Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines Page 5

  Ricketts felt the ground shaking beneath his feet, then saw a dark eruption far ahead, equidistant between the silhouetted towers, where the holes had been dug in the ground. As the vibrations turned into a rumbling, the earth erupted in a dark crescent and then a black, expanding hillock. Then the rumbling became a thunderous explosion that created a gigantic mushroom cloud of smoke, dust, sand and showering gravel, billowing up from a bed of white and blue flames fringed by crimson sparks. The mushroom cloud rose higher, expanded in all directions and was blotting out the stars even as its tendrils coiled languorously back down to shower the desert floor with its deadly debris. As one tower, then the other, collapsed and disappeared in the billowing smoke, the roaring tapered off into a rumbling and eventually faded into silence.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Hailsham bawled.

  Reluctantly, the men turned their backs on the spectacle before them, filed back into the Chinooks and were lifted off the desert plain before Iraqi troops arrived at the scene of the explosion, which they surely would.

  When his Chinook had ascended and was heading back to Saudi Arabia, Ricketts glanced back through a porthole and saw the immense mushroom cloud settling down over what looked like an enormous crater surrounded by charred, upturned earth. Where the two towers had stood, there was now just a mess of tangled metal, spreading out a great distance.

  With communications from Baghdad cut, the real fight could start.

  Chapter 5

  The men chosen for long-range reconnaissance patrols, or ‘Lurps’, were given light-strike vehicles, or LSVs, and Land Rover 90s, more commonly known in SAS circles as ‘Pink Panthers’ or ‘dinkies’. Each Pink Panther was a mobile arsenal, carrying a Magellan satellite navigation system, two M203 grenade-launchers, LAW 80 94mm anti-tank missiles, a front-mounted 7.62mm GPMG, a rear-mounted 0.5in Browning heavy machine-gun, as well as Stinger antiaircraft missiles for use against Iraqi helicopter gunships. The commander and driver were each given a pair of Litton night-vision goggles. An armed trooper from the Mobility Group was to accompany each Pink Panther on a motorbike. Each team also carried a laser designator to be used for marking targets for the Allied aircraft, whose laser-guided bombs could then home in accurately on air-defence sites, bunkers, radar sites, command-and-control centres and military factories.

  At approximately midnight on 22 January two RAF Chinooks lifted a squadron of SAS men and their LSVs and Pink Panthers deep into the desert of western Iraq, in the area known as Scud Alley.

  Looking through a porthole just before landing, Ricketts saw some of the US HH-531J Pave Low and HH-60G Night Hawk helicopters just below and ahead. Equipped with special electronic and night-flying systems, they were extremely efficient as pathfinders. They were, however, also transporting Pink Panthers, LSVs and Honda motorbikes, all of which were slung in nets below them and seemed to be flying just above the desert plain. The others, which Ricketts could not see, were slung below the Chinooks.

  Turning away from the porthole and glancing around the helicopter’s long, narrow, dark hold, Ricketts saw the men preparing for the landing. Coming on this insertion straight after the previous night’s raid on the communications towers near Baghdad, Ricketts and most of the men were particularly tired. And yet they were glad to be back in business, instead of wasting their time in so-called further training on the hot, dusty plains of the Empty Quarter.

  With the appearance of their RAF Loadmaster, Ricketts knew they were about to land. This was confirmed when the Chinook slowed down, stopping moving forward, hovered briefly, then made its vertical descent. When the Loadmaster shouted over the din for the men to prepare to unload, they all checked their safety belts, equipment and weapons while firing off the usual bullshit.

  The Chinook hovered for some time while its underslung loads – the Land Rovers, LSVs and motorbikes – were set down gently and released, but eventually it moved forward, away from the disengaged loads, and touched down on the desert floor further on. It bounced lightly a few times, then its roar subsided as its rotors, though still spinning, went into neutral. The loading ramp was opened, allowing moonlight to beam in as the men disembarked.

  Once outside, Ricketts was shocked by the cold, fierce wind. Tying his shemagh across his face to protect his nose and mouth from the swirling sand, he noticed the other men were doing the same. With their veils and the camouflaging over their berets, they looked like Arab militiamen.

