knows where else? Tell me that isn't a story.'

  Pete rolled his eyes. 'He won't leave this shit alone, Nick. You just watch when we get back to base. He'll be into the FCO mob like a rat up a drainpipe, trying to get them to pay attention. And for what? Whatever they say, you ain't getting me running round filming a bunch of junkies.'

  Pete slapped the back of his hand against Paul's legs. 'Oi, you're supposed to be a mate. If you treat a mate like that, I'm glad we're going back to Basra tomorrow. Leave you fuckers out here in the world's biggest ashtray.'

  Paul cut him off. He yelled to the three in the VCP: 'Vehicle… I don't like it. The fucker's not slowing…'

  Rhett charged past the rear of our wagon. 'Hold your fire… On my command…'

  Pete picked up the camera.

  Dom shot me a glance. 'Suicide-bomber?'

  Pete was already out and running. Dom and I followed. Fuck the helmets. If the wagon was packed with high explosive, they weren't going to be much help.

  6

  The lead Warrior was still parked at forty-five degrees to the road.

  Rhett assessed as we took cover behind. He rattled a commentary into his PRR as he scoped it through bin
os. 'One-up, looking young. Still closing, maybe a hundred away.'

  I stuck my head out. It was an old Toyota Hilux, dark blue or black. A white rag fluttered on a length of wood behind the cab. A green tarpaulin over the tail-bed flapped in the slipstream.

  'Wait, wait, wait…' Rhett had to make sure it wasn't some dickhead tuning the radio instead of watching the road. Could be. It had been known.

  Pete had strayed out into the road as he filmed. I grabbed his body armour and hauled him back into cover. Dom was tight in behind me.

  Rhett stepped out when the Hilux was just fifty metres away. He tried to wave him down. 'Keep that fucking cannon on him.'

  The driver's grim-set face filled the windscreen. This was no dickhead surfing the channels for Radio Basra.

  The Hilux accelerated.

  'Hit it, hit it, hit it!'

  Rhett's voice was lost in the hail of 30mm as he dived for cover next to us. Rounds punched into the Hilux and kicked up chunks of tarmac around it. The windscreen disintegrated. The wagon was taking so many hits, I couldn't believe the whole thing didn't fall apart.

  Everybody in the all-round protection cordon hit the ground, braced for the inevitable.

  Pete had disappeared. Dom got up off his knees and was about to follow. I lunged for his body armour and grabbed him as the Hilux screamed past, pulling him to the ground. 'No fucking way!'

  Paul gave him a long burst. The high-velocity rounds made my ears ring. I jumped on top of Dom to keep the fucker on the ground as Paul stopped firing and dropped down into the Warrior.

  The Hilux slammed straight into the bar armour at the front of our wagon. There was a loud bang and bits of metal and glass showered down on us. Then there was a deathly silence.

  I peered round. The Hilux had been no contest for twenty-five tonnes of armoured vehicle. The whole left side of its engine compartment looked like it had gone through a crusher. Steam hissed from broken pipes. Oil smoked on hot metal.