Eye of the Storm (50 page)

‘Pull the stuff back and let’s see what’s behind it,’ I hissed. At once Ken and Des peeled back one edge, then Des turned and said, ‘The wall’s already been blown. There’s a bloody great hole here.’

‘Well, let’s get through it,’ I said. We were crouched down by the wall, but with the moonlight we would be immediately visible to anyone who looked hard enough from the trucks, the bunkers, or even the smaller buildings to our left. It felt as though we were standing in the spotlights on stage in a packed theatre.

Within thirty seconds all six of us were through the gap and had pushed the plastic sheeting back in place. Inside, there was total chaos. The place had obviously suffered a direct hit from an Allied bomb or missile. In places the fence was twisted and flattened, and in others completely torn from its cement base. Of the main bunker there was almost nothing left. There were buckled steel girders and shattered concrete everywhere. Some of the wreckage was so precariously balanced that it looked likely to crash down at any moment.

I took a look around for an entrance to the three underground rooms, but the stairway and the rooms had been completely buried beneath the rubble. The whole site was extremely hazardous, and I realized that one or more of us could get badly injured simply walking in the ruins, especially since the moonlight on the wreckage left large areas in deep shadow. It was perfectly certain, too, that there wasn’t any switching gear left for us to destroy. Curiously, I felt a sense of anti-climax. Still, there was one thing we could do.

‘Des, you and Timothy dump all your explosives here and get back to the gap in the wall and wait for us there. Now we’re here we’d better bring down the mast, if nothing else.’ Since the mast was still up, it could still receive and transmit signals via the antennae and dishes on it – which meant the site could still get Scuds off towards Israel. Thinking quickly, I offloaded my own explosives and told Mugger, ‘Let’s blow the mast and get out of here.’

‘These charges are not really suitable,’ he replied mournfully. ‘They’re no good for cutting steel.’

This was too much. First we had intelligence that told us the place was defended, if at all, by about thirty Iraqis. Then Intel had failed to tell us that there were a military camp and fortified defensive positions around the relay station. Meanwhile, somebody had neglected to tell us, or RHQ, that the site had already received an extremely accurate air or missile raid. Finally, having successfully reached our target unseen with more than a hundred pounds of explosive charges, we found that those charges probably would not do the one job that still needed doing. Well, we were bloody well going to do something, I thought.

‘Surely you can do something?’ I asked Mugger. He considered for a while, and finally nodded. ‘If we pack a charge and a third of the other explosives around each of three of the mast’s four legs, then it will give us about thirty-five pounds per leg. With luck that will do the job.’

‘Okay. Let’s do it,’ I said. ‘It sounds much too damned quiet out there for it to last.’ By now we had been almost in the centre of an enemy installation for ten or fifteen minutes. It seemed incredible that nobody had noticed us, but how much longer could we trust our luck to last? I had a strong suspicion that the answer was ‘not much’, but the demolitionists were already on the case. Mugger, Ken and Tom quickly divided the explosives into three piles, then each of them grabbed one pile and headed in a crouch for one of the steel legs of the mast.

I waited between two of the legs, aware that these three guys were playing with high explosives that could blow us all to atoms in a millisecond if anything went wrong. So while I hoped that they wouldn’t take too long, I also didn’t want them to be foolishly hasty.

Ken was the first to finish, then, thirty seconds later, Tom came over to join us.

‘What’s keeping Mugger?’ I asked.

‘He’s going to pull the three switches,’ Ken answered. By now we were scarcely bothering to lower our voices.

‘Right,’ I told them. ‘You two go and join Des and Timothy and all of you get through the wall and wait there. We’ll be right with you.’

A minute later Mugger appeared out of the darkness and gave me a big grin. ‘Okay Billy,’ he said. ‘They’re each on a two-minute delay, so let’s head for the great outdoors.’ He was, as usual, as cool as a cucumber and, like any artist, supremely happy in his work. I didn’t need any extra prompting, and we lit out for the wall like greyhounds.

At which point our good fortune took a nosedive. We were through the tangled fence and close to the gap in the wall when all hell broke loose. There were several single shots followed by a burst of automatic fire, then the enormous whoosh of a Milan going in and, seconds later, a huge explosion as the missile struck home. Then everyone seemed to let rip together. Rounds were zipping overhead and we could hear them smacking into the other side of the wall.

