And this was just as we drove out of the gate. I thought: That’s it, we’re off to be shot without a doubt. We’ll have a quick drive around town, they’ll make a video, and then they’ll do the business.
We turned right onto the main boulevard, and the crowd surged around us. We had to stop almost immediately, as the jundies tried to push people off and the driver jammed his hand hard on the horn. We inched forward, trying to pave a way through the mob. They chanted “Down with Boosh! Down with Boosh!” and I just stood there like the president at the head of a cavalcade.
The squad dies were chuffed as hell. Everybody was firing into the air. Even kids of ten were letting rip with AKs. All I could think was: One of these rounds is going to hit me. It was such a lovely hot day as well.
I got twatted now and again by a stick or stone. The jundies either side of me were jumping up and down with excitement. I only had socks on my feet, and they landed on them with their boots. I felt weak and wanted to lean against the cab, but they pulled my head back to make sure everybody could see me.
Dinger came up on the right-hand side. He, too, was riding a Toyota pickup. As he drew level, we got some eye-to-eye and managed to swap a smile. It was the best thing that had happened all day. Dinger was looking how I felt. He was the bog monster at the best of times, but I looked at him and thought: Fucking hell, I didn’t know he could get even uglier than he was. It was the happiest time since the capture, without a doubt. The wink and the small smile, that was all I needed. I drew immense strength from that one small gesture. It was a matter of personal credibility. If he could get through this and grin about it, I thought, fuck it, so can I. I felt incredible affection for him, and I hoped that he did for me. This, as far as I knew, was my last look at a mate.
We trundled along on our carnival floats, driving down the main boulevard of the town. The crowd chanted and shook their fists. The noise was incredible. They didn’t even know who or what we were. We could have been spacemen for all they knew, but whatever, we were the bad guys.
Some of the squad dies were chanting with them. Others were running around trying to control the crowd. All of them were trying to avoid the stones and sticks that were meant for us. There were bursts of fire going off all over the place, the jundies with us firing in the air as well.
“Down with Boosh.” Boosh!”
People were diving in and out of the little Arab shop fronts with their concertina railings. “Thou shalt not steal,” the Koran proclaims, but everywhere you go in the Middle East the shops have these railings as security against thieving fellow Muslims. Everybody had pictures of Saddam and was pointing at his face and kissing it and shouting up to Allah.
We would move at walking pace, then stop for a bit to move the crowd. My legs couldn’t hold me up. I looked over at Dinger, and he was grinning from ear to ear. I wondered what on earth he was laughing at; I thought he’d gone demented. Then I realized: He was taking the piss out of them! I thought, Blow this, we’re on our way to die here, so who gives a monkey’s? I started myself. Fuck ‘em! Suddenly all that mattered to me was not looking a bag of shit. You’ve got to make sure you look good. I got some eye-to-eye going with the crowd and smiled away. One of the guards spotted me and got the chance to look a right hard man, landing a slap and a punch. I looked at Dinger, and we grinned at them like Leslie Grantham opening a supermarket. If our hands hadn’t been tied, we’d have been doing the royal wave.
It really sparked them up, the grinning. Some took it well, most of them didn’t. They were going crazy. It was the wrong thing to do and totally counterproductive, but it had to be done. The guards gave us a slap to get us all subdued again because it made them look good. But what the hell, I felt better. A large white American sedan came through on the left-hand side. Two ruperts in it looked up, pointed, and laughed. They were in a good mood about it anyway. I gave them my big presidential smile in return. They loved it, but that gave the jundies the hump and they had another go at us.
We paid the price for all the piss-taking when we got to the other end of the town. Crowds of people were waiting for us, trying to break through the cordon, arguing with the squad dies because they wanted to have a go at us. They were jumping up and down, and it was obvious it was only a matter of time before the cordon was either broken or deliberately removed. My only worry was the thought of me getting shot and not Dinger.
I was dragged off the vehicle. I searched desperately for Dinger. I needed him. He was my only link with reality.
Then I saw that the same was happening to him and I thought: It’s going to happen round here somewhere.
I was not too worried about the actual dying bit. Never had been; just as long as it was as quick and clean as Mark’s.
Would Jilly ever know? Did she even know I was missing? Everything materialistic was squared away; there was nothing else I could have done for her. But it was the emotional thing: it would have been lovely to have the chance to say my farewells.
What a way to go.
Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!
The stench of the town was overpowering. They were primitive, caveman smells of cooking, old embers, and stale piss, mixed with rotting garbage and diesel exhaust.
The town was an odd mixture of the medieval and the modern. The main boulevard was freshly tarmacked; the rest was dust and sand. There were Land Cruisers straight from the showroom and jundies with shiny boots and clean, western-type uniforms, and the crowd in their stinking dish-dashes and flip-flops or plain bare feet. I was knocked to the ground at one point, and right next to my eye was a big toe splayed out like a split sausage, grimed with a lifetime of dirt. There were immaculately groomed officers and healthy-looking young soldiers, and the locals with just three teeth between them and even those were black and decayed, and Negro Arabs with scarred faces and white, scabby knees and elbows from lack of washing and moisturizing, and dusty, matted rasta hair.
The buildings were of mud and stone, square with flat roofs. They must have been a couple of hundred years old, and on their sides were the latest posters for Pepsi Cola. Old, skinny, mangy dogs skulked in the shadows, scavenging and pissing. Rusty tin cans lay in piles everywhere.
Running down the middle of the boulevard was a central reservation, and in the middle of it, just opposite us, was a children’s playground, full of tubular steel frames and swings in old faded blues and yellows. It was the sort of thing you’d find on a normal housing estate in Britain, but it looked so out of place and weird in this kind of world. They’d been fighting a war for years, and there was poverty, shit, and grind all around us. Fuck knows what the Arabic for “Tidworth” is but this was it-an old shit-arse tip of a place.
We were standing at the roadside awaiting death. The jundies grabbed us, but my legs had given up and I stumbled. They had to drag me towards my public. They showed us off like hunting trophies, pushing our heads up, making sure everybody got a good look.
I wasn’t smiling this time. I was looking out for Dinger; I was scared of losing him in the crowd. I just wanted to keep by him. I could hear him yelling and shouting as much as I was, and from time to time I caught glimpses of him. It was a bad time.
The mob ruled. I had been right cocky when we got dragged off the vehicle, but now I was plain scared. They were all warbling the Red Indian war cry. Were we going to be left to the crowd? Were they going to rip us apart? Old women came up and pulled my hair and mustache and hit me with sticks or punched. The men would start by poking, then end up punching and thumping. I fell to the ground, and all the bodies closed in. They thrust pictures of Saddam in front of my face and made me kiss him.