Sniper one (11 page)

As part of the CO's new regime, Cimic House was to be thoroughly militarized. Not only did we badly need better protection, but it sent a message to the OMS that we were here to stay.

Forced against their will to labour under the fallacy that they were on a peacekeeping tour, the Light Infantry had been prevented from doing almost anything to fortify Cimic House. That included not being able to deploy snipers on Cimic's roof, until the very end. It was all because the CPA were adamant that the place musn't look like a combat zone for the sake of the trust they were trying to build with the locals. As a result, the lads were getting homemade blast bombs regularly chucked over the compound's walls. The poor sods just had to sit there and take it.

The CPA bods weren't going to like our militarization at all – especially because the very first thing that went was their treasured views over the Tigris. We erected ten-foot-tall anti-sniper screens made out of locally made reed fencing all along the compound's perimeter. That would stop people taking pot shots at us as we moved around inside. On top of the sheeting went a thick coil of razor wire, to dissuade any suicidal nut from getting over the walls in a hurry.

The front and rear sangars were rebuilt more sturdily and filled with proper sandbags. We had to dig up most of the garden to fill them. We also threw out all the old local weaponry that the CPA had asked the Light Infantry to put in the sangars. They were lined with RPKs, AK47s, old Iraqi army boxes of ammo, and even RPGs – again, all to make the place look more Iraqi-friendly rather than foreign occupied.

Screw that. We replaced them with our own weapons. That meant a GMPG in each and NATO standard ammunition. Our weapons were tried and tested, and had been properly zeroed. The local jumble sale collection were unzeroed, we didn't have the proper cleaning kits to maintain them, and we had no idea how accurate they were.

And from now on, the front gate would be manned at all times by Y Company troops, not just Iraqi policemen. We'd seen how reliable they could be.

As the roof was our domain, my platoon was responsible for fortifying that part of Cimic. The key to sniping is being able to see as much as possible in comfort. So we rearranged it just how we wanted it. First off, we taped down all the wires up there for the radio antennas and the Sky TV satellite dish. They were trip hazards.

Then there was the crappy half sangar the Light Infantry had built. A sangar is the army term for a fortified lookout post, normally at height. We moved it from the south-west corner to the south-east, which gave us a far clearer view straight down Tigris Street. And we rebuilt it up to chest height with a base three sandbags thick. We gave it a flat roof with some timber and another couple of sandbag layers, and laid a camo net over its sides. It wouldn't have stopped a dirty great mortar round bang on target from killing everyone inside. But it did give us something to dive into if we saw or heard a mortar launch. And it gave us a little bit of protection from the heat. From then on, it was known as Top Sangar.

We also built a second half sangar on the small roof of the enclosed stairwell block that led up to the flat roof. It was just three metres square. But it was the highest point of the house and that meant we wanted to be there. We made a ladder to get up there, and gave it a three-foot wall of sandbags and a lining of mattresses. Only six blokes maximum
could comfortably work in it at any one time, but it gave us another eight feet of elevation and a great 360-degree view of the town from one single position. Its position was known as Rooftop.

All this work was done in the middle of the night, so we could use the cover of darkness to climb about the place.

In the morning, the CPA bods woke up just as we were finishing off. Molly Phee had cleared the lot, so we had nothing to worry about. But that didn't stop a few of them sharing their feelings with us.

The prettiest woman in the compound by a country mile was an American CPA official called Jodie. She was young, had long brown hair, big boobs, and always wore tight denim jeans. A very nice bit of eye candy and no mistake. And just the sort of thing you don't want to see when you're trying to concentrate on a difficult job. But we all still used to gawp at her.

That morning was the first time any of us had really seen her open her mouth. And the dream was ruined in an instant.

Dale had been supervising a couple of young lads put the finishing touches to the sniper screens by the water on the western wall. Jodie flicked her hair over her shoulder and marched straight up to him.

'What the hell do you bozos think you're doing? This is not an army boot camp, you know. This is a peaceful office of the government of Iraq. You've made us feel like we're living in Fort Knox.'

'Sorry about that, ma'am. We're only doing our job.'

'You may think it's your job, but the only reason we're being attacked is because you guys are here.'

