Chris Ryan (13 page)

was nobody in sight. To this day I swear that Paul walked out in front of me. I thought I was compos mentis, and seemed to know what was happening. I knew I'd passed out. I knew I had fallen and hit my nose � but now I was fully conscious and alert again. 172 The One That Got Away I even heard the sound of Paul's boots as he came towards me over the gravel in the wadi bed, and for a few moments I thought my nightmare was over. I thought help and salvation had come. Far from it. I was still on my own. Disappoint�ment dealt another crippling blow to my morale. What the hell was Ito do now? I sat down, trying to get myself together. It was early morning on Thursday 31 January. I'd been on the run for eight days and seven nights. It was ten days since my last proper meal, six days since I'd finished my biscuits, three since I'd had any water. My body wasn't going to last an�other day. In a futile gesture I pulled out my TACBE, switched it on and let it bleep away. Then I looked up and realised that in the middle distance, about a kilometre away, there was a barn or house � a combination of both, standing out on a rise in the middle of scruffy fields in which rocks poked up out of the bare grey earth. As I stood watching, a man came out of the house and walked away with a herd of goats. The people living in that barn must have water. I decided that I had to get some, whatever the cost. If I was in Syria, the people might be friendly. If I was still in Iraq, I was going to have to threaten to kill them, get a drink, and carry on. I'd made up my mind: I was going in there, and I'd kill everybody if need be. eight SAFE OR SORRY? I left the TACBE on in my pocket as I started forward. Beep, it went, beep, beep. I began closing on the barn. The building was made of dirty-white stone, with a low wall running out of its right-hand end; and the doorway was open. Outside it was a young woman with a black scarf tied round her head in a band, bending over a wood fire and holding what looked like an upturned wok. I could see that she was cooking pieces of dough, like nan bread, spread over the shallow cone of hot metal. Two or three children were playing in the open. The woman saw me coming but did not react much. As I approached, my weapon in my hands, she lifted her head and called into the house. I was only five or six metres off when a young man came out � a fellow of maybe eighteen with dark, curly hair. He touched his chest and then his forehead with his right hand, nodding in typical Arab greet�ing. I went up and shook his hand, and pointed at the ground, asking, 'Syria? Is this Syria? He nodded, repeating, `Seeria! Seeria!' Then he pointed over my shoulder and said, 'Iraq. Iraq.' I looked back the way he was gesturing, and in the dis�tance behind me, over the mounds to the east, I saw a town with a mast. Krabilah! Looking westward, I saw another town, also with a mast. Abu Kamal! The one to the east was miles behind me. Both bloody towns had masts! I realised that I must have passed Krabilah early in the night, and that most of the walking I'd done since then had been unneces�sary � nothing but self-inflicted torture. That line of barbed wire had been the frontier after all. I'd been in Syria for hours. 174 The One That Got Away The young man could see the state I was in. A worried look came over his face, and he began touching my hands. He took me by the sleeve and drew me into the barn. In the middle was a round oil stove with a glass door and a metal chimney that rose straight through the roof. At the far end of the room lay rolls of bedding and some straw. There was practically no furniture, and it was obvious the people were very poor. A woman with tattoos on her face sat breast-feeding a baby, and did not move as I came in. I sat on a mat on the ground next to the stove with my weapon laid across my lap. The young man looked at me and asked in gestures if I wanted something to eat. `Water!' I croaked, tipping up an imaginary glass. 'Water!' A moment later he handed me a shiny metal bowl full of water, which tasted incredibly fresh and cold. Never in my life had I had a more delicious drink. I tipped it straight down my neck. The boy brought another bowlful, and I drank that as well. Next he gave me a cup of sweet tea, thick with dissolved sugar, and I put that down too. Then the woman came in with some of the bread she'd been making, and gave me a piece. It was still hot, and smelt delicious, but when I bit off a mouthful and tried to swallow it, it locked in my throat and would not go down. I had to get my boots off. It was four days since I'd seen my feet, and I was dreading what I would find. As I undid the laces and eased the boots off, the stink was repulsive. Like my hands, my feet were rotting. I smelt as if my whole body was putrefying. When the man saw the state of my feet, with pus oozing along the sides, he let out a yell. The woman who'd been cooking came up with a wide bowl like a dustbin full of cold water and began to wash my feet. All my toenails had come off, and my toes were numb � I couldn't feel them. But the water stung the rest of my feet like fire. In spite of the pain, I forced myself to scrape the pus out of the cuts along the sides and round the heels. I also washed the blood off my face. With that done, it was bliss to lie back with my bare feet raised to the warmth of the stove and let them breathe. Another girl appeared from outside, took my Safe Or Sorry? 