Scott Andrews - Operation Motherland

"You still able…"

"Oh yes."

"Then let's get the fuck out of here."

At that moment Tariq came haring through the door, bullets churning the ground behind him, and yelled: "RUN!"

He ran right through us and kept going, so we turned and followed him, scattering the chunks of plaster that had been knocked free from the ceiling and walls by the earth shattering explosions. At the rear of the entrance hall was a sweeping marble staircase and Tariq made to climb it. David shouted at him not to, and he took the lead, dodging right and taking us to ornate double doors behind the stairs. These led into a kind of sitting room, empty except for one painting of Saddam on to which someone had felt-tipped a noose, and a large cock and balls squirting into the dead dictator's face.

David held one door open as we all ran through it, and then raked the hall behind us with fire to discourage pursuit.

"Where?" shouted Dad.

"This way," replied David breathlessly, and ran to the corner of the room. In the half light I would never have noticed the door ring, but David had planned this well, and he went straight to the hidden door, pulled it open and ushered us through into a dark passage.

I was last through, and as I passed the threshold I heard a metallic clatter from behind me which, although new to me, I instantly realized was the sound of grenades bouncing across marble. I grabbed the door and pulled it closed just in time. A deafening roar, amplified by the cold stone acoustics of the enormous, empty room, filled my senses and flung me backwards.

The door held.

David reached across me and slid a bolt home, locking it behind us. Then he leant down, helped me to my feet, and dragged me away into the depths of the unlit passageway.

"Lee!" hissed Dad urgently.

"I'm all right," I replied.

"Ahead thirty metres, then turn left and up the stairs," said David loudly. I dimly heard Tariq give a grunt of acknowledgement somewhere ahead of us.

We made our way forward in the pitch darkness as quickly as we could.

"Thank you," I said. "You saved my life."

David said nothing. I wondered which he was regretting most – betraying his father, or not shooting him when he had the chance.

We soon reached a door, and huddled together, lit by the chink of light that gleamed through the tiny crack that outlined its frame.

"This leads into a private bedchamber," whispered David. "Uday would bring his whores here in secret. It should be unoccupied, but you never know. Once I open the door we run to the balcony. It looks out over the river, and over the wall. There's a ladder under the bed. I'll get it; we lay it across the gap, walk over the wall and drop down. Clear?"

"And if the room is occupied?"

"Then, Sergeant, we have fight on our hands. Everyone ready?"

There was the sound of four guns being cocked and then David counted down from three. We burst into the room, guns waving.

"Clear," said Dad. I got to the balcony first, and looked out into the night. I couldn't see much because the balcony looked out of the compound across the waterway. There was less gunfire than before. It was coming in sporadic bursts now, somewhere off to my right, from a building that stood close to where one of the bombs had exploded. I could see the riverside wall was ablaze, flames licking out of the empty window frames. Tariq had only a few people left to him after last week's massacre. The plan was that they would stay outside and lay down covering fire at the points where the wall was breached, that way the Yanks wouldn't know which breach we planned to exit by. We would go across the wall here and then we and the rest of the gang would simply melt away into the darkness. It was a good plan, but it had one fatal flaw.

"Where is it?" hissed Tariq urgently, behind me. I turned to see the three of them standing by the bed. No ladder.

"I don't know," said David. "It was here this morning. Someone must have taken it."

"Fuck," said Tariq, succinctly. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. What now?"

"Can we jump it?" asked Dad.

I shook my head. "It would be suicide. Options? David, you know the layout of this place. Where's the nearest breach in the wall and how do we get there?"

"Two hundred metres east. I set a charge near the swimming pool."

"Okay then," said Dad, looking for the door. "Hang on. Where's the door?"

"There isn't one," replied David. "Secret bedroom, remember? The passage is the only way in or out."

"Jesus," I said. "Who the fuck builds a secret chamber with only one entrance?"

"The Ba'ath party," said Tariq, "never could do a damn thing properly."

"So you mean we're trapped?" asked Dad, incredulous.

"Yeah," said David.

"And how long before someone figures out where we are?" I asked.

"Not long."

"Then we have to go out the window."

"You said it was too high," protested the Iraqi.

"He didn't say anything about jumping," said Dad, smiling. Weird, but that moment, when he read my mind before the others, made me feel closer to him than all the hugging and wailing a few minutes earlier.

"We climb," I said.

One of the good things about the palace compound is that the buildings were as ornate as they could possibly be. It wasn't hard to climb up on to the roof using all the elaborate cornices, cupolas and jutty-out bits. Tariq went first, then me. Then David gave Dad a boost while Tariq and I pulled him up. David was still outside on the wall, perched on the ledge above the balcony, reaching for the lip of the roof when Uday Hussein's secret fuck pad was blown to shit by grenades.

The shockwave dislodged him and he began to topple backwards. I leaned out and grabbed his flailing right hand, pulling him back in. He scrambled up, flinging himself on to the roof. Almost immediately we heard someone run out on to the balcony and shout "clear!" I silently mouthed "close". David nodded and mimed back "thank you". I smiled and patted his shoulder.

The flat roof was littered with discarded bits of stone, half cut rolls of waterproof tar stuff and other assorted junk left behind by the builders responsible for this architectural abortion. We moved away from the edge so we couldn't be seen from below.

"Now they're going to be confused," whispered Tariq grinning.

"I hope so," replied Dad. "Because if they figure out where we are, they'll just blow up the building, or worse, set a fire and leave us up here to burn."

That shut us all up for a moment, and in the silence we all realized the same thing; the gunfire had stopped. Tariq's forces had fled, been captured or killed.

We were on our own, trapped on a roof in the middle of a compound swarming with people who wanted to kill us.

"I told you I hated this plan," I said.

There was little we could do but wait.

From our vantage point we could see that the area was heavily patrolled, plus there was a team sorting out David's creative rewiring of the backup generator, so the building was a hive of activity. Come daylight, things would start to return to normal. This part of the compound was usually pretty quiet, said David; the main activity was all focused on the barracks, supply dump and vehicle store, about half a mile away on the compound's northern side.

"It may sound counter-intuitive," he said, "but we've got a better chance of sneaking out in broad daylight tomorrow than we do now."

And so we decided to get some sleep. I was just clearing a space to lie down when Dad came over to me and sat beside me.

"I'll take first watch, keep an eye out," he said.

"Okay," I replied.

There was an awkward silence. I don't think either of us knew what to say to each other.

"When I last saw you, you were a just a schoolboy. It was all Doctor Who, Grand Theft Auto and wondering if you were going to snog that girl from the High School, Michelle, wasn't it?"