'I'm not sure that's really the case, is it, love?'

'And anyway, what sort of image does all this give the local
Iraqis? They'll be scared to death about coming in here to see us now, which means we'll be back to square one.'

Then, as an afterthought: 'You people might as well be Saddam Hussein.'

Dale's a heftily patient man. But that really did it.

'Now you listen to me,' he said, his voice a low, slow rumble. 'The only reason we're here is to protect you and what you do in this place. And if we hadn't been here over the last few days, there's a middling to strong chance the OMS would have crept over the walls in the dead of night and chopped you and all your CPA buddies into little bits with kitchen knives. So go and have your breakfast, let us do our faarkin' job.'

We heard no more from Jodie about our renovations.

To prove Dale's point, we were mortared for the first time since we'd been in Cimic that day. It was a burst of four rounds, and only one landed in the camp perimeter. It exploded on the driveway with a loud bang leaving scorch marks on the tiles. Luckily nobody was around. The reality is there is little you can do if one of these things lands on you. Unless the mortar launch is close enough for you to hear its dull clump, the first you know you're getting incoming is the telltale whistle of the round coming in about three seconds before it lands. It's an intimidating weapon to deal with mentally because it takes your fate almost entirely out of your own hands. If you're in the wrong place, you're fucked. Simple.

One of the very few strategic negatives of Cimic House was the giant water tower within the compound right next to the main house. As the tallest building in Al Amarah, it gave the OMS's endless supply of mortar teams the perfect aiming point. Getting mortared is a nasty experience to begin with. But after a while, we learnt to stop being bothered about
whether we were going to get it from the next shell and trust in fate. It was hardly as if we had a choice. With only a couple of attacks a day, the odds were still massively in our favour.

On the roof, we had to learn about our new city's skyline fast. At any moment we could be called upon by the battle group to try to bale someone out of the shit with our longs. That meant familiarizing ourselves with the view until we could see it in fine detail with our eyes closed.

From Rooftop we could see clearly for two kilometres in every direction. It was a great panorama.

Going clockwise and immediately to our west, a dam was slowly being constructed on reclaimed waste ground to control the Tigris tributary's flow. On the other side of that waterway was Al Amarah's main hospital. Further west still was the vast Olympic Stadium, a great big arena built in an art deco design that was now substantially unused. At some stage, some buffoon had decided Al Amarah actually stood a cat's chance in hell at competing with places like London, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney to host an Olympic Games, so they built it to the cost of millions. Severe delusion. That deserved sectioning.

Sweeping towards the north, a big dual carriageway road bridge crossed over the main Tigris River that ran west to east. It was known as Yugoslav Bridge because it was built by Tito. On the north-west bank was 'Vietnam Wood', a thick grove of date palm trees that had a jungle feel about it when we patrolled through the place.

On the eastern outskirts of the wood was the remnants of the Iraqi Army Corps' massive ammo dump. Tank and artillery shells were piled up in dozens of mounds as tall as a man, just rusting away. Most of the serviceable stuff had already been pinched by the locals and the OMS but there were still regular scavengers around it. Unlike at Abu Naji,
they didn't need to steal the stuff in the city centre. Here they just picked it up off the street.

Directly north over the Tigris was one of the most pathetic sites of all, the shattered ruins of the Corps' city centre camp. It was completely flattened by the USAF twice, in the Gulf War and then in the invasion. Since Saddam's downfall, it had been inhabited by hundreds of refugee families. I don't know how they managed to survive in that slum, but they did. It was overrun by packs of wild dogs and covered in unexploded ordnance, along with the rusting hulks of abandoned T55 tanks. Most of the refugees had nowhere else to go. Behind them, there was a busy bus depot and a big school.

To the east after another major road bridge were the crowded rooftops of Al Amarah old town, a district known as Al Mahmoodia where there was the endless maze of market souks from our first foot patrol. The old town's houses were a lot older, and it was the only place in the city that wasn't built on a grid system. Again with a squint, some of it looked quite charming.

Behind the old town and over a third Tigris bridge as the river swung right was the OMS stronghold suburb of Aj Dayya. It was a stinking slum of a place. Al-Sadr's most fanatical followers ran it with a rod of iron so it became very fundamentalist, as well as home to a large body of the enemy. We went there as little as we could.

