Andy McNab - Bravo Two Zero

I went through different scenarios, fantasies really. What if I was already in Syria? I knew I hadn’t crossed the border: the two countries were at war; there had to be some physical barrier between them, but that didn’t stop me daydreaming.

It must have been about eight o’clock when I heard the scuffle of goats’ hooves coming from the direction of the town. I tensed. We hadn’t had the world’s best luck with goats on this trip.

I didn’t hear the goat herder until he was right on top of the metal plate. I took a deep breath, a really deep breath. Straining my neck, I saw the ends of two sandals and a set of big, splayed toes. One foot came down into the mud. I gripped my fighting knife. I wouldn’t do anything until he put his head down and actually saw me, and even then I didn’t know what I was going to do. Did I just bring the left hand up and stick him one in the face? If he started running, what then? I could tell by the big choggie, splayed feet that he wasn’t military, so hopefully he wasn’t armed.

He stooped to pick up a small cardboard box I hadn’t noticed in the ditch. It was a discarded ammunition box for 7.62 short, the round that AKs fire. He disappeared from view. The box landed back in the water. He must have looked at it and decided it was of no use.

A couple of goats came and stood on the bank. I didn’t want to breathe, I didn’t want to blink. The goat herder made his way back on to the bridge and stood with his toes dangling over the edge of the steel. He coughed up a massive grolly out of the back of his neck and flobbed it into the water. It drifted down to me like a slimy green jellyfish and lodged itself in my hair. I was in such a mess anyway that it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did.

I was sure that one of the goats would get into the water and make the old boy come and rescue him, but nothing happened. The goats all trundled over, and the goat herder followed. I started to scrape the slime out of my hair.

I lay listening to noises. Looking out from my tomb, I could see that it was a crisp winter’s morning with not a cloud in the sky. It was a view of the countryside, not at all a desert scene. All it needed was cows, and it could have been the fields around Hereford. There’s a small footpath which follows the banks of the River Wye, and from a certain point you can look over to the other side at a dairy which has its own cows. Kate used to love being taken there. It looked nothing at all like the scene I was looking at now, but I imagined cows mooing and the sound of Kate giggling. The sun was out, but I was out of range of its warming rays. I felt like a lizard stuck where I was. It would be so nice to be out in the open, warming the bones.

I could hear vehicles in the distance-the springy, old me tally jangly sounds of them trundling along. Kids and older people hollered and shrieked. I was desperate to know what was going on out there. Were they looking for me? Or were they just going about their normal business? In one way it concerned me greatly that people were in the vicinity, but in another it just sounded nice and comforting to hear human voices because it meant I wasn’t alone. I was cold and exhausted. It was good to have some kind of reassurance that I was on earth, not Zanussi.

Sometimes a vehicle would come nearer and nearer and nearer, and my heart would start skipping beats.

Are they going to stop?

Don’t be so stupid-no drama, they’re going to the river.

They must be looking.

But not intensively-it’s too near the border.

The noises were scary. By the time they got to me my mind had magnified them a hundred times. I flapped about the kids being curious. Kids must play. Did they play in the water? Did they play with the goats? What did they do? A kid is shorter than an adult and would get a better perspective when looking at the culvert. Instead of seeing daylight a kid was going to see my head or my feet, and he wouldn’t need to have passed his eleven plus to know that he should raise the alarm.

I wanted so much not to get caught. Not now. Not after so much.

I kept looking at the watch lying on my chest. I looked once and it was one o’clock. Half an hour later I checked again. It was five past. Time was dragging, but I started to feel better about my predicament.

There had been vehicles, goats, and goatherds, and I’d got away with it. I was still trying to memorize the map, going through the routes in my mind. I was gagging for last light.

There was a deafening rattle of steel as a group of vehicles thundered across. This time they stopped.

You’re compromised: what did they stop for? You’re in the shit.

No worries, they’re picking somebody up. Just keep remarkably still, control your breathing.

I tried hard to think positively, as if that would stop them coming and finding me.

7.62 is a big-caliber round. The sound of over a hundred of them reverberating on the steel plate just a fraction of an inch from my nose was the worst thing I’d ever heard. I curled up and silently screamed.

Fuck! fuck! fuck! fuck! fuck!

Men bellowed at the tops of their voices. They fired all around the drainage ditch. The mud erupted. I felt the tremors. I curled up even tighter and hoped nothing was going to hit. The cracks, thuds, and shouts seemed never-ending.

The firing stopped but the shouting continued. What were they going to do now-just stick a weapon underneath and blow me away, or what?

I was shitting myself. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. I couldn’t understand what they were screaming. Did they want to capture me? Did they want to kill me? Were they going to throw a grenade in? Fuck it, I thought, if they want me out, they’ll have to drag me out.

I was going to die in a drainage ditch two and a half miles from the border, of that I had no doubt. My nose was more or less touching the underside of the steel plate. I was stretching my neck, but I couldn’t see much because of the perspective.

The muzzle of a rifle came down. Then a bloke’s face. When he saw me there was a look of total and utter surprise. He did a little jump back and shouted.

The next thing I saw was a mass of boots jumping down all around the drainage ditch itself. Three blokes at either end, yelling their heads off. They motioned for me to get out.

No fucking way!

They wanted to see my hands. I was lying on my back with my feet and hands out straight. Two blokes grabbed a boot each and heaved.

I came out on my back and had my first view of Syria in the daylight. It looked the most beautiful country on earth. I could see the mast on the higher ground, tantalizingly close. I could almost have reached out and touched it. I felt burgled or mugged-the feeling of disbelief that this was happening to me at all, mixed with outrage that I was being robbed of something that was rightfully mine.

Why me? All my life I’ve been lucky. I’ve been in dramas that I’ve had no control of, and I’ve been in problems that I’ve created myself. But I’ve always been lucky enough to get out of them reasonably unscathed.

They gave a couple of kicks and motioned for me to get to my feet. I stood up straight, my hands up in the air, staring straight ahead. Nice blue sky it was, absolutely splendid. I turned my back on Syria and looked at the ploughed fields and green vegetation, and all the huts and tracks that I’d avoided during the night.

So much effort wasted. So few hours of daylight left.

They held their weapons nervously and jumped up and down, making weird warbling noises like Red Indians. They were as frightened as I was. They fired into the air on automatic, and I thought, Here we go, all I need is for one of these rounds to come down and slot me through the head.

Two Land Cruisers were parked to the right-hand side of the bridge. Three characters were pacing around on the steel plate; eight or nine others were charging around on the banks of the ditch.