Crossfire (5 page)

Thursday, 1 March
1829 hrs
Basra Palace

'I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about him.'
Pete sipped his brew, trying not to burn his lips
and fingers.

We were sitting at the back of one of Saddam's
old state rooms as we listened to the CSM's confirmatory
orders. Dom had disappeared to a
different part of the palace complex to have
another go at the FCO. I'd offered to escort him,
but he insisted he was fine.

'I mean, there's more chance of being struck by
lightning than getting an interview with the
spooks and the Foreign Office lot. Drac knows
that, but he's gone back for more. I don't like
the way they treat him. Particularly since he
comes straight back and takes it out on me.'

I tried to make light of it. 'Maybe that's what
pisses him off. Somebody actually refusing to be
interviewed by Platinum Bollocks.'

Pete leant over to talk quietly in my ear. The
CSM didn't take kindly to people chatting in his
Orders, even if they weren't on his payroll. 'He's
been really off, this last three or four weeks.'

'You want me to have a word? It's my job – I'm
supposed to look after you. Whatever's bugging
him could affect his safety.'

He thought about it for a second. 'Nah, I've
been trying to work out what goes on in that
head of his for years.' He shrugged. 'I just have a
laugh with the bit of Dom I know.'

I looked around me. We were sitting just a few
feet from the famous toilet that every newspaper
in the world seemed to have printed a picture of.
Sculptures of men and women with stern faces
and square jaws were carved into the marble
walls, pointing heroically skyward. They were a
bit less heroic now they had dark glasses,
moustaches and teeth, courtesy of a string of
bored squaddies with marker pens.

The marble floors were cracked and scraped
after years of abuse from boots, chairs and desks.
Gaffer-taped cables snaked underfoot and up the
walls. The rooms were subdivided into offices
and briefing areas by sheets of 3x3-metre
plywood. The partition doors, also made of
plywood, were pulled shut by a two-litre water-bottle
suspended on a length of paracord
running through a hole in the frame.

Phones rang incessantly. Kettles boiled 24/7
alongside ration packs of brew kit.

'Any questions?' The CSM's voice boomed
round the room. He had some sort of northern
accent, but at least it wasn't Scouse. Even though
he spoke at a million miles an hour, I could
understand him. He may have been plain Dave
to his wife and other civvies, but he was 'sir' to
anyone in uniform below the rank of major, and
he had everyone's complete attention. It wasn't
just because the army insisted on it: piled on the
floor to my left were the remains of some mortar
rounds and rockets that had thumped into the
compound over the months of their tour – we
were in serious country.

The twenty or so team commanders for tonight's
strike operation, all NCOs, had had their formal
orders earlier in the day, followed by full tabletop
rehearsals. Dom had been present for those. Dave
was now doing the final run-through.

'No? Good. OK, the house we're going to
hit . . .' He glanced at the huge wall map of the
city behind him. Satellite photos and int briefs
lined its sides. 'The spooks over in the west wing
have strong reason to believe it's part of the
supply chain between Iran and local insurgents.
Weapons, ordnance, explosives – they think we'll
find the lot. No need to remind you, this affects
us all. We've lost enough good people.'

He tapped the satellite photography with his
steel pointer. 'Take a lot of care. Look again at the
junctions either side, look at the buildings all
around. Before we move out, make sure your
people are aware of where they need to be, what
they need to do, where everyone else is and
what they're doing. There will be no fuck-ups.'

B Company's target, in the Gazaya district of
the city, the main stronghold of Muqtada Al-
Sadr's Mahdi Army, was a small two-storey
building surrounded by a concrete-block wall
with a steel door on to the street.

The strike was phase two of the operation to
kill and disperse the insurgents in the Brits' area
of operations. They had also been gathering in
Gazaya over the past two weeks, and their
numbers would have kicked up a notch if any
had managed to escape the Kingsmen's attacks
out in the sandpit.

