Grey was starting to wonder whether they could win this firefight with sheer force and accuracy of fire alone. They could keep smashing the enemy until their machine guns ran dry, then resort to their personal weapons. But there were too many of the enemy, and he figured they were too well armed. They also appeared to be oblivious to the casualties they were taking, their fighters near suicidal in their desire to take the fight to the British enemy.
Only a Fedayeen force would be fighting with such fanatical intensity, and with such disregard for loss of life on their own side. Grey also feared that with every passing second hidden numbers of the enemy might be advancing through the darkness toward the Squadron’s LUP.
To his rear a flash of movement caught his eye. It was followed by a shattering explosion. A second projectile had smashed into the lake bed, this one right on the OC’s wagon’s heels. Unlike the RPG, it had left no fiery rocket’s trail. It blew the entire vehicle into the air, engulfing it in a thick cloud of smoke and blasted sand.
As the air cleared, Grey saw the heavy wagon sitting where it had landed: it had been thrown almost at right angles to its original position. Only an artillery round—or, God forbid, a tank shell—would have the power to hurl a Pinkie around like that.
Grey figured the shell must have plowed deep into the lake bed, burying itself in a layer of soft sand, which served to mask the blast. But it was only a matter of moments before a round like that scored a direct hit and pulverized a Pinkie—especially if an Iraqi battle tank had joined the battle.
Grey’s mind was racing, the gray matter churning out dozens of thoughts per second as he pulled the GPMG closer into his shoulder and traded fire with fire. Heavy armor was the one thing that the Squadron was ill equipped to take on. If they’d had some MILANs, they could have used those wire-guided missiles to blast a battle tank asunder. More the pity, then, that they didn’t have any.
Of course, it was blindingly obvious that the Iraqi Fedayeen didn’t operate artillery or battle tanks. Only the regular Iraqi army was equipped with those types of hardware. And the only Iraqi army unit known to be operating in this area was the Iraqi 5th Corps.
Had M Squadron just been ambushed by the very unit whose surrender they were supposed to be taking? And if so, had the Fedayeen shadowing the Squadron somehow called in the 5th Corps to join the battle?
Either way, their only option now was to get the hell out of the LUP. With heavy shells slamming into the limited terrain of the lake bed, they had to bug out and hope to lose the enemy in the dark. At least then they’d have the advantage of night-vision equipment. The cloak of night should serve to hide them, and if they could navigate their way south into the open desert, the Squadron might be able to evade and escape from the enemy that way.
A second massive shell went screaming across the lake bed and plowed into the soft ground on the far side of the HQ Troop’s vehicles. Whatever it was that was lobbing in those rounds, it had dropped the first slightly short and the second slightly long. That meant that the gunner had the HQ Troop bracketed, and the next shell was likely to land right on top of their position.
None of the Pinkies had the space to carry any extra passengers, least of all any wounded.
If they lost a wagon or two, things would get desperate.
From behind him Grey could hear engines revving wildly and smell the acrid stench of tortured, burning rubber. He turned to see the OC’s wagon spinning its wheels as it struggled to haul itself out of the soft sand and onto firmer ground. It looked as if the OC was trying to move his troop away from the heart of the lake bed, the epicenter of the killing ground.
His open-topped Land Rover was peppered with bullet holes, and great rents had been torn in the aluminum bodywork by shrapnel. Grey could hardly believe that it was still drivable. Behind it, and nose to tail with the OC’s wagon, the signals vehicle was also on the move. For a long second Grey figured that the lead wagon was trying to tow the other out of the kill zone, which was a fucking desperate set of straits to be in.
One crippled Land Rover dragging a second stricken vehicle—this was worse than the blind leading the blind. But then he realized that both wagons had somehow got moving under their own steam and were making for the exit to the lake bed. How both Pinkies could still be in action, Grey didn’t know, but at least the OC seemed to have woken up to the fact that either they got the hell out of there or they were dead.
As the lead wagon headed for the exit point, Grey could see that the OC had his hearing protectors on, which meant he had his
radio working. A clutch of quad bikes roared past the OC’s wagon, with Gunner at the head. Like sheepdogs shepherding a flock, they would be first out, scouting the way ahead and searching for the enemy. If the Boys from Bayji were out there lying in ambush, the quads might be able to radio back a warning.
