Sniper one

  Dawn came on Day 10 with me on an L96 in Top Sangar and Oost spotting for me down Tigris Street. Fitz and Sam were in Rooftop. An hour or so later, a heavy weight of AK fire hit the roof's northern wall; the first attack of the new day.

  'Firing point definitely on the north bank,' came the shout down from Fitzy.

  'Somewhere among the army camp ruins, I think. Can't see it exactly yet.'

  That meant they were quite close, and Fitz needed our help.

  'Right, come on, Oost, over to the north wall with me, mate.'

  We grabbed our SA80s and crawled out of the sangar. Just after we reached the north wall, a high-calibre mortar round plunged straight down through Top Sangar's corrugated iron roof, and exploded in a deafening flash of light and noise. It blew the thing to fuck. The small space where we had just been perching was peppered from top to bottom with smoking pieces of red-hot shrapnel. The sangar did its job well though, as none of the blast went through its sturdy sandbag walls, saving us from any splinters.

  Oost and I sat up against the northern wall stunned, and our ears ringing.

  'Holy fucking Mary. That was a close one.'

  'Too fucking close.'

  Since the rest of the roof was still getting heftily shot at, there wasn't much time for existential contemplation. No point in thinking about it anyway, there was nothing we could have done. We rejoined the firefight, and rebuilt the ruined sangar after dark.

  By midday the next day, I was in Cookhouse Sangar spotting for Des while Pikey had run down to eat. It was during a short lull in the attacks so we chewed the cud a little. A few mortars had come in, so we popped our helmets on just in case.

  That time, I had no warning at all.

  Since a high-velocity round travels 300mph faster than the speed of sound, I felt the wallop of the bullet before I heard it. A hard smack on the back of my helmet, followed a fraction of a second later by the crack of the round being fired, and the shot's echo off the surrounding rooftops. We both ducked right down below the sandbag parapet.

  'Shit, Des, what the hell was that?'

  'Dunno. You OK?'

  It felt like I was. 'I think so.'

  Des had been facing me, and worked it out quicker than I did. I'd been shot for a second time.

  'One round, so must have been aimed right at you. From over your left shoulder about 200 metres away I think, judging by the sound. Are you hit, man?'

  Des poked his periscope over the parapet and scanned the horizon. With no second shot following the first, he poked his long over thirty seconds later. In a state of semi-shock, I took off my helmet to feel for the damage. Again no blood, but a mighty fucking sore head all the same.

  'No, can't see any movement either. Whoever he was, he's gone.'

  We looked at the helmet. The fucker had been very unlucky, it was a great shot. On its right side was a gouge five centimetres long and one deep. The round must have struck just to the right of the helmet's rear, causing it to shave one side rather than go straight through.

  If the slug had impacted ten centimetres further to the left, it would have taken off the top part of my skull, with half my brain probably still attached to it.

  Des whistled.

  'Fuck, man, you lucky bastard. No wait, you're an unlucky bastard. You know what, Danny, I don't know what the fuck you are any more.'

  Des had a point. That was two extraordinary calls in twenty-four hours. I picked up another sandbag and put it behind my head and stayed with Des until Pikey returned. Then I went back up to the roof and showed Chris my helmet.

  'You know what, mate? I think someone's telling you to go downstairs for a bit. Go and get yourself a brew or something. We're fine up here for now, mate, I'll call you when it kicks off again.'

  For four days in a row now I hadn't left the rooftop for longer than fifteen minutes and only to eat. Maybe Chris was right, perhaps I had started to lose concentration, and that wasn't good.

  I went down to the cookhouse to get a cup of tea. Just off from the kitchen was Corky the Medic's room. I could hear him pottering about in there so I popped in to see how he was.

  The room had changed a lot too since I'd last seen it during the ceasefire when I'd had to visit Corky about my viral infection. Corky had turned it into a proper dressing station. Everything was laid out there next to the bed: neck braces, bandages, scissors, scalpels, tweezers, IV drips; the lot.

  'Nice place you've got here, Corky.'

  'Thanks, Sergeant. Hope I never see you in here again. In a nice way, of course.'