It was obvious from the photos there hadn't
been any town planners around when Gazaya
went up. Houses and apartment blocks up to
four storeys high seemed to have been piled on
top of each other with a warren of alleyways and
wasteground between them.

Dave gobbed away about the outlying areas,
the other houses that were going to be hit by the
other rifle companies, where they'd had contacts
in the past, where their guys had been shot. The
team commanders nodded; so did the two female
RMPs (Royal Miltary Police) and a medic. None
of them could have been over twenty-five. Some
things don't change. I'd been a corporal in this
very battalion when I was nineteen.

By comparison Dave was an old man. He must
have been about forty; either he was using hair
dye, or he was so laid-back he was almost
horizontal. There wasn't a grey hair in sight, and
his face was almost completely unlined, except
for a thin scar that ran from the edge of his top lip
up the side of his cheek.

'Number one on the door is Rifleman Duggan.'
He turned to his lads and stabbed a finger at
them, more out of pride than aggression. He was
the CSM, this was his rifle company, and the
respect between them was so solid you could reach
out and touch it. 'You lot make sure you big him
up before tonight. It's a big deal for him. It's a big
deal for anyone.' He paused to make sure it sank
in. 'He leads us in and we take on whoever's there.
We lift the targets, then the film crew come in to do
their thing and make you all famous.'

A ripple of laughter spread round the room.
They knew a couple of the young lads would be
taking up fire positions a little more dramatically
than usual if Pete and his camera were nearby.

'And then we stay and fight. But remember,
this is a hard-arsed area. They like to keep all
their mortars and explosives to themselves.
We've never left there without a contact.'

There was a loud thud out in the compound.
We jerked down to tighten our body armour and
get our helmets from under our seats. Nobody
went anywhere without them.

Then, maybe fifty metres away, a second rocket
exploded. We were being IDFd by 107mm
Katyushas.

'Remember.' Dave scanned the room as the
third and fourth rockets slammed into the compound.
'The house is probably holding the guys
who killed the Marines last Remembrance Day.
That's why the media are coming with B
Company. We're going to show some payback.'

He jerked a thumb at the vehicle-group
commander, a Fijian corporal with a head the
size of a watermelon and hands that made his
notebook look like a postage stamp. 'If they start
firing, you hit them with everything you've got,
you understand me? I want all our lads out of
there alive – and that's an order.'

This was a really tight company. You could feel
it. Even if I'd told them I was from the Green
Jackets and later the Regiment it wouldn't have
counted for anything. They were fighting a war
together and didn't give a shit about anyone else.

Dave was still going nineteen to the dozen;
maybe he had his eye on another brew. 'Once
we're in there, we're staying. We'll wait for the
fuckers to try it on and see what happens.
Corporal Barney,' he pointed to the sniper
commander, who looked up from his notes, 'you
tell your lot to get a few drops of that Optrex stuff
down their eyes. I don't want them missing anyone
coming our way.

'If it kicks off, don't worry, I've got more brass
in my wagon to resupply your lot than they had
at the Alamo. We might need it. C Company were
in there last week. Five fucking hours that contact
lasted.'

His jaw tightened as there was another
explosion in the compound. 'Remember the two
lads killed last week, and the poor fucker sent
back to the UK with half his guts hanging out
after one of those fucking things landed on him.
Just make sure you look after your people and
keep them alive, OK?'

There was a murmur as everyone stood. We
headed for the brew area. Nobody was going
anywhere until the attack had stopped and the
munitions guys had got out there to clear
the compound.

Pete stood up with his empty cup still in his
hand and his helmet at a jaunty angle. He didn't
wear one of the black Wehrmacht-style helmets
like the rest of the media. He said the lip at the
front got in the way when he filmed. Instead,
he'd got hold of an old British steel helmet
on eBay, and ground down the front of the
rim.

He wore it tipped back and to the left, with a
square of shammy leather underneath so it
stayed at the same angle and didn't slide about
on his bald head. With the corners of the shammy
hanging down over his ears, all he needed was a
Capstan Full Strength glued to his bottom lip and
he'd have been a ringer for old Tommy Atkins in
the trenches.

