The Squadron OC plus his Headquarters Troop had been forced to go to ground, and they’d lost contact with one element of the Squadron completely: the lone Land Rover plus the clutch of quads, with however many men crammed onto those vehicles. Furthermore they’d got one quad on the run two-up, which would be crashing across the border into Syria if Gunner had his way, or falling into enemy hands if he didn’t.
Either way, the Squadron had been well and truly scattered, so now probably
was
the time to head for the combat RV. But before they could try for Syrian territory, they’d have to cross the N253, a main road that runs along the Iraqi side of the border. And if Grey had been the commander in overall charge of the Iraqi forces, it was there that he’d have the main body of his armor and infantry positioned. That way he could use the Fedayeen to drive the British patrol onto their guns.
The lead wagon was rocketing ahead as fast as it could go, when Grey caught the ominous growl of a powerful engine just to the north of their line of march. He locked eyes with Raggy. They’d both recognized the sound. There was a tank on the prowl out there not far ahead of them, and it sounded like a monster.
Moth gunned the Land Rover, pushing it ever harder. But the terrain here was far harsher than the Ninawa Desert in terms of navigating at night and at speed. It was a flat, rocky plain, crisscrossed in every direction by dry, shallow gullies. Mostly they were oriented in a southeasterly direction, and when it rained here they’d channel the floodwaters toward the seasonal lake of the Kabrat Sunaysilah,
lying on the northern border of the desert. The easiest thing would be to head for the cover of one of those gullies, yet that would channel the patrol in the opposite direction to the way they needed to go.
Syria lay west: the gullies would funnel them south and east. Instead, Moth found himself having to search for a route across the narrow, steep-sided obstructions while the men clung on to the wagons for all they were worth.
As the lead Pinkie crawled down the friable slope of the next gully, Moth made the snap decision to pull up in the cover of its walls. The throaty growl of the approaching tank was growing ever louder as it churned through the smoke and the fumes.
The two wagons behind pulled up alongside them, and the men piled off in all-round defense. With LAWs held at the ready and the heavy machine guns freed for action, they were now in a snap ambush. Almost as an afterthought, Moth reached forward and unleashed his grenade launcher from its cowboy holster. If that Lion of Babylon came charging over the wadi’s edge, they’d hammer it with everything they had.
The more modern Asad Babils had laminated armor to the front and rear, to provide extra protection against HEAT (high-explosive antitank) armor-piercing projectiles, so there was little the men were likely to achieve against one of those. But it would be better to go down fighting.
The clatter of the tank tracks could be heard clearly now as it hunted through the smoke and the wreckage. From behind them they caught the odd snarl of a speeding Toyota, but it was the howl of that T-72’s massive twelve-cylinder diesel engine that had them transfixed. No point going anywhere until that had been shaken off or dealt with.
The most advanced Lions of Babylon had been fitted with Belgian-made thermal imaging sights for the 125mm smooth-bore main gun. That would explain how the enemy had been able to track the Squadron through the dark and the thick smoke as they escaped from the first LUP. If the battle tank now bearing down on them was fitted with such a system, it would be able to see through the drifting smoke.
The clanking of the approaching behemoth became ever more deafening as the men tensed themselves to open fire. For an instant its squat desert-gray form came looming out of the shadows, its near-side track tearing along the western lip of the ravine and throwing down rocks and sand into the bed of the wadi.
There was a horrible moment when it seemed as if the lip of the wadi above them would collapse, bringing the 41.5-ton armored monster down on top of them. And then it had roared past, the long neck of its main cannon swinging this way and that as it scanned through the drifting smog. Getting the three wagons below ground level and out of sight had more than likely saved them. But how many more times were they going to get this lucky?
The noise of the battle tank faded, and finally Moth fired up the Pinkie and nosed out of the ravine, setting a course westward for Syria. As they pressed onward through the relative quiet of the night, a thought struck Grey: for the first time in many hours they were no longer under direct attack.
He glanced at the faintly luminous dial of his watch. It was 0200. No more than three hours left until first light. He didn’t doubt that come sunup they’d be pretty much out of options. Most likely they’d find some kind of an LUP, but Grey wasn’t kidding himself that they’d be able to lie low all day long without being discovered. There were scores of enemy vehicles out there combing the terrain, and he was not even sure that they could manage to evade them during the hours of darkness—and more seemed to be joining the hunt with every passing hour.
