The Squadron’s last ERV was a four-way junction of dirt tracks set at the extreme northern end of the Ninawa Desert. It had been chosen because it was visually distinctive and memorable, with the ruin of an ancient stone-walled fortress lying to the north side of the crossroads. It was to there that Grey decided to try to charter a route using his compass and his mapping.
He turned to Moth. “Ignore all those twats crapping on about splitting up. Head three fingers to the left of the Southern Cross.
Forty kilometers south is the first ERV. Get up as much speed as you can, ’cause that’s where we’re bloody going.”
Moth swung the wagon round to the new bearing, the other vehicles moving into line behind him. For now, at least, they were holding together as a unit. As they probed ahead into the hostile night Grey had an image in his mind of a lone quad haring across the desert. Gunner would have to box around the Iraqi forces, which meant it would probably be a good two-hundred-kilometer round trip across rough terrain before he hit the Syrian border.
Luckily, he’d have his silk escape map threaded into the waistband of his pants, so he’d have the means to navigate his way toward the combat RV. The map was 1:200,000 scale and covered the whole of Iraq, so it was like a massive parachute when unrolled, but it was more than good enough to plan a route to hit an unmissable feature like the Syrian border. He’d also have the half dozen gold sovereigns provided to all SF operators sewn into his clothing somewhere crafty. If it came to it, he could use those to bribe whatever Syrian forces he came across to allow him and his passenger through.
Most of Gunner’s spare fuel would be on one of the Pinkies, so he’d only have whatever was in the bike’s tank, plus maybe a small can of extra fuel strapped to his quad. But presumably he had enough to make it to the border or he wouldn’t have made a break for it alone—he’d have stuck with one of the wagons. Gunner was a slick operator and a smart navigator, and he’d not have set off for the combat RV without the juice to get there.
It was the officer clinging onto the rear of the quad that Grey really felt for. Perched back there on the metal rack, he’d hardly have been privy to Gunner’s decision to split. After a ride like the one that lay ahead of them, his backside was going to be so sore he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week. As Grey played the image through his mind, he couldn’t help but crack up laughing.
He didn’t keep smiling for long, though. The alternative scenario was that the two of them wouldn’t make it. There were any number of reasons why they might fail. They might run out of fuel. They
might shoot over a ravine in the dark and roll the quad. They might go into a hide during the day, and the enemy might find them.
Worst of all, if Gunner tried to box around south, they might blunder into the Fedayeen and get taken captive. Grey shuddered to think what would happen to them if they did. If there was one thing that Grey was determined to avoid above all else, it was falling into their bastard hands alive.
Grey took a quick glance behind him. The three wagons were well spaced apart and showing no lights, and the sky above them remained blissfully dark. They no longer had Gunner probing the way ahead, but even so he figured they had a half-decent chance of making it through the screen of enemy forces unseen. If they did, they’d loop around southeast and make direct for their ERV.
But all of that was predicated upon the Fedayeen remaining stationary in their positions, and unfortunately that was something they just couldn’t count on. The Fedayeen had been constituted as a fast guerrilla-type force able to rove around in their highly maneuverable vehicles doing hit-and-run-style operations. They had an organic, flexible command structure, and staying put really wasn’t their style.
The three wagons pushed onward for twenty minutes or so in a tense and brittle silence. Instinctively, all the men knew this was their last-gasp effort. It seemed to Grey like the silent desert was holding its breath as it waited to see if they’d make it through the wall of steel all around them.
It was then that a crescent of headlights emerged from the desert ahead of them, stretching across their path. As Grey stared into that swath of illumination, he was forced to accept that the enemy had comprehensively outmaneuvered and outsmarted the British force. They had second-guessed their intended line of escape and cut them off in every direction so as to cover all points southeast through to southwest.
Grey took one last look at the map nestled in his lap, but he knew they were out of options. If they kept running in any direction southeast to southwest, they’d blunder into that screen of waiting
Fedayeen, which outnumbered them four to one and outgunned them even more comprehensively.