  'Funny you should say that really.'

  'Why?'

  'Doesn't matter.'

  Stuffed underneath a sideboard was a big cardboard box with some company's logo stamped on it. I didn't recognize it from my previous visit either. Being a nosy parker, I gave it a little shove. It was heavy.

  'What's in there then, Corky?'

  'Oh, er, you don't worry about that, mate.'

  We both made a start for it. I was nearer than him.

  'Easy tiger. Bit of contraband booze do we have here? Don't worry, you can share it all with me.'

  'No, mate, it's not. Listen, honestly, don't worry about it . . .'

  It was too late. I already had a paw inside it and had got a hold of whatever it contained. Out came something folded up and made out of a rubbery nylon material, but unusually dense and thick. As I unfolded the thing, I saw there was a zip on it too.

  'Oi, oi! Is this your gimp suit then, Corky? You filthy little bugger.'

  Then I realized what it really was, and stopped dead in my tracks. A body bag.

  Fuck.

  'They delivered a whole load of them during the last resupply,' Corky explained. 'Sorry. I did try to tell you.'

  Well, that was a nice touch. Someone somewhere thought we'd obviously be needing a few of these as our early transport home. The discovery did little for my mood, so I left sharpish.

  Poor old Corky. He had a tough deal in that room. All his trauma kit was clearly carefully looked after and ready to go. That's because he knew he might be called upon at any moment to do every single thing he could to save our lives. But he also knew if all his efforts failed, he had a second job. To bag, tag and watch over our dead bodies.

  *

  The battle group knew it had to go into Al Amarah and do something about the uprising's increasing intensity. If not a knockout blow, then something if only for the sake of it. For the Warriors to keep sitting back in Abu Naji while the OMS ran amok looked weak and gave the OMS a propaganda boost. In Cimic, we were also beginning to crave a respite, even if only for twelve hours or so just to take the consistent pressure off for a little bit.

  On Day 10 of the siege, the day of my close call in Top Sangar, Operation Hammersmith was launched.

  The enemy was now considered too strong for the battle group to be able to retake all the town's police stations and then, crucially, hold them as we'd done in May. Instead, a full-on offensive on the Aj Dayya estate was launched. We knew that's where most of the OMS's most effective manpower was based. If a fair few of its key players were taken out, it would surely help to lance the angry boil.

  Under darkness and in the early hours again, the plan was to punch into the city with four Challenger IIs, then encircle Aj Dayya with a ring of steel made up by C Company's fourteen Warriors. Finally, the Royal Welch Fusiliers would carry out a series of search and arrest operations. In a rare triumph of persuasion, we were given Spectre on call for the first three hours.

  This time, Sniper Platoon was restricted to overwatch where we could from Cimic. Charlie Curry wisely judged that the basic defence of the compound couldn't spare us if a massive counterattack came its way.

  What we missed we were only too glad to.

  The column came in and, as everyone from the CO downwards had expected, it got properly creamed.

  Along with Captain Curry and the company's other platoon commanders, I spent most of the battle in the Ops Room trying to keep t
rack of the carnage going on all over the city.

  Redders shouted out the vehicle crews' snatched radio messages as he heard them over the net. One of the first set the battle's grim tone.

  'Lead Challenger now immobilized. Twelve RPG direct hits.'

  Jesus. Until then, we'd thought our main battle tanks were unstoppable. But there was worse.

  'Warrior call sign Whisky 28 in such deep shit. In a dead end with enemy all around it. Calling in a danger close strike from Spectre now.'

  Danger close means dire straits, and we all knew the chances were they were going to catch a bit of the Spectre's cannonfire themselves. There was a tense silence in the Ops Room for two minutes as all eyes fixed on Redders.

  'Whisky 28 OK,' he finally said to a group exhale in relief. 'Extracting now.'

  Somehow they had got away with it.

  Many others hadn't though. A total of five Warriors were also lost with enormous battle damage throughout the operation, and there were six serious casualties.

