Crossfire

1

The noise and heat, gloom and sheer fucking claustrophobia in the back of the Warrior were oppressive enough, but now the armour was suddenly clanging three times a second like the world's strongest madman was using it for sledgehammer practice. We were taking rounds. It could only mean we were closing in on target.

The engine roared and the tracks screeched over the rock.

The front end dipped hard.

'Fuck!' the Scouse driver screamed over the radio net, as he stood on the anchors. 'There's a fuck'n' bastard tank!'

The commander yelled back so loud I had to lift the PRR pad from my ear. 'Go right, you cunt — you'll hit the fucker!' Until a few years ago, the only way troops could communicate with each other was by shouting or hand signals, but every man and his dog now wore a personal role radio. It had revolutionized the infantry. Just four inches by six, with a headset consisting of an ear pad, Velcro strap and little boom mike, PRR acted effectively as a secure chat net between troops.

The Challenger's thundering growl had come from our left. The tracks squealed and we gripped whatever we could get hold of to stop ourselves being flung from our seats. We took more small-arms fire into the hull, and then there was a much louder bang two feet away from my shoulder.

'RPG!'

Rocket-propelled grenades could punch holes in concrete walls. I knew it would just bounce off the skirt of bar armour surrounding us, but I still felt like I was trapped in a locked safe while people on the outside were fucking about with blowtorches and gelignite.

It wasn't simply that I couldn't see what was happening. It was having no control that bothered me. I was at the mercy of the driver, the gunner and the commander in the turret. He was a platoon sergeant called Rhett or Red — I didn't catch it when we met, and then we got past the point where I could ask again.

Our Warrior was part of the battle group's recce platoon. Dom, Pete and I were embedded. 'Entombed, more like,' Pete said. He'd been a tankie himself once upon a time, and even he didn't like the lid coming down. We were jammed shoulder to shoulder in the eerie red glow of the night-lights. Rhett's scuffed and dusty desert boots were level with my face. The gunner was up there on his left, frantically feeding rounds into the 30mm cannon.

The wagon took one final hard right and came to a jarring, gut-wrenching halt. The stern reared up under the momentum, then crashed down like a breaking wave.

'Dismount! Dismount!'

Rhett's shout was drowned by the cannon kicking off above us.

Dom got a punch from one of the Kingsmen and hit the button above his head. The rear-door hydraulics whined. I could see stars, hear the roar of gunfire and heavy machinery.

The four recce guys tumbled out into the inky blackness. Pete shoved a hand over his lens and we followed.

My Timberlands slid and twisted on the rubble as I ducked down against the bar armour, gulping fresh but dust-laden air. Oil wells blazed out of control on the horizon. Gases and crude were being forced out of the ground under phenomenal pressure, shooting flames a hundred feet into the air.

The night was filled with the thunder of 30mm cannon kicking off across the dried-up wadi bed that separated us from our target — the buildings no more than a hundred away. It had prevented the drivers going right up to the front doors.

I was hungry for more air. My nostrils filled with sand, but I didn't care. I had my feet on the ground and I was in control of them. And, thanks to the mortar platoon, I could see what was happening. Their 81mm tubes had filled the sky with illume. Balls of blazing magnesium hung in the air above the town before beginning their descent, casting shadows left and right as they swung under their parachutes, silhouetting the two massive Challengers rumbling left and right of us.

Bright muzzle flashes from four or five AKs sparked up from the line of houses that edged the built-up area.

Our gunner switched from the 30mm Rarden cannon to the 7.62mm Hughes Helicopter Chain Gun to dish out a different edition of the same good news.

Two Warriors lurched to a halt alongside us, throwing up a plume of dust. My nose was totally clogged now. Guys spilled out of the back doors with bayonets fixed.

Pete adjusted the oversized Batman utility belt round his waist where he stuffed his lenses and shit, and raised his infrared camera to his face. He was like a kid in a sweetshop as the mass of armour surrounding the town spewed infantry into the sand.

Dom got ready to do his Jeremy Bowen bit to camera. He rehearsed a few soundbites to himself as Pete sorted the sound check.

'The Kingsmen of the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment are halfway through their six-month tour. They have been shot at twenty-four/seven by small arms, RPGs and mortars, but ask any one of them and they'll tell you it's what they signed up to do.'

Tonight they were about to kick the shit out of the insurgents who were within spitting distance of taking over Al Gurnan and starting to claim the ground as their own. They had to be broken. An insurgent stronghold soon became another link in the supply chain from Iran, just ten clicks away.

The Kingsmen's mission was to do the breaking, and ours was to report it. Dom talked, Pete filmed him, and I had to make sure the two didn't get shot, snatched or run over by a set of tracks sent screaming across the desert by a bunch of jabbering Scousers.

It wasn't easy. When Dom started playing newsman, he seemed to think there was a magic six-foot forcefield standing between him and any incoming fire. Sometimes he thought he didn't even need to wear a helmet. But in this war the enemy didn't give a shit whether you were a journalist or a soldier. If you were a foreigner they wanted you out, preferably in a body-bag. If they could get you alive, so much the better: you'd be the new star of The Al Jazeera Show, and all you could do was hope your next appearance wouldn't end with them slicing off your head online.

The chain gun ceased fire. The Kingsmen swarmed down into the wadi.

Dom made to follow, but I grabbed him and pulled him on to his knees. Another flurry of illume kicked off over the town and the cannon opened up again. I had to scream into his ear: 'They said not to go forward until they call us! Wait. Let them get on with it.'

The Kingsmen vanished for a few seconds in the dead ground of the riverbed, before reappearing on the far bank, screaming and shouting all sorts of Scouse shit they probably didn't even understand themselves.

They kicked their way through a series of old wooden doors and into whatever chaos lay the other side.

2

The sun had risen enough to chuck out a bit of heat, but not enough to coax me out of the oversized fleece I had on over my body armour. I ran my tongue over my furred-up teeth and gave my greasy, stubbled face a rub.

Dom and Pete sat among steel ammo boxes, day sacks and general wagon shit the other side of the idling Warrior. Pete fucked about on his Mac laptop, editing the bulletin Dom had made during the attack. He wasn't one of those bunker journos who gave their action-packed report from the safety of a Green Zone balcony. And that was my big problem. I spent every waking hour either pulling him down or away from someone or something that could kill him.

Paul, one of the recce platoon, was top cover with a Minimi; he had to stand between us with his head and shoulders sticking out through the open mortar hatch. Sand and all sorts showered down each time he moved.

I brushed some desert off my fleece. It got cold out here at night and I was a bit of a lizard. I liked to keep warm, even if it meant wearing something Pete described as the colour of shite after a bad vindaloo. I hadn't got it from an outdoors store; I always ended up throwing my kit away every few weeks because it got so minging, so I'd treated myself to a trip to Oxfam. Three and a half quid as opposed to thirty; a bargain whatever the colour.

Last night had produced an insurgent body count of eighteen, at a cost of two wounded Kingsmen. Now a Challenger and our three recce-platoon Warriors had been tasked with setting up a vehicle checkpoint on the eastern road out of town to see what got caught in the net.

Looking out of the open rear door, I could see the wadi the guys had run through during last night's attack. It was littered with carrier-bags, dog shit, drinks cans, water-bottles; all kinds of trash that wouldn't be washed downstream until next year when the rains came.

A pack of scabby old dogs were kept at bay by the heat blasting from the grilles of the Challenger's massive turbo-charged diesel engine. Like the Warriors', its hull and tracks were caked with mud and dust. No call for spit and polish here: they were fighting a war. The bar armour surrounding the lower hull and tracks looked like a series of buckled and scorched farm gates. That was because it was doing its job, deflecting RPGs.

Now it was light, I couldn't see too much flame from the blazing oil wells, just thick black pillars of smoke on the horizon. It was going to be a long time before this place was stable enough for the conglomerates to come and start sucking out black gold.

The Challenger pointed its big fuck-off barrel at the town like it was giving the locals the finger. Come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough. It wouldn't take a genius to get the message.

A helmet jutted from its turret. Tank crews wore dark green covers to blend in with their vehicles; light desert camouflage would make a perfect target for a sniper or any half-decent shot who'd bothered to zero his weapon.

The Kingsmen had five VCPs covering all the roads in and out of town. After last night's attack they dominated the area. At first light they'd started searching and questioning every male of fighting age. Notionally that was fourteen to sixty. The reality was that if you could lift a weapon you could fire it, so the guys had massaged the age bands. Terrorists, insurgents, whatever the government had decided to call them this week, to the Kingsmen it was academic. Out here on the ground, politics meant nothing. Even kids and old men were firing AKs and RPGs at them, and they were firing back.

There was never any doubt who was in command. I could hear Rhett right now, out on the VCP, giving shit to the platoon.

It was easy to tell the guys at the sharp end from the rest of the army, even though they wore the same uniform. They were in shit state. Their boots were hammered and fell apart before they ever got a clean. Their uniforms were dirty and ragged, their camouflaged helmet covers and body armour so worn and ripped it was hard to see the pattern.

The Challenger wasn't the only one with its engine running. All three Warriors had theirs idling so the big square boiling vessels inside could heat water.

I pushed the button at the bottom of our BV and made three brews.

'Here, mate.'

Pete took his white, no sugar. Fuck knows why, but this lot called it a Shirley Temple. I passed the mug to him round Paul's legs.

He took it without looking up and settled it on the steel floor beside him, pausing only to blow sand off his keyboard.

The Kingsmen thought Pete was weird for not taking sugar. 'He worried about his figure or something?'

Dom took sugar, but as far as they were concerned he was still from a completely different planet, not because he was a Pole but because he drank only three brews a day.

To make up the shortfall, I threw Pete a Yorkie bar from the ration packs. He glanced at the wrapper and gave a little chuckle. Where it normally read 'It's Not For Girls', the army ration pack version had 'It's Not For Civvies'. Now that he'd been let in on the joke, it never ceased to amuse him.

Paul's brew was next. Like the whole of recce platoon he took it NATO standard: white, two sugars. Me too. Not because I liked it that way any more but so I could join the others taking the piss out of Pete for being a girl.

I tugged at his trousers and a leather-gloved hand whisked the plastic mug on to the roof.

'Cheers, la'.' Pete's accent would always be more Bermondsey than Scouse, but he needed to level the score.

Paul muttered something back and Pete laughed. The banter had been ricocheting between them for the last two days.

Paul's tone changed suddenly. 'I got movement… in the wadi… three fifty. They're carrying…'

Radios crackled and another Warrior from a VCP south of us opened up with its cannon.

I watched through the rear doors as the ground round the bodies erupted in clouds of dust. The small figures scattered.

Dom grabbed Pete's camera and almost fell out of the wagon. He was nearest the door and Pete still had his iBook on his lap.

Paul got a lead on one of the runners. He kicked off a short burst and the empty cases cascaded on to Pete's head as he hunched over his screen.

Then Rhett yelled, 'Check fire, check fire!'

Paul froze.

'It's kids!'

3

The radio net went ballistic as everyone was told to stop firing.

Rhett paced angrily as the net commanded a call sign to go and check if any of them had been hit. 'Little shites!'

Then he shouted into the camera, a finger jabbing at the lens with every word as Dom kept it stable on his shoulder. 'The little bastards shove a black sock over a water-bottle, put it on the end of a stick and play RPGs. It might be the only game they know, but it's going to get them killed. Or one of my guys, while he's trying to work out what the fuck's being aimed at him. It pisses me off. Why don't their parents grip the little shites?'

He stormed away to give someone else a bollocking. Our driver walked past the open rear door with an SA80 in one hand and a big wheel wrench in the other. Our Warrior had had two wheels blown off a fortnight ago by an improvised explosive device dug into the side of the road. Now the nuts on one always seemed to be coming loose, and the driver liked to tighten them at every opportunity.

''Ere, Paul…' Pete gestured towards the driver '… you Scousers, you're always at it — your mate's nicking the wheels off your own fucking wagon…'

The mouthful he was about to get back was interrupted as the net reported no bodies in the contact area.

'Thank fuck for that.' In helmet, padded gloves and body armour, Paul was the next best thing to the Terminator. His ballistic glasses looked like untinted Oakleys. Like the leather gloves, they were worn to protect against fragmentation from RPGs and upblast from IEDs. The original issue had been ski goggles, but nobody wanted to wear them. Maybe it was the curvature or the Perspex, but they gave a weird perspective when you took aim. These ballistic gigs gave superior vision and far more protection.

