A “one-ship” was military-speak for a lone aircraft. They were still trying to pull the HQ Troop out, so they’d been forced to separate the two Chinooks.
Grey glanced at the cloud of steam that was boiling up from their engine and presumably scalding Raggy’s balls off. “No fucking loss there. Ours is about to fucking pile in on us.”
“The helos are coming in with top cover from fast air,” added Ed. “That should keep the fucking Fedayeen’s heads down.”
The Chinooks would be fitted with internal fuel bladders to give them extra range. And for sure they’d need it, given the runaround from grid to grid they’d been getting as the scattered forces of M Squadron tried to outrun and evade the enemy. The bladders sat in the hold, cutting down the space for men and cargo. With a lone helo inbound, there would be precious little room for the twenty-six men, let alone all their gear and the wagons.
As Ed’s voice went off the air, Grey double-checked the grid on his map. They had five clicks to go, and if the fast jets could drive off the Fedayeen they might just make it. If not, there was no way they could hold that grid, fight off the Fedayeen, and get the lone Chinook in safely.
If Grey were the Iraqi commander sitting in that convoy on the N253, just as soon as the British force went static he’d start dropping shells onto their grid. He’d get the Fedayeen to talk the rounds in, walking the 125mm tank shells and their artillery rounds right onto the British position. Basically, any helo crew putting down amidst all of that would be committing suicide.
Grey glanced toward the heavens, and he fancied he could just make out the faint roar of a couple of jets inbound. That, he hoped, was the fast air escorting the lone Chinook in.
Moments later the lead pilot came up on the air. Moth gave him the talk-on as he continued to coax their ailing wagon through the horrendous terrain. He was having to yell to make his voice heard above the screaming whine from just beneath the hood, to which had now been added a deafening steel-on-steel clanking sound.
“This is the sketch: we’re making for an extraction grid two kilometers north of here, but we’ve got enemy wagons in hot pursuit. We need to go firm on that grid and wait for a Chinook to extract
us. Can you keep the enemy off our backs and away from that RV point until we’re pulled out of there?”
“Roger that,” came back the crisp tones of the lead RAF pilot. “It’s a very confused battle space down there, so we’ll come in first in a low-level pass. If that doesn’t do it, we’ll start hitting enemy targets. Either way, we’ll keep a good watch over you.”
Moments later a pair of Tornadoes came screaming out of the darkness to the southwest, tearing over the N253 and practically kissing the desert as they thundered across the Fedayeen positions. More or less the instant the jets roared past overhead, the enemy vehicles in pursuit slowed to a halt and their lights went dark.
The pair of British warplanes banked around in a burning turn, then tore back across the enemy positions like streaks of lightning blazing through the night. They dipped low over the Fedayeen positions, their pounding slipstream ripping the branches from the scattered palm trees as they practically set the desert ablaze with their afterburners.
For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the terrain behind the three battle-weary wagons had gone dark. It was totally devoid of enemy headlights, muzzle flashes, or any sign of movement. Presumably, the enemy commander figured the jets would soon be gone, in which case he could finish off the British force at his leisure.
The one thing he couldn’t know was that in the wake of those warplanes a heavy-lift Chinook was inbound and the twenty-six men on the three crippled vehicles were just a few thousand yards away from getting plucked out of the cauldron of death. If they could make it out of there, rarely would a force have snatched such a victory—or at least survival—from the jaws of defeat.
That was if the men could make it to that grid, get the Chinook in safely, and get pulled out alive.
The vehicles hammered onward, although Moth felt able to ease off the gas just a little, with those warplanes above them. It was just as well, for the wagon was spitting and popping as the engine gasped its last.
Barely minutes later they pulled to a halt on a featureless patch of ground. Moth killed the motor just moments before it seemed destined to burst into flames. Raggy dived off the hot, smoking hood as men piled off the rear into all-around defense.
Grey’s first priority now was to blow the wagon. He started to throw out equipment from the rear so he could get to the charge and prepare to set the fuse system. He dug down to it, and his frozen fingers began feverishly to rip off the black gaffer tape that protected the trigger mechanism. In the back of his mind he knew he had to check it over first—for one or more of the wagons’ fuses in the wadi of death had failed to blow.