There were bullets flying everywhere, riddling the sheeting covering the gap while, above, tracers created amazing patterned arches. We were safe enough on our side of the wall, but not for long. Behind us, no more than ten metres away, was over a hundred pounds of high-explosive getting ready to blow in less than ninety seconds.

‘What do you reckon, Mugger?’ I asked.

‘We haven’t got much fucking choice, have we?’ he replied.

I grinned at him. ‘No. I suppose not. So let’s go.’ And with that I ducked round the plastic sheet and into the open area on the other side. The other four were all lying by the wall outside.

‘Line abreast and back to the jumping-off point,’ I yelled. ‘And let’s move it. It’s all going to blow in a few seconds.’

Surging forward, we spread out like the three-quarter line in a rugby game and belted towards the dark, looming mass of the north end of the berm. Though I swear that not even the finest line-up ever made it from one end of a rugby pitch to the other at the speed we travelled that night. Of course, we were all as fit as professional athletes, and given the amount of adrenalin fizzing around in our muscles we’d have been good for a few world records – if anyone could have spared the time to clock us.

We were halfway between the wall and the jumping-off point when the first explosive charge blew, followed seconds later by another boom and, almost immediately afterwards, by a third.

None of us stopped to watch the effects, however, for there were bullets whistling all around us. As I ran I looked to the left. The bunker there was gushing flames and smoke from its gun slits and entrance, which meant the Milan had done its job.

The bunker on the other side was still intact, and there seemed to be a lot of the enemy fire coming from that direction. But Pat and his team on the 110s had the heavy machine-guns in action, while some of the guys with him had brought their grenade launchers to bear and were peppering the bunker with high-velocity fragmenting metal. As a result, most of the enemy fire was wild, since they were reluctant to face the streams of 0.5-inch rounds and 40mm grenades.

We ran to within a few metres of the Land Rovers’ position, and I yelled to the fire-support team that we were all through and evacuating the area. On we dashed. Suddenly we were at the north-south road and I could see dark shapes over to our right where the enemy trucks were parked. Our guys there were firing on groups of Iraqi troops who were taking cover at the sides of the ruined bunker and in a few small huts, or crouching behind low humps of sand and rock.

The enemy soldiers appeared to be using automatic rifles and light machine-guns, as well as standard magazine rifles – and there seemed to be a lot of them. My immediate impression, however, was that none of them was capable of shooting very straight. Not that it mattered. You could just as easily die from a lucky shot as from the perfect aim of a sniper.

Among the SAS men near the trucks I thought I could make out Major Peter in the group closest to us. I yelled, ‘Cease fire and retire with us back to the vehicles,’ meaning the four 110s we had left behind near the abandoned L-shaped bunker. We continued to run up the slight slope, parallel with the berm. When we reached them the wagons were all intact, including the one that had fired the Milan, which had rejoined the other three after taking out the bunker. Tracer and bullets were still flying everywhere, and back towards the target we could hear the roar of the Brownings, the lighter rattle of the GPMGs and the thump of the grenade launchers as Pat and his fire-support group continued to lay down a stream of heavy and accurate fire.

As I reached the vehicles and turned around I found Major Peter jogging the last few paces towards us. ‘Some night,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ But it was not until later, during our debriefing back at the LUP, that I learned what had turned our mission noisy, and Major Peter’s part in it.

He and the three troopers who had been detailed to check out the enemy trucks with him were right alongside the vehicles as I and my team disappeared through the bunker wall. Crouched down, they waited with their weapons ready, occasionally scanning the scene through their Kite sights. Then, some ten minutes later the cab door of the leading truck had opened to reveal a bleary-eyed military driver who had almost certainly been asleep. Bleary or not, however, he spotted our guys and immediately made a grab for a rifle he had propped up on a seat next to him. It was the last thing he ever did. Reacting instantly, Major Peter levelled his M16 at the Iraqi’s chest and fired several rounds – the single shots we had heard as Mugger and I headed for the gap in the wall, just before automatic fire tore the night apart. The driver was probably dead before his hand touched his own weapon. Seconds later the enemy troops in the right-hand bunker opened fire and our man on the Milan decided that the moment had come for him to take it out. It was then that the whole shebang went
very
noisy.