175 socks and rinsed them through. When she brought them back, of course they were still wet, but I pulled them on, and got my boots back on as well. In sign language, and by making aircraft sounds, I tried to indicate that I was a pilot and had been in a crash. Then I made some siren sounds � dee-dah, dee-dah, dee-dah � to show that I wanted to go to the police. A boy of about six had been drawing pictures of tanks and aircraft on sheets of dirty white paper. With my numb fingers I drew a police car with a blue lamp on the roof. Suddenly the message got through: the young man nodded vigorously and pointed towards the distant town. `Go to the town?' I suggested, and I made driving motions. 'You have a vehicle?' Again he nodded and pointed. What he meant � I soon found out � was that we should start walking down the road towards the town and thumb a lift. With the water and tea inside me, my body seemed to have switched back on. My drowsiness and disorientation had vanished. I felt sharp again, as if there was nothing wrong, as if I could do the whole walk again. Everything seemed so relaxed that for a while I just sat there, re�covering. The old man came back with his goats and stood looking at me. Then, to get some action, I dug a sovereign out of my belt and showed it round. I started saying Felous, felous' �`money, money' � and pointed to the goats, then back at the coin, trying to put over the idea that this represented many animals, or a lot of cash. 'Bank,' I said, 'bank.' The appearance of the gold galvanised the young man. All at once he became hell-bent on going into town. Maybe he thought that if he escorted me in I would give him the money. Soon everyone was staring at the sovereign. Another girl came in, and somehow I knew she said, 'He's got more on him somewhere.' The old man appeared with a gun �some ancient hunting rifle. 'More,' he said, 'more' � and by gestures he showed he wanted another coin, to make the girl a pair of earrings. Then he started demanding gold for the other girls as well. 176 The One That Got Away `No, no, no,' I said. 'This is for goats, clothes and stuff. No more.' The Arabs began muttering to each other. For half an hour things remained tense. I lay with my feet against the oil fire, warming up. It was the first time in a week that I hadn't felt half frozen. I had begun to hope that I could sleep in the farmhouse that night; I wanted to tell them, 'Wait awhile � just let me rest here.' But the young man had become deter�mined to go into town, and indicated that I should come outside. I decided not to wait any longer. But to present a less aggressive figure, I took off my webbing and smock, so that I was left wearing my dark-green jersey and camouflage trousers. With signs I asked the man for some sort of bag. He produced a white plastic fertiliser sack, and I put my kit into that. I then slung the sack over my shoulder and we set off along the road. Soon I thought, 'It's hardly the thing, to walk into a civilian town carrying a rifle,' so when we'd gone about two hundred metres, I broke my weapon down in two and put it in the bag. I still had my knife, but in this situation I could have done with a pistol � an inconspicuous weapon, which would have come in handy during the emergency which fol�lowed. The young man led off quite fast along the dirt road and I shuffled behind him, in too much pain to move quickly. Every minute or two my companion stopped and waited for me to catch up. Then, seeing I was in difficulties, he took the bag off me, and without the weight I made better progress. I kept saying, 'Tractor? Where's a tractor?' � and I presume he was saying in Arabic, `One'll come soon.' Wagons were rolling out from the town, and presently one stopped: a land-cruiser loaded with bales of hay. The driver could speak a little broken English. He said he was a camel farmer, and asked who I was. `My aircraft's crashed,' I told him. `Your aircraft? Where is it?' `Over the hill, over there. I need to go to the police.' Safe Or Sorry? 