Ed was on the radio calling for an update on the helo extraction. He came off the air following a terse exchange, balling his fists into his temples with tension.
“Change of fucking plan!” he yelled over the radios. “We’re not going to blow the wagons. If the Chinook’s delayed it’ll come down as the wagons blow and get caught in the blast. Rip everything out
that you can salvage, and we’ll leave ’em to the fast air. Chinook inbound in five minutes.”
In spite of their utter exhaustion the men started sparking now. So began a fevered rush of activity as they tried to tear all the sensitive equipment out of the wagons in the short time they had remaining. In theory they were leaving them to get hit by the warplanes and denied to the enemy that way, but there were never any guarantees.
Working fast and trying not to show any lights, they started stripping sensitive equipment from the Pinkies as the Tornadoes flew close and very noisy orbits above them. Grey set about ripping the radio from its mounting, while Moth did the same with the other comms systems and their Blue Force Tracking unit.
That done, Grey grabbed the GPMG, unbolted it from its pivot mount, and slung it over his shoulder. He clicked together the 400 rounds of link and wrapped the entire lot around his neck and torso. He hauled his Bergen and the Colt assault rifle out of the back of the wagon and dumped them on the ground beside him.
To his rear the Dude moved off from the wagon staggering under the weight of the .50-cal plus the final tin of ammo with its few remaining rounds.
Grey stepped away from their Pinkie with the GPMG on his shoulder, Bergen on his back, ammo wrapped around him, and his Colt in hand. In spite of his total and utter exhaustion, he was now carrying some eighty-plus kilos of weight slung around his person and somehow managing to stay on his feet.
He glanced at Moth and Raggy, plus some of the others from their wagon. Every man was plastered with mud and dust, mixed with a slick of cold, icy sweat, and were weighed down with all the gear that they could carry.
“You blokes ready?” Grey grunted.
He got a series of terse nods all around.
For an instant he paused, eyeing the trusted Pinkie that they were abandoning. He leaned in, checked the milometer, and did a quick mental calculation. From the reading, he figured they’d
covered 1,019 kilometers since setting out from the LZ north of the Euphrates, and for a good part of that they’d been taking murderous fire. But he’d never have the chance to count the unbelievable number of hits their wagon had taken, for this was the last good-bye.
Grey turned to walk the short distance to the LZ. Not a moment too soon he detected a distant, eerie blue glow moving across the desert toward them. It was the unmistakable signature of a Chinook coming in low and fast at night. At that height, and with the way the twin rotors whipped up the air, the static electricity formed a flickering dust halo, like some kind of an alien light show.
Right now, it was the most welcome sight that any of the men had ever seen.
The lone Chinook circled in from the southeast, its twin rotors silhouetted against the glow of first light. It flared above the LZ, which Ed had marked with a distinctive symbol formed from IR Cyalumes. The helo came down in a thick, choking dust cloud, the door gunners sweeping the terrain with their miniguns as it descended, but there seemed to be nothing moving out there that was remotely close to the LZ.
The helo’s ramp was down before the wheels touched the desert, and the men staggered aboard. Grey took one last look around him before the Chinook spooled up to speed. He tried to check that Moth, Dude, Raggy, and the others were all on board, but with the choking cloud of dust kicked up by the rotors he could barely see his hand in front of his face.
The indistinct forms crouched all around him were pretty much unrecognizable, and the last thing they ever wanted to do here was to leave a man behind.
From the open ramp there came a yell: “Twenty-six aboard!”
The helo’s loadmaster had done a body count, so presumably that should be everyone. Though they were a fragmented group culled from across M Squadron, presumably all the men from their makeshift force were present and correct.
Let’s go.
The turbines reached a screaming fever pitch, and the helo hauled itself into the air. With the twin rotors powering the Chinook skywards, half the men of M Squadron were now pulling away from the desert that had so nearly been the death of them.
Through the porthole-like window Grey could see scores of burning vehicles scattered over the terrain to the north, south, and the east, indicating the magnitude of the area over which they had done battle, plus the true the extent of the forces they had been up against.