His Osprey body armour had two big plates front and rear, and a big collar that came right up to his ears to protect against upblast. I particularly liked the bat-wings — Kevlar pads extending from the shoulder to the elbow to give extra protection when he stuck his top half out of the mortar hatch, ready to back the three lads with his Minimi 5.56 machine-gun if things kicked off.

I just wished Pete, Dom and I had the same protection, instead of the blue baby armour the media always minced about in. The theory was that we stood out from the military, but through the iron sights of an AK we'd be the only blue things in the desert.

A contact kicked off in the distance, probably at a VCP on the other side of town. Tracer rounds bounced into the sky.

The VCP set-up was simple. Two Warriors parked about fifty metres apart, on opposite sides of the road and angled at forty-five degrees to it, forming a chicane. One had its 30mm cannon facing out-of-town traffic, the other facing traffic coming in. Every vehicle, even donkeys and carts, was stopped by whichever Warrior it came to first and fed through into the safe area to be searched. The rest of the platoon was spread out in fire positions as all-round defence.

We'd had a big rush out of town to start with, as the locals tried to leg it, but then it died down when they realized no one was going to escape with their hauls of weapons, explosives and drugs.

The problem was, no vehicles meant no locals the insurgents had to worry about killing by mistake, so we were an unprotected target. 'Open season,' Pete muttered.

Dom climbed back in and the two of them got back to work.

I sat down with my brew near the open doorway and watched as a battered 4x4 crept into the VCP.

4

Many of the vehicles I'd seen looked brand-new. Some had Kuwait or Dubai numberplates. All flew a white flag. This one was a Land Cruiser, and its best days were behind it. Paul's feet shifted as he shadowed it with his Minimi. I watched as it moved into the safe ground. A white pillowcase hung from its aerial.

Five males of fighting age got out with their hands in the air. They knew the drill; they'd been doing it for nearly four years now.

I stretched my legs along the seat. Pete tapped away at the keyboard, preparing to send TVZ 24 the latest report from its star correspondent.

It was Poland's first twenty-four-hour news channel. I'd watched a few of Dom's pieces. It looked like Sky, News 24 or CNN with additional gobbledegook; they were all the same format, lots of primary colours, rousing music, girls with big hair and white teeth. Their headquarters were in Krakow, but TVZ 24 didn't only beam out to Poland: plumbers and builders all over Europe were regular viewers on satellite or cable. Dom and Pete worked out of the Dublin office. There were better tax breaks in the Republic than in the UK.

It wasn't only the Poles who knew our hero. Dominik Condratowicz was a bit of a celeb in reporting circles, the golden boy of war journalism with platinum-plated bollocks. He was one of those people who believed he would never get shot or damaged, the sort, Pete said, who walked into nothing but good. He wore a memory stick on a chain round his neck. Maybe it was to ward off evil spirits.

He was tall and annoyingly good-looking, even when a thick layer of dust had given him a horror-film face. His Top Gun-style dark brown hair, blindingly white teeth and firm jawline were featured most weeks next to his wife's in Poland's answer to Hello!. As far as I knew, he lived in Dublin with Siobhan, his Irish wife, and her son. He kept things close to his chest, did Platinum Bollocks.

Pete was getting pissed off with the dust billowing off Dom's jacket. 'Here, Dracula, you going to take your fucking cloak off or what?' Dom's mother was from Transylvania. When he'd found out Pete obviously thought he'd died and gone to heaven. He was laughing so much he had to close his iBook to stop his own dust getting on the keys.

Dom cocked an ear as Pete went back to his edit. 'Talking of creatures of the night…' His English had an accent, but it was a whole lot better than mine. This guy had education behind him.

An unmanned aerial vehicle — the battle group's eyes — buzzed overhead in the brilliantly clear sky. Like a large model plane with a huge wingspan and a couple of cameras in the body, the UAV was flown by remote control from one of the Warriors.

Pete took the final bite of his Yorkie, pulled a can of compressed air from his Bat-belt and gave the laptop keys a few bursts. As he treated himself to a blast down the front of his shirt, I spotted a memory stick like Dom's round his neck. I hadn't realized superstition was so rife in this business.

Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq. They'd been there, seen it, done it together, and Pete had filmed Dom wearing the T-shirt. He never lost an opportunity to remind Dom it was his camerawork that had won them all their awards. They'd picked up an Emmy last year for a documentary on women's rights in Afghanistan — almost non-existent under the Taliban, and not much improved, apparently, under new management.

5

A couple of cars and trucks were still being held at either end of the chicane, waiting to be fed into the safe ground.

Pete was about to upload the report. He joined Paul in the mortar hatch and plonked his sat phone on a flat stretch of hull. The BGAN Explorer 500 looked more like a George Foreman grill than a mobile. Lying on its side with the lid open, it was pointing straight at Paul.

'Mind the old family jewels, mate.' Pete grinned from ear to ear. 'You know what they say about them microwaves…'

Pete used a little inbuilt button compass to point it towards the satellite, then ran the USB lead back down through the hatch and into his iBook. The power lead was plugged into the vehicle supply.

'All set?' Dom closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable.

Pete tapped away. 'On its way.'

A shaft of early-morning light shone through the mortar hatch and on to my face.

'Back in your coffin, Drac.' Pete wasn't missing a trick this morning.

Dom kept his eyes shut but couldn't stop a grin.

'What now, Pete?' I shifted a day sack out of the way. 'You going to go and talk tanks with your new mates?'

He shook his head. 'Had enough of that shit when I was in. I never liked the fucking things even then. Besides, Tallulah wants me to give Ruby a virtual bollocking.'

Pete logged on to BT at least once a day and checked his emails. The ones he got from seven-year-old Ruby and her step-mum Tallulah always raised a smile with him. They did with me, too, but only because Ruby and Tallulah sounded more like a Eurovision Song Contest entry than real people.

Emails were OK, but no one out here was allowed to use a mobile phone to call home. The insurgents had infiltrated the phone companies, and if a soldier was allowed to waffle to his family they could triangulate the signal, get a fix on his location and an early warning of any troop movement across the desert. Which meant they could scatter — or they could attack.

Pete was in his late forties, and had been a squaddy himself for four or five years when he was younger. Hussars, dragoons, lancers — some tank regiment, I'd never understood who was what. I liked him a lot, and it wasn't just because of his accent. The moment I'd heard it at Amman airport, I'd known we had a lot more in common than an army past.

What we didn't share was his almost obsessive-compulsive approach to organization. Pete had to be the most fastidious man on the planet. Maybe that wasn't so surprising, after being cooped up for the whole of his army career with a crew who farted every five minutes and pissed in empty plastic bottles. He washed his socks and underwear every night, even though he had a fortnight's worth in his bag, and spent so long with the Colgate and floss I thought he was going to wear his teeth out.

''Ere, Nick… You want to get online before the Prince of Darkness here hogs the fucking thing?' He looked across at Dom and the smile evaporated.

Dom seemed to spend longer on the phone and email than a lovestruck teenager, and it never seemed to be to his wife. His hours online were to Moira, his producer back in Dublin.

'The price of fame.' I raised an eyebrow.

'Rather him than me,' Pete said. 'She's an arsehole.'

It was true. The only decent person I'd spoken to in the whole office was Kate, her PA.

He went back to his laptop. It still felt strange to me that they were able to maintain contact with the outside world and conduct their lives almost normally while sitting in the back of one of these things in the middle of a war zone. It wasn't just the technology that amazed me. It was sustaining the relationship.

An RPG kicked off somewhere in the city. A 30mm fired up and gave it a few rounds back.

Dom opened his eyes and reached for a bottle of water. He took a few swigs and offered it to Pete, who looked at him in disgust. 'After you've had your fangs round it?'

Dom finished it off. I could almost hear his mind ticking over as he drank. 'Did the two of you see the trackmarks on their arms last night?'

We'd got called forward at dark o'clock to check out the aftermath of one of the house attacks. There were four dead, all in their twenties. Two had had AKs, the others RPG launchers.

Pete gave me a here-we-go-again look. 'I keep telling you, Drac. There's loads of these fuckers on the gear. It's even worse than at home.'

Dom dropped the empty bottle on the floor. 'I understand that, Peter, but the ones at the bottom of the food chain, why do they fight? Ideology, or just to earn their next fix? Iran is supplying them with heroin, along with the weapons and ammunition they fight with.'

Pete gave me another glance. We'd been over this ground many times. Dom had obsessed about the heroin trade ever since we'd got here, and Pete was worried.

'Listen, Drac, Iran has the worst drug problem in the world. Two million of the fuckers are hooked. It's the law of averages that the locals are on the gear. You can spit at the border from here.'

Pete punched Dom on the arm and gave him a 500-watt grin. 'I bet even that little git Ahmadinejad shoots up. Probably what stunted his growth…'

Dom couldn't raise a smile. 'Those young guys last night, and these…' He pointed at Paul's legs. 'Guys like this are fighting a war while people make fortunes trafficking heroin. Using the very wars they're fighting as cover.' He turned to me. 'What if we could prove there are people in Afghanistan and Iraq who are using the wars to move heroin into Europe and who knows where else? Tell me that isn't a story.'

Pete rolled his eyes. 'He won't leave this shit alone, Nick. You just watch when we get back to base. He'll be into the FCO mob like a rat up a drainpipe, trying to get them to pay attention. And for what? Whatever they say, you ain't getting me running round filming a bunch of junkies.'

Pete slapped the back of his hand against Paul's legs. 'Oi, you're supposed to be a mate. If you treat a mate like that, I'm glad we're going back to Basra tomorrow. Leave you fuckers out here in the world's biggest ashtray.'

Paul cut him off. He yelled to the three in the VCP: 'Vehicle… I don't like it. The fucker's not slowing…'

Rhett charged past the rear of our wagon. 'Hold your fire… On my command…'

Pete picked up the camera.

Dom shot me a glance. 'Suicide-bomber?'

Pete was already out and running. Dom and I followed. Fuck the helmets. If the wagon was packed with high explosive, they weren't going to be much help.

6

The lead Warrior was still parked at forty-five degrees to the road.

Rhett assessed as we took cover behind. He rattled a commentary into his PRR as he scoped it through binos. 'One-up, looking young. Still closing, maybe a hundred away.'

I stuck my head out. It was an old Toyota Hilux, dark blue or black. A white rag fluttered on a length of wood behind the cab. A green tarpaulin over the tail-bed flapped in the slipstream.

'Wait, wait, wait…' Rhett had to make sure it wasn't some dickhead tuning the radio instead of watching the road. Could be. It had been known.

Pete had strayed out into the road as he filmed. I grabbed his body armour and hauled him back into cover. Dom was tight in behind me.

Rhett stepped out when the Hilux was just fifty metres away. He tried to wave him down. 'Keep that fucking cannon on him.'

The driver's grim-set face filled the windscreen. This was no dickhead surfing the channels for Radio Basra.

The Hilux accelerated.

'Hit it, hit it, hit it!'

Rhett's voice was lost in the hail of 30mm as he dived for cover next to us. Rounds punched into the Hilux and kicked up chunks of tarmac around it. The windscreen disintegrated. The wagon was taking so many hits, I couldn't believe the whole thing didn't fall apart.

Everybody in the all-round protection cordon hit the ground, braced for the inevitable.

Pete had disappeared. Dom got up off his knees and was about to follow. I lunged for his body armour and grabbed him as the Hilux screamed past, pulling him to the ground. 'No fucking way!'

Paul gave him a long burst. The high-velocity rounds made my ears ring. I jumped on top of Dom to keep the fucker on the ground as Paul stopped firing and dropped down into the Warrior.

The Hilux slammed straight into the bar armour at the front of our wagon. There was a loud bang and bits of metal and glass showered down on us. Then there was a deathly silence.

I peered round. The Hilux had been no contest for twenty-five tonnes of armoured vehicle. The whole left side of its engine compartment looked like it had gone through a crusher. Steam hissed from broken pipes. Oil smoked on hot metal.

Paul's head appeared through the hatch. He was straight back on the Minimi and resumed firing, directly into the cab. The body behind the wheel jerked and danced as the rounds thumped home.

Rhett was up on his feet and running. He was joined by two of the platoon. They stood and emptied their magazines into the cab until he finally raised his arm. 'Stop! Stop! Check firing!'

