unbearably slowly. And then with a nod from Lieutenant Carter, the next group, call-sign Yankee, which consisted of Tajican, five other soldiers and Erich, went quietly over the wall.
Carter once more started timing.
The next few minutes seemed to take an eternity, and then the young officer nodded at Lance Corporal Westley, to take his group over.
‘You’re X-ray. I’ll see you at the bridge,’ he said slapping Westley on the back.
‘Aye, sir,’ he replied.
Mike turned to Andy and held out a hand. ‘Good luck.’
Andy grabbed his hand. ‘See you in an hour.’
Westley waited until the two soldiers in his group along with Mike and Farid had climbed over the wall, before following them. His call-sign were going to pick up the other three men already waiting quietly in the dark outside the compound.
And now there was Andy, Sergeant Bolton, Lieutenant Carter, two more men, both bandaged from minor wounds, and another man on watch up on the wall, whom Carter quietly ordered over the radio, to join them.
Andy looked at Sergeant Bolton, holding one hand protectively against his dressed wound, and in the other, a cigarette. ‘You know those things’ll kill you,’ he said.
Bolton’s face creased with a wry smile. ‘Ha bloody ha.’
Carter looked at his Sergeant. ‘You going to be okay?’
Bolton grunted as he pulled himself up on to his haunches and stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Just fine, sir.’
‘Okay, good. Mind your footing. Denwood said that dressing can only take so much.’
The man who had been up on the wall, keeping watch over the boulevard, loped across the compound, the equipment on his webbing jangling in the silence. He squatted down beside Lieutenant Carter, and made a quick report.
‘Nothing going on out there, sir. It’s like a ghost-town. No lights, no noise. Nothing’
‘All right, time to go.’
Carter went over the top first, and then with Andy and one of the other men helping from within the compound, they got Sergeant Bolton over and down on to the pavement on the other side managing, so far, not to unravel his field dressing, loosen the clamp and open the wound. He knelt down in silence, struggling with his breath, clearly in a lot of pain, and holding both of his hands over the wound.
Crouching at the base of the wall, Carter looked through the scope on his SA80; a bulky attachment on the top of the rifle, above the magazine - called the SUSAT - that allowed limited night vision. He swept it around, quickly scanning the cluster of narrow street openings ahead. He squinted at the grainy green image he was seeing through the small circular lens.
‘You men see anything?’ he whispered.
The other two soldiers, hunched over their weapons, staring keenly through their scopes and panning hastily left and right, were quick to answer that they could see no immediate threat.
‘All right, then. We’re heading up that street ahead of us. You see the one with the big old-style satellite dish sticking out on the first floor?’
‘Yeah,’ grunted one of the soldiers.
‘That’s the one we came down this morning. Let’s go.’
Mike studied the grainy, glowing forms of the men in his group, through his weapon’s night scope. Lance Corporal Westley was squatting against the corner of the wall looking out on to the junction. This was the wide road they had entered Al-Bayji on. Right would take them into town, left would take them to the outskirts of town, through the market-place and to the single lane bridge over the Tigris.
The other men were scanning the rooftops and both sides of the road, left and right, for activity.
He could see Farid resting against the wall, staring up at the sky, the scope making his eyes glow a devilish lurid green, flickering every now and then as he blinked.
Westley had put Mike in charge of the Iraqi man. The Lance Corporal didn’t trust the translator, but didn’t want to waste one of his men on the task of watching him.
Westley rose to his feet, and with a beckoning gesture, led them out into the wider road, turning left, heading roughly north-east towards their rendezvous. In the distance Mike could see the taller buildings giving way to single storey, and the opening out that signalled the market area.
And then there was a flicker of light up ahead.
He saw Lance Corporal Westley stop and suddenly place a hand to his ear, an instinctive reaction. There was radio traffic coming in. He heard the young man’s rasping whisper.
‘Shit!’
Westley listened to some more, and then turned