  The sky was clear of clouds, but the sweeping sand obscured the stars and the horizon was barely visible through the murk. The dropped vehicles, still in their netting, were about a hundred yards further back and the other two Chinooks, each of which held 44 fully equipped troops, were about to land about the same distance away in the opposite direction.

  The first helicopter touched down without trouble. When the second followed, luckily a good distance away, the ground erupted beneath it with a mighty roar, spewing soil, sand and smoke. The wheels in contact with the ground were blown off by the blast, burst into flames and shot like rapidly spinning balls of fire through the billowing black smoke. The Chinook crashed down on its rear end, then tilted sideways, its rotors still spinning, barely missing the ground. Where the wheels had been, the fuselage was torn open and the twisted metal was scorched.

  ‘Damn!’ Major Hailsham explained. ‘They’ve landed on a minefield!’ He started forward instinctively, without thinking, but Ricketts grabbed his elbow and pulled him back. ‘You’re right, boss – it’s a bloody minefield. There’s not a thing we can do.’ Understanding what Ricketts meant, Hailsham nodded, then looked back across the dark plain.

  The Chinook was not on fire, but its underside was badly damaged and the fuselage was shuddering violently as the pilot, knowing the men could not disembark, tried to lift off. As the troopers pouring out of the other Chinook milled about, looking at the damaged chopper and then glancing cautiously at the ground near their feet, wondering if they too were on a minefield, the damaged, tilting Chinook roared and shook even more, its rotors spinning faster, creating great clouds of sand. Slowly, with metallic shrieks of protest, it righted itself and lifted off the ground.

  As the Chinook rose awkwardly and noisily from the minefield, obscured in its own swirling curtains of sand, dust and debris, Jock McGregor, in charge of a crackling PRC 319 portable radio system, called out to Captain Hailsham: ‘The captain says to tell you he can’t land without wheels, so he wants permission to return to the FOB and take his chances on a landing there.’

  ‘Permission granted!’ Hailsham bellowed against the combined noise of the roaring Chinook and the howling wind. ‘Wish him good luck.’

  ‘Aye, aye, boss!’ Jock called back, waving his hand in acknowledgement. He conveyed Hailsham’s message over the radio as the Chinook reached flight altitude, hovered for a moment, then laboriously headed back towards Saudi Arabia, leaving an immense cloud of sand to settle over the minefield.

  Hailsham’s hazel eyes turned above his fluttering light-brown shemagh to look directly at Ricketts. ‘Damn!’ he exclaimed softly. ‘Forty-four men down already. Ah, well, let’s get started.’

  The rest of the men from Hailsham’s Chinook had already surrounded the vehicles and equipment disengaged from the underslung loads and were removing the nets in which they had been carried. Hailsham and Ricketts joined them. Glancing across the desert, they saw that the men from the second Chinook were doing the same. Hailsham called Jock over and asked for the microphone for his PRC 319, which he used for a chat with the NCO commanding the other group. Satisfied that they were all right, he told them to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of land-mines elsewhere.

  ‘The first thing we have to do,’ he said to Ricketts, handing the mike back to Jock, ‘is get rid of that damned minefield over there.’

  He waited until the conveyance netting had been removed from the first Pink Panther and the satellite communications system fixed to the vehicle, then called HQ in Riyadh, giving his grid reference and asking for a
n AWACS command aircraft to fly over and detonate the whole minefield. Receiving an affirmative, he turned off the SATCOM system and watched his men as they removed the netting from the other vehicles, attached the separately packed equipment, and prepared the vehicles for use.

  The Pink Panthers were painted in a desert camouflage scheme of sunset pink, earth brown and sandy yellow, which made them look a bit like cartoon or funfair cars. They were, however, highly sophisticated vehicles, with 3.5-litre V-8 petrol engines, five-speed gearboxes, alternating four- or five-wheel drive, with cabins stripped down to the hull and windscreens removed. They were also bristling with machine-guns and heavily laden with bergens, ammunition bandoliers, camping equipment and radios. Short-burst radio and SATCOM antennae were fixed to the sides, jutting up in the air, high above the multidirectional barrels of the guns. A SATNAV Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver was mounted on the vehicle – though it could also be carried by hand – and a sun compass, also used for navigation, was mounted horizontally on the front. Smoke dischargers were fitted front and rear, detachable searchlights were positioned on each side, camouflage netting was rolled across the bonnet and there were extra storage racks for food, water, fuel, spare parts, more weapons, ammunition and the tools required for the construction of OPs, or observation posts.

