Sniper one (16 page)

'That's all of our call signs accounted for now, Danny. Everyone's safe inside here or Abu Naji.'

'Christ, we got away with that one, didn't we, mate? May Day. That'll be right. More like Mayhem if you ask me.'

'Too right. I tell you what. That Beharry boy deserves a medal for what he just done. Fucking astonishing effort. He's only twenty-four years old and all.'

'Yeah. How are the casualties?'

'Not great. We've got a lot of unwell people still, but they've all been passed down the medivac chain to Basra. It looks like they're all going to live.'

Unbelievably nobody had been killed. Again, we had the typical Iraqi undisciplined fire to thank for that. The OMS with their macho promenading were particularly bad at it. If we had been in their place and they had been in ours, we would have massacred dozens of them. Thank God for Rambo films.

As usual, we had spoken too soon.

Thirty minutes later, a series of explosions rang out to our south again. They were followed by a huge weight of AK fire. It was too far away to see much through our sights. Bright yellow flashes intermingled with hundreds of red darts of tracer, and then a lot of smoke. It looked like it was coming from Red 11, the main Route 6 road junction on the other side of the Tigris opposite the OMS building – the OMS's favourite ambush spot.

'Whoa, someone's getting fucking whacked over there. I thought you said all our call signs are back in base, Chris?'

'They are. At least that's what the Ops Room told me. I don't know what the fuck is going on over there.'

Chris radioed it down to the Ops Room. They checked with Abu Naji, and confirmed what they had already told him. The shooting continued for a further ten minutes. Another huge ball of flame shot up over the ambush site.

'Shit. That looks like an oil tanker going up. Who are those fuckers?'

Chris had been right. The ambush was not on any of the
battle group. It was only when a fleet of Warriors reached the scene that anyone managed to work out what on earth had happened.

It was a giant convoy of US Army engineers. Specifically, the 84th Engineer Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division. They were passing through on their way out via Kuwait. It was the end of their year-long tour and they were going home to their base – in Honolulu, Hawaii. You can just imagine how happy they must have been.

At least 60 OMS gunmen were lying in wait in drainage ditches on both sides of the main road to smack anything painted in desert khaki that passed by. They couldn't give a stuff if it was the Yanks or us. They probably didn't even realize.

When the rounds started coming in, the American soldiers had bomb burst all over the town in a desperate bid to get away from the gunmen. Two were killed, a 32-year-old staff sergeant from Chicago and a 22-year-old private from California. Eight others were wounded. Most made it to nearby police stations. But two were missing in action.

The battle group launched a massive search operation for them. That meant coming back into Al Amarah yet again and drawing yet more OMS fire. Helicopters were also sent up. But the soldiers had ducked into the southern estates, and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They were on the run for hours.

At first the engineers hid, but were soon spotted. In a desperate flight for their lives, crowds chased them through the back streets and shit-filled trenches of the estates. They wanted to lynch them. Eventually, around midnight, they ran out on to a main road and straight in front of a passing Iraqi police patrol car. Normally in Al Amarah that would have meant curtains for them. But they'd got a lucky break.
The two coppers inside happened to be some of the very few honest policemen in the city. They ran them down to Abu Naji's front gate and dropped them off.

Half of the engineer convoy's thirty-four vehicles had been totally burnt out. They were abandoned where they were hit and left a charred and mangled line of metal almost a kilometre long up the Red route.

We also heard that there were so many OMS gunmen firing on the convoy that the idiots even managed to waste four of each other in their own crossfire. We thought that was exceptional.

The battle group had known absolutely nothing about the convoy. That meant nobody had been given any chance to warn them about what a nest of hatred they were about to stroll into. It was dark when they came over Yugoslav Bridge. So with us busy spotting for mortar teams, we hadn't seen them either. Nobody should have been operating in Al Amarah without all of us knowing about it. You pass through another unit's AO, you fucking well tell them. Otherwise, this happens.