177 `OK. I'll take you.' He swung his vehicle round, and I got into the middle of the front seat, between him and the young man. In a minute or two I was regretting it, because he started making aggres-sive comments: 'You shouldn't be here. This is our country. This is a bad war.' I just said, 'Yeah, I know,' and kept as quiet as possible. Soon we hit the edge of the town, which proved a severe dis�appointment. I'd been imagining a fairly sophisticated place, with banks and shops and other signs of civilisation. This place had nothing but crude houses made of grey breeze blocks, with heaps of rubbish lying round them. There was no vegetation, and not a sign of a garden. The only form of decoration was the odd burnt-out car. One thing that did surprise me was the extent to which the Syrians resembled Europeans � and I was startled by the sight of two men with flaming, carrot-coloured hair, one of them sporting an equally red beard. My driver pulled up outside a house on the left-hand side of the road and beeped his horn. Out came an Arab dressed in a black dishdash. There was a bit of an exchange between the two; then the driver said something to the young farm lad, who got out of the truck. I felt helpless, because I saw fear in the boy's face, and didn't know what was happening. `Everything all right?' I asked, but the driver spoke sharply to the lad, who set off walking, back towards home. The two of us went on into town, and the driver started niggling again. 'You want to go back to Iraq?' he said, and roared with laughter. 'I should take you back.' `No, no!' I said. I brought out my idemnity slip, written in Arabic as well as English. The letter promised �5,000 to anyone who handed me safely back to the coalition. The driver snatched it and began to stuff it into his pocket, as if it was actual cash. `You don't understand,' I said. 'I have to be with this piece of paper. Me and the paper at the same time. You only get the money if the two are together.' I took it back from him and put it away. 178 The One That Got Away `OK,' he said, 'OK.' At least he stopped talking about taking me back across the border. But then he asked, 'You have gun?' `No,' I said. 'No gun.' We came to a petrol station, and he pulled up. On the other side of the pumps was a car with a gang of young lads round it. The driver touched my bag, with all the kit in it, and asked, 'What all this?' `Nothing, nothing. Just my things.' He reached over to pat me on my stomach, to feel if I had a weapon concealed about me. `No,' I protested. 'I've got nothing.' Suddenly he called out to the lads by the pump, and one of them came over. The boy stood by the window and didn't look at me, but kept his eyes straight down on the bag. The driver went on talking to him � until suddenly he ran off into the building. I thought, 'There's something going on here. There's going to be a lynching party coming out. They're going to do me for my weapon, or put me back across the border.' It was time to go. .I opened the door, grabbed the bag and began to get out. At that moment the driver seized my left arm, trying to restrain me. I dragged him across the front seat and half out of the cab. When I kicked the door shut, it caught his head in the opening and he had to let go of me. He let out a yell, and I took off. Fear boiled up in me again, almost worse than before. Away I went, running up the street, with the plastic sack in one hand. At least, I thought I was running � but when I turned round I saw a load of old guys easily keeping pace with me. I was running in slow motion. I couldn't go any faster. Soon there was a big commotion, and a crowd of over a dozen people coming after me. They were barely thirty metres behind me and closing fast. I thought, 'You're screwed here.' Instinctively I knew that in those Arab border towns everyone is related to everyone else. Although some of these Safe Or Sorry? 179 people called themselves Syrians and some Iraqis, they probably all belonged to the same families, and had cousins or even brothers on the other side. I'd seen it on the border between Saudi and Iraq: guys from both sides were driving across to the frontier posts opposite, just to have tea with their friends. Whenever they got a stand-to, they'd merely disappear back. Now, somehow, these Syrians knew I had a weapon in that bag. They were out to get it, and then to throw me back into Iraq, or worse. A terrific atmosphere had suddenly built up. The pavements were full of people, and the ones on the other side of the road were all looking, alerted by the noise. Ahead of me, more pedestrians were staring. I kept hob�bling and staggering along, hampered by the plastic sack in my right hand. I couldn't even wave my weapon in threat, because it was stripped down.To have reassembled it would have meant stopping for at least a minute, and by then the mob would have been on top of me. Then, as I turned a corner, a miracle: there stood a man with an AK 47, wearing chest webbing. He was right next door to a pillar box, obviously on duty. It flashed into my mind that this might be the Iraqi border post, but it was too late to worry. `Police?' I shouted. 'Police?' I don't know what the guy said. I'm not sure he said any�thing at all. He just pulled me through a gateway and into a walled garden. I saw bunting of triangular flags over the en-trance, vegetation all round, and
