Behind Iraqi Lines

By the second day of the war, RAF aircrews were attempting to trap Iraqi aircraft hidden in hardened aircraft shelters, or HASs, by bombing the access tracks and taxiways leading from the shelters to the runways. At the same time, US giant B52s were carrying out round-the-clock, high-altitude attritional bombing raids designed to demoralize, exhaust and daze the Iraqi troops by denying them sleep, when not actually killing them.

By Day Three, however, it had become clear that the major threat to the Coalition was the Scuds, particularly those on mobile launchers.

‘Which is where we come in,’ Major Hailsham told his assembled troopers outside his tent in the FOB in Al Jubail. ‘The difficulty in tracking mobile Scud launchers is complicated by Saddam’s use of dummy rockets that look realistic from the air and contain fuel that explodes when hit by a bomb, thereby encouraging our pilots to report more strikes than they’ve actually made. They also use dummy mobile launchers with real crews and they, too, look genuine from the air.’

‘You mean the crews of the dummy mobile launchers have to drive around the desert, deliberately trying to be spotted, in order to misdirect the fire from our aircraft?’

‘Correct,’ Hailsham said.

‘Some job!’ Geordie exclaimed. ‘Rather them than me! Driving around just to be picked off by any passing aircraft and become another statistic on their kill counts. No, thanks. Not my cup of tea!’

‘As if those Air Force bastards don’t already come out with enough bullshit when they’re doing their sums,’ Andrew said, flashing his perfect teeth. ‘The day I find an honest Air Force kill count I’ll eat my own cock.’

‘If you can find it,’ Geordie said, which brought the house down.

‘OK, men, that’s enough,’ Hailsham admonished them, continuing when he had regained their attention: ‘It’s becoming clear that because of these dummy sites and launchers, the number of Scuds taken out by the aircrews is considerably less than at first anticipated. And as the real ones can’t be seen from the air, eyeball recces and personal contact are needed. So, my good fellows, we’re going to take them out ourselves, with particular emphasis on those within range of Israel, located in the desert round two Iraqi airfields known only as H2 and H3. So far, the Israelis are refusing to be drawn into the war. We therefore have to stop the Scud attacks on Israel before their patience wears out.’

‘What’s the terrain like around H2 and H3?’ Ricketts asked.

‘Fortunately a lot of it’s less flat and open than most parts of the desert,’ replied Hailsham, using his pointer to indicate the area on the map behind him. ‘The demarcation line is between the British and US territories on the most distant of the three MSRs [military supply routes] running north-east from Baghdad to Amman. If the Americans operate mostly to the north of it, in the area they call Scud Boulevard, or the northern “Scud box”, as they call it, and we keep to Scud Alley, south of the main road, there’ll be no danger of us fighting each other accidentally. Our territory, Scud Alley, is the Jordanian lava plateau, a relatively high, hilly area with deep wadis that are often flash-flooded after storms. Loose rock instead of sand, though dense sandstorms are blown in from other areas. Lots of rain instead of burning sun. Freezing cold at night. In fact, it’s more like the Falklands than it is like Oman, so you shouldn’t find it too strange.’

‘I remember the Falklands well,’ Paddy said. ‘Rain, hail and snow.’

‘Right,’ Jock concurred. ‘OPs always flooded with water. Fucking wind every day. I thought this place would be a pleasant change – balmy nights, lots of sunshine.’

‘You just want to look like me,’ Andrew teased him. ‘Suntanned and beautiful.’

‘Spare me!’ Jock retorted.

‘That’s enough,’ said Hailsham, with a wave of his hand. ‘Let’s get back to the business in hand.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Geordie said, grinning mischievously at each of his mates in turn and cracking his knuckles.

‘Good.’ Glancing outside the lean-to tent, Hailsham saw the sun sinking towards the flat horizon, casting its crimson light on the white plain as darkness crept in. Helicopters and fighter planes were silhouetted in its huge, fiery eye like ink-black cut-outs suspended on invisible threads. From where he stood they looked beautiful. ‘The Regiment will undertake three lines of attack,’ he continued. ‘Some teams will stake out static, covert road-watch patrols to report the movement of Scud traffic. Others will then vector F-15 strike aircraft onto the Scuds to destroy them.’

‘What kind of teams?’ asked Danny.

‘Lurp teams – eight men. To be inserted by chopper at an LZ about 140 to 180 miles behind the enemy border, without any transport other than desert boots and a strong will.’