Swinging to the south, over 200 metres of rooftops, was the old town's major east–west thoroughfare, Baghdad Street. South of that was the main business district of the city. In it was the telecom centre, the police HQ and a series of oily factories. Then, the Pink Palace, and finally Tigris Street which led down to the OMS building at the bottom of it, with a pontoon footbridge that crossed the Tigris tributary halfway down it.

We struggled to see further than that, even with our high-tech viewing aids. But that was no bad thing really. About three kilometres south of Cimic, the shops and work yards began to give way to slum housing estates. Apart from Aj Dayya, the city's southern half was its main residential area. We passed through it on our way in from Abu Naji. And it was a true dump in the very highest of Maysan traditions.

The southern half was split into four estates of varying degrees of upkeep. From west to east, they were Al Masikh, Kadeem Al Muallimin, Al Awwashah in the middle and Al Muqatil on the east. Independent from the OMS, each of the estates also had its own militia, normally formed on tribal backgrounds. At any one time, they could be at full-scale war with just us, the OMS, each other – or all of us at once. There appeared to be little rhyme or reason to any of it. They couldn't tell you either. It was just what they did. For them, the British Army was just another rival tribe. Someone else to shoot at.

On the city's far southern outskirts just beside Route 6 was the city prison. We had codenamed it Broadmoor. Of course, it was empty when the Paras arrived here after the war. So the NGOs moved in as it was one of the few secure locations they could find from which to defend themselves if need be. These were the people who were really going to rebuild Iraq, from the UN right the way down to various US government-sponsored organizations and Christian charities.

We had at least five different standing tasks on the roof at any given time. The most important was to keep an overview for as long as we could on any patrol that went out. If they came under fire, we would help out by trying to spot for the gunmen. And if any of them got into the shit at night, we'd be ready to pop up an illume round from a 51mm mortar tube.

The 51 is small and light enough to fit in a backpack. It has an accurate range of anything between 200 and 800 metres. We mostly used it for illume. Like all mortars, you simply put them down the tube and then pull a lever which smacks a hammer onto the round's firing pin, igniting it. And an illume is just a bloody great lump of burning magnesium that falls slowly down to earth on a little parachute. It burns with the brightness of 10,000 candles. It's like turning on a giant floodlight over the town for sixty seconds. If need be, it could also fire high explosive rounds.

During daylight I made sure there were always at least two sniping pairs on the roof, one in Rooftop and one in Top Sangar. Often, there were many more than that. Many of the lads used to come up in their free time as well because they enjoyed the work so much.

As with any soldier there, we had an automatic clearance to shoot people, and kill them, if we really thought it was necessary. We didn't need to ask for permission. But I was careful to remind the boys of the British forces' strict rules of engagement at that time.

'Remember boys, do not open fire unless you perceive a direct threat to life. We need to catch these sods in the act of trying to kill us or someone else. That means grenade in hand about to be thrown, or AK47 brought up to aim. You know the drill.'

They didn't really need telling. Each and every one of them was a professional and knew you don't kill unless there is a clear military purpose. It's a waste of a perfectly good round.

We had all our kit laid out next to us. Everything was at arm's reach when we needed it. The place soon began to resemble a craftsman's workshop.

'I'm like a pig in shit up here,' Pikey announced to Ads.

'Yeah, you smell like one too, mate.'

The L96 took a box magazine that holds eleven rounds. So as well as the one in your rifle, we'd also lay out three to grab if they were needed. The rifle takes ball ammunition, exactly the same sort as a normal 7.62mm bullet. The only difference is it's green spot ammunition. Green spot is the first batch hot off the presses from a new mould. If you've just made 50,000 rounds, the first 5,000 will be the very best, so they mark them with a little green spot. After a while with metal clunking against metal, small nicks and dents will develop in the bullets. They could minutely affect the round's trajectory in flight. That's why the best stuff is always held over as sniper ammunition. We never use tracer, which lights up a few metres out of the barrel to show you where you are shooting. First of all, we know where we are shooting. Second, it will betray our position.