He took the last couple of steps, jumped up on the bar armour and peered through the smashed glass. 'We can't make the cunt any more dead.'

Pete appeared, camera up, and filmed the three Kingsmen at the driver's door.

I let go of Dom and helped him to his feet.

Rhett wrenched the door open. The body rolled out on to the sand-covered tarmac. The only sound was the steady rumble of the Warriors' engines, and the hiss of steam.

Rhett beckoned us forward. He pointed to a car battery in the footwell. The negative terminal was already connected to one of the two-core cables running out of the passenger door and under the green tarpaulin at the back. The second strand lay loose, ready to be touched to the positive.

'The battery first, Peter. Then whatever the Kingsmen do next.' Dom glanced down at what was left of the body. 'No, wait — see the trackmarks?' He pointed at the body's bloodsoaked arms. 'I need a close-up.'

I gripped the back of Pete's body armour to steady him. Left to his own devices, he'd have climbed into the cab to get a better picture and ended up kicking the loose wire on to the battery terminal.

He got the shots Dom had asked for, then zoomed in on a corporal as he ripped the wire from the battery.

Dom called us to the rear of the Hilux as a couple of Kingsmen lifted the green tarpaulin carefully from the flatbed to expose what looked like a pile of hardened mashed potato.

I tapped Pete's arm. 'Plastic explosive.' It was moulded over a cluster of six mortar bombs that had been gaffer-taped together. 'Eighty-one millimetre. Mint condition. See that? Even the brass around the percussion cap is still shiny. Look at the base of the rounds, mate. Can you get the stamps?'

Pete zoomed in. '"Lot 16 2006". They Brit or Yank?'

'Neither.'

The fact that it was written in English didn't mean they'd been factory-made in an English-speaking country, or that Islamic fundamentalists were knocking up 81mm mortar rounds in a shed behind Bolton railway station. All exported munitions carry English ID. It's the language of war and Iranian mortars. Rhett eased the detonator from the pile of mash and looked at the body on the ground. 'Fucking useless twat, doped to the eyeballs — couldn't even kill himself properly, could he?'

Dom took the two steps to me and kept his voice low so the Kingsmen couldn't hear. 'You see what I mean, Nick? These mortar rounds are coming into the country in the same shipments as the heroin. This guy's not a militant, he's a victim, just like these soldiers. They're all just pawns, Nick.' He pointed at the trackmarks, trembling with anger. 'It's not just happening here.'

He stared into the distance and his voice cracked. I thought he might be about to cry. 'Dublin. London. They're all lining their pockets. We have to do something about it. We can't just stand by and do nothing.'

7

'Say what you like about Saddam Hussein,' the Media Ops guy said, 'but he didn't mess around when it came to ordering up the gold leaf and sculpted marble.'

We were sitting in a Portakabin at the COB (Contingency Operating Base), getting increasingly bored by the Royal Artillery captain's tour-guide spiel. We weren't the new kids on the block. All we'd needed was a brief on the situation, a timetable for the embed, and a helicopter ride out to where the action was. Personally, I wasn't that interested in hearing about the fifty-six windows on the front façade, the eighteen giant reception rooms, twelve balconies, five grand staircases and eight spacious toilets with gold taps Saddam had knocked up on a commandeered public park in 1990 while his subjects scratched a squalid living around him.

Nor was Pete, by the look of him. He was trying hard not to yawn.

'And that's just one of fifteen buildings in the same complex,' the captain went on. 'Little did he know his palace would become a fortified British camp. The grounds are now home to 2 Rifles.'

I knew the second battalion of the British Army's new rifle regiment had been formed a week or two earlier from the Light Infantry, Green Jackets and Gloucesters, but only because the Scousers had been moaning about it. This amalgamation business was all the rage. The Duke of Lancs had been the King's Regiment until five minutes ago.

The captain shrugged. 'Or maybe he did. In the end, he never came here, not even for the weekend.' He laughed at his own joke.

I felt sorry for the fucker. He would probably have much preferred to be out there doing some proper soldiering instead of fronting the army's PR machine. That said, it was my job to protect Dom and Pete, and not just from bombs and ricochets. I put up my hand. 'Is there really a Pizza Hut here? If so, can we order?'

When we'd landed from Jordan on the only civilian flight serving the city, we'd seen the rows of tents and vehicles stretching away to the horizon. To most soldiers out there, 'COB' was just another way of saying 'in the rear with the gear'. Word had it they even had two Indian guys running round on mopeds delivering American Hots with extra pepperoni.

The captain looked at his watch. 'No time, I'm afraid. Your carriage awaits.'

Even at night, which was the only time it wasn't too dangerous to fly into the compound, the pilot had to keep the rear tailgate down so the gunner had a good arc of fire. It gave us a spectacular view of the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway, glinting in the moonlight as it snaked through a series of mansions. They were flanked by palm trees and what had probably once been exotic gardens. Now they were just tank parks for 2 Rifles' armour, and as the Merlin dropped closer to the ground it looked as if every square metre had been rotavated by IDF (indirect fire).

The heli touched down just long enough for the loadmaster to kick us out and then it was airborne again. As briefed, we ran towards the torchlight that flickered on the edge of the pad, sweating in our Osprey body armour and helmets. Things were going to be different in the city. Our baby armour would have been as much protection here as an extra pullover.

A total blackout was in force. Fuck knows who held the torch, but he came from Essex. 'You can expect at least three or four mortar or rocket attacks a day while you're here.'

We followed him past wall upon wall of HESCOs, massive defences made from circular bins of galvanized steel mesh and polypropylene, filled with whatever was to hand. 'Sand's the material of choice around here,' our guy quipped, loving the chance to showboat a little. 'But it stops shrapnel all the same.'

We soon reached a building. Moonlight shone on huge marble pillars supporting a stone portico.

'Fuck me.' Pete craned his neck. 'That's Tallulah straight off to B&Q when I send her the pics.'

We went through a pair of five-metre-tall doors, and into a marble-floored hall. The guy with the torch had to be the army's oldest corporal.

Pete surveyed the empty room. 'Couldn't he afford any furniture, then?'

'Looters had it away before the Royal Marines arrived during the war.' The corporal nodded at a door to the left. 'Just a few gold taps left in the bogs. Fancy a brew?'

There was a loud thud out in the compound, then another.

'Katyushas.' The corporal poured hot water into white styrofoam cups. 'Hundred-and-seven-millimetre. All brand-new stock. Everyone knows it can't be local. No heavy-calibre munitions have been made in Iraq since 2003.'

Pete asked the obvious question: 'So where is it being made, then?'

He handed Pete a steaming cup. 'Iran, mate. The border's just ten K away.'

8

'I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about him.' Pete sipped his brew, trying not to burn his lips and fingers.

We were sitting at the back of one of Saddam's old state rooms as we listened to the CSM's confirmatory orders. Dom had disappeared to a different part of the palace complex to have another go at the FCO. I'd offered to escort him, but he insisted he was fine.

'I mean, there's more chance of being struck by lightning than getting an interview with the spooks and the Foreign Office lot. Drac knows that, but he's gone back for more. I don't like the way they treat him. Particularly since he comes straight back and takes it out on me.'

I tried to make light of it. 'Maybe that's what pisses him off. Somebody actually refusing to be interviewed by Platinum Bollocks.'

Pete leant over to talk quietly in my ear. The CSM didn't take kindly to people chatting in his Orders, even if they weren't on his payroll. 'He's been really off, this last three or four weeks.'

'You want me to have a word? It's my job — I'm supposed to look after you. Whatever's bugging him could affect his safety.'

He thought about it for a second. 'Nah, I've been trying to work out what goes on in that head of his for years.' He shrugged. 'I just have a laugh with the bit of Dom I know.'

I looked around me. We were sitting just a few feet from the famous toilet that every newspaper in the world seemed to have printed a picture of. Sculptures of men and women with stern faces and square jaws were carved into the marble walls, pointing heroically skyward. They were a bit less heroic now they had dark glasses, moustaches and teeth, courtesy of a string of bored squaddies with marker pens.

The marble floors were cracked and scraped after years of abuse from boots, chairs and desks. Gaffer-taped cables snaked underfoot and up the walls. The rooms were subdivided into offices and briefing areas by sheets of 3x3-metre plywood. The partition doors, also made of plywood, were pulled shut by a two-litre water-bottle suspended on a length of paracord running through a hole in the frame.

Phones rang incessantly. Kettles boiled 24/7 alongside ration packs of brew kit.

'Any questions?' The CSM's voice boomed round the room. He had some sort of northern accent, but at least it wasn't Scouse. Even though he spoke at a million miles an hour, I could understand him. He may have been plain Dave to his wife and other civvies, but he was 'sir' to anyone in uniform below the rank of major, and he had everyone's complete attention. It wasn't just because the army insisted on it: piled on the floor to my left were the remains of some mortar rounds and rockets that had thumped into the compound over the months of their tour — we were in serious country.

The twenty or so team commanders for tonight's strike operation, all NCOs, had had their formal orders earlier in the day, followed by full tabletop rehearsals. Dom had been present for those. Dave was now doing the final run-through.

'No? Good. OK, the house we're going to hit…' He glanced at the huge wall map of the city behind him. Satellite photos and int briefs lined its sides. 'The spooks over in the west wing have strong reason to believe it's part of the supply chain between Iran and local insurgents. Weapons, ordnance, explosives — they think we'll find the lot. No need to remind you, this affects us all. We've lost enough good people.'

He tapped the satellite photography with his steel pointer. 'Take a lot of care. Look again at the junctions either side, look at the buildings all around. Before we move out, make sure your people are aware of where they need to be, what they need to do, where everyone else is and what they're doing. There will be no fuck-ups.'

B Company's target, in the Gazaya district of the city, the main stronghold of Muqtada Al- Sadr's Mahdi Army, was a small two-storey building surrounded by a concrete-block wall with a steel door on to the street.

The strike was phase two of the operation to kill and disperse the insurgents in the Brits' area of operations. They had also been gathering in Gazaya over the past two weeks, and their numbers would have kicked up a notch if any had managed to escape the Kingsmen's attacks out in the sandpit.

It was obvious from the photos there hadn't been any town planners around when Gazaya went up. Houses and apartment blocks up to four storeys high seemed to have been piled on top of each other with a warren of alleyways and wasteground between them.

Dave gobbed away about the outlying areas, the other houses that were going to be hit by the other rifle companies, where they'd had contacts in the past, where their guys had been shot. The team commanders nodded; so did the two female RMPs (Royal Miltary Police) and a medic. None of them could have been over twenty-five. Some things don't change. I'd been a corporal in this very battalion when I was nineteen.

By comparison Dave was an old man. He must have been about forty; either he was using hair dye, or he was so laid-back he was almost horizontal. There wasn't a grey hair in sight, and his face was almost completely unlined, except for a thin scar that ran from the edge of his top lip up the side of his cheek.

'Number one on the door is Rifleman Duggan.' He turned to his lads and stabbed a finger at them, more out of pride than aggression. He was the CSM, this was his rifle company, and the respect between them was so solid you could reach out and touch it. 'You lot make sure you big him up before tonight. It's a big deal for him. It's a big deal for anyone.' He paused to make sure it sank in. 'He leads us in and we take on whoever's there. We lift the targets, then the film crew come in to do their thing and make you all famous.'

A ripple of laughter spread round the room. They knew a couple of the young lads would be taking up fire positions a little more dramatically than usual if Pete and his camera were nearby.

'And then we stay and fight. But remember, this is a hard-arsed area. They like to keep all their mortars and explosives to themselves. We've never left there without a contact.'

There was a loud thud out in the compound. We jerked down to tighten our body armour and get our helmets from under our seats. Nobody went anywhere without them.

Then, maybe fifty metres away, a second rocket exploded. We were being IDFd by 107mm Katyushas.

'Remember.' Dave scanned the room as the third and fourth rockets slammed into the compound. 'The house is probably holding the guys who killed the Marines last Remembrance Day. That's why the media are coming with B Company. We're going to show some payback.'

He jerked a thumb at the vehicle-group commander, a Fijian corporal with a head the size of a watermelon and hands that made his notebook look like a postage stamp. 'If they start firing, you hit them with everything you've got, you understand me? I want all our lads out of there alive — and that's an order.'

This was a really tight company. You could feel it. Even if I'd told them I was from the Green Jackets and later the Regiment it wouldn't have counted for anything. They were fighting a war together and didn't give a shit about anyone else.

