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