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.