a big bungalow. He had me by the arm and the scruff of the neck, and ran me into this enclosure, out of reach of the crowd in the street, who by then were yelling for my blood. What his motives were, I'll never know. He may have been trying to save me from the mob, or he may just have thought he'd grabbed a prisoner. Inside the bungalow a man sat behind a desk, smoking. He was wearing a black leather jacket. So were all the other men in there � black leather bomber jackets and jeans � and they all seemed to be smoking. Nobody spoke a word of English. There was a lot of pointing. I said, 'I'm a helicopter 180 The One That Got Away pilot,' and made chopper noises, whirling my hand round to indicate rotors, and then diving it down to show that I had crashed. Very soon they'd opened my bag and got out the 203, to�gether with my webbing. Then the driver who'd given me the lift rushed in and let fly a volley of Arabic, jabbing his finger in my direction. I felt another surge of fear, and motioned to the bomber-jacketed guys, 'Get him out!' They bundled him into another room, protesting all the way. The air was full of animosity, but I couldn't tell which way it was pointing. These leather-clad guys obviously had no time for the driver, but they didn't like the look of me either. I couldn't blame them. My hair was matted with dirt; my face was emaciated, eyes staring. I had ten days' growth of beard. I was filthy and stinking. I was also an infidel. They started stripping my kit, and pulled out the two white phosphorus grenades. One of the guys, who was smoking a cigarette, held a grenade up and asked something in Arabic, obviously 'What's this?' `Smoke,' I told him. Tor making smoke' � and I waved up clouds of ;he stuff in mid air. They started lobbing the grenades round, one to another, catching them like cricket balls. The safety pins, which I'd loosened before our first contact, were hanging out. I knew that if one of the grenades went off, it would kill us all; so I made to stand up and grab them. The movement did not go down well. The instant I was half-upright, three guys pulled pistols and levelled them at me, yelling at me to sit down. So I sat back, and everything gradually calmed down. The man who'd finished up with the grenades brought them over, and let me push the pins back into place. By then the others were ripping out all my kit: the kite-sight, my little binoculars, my fireflies (the lights which give a high-intensity flash and have infra-red filters for bringing aircraft on to you). All my stuff was disappearing, and I thought, 'I'm not going to see any of this again.' None of it was particularly valuable, but I'd become quite attached to it, having carried it all that way, and now it was being stolen in front of my eyes. Safe Or Sorry? 181 After about twenty minutes I was taken through a door into another room, and in came a man of fifty or so, wearing a grey suit. He was very calm, as if nothing bothered him, and he looked exactly like a Middle Eastern version of the actor Anthony Hopkins. He sat me down at a table with a piece of paper and said, 'Details? Name? Birthday? Country?' I wrote down, 'Sergeant Chris Ryan, 22 Turbo Squad�ron, Para Field Ambulance,' and my date of birth � and left it at that. 22 Para Field Ambulance didn't exist, but I thought that if I finished up in a prison camp, and the num�ber, combined with the word 'Turbo', reached the coalition, somebody would click on to the fact that I was a medic in 22 SAS. I gave my rank as sergeant because I knew it would command a bit more respect than if I said `corporal'; besides, in the SAS corporals get sergeants' pay. While I was writing, another man gave me a cup of coffee, and I drank it. It was thick and bitter, Arab-style, and made me feel thirstier than ever. The Hopkins character took the paper, went out, then came back in and beckoned me to fol�low him. I stood up, and as I reached the door two other guys were waiting. I felt as if I was going to run the gauntlet, but they grabbed me by the arms and pulled me into a different room. There they pointed down at a white dishdash and motioned me to put it on. By then I was really scared. What the hell were they doing, making me dress up like an Arab? The dishdash came down to my feet. Someone came in with a shamag and wrapped it round my head. At first I could just about see out, but then they pulled it right down over my face. Nobody told me where I was going or what was happening. I felt panic rising. Inadvertently I had handed myself over to these bas�tards, who had complete control of me. I saw my bag of equipment go out the door ahead of me. A land-cruiser pulled up outside. Two men armed with AK 47s came in; there was an exchange, and I was passed over to them and marched out. One man climbed into the driver's seat, I was pushed into the middle, and the second man got in on my right. 