  The whole thing lasted twenty-three hours, almost double the time planned. All call signs from the battle group including those inside Cimic were contacted by the enemy no less than 103 times that day – a modern record for the British Army.

  It was also appallingly hard and hot work. The entire crew and dismounts of another sorry Warrior went down as heatstroke casualties and had to go back to base early, vomiting and slurring their words.

  As for the operation's outcome, nobody could say it was anything more than a score draw for each side. The pluses were that a lot of enemy were killed. With the armour drawing them off us, we also got our little respite. It was just miraculous again that in the most intense furnace of combat, no British soldiers had been lost.

  On the downside, one or two bad boys were arrested but a lot more weren't home. We also knew we wouldn't be getting Spectre again in a hurry with the conflict in Najaf still going at full tilt.

  Worst of all, the thorough pasting the column got had confirmed our fears: we couldn't rely on a resupply any more because the Warriors were no longer guaranteed to get through to us. Effectively, we were on our own.

  Then, the day got even worse. A double whammy was waiting for us in Captain Curry's O Group.

  'I'm afraid it's the bad news, then the really bad news tonight, guys. A 21-year-old private from the Black Watch was killed earlier today in Basra. Roadside IED, followed up by small arms fire ambush.

  'Unfortunately, what's happening in Najaf right now makes the loss of that poor sod pale into insignificance. The US Marines have gone and done us no favours whatsoever today.'

  In their bid to crush Moqtada with an iron fist, the US Marines had surrounded and sealed off Najaf's Old City, putting the ultra-precious Imam Ali mosque fully under siege. Moqtada and the rebels barricaded themselves inside it. Then a Marine artillery shell damaged two of the mosque's golden minarets and hurled shrapnel into its courtyard.

  Meanwhile, all of this was being pumped live into every Al Amarah sitting room courtesy of Al Jazeera TV. Moqtada had seen to that. Tactfully, he added: 'The final battle for humanity has begun.'

  We knew we'd feel the backlash the next day, if not later that night. Our position in Cimic was balanced on a knife edge, thanks yet again to events elsewhere controlled by our 'coalition partners'. Worse, there wasn't a damn thing we could do about any of it.

  We were just holding out against the insurgency's current level of force and violence. But if the Yanks went into the mosque, it would effectively mobilize most of the male population of southern Iraq. In Al Amarah, they would descend on Cimic House like killer flies on cow shit.

  Sure, we'd kill truckloads of them as they tried to get over the walls. But we couldn't kill thousands; we simply didn't have enough bullets. If the Challengers and Warriors didn't get through then, we would soon be overrun.

  Charlie Curry's final bit of O Group news: the whole miserable day had been Moqtada al-Sadr's thirty-first birthday. I only hoped he choked to death on his cake.

  23

  As it turned out, we got our first vote of no confidence the next morning from our own Iraqi workers inside Cimic. Just watching Al Jazeera overnight proved enough for them. No matter what else was to happen in Najaf, they had decided our time was already up.

  I was in the Ops Room discussing our ammo supply with Captain Curry when Daz ran in.

  'Danny, sir; you've got to come and have a look at this. It's something else.'

  Daz led us out to the balcony that overlooked the back gate, the entrance the locals used. There below us were the interpreters, the two laundry men, the gardener, the cleaners, the water plant operators and its guards. They were going backwards and forwards from the abandoned accommodation blocks to the gate in two lines like ants.

  Poised precariously in their arms or over their shoulders were washing machines, spin dryers, air conditioning units, mattresses, shelves, bedside cabinets, TVs. Then they came back for second helpings. They were having away everything and anything that wasn't bolted down. It wasn't just that they were nicking our stuff, but they were doing it in broad daylight and right in front of our very eyes. Rasheed the porn merchant even waved at me with a smile when he saw us looking down.

  It meant one very obvious thing. They no longer gave a ha'penny if they got fired because they were convinced there soon wouldn't be anybody left to pay them anyway. Like all good Arabs, they weren't going to let a good business opportunity pass them by. They were taking what they could, then and there, while they still had the chance.

  'Cheeky bastards!'

  'Like rats abandoning a sinking ship.'