  The LSVs, based on the dune-buggies widely used on American beaches, were virtually no more than tubular-steel frames in roll cages – no roof, body panels or windscreen – with two seats in the middle, fat, low-pressure tyres on each corner and a powerful engine. But although their payload capacity was limited, they carried LAW 80 anti-tank rockets and man-portable MILAN guided-missile firing posts, which made them ideal for hit-and-run raids on enemy targets.

  The motorbikes, one to accompany each Land Rover, were Honda production machines, used as outriders, mainly for forward-observation purposes in terrain impassable to the other vehicles. They were driven mostly by daring young cowboys armed with an M16 slung across the back and a Browning 9mm high-power handgun in a holster at the hip.

  A sudden, staccato series of mechanical coughs and roaring reminded Hailsham and Ricketts of the troopers disgorged from the second Chinook. Looking sideways, they saw that they were starting up their Pink Panthers, LSVs and motorbikes even as the Chinook was lifting off in a swirling cloud of sand and gravel. That cloud swallowed the men below, but they soon burst out of it, driving their assorted, brightly coloured vehicles across the flat plain to encircle Hailsham’s group and skid to a halt, churning up more sand and dust. Meanwhile the Chinook behind Hailsham and Ricketts also took off, soon joining the other in the sky, where they hovered close together for a moment, like giant copulating beetles, before heading back to the border.

  When the men around Hailsham had settled down, he climbed up on the back of his chosen Land Rover and called them in around him for his final briefing.

  ‘First,’ he said, ‘I want to remind you that following Iraq’s launch of Scud missiles against Israel, destroying their mobile launchers has become our number one priority. We’re here because conventional aerial reconnaissance methods are too slow to keep track of the highly mobile missiles, so improvised methods have to be adapted to put the Scuds out of business. This area is a Scud box known as Scud Alley. It’s about 240 square miles – including the motorway linking Baghdad with Amman. For that reason, it’s very well defended and we have to be on our toes.’

  ‘Does that mean we only move by night?’ Danny Porter asked.

  ‘This is no Empty Quarter. In short, it’s damned dangerous. So, yes, we move only by night.’

  Andrew had been studying his map and now he looked up. ‘How many mobile launchers in this particular area?’

  ‘Around twelve to fourteen – and we’re going to find them.’

  ‘What happens when we do?’

  ‘The USAF and US Navy have put heavily armed F-15Es, F-16 Fighting Falcons, A-10s and A-6E Intruders on round-the-clock patrols over the Scud boxes, both north, where their men are, and south, where we are. However, the pilots need precise targeting information before they can launch attacks. We’ve been sent in here as mobile teams to put eyes on the ground. For this purpose we’ll set up covert OPs to cover key roads. When Scud convoys are spotted, we’ll either mark the target with our laser designators or pass the grid reference on to an E-3 AWACS command aircraft, using our SATCOM systems.’

  ‘We just roam freely?’ Geordie asked.

  ‘Strictly within the area marked for your own team on the maps. Two Land Rovers, one LSV and one Honda to each patrol. We break up right now. We keep in touch with each other with short-burst transmissions on the PRC 319s. We rendezvous for resupplies at midnight five days from now – in Wadi Tubal, also marked on your maps. If anyone has any problems getting back, he’s to contact the others by radio. Any questions?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paddy Clarke said, putting up his hand like a schoolboy. ‘What the hell are we doing with American LSVs instead of just the Pink Panthers? The fucking things only have a range of 200 kilometres against a dinkie’s 650. Bloody useless, boss, if you ask me.’