Grey had heard no orders issued via the radios, so he presumed they’d follow standard operating procedure for pulling out of the LUP. The HQ Troop would lead, followed by Four and Five Troops, with Six taking up the rear. As Grey’s was the vehicle in Six Troop nearest to the exit point, he figured they’d have to be last out of the LUP.
They’d chosen this LUP carefully and they’d chosen well. It was a great defensive position. By bugging out, they were breaking all SOPs. But Grey didn’t doubt for one moment that the OC’s decision was the right one. With the Squadron getting hosed down by Dushka fire, RPGs, and now large-caliber shells, they had no option but to leave.
As the command wagon roared through the narrow exit point, Grey knew it was up to Six Troop, and his wagon in particular, to provide vital covering fire. The exit lay to the south of the wadi, which was within their arc of responsibility, and it was Grey’s vehicle that lay closest to it. They’d need to remain where they were, putting down rounds until the rest of the Squadron had got safely out of there.
They had been first into Iraq on the Chinooks, and they were going to be last out of the ambush.
So be it.
All the Six Troop vehicles were smashing rounds toward the enemy positions, throwing out a concentrated wall of fire so as to cover those escaping from the LUP. Grey could see the empty cartridges spewing out of the Gimpy’s breech, each a glowing cylinder of metal lit up golden-red in the muzzle flash of the .50-cal behind him.
As he kept his finger hard on the trigger, the spent shell cases went tumbling onto the wagon’s floor in one long, hot torrent of
smoking metal. Already, there was a slew of spent bullet cases down there, and it was greasy and treacherous under foot. Grey had to keep booting the used brass out of the way so as to stop himself from losing his footing as he ramped the weapon around to hit new targets.
He could only imagine that their Pinkie was riddled with fire, but the deafening noise of battle—plus the tearing impact of enemy bullets—was silenced by his ear protectors.
As the adrenaline surged through his veins, the sense that he was cut off and insulated from the world all around him deepened, taking on a viselike grip. Time seemed almost to freeze. It felt as if every second lasted for an age, and every action seemed etched into his mind in impossible detail and clarity.
In his heightened state of consciousness, he’d become hyperaware of every minute detail of the battle. With dreamlike lucidity, he sensed the individual movements of the machine gun as it sucked in the rounds, punched the detonation cap, and powered each bullet down the length of the barrel, spitting out a spinning projectile of death traveling at some three thousand feet per second.
It was almost as if his eyes were following those rounds as they left the barrel and rippled through the air separating him from those he wanted to kill. His knotted shoulder muscles burned and ached from the tension of hunching over the juddering weapon, and letting loose a near-continuous and deadly accurate stream of fire. But his mind blanked any pain.
As his brain processed a tumult of thoughts at the speed of light, he zeroed in on the one overriding priority right now: how to find, target, and kill the enemy and get the Squadron out of there. It burned his mind into a pure, crystal-clear focus in which nothing else in his life seemed to matter. His family back home, the mortgage, the unpaid bills, the recent arguments with his wife—they were all irrelevant when faced with the kill-or-be-killed reality of full-on combat.
Grey had never known anything like the level and intensity of fire they were up against. Despite the solid wall of rounds that he and Dude
were pouring out, the enemy seemed undaunted, and he could sense their bullets tearing metal all around him. He just prayed that none of the damage was terminal and that none of his men took a direct hit.
From behind him the Dude kicked away a third empty ammo box and slammed his fourth belt onto the .50-cal. They were eating up the ammunition at a furious rate. The Dude had already burned through half of his 600 rounds, and Grey was well through the Gimpy’s second belt of 200.
Standard operating procedure when going on the run was to follow the OC’s lead and to try to keep the Squadron together for as long as possible. Things started to move very quickly now. To the east of the wadi Four Troop broke fire, and one by one their Pinkies followed the OC’s lead. Moments later Five Troop ceased firing, abandoning their positions to the north of the sunken terrain so they could head for the exit point.
To the far right of Grey’s position the guns on Scruff’s wagon were the first of Six Troop’s to fall silent. Scruff’s Pinkie reversed away from the edge of the lake bed, turned in a cloud of dust, and kangarooed across the ground, which had been churned up by the passing wagons, not to mention the enemy fire.
