Chris Ryan - The One That Got Away - Junior edition

Already I was out of breath. Behind me, the vehicles had driven up the side of the wadi and were heading straight across the open desert towards me. The clouds parted and the moon shone through, lighting the place up like day. It may have been my imagination, but my smock seemed to have become luminous, shining like an electric beacon. The old adrenalin had started up, and my heart was going like a sledgehammer. Then I saw a little bush with a shadow behind it, and threw myself down into that tiny patch of black.

As I lay there panting, I frantically sorted out my kit. I checked the magazine on the 203, and piled spare mags in a heap beside me. I opened out the 66 so that it was ready to fire. I even bent together the ends of the safety pins on my white phos grenades, so that I could whip them out quickly if need be.

For a moment I got a breather. The lights swung round, whipping wildly up and down as the vehicles went over bumps and headed back into the wadi. I heard the banging of doors. Obviously some guys had got out to have a look round the place where the goatherd had found us in the morning. I squinted through the night-sight, trying to make out what they were doing, but the glare from the lights shone everything else out. Then the vehicles moved off again and started driving about the floor of the wadi.

The moment the lights were away from me, I picked up my kit, stuffed things into the webbing pouches down my front, and legged it.

Now I was really running, looking right and left for cover. Suddenly the lights swung round again and they were coming at me. I dropped down and got my kit out once more. I set up the 203 with the battle-sight, and as I piled the spare magazines, it went through my mind that this was just like range practice. I cocked the 66 again, lifted the bomb-sights on the 203, and waited.

I didn’t know if they’d seen me or not. But they were driving towards me at a steady roll. I got the 66 lined up on the leading pair of lights and listened to the sound of my heart pounding.

The lights were still coming. Obviously the vehicles weren’t going to stop. Someone on board must have realized that I would be heading due north, going for the river, and they were driving on that bearing. The wagons were rolling at maybe 15 mph, and the lights were quite steady. They would pass so close that there was no chance of them not seeing me.

It was them or me.

I hugged the ground and tried to stop myself shaking. An age seemed to pass as the vehicles ground on.

Fifty metres, and they kept coming.

There were two Land Rover-type vehicles. I couldn’t tell how many men they might contain. As they approached, I held the sight of the 66 aligned between the front pair of lights. When they were twenty metres off, I pulled the trigger.

Whoooosh! went the launcher, right in my ear. Out front there was a big bang as the rocket took the vehicle head-on. There was no flash. Just a heavy explosion, and a cloud of white smoke billowing out in the moonlight.

The vehicle rolled to a stop.

I dropped the 66, grabbed the 203 and lined up the grenade-sight on the second pair of lights, a few metres to the left of the first. From maybe forty metres I smacked that one right in the bonnet.

Then I was up and running towards the enemy.

In a moment I had reached the first vehicle and put a burst into it. Coming to the second, I sprayed it all down the side, through the canvas back. Then I looked into the back and put another burst in. There were men in the back wearing dishdashes. I let off another burst into the driver’s compartment. Then I had to change magazines. At the front again, I put more rounds into the first vehicle. Both vehicles were now in bits.

Only then did I realize I’d left the other magazines piled up at my firing point. I sprinted back to them, snatched them up, stuffed them down the front of my smock and ran.

I ran till I thought my heart was going to burst. I imagined that everybody was on to me and chasing me. The moon was so bright that I felt as if a spotlight was beaming down on me. I was swept up in panic, just as I had been when chased as a kid. It was as if I’d been found out, and was on my own. I ran till I had to slow down: my throat was heaving, my chest exploding, my mouth dry as the desert. I’d had no water all through that day, and soon I was so tired that it was painful even to walk.

All the time I was turning to look behind, to see if any more lights were coming up — but nothing showed. At last I thought it was safe to stop, sit down and sort out my equipment.

After a contact like that, it takes time to recover. Gradually I chilled out and got myself together. One minor improvement was that I had less to carry: once I’d fired the 66 I threw away the tube, which was useless to the Iraqis.

Walking again, I kept on for a couple of hours towards the north. All the time I was wondering what had happened to Stan, and hoping he hadn’t come back in one of the vehicles. Or had he sent them up to me? No, I decided: he couldn’t have. It must have been the goatherd who brought the Iraqis back to the wadi; no one else could have directed them onto my position with such accuracy. My intuition about him had been right. I should never have let Stan go off with him.

The question was, what had happened back on the site of the contact while I had been heading north? If anyone had got away from one of the vehicles I’d hit, or if someone else had found the wrecks, word might have gone out that another enemy soldier was on the run. People would surely guess that I was heading for the Euphrates. From the firepower I’d put down, they might even have thought that there were several of us.

I tabbed on and on through the moonlight. Now the desert was rolling in gentle undulations, and I believed that the river was going to appear over every rise. Then, to my right, I heard dogs barking, kids shouting, grown-ups calling. As I went down on one knee to listen, I saw the red tracer of anti-aircraft fire going up in the distance. Obviously there were habitations somewhere close to me, and the people I could hear were watching that nice firework display on the horizon. Then I heard the far-off roar of jets. They must have been miles off, attacking some target, and the red tracer was curving silently up towards the stars.

Half an hour later I spotted a glimmer of light ahead. The night-sight picked out three stationary vehicles, with light coming out of the side. I went down and watched for signs of people on foot, in case a mobile patrol was being deployed to cut me off. Men on foot could be strung out in an extended line, sweeping the desert ahead of them. But I saw nothing more, so I avoided the vehicles and carried on.

Again, as I came to the top of a rise, I was convinced that I must find the Euphrates in front of me — but no. The next thing I saw was a set of pylons. I’d been expecting them for some time, because they were marked on my map. Beyond them was a main supply route, and some fifteen kilometres beyond that, the river. When I sat down under the power lines and scanned ahead, I found I could see the road, and a wide-open flat area beyond it — but no water.

I knew that in Biblical times the Euphrates had been a mighty waterway, and I assumed that it must still be pretty big. But after I crossed the main supply route, all I hit was a huge system of dry wadis, with steep walls up to twenty metres high. Obviously they’d once been a river bed. Maybe in wet weather flash floods would turn the channels into a rushing river again. I was gagging for want of water, and getting so confused in my mind that suddenly I thought, I hope this isn’t the Euphrates. Surely it can’t have dried out since the Bible? If it has, I’m finished .