Either they had to make it across the Syrian border or they got the Chinooks in sometime within the next couple of hours—and all before the wagons ran out of fuel. He glanced at the gauge. The needle was hovering at just above the reserve-tank level. As overloaded as they were, they’d get maybe thirty clicks out of that—possibly less, depending on the terrain. Plus he knew they had a few glugs of diesel left in the one remaining jerrican that hadn’t been exhausted. They needed to get to a hot-extraction grid or cross into Syria bloody quickly, and before the tanks ran dry.
The lead wagon emerged from the final ghostly whips of smoke remaining from the
SLAR
attack and pushed into the open. Grey put a call through to Ed on the radio.
“We’re running low on fuel and there’s precious few hours left of darkness. Let’s stop for a Chinese.”
“Got it,” Ed confirmed. “Pull over when you can find some cover.”
The lead Pinkie rolled to a halt in a shallow depression and Moth cut the engine. The two other wagons pulled up, one on either side. The top gunners covered their arcs as the extra men tumbled off the vehicles and gathered round. The wagons were close enough so all twenty-six could hear what was to be said.
“This is how I see it,” Grey began, speaking into the tense silence. He was one of the most battle-experienced of the lot, and he’d largely been navigating the patrol ever since they left the wadi of death. He had the skills and the experience to speak and to be heard. He outlined the patrol’s predicament, then asked for any suggestions from those present. No one had much to say, so he plowed on. He was stating the obvious, but it needed to be said so they could make the toughest of decisions.
“There’s no way we can lie up around here come daylight. We’ve seen enough of the enemy to know they can scour just about every inch of the terrain, and if nothing else the tracks we leave will lead them right to us.”
Raggy grunted in agreement. “Time’s fucking tight now. There’s only three hours left until first light. One way or the other we’ve got to get ourselves gone.”
“Right, so let’s go firm on a grid and get the Chinooks in,” Grey continued. “Or let’s get a grid passed from Headquarters, one we can make this side of the N253, and let’s rendezvous with the helos there. That’s Plan A. But if there’s no helo pickup possible by 0330, we need to face the fact that we’re not getting pulled out of here. We’ll need to run west and make a break for the Syrian border, ’cause there’s no way we can hide around here come sunrise.”
“Agreed,” said Ed. “We go for the helo pickup, and if not for Plan B—which is to make for the combat RV before—”
His last words were cut off by a sharp burst of small-arms fire. About a kilometer to the east, tracer rounds went arcing into the sky. There was no way the fire had been aimed at the patrol, for it was well wide of the mark. It looked more like some kind of a signal, and there were no guesses as to who the signal was intended for. Everywhere to their east and south there were headlights stabbing the darkness.
Half a dozen sets of lights turned toward that burst of fire and began to converge on it. For a moment it crossed Grey’s mind that it might have signaled that the Fedayeen had found one of the scattered elements of the Squadron. It was possible they’d cornered Gunner and his Rupert passenger as they tried to evade and escape on the quad. There was just no way of knowing.
“What about the rest of the guys?” he asked Ed. “Any news on Gunner? Or the third force: the lone Pinkie and the quads?”
“No word on Gunner,” Ed replied. “But I was onto Headquarters as we moved out of the last LUP, and the third force has just come up on comms.”
“Nice one!”
“Fucking result!”
“So what’s the score with that lot?”
“There are twenty-four blokes with them,” Ed said. “They’ve got one Pinkie and half a dozen quads, so they’re hopelessly overloaded, worse than us. They’re into some difficult terrain: rocks, boulders and ravines. But they’ve gone to ground as best they can and they’re playing hide-and-seek with the enemy . . .”
Grey whistled. “Fucking hell, and we thought we had it bad. The quads must be double-bagged, maybe more, and they’ll be burning up the juice. Plus they’ve got fuck-all heavy weapons.”
“Yeah, but it’s the quads that saved the Squadron,” Scruff cut in. “Far more of them got through the swamp than the Pinkies. If the lead troop had all been riding Pinkies, they’d have been finished.”
