Andy McNab - Crossfire

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.

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 Nescafe, 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.'