Crossfire (4 page)

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.

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 binos. '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.

Paul's head appeared through the hatch. He
was straight back on the Minimi and resumed
firing, directly into the cab. The body behind the
wheel jerked and danced as the rounds thumped
home.

Rhett was up on his feet and running. He was
joined by two of the platoon. They stood and
emptied their magazines into the cab until he
finally raised his arm. 'Stop! Stop! Check firing!'

He took the last couple of steps, jumped up on
the bar armour and peered through the smashed
glass. 'We can't make the cunt any more dead.'

Pete appeared, camera up, and filmed the three
Kingsmen at the driver's door.

I let go of Dom and helped him to his feet.

Rhett wrenched the door open. The body
rolled out on to the sand-covered tarmac. The
only sound was the steady rumble of
the Warriors' engines, and the hiss of steam.

Rhett beckoned us forward. He pointed to a
car battery in the footwell. The negative terminal
was already connected to one of the two-core
cables running out of the passenger door and
under the green tarpaulin at the back. The second
strand lay loose, ready to be touched to the
positive.

'The battery first, Peter. Then whatever the
Kingsmen do next.' Dom glanced down at what
was left of the body. 'No, wait – see the trackmarks?'
He pointed at the body's bloodsoaked
arms. 'I need a close-up.'

I gripped the back of Pete's body armour to
steady him. Left to his own devices, he'd have
climbed into the cab to get a better picture and
ended up kicking the loose wire on to the battery
terminal.

He got the shots Dom had asked for, then
zoomed in on a corporal as he ripped the wire
from the battery.

Dom called us to the rear of the Hilux as a
couple of Kingsmen lifted the green tarpaulin
carefully from the flatbed to expose what looked
like a pile of hardened mashed potato.

I tapped Pete's arm. 'Plastic explosive.' It was
moulded over a cluster of six mortar bombs that
had been gaffer-taped together. 'Eighty-one
millimetre. Mint condition. See that? Even the
brass around the percussion cap is still shiny.
Look at the base of the rounds, mate. Can you get
the stamps?'

Pete zoomed in. '"Lot 16 2006". They Brit or
Yank?'

'Neither.'

The fact that it was written in English didn't
mean they'd been factory-made in an English-speaking
country, or that Islamic fundamentalists
were knocking up 81mm mortar rounds in a shed
behind Bolton railway station. All exported
munitions carry English ID. It's the language of
war and Iranian mortars. Rhett eased the
detonator from the pile of mash and looked at
the body on the ground. 'Fucking useless twat,
doped to the eyeballs – couldn't even kill himself
properly, could he?'

Dom took the two steps to me and kept his
voice low so the Kingsmen couldn't hear. 'You
see what I mean, Nick? These mortar rounds are
coming into the country in the same shipments
as the heroin. This guy's not a militant, he's a
victim, just like these soldiers. They're all just
pawns, Nick.' He pointed at the trackmarks,
trembling with anger. 'It's not just happening
here.'

He stared into the distance and his voice
cracked. I thought he might be about to cry.
'Dublin. London. They're all lining their pockets.
We have to do something about it. We can't just
stand by and do nothing.'

Wednesday, 28 February
2043 hrs
Basra Airport

'Say what you like about Saddam Hussein,' the
Media Ops guy said, 'but he didn't mess around
when it came to ordering up the gold leaf and
sculpted marble.'

We were sitting in a Portakabin at the COB
(Contingency Operating Base), getting increasingly
bored by the Royal Artillery captain's
tour-guide spiel. We weren't the new kids on the
block. All we'd needed was a brief on the situation,
a timetable for the embed, and a helicopter
ride out to where the action was. Personally, I
wasn't that interested in hearing about the fifty-six
windows on the front façade, the eighteen
giant reception rooms, twelve balconies, five
grand staircases and eight spacious toilets with
gold taps Saddam had knocked up on a
commandeered public park in 1990 while his
subjects scratched a squalid living around him.

Nor was Pete, by the look of him. He was trying
hard not to yawn.

'And that's just one of fifteen buildings in the
same complex,' the captain went on. 'Little did
he know his palace would become a fortified
British camp. The grounds are now home to
2 Rifles.'

I knew the second battalion of the British
Army's new rifle regiment had been formed a
week or two earlier from the Light Infantry,
Green Jackets and Gloucesters, but only because
the Scousers had been moaning about it. This
amalgamation business was all the rage. The
Duke of Lancs had been the King's Regiment
until five minutes ago.

The captain shrugged. 'Or maybe he did. In the
end, he never came here, not even for the weekend.'
He laughed at his own joke.

I felt sorry for the fucker. He would probably
have much preferred to be out there doing some
proper soldiering instead of fronting the army's
PR machine. That said, it was my job to protect
Dom and Pete, and not just from bombs and
ricochets. I put up my hand. 'Is there really a
Pizza Hut here? If so, can we order?'

When we'd landed from Jordan on the only
civilian flight serving the city, we'd seen the rows
of tents and vehicles stretching away to the
horizon. To most soldiers out there, 'COB' was
just another way of saying 'in the rear with the
gear'. Word had it they even had two Indian
guys running round on mopeds delivering
American Hots with extra pepperoni.

The captain looked at his watch. 'No time, I'm
afraid. Your carriage awaits.'

Even at night, which was the only time it wasn't
too dangerous to fly into the compound, the
pilot had to keep the rear tailgate down so
the gunner had a good arc of fire. It gave us a
spectacular view of the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway,
glinting in the moonlight as it snaked through a
series of mansions. They were flanked by palm
trees and what had probably once been exotic
gardens. Now they were just tank parks for 2
Rifles' armour, and as the Merlin dropped closer
to the ground it looked as if every square metre
had been rotavated by IDF (indirect fire).

The heli touched down just long enough for
the loadmaster to kick us out and then it was airborne
again. As briefed, we ran towards the
torchlight that flickered on the edge of
the pad, sweating in our Osprey body armour
and helmets. Things were going to be different in
the city. Our baby armour would have been as
much protection here as an extra pullover.

A total blackout was in force. Fuck knows who
held the torch, but he came from Essex. 'You can
expect at least three or four mortar or rocket
attacks a day while you're here.'

We followed him past wall upon wall of
HESCOs, massive defences made from circular
bins of galvanized steel mesh and polypropylene,
filled with whatever was to hand.
'Sand's the material of choice around here,' our
guy quipped, loving the chance to showboat a
little. 'But it stops shrapnel all the same.'

We soon reached a building. Moonlight shone
on huge marble pillars supporting a stone
portico.

'Fuck me.' Pete craned his neck. 'That's
Tallulah straight off to B&Q when I send her the
pics.'

We went through a pair of five-metre-tall
doors, and into a marble-floored hall. The guy
with the torch had to be the army's oldest
corporal.

Pete surveyed the empty room. 'Couldn't he
afford any furniture, then?'

'Looters had it away before the Royal Marines
arrived during the war.' The corporal nodded at
a door to the left. 'Just a few gold taps left in the
bogs. Fancy a brew?'

There was a loud thud out in the compound,
then another.

'Katyushas.' The corporal poured hot water
into white styrofoam cups. 'Hundred-and-seven-millimetre.
All brand-new stock. Everyone
knows it can't be local. No heavy-calibre
munitions have been made in Iraq since 2003.'

Pete asked the obvious question: 'So where is it
being made, then?'

He handed Pete a steaming cup. 'Iran, mate.
The border's just ten K away.'