Bravo two zero (42 page)

    "Of course, I understand."

    "It's Bush and Thatcher and Major. They're stopping all medical aid coming in. But we do have some food for you this morning. You would like some food?"

    "Thank you very much, I would like some food."

    They brought in water and a one-inch cube of margarine in a paper wrapper. I opened it up and started eating.

    "About escape, Andy. You've been here a long time. You may be feeling that you want to escape. Escape would be very, very useless; it would be no good for you. You're in Baghdad. There's nowhere for you to go.

    And we're friends now, aren't we, Andy?"

    I nodded and agreed, my mouth slippery with grease.

    "Let me show you what happens when people try to escape." Mr. Jihad lifted up his trouser leg and showed me a huge scar. "When I was a young man, I was in prison in Iran for six months. My friend and I tried to escape. We got away but we were captured the next day. They took us back to the camp and decided to make an example of us. So they got us on the floor, face down, and two soldiers stood over us with their rifles and bayoneted our legs through the back of the knee. They forced our kneecaps right out. If you try to escape, Andy, I will have to do the same to you."

    I wasn't going anywhere. I could just about stand up.

    I smiled. "I just want to go home to my family."

    "This cell is very dirty, you know, Andy. You people might live like this, but we Muslims are very clean. You will clean this up."

    "How do I do that?"

    "You clean it with your hands, Andy. Come on, clean this place up. We do not live in this mess."

    He stood over me and watched as I got down on my hands and knees and scooped all my shit into a pile. Then he gave me two bits of cardboard to put it on, and they left the cell.

    I looked at the walls and saw fresh bloodstains on the surfaces. They were mine. At least I'd added to the ambience of the cell.

    I began to feel apprehensive. What would happen now? Would we go away?

    Would we stay there? Richard Pryor had said to me: "England is a nice place. I was there fifteen years ago. I was at college in London. I know London well. Maybe one day you'll get back." Yeah, maybe.

12

    Some time in the afternoon of the 6th, they came in and handcuffed and blindfolded me again. They picked me up, and I thought I was off for another interrogation. I went outside and started to follow the old familiar route, but this time we took a strange turning, and I found myself being put into the back of a vehicle.

    I leaned forward, head down to release pressure on my hands. It was lovely and warm in the car, and I could hear the birds singing. It was gorgeous weather. I was full of dread.

    The car was big. An old American thing, I assumed, like they all seemed to be.

    "If you try to escape," somebody said, "we will kill the other two. And if they escape, you will be killed. So you see, it is pointless."

    Did that mean that Dinger and Stan were coming too? I waited for someone else to get into the car, but no one did. Both doors were closed. I was alone in the back. There were two fellows in the front, and they both spoke excellent English.

    "Do you know where you're going now, Andy?" the driver asked as we set off.

   "No, I have no idea."

    "We're taking you to the British Embassy. You will now be going home to your family. No problems."

    "Thank you very much."

    They started laughing to themselves and I went along with it, playing the idiot.

    "No, we are only joking, Andy. You'll be going home one day, but not yet. Not for a long time yet."

    We drove for a few minutes in silence.

    "Have you heard of Ali Baba?" one of them asked.

    "Yes, it's an old film which they play every Christmas. They always have Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves on."

    "Yes, well this is where you are. You're in the land of Ali Baba, in Baghdad. The thieves of Baghdad. A very beautiful city. But no longer, because everybody's dying. You people, you are coming in and bombing our places. Children are dead. Entire families are dying. It's no more the great land of Ali Baba; it's all demolished. But when we win, we will rebuild, no problem. Fantastic place. Ali Baba."

    I nodded and agreed. They turned on the radio and scanned through the stations. Every one sounded the same aggressive rhetoric or wailing Arabic songs. They were enjoying themselves, driving along with the windows open, not a care in the world.

    I listened to the sounds of the city. We stopped at lights, hooted, and people gob bed off. Music blared out of shops; there was all the usual hustle and bustle of a city. The characters suddenly started laughing and chattering.

    "We're just looking at your two friends in front of us," one of them said. "They are leaning against one another, sleeping. They must be very good friends."

    This was great. It confirmed that Dinger and Stan were with me. It was a fantastic feeling.