Dave was still going nineteen to the dozen; maybe he had his eye on another brew. 'Once we're in there, we're staying. We'll wait for the fuckers to try it on and see what happens. Corporal Barney,' he pointed to the sniper commander, who looked up from his notes, 'you tell your lot to get a few drops of that Optrex stuff down their eyes. I don't want them missing anyone coming our way.

'If it kicks off, don't worry, I've got more brass in my wagon to resupply your lot than they had at the Alamo. We might need it. C Company were in there last week. Five fucking hours that contact lasted.'

His jaw tightened as there was another explosion in the compound. 'Remember the two lads killed last week, and the poor fucker sent back to the UK with half his guts hanging out after one of those fucking things landed on him. Just make sure you look after your people and keep them alive, OK?'

There was a murmur as everyone stood. We headed for the brew area. Nobody was going anywhere until the attack had stopped and the munitions guys had got out there to clear the compound.

9

Pete stood up with his empty cup still in his hand and his helmet at a jaunty angle. He didn't wear one of the black Wehrmacht-style helmets like the rest of the media. He said the lip at the front got in the way when he filmed. Instead, he'd got hold of an old British steel helmet on eBay, and ground down the front of the rim.

He wore it tipped back and to the left, with a square of shammy leather underneath so it stayed at the same angle and didn't slide about on his bald head. With the corners of the shammy hanging down over his ears, all he needed was a Capstan Full Strength glued to his bottom lip and he'd have been a ringer for old Tommy Atkins in the trenches.

I tapped his arm. 'Finish your emails, Bermondsey Boy, I'll see to these.'

'Thanks.' He passed his cup. 'That's if the sat phone ain't shot to bits.'

Pete went to the other side of the room, where his iBook was rigged up to a BGAN wire running out through the window. The BGAN itself was sitting on top of one of the HESCOs outside.

Yet another rocket landed with a dull crump. It was the fourth attack we'd had that day. The last one had been mortars and had taken out two of the quartermaster's steel freight containers. No one was killed or injured, so I could just imagine the QM rubbing his hands as he prepared to compile a list of bomb-damaged goods long enough to fill two ships, let alone two containers.

When I got back to Pete with his Shirley Temple, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, back against the wall, his iBook on his lap. The memory stick he normally wore round his neck was jutting out of the USB port.

He wore a big smile under the helmet.

'Family stuff?' I laughed. 'So that's what you keep on those things. I thought you boys had 'em as some sort of good-luck charm. Fucking Dom walks round like he's immune to everything except green kryptonite.'

'Don't I know it, mate. It's a worry. Here you are…' He shifted the screen so I could share. 'Last year's birthday party. Six years old and bright as a button.'

A tall woman in a bikini with long wavy blonde hair was doing her best to keep control of half a dozen kids in armbands and goggles. The camera panned to take in more of the background.

I did a double-take. 'Fuck me, Brockwell Park lido! That takes me back a bit.'

'Done a few laps in your time, have you?'

'We used to go and mess about there as kids.' I watched his grin widen. 'We'd get out at Brixton and go to the market first, see what we could nick. We usually landed up with a couple of tomatoes or some green thing we didn't even know the name of, but it still made a nice picnic. Then we'd doss by the pool until we got thrown out for divebombing the grown-ups.'

Pete had been nodding along. He gave a burst of laughter louder than a 30mm. 'I got chucked out too! Wrongly accused of being the previous owner of a turd they found floating in the deep end. Wasn't you, was it? Too much exotic veg?'

I pointed at the screen. 'That Tallulah?'

'Yes.' He beamed. 'And that's the birthday girl.' His finger touched the screen and lingered as she blew out the candles on her cake. He was lost in his own world for a bit. 'I've missed every one of the last three…' He looked up suddenly. 'But do you know what, Nick? I'm not fucking missing her seventh, in three weeks' time. Or any of the others after that. I'm jacking it in, mate. Local news and quality family time, that's me from now on.'

I wasn't sure if he was serious. 'But you'd miss all this.' I waved my arm to embrace the chaos.

'Miss what? A reporter on a personal crusade he won't let me in on, crap tea — no offence — and an arse full of sand?' He tapped the screen again. 'No contest, mate.'

I understood the tea and sand bit. 'Crusade?'

He blew out his cheeks. 'He's always been hungry for it. Passionate, you know? I used to be up there with him, righting wrongs, changing the world. But I just don't have the appetite for it any more. It's partly the fact that all we're producing here is tomorrow's chip paper. Disposable news — nobody gives a fuck.' His eyes roamed back to the birthday party. 'Partly that other things, like spending time with Tallulah and watching Ruby grow up, are a whole lot more important to me now.' He shrugged. 'Don't get me wrong, the awards we got for the Kabul doc mean something because they were recognition for exposing the fucking nightmare out there, but I just… I just don't share Dom's passion any more.'

'And the new passion is drugs? That's the crusade?'

He leant forward to get his face closer to mine. 'He's so fixated he even had me secret-filming in Dublin a couple of weeks ago…' He slumped back and stared up at the ornate ceiling. 'But I'm checking out now. Maybe I'll do the odd wildlife documentary. Just as long as I can know what my schedule is far enough in advance not to risk missing another of Ruby's birthdays…' His eyes narrowed. 'You got family, Nick?'

'I did have, once.' I got a sudden rush of pins and needles in my legs, a sensation I hadn't experienced for a long, long time. 'A little girl who was a lot like your Ruby, as a matter of fact. Her parents were killed, I was her guardian.' I was vaguely aware that sweat was now leaking more heavily down my face and tried to wipe it away. 'I never really got the birthday thing right… In the end I had to ask someone more reliable to take over.'

My memory stick was set to locked, and that was the way I liked it. Somebody once told me I lived life with the lid on, and I guessed they were right. It was the way it had to be. How was I supposed to function if I spent all my time clicking thumbnails of a teenager dead on a King's Cross bed? The image I tried to cling to was of her bright and sparkly at the one birthday I did manage to get right, at the replica of the Golden Hind on the Thames.

I was spared having to go there, and poor Pete was spared having to listen. One of the rifle-company lads appeared and stood next to me, but it was Pete he was after. He had a blue Helly Hansen T-shirt on under his armour, and a brand-new tattoo of barbed wire curling round his right arm. Here and there a few scabs still clung to the ink — but not as many as there were on the zits he'd popped on his face.

Pete looked up at him with a big smile. 'Hello, mate. What can I do you for?'

The young lad smiled back. 'I heard you was a tankie. My dad was, too — Jim Duggan, you know him?'

Pete moved his head from side to side in thought mode. 'No, mate, sorry, don't ring any bells. He still in?'

The lad was Welsh, and flushed with pride for his dad. 'No, he's here, in Iraq, working for one of the security companies.'

Duggan… The name suddenly rang a bell with me. He was the boy who needed bigging up. I held out a hand. 'I'm Nick, that's Pete. You number one on the door tonight?'

He got even prouder. 'Terry. Yeah, first time. The platoon swaps round the entry teams.'

'Good luck, mate. You know, until about four years ago only special forces would be doing that shit.'

His eyes widened and he kept shaking my hand, and Pete just kept looking at him, deep in thought.

'Yeah?'

'That's right, mate. Big day. Good luck.'

One of the RMP girls walked past and Terry's eyes swivelled. Pete laid down his iBook, stood up and wrapped a fatherly arm round him. 'You do good tonight, my son, and she'll be all over you like a rash.'

Terry might have been about to get the party gear on and make entry into a house packed with guys wanting to kill him, but he was maybe nineteen at a push. The RMP would have had him soft-boiled for breakfast.

Pete gestured at the iBook. 'If that old man of yours is on email, you want to drop him a line? Tell him you're OK?'

Pete and I exchanged a glance. He knew as well as I did that if tonight went to rat shit this might be the last time he ever made contact.

Terry was even more made up as he sat and started tapping away.

Pete stepped over to me, looking pleased with himself. 'You know what? There would be stuff I'd miss. Mostly the camaraderie. The brotherhood. It's a bit like being a squaddy, what we do. Even when you're up to your neck in shit, you're surrounded by mates.' He smiled. 'We were in Kabul when Ruby's mum fucked off to Spain with the bloke who built our extension. It was Dom and all the other guys who kept me afloat.'

He slapped my arm. 'Sorry, mate, too much information. If you do ever get there, though, the Gandamack Lodge is the place to drown your sorrows. Great bar. The city's not exactly awash with them. All the news crews stay there, and it's the circuit's watering-hole. Plenty of company.'

The shout went up that the attack was over, but we stayed where we were. The area still had to be cleared before anyone could move.

'Talking of keeping afloat…' he hit my arm again… 'when Tel's finished, why don't you go online to Sad Fucks Reunited, see if you can hunt down the old diving team?'

10

'Where the fuck is Peter with those drinks?'

It was the first time I'd heard Dom swear. Things obviously weren't too hunky-dory on Planet Platinum Bollocks. He'd come back fuming from his session at the FCO building. Pete and I had tried to draw him out, but he stayed tight-lipped.

It was H-hour minus twenty, and we were choking on the exhaust from B Company's nine Bulldogs. Their back doors were open. In the dull red glow from the interiors I could see a mass of last-minute checks going on. I watched Terry as he tugged his chest harness over his Osprey body armour and positioned the pouches to make sure his mags, frag and smoke grenades were secure. Once he was sorted, he couldn't resist having another quick squeeze of a zit.

All I had to check was the field dressing in the left map pocket of my cargos, same place everyone kept one. That way we knew where to grab it if someone took a hit and started leaking.

The ear pad of my PRR crackled as guys blew into their mikes to test their radios were working and on the right channel.

Dom turned to me. The guys were around us so he kept his voice low. 'They are so young.'

I pointed to Terry, now pulling on his gloves — maybe to stop himself attacking his face. 'That little fucker there's first through the door tonight.'

Dom moved a few steps to check he really was seeing teenage spots on the man leading the attack.

'That's how it is.' I shrugged. 'They're infantry, they're all young fuckers.'

Dom was still brooding as Terry clambered into the back of his Bulldog. Maybe he was thinking how lucky that stepson of his was in comparison. I guessed he'd be tucked away in a nice warm university bed right now, probably not his own. Good for him. I always wished I'd had the chance of college instead of running round like Terry, with a tin hat on, getting shot at.

Pete returned with three white cups and caught the fag end of the conversation. 'That kid who's first through the door tonight is only nineteen.'

I took my brew but Dom shook his head.

'Take it, you'll like this one. I got us some real coffee. I told 'em vampires can't drink tea, it kills them. Go on, it'll calm you down. You shouldn't go chasing after those fuckers. It winds you up too much.'

I took a sip of the strong, milky brew as Dave came on the PRR. 'All call signs. Ten minutes.'

Around us, working parts were cocked.

''Ere, Drac, you get any one of those spooks to interview yet? We got a busy day tomorrow?'

Dom's mobile rang before he got the chance to answer. 'Baz! You sure?' He jammed a finger in his other ear and shouted: 'Is that better? I said, are you sure it's him? That's great news. When did you find out?'

He closed down and put the phone back in his pocket. He looked at Pete. 'I've got a lead.'

'Want me to come with you?'

'No, I'll go first thing — should only be a few days. Just get lots of footage. You know, the boys emailing home, that sort of thing. Bread-and-butter stuff. Cover for me with Moira. You know how much she hates me doing my stuff on her dime.'

Pete was frowning. 'What are you—'

There was an explosion two hundred away, followed closely by another.

'Take cover!'

As if anyone needed telling. Cups dropped to the tarmac as we legged it into our Bulldog.

Pete grabbed my arm. 'Something's wrong, Nick. This is about more than an interview.'

'Personal?'

'Very.'

Dave was already on the net. 'Soon as all call signs are complete, we're mobile.'

Thirty seconds later, the company rolled out of the tank park in their nine wagons, just as another Katyusha piled into the compound. The explosion sounded much closer this time. Yet another whooshed over the open mortar hatches, its rocket even louder than the wagon's engines and tracks.

The Bulldog was essentially the old APC (armoured personnel carrier) that had been rumbling over the Westphalian plains of Germany for thirty or forty years as part of the BAOR and during the Cold War. I'd spent two years in them myself as mechanized infantry, and remembered them as slow and sluggish. But this lot had been geared up with a brand-new power pack so they could scream along at fifty m.p.h., keeping pace with the Challengers and Warriors. They also had brand-new armour all round, including bar armour to keep the RPGs at bay, and a turret with a GPMG had been mounted where the wagon's commander would normally sit and poke his head out to watch thousands of Russian tanks screaming towards him.

