Andy McNab - Deep Black

We took the lift. Our rooms were next to each other, and whoever had stayed in mine had left about ten minutes earlier and not told the housekeeper. The place reeked of cigarettes and sweat.

There were two single beds. The veneer was lifting off every chipboard surface, and the carpet was scarred with cigarette burns. The walls had been sprayed with concrete and were now a lumpy, faded yellow. The tiny bathroom had a toilet, basin and shower. I tried turning on the tap. Nothing happened. Maybe later.

I dumped my kit on the bed, which was covered with old, mustard-coloured, furry nylon blankets. No sheets, and a couple of saliva-stained foam pillows without cases. B-and-B owners in Margate and Blackpool would have been proud of this place, charging so much for so little.

I went and pulled open the glass sliding door to the balcony and was mugged by the noise of the city. The Tigris lay in front of me, glittering in the mid-afternoon sun. Apart from the mosques and a few surviving government buildings, all I could see was miles of middle-class housing, little blocks of concrete fighting for space among the towers. Further out, on the edge of the city, was the Baghdad I knew.

It suddenly felt like yesterday that Gaz, Rob and I had been mincing about on the north-eastern edge of the city during the '91 war. It was a slum, a massive township of crumbling buildings, a world of poverty and shit. The Shia who lived there were forced to call it Saddam City. Finding the fibre-optic cables that ran beneath it on the way from Baghdad to the Scud teams in the Western desert had been a fucker, but it had had to be done. If they weren't destroyed, the Scuds could still be fired into Israel. The Israelis would have joined the war, and the coalition's alliance with the Arab states would have been over.

I looked out into the heat haze beyond the city. It had been about this time of day that I would give my orders for the coming night's fuckabout, and my four-man patrol would start preparing. We would stay in the sewer under a market square until last light, then slip out to do the night's work. It was more or less the same each time, checking the power lines leaving the city, checking any communications towers still standing after the last twenty-four hours' air attacks.

When my patrol finally located the cables, it was almost an anticlimax. All they needed was one good tap with a two-pound ball hammer and that was it.

Looking down, I could see that the garden area was surrounded by a low wall and some pretty serious rush fencing. A couple of guys were drinking coffee inside a cabana in what looked like a small oasis. The war seemed a million miles away. There was even somebody cutting the grass with a petrol mower.

Then two Blackhawks came screaming across the river, so low I could have headbutted the pilots, but nobody took the blindest bit of notice.

One of the single-storey rooms jutting out from the ground floor seemed to have been taken over by CNN. All its windows had been sandbagged, and their logo hung from a small shed where the security guy was sitting. Just outside, on the grass, were a black leatherette sofa and chairs that would only get sat on once they were in the shade. The place was heaving with important-looking cables and antennae. Beyond it, a guy in shorts, T-shirt and trainers was sprinting along the bottom of an empty thirty-metre swimming-pool. Each time he got to one end he did a shedload of sit-ups, ran to the other, did some burpees, then back again for more press-ups. It was making me sweat just watching him.

I needed to check out our escape route, since jumping six floors wasn't an option. A green sign in the corridor directed me in Arabic and English to the fire escape.

A push-bar door led to a bare concrete stairwell. There were no lights, just slits in the walls, so fuck knows what happened here at night. The stairwell was littered with cigarette butts and old newspaper photographs of Saddam smiling and pointing at something in the distance. I'd always assumed it was a fucking great suitcase full of money. I wedged one of the papers between the door and the frame so it wouldn't lock on me if I needed to come back up.

Moving down the fire escape, I checked the doors on each floor. They were all locked from the inside. Even worse, on the flooded ground floor, the double exit doors that led out into the open were chained, padlocked and blocked by a mountain of rubbish. The only way out from the sixth was the lift.

I went back up and knocked on Jerry's door. He was busy sorting out the recharging equipment for the camera and phone. The Thuraya, about the size of a household mobile, was resting on the balcony ledge. He'd pulled the thick plastic antenna out from the side in an attempt to get a satellite fix.

No cell networks were operating in Iraq now the Ba'ath Party's had been obliterated. There was a system of sorts, but for the exclusive use of CPA officials. With a Thuraya it didn't matter if you were in the middle of the Russian steppes or on top of Mount Everest: as long as it could shake hands with a satellite, you could talk to anyone, anywhere, with a mobile or a landline. Where anyone got the money to run them, I didn't have a clue. You could buy a week in Greece for a few minutes on one of these things.

I went out on to the balcony while Jerry untangled several lengths of wire, one of which connected the phone to the camera so he could transmit images down the line. Jerry's plan was to download them to the Telegraph as soon as he got them, then wipe the memory card clean so there was no chance of anyone else getting their hands on them.

The guy in shorts was still bouncing backwards and forwards in the pool. I picked up the Thuraya to see if it had a signal, but the five-bar indicator was blank. I carried it along the balcony a few steps, but still got nothing.

I went back into the room. Jerry was stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head, admiring his prowess with the electrics.

'No signal – the sat must be the other side.' I threw the Thuraya on to the bed next to him. 'The only way out of here is by the lift or jumping. The fire escape is blocked.'

'Don't worry, man, this place is as safe as Fort Knox. First things first.' He had cheered up a lot since the wait in Amman. Maybe he felt we were just that bit closer to Nuhanovic. He sat up on the edge of the bed. 'You get the beers. I'm going to need some local clothes if I'm going to do the brown thing right.'

We had already agreed that he was going to do the brown-man stuff and I would do the white.

'I'll call DC, then hit the mosque over the road in time for Asur and see what I can pick up. That's if I can get past that tank without them putting a bullet in my Islamic ass.'

I nodded. It was pointless just sitting around waiting for the source to come up with the goods: we had to get out there. Somebody had to know something. Jerry didn't want to quiz the journalists because they'd sniff a story and either clam up or lie. But there was nothing to stop me getting among the guys working on the circuit.

I checked Baby-G, my own black one this time. I'd left Kelly's behind: I needed to keep a clear head. Who was I kidding? Looking at my own just made me think about hers – and then about her. It had been wider than her wrist, and took her for ever to fasten.

It was just after three p.m. – seven a.m. Washington time. We'd missed a couple of nights' sleep. No wonder I was feeling knackered.

We took the small, nine-person lift down to the lobby. Jerry, as ever, was clutching his camera; I had my bumbag with my passport in it, along with just over three thousand dollars in cash. The lift stank of cigarettes and stopped at every floor with a disconcerting bounce. We were joined on the fourth by two Filipino guys with MP5s, dressed in black body armour like a SWAT team; on the third, by two military guys trying to look like civilians, which is pretty much impossible when you're sporting a whitewall haircut; finally, on the second, by two NGO guys with fat Filofaxes and even fatter beer bellies.