Andy McNab - Bravo Two Zero

We were committed. Bob was in my arms giving it the wounded soldier.

The blokes were straight up from the ditch.

“What the fuck have we got here?” Mark shouted in disbelief. “This is the story of our lives, this is! Why can’t it be a fucking Land Cruiser?”

The driver panicked and stalled the engine. He and the two passengers in the back sat staring openmouthed at the muzzles of Minimis and 203s.

The cab was an old rust bucket with typical Arab decoration-tassels and gaudy religious emblems dangling from every available point. A couple of old blankets were thrown over as seat covers. The driver was beside himself with hysteria. The two men on the backseat were a picture, both dressed in neatly pressed green militia fatigues and berets, with little weekend bags on their laps. As the younger of the two explained that they were father and son, we had a quick rummage through their effects to see if there was anything worth having.

We had to move quickly because we couldn’t guarantee that there wouldn’t be other vehicles coming over. We tried to shepherd them to the side of the road, but the father was on his knees. He thought he was going to get slotted.

“Christian! Christian!” he screamed as he scrabbled in his pocket and pulled out a keyring with the Madonna dangling from it. “Muslim!” he said, pointing at the taxi driver and trying to drop him in it.

Now the driver sank to his knees, bowing and praying. We had to prod him with rifle barrels to get him to move.

“Cigarettes?” Dinger enquired.

The son obliged with a couple of packs.

The father got up and started kissing Mark, apparently thanking him for not killing him. The driver kept praying and hollering. It was a farce.

“What’s his problem?” I said.

“This car is his occupation,” the son said in good English. “He has to feed his children.”

Bob came storming over and said, “I’ve fucking had enough of this.” Sticking the end of his bayonet up one of the driver’s nostrils, he walked him over to the ditch.

We left them all there. We had no time to tie them up; we just wanted to get going. We needed to put in some miles.

“I’ll drive,” I said. “I saw Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.”

It was an old column gearshift, and I couldn’t work it. To the accompaniment of jeers and much slagging, I did a six-point turn to get us facing west, and off we lurched. Legs was in the front to do the compass bearings; the other three were crammed into the back. The way our luck had been going I fully expected the compass to pack in and the next sign we saw to be “Baghdad Welcomes Safe Drivers.”

We had no shorts (pistols); they were all longs, and it was going to be almost impossible to bear them if we were compromised. Nevertheless we were happy as Larry. This was make-or-break time. We’d either make it tonight or we’d be dead.

It was unfortunate that we were committed to going on roads but we’d just have to make the most of it. We had just over half a tank of fuel, which was plenty for the distance we had to cover. We were going at quite a fuel-efficient pace anyway because we didn’t want to look conspicuous or get involved in the slightest accident. We’d just drive as far as we could, dump the vehicle, and go over the border on foot.

We tried to make up game plans for what we would do if we got caught in a VCP (Vehicle Checkpoint). We didn’t know what we’d do. We couldn’t try to barge through a checkpoint barrier on the road. That might happen in films but it’s fantasy stuff; permanent VCPs are made to stop that sort of thing. The vehicle draws fire every time, and we’d end up as perforated as Tetley tea bags I’d probably just have to brake as fast as I could, and we’d pile out and do a runner.

Unfortunately, we were reading air charts, not an AA road atlas. The roads were very confusing. Legs directed me to take junctions that went generally west, and I constantly checked the mileometer to see how far we’d gone.

The first major location we came to was the pumping station area. There were military vehicles and blokes milling around, but no checkpoint. Nobody took a blind bit of notice of us as the cab chugged past.

We had to look as though we knew where we were -going. If we looked lost it would arouse suspicion, and people might even come over and offer to help.

We came to yet another set of junctions. There was nothing going west and the best we could do was to turn north. It was a normal two-way road instead of the single-track ones we had been moving on. It was busy with convoys of oil tankers. We pulled out to overtake, but military vehicles were coming the other way. Nobody else was doing it so we had to play the game to blend in. At least we were moving, and the heater was going full blast. It was blissfully warm.

The convoy stopped.

We couldn’t see why. Traffic lights? A broken-down vehicle? A VCP?

Legs jumped out and had a quick look but could see nothing in the darkness. We started inching forward. We stopped again and Legs got out.

“Military vehicles at the front of the convoy,” he muttered. “One of them has crashed or broken down.”

Squaddies were hanging around on foot and in Land Cruisers, and cars and trucks were maneuvering around them. We started to drive past, and I held my breath. One of the blokes directing the traffic spotted us and started to wave us on. Mark, Bob, and Dinger pretended to be asleep on the back seat; Legs and I grinned like idiots inside our shamags and waved back. As they disappeared in the rearview mirror, we laughed ourselves silly.

We hit a built-up area. Statues of Saddam stood outside public buildings and pictures of him were plastered on every available space. We drove past cafe bars with people milling around outside. We passed civilian cars, armored cars, and APCs. Nobody turned a hair.

Sometimes the roads and junctions funneled us in totally the wrong direction. We did a touch of north, then east, then south, then west, but ensured we were generally keeping west. Mark had the Magellan on his lap in the back and was making attempts to get a fix so that if the shit hit the fan, we would each have the information we needed to get us over the border.

Dinger was smoking like a condemned man enjoying his last request. I was considering whether to join him. I’d never had a cigarette in my life, and I thought: By tonight I could be dead, so why not try one while I have the chance?

“What’s the score on these fags?” I asked Dinger.

“Do you drag all the smoke down, or what do you do?”

“You’ve had one before, have you?”

“No, mate-never smoked in my life.”

“Well, you ain’t going to start now, you wanker. You’ll flake out and crash the car. Anyway, do you have any idea how many people die of lung cancer each year? I can’t possibly expose you to that sort of risk. Tell you what, though-you can have a bit of passive.”

He blew a lungful of smoke in my direction. I hated it, as he knew I would. When we were on the Counter Terrorist team together, Dinger used to drive one of the Range Rovers. He knew I loathed cigarettes so he’d be at it all the time, keeping the windows wound up. I’d go berserk and open them all, and he’d be laughing his cock off. Then the windows would go up and he’d do it again. He had a tape called something like “Elvis-The First Twenty Years.” He knew I hated it so he’d put it on at every opportunity. We were driving along the M4 one time, and I’d wound down the window because he was smoking. Dinger put the cassette on and grinned. I pressed Eject, grabbed the cassette, and chucked it out of the window. War was declared.

I had my own tapes which I took with us on long drives, but the difference was that it was good music-Madness, usually, or The Jam. One night, many weeks later, I put one of them on and closed my eyes as I complained about his smoking and farting. Before I realized what he was doing, he ejected the tape and sent it the way of Elvis.