Ours was the command vehicle, at the rear of the column. Dom, Pete and I were crammed into the back, along with Dave, two medics, the company commander and his signaller.

The company commander, a major, was on the net to another rifle company, Chindit, to tell them we were leaving early. Chindit were from 2 Lancs, who were defending the OSB (Old State Building) in the centre of the city.

They'd be backing us once the contacts started. The plan was to let the militants run and drive into the contact area and take us on. As soon as that happened, Chindit Company, reinforced by three extra Warriors from Rhett and his recce platoon, would scream out of the OSB in their Warriors and cordon them off. With so many Warriors on the ground, the militants would have nowhere to run. It was then the job of both companies to dispose of as many insurgents as they could in the killing ground they had created.

This was just one of the four strike ops that would be going in tonight. The other companies from 2 Rifles would be doing the same in other areas, also with 2 Lancs backing them in their Warriors. It was going to be one fuck of a party.

I bent my five-inch plastic IR cyalume stick so that the glass inside broke, mixing the chemicals that made the thing glow, though only when viewed through NVAs.

Everyone else was doing the same, then attaching them to the back of their helmet or Osprey. In the confusion of contact it was a good way of knowing where your mates were before you decided to take a shot through your night sight at a moving body.

11

It was just as suffocating inside the Bulldog as it was in the Warrior, even with the mortar hatches open. Dust and exhaust fumes blasted in as we roared towards the compound exit.

Dave sat next to the door handle and pointed out where all the wagon's shit was located. 'Behind the boss there, morphine and tourniquets. Spare ammo is here.' He kicked the metal boxes below his seat with his heel.

Another rocket went off in the compound. He waved a finger under the table that held all the computer and signals kit the company commander was gobbing off into. 'Pass 'em about, will you?'

I leant over and lifted the lid of a battered plastic picnic cooler. It was packed with 500ml bottles. Drinking water wasn't in short supply in the compound. There were pallets of the stuff people could just help themselves to, and almost as many squirty bottles of hand cleanser. Out here, soldiers had to wash their hands every time they ate, had a dump or simply had nothing else to do. Sickness and diarrhoea could affect anyone; get a couple of guys with a bug and soon the whole company's out of action.

I threw him the bottle and passed a couple more round. I reached behind the company commander and tapped the scabby boots of the gunner. He reached down from his turret and grabbed it. Next thing I saw, he was pouring the contents away and preparing to take a piss into the empty bottle.

The company commander pressed a series of buttons on the control panel in front of him to switch between the different nets he was listening to and waffling on. His laptop showed the positions of all call signs in the city.

Dom and Pete were squashed up on my left. Sonia, one of the medics, was by the door. The other medic, sitting next to Dave, was dressed in full party gear — body armour, bingo wings, ballistic glasses, leather gloves. At a nudge from the CSM he stood up through the hatch and stuck his SA80 out into the gloom. The GPMG turret swung right as we passed through Saddam's majestic gates. We were out of the compound.

Nobody said a word. Through a haze of dust piling in through the mortar hatch, I'd caught the occasional glimpse of clear starlit night. Now I began to see bulbs. They dangled across the streets like strings of big party lights, and led off to concrete-block houses at either side. Normal street-lighting had been fucked years ago.

Faded billboards advertised Marlboro and Nescafé, and gave a message in Arabic that I guessed said Gillette was the best a man could get. The newest ones advertised Iraqna, the country's mobile-phone network.

Washing hung from balconies above closed-up shop fronts. Kids' Teletubby T-shirts and football shirts were soon filthy again from the dustcloud we kicked up. From this angle, I could have been in the back streets of Naples.

The wagon came to a sudden halt. Dave pushed down the lever on the big metal door and let it swing open. No hydraulics on these old things. He grabbed the top cover to tell him to jump out with him.

Dom was confused. 'We there already?'

Through the open door, I could see the top cover was already taking a fire position by a wrecked car.

'Not yet.' Dave kept the door open and yelled to Pete to jump out with his IR camera. 'There's time to film if you want. One of the locations saw where the rockets came from and called in a fire mission. We can't go any further until it's done.'

Sonia eased her feet out of the way so Pete could dismount, and Dom was close behind.

I followed, glad to be out of the wagon even after such a short time. 'How long we got?'

'Just enough to make sure the fuckers don't hit us as well as the firing points — it's only about a K away.'

Dave pushed the door shut and Sonia locked it from the inside.

'Who's firing?'

'The artillery. We've got a 105 from the COB on the case. That's why we stay well back. Can't trust them to shoot straight.' Dave chortled away to himself.

I made sure Dom and Pete were in cover, then sheltered in a doorway. Lights went out all round us. I pictured kids and grannies being jammed under tables for a bit of protection. The locals knew as well as we did that shit was on its way. If the Brits were static, they were a target.

12

The whole company was shaken out in all-round defence along the road. My PRR was alive with guys making sure all the arcs were covered.

Pete started filming as Riflemen pulled down the night-viewing aids attached to their helmets over their non-aiming eye. The NVAs on their weapons were already switched on, ready to take aim if they saw a target. Alot of them had chosen to wear their normal dark green camouflage smocks. Some had also covered their helmets with dark green covers. It was a matter of personal choice. They were fighting at night in a town, not in a sandpit.

Nothing could be heard above the rumble of the Bulldogs and the now much calmer chat on the net. I'd just taken a couple of steps out of my doorway to get closer to Dom when a loud whoosh overhead was followed by an explosion as a 105mm artillery shell slammed into the city ahead of us.

Dave ran over to me as another whistled over our heads. He crouched against a Datsun that looked like it was held together with gaffer-tape. 'I bet they don't tell you about any of this shit back home, eh? Can you imagine what the papers would say?' He ran his hand along an imaginary headline in the air. 'British Artillery Shells Basra.'

A third 105 round landed, and seconds later an AK opened up just ahead. Two Bulldog guns and six or seven SA80s returned fire.

Two more AKs opened up. The PRRs were jumping and the CSM got on the net. 'Leave 'em, we've got things to do. Let's go, mount up.'

The Bulldogs' guns kept up the rates as guys jumped back in. I grabbed hold of Dom and Pete. Dave and the medic kept their covering positions as Sonia held open the door. We scrambled in and the others followed.

Dave seized the door handle and pointed at Pete and Dom. 'Make sure you look after those two. If they can lift you, they will. They're always after a squaddy. One of you guys would be even better. Bigger ransom.'

Pete turned to Sonia. 'And they'd be able to understand what we were saying. He'd be no good on Al Jazeera.'

Dave waited on the PRR for confirmation that everybody was back inside their wagons. Finally he leant across and thumped the company commander on the leg before giving him the thumbs-up.

As the tracks squealed again, we took three or four rounds of AK into the side. The GPMG rattled off a reply.

The wagon jerked and there was a loud scrape of metal on metal. The whole right side of the Bulldog lifted and the scraping continued.

Pete grinned. 'Someone won't be driving to work in the morning.'

Dave thumbed the medic to get his arse back on top cover, and it wasn't long before he was signalling Pete to join them with his camera.

Dom wanted to follow but Sonia grabbed him. She sounded like she should have been on EastEnders. 'It's just where the rocket launcher was, innit? Stay here, love, it's safer.'

Pete came back down. He opened the side screen of the camera and pressed play. We crowded round. It was fantastic quality, black-and-white IR, none of that hazy green stuff I was used to seeing on TV. The 105s had wreaked devastation. The remains of a six-barrel rocket launcher lay mangled on the back of a truck. Pete had homed in on what was left of a body. The image shook as the Bulldog bounced about, but he looked to be in his teens. The shredded clothing was still smouldering. An arm was missing, and a big chunk of the launcher stuck out of his back.

'We got one of the fuckers, anyway.' Sonia's East London tones even drowned the engine noise.

My nostrils twitched. I could smell shit. I looked at Sonia and raised an eyebrow.

'Not me.' She smiled. 'We're nearly there. Their sewers are fucked.'

Dave got on to his PRR. 'Front vehicle, count us in. Everyone, listen in.'

The company commander's head was buried in his laptop. Signals popped up on the screen every few seconds like messages in a chatroom. He talked non-stop on the net. The signaller worked frantically beside him. It was almost like watching a movie.

The Fijian's voice filled the net, very slow, very laid back, speaking as if he couldn't smell a whiff of shit. 'We're turning on to the target street now. Four hundred to go. Street is lit, house lights going out.'

13

The PRRs fell silent as the Fijian counted us in. Serious faces looked up and out at the buildings that hemmed us in on both sides.

'Fifteen… twenty…'

Dave pushed down the locking bar of the rear door and held it closed.

I checked my Osprey collar was up and the Velcro fastening in the front was secure enough to keep it that way.

'On target — stop, stop, stop!'

The wagon tipped forward. Dave hurled the door open before it had even finished rocking. He and the second medic both jumped out and disappeared towards the front of the wagon. He had to organize the strike and the protection, and relay everything back to the company commander. Sonia stayed in the wagon to receive any casualties.

Pete tumbled out. He had a job to do as well. He had to keep as close as he could to the entry team without getting killed.

Dom and I were close behind. All the Bulldog commanders were ripping down the cables overhead. Bulbs shattered on the ground. Lights went out along the rows of buildings as the area closed down and got ready for a nightmare. Petrified kids screamed at each other inside the buildings all round us.

Pete had reached the door in the outer wall of the target. The strike team was forming up each side. Terry checked it wasn't unlocked before the battering ram was swung into action. The bang of steel on steel mixed with the rumble of the wagon power packs, smashing glass and the screams of revved-up soldiers and terrified civilians.

Dom filmed with the IR camera in front of him as we moved along the line of Bulldogs. I gripped the back of his Osprey to steady him and keep him out of the team's way as he concentrated on the small digital screen.

The ladder crews ran across our path from left to right, heading for the rear of the building. Others legged it to the far side of the street. They needed to get Barney and his snipers up on vantage-points both sides of the road, soon as. Guys with Minimis followed to give all-round defence.

There was an almighty crash as the battering ram slammed into the steel door for the fifth time. Its top hinge ripped apart and the door fell halfway to the ground but held.

Pete's stills camera flashed on multidrive. The strobe effect made the entry team's movements look like something out of the Keystone Kops.

Snipers raced up ladders and on to walls.

The entry team formed up on the front door, half a dozen each side. Terry already had his weapon in the shoulder, facing in. His zit-covered face glistened with sweat. His mate behind held him by his Osprey, as if he was restraining a hyped-up greyhound.

'Get that fucking door in!' The yell echoed above the Bulldogs' engines.

The battering ram crashed against the steel door again and again. Pete did his paparazzo thing, triggering so many bursts of flashlight it seemed like there were a dozen cameras, not just one.

The steel door came off its hinges and crashed to the ground.

'Get in there! Now!' Dave somehow managed to make himself heard above the din of engines, shouts and screams from what seemed like every building in the street.

Terry yelled at the top of his voice as he was released, and disappeared through the open door. The number two followed. The entry team with their battering ram were next, and I heard the first thud as they pounded against the wooden front door of the house just two metres inside the wall.

Dom arrived at the breach and stood trying to get some film of the guys inside. Most of the strike team hadn't been able to get into the confined space between the wall and the door.

'It's blocked inside! It's blocked!'

'Fucking hit it! Hit it!'

Pete got up on the tips of his toes. He stretched his arm and aimed the camera over the wall, then hit the multidrive.

Dom strained forward, trying to get into the tiny courtyard with the team. He really thought that forcefield of his would make him bulletproof.

I hauled him back, doing my job. Even Terry was holding back from the door frame until it was time to move.

I shouted into Dom's ear, 'Just let them get on with it, mate.'

There was fire from inside the house. I pulled Dom further back. He fell. Good. I wanted him on the ground anyway. I wanted him anywhere out of the line of fire as Riflemen collapsed against the wall each side of the door as it erupted in a cloud of splinters. Another burst headed the Riflemen's way. The rounds hit the outer wall. Pete, now on the ground streetside, was showered with concrete dust.

'Gunner! Gunner!'

A Rifleman ran to the door and fired his Minimi from the hip. As he moved from the side of the door to directly in front of it, his body rocked back and his helmet rattled with the recoil of a good thirty-round burst.