  ‘It’s a trial run,’ Hailsham explained. ‘The LSVs are particularly popular with the US Special Forces, including those operating in the northern Scud box. I agree that they’re small and have a much shorter range, but they’re also extremely powerful and can go where the Land Rovers can’t. Also, their relatively quiet engines and reduced radar and infrared signatures make them pretty difficult to find or hit. The American Delta Force strongly recommends them, so we’re trying them out, with particular regard to their speed and mobility over difficult terrain. Any more questions?’ When their shaking heads told him no, he said, ‘Right, men, let’s hit the road.’

  After the Troop had been divided up into individual teams, the men climbed into their allocated vehicles and prepared to take off. Ricketts was commander of one of the Pink Panthers, sitting up front beside the driver, Danny Porter, with Geordie in the rear compartment as gunner, in charge of the 360-degree-traverse Browning 0.5in-calibre machine-gun. Andrew and Paddy were in the accompanying LSV and a young trooper, John ‘Johnny Boy’ Willoughby was on the Honda outrider, with his shemagh over his mouth and eyes, his M16 across his shoulders and his Browning at his hip.

  With their veils, night-vision goggles and exposed facial skin camouflaged in blackening ‘cam’ cream, the men looked like brigands from a ‘Mad Max’ film.

  Hailsham was just about to give the signal to move out when Jock, handling the SATCOM system in his Pink Panther, told him an RAF Tornado was on its way to detonate the minefield. In less than a minute they heard it overhead and Hailsham confirmed the grid readings to the pilot over the SATCOM.

  ‘With all due respect, sir,’ the pilot responded, his voice distorted by static, ‘I think you should get the hell out of there before I drop my impressive load. You’re a mite too close for comfort.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ Hailsham replied, deadpan. ‘I think I know what you mean. We’ll be gone by the time you get here. Over and out.’ Immediately, he gave the signal to move out, which was conveyed by his NCOs from one vehicle to another. Suddenly the desert’s silence was split by the roaring of the Land Rovers, the lesser clamour of the LSVs and the harsh chatter of the motorbikes as they revved up. Hailsham’s Pink Panther left first, heading deeper into the desert, and as the other vehicles followed him, one after the other, they churned up an enormous cloud of sand and dust.

  This was nothing compared to the cloud created by the exploding JP233 bombs of the Tornado when it swooped down five minutes later. By that time the SAS mobile patrols had gathered much further out on the plain, waiting to see the results of the air attack.

  Even in the moonlight, the Tornado was an awesome vision, a beast of many limbs and appendages, beginning with its air-to-air refuelling probe and including massive, moveable ‘swing’ wings; a high fin with ESM, or electronic surveillance measure; underslung fuel tanks and alarm anti-radar missiles
; plus under-wing ECM, or electronic countermeasure, pods, and protruding TRB 199 twin engines. For all that, it was a monster of terrible beauty, gifted with terrain-following radar and a computerized cockpit that enabled it to fly in as low as fifty feet above the ground to drop its JP233 bombs.

  The bombs, which included a series of cratering devices, drifted down from the aircraft by parachute and detonated just above the ground. That detonation propelled various charges deep into the ground, and when these exploded they heaved up the surface and created many large holes beneath it. The multiple, underground explosions caused a vast area of the desert floor to rumble and shake. Then it erupted in a spectacular, cataclysmic mushroom cloud of sand, dust, gravel, smoke and swirling tendrils of gaseous flame. The noise was deafening, the impact shattering, and the mushroom expanded to form a great canopy over the desert, blotting out the big moon and brilliant stars.

  Only when the great mushroom cloud had started to collapse, falling back in upon itself, did the men in the Land Rovers, LSVs and motorbikes head off in the opposite direction, away from Saudi Arabia and deeper into Iraq, eventually going off in many different directions, cutting lines through the desert.

  They were all on their own now.

  Chapter 6

  The Scuds, genuine and false, had been reported as travelling along roads and tracks known as MSRs, or military supply routes. The SAS patrols had therefore each been given a preselected stretch of MSR to cover. Driving by night for an hour or so through the desert, with the Pink Panther and the LSV side by side, and the motorbike in the lead, Ricketts’s group soon reached the area selected for their OP, located behind a ridge that offered a good view of the MSR below.