    The boys started smoking and were very jovial. We drove on for another 30 minutes or so.

    "Yes, we're going to somewhere else in Baghdad.

    You'll enjoy this place. Very good place. We were only joking about the embassy."

    People reached in through the windows when we arrived at what they announced was the military prison, slapping me on the head, pulling my mustache. Nothing too serious, all very neighborly stuff.

    I heard barriers being lifted, gates being opened. We drove forward a bit more and stopped. They got me out of the car and put a blanket over my head. I was led up to a door and along a wide corridor with concrete floors. There were echoes of talking, of bolts being opened and closed, the jangling of chains and keys.

    This place wasn't damp, but it was freezing cold. They led me into a cell. I was made to sit on the floor, and my handcuffs and blindfold were taken off. I saw soldiers dressed in olive drab and red berets, wearing the old '37 webbing-pattern belt and gaiters, all immaculately blancoed in white. They were military policemen. I spotted an officer and a couple of blokes in civvies. They closed the door and left me.

    The door to the cell was something that the sheriff would put you behind in a western. The bars were covered with a blanket to stop me seeing out. There was one fluorescent light, right in the middle of the ceiling, which was about 15 feet high. Also right at the top was a small slit window. A shaft of light beamed through. The bottom half of the walls were painted red, the top magnolia. And at first glance, that was all there was to see. Then I saw the scratchings on the wall, in Arabic. There were more pictures of doves with chains around their legs, and a drawing of a woman.

    I paced out the cell. It was about 12 feet by 9.

    I strained my ears and heard other doors being opened and closed. I assumed that Dinger and Stan were getting banged up as well. At least we were all in the same place. And compared with the interrogation center this was Buckingham Palace.

    Had they finished with us now, or what? I wasn't too sure and I didn't really care. I loved this place. It was wonderful.

    Fifteen minutes later the doors opened again. I thought I'd better start switching on and showing some respect. To turn the situation to your advantage you have to make an effort, get some sort of friendship going.

    As I got slowly to my feet, wincing with the injuries, a new character came into the cell. He was wearing civilian clothes, but with a DPM combat jacket over the top. He was about 5'3" tall and had white hair.

    On his face he had a pair of really thick glasses and a big happy smile.

    "Would you like to be with your friends?" he beamed.

    "Yes, I would, very much."

    He took me by the arm and led me to another cell three doors down. It was empty.

    Yeah, I thought-good fucking stitch! For a few moments there I'd been all happy that I was going to see Dinger and Stan. I sat down on the floor and tried not to show my feelings.

    Two minutes later the door opened and there was Dinger. We had a big hug and a shake of hands. Then another couple of minutes later Stan came stumbling in, supported on either side by guards. In his hand he carried a tray of rice. As the guards locked us in and left us we looked at one another in disbelief, then started gob bing off.

    "Chris and Vince?" I asked.

    "Vince is dead," Stan said. "Exposure. I got split from Chris; I don't know what happened to him. What about the other three?"

    I said that Mark was dead, and probably also Legs and Bob-despite what the Iraqis had told me.

    We fell into silence and started eating. We heard the sound of footsteps and keys in the corridor and stood up again. The door opened and a major entered. He introduced himself as the prison governor.

    "What happened where you were, I was not responsible for," he said in better English than mine. "I am only responsible for you now. We will feed you and we will look after you. If you are good, we will be good to you. If there is trouble, you will be punished."

    Just 5'6" tall and small-framed, he was smartly dressed, well groomed, and fresh smelling. He seemed genuine. If we played the game, we should be Okay. As he spoke, however, I couldn't help noticing that the guards behind him didn't seem to have the same benign smile on their faces. They looked every bit as brutish as the people we were used to.

    They were very young, and they would have things to prove to us-and to each other. I didn't doubt that when the cat was away, the guards would play.

    Once the major had gone, we came to certain decisions based on experience, training, and the advice of the Marine POW.

    We would remain always the gray man, never allowing ourselves to show a reaction or become overconfident. We weren't out of the woods yet, not by a long way.