The echoes bounced round the street, drowning out all other noise. I hauled Dom up so he could film. Pete saw us move and jumped up to get his camera back over the wall.

It's not enough just to be able to carry one of these machine-guns. You need to have the attitude to use the fucking thing. This lad had it. He kicked off a twenty-round burst, standing not even a metre from the door. Gun oil smoked on its red-hot barrel.

The wagon commanders chucked rocks at the last few lights that couldn't be reached any other way. Cyalume sticks glowed on the roofs and walls around us to indicate the location of the snipers. When the shit hit the fan, the GPMG gunners on the Bulldogs would know to aim at anything but blue.

The Minimi stopped. The air was thick with cordite. The gunner jumped out of the way as the door collapsed and Terry and the strike team surged through. Their shouts were mixed with screams from terrified women and children.

Dom moved through the gateway as a burst of AK came from inside followed by four or five quick rounds of 5.56.

It was pitch dark now. No more flashes from Pete, and the last of the street-lights had been killed.

Pete pushed his way inside. 'Hope Tel's OK, eh?'

I let go of Dom, only for him to get knocked aside by the RMPs as they barged their way through. One had a full Royal Mail post sack over her shoulder.

The air was thick with sweet, flowery incense to hide the smell of shit from the open sewers, but it couldn't hide the cordite. There were just three small, dimly lit rooms on the ground floor. An external stairway curled up to the second floor. The Minimi had disintegrated the wall opposite. It was now rubble spread across the floor.

Riflemen dominated every room.

14

One of the Rifles was an Arab from Birmingham. He yelled at a man kneeling on the threadbare carpet in a narrow room to our right. The prisoner was young twenties, definitely of fighting age. Cushions lined one wall. His hands had been plasticuffed in front of him. He was still begging the interpreter as a pair of ski goggles blacked out with gaffer-tape was pulled over his eyes.

One of the RMPs went ballistic, screaming questions for the Arab to translate. 'Name? What's your name? Any more men in the house?'

She checked her picture cards of Basra's most wanted as she went. He looked up, his hands pleading as desperately as his mouth.

'Shut the fuck up!' She bent down until she was inches from his face. 'Name! ID card! Where's your ID?'

Dom carried on filming. Riflemen drenched in sweat shouted at each other as they controlled the rooms.

Screams came from the middle room. Dom swung round. He got some footage through the half-closed door as women, young and old, huddled on the floor with the children. The other RMP jabbered away in Arabic, trying to calm them as she opened the mailbag and handed the kids little day sacks. Bad cop, good cop.

The Rifleman guarding the door pointed at Dom's camera. 'Not here, mate. Just let her do her stuff. Leave the women alone and they'll tell you more than these cunts.'

Flashes from Pete's camera bounced into the hallway from the third room. I went with Dom to see the body of another man of fighting age, a bit older than the last, stretched out on the floor. His blood soaked the carpet and had splattered over a pile of what looked like mud bricks wrapped in heavy polythene in front of the TV. Tom and Jerry kicked the shit out of each other on screen. An AK lay in the corner. There was a pistol tucked under the waistband of his jeans. Muqtada Al-Sadr, sunbeams radiating from behind his head, gazed down at him from a massive poster on the wall.

Terry stood over him, waiting to see who he'd dropped.

A corporal with a set of picture cards was down on his knees, inspecting his handiwork. 'Yep, you got him. One of the bombers.'

Dom was examining the pile of brown blocks. 'And what looks like half Afghanistan's heroin output for a month.'

The lad's face lit up as he took slaps on the back from the lads.

Pete did the same. 'Well done, mate — and still alive to tell your old man the tale. Good news.'

Our PRRs sparked up. 'One dead, one lifted,' the company commander said. 'They've confirmed, we've got them both.'

A mobile phone rang the Nokia tune and its display flashed in the dead man's jeans.

Dom and Pete filmed the AK and the polythene blocks of heroin being placed in clear-plastic evidence bags. Kingsmen took digital pictures of notebooks, photographs and anything else evidential before it, too, was bagged up and taken away.

Terry nodded down at the body. The mobile was still ringing. 'Wonder if it's his mates warning him there's a patrol.'

Pete smiled back. 'Nah, it's the neighbours telling him to turn the fucking noise down.'

Our PRRs sparked up once more as Dave now took control from the street. 'OK, listen in. Barney, your snipers set?'

'Set.'

'Wagon commanders, set?'

'Yeah, all set.' The Fijian sounded as if he was ordering pizza.

'Strike team, crack on and finish the search. I want this done quickly before we're taking incoming.'

They lifted books from their shelves, flicked through all the pages, and pulled drawers from an antique sideboard that might have been looted from Basra Palace.

We moved back into the other room. Dom filmed the live body again. The guy was still on his knees, but his plasticuffed hands were now covered with a clear-plastic bag to preserve any explosive or weapon residue on his skin. He also had a set of defenders over his ears, and a white markerboard hung round his neck on a loop of paracord upon which the name SADIQ had been written in marker pen. A yellow cyalume stick was taped to the board to help with ID in the confusion and darkness. The interrogator stood over him, taking digital pictures.

Dave came into the building and got on his PRR. 'All call signs, stand to. They'll be here soon.'

He grabbed a squaddy in body armour moving past him. 'Where are the women and kids?'

He was directed to the middle room. He knocked on the door. 'OK, girls, let's get them out.'

The kids were playing with colouring books, plastic toys, the sort of stuff they hand out on long-haul flights. The women were totally covered. Evidence bags containing three mobile phones and a couple of notebooks lay by their feet. The RMPs were scribbling details.

The search teams had unearthed more weapons. A couple of AKs, some pistols and ammunition were being bagged up, together with some DVDs. According to the crude photocopies on the covers, they were of Western hostages being decapitated, Algerian soldiers having their throats slit, and IED attacks on American Humvees. Dom filmed it all with the IR.

The RMPs and a couple of Riflemen escorted the women and kids to a Bulldog. They would sit out the next couple of hours in cover while the rest of us waited for the inevitable.

The search team entered the newly vacated room and started to rip it apart.

As if on cue, two shots rang out from the snipers above us. Barney's voice barked over the net: 'That's one down. I'm claiming it.'

15

'Tel, mate, look over 'ere…'

Pete kept snapping away as Terry and the strike teams prepared to surge out of the house and back on to the street. Dave was sharp with him. 'No more flash — you'll make yourself a target.'

Pete's tin helmet was tilted back so he could get the camera to his right eye. He looked ridiculous. Even the Riflemen laughed at him as they ran past. He packed his stills camera away in his Batman utility belt and took over with the IR handheld, changing batteries like Riflemen change magazines. Always have a full weapon.

I leant against one of the interior walls near the door and watched the guys look mega-warlike for the camera as they waited their turn to move out. I felt a pang of jealousy. At least they were in control. It always felt good to be able to fire back.

A Manchester lad of eighteen or nineteen did a last check of the link on his Minimi before moving out with his team. He was about as tall as his weapon — and with the collapsible butt folded down, that wasn't much bigger than a ketchup bottle. Sweat poured down his face and dripped off his nose.

His lance corporal eyeballed him. 'You OK?'

The lad nodded.

Dom moved away and rolled up the dead man's sleeves. I could see the trackmarks even from where I was standing. He looked up at the lad. 'They're high as kites. Be careful.'

It was nearly the Rifleman's turn to leg it out of the building. He nodded at me. 'Where the fuck's he from?' Manchester, by the sound of it.

'He's Polish. He's the Polish Jeremy Bowen.'

He glanced back at me blankly as he got the go from his corporal. 'Who the fuck's Jeremy Bowen?' He legged it out on to the street before I could answer.

The rest of the team followed. The PRRs were full of chatter but soon cut it when the first burst of AK rattled down the street.

Dave appeared next to me. 'Here we go.' He jerked a thumb as the last man disappeared through the hole in the wall and into the street. 'It's up to you what you lot do. Stay in the house, go back to the wagon, or get out there. Just don't get in the lads' way, OK?'

Pete shouted over at Dom: 'We going, Drac, or what?'

The AK kicked off again and six or seven SA80s gave some back. All of a sudden it seemed the whole street was alive with gunfire. AK rounds bounced off the wagons and into walls.

The Riflemen gave it back in spades.

I caught Pete's eye. 'You all right?' It seemed the thing to say when this sort of shit was happening.

'Don't be fucking stupid. I'm shitting myself.'

The air filled with the roar of engines and the squeal of tracks as the wagons moved out to make better use of their guns.

Dave called for sit reps from the roof snipers. It was pointless Pete asking Dom what he wanted to do. We both knew.

'Wait here.' I left the building and stuck my head through the gap in the wall where there'd once been a door. Most of the Bulldogs were on the move, taking both ends of the street and covering the corners with their GPMGs. One, the rear command vehicle, stayed static. Its top cover cracked off rounds in all directions. Every dog and human in the neighbourhood was going berserk.

Pete was behind me, camera up. Dom was redundant until he could get his report in, but he was tucked in behind him.

We legged it to the command Bulldog and moved along its flank to a Rifleman at the front-corner bar armour.

Briefly, a bright burst of muzzle fire lit the dark. Weapon reports echoed along the street, making it hard to work out where they had originated. The Rifleman loosed off six or seven shots in reply.

I held Pete by his body armour to steady and control him as he filmed. 'Follow the road up on the left, about a hundred. There's an alleyway. That's where they're firing from.'

Suddenly the Rifleman stopped firing and jumped back. I yanked Pete so the guy could get into cover. Pro that he was, Pete filmed the lad as he hit his release catch and the mag fell to the ground. He slammed in a fresh one, hit the release catch for the working parts to go forward, and swung back into position. Pete moved behind him, filming over his shoulder.

Dom tugged at my arm. 'Let's go.'

Another bright burst of AK lit the alley mouth and thudded into the command wagon. Pete turned back to Dom. 'Go forward? You got a death wish, Drac, or what? We'll get enough good gear here.'

Before he'd even finished, all hell let loose on the PRR. The snipers had seen more Iraqis moving in.

16

Dave didn't want to know about the dramas, he just wanted a body count.

Barney got on the air. 'Five. But we got groups of two or three moving all over the arc.'

'Wait out. Boss — Chindit?'

You could have heard a pin drop on the net. Nobody was going to talk over the top of those two.

'Chindit now mobile.'

It was hard to see exactly what was happening in the dark now the street-lighting was dead. Riflemen ran all over the place. Contacts could be heard left and right, as well as beyond the buildings on both sides of the street. Shouts and screams of command filled the short lulls when the Bulldog guns weren't firing. I didn't try to work out what was going on. It's always best just to get on with your own stuff.

An eight-strong Rifleman patrol came up behind us, panting and sweating, just as the wagon's gunner aimed a long burst at the end of the road. My ears rang. Empty cases tumbled off the hull and clinked on to the crumbling tarmac.

The patrol's NCO yelled at the gunner. 'We're moving into the alley, crossing your front!'

The last thing they wanted was a blue on blue.

Pete filmed them as they hunched behind the Bulldog, waiting for the gun to stop. 'All right, Tel?'

Pete had the handheld up to his eye. He couldn't use the hinged screen like a tourist because of the telltale glow.

Dom got into reporter mode. 'Can you tell me what's happening?'

The NCO didn't bother looking at him or the camera as he replied. His eyes switched between the road and the gunner, who was still firing. He had to force the words out as he tried to regain his breath. 'We're going to go down the alley and bomb-burst out the other side of the building. We got movement in cover over there and the snipers can't get 'em — so we're going to flush 'em out.'

Pete put the camera on Terry, but only for a second before our gun stopped and the NCO legged it. The patrol followed. I watched the last man, the little Manchester lad, as he ran across the street and veered right, up towards the alley mouth. Blue cyalumes hung off buildings either side.

There was no need for discussion. Dom was already on his feet and about to follow.

I restrained him as another long burst came from the other side of the buildings, and checked he and Pete still had IR cyalumes gaffered to the backs of their helmets. 'You've definitely bent those things?'

They nodded. I kept low and followed the patrol, who were well ahead of us now. An RPG kicked off to our right and flew straight down the middle of the road. It slammed into a building fifty metres further on and exploded. Lumps of concrete rained down on us. When I looked up again, the last man was disappearing into the alley.

'Come on, quick!' We needed to get there before they were swallowed into the darkness.