  'Fuck them,' said Captain Curry, shaking his head. 'Most of that stuff is so badly fragged it's no use to us anyway. Sooner they're all out of here the better.'

  He was right. Nobody had any interest in doing any washing and spin drying right then. Having Iraqis inside the camp was also no longer a great idea either. We couldn't trust any of them. After the morning's plunder, none of them came back. But two had the brass neck to ask for that day's wages.

  They'd done us a favour anyway. When the frequency of attacks against us inevitably increased that day with the new developments in Najaf, Curry ordered the disposal of any loose obstacles about the compound. Anything that we might trip over while sprinting from A to B, or that could become secondary shrapnel underneath explosions. Patio chairs, the table tennis table and the gym equipment all went over the wall for locals to scavenge.

  The day was filled by fresh calls of 'Allah Akbar' from around the surrounding streets. Sniper fire on us from the old town's rooftops increased to pretty much constant and the rebels turned up with renewed vigour to discharge whatever arms they had at us. From then onwards, we stopped going out at night.

  Events in Najaf had perched southern Iraq on the edge of an awfully steep precipice. After smashing up the minarets, the Yanks were for the moment holding back from a full storming of the Imam Ali mosque. Nobody knew for how long though. Neither did it stop them from issuing ever more incendiary threats against Moqtada and the Mehdi Army on an almost daily basis.

  For his part, Moqtada had ordered his offices all over the nation to empty their coffers and secure the services of as many combatants as possible. Intelligence came through that young men were now being paid as much as US$50 a day to fight the coalition; a king's ransom.

  Added to that, we heard that many of the new recruits to the jihad in Al Amarah were also high as a kite. OMS leaders were feeding them with a lethal combination of amphetamines and opiates that made their brains tell them they were invisible. Then they let them loose on us.

  We were now so busy that the platoon's system of shifts on the roof became irrelevant. If everyone wasn't stood-to together at any given time, then the likelihood was they would be soon enough. Instead, I sent a pair or two down for a couple of hours' kip during a lull. When they came back, another lot would go down. If they were unlucky, it would be only five minutes before someone screa
med 'Stand-to' again.

  The other platoons would be doing the same around the rest of the camp: in the sangars, on the lower balconies or at the two Warriors. With the adrenalin kicking in the moment you woke, an hour or two of sleep a day was all we actually needed. Your body gets used to replenishing itself in the time it has. Nobody really needs eight hours' sleep. It's a bad civilian habit.

  At that stage, the drug-addled loonies we could handle. However, the OMS were also training up dozens more mortar teams to ramp up their endless bombardment on us. That made things far worse. The sheer volume of stuff they began to lob in was just unbelievable. Between 11 and 13 August alone, 400 separate mortar rounds were launched on Cimic House – an average of one every eleven minutes for three full days in a row.

  Mortar shells arrived from everywhere, a 360-degree spread around us. The problem was still Cimic's water tower, as you could see it from all over the city. With the crews' work uninterrupted as we were no longer out on the streets, a decent aiming point was all they needed. We even discussed blowing the water tower up, but we couldn't be sure it wouldn't fall on the house.

  The only thing that gave us even half a chance was the pop of the shell's launch. That meant we had five or six seconds to hurl ourselves into cover during its flight time. Then boom; and fuck, another close one.

  That amount of incoming, far more than we'd ever seen in May or June, began to unnerve even our steeliest soldiers.

  'I wish these fuckers would give us a break,' even Des conceded. 'Why don't they just go and shag their ugly bitch wives for a while instead?'

  In May it had been exciting. Now we all knew the huge increase in volume also hugely increased our chances of getting hit. People being dead made a difference too. It reminded us of our own mortality.

  Nerves started to jangle. A strict ban was imposed on doors being slammed. Any big bang was making the more jittery like Redders jump out of their fucking skin.

  Yet again though, and through it all, I never once failed to get a single volunteer to go up to Rooftop or Cookhouse Sangars, the most exposed and dangerous places in the whole compound. Quite the opposite, I had to order people out of there to give someone else a turn. This was the calibre of the boys.