“They taken casualties?” Grey asked. Clearly, that third group was the most vulnerable.
“Headquarters is seeking casualty stats right now,” said Ed, “but it’s a hellishly confused picture. They’ll try to marry us up with that
lot so they can extract us as one force from the same grid. But Head Shed says don’t worry about them right now. Our job it to get ourselves out of the shit. That’s our priority.”
“Presumably, Headquarters are still looking to pull the OC out first?” Grey queried.
“Yeah. We may get a bit of a runaround as they try to pull the boss out, but that’s just how it is. He’s the last person we want getting captured or killed.”
“One thing,” remarked Moth. “Let’s try to get some air. We need something that can sit above us, looking nasty and ugly and ready to mallet the enemy if they get too close. That’s the only way to get the Chinooks in.”
“Try for some air,” Ed confirmed. A pause. “So we’re decided?”
There were terse nods all round.
Grey glanced at the men. Their faces were caked in mud and dust mixed with cordite burn marks and streaks of smoke. In their ripped and bloodied combat uniforms and with self-administered bandages slapped on here and there, they looked like a band of total desperadoes. Which right now was exactly what Grey figured they were, especially when considering their chances of getting out of this one alive.
Moth got on the satcom and put out an all-stations call to any available warplanes while Ed dialed up Headquarters to get a usable extraction point. It was a few moments before he was able to pass the grid of the new helo pickup to Grey.
He also had news for Moth. Headquarters had promised an AC-130 Spectre gunship to be orbiting in their overhead within the next hour. The Specter had been scrambled from the nearest friendly air base and was flying in specifically to give top cover to the scattered remnants of M Squadron. Having a Specter above them would sure make all the difference right now.
The Hercules AC-130 Spectre is the cream of air cover, being an armored behemoth that can loiter in the air for several hours flying orbits above the battlefield. It boasts a 25mm GAU-12 Equalizer cannon, a 40mm Bofors autocannon and a 105mm M102 howitzer.
It has unrivaled night-vision optics, pinpoint targeting systems, and a crew of thirteen to fly and fight her, including pilots, a navigator, fire-control officers, sensor operators, loadmasters, and the all-important gunners.
In short, it was the perfect air asset to de-conflict a complex and confused battle space—identifying friend from foe—and to target and hit hostile forces. The likelihood of it being unable to do any attack runs—as with the F-16s—was pretty much zero. Its call sign was Ghost One Six, and it would be above them in sixty minutes’ time.
Grey punched the coordinates of the new helo pickup point into his GPS and worked it through the mapping.
“RV point with the Chinooks is five kilometers due west of our present position,” he announced, “plus five clicks short of the N253. It’s doable.”
“Right, let’s get moving,” Ed confirmed.
The men mounted up the vehicles. Moth fired up their wagon and prepared to move off. But as he did so, there was a furious cry from one of the wagons to their rear.
“The wagon’s fucking dying! Bastard fucking wagon’s fucking died on us!”
It was Scruff. Grey could only imagine his Pinkie—like the rest of the wagons—had been torn up by the 12.7mm fire and shrapnel, and that was what had made it finally give up the ghost. It was a miracle that the three Land Rovers had kept going thus far, but now they were going to have to get the men from the last wagon to cross-deck onto the two that remained.
Grey ran back to Scruff’s position to find out what the hell had happened. It turned out that the rearmost of the vehicles had in fact run out of diesel. For a moment Grey was frozen with indecision and then he made the call.
“Fuck it, keep everyone on your wagon. We’ll refuel it from our jerry. We’ve got to keep the wagons going, or we’re fucked. They’ll catch us.”
Bodies piled off the lead Pinkie, as Dude unearthed the last remaining jerrican and hauled it out of the rear. He handed it to
Grey. It had a five-gallon capacity, and it felt as if it was around one-quarter full.
Under normal circumstances the Pinkies could manage twenty miles per gallon across rough terrain. Overloaded as they were, that was probably down to fifteen. If Grey drained the entire can into Scruff’s wagon, he was giving it no more than thirty miles of fuel max. Either they got the Chinooks in pronto or they’d be down to twenty-six men sharing two crippled vehicles.