I stopped at the intersection.

A dull glow shone along the alley from the street a couple of hundred beyond it. It was about two metres wide. Rusty metal doors and barred windows lined both sides. The ground was strewn with litter, rubble, puddles, dog shit. The patrol was nowhere to be seen. They had already bomb-burst out the other end.

We crunched our way towards it. Dom needed controlling. He'd switched on his forcefield again and was surging ahead.

'No one goes any further than the end, OK? We've got snipers above us and we don't know what the fuck's going on out there.'

Pete snorted. 'You won't have to tell me twice, mate.'

Dom got there first. He was scoping up and down as I joined him. Out there somewhere was the distant rumble of Chindit Company's Warrior tracks. Immediately ahead, across about thirty metres of sewage-covered wasteground, lay a rabbit warren of side-streets, ramshackle buildings and bomb-blasted sewers. That was where the patrol must have gone.

I gripped Dom, the stench of shit burning deep into my sinuses. 'This is as far as we go, all right?'

He pointed frantically to a fallen wall about fifteen away. 'There, Peter, look!'

A body lay motionless in the half-light, face down on the wasteground.

Pete started filming. With his camera's night-viewing capability he could see better than we could. 'He's got one round through the nut and there's an AK next to him.'

Dom spotted another body sprawled on the road further on, just before the warren where the patrol must be. The snipers couldn't have missed the fuckers at that range.

SA80s stuttered behind us back in the street. Pete arranged Dom at the edge of the alley so he had the body in the background. Dom started gobbing off to camera in hushed and dramatic Polish.

Above us, another sniper added to the soundtrack. It was going to be award-winning footage.

17

Pete was still filming as a burst of AK screamed out of the warren. The rounds zinged over our heads and into the walls behind us.

Pete jerked the camera away from Dom. 'Tel!'

I turned to see a body staggering out of a half-demolished building and into the wasteground.

It was a Rifleman — the dome of his helmet was silhouetted against the distant glow. He stumbled a few steps more and fell.

Pete pushed the camera into Dom's hands and legged it across the wasteground.

'Pete, stop!'

Either he couldn't hear me or he didn't want to. I shoved Dom back against the wall. 'Stay here!'

I tried to gain ground and catch up with him but it wasn't long before my boots were sinking into calf-deep puddles of sewage.

The Rifleman lay prone on the ground. Sniper fire cracked off above us. The rest of the patrol was now engaged in a contact inside the warren. As long as they kept the fire going I could get Pete and the Rifleman — if he was still alive — back into cover.

Pete was bent over the body. I fell on my knees next to him. Sewage splashed up my Osprey.

Pete must have spotted Terry through the viewfinder. The boy groaned.

'Pete, he's OK, he's alive. Come on, let's get him up.'

Terry had taken a couple of rounds into his front plate. The force would have knocked him to the ground, but he wasn't injured, just bruised. He lay there in shock at still being alive. 'Fuck… fuck…'

For Pete it was relief.

'Get up, both of you. Come on!'

I grabbed Pete as a scream from the snipers told us to get out of the killing ground. They cracked a couple of rounds over our heads.

I looked up towards the warren as a body dropped just metres away. His AK hit the ground before he did.

More bodies poured from the darkness. They weren't firing.

'Run! They're going to lift us!'

Pete and Terry were on their feet. I pushed them on through the stinking mud as the snipers tried to cover us.

It was too late.

An arm appeared from behind me. Then I felt hot breath on my neck and a head against my shoulders. He tightened the armlock, and the world was full of grunts and stale tobacco. His weight was dragging me down. The Velcro of my PRR ear pad ripped away and fell to the ground.

Other bodies swarmed over Pete and Terry but they were going down fighting. There was nothing I could do for them until I was free.

The screams, gunfire and Warrior engines receded into the background as I jerked left and right, pushing my head back to nut him, anything to get the fucker off me.

My knees buckled. I fell to the ground and he collapsed on top of me. I kicked, pushed, punched, anything to get him off so Barney — anyone — could take a shot.

I kicked out but this boy was massive and he kept hold. Wet with shit, his hair slapped against my face. We tumbled into a shallow ditch. I made a grab for his head and tried to butt him.

We rolled over and over in the shit puddles. I saw the stars, and the next thing I knew my face was in the mud. I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I had to breathe. It was like holding your mouth and nose as a kid after taking a deep breath, then carrying on until it becomes unbearable and keeping on going a few seconds past that.

I felt a stabbing pain in my eyes and ears. I felt pressure in my chest and throat. I thrashed and bucked, but only succeeded in burrowing my head further into the slime.

My body was telling me to breathe, but it wouldn't let me inhale water. I jerked and convulsed like a madman. After ten or fifteen seconds more I felt like I was in a vice that was being gradually tightened across my breastbone and spinal column. Water seeped into my lungs, my body was a mass of pain and I knew I was dying.

I didn't even sense the other body appearing above us, or jumping down into the ditch, or the boot that must have come in fast and hard and smacked against the Iraqi's head. All I heard was a bone-crunching thud, then the man crushing me spasmed and relaxed. Next thing I knew, his weight was pulled off me. My lungs roared as I filled them with air.

Another kick barrelled into my assailant as I gulped and coughed.

The boot was Pete's. I could see him through the blur of mud and shit that covered my face. And then I heard the loud bang as he followed up with just one round from Terry's weapon into the Iraqi's head.

'Staying down there all night, mate?'

His free hand was outstretched. He hauled me to my feet.

Sniper rounds whistled overhead, thudding into the warren. I fought for breath and spat shit from my mouth.

A few metres away, Terry was kicking another dead body off him. He scrambled to his feet and stepped over the one Pete must have dropped.

'Man on! Man on!' The screams came from the snipers.

I spun round to see more bodies closing fast.

Pete didn't miss a beat. Terry's SA80 went straight into the shoulder. 'Go, go!'

I turned and ran, pushing the boy ahead of me. Pete put down a series of short sharp bursts that punctuated the stream of sniper fire above me.

I stopped halfway and turned back, letting Terry go on. AK muzzle flashes strobed in the darkness as Pete kept firing.

'Enough, Pete. Come on!'

My body jerked as if somebody had swung a pickaxe handle into my chest. I was hurled back. My hands were flung into the air and I fell, pain searing my arm. The force spun me round and I crumpled, face down.

I lay there, a bundle of pain, fear and disbelief. Like Dom with his invisible forcefield, I'd thought I'd never get shot again.

I didn't have as much as a nanosecond to start crawling before Pete caught up with me. He managed one short burst before he ran out of rounds.

He dropped the SA80 into the shit next to me and his bony hands grabbed my good arm and pulled. His grunts sounded louder than the gunfire.

Bodies surged from the warren; the patrol was taking on the insurgents as they moved back towards the alley.

The Manc lad stood his ground in the middle of the wasteground, his shoulder rocking back with the recoil from his weapon. The moment we were in the alley, Terry helped get me over Pete's shoulder in a fireman's lift.

'You're all right, Nick. Sonia'll sort you. See you later, Tel.'

He turned towards the Bulldogs and legged it.

My forearm jolted with pain each time his feet hit the ground. I looked down. The skin was punctured big-time, but it wasn't flapping about. Maybe the round that had hit me hadn't smashed the bone. I couldn't tell.

Sonia had the back of the wagon open and ready. Pete threw rather than loaded me in. Rounds from both sides of the street smashed against the armour. The GPMGs returned fire. The gunner above me gave it max.

Sonia jabbed an autojet of morphine into my arse and tore at my T-shirt with scissors. She pulled a face. 'I might let off the odd fart, but I don't bloody shit myself!'

I could hear Pete laughing with sheer relief as he and Dom jumped in for cover. 'Fuck me, mate. You're supposed to be looking after us!'

Another burst slammed against the armour plating of the wagon and I heard two Warriors scream up alongside us.

18

Somebody leant over me, high collar and batwings silhouetted against the red light. His hand was in the air. His fingers were gripped round a plastic bottle. A tube ran down from it and into my good arm.

A cannon kicked off a few rounds. Everything jerked as we moved off again. The guy holding the saline cursed as he tried to keep his balance.

I could see Warrior seats. I must be on the floor, between the two benches.

We lurched off again and my head rolled to the right.

Dom and Pete looked down at me. Pete was filming.

'You'll thank me for this later, mate. One for the family get-together…'

I sort of saw a smile behind the lens.

My head bumped on the steel floor and I realized I didn't have my helmet on. I couldn't remember it being taken off. Not that it mattered. My head didn't hurt. Morphine rules.

One minute, two minutes, five minutes, an hour later, for all I knew, the wagon stopped and the door was pulled open. Scouse voices echoed in the darkness.

'Get them out of there! I'm not fucking waiting out here all day, you cunts — get them out!'

The guy with the saline shouted back, 'This one first!'

Hands gripped me and floated me on to a stretcher. Red night-lights and dark shadows had been replaced by shot-to-fuck HESCOs and a sky speckled with stars.

My new best friend with the drip stayed alongside the stretcher as I jerked up and down. Dom and Pete were nowhere to be seen. Boots crunched over a stretch of rubble-strewn ground. Seconds later I was blinking under blindingly white light.

White tiles, white floors. Maybe six or seven others lying on stretchers, bound up with awesomely white dressings over filthy combats and body armour.

A medic with rubber gloves on swam across my vision. He was Ospreyed up and helmeted. Wherever I was, they must be taking incoming as well.

It had to be OSB. The place was permanently under siege from indirect fire, small arms and RPGs. One of their sangars held the record for having the most contacts in the whole of Iraq. The Chindits had even built earth ramps up to the HESCO walls so their Warriors' 30mm cannon could join in the firefights.

My stretcher was lowered on to a table. Within seconds somebody was cutting off Sonia's field dressing.

'It's OK, mate. It didn't hit a bone. Just a meaty hole, that's all.'

A mortar landed close by and I must have flinched. The guy doing the cutting was a Jock. 'It's OK. They'll get bored in a minute.'

Automatic fire kicked off from somewhere above me. Maybe it was that record-breaking sangar.

Through the blur, I could see Dom and Pete in the room.

The Jock was cleaning my left hand now. The liquid stank.

'Pete!'

They were busy talking to the guys, pointing at me.

'Pete!'

A burst of Scouse came from behind me. 'You'll be OK, la'!'

Rhett came into vision. He inspected the wound as Dom and Pete stepped up beside him.

Pete pointed at my Osprey. 'You copped this, mate.'

I looked down like a drunk to see a blurred couple of strike marks, almost indents in the front plate. I couldn't see the ripped material because it was covered with shit and mud.

Pete brought his camera up as Dom eased off my body armour and one of the medics cut along the inseam of my cargoes with a pair of scissors.

'Nick, they're going to clean you up here. As soon as the attack stops Rhett's taking you back to the COB with the other casualties. We'll see you there after they've sorted you out.'

'You'll soon be sound as a fuck'n' pound.' Pete's bad Scouse echoed off the tiles.

I tried to reach out to him with my good hand and was told to stay exactly where I was. 'Pete… thanks, mate…'

'Oh, fuck off.' He laughed. 'It's only 'cos I need you.'

I must have frowned.

'You're a witness in the case of the floating turd!'

I heard him laugh again, loud and long, and then the world grew gradually calmer.

The morphine took effect.

I felt myself floating.

My world became a drowsy haze of dim red light.

19

I felt numb and dumb, like a drunk bouncing off the furniture in some badly lit nightclub.

It was Dom, I was sure of it, shaking me, talking close to my ear. He was panicky, out of breath. Scared.

'Pete's gone…' He said it over and over. 'Pete's gone… It's all my fault… I'm so sorry, Nick. I've got to go… I've got to go…'

Was he crying? 'What the fuck you on about?'

'I've got to go…'

He was a blur, but it was definitely Dom. He sobbed something I couldn't quite hear. 'What you on about, mate?' I tried to push myself up but he stuck out an arm, told me to rest.

His head moved closer to mine. 'Nick, no matter what you're told, it wasn't me, OK? It — was — not — me…'

I felt him grip my hand. I tried to make sense of what the fuck he was on about. My head was still full of whatever shit had been mixed with the morphine.

'Wasn't what? Wasn't you who what?'

He squeezed my hand. 'You'll know soon, when the drugs have worn off. They'll tell you. Remember — it wasn't me. Say it, Nick.'

'It wasn't me…'

He let go of my hand and I tried to stay awake.