Apparently the shooting woke the driver of the second truck. He was more cautious than his colleague in the other vehicle, however, for he climbed down on the side away from our guys. He immediately spotted the trooper who was about to loose off the LAW 80 at the left-hand bunker and, with commendable courage, leapt on his back and started trying to strangle him. Luckily he was spotted by one of Major Peter’s unit, who rushed forward through a curtain of bullets and clubbed the Iraqi on the back of the head with his rifle butt.

With its aluminium and plastic parts, the Colt M16 may be very light, but it is still solid enough to knock someone senseless if used in the right way. Our guys left the Iraqi where he fell, no doubt to crawl off later with a bad head. They could have shot him, but there was no point. He was unarmed and now out of the game, nor was he going to recover fast enough to cause us any further problem. It was the right decision. He was a brave man, and enough men were dying already that night.

There was one serious consequence of his action, though, for it meant that the LAW missile was never fired at the second bunker. By the time the operator had it set up again on his shoulder, my team and I were belting back across the area in front of him and the risk of hitting one of us by accident was too great. That and my yelling at them to retire caused him to give up on his task and fall back after us.

As Major Peter and the others joined us at the vehicles, I happened to glance up to the top of the berm, and saw about a dozen figures milling about up there. They seemed to be dressed in dark kit, rather than the normal olive drab of Iraqi soldiers. I yelled, ‘Who are those guys on top of the berm?’ and someone shouted back, ‘It’s okay, they’re the Iraqi truck drivers from the parking area.’ I assumed that the man who answered was one of those I had left with orders to guard the wagons and secure the area. I also assumed that they must have checked the top of the berm and dealt with anyone who might have been up there.

It was now that I made what was potentially the most serious mistake of my life. I believed what I heard and relaxed. Seconds later the figures on the berm disappeared and I thought that, frightened by our presence and all the firing, they had made themselves scarce. I should have sent a patrol up there to cover us and make sure there was no danger from that quarter. After all, why would a group of Iraqis stand on top of a sandbank looking down at an armed enemy if they didn’t have to?

The answer was not long in coming. The watchers on the berm can’t have had their weapons with them when we first saw them. They must have gone off to collect them, however, because a few minutes later we found ourselves taking a lot of incoming fire. In the space of a few seconds Mugger had two bullets through his clothing and I felt one whip by my head, just missing me. Some of the rounds were literally parting our hair, and one slammed into the Milan on my vehicle, wrecking the delicate firing mechanism. At first we couldn’t even tell where the firing was coming from; then, finally, we traced it to the top of the berm where we had seen the figures earlier.

Once again luck was with us because the enemy firing down on us were obviously not Saddam’s crack Republican Guard. All they were doing was spraying rounds indiscriminately in our direction, although if they had taken time to aim and concentrate their fire they could have wiped us all out. We weren’t even under cover. None the less, once we realized where the danger lay we started to give it back in spades, with our M16s, medium and heavy machine-guns and grenade launchers pouring concentrated fire in their direction.

Yet despite returning a heavy and accurate fire towards the Iraqi troops on the berm, the general consensus among our guys seemed to be to get out of there – fast. So much so, in fact, that without waiting for orders, several of them started firing up the motors and heading the wagons towards the south. As one of the last to leave fishtailed away in a skidding start, its front wing struck me a violent blow on my thigh and belt kit and sent me flying through the air. As I went in one direction my rifle, which had been knocked from my hand, went in another.

Half winded, I staggered to my feet, and found the last of the four Land Rovers we’d left here revving up next to me. ‘Jump on or we’re fucking going without you,’ a voice yelled. It wasn’t much of an option, for bullets were ricocheting off the vehicle’s sides and bonnet. Someone grabbed my arm, and I scrambled aboard as the wagon lit out, with enemy bullets still pinging off the sideworks. My M16 – with twenty gold sovereigns still hidden in the butt – was left behind. I often wonder whether whoever found the weapon also discovered the secret hoard of gold. It would go a long way nowadays, given the present state of the Iraqi economy.