I tapped his arm. 'Finish your emails,
Bermondsey Boy, I'll see to these.'

'Thanks.' He passed his cup. 'That's if the sat
phone ain't shot to bits.'

Pete went to the other side of the room, where
his iBook was rigged up to a BGAN wire running
out through the window. The BGAN itself was
sitting on top of one of the HESCOs outside.

Yet another rocket landed with a dull crump. It
was the fourth attack we'd had that day. The last
one had been mortars and had taken out two of
the quartermaster's steel freight containers. No
one was killed or injured, so I could just imagine
the QM rubbing his hands as he prepared to compile
a list of bomb-damaged goods long enough
to fill two ships, let alone two containers.

When I got back to Pete with his Shirley
Temple, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor,
back against the wall, his iBook on his lap. The
memory stick he normally wore round his neck
was jutting out of the USB port.

He wore a big smile under the helmet.

'Family stuff?' I laughed. 'So that's what you
keep on those things. I thought you boys had 'em
as some sort of good-luck charm. Fucking Dom
walks round like he's immune to everything
except green kryptonite.'

'Don't I know it, mate. It's a worry. Here you
are . . .' He shifted the screen so I could share.
'Last year's birthday party. Six years old and
bright as a button.'

A tall woman in a bikini with long wavy
blonde hair was doing her best to keep control of
half a dozen kids in armbands and goggles.
The camera panned to take in more of the
background.

I did a double-take. 'Fuck me, Brockwell Park
lido! That takes me back a bit.'

'Done a few laps in your time, have you?'

'We used to go and mess about there as kids.' I
watched his grin widen. 'We'd get out at Brixton
and go to the market first, see what we could
nick. We usually landed up with a couple of
tomatoes or some green thing we didn't even
know the name of, but it still made a nice picnic.
Then we'd doss by the pool until we got thrown
out for divebombing the grown-ups.'

Pete had been nodding along. He gave a burst
of laughter louder than a 30mm. 'I got chucked
out too! Wrongly accused of being the previous
owner of a turd they found floating in the
deep end. Wasn't you, was it? Too much exotic
veg?'

I pointed at the screen. 'That Tallulah?'

'Yes.' He beamed. 'And that's the birthday
girl.' His finger touched the screen and lingered
as she blew out the candles on her cake. He was
lost in his own world for a bit. 'I've missed every
one of the last three . . .' He looked up suddenly.
'But do you know what, Nick? I'm not fucking
missing her seventh, in three weeks' time. Or any
of the others after that. I'm jacking it in, mate.
Local news and quality family time, that's me
from now on.'

I wasn't sure if he was serious. 'But you'd miss
all this.' I waved my arm to embrace the chaos.

'Miss what? A reporter on a personal crusade
he won't let me in on, crap tea – no offence – and
an arse full of sand?' He tapped the screen again.
'No contest, mate.'

I understood the tea and sand bit. 'Crusade?'

He blew out his cheeks. 'He's always been
hungry for it.
Passionate
, you know? I used to be
up there with him, righting wrongs, changing the
world. But I just don't have the appetite for it any
more. It's partly the fact that all we're producing
here is tomorrow's chip paper. Disposable news
– nobody gives a fuck.' His eyes roamed back to
the birthday party. 'Partly that other things, like
spending time with Tallulah and watching Ruby
grow up, are a whole lot more important to me
now.' He shrugged. 'Don't get me wrong, the
awards we got for the Kabul doc mean something
because they were recognition for exposing
the fucking nightmare out there, but I just . . . I
just don't share Dom's passion any more.'

'And the new passion is drugs? That's the
crusade?'

He leant forward to get his face closer to mine.
'He's so fixated he even had me secret-filming in
Dublin a couple of weeks ago . . .' He slumped
back and stared up at the ornate ceiling. 'But I'm
checking out now. Maybe I'll do the odd wildlife
documentary. Just as long as I can know what my
schedule is far enough in advance not to risk
missing another of Ruby's birthdays . . .' His eyes
narrowed. 'You got family, Nick?'