The ‘Lurp’ teams Hailsham referred to were LRRP, or long-range reconnaissance patrols.

‘A strong will,’ Andrew echoed with a devilish grin. ‘That whittles it down to one man – me – and that isn’t enough.’

‘In parallel,’ Hailsham said when the anticipated scorn had been poured on Andrew, ‘there’ll be fighting columns of up to a dozen well-armed Land Rovers carrying one and a half tons of war matériel each, manned by a half squadron of thirty men or more. We’ll have four such columns. Their job will be to penetrate one of two major areas in the west, near the border with Jordan, from where the Scuds are launched. This “Scud box” is a well-defended area of desert of approximately 240 square miles, including the motorway linking Baghdad with Amman. Around twelve to fourteen mobile launchers are thought to be in or near the area.’

‘Do we move by day or night?’ Ricketts asked.

‘It’s not the Empty Quarter, so we’ll mostly move by night. According to Intelligence, Bedouin come and go constantly. There’s also a surprising amount of civilian traffic, much of it generated by fear of Western vengeance on Baghdad. Last but not least, because it’s a critically important military zone, it’s filled with Iraqi military personnel of all kinds, including Scud crews and the militia.’

‘How do we insert?’ said Andrew.

‘Two of the OP patrols will go in on foot. Another will be lifted in by RAF Chinooks. The rest will drive in on stripped-down Land Rovers and motorbikes. We cross the border on the twentieth – tomorrow.’

‘Who does what?’ asked Danny.

‘Allocation of duties is being drawn up right now and you’ll all be informed within the hour. Any more questions?’

‘No, boss,’ was the general response.

‘OK, men, go and have some chow. Get as much rest as possible. You’ll get your allocations later. Departure time will be the afternoon or early evening. That’s it. Class dismissed.’ As the men turned away, heading for the mess tent, Hailsham indicated that Ricketts should remain. ‘I have a special job for you,’ he said. ‘Pull up a chair, Sergeant-Major.’

Ricketts sat in a wooden chair on the other side of the trestle table Hailsham was using as a desk. The major placed two cups on the table and removed the cap from a vacuum flask. ‘Tea?’ he asked. When Ricketts nodded, he poured two cups of hot, white tea, then pushed one over to Ricketts. ‘Sorry, Sergeant-Major, no sugar.’ He glanced out over the sea of tents, now sinking back into a crimson twilight streaked with great shadows. After sipping some tea, he turned back to Ricketts. ‘Before anyone goes anywhere,’ he said, ‘we have to cut Iraq’s links with the outside world. They’re in the shape of a complex web of communications towers known as microwave links, set up in the desert, dangerously close to main roads and supply routes.’

‘Should be easy to find,’ Ricketts said, trying his hot tea.

‘Not that easy, Sergeant-Major. The towers may be visible, but the fibre-optic cables are buried well below ground. So far, even the US National Security Council’s combined intelligence and scientific know-how hasn’t been able to bug them or tap into them – let alone destroy them.’

Ricketts spread his hands in the air, indicating bewilderment. ‘So how do we knock out Iraq’s whole communications system? It’s too widespread, boss.’

‘We don’t necessarily have to knock the whole system out,’ Hailsham said. ‘According to the green slime, it’s the communications system coming out of Baghdad that controls Saddam’s trigger-finger. Like the rest of the system, that network is a mixture of microwave link towers, in which telecom messages are transmitted short distances by air waves, and by fibre-optic cables buried in the ground and capable of carrying an enormous amount of data. We’ve received enough info from Intelligence to enable us to concentrate on the fibre-optic cables. Those lines carry Baghdad’s orders to the Iraqi troops responsible for Scud operations. They also run Saddam Hussein’s diplomatic traffic to Amman, Geneva, Paris and the UN, thus increasing his political credibility. It’s our job to destroy that credibility as well as the Scuds – and we have to do it immediately.’

‘You mean tonight?’

‘Exactly. I want you to pick 40 of your most reliable men and have them ready to be airlifted before midnight. I’m coming with you. Our LZ is an area approximately sixty kilometres south of Baghdad, near the main road that leads to Basra. According to Intelligence, the highest density of Baghdad’s fibre-optic cables are buried there and the ground is relatively easy to dig. We’re going to dig down, remove a sample of cable for analysis, then blow up the rest – so we need a couple of demolition experts. Any questions, Ricketts?’

