I had just started praying for the enemy to appear so I could be released from the pain when we moved into a flat open area, which Jimmy informed us was Mahazair Pools, the night basha spot. Thank fuck, I thought, as I carefully eased the weight off my shoulders and unsaddled my bergen. I reached for my last water bottle. It was empty. My thirst was fearsome. Rifle in one hand, empty water bottles swinging in the other, I walked across to the pools. My body felt strange and disjointed, as if someone had taken me apart and reassembled me in the wrong order. Now that we had stopped, the strain I’d locked into my body was released in a gush of heavy perspiration.
6
Isolation Ward
The beads of sweat trickled over my pulsing temples, ran down my jaw and dripped from my stubbled chin onto my already-soaking shirt. It was now virtually dark. I could hardly see anything around me, but all was reassuringly quiet. So far so good. But the worst was yet to come: I was soon going to be facing a crucial trial.
For the moment, though, my body was craving water to replace the fluids it had lost over the last few hours. I reached out, picked up the plastic beaker from the brown tray and greedily gulped the tepid liquid. It was Thursday night. I’d been here eight hours already. I had to face six days of the same monotonous routine, six days of swallowing mindbending green-and-pink torpedo pills. BET they called it – behavioural exposure therapy. The pills were meant to soften me up, to break down the barriers and allow the memories and traumas I had supposedly suppressed for all these years to come bubbling back to the surface where I could confront them, be exposed to them and so gain some kind of miracle cure. Six days of strictly supervised food-and-drink intake so that I could lie here detoxifying from any excesses I might have been indulging in. Detoxifying! That was a joke, when I was forced to take those pills which had God only knows what powerful chemicals in them. And six days of isolation – lying here all alone. They considered me a high-risk case, so they were monitoring my behaviour scrupulously and keeping me apart from the others. Only when I had passed this test would I be allowed into the general ward.
I went over to the window and opened it. The cool November air streamed over my face, staunching the flow of perspiration. The sudden change of temperature cleared my head and shook me fully back to the present. Beyond the dark band in the immediate foreground, where I could just make out the vague shapes of occasionally rustling trees, the great metropolis spread out under a glowing halo of misty neon orange as far as the eye could see. And if you went to that distant point on the horizon, I reflected, it would spread out yet again as far as the eye could see, like a vast alien colony on some distant science-fiction planet. It was an awesome contrast to the tiny, remote native villages I was used to seeing on operations, and to my home in Hereford where, on a night like this, you could look out and see ranges of hills and mountains forming a natural backcloth to the cluster of houses under the floodlit cathedral tower.
My thoughts were interrupted by a sonorous reverberation emerging from the background roar of the city. I looked up and watched as a 747 from Heathrow banked overhead and growled up into the night sky, the flashing navigation lights gradually getting fainter and merging with the stars. I thought back to those flights at the beginning of my career, in the C-130 from RAF Lyneham to Akroterion and on to Salalah, and in the Skyvan from Salalah to Midway. Had I changed? Was I disfigured by mental scars? Was I really so different from that eager young soldier, toiling his way up the Jebel in the heat of an Arabian night to face his first conflict all those years ago?
I closed the window and sank back onto the bed. As I drifted off into a restless sleep, I was disturbed by faint sounds from a distant radio. Someone was slurring the dial through the channels, creating a weird collage of strident noises.
7
Operation Jaguar
‘Allaaaahu akbar, Allaaaaahu akbar.’ The eerie ululation of the muezzin calling the Firqats to prayer rose to a high-pitched wail and drifted through the failing light of the evening. The shamag-clad Firqats gathering at the night basha spot squatted on the ground in large circles. With their FN rifles upright, gripped between their knees, they responded in a unison of strange melodies. The holy month of Ramadan was due to begin on 20 October. During Ramadan, Muslims are not allowed to eat or drink between dawn and dusk, and obviously this could have severely hampered our movements – after all, an army marches on its stomach. But since we could not afford to wait until the end of November, the Firqats’ religious leader had agreed to grant them the impunity permitted to Islamic warriors fighting a holy war. The prayers meant that the operation was about to begin.
I glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes to go. We sat around in small groups, listening to the Firqats and watching the shadows lengthen. We talked in low voices. We fell silent. We dozed. We gazed at the stars. We thought of home. We ate. We drank mug after mug of tea, filling ourselves up with liquid like camels in preparation for the trek ahead. We checked our equipment. We cleaned and oiled our weapons for the tenth time. We filled our water bottles and we filled our magazines. We thought of the task ahead and we felt the adrenaline begin to stir in our limbs. And we stared through the gloom at the great blackness of the Jebel plateau that loomed up in front of us, attempting to gauge the height we had to climb, the pain barriers we would have to surmount.
The minutes slipped by as we waited for complete darkness. I did yet another mental check on my equipment. Was the GPMG 100 per cent serviceable? Would we have stoppages? Where was the spare-parts wallet? Did I have the rear mounting pin? I glanced again at the watch suspended around my neck on a length of para-cord. Ten minutes to go. I fingered the two syrettes of morphine that were attached to the paracord with masking tape just above the watch. Would I need to use them? Could I remember the medical drill? I recollected talking to Iain Thomson in Hereford. He told me he had taken thirteen syrettes after being ambushed in Borneo. It struck me as strange. We had been informed that more than three syrettes and you would be dead anyway. I made a mental note to get the full story from him one day.
I checked the safety-catch on my SLR. Five minutes to go. I was beginning to feel anxious. What if they were waiting for us on the way up? What if the airfield was heavily defended? How would I react? Suddenly there was a noise from the Firqats’ area: the sound of equipment being moved, the clink of link ammunition against a metal water bottle, a rifle falling to the ground, a low hum of conversation. Above, the sky was completely dark – no moon. All around, men were clambering to their feet, pulling on equipment, adjusting straps and webbing belts. At long last, I thought with relief, we’re off. Jimmy had gone through the plan that afternoon as we sat around the pools of Mahazair, so every man knew exactly what he had to do. We pulled on our loads and joined the ever-growing crocodile of heavily laden figures ready to depart.
The only noises now were the odd clink of a weapon, the whispers of the radio operators doing their final checks, a nervous cough. After a few minutes the radios crackled down the line. I knew this was the signal. Zero hour: time to move! Suddenly the crocodile shuffled forward as the Firqat guides up front led off into the darkness. I shifted the tripod on my shoulders into a less painful position and began carefully picking my way through the darkness. The death march had begun.