Wrapped in a towel, I padded on bare feet back to my small room. As I did so I heard the wailing call from the nearby minaret commence and I prepared for action.
After donning the company’s uniform of desert camouflage fatigues, I walked over to my open window and looked out over the Green Zone of Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein’s palaces had been appropriated by the ‘liberating’ forces and now nearly five thousand foreigners lived amongst his lush parks and gardens. A further five thousand Iraqis had also moved into the zone. Most of these were the very poorest people in Iraq who had taken the opportunity to avail themselves of Saddam Hussein’s plush apartments when he had fled ahead of the liberating forces.
Now the Green Zone was an enclave of relative peace in the tur-moil of a Baghdad trying to come to terms with life after Saddam’s regime. It was surrounded by high concrete blast walls, T-walls and barbed wire with numerous heavily manned guard posts.
I had arrived in Iraq some nine months before and was now due some home leave. Each day I looked forward to the day when I arrived at Heathrow to be reunited with my son Jason for a short time and then dropping him off with his grandparents and whisking his mother off to a romantic resort in Spain.
‘Good morning, Sergeant Briggs,’ smiled the cook as I loaded my plate with bacon, eggs and toast in the company canteen.
‘Good morning, Corporal Jones,’ I replied.
Even though none of us were still in the armed forces old habits die hard and our former rank continued to define us. A retired officer was therefore accorded executive status while former enlisted men were the workers with sergeants equated to a civilian foreman in both rank and pay bracket.
At this early hour the canteen was still empty. ‘Are you going out today?’ asked Jones as I sat down not far from him.
I looked at my watch. ‘A couple of hours. Enough time to catch a bite to eat and check the vehicles.’
‘I’m glad you’re on the ball. Some of the contractors they’ve taken on lately aren’t worth feeding. Not a combat soldier among them.’
I nodded and concentrated on my food while silently conceding that Jones was correct. Much to my annoyance many of the men I now had to work with had as little as one period of enlistment under their belts. As soon as their first tour of duty was up they ditched the military and signed up for company work where they could earn many times the army’s rate of pay for performing much the same duties; however, I knew that receiving higher pay did not equate in any way to being a better soldier.
I finished my breakfast and walked outside to find that our armoured carriers had been refuelled and were now parked nose to tail outside the company’s dispatch office. The five vehicles had been used the previous day by another group and I distrusted their leader enough to want to make sure that he had done his job properly.
I thoroughly inspected the carriers and noted that the machine guns on three of them had been fired recently and that the boxes of expended ammunition had not been replaced. On some patrols if things were quiet the officer in command might authorise some ‘unofficial’ target practice to take place in a quiet part of the desert. On their return the patrol was supposed to replenish the missing ammunition, but this was often overlooked in their rush to wash the desert dust out of their dry throats in the company’s air-conditioned bar.
Added to this I found that the batteries were nearly flat in the radios on two of the vehicles. The length of our mission would ensure that long before we returned, the suspect equipment would have ceased to work. I wrote down all the problems I had found and headed for the company office.
Bradsure International Security Service (BISS) had been the only company to express any interest in allowing me to join them. On reviewing my medical record the rest had declined my offer, fearing that I could become a burden to them if my wounds were to deteriorate. With the money they were offering, these companies had more than enough fully fit men offering their services and they could well afford to ignore my past valuable experience.
BISS on the other hand were not quite so selective. Run by a board of directors who had their eyes fixed solely on the bottom line they offered lower wages than the rest and accepted nearly anyone who applied as long as they had some military experience and they didn’t have to waste money training them. The company also kept their profits high by cutting corners whenever they could, particularly when it came to basic maintenance, and it was not unknown for a patrol of five vehicles to set out for the day and only three returning with the extra crew members crammed into the few remaining vehicles.
Inside the office I handed my list of necessary replacement parts to the officer on duty. He had been a former major in the engineers and had never seen action in his life. In a moment of liquor-induced candour he had revealed that the nearest he had come to actual conflict was when a disgruntled local had chosen to express his displeasure by lobbing a mortar round into the Green Zone.
He read through my list while sipping at his morning cup of coffee. ‘I can get you the ammunition – we’ve plenty of that – but the radio batteries are another thing. Are you sure you can’t muddle through with what you’ve got?’
I gave the man behind the desk a withering look. ‘Would you like to be out there,’ I said, pointing off into the distance, ‘under attack and unable to call for support?’
The man cleared his throat and blushed. ‘Quite so. Well, we haven’t any spare batteries in stock. They’re on order and should be delivered later today. Can’t you recharge the ones we have, or perhaps borrow some from another company?’
‘We’re supposed to be leaving in an hour. There’s no time.’
‘Why not use your mobile phones?’
I exploded. ‘Jesus Christ, mate! Don’t you know anything? They can track the patrol if we use our mobiles. The first time a call is intercepted they will set up an ambush. Besides, the network doesn’t extend out into the countryside!’
‘Calm down, Sergeant!’ came a voice from behind me and I turned to see my group officer enter the room. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘We don’t have radio batteries for two of the vehicles and I can’t risk taking men out there and placing them in any more danger than we have to.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay, so we leave them behind and take the three operational vehicles. That way we won’t need as many men and we won’t have to split the bonus in as many ways.’ He grinned. ‘There’ll be more money for each of us.’
I was totally blown away by the man’s crass stupidity. ‘Sir, we need all five vehicles. One lead vehicle, one to cover our rear and the three in the middle changing places regularly so the enemy can’t tell which one has the VIP in it. Going with three vehicles will be like waving a flag at the terrorists, saying “Come and shoot us. Your target is in the middle”.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ scoffed the former engineering major. ‘You’re worrying about nothing.’
‘The Major’s correct,’ agreed my patrol commander.
I thought about taking the matter further but knew that it would be useless. All I could do was make the best of a bad situation. ‘I’ll go through the roster and see who we can leave behind.’ I wanted to be the one to do that task so that I could ensure that the most experienced men went along in case anything went wrong.
‘No need, Sergeant Briggs. I’ll do that. You go and make sure our three vehicles are in order.’
I went off to do what I was ordered to do, but I wasn’t at all happy. My gut feeling was that this mission was going from bad to worse very quickly and we hadn’t even gotten under way.
At the appointed time our patrol assembled at the vehicles and I saw that my worst fears had been realised. The two officers