    We would show respect to the guards. Being young bastards, they were almost certain to tear the arse out of the situation if we were abusive or truculent. By being respectful we might also be able to get information or take some advantage, which would take us halfway towards another aim, which was to get some form of relationship going. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you don't know until you try. We didn't know how long we were going to be there for-it could be days, weeks, or years. We would try to get some sort of fraternal thing going, based on us all being soldiers together, which might bring us medicine, food, and little goodies.

    We'd use this time as best we could to sort ourselves out and prepare ourselves for escape, adjusting both physically and mentally. I still had my escape map and compass, and so did Dinger. Physically we'd sort ourselves out, hopefully helped by more reasonable supplies of food, and mentally we'd spend as much time as we could doing map studies. We knew we were in Baghdad, so if we learnt the surrounding area we'd have some form of chance if we managed to escape. The escape maps were not detailed enough to show the city in street form, but they indicated the main features on the ground like rivers, salt lakes, and high ground.

    All we had to do was get out of Baghdad.

    The first thing to do, as ever, was just to tune in to the new environment, hoping that there was going to be some sort of routine. We didn't want to screw up the fact that we were all together. We would use the system, rather than fight against it.

    During the course of the first day and night, guards were coming and going nonstop. Each time we'd stand up and face them. They were still in their teens, most of them, which made them more authoritative and overbearing. They never appeared in groups of less than three, and they always carried pistols. They were clearly very wary of us. On one of the visits our boots were taken away from us and replaced with white pumps without laces.

    I asked for water. They came back with a pitcher and a cup. We drank some, and then put the pitcher back down on the floor as if it was going to stay there. They didn't question it.

    "How do we go to the toilet?" Stan asked.

    "You go when we say you go."

    "We're suffering from diarrhea and stomachaches, and we're being sick.

    We need a bucket or something so we can go."

    A bucket turned up. They were small victories, but encouraging signs that we could manipulate our circumstances. That first night was a happy, giggly, taking the piss sort of time. We heard mumbling in the near distance and guessed that there were other prisoners. We eventually worked out that they were right next door to us. How many of them, we couldn't tell.

    There was a door right at the end of the corridor, and once the guards had slammed that shut they seemed to be out of earshot. Nobody had told us that there was a no talking rule, but it was safer to assume that there was.

    Tapping on the wall with our tin mug, we knocked out a simple identification code to see if the person in the next cell was an ally.

    Only a Westerner would recognize the friendly pattern of knocks you would do on the front door of a friend's house: tap, tapetty, tap tap -to which the reply, of course, is: tap tap. We got the answer we were hoping for. The contact was good for our morale, and probably theirs.

    It was a good feeling to have got something going on the very first night.

    We started to speculate about our situation. Were the other members of the patrol here? Was this a staging post? Would we be here for the duration?

    "We didn't know where the hell you guys had got to," Stan said. "Vince was babbling about aircraft and TACBE, and Chris and I remembered hearing jets. We worked out that Vince was telling us that you'd stopped and tried to make contact with them. We sat on high ground looking through the night sight, but there was no sign of you. We tried to raise you on TACBE, but no answer. In the end we decided to press on, hoping you'd keep on the bearing and we'd meet up."

    They carried on for about four hours, and then it was coming to first light. Chris and Stan were worried about being caught in the open.

    Vince was out of the decision making; he stood swaying in the wind and rain as the others ran around looking for somewhere to hide.

    Stan found a tank berm about 6 feet deep, with tank tracks leading away from it that were about knee deep. They led Vince into one of the tracks and lay down either side of him. Throughout the night Chris and Stan took it in turns to sleep. The man who was awake kept a watchful eye on Vince.

    First light came and Stan had a auick look around. To his horror, he found that the tank berm was only about 600 meters from some sort of enemy position-either a hut or a box vehicle with aerials, it was hard to tell. They were stuck there now until last light.

    It started to snow. Soon the snow turned to sleet, and the tank track filled with slush. They were soaking wet. The temperature dropped.

    They had very little food left, just a couple of packets of biscuits between them. Everything else had gone in the berg ens As it started to come to last light, they crawled into the berm and stood up. They'd been lying in freezing water for twelve hours. Stan had lost all feeling in his hands and feet; Chris's joints were frozen.

    They moved around in circles, frog-marching Vince between them. When darkness had fallen and it was time to leave, they were so cold that the only way they could pick up their weapons was by cradling them in their arms.