Andy McNab: Crossfire

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.

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.'