20

'Nick, it's me. Wake up, lad.'

'Dom?' I turned over in a semi-daze. 'What you on about? Pete's done what?' My arm was throbbing. I eased open one eye. My arm was covered with a clean dressing. It felt newly sewn up.

'You're going to be right as rain, lad. The doctor said you'll be up and walking today.' The Scouse was thick as soup.

'Rhett?' I tried to open both eyes.

'Course it is, you soft twat.'

He was sitting on a plastic chair beside me. He had fresh combats and body armour on, and sweat ran down his shiny clean-shaven face. He cradled his helmet under his arm.

We were in a huge marquee. The plastic roof was twenty metres above me, stretched over an aluminium frame. The area had been partitioned into cubicles with 3x3-metre plywood. My head hurt, and I smelt of Dettol, or whatever had been thrown over me when I'd been washed and sorted out. It was hot and muggy. Shouldn't a hospital or whatever this was have airconditioning?

'I feel like shit. Where am I?'

He tried to laugh, but couldn't manage it. 'COB.'

My eyelids drooped. They wanted to stay glued together. I was thirsty, but my mouth felt too furred-up ever to let anything through again. As I lay on my back and tried to get my fingers working, I heard Land Rovers speed past. I'd have recognized that engine note anywhere. The odd Brit shout penetrated the marquee walls. I eventually opened my eyes again. It was still a bit blurry but that felt like tiredness rather than drugs.

All my kit from the palace was on a bench in the corner. There wasn't much of it, but I didn't care. Out here, whatever you had would be in shit state within seconds.

I took a breath and forced myself to sit up.

'I got bad news, Nick. It's Pete…' Rhett was grim-faced. 'He's dead, mate.'

I couldn't have heard him right.

'He got shot about four hours ago. Sorry, mate, he was a good lad.'

Pete's gone… I've got to go… I've got to go…

'Where's Dom?'

'Dunno. Probably well shook up. He saw it happen. Media Ops asked me to break the news. It's a fucker.'

I pointed over to my kit. 'Can you pass my mobile? It's in one of the side pouches.'

I was fully awake now. I was thinking about Tallulah, Ruby and those birthdays he was determined not to miss.

I sparked up the phone. Iraqna had treated me to a three-bar signal.

I called Dom. The default Vodafone Ireland message kicked in immediately.

'It's Nick. Rhett's just told me. Call me back soon as, mate. I need to know you're OK.'

I sat cradling the phone in my lap. 'What the fuck happened?'

He placed his helmet carefully on the plywood floor. 'Fucking nightmare.' He shook his head. 'We brought both of them back here from OSB. You were out of it, so Dom said they'd decided to go outside the wire to film the Merlins flying low into the city. Some fucker must have been waiting. Pete took two rounds. There's always some of those shites hanging around looking for a target. Dom ran and got help, but it was useless. He'd have died instantly. What can I say? Fucking crying shame…'

'What about the shooters?'

'The QRF [quick reaction force] were out like a bunch of fucking whippets, but they'd legged it.'

'Where's Dom?'

'His kit's gone. He's fucked off.'

I willed the phone to ring. A cameraman had died on my watch, and now the reporter was missing.

I looked up. 'Help me get dressed, mate.'

21

I did it as fast as I could, one-handed and with a bit of help from Rhett. My jeans and T-shirt were on my Bergen, but my boots had probably been burnt along with the rest of last night's shit-covered, infected gear. I dug out my trainers.

'You know where they keep the bodies?'

Rhett was in awkward mode. 'No, it's not the sort of place we want to go near.'

I held out my good hand and we shook. 'Thanks, Rhett. If you want to come with me and have a last look, you can.'

'Nah, I want to remember him as a gobby shite.'

He left and I finished dressing. A mirror hung on a bit of string from a section of frame by the side of the bench, and I saw what was left of a large black M that had been written on my forehead in permanent marker. At some stage I would have had a label attached to me too, to make doubly sure everybody further down the chain knew I'd been administered morphine. It affects other treatments.

With greasy, sticking-up hair and already sweating, I pushed aside the green nylon sheet that acted as a door, turned left and walked down a corridor of cubicle walls towards the sound of music. I passed air-conditioning ducts, but they weren't working.

There was another cubicle at the end of the corridor. This one was an office. Two guys in white coats sat on plastic chairs, watching MTV. They had their backs to me but I could see the mugs of brew and a packet of Rich Tea.

'Lads, where's the morgue? I think one of my mates is there — you know, the cameraman who got shot.'

They both looked round, and then at each other. It was hard to interpret their expressions. Either I wasn't allowed access, or neither of them wanted to miss Beyoncé shaking her tits on MTV.

The blond one stood up. 'Next door.' He picked up his armour and helmet. 'Where's yours?'

'Don't know, mate.'

I followed him out into the blinding sunshine. I almost had to close my eyes. We turned right in the sand and headed for a concrete-block building. The guy turned back to me as we walked. 'You ever seen a dead body before, mate?'

I nodded.

Entering the building was like stepping into a fridge. This was where all the air-conditioning lived. Beyond sheets of thick plastic hanging from the ceiling lay five stone slabs like kitchen worktops.

A body lay on one, covered with a sheet. Two clear evidence bags lay on the floor next to him. One was smeared on the inside with wet blood that must have rubbed off his clothes. The other, much smaller, contained his personal effects. His wallet, his watch, his wedding ring. And his precious memory stick.

The guy went over and pulled the sheet back, then stood aside and leant against the next slab along.

Pete's couple of days' stubble would keep growing for a bit longer, but he'd been cleaned up pretty well. I realized this was the first time I'd seen him without a smile on his face.

He had two strike marks in his chest. They'd dried up and looked like big scabs. The rest of his skin was pale.

'What's going to happen now? How's he going to get home?'

'I guess we'll fly him back to Brize. That's what normally happens.'

I looked at Pete again. Something about those strike marks wasn't right.

I walked all the way round him, looking for more strikes, more marks. 'Why wasn't he wearing armour?'

The guy was getting bored now. He'd done his bit. Beyoncé beckoned. 'Don't know, mate. He just got shot and brought here. That's it.'

I lifted Pete's right arm, then pulled it up a bit more until his shoulder lifted and I could see the exit wounds in his back. They were large, as they always are when the rounds are allowed to exit the body. I put his arm down where it belonged.

'I'm going to see you all right, mate…' I said quietly.

The medic came towards me with the sheet. 'No need to worry about that.'

'I wasn't talking to you.'

I picked up Pete's personal stuff and left him to it. I walked back out into the sun. Dom and I would take his gear to his family. The least we could do was make sure the stuff that was most important to him got back to the people who were most important to him. Small things in big firms always tended to go missing.

Why wasn't he wearing Osprey? Everyone had to wear it even to go for a dump. Pete was so careful. He would have had it on. Even if those two rounds had pierced his body armour by some sort of miracle, they wouldn't have exited like they did. When a high-velocity round enters the body, it creates a vortex behind it like the wake after a boat. As it leaves, the pressure equalizes. There's a small air explosion that rips the exit wound open. It's what high-velocity rounds are designed to do.

22

My arm hurt like fuck as it swung and I had to cradle it against my chest.

Screwing up my eyes, I turned right, headed past the morgue and into the dining tent. People were coming and going with mugs of brew. The entrance was full of people in body armour and helmets washing their hands in cleansing liquid so's not to waste water. They looked at me like I was an alien. 'I know, I haven't got any. Anybody know where Media Ops are?'

I was pointed beyond the cookhouse. I turned left by the showers and half walked, half ran, asking for directions along the way. Most people knew their own areas and that was it.

Eventually I found myself outside two Portakabins with huge air-conditioning condenser boxes. I knew where I was now. This was where we'd had our briefings.

There was movement inside the second Portakabin. I went in and the place was almost as cold as the mortuary tent. The Royal Artillery captain who'd done the meet and greet was behind a desk. I couldn't remember his name — I'd just nodded and agreed as he gave his talk, not expecting to see him again. But I did remember he was in the Territorials, and had volunteered to come out here. In the real world, he was responsible for Plymouth Council's CCTV cameras.

He seemed shocked to see me. 'Nick, how are you? I was coming round later. I wanted you to rest first.' He looked uncomfortable. He stood up and took a breath to give me the bad news.

I put up a hand. 'I know Pete's dead. The recce sergeant's already seen me.'

He sat down, relieved not to be the one. I was a civvy. I might want to cry on his shoulder and have a hug.

'Why didn't he have any body armour on?'

'I don't know. We told you lot to wear it all the time — and a helmet. It was part of the briefing. Dom told us they were getting some shots of the Merlins flying low. They didn't have permission. They didn't inform anyone of what they were doing. We cannot take responsibility for these actions. They should have informed me that they—'

This was bollocks. 'Where's Dom now?'

'He's left. I don't know where or how. His kit's gone and he hasn't even signed out.'

'Signed out? How the fuck's he going to get out of here? Call a minicab?'

'He must be taking the two o'clock. It's thoroughly irresponsible behaviour — it doesn't help the media's call for closer liaison.'

'Shut up, for fuck's sake, and give me a lift to the terminal.'

I followed him back out into the heat. The Media Ops company car was a dust-covered Discovery that knocked out air-conditioning, but not enough. I shielded my eyes from the glare as we came out of one compound and went into another. We bounced over dusty tracks, working our way up to the metalled road that paralleled the runway.

'What's going to happen to Pete?'

'The TV station has notified his wife. They're arranging for her to receive him at Brize Norton. After that? Well…'

I held up the plastic bag. 'I'll take this back to her.'

We hit the tarmac. The terminal was about two clicks further up. It looked like another of Saddam's palaces. Lots of marble and towers, but surrounded by barbed wire and HESCOs. Squaddies zoomed up and down the road in stripped-down Land Rovers with.50-cal machine-guns on the back.

The Brits had used the terminal as their temporary HQ after the war until the COB was built. It had since been handed back to the civilian authorities, and catered for just one flight a day. No airline except Jordanian was willing to take the risk.

We parked outside the building. I didn't care if the media guy stayed or not. I just ran into the cavernous empty terminal.

There were about four people in civvies, but none was Dom. All the rest, about ten of them, were RMPs with dogs and SA80s.

Another marble quarry must have been gutted to build this place. The roof had to be at least seventy metres high. The walls still had gaffer-tape marks from where the Brits had run cables.

The check-in area was a line of about forty desks along the far wall. All had digital displays behind them. None was working. None of the belts was moving.

One solitary guy sat behind one of the desks. His eyes widened as I ran towards him. The flight wasn't for at least another hour and a half and it wasn't as if there were masses of people gagging to get aboard.

'This for the Jordanian flight? The Amman flight?'

'Yes, yes.'

'Has Dominik Condratowicz checked in yet?'

He looked at me blankly.

I took a breath and slowed down. 'Mr Dom-in-ik Con-drat-o-wicz.'

He checked his manifests and I leant forward to help him. I couldn't see the name. 'Do we buy tickets here? This desk?'

'Yes, yes.'

'Has he bought a ticket?'

'No.'

Dom hadn't checked in so he certainly hadn't gone airside — if there was an airside. I didn't know how it worked in this place.

Fuck it, I'd stay right here until the flight left and see if he turned up.

I moved off and sat on one of the millions of vacant chairs, waiting for him to show.

Flicking through Pete's gear, I found nothing that gave me any clues about what had happened. There was just the normal stuff in his wallet. Two Lloyds debit cards, organ-donor card, that sort of thing, with about sixty dollars.

Filming helicopters, my arse.

I got out my mobile.

'It's Nick Stone in Basra. I need to talk to Moira Foley. It's important.'

I was waiting for Kate to answer, then go to find Moira, but the boss herself came straight on. 'Hello, Nick. It's Moira, how are you? I've been so worried…'

I knew she hadn't so she didn't have to sound so concerned. 'Pete… you know?'

'God, it's fucking awful. They called me at home and—'

'Where's Dom? You know where he is?'

'With you. He filed with Pete, then called me after Pete was shot. He said he'd told you what happened.'

I held the mobile away from me and checked the display for messages. The thing was always on silent as it was a big no-no to have a mobile go off in the field.

'Nick, hello? Hello?'

I didn't need to move it back to my ear to hear her.

'I need him to call me back soon, Nick. Tell him we need a report to go with the film. It's great footage and we really need to—'

I cut her off, sat back and waited.