It was an overwhelming sight, and it reinforced in his mind just what a miracle it was that they were getting the hell out of there. They’d penetrated a thousand kilometers behind enemy lines, yet somehow they’d escaped from the trap that had been set for them in the cauldron that was northern Iraq. They’d done so by the very skin of their teeth and with the gods on their side. Somehow they were returning home from Operation No Return—as long as no one put a surface-to-air missile or a long burst of 12.7mm fire into the Chinook.
The helo banked hard, turned southwards, and accelerated to its 250-kilometers-per-hour cruising speed. As it sped low and fast across the formless desert, Grey slumped down on the cold steel floor, letting the GPMG fall from his hands. He felt his head drop to his knees. He was suddenly aware of how totally and utterly burned-out he was.
He had one thought at the forefront of his mind now: there were a load of men from the Squadron who were still on the ground out there somewhere, desperately trying to evade, and escape from the enemy. Presumably, the OC and his HQ Troop had been plucked out of their hide by now and were on a flight out. Presumably Sebastian was with them and wondering how on earth he’d survived it all.
But what about the third force, plus Gunner and his passenger? Grey wondered how many they’d lost already, and how many more they might lose in the coming hours as the fierce Iraqi sun cast its harsh, burning light across the battlefield. Come sunup, there would be nowhere left to hide. The only option would be to fight and die, or surrender.
This was a long way from over yet.
Where the hell was Mucker, he wondered, the fourth member of his team? He’d got two of his team out and, some might argue, the entire twenty-six-man unit, but still he’d left a man behind. He glanced at Moth and Dude. He could see a mixture of shock and relief written across their features, along with a growing sense of what almost looked like failure.
He leaned across to them. “Lads, don’t fucking worry about it!” he yelled. “As a team we did more than okay out there.”
Moth forced a smile: “Yeah, maybe we did all right.”
“Moth, you were mega with the wagon, not to mention the air. You drove like a fucking maniac and you smashed out the rounds from the M203. And, Dude, you did a great job on the gun, mate. Plus you didn’t get your head blown off, which is close to a bloody miracle!”
The Dude grinned exhaustedly. Shrugged. “Yeah. Tell you what, though, we’ll have some stories for our grandkids . . . Did I ever tell you guys the one about . . .”
It was an hour’s flight to the base that M Squadron had forward-mounted from, just south of the Euphrates River, at the
G2
airfield. Grey didn’t get to hear the rest of the Dude’s story, for he’d long since fallen into a deep sleep. Waking him from that would have been like trying to wake the dead.
The first he knew of their arrival was the helo’s ramp whining open and the cold inrush of air. He levered himself to his feet, grabbed his GPMG and the rest of his equipment, and turned to leave the Chinook’s echoing hold. As he did so he felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was Raggy. “Cheers for the lift, mate.”
Grey couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re the only one who’s bloody said thank you.”
Together with Moth, Dude, and Scruff, they headed down the helo’s open ramp and into the blinding light of the Iraqi dawn.
On arrival at the
G2
airfield, the remnant force of Six Troop was reunited with M Squadron’s HQ Troop. The Squadron OC and the rest of his troop—Sebastian the interpreter included—had been pulled out of theater by a Chinook flying a hot-extraction mission, and only shortly before their force of twenty-six had been rescued.
The HQ Troop was extracted complete with its two Pinkies, and so by then some two-thirds of the Squadron had been pulled out of Iraq, which left only the third group, plus Gunner and his quad, at large.
But that day—March 24, 2003—news broke on Al Jazeera TV that “ten British SAS and Special Forces had been killed in northern Iraq.” Al Jazeera cited Iraqi military sources as the basis for the story. More worrying still, footage was shown of victorious Iraqi forces riding a captured Pinkie and a quad bike—both of which were M Squadron vehicles—in order to substantiate the story.
Those men who had already been pulled out of Iraq had been placed in isolation pending debriefs on the mission. But in spite of that, news filtered through to them regarding what the Iraqis were claiming had happened to those forces left on the ground—namely, that ten had been killed. Without doubt, this was the darkest moment of the entire mission. British forces had secured satellite images of the battlefield, which proved conclusively that the three Pinkies
abandoned at the Six Troop extraction grid had been destroyed by air strikes. This meant that the captured vehicles shown on the Arab media could only come from three possible sources: from the wadi of death, from the third force still unaccounted for, or from Gunner and his passenger.