There now remained two .50-cals, one grenade launcher, and three GPMGs putting down rounds on to the enemy, but the amount of fire they were taking in return was devastating. A second vehicle ceased firing and turned to leave. Now it was only Grey’s wagon and one other remaining, and they were fast becoming the focus of all the incoming. It was total murder.
Sergeant Dave “Jamie” Jamieson was the commander of the other vehicle, and the Six Troop sergeant major. He was a wiry, fit-as-fuck Liverpool native, and Grey knew him to be as wily as a fox and as fierce as a lion. For an instant Jamie leaned across toward Grey and signaled for him to get his wagon out of there.
“YOU LEAVE!” Jamie yelled. “WE’LL COVER YOU!”
“WE’RE NEAREST THE EXIT!” Grey roared back without taking his trigger finger off his juddering, smoking-hot weapon. “WE’RE LAST OUT! GET THE FUCK ON YOUR WAY!”
Grey gestured for Jamie to pull his wagon out while he still could, and with their Pinkie providing covering fire. Jamie hesitated for an instant, then signaled his thanks, and his driver finally got their vehicle under way. When the shit hit the proverbial fan, the men of the Squadron would fight to the death for each other. That was the Special Forces ethos, and the spirit that bound such elite warriors together.
Jamie’s wagon reversed, powered forward, and made a mad dash for the narrow exit. Only when it was clawing its way out of the sunken lake bed did Grey finally give the order.
“FUCKING CEASE FIRE! LET’S GET MOVING!”
Moth gunned the engine on their wagon and ramped it into a screaming turn. As he did so, Grey and Dude remained hunched over their smoking weapons, but they eased their fingers off the triggers. For the first time in what felt like an age, the guns of M Squadron had fallen silent.
As Moth slammed the Pinkie into first and floored the accelerator, Grey took one last look at the position they were evacuating. It was pure Armageddon in there. Streams of 12.7mm tracer rounds were slamming into it from all directions, transforming the lake bed into a raging sea of fire.
Moth raced for the exit, weaving the Pinkie through savage bursts of 12.7mm. For an instant, Grey saw a massive explosion engulf the area where the command vehicle had been positioned, throwing a fist of blasted sand high into the air. It left behind a huge smoking crater where a few moments earlier the HQ Troop had been positioned. They’d got out of there not a moment too soon.
The nose of Grey’s Pinkie was thrusting its way into the narrow neck of the exit when he sensed a massive shadowed form behind him. He turned to see the hulking shape of an armored beast come thundering over the far side of the lake bed. For a moment it teetered on the six-foot-high lip of the wadi, then it tilted forward and the tracks of the vehicle slammed down onto the soft sand, the wall of the lake bed half collapsing under its weight.
As the Iraqi armor hit the level ground of the lake bed, Grey’s wagon powered ahead and careered around the corner at the high
end of the exit point. The worry now was what awaited him and his men on the far side when they hit the open desert.
To the east Grey spotted a thick dust trail snaking off into the darkness. That had to be the route the other wagons had taken.
“FOLLOW THAT DUST TRAIL!” he yelled into Moth’s ear. “WHATEVER IT TAKES—DON’T FUCKING LOSE IT!”
As Moth accelerated in that direction, their wagon rounded the eastern side of the wadi. Grey glanced toward the position they’d just evacuated, and in amongst the dust and the smoke rising from the lake bed he spotted three indistinct silhouettes. They were vehicles, perched on the very rim of the lake bed and occupying the high ground overlooking it.
For a moment he wondered whether they were some of M Squadron’s wagons that had somehow doubled back to the LUP. But when he took a closer look, the reality hit him like a steam train: they were far too large to be Pinkies.
Even in the gathering darkness those indistinct forms looked like KrAZ-225s. A Soviet-era six-wheeled steel monster of a truck, the KrAZ-225 was in widespread use with the Iraqi military. It was a fantastic off-road vehicle, capable of seventy-five kilometers per hour over just about any kind of terrain.
Scores of figures were leaping off the backs of the trucks, and within moments Grey had spotted the distinctive silhouettes of Iraqi Army forage caps, plus AK-47 assault rifles. There was no doubt in his mind anymore: the trucks were carrying a regular Iraqi infantry unit.