‘No questions, boss.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. Have you finished your tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then go to it.’

Ricketts grinned, finished his tea, then stood up and left the tent. Heading back to his own lean-to, he was enthralled by the sight of so many tents on the dark plain, under the desert’s starlit sky, but even more thrilled – indeed almost ecstatic – to be back in business at last.

It was what he and most of his mates lived for.

4

At approximately midnight, two of the RAF’s CH-47 twin-blade Chinooks lifted Ricketts’s chosen team of 40 men off the airstrip of the FOB and headed through the night sky for the LZ. The men, packed into the gloomy, noisy interior of the helicopter, were wearing the normal beige beret, but without its winged-dagger badge and now camouflaged under a shemagh, or veil, that could also be wrapped around the eyes and mouth to protect them from dust and sand. (The same kind of veil was used to camouflage the standard 7.62mm SLR, or self-loading rifle.) The standard-issue woollen pullover was woven in colours that would blend in with the desert floor and matched the colouring of the high-topped, lace-up desert boots.

‘I feel like an A-rab,’ Geordie said. ‘What do I look like?’

‘Real cute,’ Paddy replied.

‘I always knew you adored me.’

Most of the men were armed either with the ubiquitous semi-automatic SLR or with 30-round, semi- and fully automatic M16s and their many attachments, including bayonets, bipods for accuracy when firing from the prone position, telescopic sights, night-vision aids, and M203 40mm grenade-launchers. Some had Heckler & Koch MP5 30-round sub-machine-guns. A few had belt-fed L7A2 7.62mm general-purpose machine-guns, or GPMGs, capable of firing 800 rounds a minute to a range of up to 1400 metres. All had standard-issue Browning FN 9mm high-power handguns on their hips, capable of firing 13 rounds in a couple of seconds.

These weapons and their bulky ammunition belts, combined with the standard bergens and camouflaging, made the men look awkward and bulky, almost Neanderthal. However, those weapons were only part of their personal equipment, and other, heavier weapons were taking up what little space they had left between them.

In case they were approached by tanks during the operation, the men were also carrying heavy support weapons, including the 94mm light anti-tank weapon, or LAW 80, which fired a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rocket and could be used on bunkers as well as armoured vehicles; the portable FIM-92A Stinger anti-aircraft missile system, capable of firing a heat-seeking missile 8000 metres and fitted with a friend or foe identification, or FFI, system; and two different mortars: the 51mm mortar, which, though carried and operated by one man, could launch an HE bomb to a range of 750 metres, and the larger, heavier 81mm mortar, which required three men to carry it, but could fire HE bombs 5660 metres at a rate of eight rounds per minute.

‘Tell me, Alfie,’ Andrew said, bored out of his mind, and deciding to have a bit of sport with Sergeant Alfred Lloyd, who was sitting beside him, ‘how come you’re almost as tall as me, but only half of my weight?’

‘I’m taller than you, fella, by half an inch. I can tell when our eyes meet.’

A dour Leicester man and SAS demolition specialist who had formerly been a Royal Engineer, then an ammunition technician with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Lloyd had unkempt red hair, a beakish, broken nose, and a lean face veined by booze and scorched by the sun.

‘I’m always willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt,’ Andrew said, ‘so how come, since you’re even taller than me, you only weigh half my size?’

‘I’ve sabotaged ships, aircraft, every type of armoured vehicle, power stations, communications centres, supply depots, railways and roads. It required a lot of climbing and running, which is why I’m still slim.’

Alfie Lloyd was indeed still as thin as a rake, though now heavily burdened like the others and divided from big Andrew by the boxes packed with explosives, charges, detonator caps and the many other tools of his dangerous trade. Andrew stared at them sceptically.

‘Those bloody explosives, man, are they safe?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ve heard that explosives go off real easy.’

‘Bullshit. Most explosives are safe unless they’re deliberately set off. You can hammer TNT into powdered crystals and it still won’t explode. That’s why it can be delivered by parachute. No problem at all.’

‘Mmmmm,’ Andrew murmured, not totally convinced. ‘So what exactly is explosive, man? Give it to me in simple words.’

Alfie thought for a while, wondering how to reply, not being a man of great eloquence and aware that Andrew was a poet, slick with his tongue. Finally he said, ‘You tell me.’

Andrew nodded and beamed.