It was twelve o’clock midnight by now, and they’d been running and fighting for six hours. The Squadron had been brassed up, smashed up, bogged in, and forced to blow its vehicles, plus they’d lost half the guys and were split into at least four separate units. Now their force of three Pinkies and twenty-six men had been boxed in by a superior enemy force, and with no way to use their heavy machine guns due to all the bodies clinging to the wagons.
There wasn’t a man amongst them who gave a shit anymore as to who exactly the Iraqi forces they were up against might be. The Fedayeen were a known quantity; these had to be the Boys from Bayji. But very likely the regular infantry and armor were units hailing from their mission objective, the Iraqi 5th Corps. Not for the first time the intel they’d been given had proved a total crock of shit. It would be hard to imagine a force less likely to surrender than the men who were coming after them now.
Every which way Grey looked at it, from the get-go theirs had been a true mission impossible. They had driven into what amounted to an ambush, one very likely planned and conceived over several days. Just as he had feared from the start, they were sixty men up against a force of 100,000—that’s if the entire 5th Corps had decided to join in the hunt for the Squadron.
Right now he couldn’t see any way out of the trap that had been set for them. In fact, the force whose surrender the Squadron had been sent in to take looked poised to annihilate them, for there was no way that Grey and his ilk were likely to surrender. It was the ultimate irony in a mission defined by such travesties.
Grey figured it was time to face the music. He turned to Moth. “Mate, there’s no way through. There’s nowhere left to run. Best you slow the wagon.”
Without making a comment or giving any visible reaction, Moth eased off on the gas. As he did so, there was no denying the young operator’s icy cool.
Grey scanned the terrain all around them. “Let’s try to find some decent cover, eh?”
Moth indicated a patch of darker shadow lying just to their left front. He drove the wagon into it, and it proved to be a miniature lake bed set just below the level of the surrounding terrain. The bed of the depression was solid as a rock, so this was no wadi of death—or at least not in the way the last had been. It would provide some cover from being seen, plus minimal cover from fire, which was far better than none at all.
Moth got them into position and cut the engine. The other wagons pulled in close. Grey leaned across to Ed so he could have words.
“We’re boxed in,” he whispered as the quiet closed all around them. “The enemy’s to the west and the north of us, and we’ll hit Fedayeen if we continue south. If we cut east we’ll hit the N252 and a load of other roads and built-up shit. So the question is: Where’s left to fucking run?”
Ed didn’t answer. It was hardly surprising. In truth, there was zero room for maneuver.
“Okay, this is my suggestion,” Grey continued. “We stop running. We go firm. We get the extra lads off the wagons and into all-round defense. At least that way we can use the heavy machine guns. The night’s dark and they’ll take a while to find us. In the meantime, Moth can dial up some fast air.”
Ed nodded. The relief was clear on his features. “Let’s do it. There’s no way out of this shit without some air cover. Get the lads into position, and I’ll dial up Headquarters.”
Now that every man had a role to play and was no longer just a useless passenger, they started sparking. Any ideas about splitting up were instantly forgotten. The men piled off the wagons and unlashed the M72 LAWs from the Land Rovers’ hoods, and Scruff grabbed the
SLAR
85mm rocket launcher together with its thermobaric warheads. They moved into defensive positions all around the wadi rim, concentrating on the areas of greatest threat.
The M72 LAW is a single-use weapon, so once those three rocket-launchers had been fired they were done. By contrast, the
SLAR
offered the men some repeat-use firepower of untested potency. Back at their forward mounting base they’d dry-rehearsed using the
SLAR
, but with no warheads to spare, no one had yet managed to fire the thing to assess the potency of one of those thermobaric rockets.
For the first time in what felt like an age, the gunners on the three wagons were able to take possession of their two .50-cal machine guns, the one grenade launcher, and the three GPMGs. As they swung the weapons round to cover the oncoming Fedayeen and bunched their shoulders in preparation for the coming firefight, they felt strangely calm and empowered.
While they had bullets left and could use the heavy weapons, they were still a force of elite operators to be reckoned with. Every man amongst them knew to hold his fire until the very last moment, and then to unleash hell—for once they opened up, the enemy was sure get an illume round bang over their position, which would make them sitting targets.