But it looked like the engineers weren't to blame either. Before they had set off from Baghdad, they told the CO in Abu Naji that they had been briefed that there'd been no trouble in Al Amarah for ten days, and no coalition forces were based here. Now two of their men were dead. A lot more had holes in them, and millions of dollars in equipment had gone up in smoke. Somebody in Baghdad had fucked up, big style.

With the Americans' drama over, most of Cimic's now burgeoning occupancy crashed out wherever they could. It had been a seriously long day. But it wasn't finished yet for the snipers.

Nightfall only saw the mortaring against us intensify. On top of the nine during the day, we were on the receiving end of eleven more mortar strikes that night too, some of them frighteningly accurate. It had become pretty obvious to us that there was a new team in town. They were good. And they were the ones with the whopping great 82mm mortar tube.

A mortar needs to be fired on a flat hard surface to be sure of any accuracy. To relocate repeatedly and still get the rounds reasonably accurate is not an easy business. We'd always plot the coordinates of their firing position. But by the time we'd done and got all our sights lined up, they'd be off again to another location. The new team also used smoke rounds first to spot whether they were on target or not. When they were, it would be five or six high explosive rounds straight down the tube at us. It was good drills and we were impressed. It also meant they'd had some good military training. A rumour went around that they were Iranian.

After a while, I sent most of the lads to bed. There was little we could do about these fuckers in the darkness and without the ability to send an ambush patrol out. Unless we got very lucky. Three of us stayed up in Rooftop Sangar to mount the usual watch. Fitz and I were on the longs and Des was spotting. Dale had also come up on the roof to keep us company. It had been a busy day. He knew everyone
was fucked, so he had volunteered to do the night commander's shift. He'd even brought us out a brew.

'Mighty fine of you that is, Dale,' I said, as I took a long hard slurp of hot sweet tea. 'Cor, I needed that.'

'My pleasure, Danny boy. Mind you, it should be you giving me the presents really.'

'Why?'

'It's my birthday today. I'm thirty-five.'

'Really? I didn't know that. Happy fucking birthday, mate!'

'Thanks. I'd forgotten all about it too. Don't worry; you can save the faarkin' cake till later.'

The adrenalin of regular mortar incoming was enough to keep us awake through the long hours. Then, just after 3 a.m. Des spotted some heat signature through the SOFIE binos. It wasn't too far away from us on the north bank amid the Iraqi Army camp ruins. He looked again through a SIMRAD night sight. It was a flat-bottomed truck moving slowly with its lights off.

'Hold on, Dan. I think I've got something here.'

We lined up our sights in the direction where Des was looking and found the truck too.

Eventually it stopped. Five blokes got out and started unloading equipment from the back of it. Des started getting excited.

'Hey, did you see that? It looks like they're setting up a fucking mortar here. They're all armed too by the looks of it. AKs slung on their backs.'

Then Des got very excited indeed.

'Dan, Dan, Dan! I can see the fucking mortar tube. There it goes out of the truck now! Long fat fucker. It must be the 82 mil. Hey, we've really got the fuckers now. We're going to fucking waste them!'

'OK Des, keep your voice down. Range them.'

'I've done that already – 550 metres.'

The mortar team had made a mistake. They'd got cocky with all their success. In their desire to get closer to us, they'd set up in a direct line of sight. Just because it was three in the morning didn't mean we weren't still watching them like a hawk.

'Dan, this is really fucking it, you know?' Des had started to pump his fist under the sandbag wall.

'Yes I know. Right, we need to get some illume up. Dale, can you get on the 51mm mortar and do that?

'Sure thing. Leave it to me.'

'Think of it as your birthday present, mate.'

'Gladly received.'

We took a few more seconds to get our weapons ready. Because there were so many of them in the team, a couple of longs wouldn't be enough for the job. They were also close enough for us not to need them. They were going to get the Gimpy from me.

'Fitz, you grab that Minimi. As soon as the illume goes up, open fire.'

'Roger that.'

Crump, crump
. The team had got their first two rounds off at us. Nothing to worry about. Probably just smoke anyway.