'I did have, once.' I got a sudden rush of pins
and needles in my legs, a sensation I hadn't
experienced for a long, long time. 'A little girl
who was a lot like your Ruby, as a matter of fact.
Her parents were killed, I was her guardian.' I was
vaguely aware that sweat was now leaking more
heavily down my face and tried to wipe it away. 'I
never really got the birthday thing right . . . In the
end I had to ask someone more reliable to take
over.'

My memory stick was set to locked, and that
was the way I liked it. Somebody once told me I
lived life with the lid on, and I guessed they were
right. It was the way it had to be. How
was I supposed to function if I spent all my time
clicking thumbnails of a teenager dead on a
King's Cross bed? The image I tried to cling to
was of her bright and sparkly at the one birthday
I did manage to get right, at the replica of the
Golden Hind on the Thames.

I was spared having to go there, and poor Pete
was spared having to listen. One of the rifle-company
lads appeared and stood next to me,
but it was Pete he was after. He had a blue Helly
Hansen T-shirt on under his armour, and a
brand-new tattoo of barbed wire curling round
his right arm. Here and there a few scabs still
clung to the ink – but not as many as there were
on the zits he'd popped on his face.

Pete looked up at him with a big smile. 'Hello,
mate. What can I do you for?'

The young lad smiled back. 'I heard you was a
tankie. My dad was, too – Jim Duggan, you know
him?'

Pete moved his head from side to side in
thought mode. 'No, mate, sorry, don't ring any
bells. He still in?'

The lad was Welsh, and flushed with pride for
his dad. 'No, he's here, in Iraq, working for one
of the security companies.'

Duggan . . . The name suddenly rang a bell
with me. He was the boy who needed bigging
up. I held out a hand. 'I'm Nick, that's Pete. You
number one on the door tonight?'

He got even prouder. 'Terry. Yeah, first time.
The platoon swaps round the entry teams.'

'Good luck, mate. You know, until about four
years ago only special forces would be doing that
shit.'

His eyes widened and he kept shaking my
hand, and Pete just kept looking at him, deep in
thought.

'Yeah?'

'That's right, mate. Big day. Good luck.'

One of the RMP girls walked past and Terry's
eyes swivelled. Pete laid down his iBook, stood
up and wrapped a fatherly arm round him. 'You
do good tonight, my son, and she'll be all over
you like a rash.'

Terry might have been about to get the party
gear on and make entry into a house packed with
guys wanting to kill him, but he was maybe nineteen
at a push. The RMP would have had him
soft-boiled for breakfast.

Pete gestured at the iBook. 'If that old man of
yours is on email, you want to drop him a line?
Tell him you're OK?'

Pete and I exchanged a glance. He knew as
well as I did that if tonight went to rat shit this
might be the last time he ever made contact.

Terry was even more made up as he sat and
started tapping away.

Pete stepped over to me, looking pleased with
himself. 'You know what? There
would
be stuff
I'd miss. Mostly the camaraderie. The brotherhood.
It's a bit like being a squaddy, what we do.
Even when you're up to your neck in shit, you're
surrounded by mates.' He smiled. 'We were in
Kabul when Ruby's mum fucked off to Spain
with the bloke who built our extension. It was
Dom and all the other guys who kept me afloat.'

He slapped my arm. 'Sorry, mate, too much
information. If you do ever get there, though, the
Gandamack Lodge is the place to drown your
sorrows. Great bar. The city's not exactly awash
with them. All the news crews stay there, and it's
the circuit's watering-hole. Plenty of company.'

The shout went up that the attack was over,
but we stayed where we were. The area still had
to be cleared before anyone could move.

'Talking of keeping afloat . . .' he hit my arm
again . . . 'when Tel's finished, why don't you go
online to Sad Fucks Reunited, see if you can hunt
down the old diving team?'