‘A solid or liquid substance which, under the influence of a certain stimulus, such as an exploding detonator, is rapidly converted into another substance with accompanying high pressure, leading to the outburst of violence and noise known as an explosion. What say you, Sergeant?’

‘Is that fucking Swahili?’

‘I’m from Barbados,’ Andrew replied, ‘where they only speak English.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ Alfie said, shaking his head. ‘I thought I spoke English!’

‘They only think they speak English in Barbados,’ Paddy Clarke said. ‘All that molasses and rum goes to their heads and makes them think they’re white men. We should hand Andrew over to a missionary for a little correction.’

‘The Paddy from Liverpool has spoken,’ Andrew intoned. ‘Let us bow down and throw up.’

‘Can it, the lot of you,’ the RAF Loadmaster barked at them as he materialized from the gloom. He glanced through one of the portholes in the passenger hold and announced: ‘We’re coming in, if we’re lucky, to the LZ, so prepare to offload.’

‘Yes, mother!’ Taff chimed in a high, schoolboy’s voice, though he quickly made a great show of checking his gear when the Loadmaster gave him a baleful stare.

‘Hey, Moorcock’ Paddy said, turning to the new man beside him, eager for a little sport. ‘Where did you say you were located before you were badged?’

‘The Welsh Guards,’ Moorcock answered, giving his kit a great deal of attention.

‘See any action?’ Paddy asked him.

‘A brief tour of Northern Ireland,’ Moorcock said, sliding his arms awkwardly through the webbing of his bergen. ‘Though I didn’t see much there.’

‘Know much about the Iraqis?’

‘No.’

‘They’re fuckin’ murderous bastards. Don’t on any account let yourself be caught. There’s things worse than death, kid.’

‘What’s that, Corporal?’ Trooper Stone asked with a grin, being less impressionable than his friend. Although he, like Moorcock and Gillett, had only recently been badged and was serving his probationary period, he wasn’t about to take any bullshit from the older hands. ‘What’s worse than death, then?’

‘They’ll pull your nails out,’ Paddy said.

‘They’ll gang-bang you,’ Jock added.

‘They’ll chop your cock off and make you eat it with couscous,’ Geordie put in. ‘Then they’ll cut your eyeballs out and make you suck them until you go gaga.’

‘Go fuck yourselves,’ Trooper Stone said.

‘Leave these poor probationers alone,’ threatened Andrew, ‘or I’ll personally chop your cocks off and shove them, all shrivelled, up your arses, which will then need some wiping.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ Trooper Moorcock said, tightening the straps on his bergen and looking serious while his two friends, Stone and Gillett, grinned at each other.

‘We’re touching down,’ the Loadmaster said. ‘Hold on to your balls, lads…Three, two, one, zero…Touchdown!’

The transport landed with a lot of bouncing, roaring and metallic shrieking, but otherwise no problems, on an LZ located about half a mile from the main road that ran one way to Basra, 40 miles the other way to Baghdad.

The men disembarked even before the two Chinooks’ engines had gone into neutral, spilling out of the side into dense clouds of sand whipped up by the twin-bladed rotors. When the billowing sand had subsided, the first thing they saw was a fantastic display of fireworks illuminating the distant horizon: immense webs of red and purple anti-aircraft fire, silvery-white explosions, showers of crimson sparks and streams of phosphorus fireflies.

‘Baghdad,’ Hailsham explained to those nearest to him. ‘The Allies are bombing the hell out of it. Rather them than us.’

As their eyes adjusted to moonlit darkness, they saw the nearest two microwave links, soaring high above the flat plain, about a quarter mile apart, but less than twenty yards from the road. Spreading out and keeping their weapons at the ready, the men hiked across the dusty, wind-blown plain until they reached a point equidistant between the two towers. From here, the road was dangerously close – a mere twenty-odd yards.

‘It’s pretty dark,’ Ricketts said, glancing in every direction, ‘so if anyone comes along the road, we should be OK if we stay low. We need sentries on point in both directions, with the men not being used for digging keeping guard in LUPs.’

‘Right,’ Hailsham said.

Ricketts gave his instructions by means of hand signals. With the Chinooks waiting on the ground a quarter of a mile away, their rotors turning quietly in neutral, the bulk of the men broke into four-man teams, then fanned out to form a circle of LUPs, or lying-up positions, from where they could keep their eyes on the road and defend the diggers and demolition team if anyone came along.