Calmly, we rested the machine guns' barrels on the lip of the sandbag wall, and pressed our feet into its base for support. Then we looked through the weapons' iron sights. The mortar rounds thumped into the river just to our left. Then Dale let rip.

They were caught like rabbits in our headlights. Right out in the open with nowhere to hide. Two of the crew were crouching down tinkering with the mortar and its base plate.
The other three were humping mortar rounds from the flatbed to them.

Fitz and I opened up at the same moment. After a couple of rounds, the GMPG had a stoppage. So I threw it out the way without even safety-catching it, and grabbed a second Minimi lying beside me. With Fitzy already blazing away with long fully automatic bursts, I opened up again for all I was worth.

We aimed for the two men around the mortar tube first. I went for the one on its right, Fitzy the left. For a few seconds, they were all frozen to the spot staring up at the illume with disbelief. The tracer rounds, one in every four, did a great job in bringing us on to the targets. The bloke on the right went down first. He collapsed in a series of spasms as my rounds ploughed into him. In panic, all the bloke on the left could think of was to ram a round down the tube as quick as he could. He went down with the round still in his hand thanks to a long burst from Fitzy right into his guts. We made sure they both stayed down too, just in case. Both were riddled with another long burst.

The other three mortar men weren't so noble. They dropped the rounds they were carrying on the spot and just legged it. After 50 metres or so, one thought he was out of the shit enough to show a little bravado and put a few rounds back at us. Pulling the AK off his back, he turned and raised it in our direction. Bad mistake. It was just the justification we needed to engage him too, so he was the next to get the good news.

Each Minimi had a bag of 250 rounds on it. We went through them at a fair pace, firing in bursts of twenty. We'd pause for a few seconds to let the working parts settle. Keeps the barrel cool. Then we'd open up again. As we fired, bullet casings spat out of the machine guns and
littered the floor with a tinkling sound like confetti.

Des began shouting. 'Danny you should see these fuckers run.' He was jumping up and down on the spot, clearly mesmerized by the whole thing. 'Run Forrest, run,' he shouted at them at the top of his voice. His eyes were glued on to his binos as he watched.

Just before one illume went out, Dale threw another one up so they would overlap and we'd have permanent vision. He was swiftly working his way through a whole crate of twelve.

The remaining two mortar men managed to make it 150 metres or so to a small mud hut. Des sized the place up through the binos. The door faced us. There was a window on its righthand side, and an old car was parked outside.

'Don't worry guys, I don't think there is any back way out of the hut. We can get those scumbags too.'

We trained the Minimis on its doorway. All we needed now was for them to engage us again to reclassify themselves as legitimate targets.

With less than a minute gone by, the two men bolted to the car and grabbed its front doors open, blatting away madly with their AKs in our general direction. Another silly mistake. In their panic, they forgot all the rules of their own game.

Fitzy didn't need to be told.

We opened up again simultaneously, hosing fuck out of the car as well. Bits flew off all over it. The men quickly scampered back inside, but we carried on firing. We smashed every window, lacerated the tyres and turned the bodywork into a pin cushion. They weren't going anywhere in that now.

Another few minutes' silence.

'They're coming out again,' Des shouted feverishly. 'Still
armed.' So they got another long burst through the door.

Downstairs, Chris was getting in and out of his bunk like a yoyo. It was the first time we'd fired Minimis off the roof, so it was obvious to him and everybody else something pretty interesting was going on. After a burst, he'd leap up and start pulling on his boots. But then we'd stop firing just as quickly and it would be all quiet again.

Oh bollocks, it's all over. I'll go back to bed
, Chris thought. He did it at least six different times. Finally he just decided to settle for our running commentary to the Ops Room over his PRR.

Fitzy and I kept up the sporadic fire on the hut for a good couple of hours every time the blokes inside tried something on us. They were rats stuck in a trap. They knew it, we knew it. It became a trial of who was prepared to wait the longest. But we were snipers. We were used to hanging around for days on end to wait for a shot. Every time they poked their barrels out, we'd suppress them with rounds through the door. Sometimes we'd put a 7.62 round from a long through the window for good measure.