My hand fumbled desperately for the handle as I breathed in another mouthful of thick smoke, and I yanked it down hard. It wouldn't budge. I yanked again. Still nothing happened. I remember how frightened I was at that point. As the prospect of cremation came just that bit closer.
Someone cried out from further inside the cab. The words were 'help me' and there was a pitying desperation in the voice, as if he knew already that all was lost. Though it was faint, I recognized it as belonging to Jimmy McCabe, a lance corporal from Dunfermline and the only man in the APC pissed off about the fact that England had won the football the previous night. He cried out again, and I'm ashamed to admit that at that moment I didn't give him a second's thought either. Survival was everything.
The flames were growing bigger now as they danced through the gap in the armour. They were the only things I could see through the smoke, although I could hear and feel movement as other men crawled towards the rear doors.
I yanked the handle again, then felt another hand grab it. 'Wrong fucking way,' I heard Lucas gasp, before I realized that everything was upside down, and that's why it wouldn't open.
We pulled it together, and the first of the double doors flew open. I scrambled out, knocking open the other door with my desperate momentum, and rolled over on the tarmac. As I turned back towards the stricken APC, Lucas emerged on his hands and knees through the billowing smoke, followed by a third man I recognized as Private Rob Forbes. I staggered to my feet, keeping hold of my assault rifle, and helped Lucas to his. He looked concussed, but I didn't have time to worry about that now. There were other people to help. I grabbed Rob and managed to get him upright, and then a hand appeared in the gap in the double doors. I got a grip on it and pulled its owner free, dragging him well clear. It was Ben 'Snowy' Mason, another private, so-called because of his prematurely white hair. The back of his flak jacket was on fire, and he was crying out in pain. I hurriedly pulled it off him and threw it to one side while Snowy rolled over, choking.
By now, I was managing to take stock of the scene. We'd been hit by an extremely powerful roadside bomb that had created a deep, wide crater on the grassy bank at the side of the road, and demolished much of the low flint wall bordering a sheep field, behind which the bomb had obviously been hidden. A huge fire was burning, its heat so close and intense that I could feel it blistering my skin. The gouting flames were already setting light to the branches of some oak trees and a huge black plume of smoke stretched up into the sky, obscuring the Lynx helicopter as it circled impotently overhead. At the front of the APC, I could see the top half of Lieutenant Neil Byron as he clambered out of the passenger side of the cab, which was now upright, his face smoke-stained and bloodied. Our eyes met, and his were wide with shock.
And then I found out why. As he lifted his right arm, I saw that it ended in a blackened stump at the elbow, the wound already cauterized. He waved it uselessly in the breeze, staring at it now, unable to comprehend that it was gone, and that for the rest of his life he would be disabled.
I've got to admit that the knowledge that at any moment the APC could blow, killing us all, was at the forefront of my mind. But in those kinds of situations you simply don't dwell on the dangers involved. You've got to get everyone out before you can even think about retreating.
I could tell the lieutenant needed help, and I started towards him, which was when the dull, ringing silence was broken by a single burst of heavy machine-gun fire. The lieutenant's body jerked ferociously and it looked like he was being attacked from below by a shark, then two thick, winding lines of blood flew out of his chest and splattered onto the tarmac, leaving behind two exit holes the size of oranges in his flak jacket.
He didn't make a sound. Not even a peep. He simply slid back into the cab and out of sight, and I never saw him again. That's the nature of violence – its utter suddenness. It can be over in seconds, yet so great is the damage it wreaks that the ramifications often last for ever.
I dived to the ground, alongside Snowy, grabbing Lucas as I did so and dragging him down with me. Rob Forbes, a few feet away, wasn't so lucky. I can't remember if he even moved. We were all still in shock, our reactions slower than usual, and as the next burst of machine-gun fire shattered the silence, I watched as he was lifted off his feet and driven backwards through the air, his rifle clattering to the ground.
The bastards had set a clever trap. They would have known that even a powerful bomb would not destroy an APC completely and that some, if not all, the men inside would be able to evacuate it. But by placing a machine-gun crew nearby with a good view of the ambush point, they could simply pick off the survivors. The brazenness of it was incredible considering that there was a helicopter flying overhead and reinforcements would be on the scene very quickly. It wouldn't have worked if we hadn't been so close to the Irish border, but with barely a few hundred yards to travel before they crossed it and were out of our reach, and with the knowledge that the helicopter was unarmed and therefore unable to fire on them, our attackers obviously considered it a risk worth taking. And Lucas and I were now totally exposed to their fire.
A drainage ditch ran along the other side of the road, and the two of us were facing it. It represented our best chance of cover.
A third burst rang out, the heavy.5-calibre rounds kicking up chippings of tarmac only inches away from where we lay.
'Go! Go! Go!' I howled, leaping to my feet, my hand still gripping Lucas's flak jacket.
I gave him a huge shove and together we charged across the road, limbs flailing, adrenalin pumping through me so fast I felt like I was almost flying. We launched ourselves headlong into the ditch, landing in a foot of muddy, foul-smelling water. I rolled over in it and got to my feet, while Lucas remained on his hands and knees, coughing and spitting out phlegm. The back of his head was bloody and there was a deep gash at the base of his skull. He'd lost his rifle, but I still had mine. I moved over to the edge of the gully and took up a firing stance, trying to pinpoint the machine gunner's position through the assault rifle's sights.
There was a bend in the road about thirty yards up ahead, and a tree-covered slope running up behind it. I thought I caught a glint of metal in there somewhere, but such was the thickness of the tree cover that I couldn't be a hundred per cent sure. The rules of engagement in Northern Ireland were strict: only shoot if you're being directly threatened, and use the minimum force required to neutralize the threat. But the potent combination of adrenalin and the frustration of being attacked by an unseen enemy meant I wasn't really thinking about that. I cracked off half a dozen shots in the direction of where I thought I'd seen the glint of metal, then stopped, my finger tensed on the trigger. There was no return fire. The world was silent once again, save for the angry crackle of the fire across the road.
Meanwhile, Snowy was getting to his feet, using the back of the APC as cover. He had a deep gash on his forehead and he was wiping the blood from his eyes as another of the men, a recently recruited Fijian called Rafo, climbed out of the smoking double doors.
I shouted for the two of them to make a run for the ditch in case the fuel tank ignited.
At that moment, the second APC finally roared into view. I doubt if even a minute had passed since the initial blast, but it felt like hours. The APC drove past us and turned sharply in the road some twenty yards further on, so that it acted as a buffer between the stricken APC and the hostile machine-gun fire.