With the defenses set, Grey, Moth and Ed got sparking. Ed cranked up the radio to check in with SF Headquarters. Grey began working out the exact grid of the patrol’s position to pass to Headquarters. Meanwhile, Moth got on the satcom, dialing up any warplanes he could beg, borrow, or steal from the racetrack system they’d be flying over central Iraq.
“This is
Zero Six Bravo
making an any-stations call,” Moth intoned into the satcom. “This is our situation: we’re a British Special Forces patrol eighty kilometers to the southeast of Salah. This is our grid: 15839501. Repeat: 15839501. We’re surrounded by the enemy and in need of fast air. Do any call signs copy?”
All he got in reply was an echoing void of static.
“Repeat:
Zero Six Bravo
requesting fast air, at grid 15839501. This is the code word:
battle-axe
. Repeat:
battle-axe
.”
“Battle-axe” was the code word for a Special Forces patrol in need of air support. The code word was changed every twenty-four hours and passed down from SFHQ to the various patrols. Fortunately, Moth had had the foresight to get the present code word from the
HQ Troop just before stand-to at the LUP where the enemy had first hit them.
There was silence for a long second. Then: “Roger that,
Zero Six Bravo
, this is
Viper Five Three
. I’m hearing you loud and clear. We’re a pair of F-16s, three hundred clicks south of your position. We’ve got full payloads and four-zero—repeat: four-zero—minutes’ play time. What can I do for ya?”
The pilot’s voice was badly distorted by the range of the call and the interference, and it was filtered through the alien suck-and-blow of his oxygen mask. But he had an unmistakably broad American drawl, and that voice was one of the most welcome sounds that the men had ever heard.
“
Viper Five Three
,
Zero Six Bravo
. We’re under attack from Iraqi main battle tanks and infantry trucks to the north and west of our grid, plus Fedayeen in SUVs to the south. I need you overhead to smash them. Our grid is 15839501. Repeat: 15839501. Read back.”
“Roger that,
Zero Six Bravo
, your grid is 15839501. Repeat: 15839501. We’ll be in your overhead in approximately ten—repeat: one-zero—minutes. Out.”
The radio traffic had been short and sweet, not to mention decisive. Moth replaced the satcom handset and his ice-blue eyes met those of Grey. “We’ll have a pair of F-16s overhead in ten minutes. They’ve got full loads of ordnance and forty minutes’ play time. Fucking result.”
Grey broke into a smile. “You hear that, Dude? Uncle Sam’s coming to the fucking rescue! That’s why we love you Americans, Dude. Let’s get the fucking bombs in and smash them.”
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon flies at almost twice the speed of sound, or 2,410 kilometers per hour. It comes equipped with a 21mm six-barreled M61 Vulcan Gatling gun, plus 7,300 kilograms of ordnance. The pair of jets in-bound had full payloads, which meant they were fully bombed up. The F-16 could carry four massive 2,000-pound JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions, or guided smart bombs) or as many as eight smaller CBU-87s (combined effect munitions, or cluster bombs) or something similar.
The M61 Vulcan Gatling gun would be armed with 511 cannon rounds. A couple of strafes with that, and the warplanes’ armored-piercing bullets could rip the guts out of a score of Iraqi T-72 battle tanks, not to mention the KrAZ-225 infantry trucks and the Fedayeen wagons. In theory, all the men had to do was stay hidden for ten minutes, and they’d have a pair of F-16s overhead tearing up the bad guys.
Grey passed the word around the patrol. It was the first piece of positive news that the men had had since battle had been joined, and it lifted their spirits immensely. It felt good not to be running anymore. It felt good to have made the decision to stand and fight, and especially with those fast jets inbound.
A few short moments later Ed succeeded in raising Headquarters. He came off the air and glanced across at Grey. “They’re going to try to pull us out by Chinook. They’ve got helos on standby on thirty minutes’ notice. They’ll need to give us coordinates for an LZ to do the hot extraction, and they’ll need time to de-conflict and clear an air corridor with the Americans.”
“What’s wrong with doing the hot extraction from right here?” Grey queried. “We’ve drawn the bulk of the enemy onto us, so why delay? Let’s get the fuck out of here.”