182 The One That Got Away As we came out of the police station, I held my breath. I felt certain that if we turned right, we would be on our way back to Iraq. If we turned left, there was a good chance that the Syrians would be keeping me. We turned left. I breathed again. Then we set off at high speed, along rough streets full of kids playing. The fact that humans were in the way didn't deter the driver; he just kept going, with one hand on the horn, swerving in and out of the vast potholes. After a while the passenger made signs to ask if I was hungry. I said 'Yes' and nodded, so the driver stopped and waited while his mate ran out, returning with a bag of apples. When I ate the whole of the one he gave me core, pips and all, everything bar the stalk � both Arabs stared at me. The one on my right hadn't touched his apple, and he gave it to me � so I ate that too, core and all again. On we went, missing hundreds of dogs by inches. We swerved to avoid any number of dead ones, too. Next we cleared the town, came on to a metalled road and down into a big valley. Then we were out in the desert, on a road that ran straight for miles. I knew my bag was in the back, but I couldn't tell how much of my kit was still in it. I tried talking, and asked where we were going. 'Damascus?' I suggested. 'Damascus?' But my question produced no answers, so I shut up. At one point, to my right, I saw ancient ruins, but, in the state I was, they didn't interest me much. Ahead of us I saw two dark-blue Mercedes parked on the side of the road, with a group of six men standing round the cars. As we came towards them, my escorts started jabber-ing to each other. Obviously this was some pre-arranged rendezvous. We began to slow down. Fifty metres short of the cars, I could see that one of the waiting men had a pistol in his hand. Suddenly the guy on my right pulled up my sha�mag, quite roughly, so as to blindfold me, and grabbed hold of my arm. I thought, 'Fucking hell, this is an execution squad!' We came to a halt. I was dragged out, run up to the back of Safe Or Sorry? 183 one of the Mercedes, thrown down on my knees. Somebody pushed my head forward, and one of these twats came and stood behind me. Silence followed. Nobody moved or spoke. I thought I was going to die. Until then I'd always reckoned that if any�thing like this happened to me, I'd make a last-ditch run for it. Watching films of the Holocaust, and imagining I'd been caught by the Nazis, I'd seen myself putting up a last-second fight. But now it wasn't like that. Physically incapable of running, I just knelt there waiting for the bastard to shoot me in the back of the head. It was a terrible feeling, to be on my knees, waiting for someone to do that to me. But I didn't get scenes from my life flashing through my head, like you're supposed to. I just felt annoyed that I'd given myself up to these rotten people. The silence seemed to last for ever. In fact it probably went on for less than a minute. Then there was a movement. Hands either side grabbed my arms, stood me up, moved me forward and threw me into the back of a car. The doors slammed and we drove off. Now I had three escorts, all in western civilian clothes. On my left sat the youngest, a skinny fellow with a thin, weasly face and a straggling moustache � the sort of looks that annoy me. He struck me as a weak character. The driver was quite a big fellow, dark, good-looking, maybe my own age, and wearing a black leather jacket. His front-seat passenger was about forty: chubby, and going thin on top, he wore a green safari-type jacket with patch pockets. All three had ties, but they had pulled the knots loose, and in general their appearance was scruffy. Who were these guys? Police, I hoped. But they gave me no clue as to their identity � and why were they messing about so much? In my state of exhaustion and confusion, I didn't know what to think. Of course I considered trying to take them out. I still had my knife on me � but the car was travelling fast, probably at 70 or 80 m.p.h. for most of the time. Also, there was another car escorting us, and police outriders. The desert we were going through was very open, with nowhere to hide. 184 The One That Got Away My shamag was still on, but the guy in the passenger seat pulled it down far enough for me to see. Then, leaning over into the back, he began to strip-search me: he took off my ID discs by pulling the cord over my head, unclipped my belt, undid my boot laces, removed my watch, emptied my pockets, took my notebook and map. One thing which escaped him was my belt, which had 19 gold sovereigns taped to the inside. That was another frightening moment, when I felt his hands on me. The guy on my left was holding my arm, and I was thinking. 