Meanwhile Hailsham and Ricketts accompanied Sergeant Lloyd as he checked the alignment between the two communications towers and gauged where the fibre-optic cable was running between them, hidden under the ground.

‘This is it,’ he said, waving his hand from left to right to indicate an invisible line between the two towers. He turned to the dozen troopers selected to dig. ‘I want a series of four holes about twelve foot apart, each six foot long and as deep as you need to go to expose the cable. That should be about four feet. If you see any transport coming along that road, or if we call a warning to you, drop down into the hole you’re digging and don’t make a move until given clearance. OK, get going.’

The men laid down their weapons, removed spades and shovels from their bergens, and proceeded to dig the holes as required. As they did so, they and the others – now stretched belly-down in LUPs on the dark ground, their weapons at the ready and covering the road in both directions – were able to watch the fantastic pyrotechnics of crimson anti-aircraft tracer fire and silvery bomb bursts over distant Baghdad, which was being bombed by wave after wave of British, American and Saudi jets, as well as Tomahawk Cruise missiles fired from ships in the Gulf, flying in at just under the speed of sound at heights of 50–250 feet, to cause more devastation and death.

‘Wow!’ Andrew whispered, looking at the lights over the distant city. ‘That’s just beautiful, man!’

‘Beautiful from here,’ Hailsham replied. ‘Hell on earth if you’re there.’

‘You men,’ Sergeant Lloyd said to two of his eight sappers, both of whom had various explosives, charges and timers dangling from their webbing. ‘I want you to take out those towers, one to each man. Fix enough explosives to the base to make sure the whole caboodle topples over. Use electronic timers that can be fired from here by remote control. Don’t make any mistakes. When this lot goes up, those towers have to go up at the same time. Understood?’

‘Yes, boss,’ the men nodded.

Then they headed off in opposite directions, towards the tower each had selected, the explosives on their webbing bouncing up and down as they ran.

‘You see that?’ Geordie whispered to Trooper Gillett, having decided to pass the time by winding him up. ‘Those explosives are liable to go off any second, taking us out with him.’

‘Aw, come off it, Geordie!’

‘No, kid, it’s true! I’d be pissing in my pants if I was you. He’ll blow up any minute now.’

‘That’s bullshit, Geordie,’ Trooper Stone retorted. ‘We all heard what Sergeant Lloyd said in the plane – explosives don’t blow up easily.’

‘Besides,’ Trooper Gillett added, ‘that sapper’s practically out of sight already. If the stupid bastard blows himself up, we’re well out of range. Pull the other one, Geordie.’

‘Shut up, you men,’ Sergeant Lloyd said, glancing down at the men digging the holes, ‘these men have to concentrate. If you’ve got nothing better to do, I can always hand you a shovel.’

‘No, thanks,’ Geordie said, edging away. ‘I have to go and stand out on point. Have a nice day!’

‘Fucking nerd,’ Sergeant Lloyd said.

The digging alone took forty-five minutes. During that time two vehicles, about half an hour apart, came along the road, heading away from Baghdad, their headlights cutting a swathe through the darkness but not picking out the men who were concealed in LUPs, guns at the ready, only twenty yards or so away. The first vehicle was a Mercedes saloon filled with white-robed Arabs; the second was a soft-topped army truck packed with Iraqi soldiers. Both passed by and disappeared into the night, their drivers and passengers, probably fleeing from the air attacks on Baghdad, not knowing how close to death they had come in what they thought was an empty, safe area.

About twenty minutes after the army truck had passed by, one of the men uncovered a fibre-optic cable.

‘That’s it,’ Sergeant Lloyd said, glancing down into the hole as the trooper who had reached the first cable wiped sweat from his brow. ‘I want that whole stretch of cable cleared, Trooper, so get back to your digging.’

‘Right, Sarge,’ the trooper said. He continued his digging. When the length of cable running across the bottom of the hole was completely exposed, he jumped out to let Lloyd jump in. Ricketts glanced left and right, checking the road in both directions, but there was no sign of any more movement. Satisfied, he knelt beside the hole in which Lloyd, unpacking his boxes, was already at work.

‘Cable!’ a trooper called from the next hole.

‘Me, too!’ someone else called, to be followed by a third, then a fourth.

‘Tell them to clear the whole length of cable,’ Lloyd told Ricketts, ‘then get out of the holes. My men will do the rest.’

‘Right,’ Ricketts said, then stood and went from hole to hole, passing on Lloyd’s orders.