'Jesus, if I'm going to safety, they shouldn't be doing this to me.' Could these fellows be the Syrian police? Or who were they? Why were they behaving like this? It was all very strange and alarming. Presently they blindfolded me again. They talked a bit among themselves, and played loud Arab music on the stereo. Also, they chain-smoked. Soon I was in agony. In the warmth of the car � the highest temperature I'd been in for days � my feet and knees began to swell. Probably being static contributed to the trouble, and the pain became ex-cruciating. I kept trying to ease the agony by shifting around, but all the time I was finding it harder and harder to breathe. I wasn't exactly hyperventilating, but I'm sure fear was con�tributing to my problems, and I was being choked by the filthy smoke. I started feeling claustrophobic, and said, 'Can't you take the blindfold off?' Until then, whenever I'd tried to pull the shamag off my face, the guy in front had twitched it back, but now he seemed to realise that I was in trouble, and let it drop out of the way. I saw that the second Mercedes was ahead of us, and that whenever we came to a village, our outriders went ahead on their motorbikes to seal off any side-roads, so that we could go speeding straight through. Then they'd come howling past us and take the lead again. The scrawny fellow next to me kept poking me in the ribs and going on about the war, making banal, needling remarks in broken English. 'What were you doing in Iraq? You shouldn't be here. Do you like Americans?' Safe Or Sorry? 185 At any other time I'd have thumped his block off � and I don't think he'd feel very well if I saw him today. As it was, I grunted monosyllabic answers, anxious to give nothing away. I still didn't know who these people were, or what they were doing. I felt fairly confident they weren't taking me to Baghdad, but I thought they might be going to hand me over to some extremist group as a hostage. I knew that both John McCarthy and Terry Waite were being held by guerrillas. In my confused state, I couldn't remember who it was holding them � was it Hizbollah? � but I began to think I was going to end up with them. Sometimes our driver would overtake the other car and lead for a while. Every time we came to a village, one of my escorts would pull the shamag over my eyes so that I couldn't see any names. After four or five hours we drove down a broad valley, with steep sides set back maybe a kilometre on either side, and high ground rising beyond them. Then, looking ahead, I saw a motorway sign coming up � and all it said, in enor�mous letters, was BAGHDAD, with a big arrow pointing from right to left. When I saw that I felt that I'd gone through the floor and my arse was getting dragged along the ground. just as I spotted it, the driver said something to the fellow beside me, who started poking me in the ribs, cackling, 'Yes, you right. You going Baghdad! You going where Baghdad is.' I was growing angry � partly with the idiot beside me, partly with myself. How the hell had I ended up in such a situation? All my effort in walking so far seemed to have gone for nothing. Why had I given myself up to these dick-heads? Why hadn't I tried to pinch a vehicle and drive myself to Damascus? The front-seat passenger turned to me and said, 'Yes �we're Baghdadis.' Then the driver pointed at his own backside and went, ee, ee, ee,' watching me in the mirror as he did so, ob�viously meaning that my bum was twitching. He never realised what a good turn he did me by making 186 The One That Got Away that stupid gesture. All at once he infuriated me and steeled my resolve. I thought, 'Fuck you! I can take anything you cunts can give me. I'll keep my mouth shut and take what-ever's coming.' I began struggling to reorientate my ideas. I had to accept that I was going to a prison camp. I was going to be interrog�ated. I was going to get a bad kicking, a beating. 'Think your thoughts,' I told myself. 'Get organised.' I still considered doing a runner, but it was impossible. I was physically knackered, and wouldn't have gone a hundred yards. 'It's no good,' I told myself. 'They'll have you.' Instead, I sat still, trying not to annoy my escorts by fid�geting; but every part of me was aching: back, shoulders, knees � but worst of all, my feet. With the view cut out by the blindfold again, I kept trying to visualise where we were. On the highway to Baghdad, I felt certain. But which way did it go? Had there always been a highway to Baghdad, right from Biblical times? And did it run through Jordan, or what? Exhaustion began sweeping over me again. Although I'd drunk the water and coffee in the barn that morning, I was desperately in need of food, and more liquid. I had been weakened more than I realised. My mind was so confused that I couldn't remember the simplest details of everyday life. Through my blindfold I could see and feel that we were heading towards the sun, and that hour by hour the sun was going down. But what did that mean? Did the sun set in the east or in the west? Unable to remember, I tried to think back to what used to happen when I was a kid. Gradually I got it: from my bedroom at home I could see the sun coming up over Gibside, the