that, Corporal?’ Trooper Stone asked with a grin, being less impressionable than his friend. Although he, like Moorcock and Gillett, had only recently been badged and was serving his probationary period, he wasn’t about to take any bullshit from the older hands. ‘What’s worse than death, then?’
‘They’ll pull your nails out,’ Paddy said.
‘They’ll gang-bang you,’ Jock added.
‘They’ll chop your cock off and make you eat it with couscous,’ Geordie put in. ‘Then they’ll cut your eyeballs out and make you suck them until you go gaga.’
‘Go fuck yourselves,’ Trooper Stone said.
‘Leave these poor probationers alone,’ threatened Andrew, ‘or I’ll personally chop your cocks off and shove them, all shrivelled, up your arses, which will then need some wiping.’
‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ Trooper Moorcock said, tightening the straps on his bergen and looking serious while his two friends, Stone and Gillett, grinned at each other.
‘We’re touching down,’ the Loadmaster said. ‘Hold on to your balls, lads…Three, two, one, zero…Touchdown!’
The transport landed with a lot of bouncing, roaring and metallic shrieking, but otherwise no problems, on an LZ located about half a mile from the main road that ran one way to Basra, 40 miles the other way to Baghdad.
The men disembarked even before the two Chinooks’ engines had gone into neutral, spilling out of the side into dense clouds of sand whipped up by the twin-bladed rotors. When the billowing sand had subsided, the first thing they saw was a fantastic display of fireworks illuminating the distant horizon: immense webs of red and purple anti-aircraft fire, silvery-white explosions, showers of crimson sparks and streams of phosphorus fireflies.
‘Baghdad,’ Hailsham explained to those nearest to him. ‘The Allies are bombing the hell out of it. Rather them than us.’
As their eyes adjusted to moonlit darkness, they saw the nearest two microwave links, soaring high above the flat plain, about a quarter mile apart, but less than twenty yards from the road. Spreading out and keeping their weapons at the ready, the men hiked across the dusty, wind-blown plain until they reached a point equidistant between the two towers. From here, the road was dangerously close – a mere twenty-odd yards.
‘It’s pretty dark,’ Ricketts said, glancing in every direction, ‘so if anyone comes along the road, we should be OK if we stay low. We need sentries on point in both directions, with the men not being used for digging keeping guard in LUPs.’
‘Right,’ Hailsham said.
Ricketts gave his instructions by means of hand signals. With the Chinooks waiting on the ground a quarter of a mile away, their rotors turning quietly in neutral, the bulk of the men broke into four-man teams, then fanned out to form a circle of LUPs, or lying-up positions, from where they could keep their eyes on the road and defend the diggers and demolition team if anyone came along.
Meanwhile Hailsham and Ricketts accompanied Sergeant Lloyd as he checked the alignment between the two communications towers and gauged where the fibre-optic cable was running between them, hidden under the ground.
‘This is it,’ he said, waving his hand from left to right to indicate an invisible line between the two towers. He turned to the dozen troopers selected to dig. ‘I want a series of four holes about twelve foot apart, each six foot long and as deep as you need to go to expose the cable. That should be about four feet. If you see any transport coming along that road, or if we call a warning to you, drop down into the hole you’re digging and don’t make a move until given clearance. OK, get going.’
The men laid down their weapons, removed spades and shovels from their bergens, and proceeded to dig the holes as required. As they did so, they and the others – now stretched belly-down in LUPs on the dark ground, their weapons at the ready and covering the road in both directions – were able to watch the fantastic pyrotechnics of crimson anti-aircraft tracer fire and silvery bomb bursts over distant Baghdad, which was being bombed by wave after wave of British, American and Saudi jets, as well as Tomahawk Cruise missiles fired from ships in the Gulf, flying in at just under the speed of sound at heights of 50–250 feet, to cause more devastation and death.
‘Wow!’ Andrew whispered, looking at the lights over the distant city. ‘That’s just beautiful, man!’
‘Beautiful from here,’ Hailsham replied. ‘Hell on earth if you’re there.’
‘You men,’ Sergeant Lloyd said to two of his eight sappers, both of whom had various explosives, charges and timers dangling from their webbing. ‘I want you to take out those towers, one to each man. Fix enough explosives to the base to make sure the whole caboodle topples over. Use electronic timers that can be fired from here by remote control. Don’t make any mistakes. When this lot goes up, those towers have to go up at the same time. Understood?’
‘Yes, boss,’ the men nodded.
Then they headed off in opposite directions, towards the tower each had selected, the explosives on their webbing bouncing up and down as they ran.
‘You see that?’ Geordie whispered to Trooper Gillett, having decided to pass the time by winding him up. ‘Those explosives are liable to go off any second, taking us out with him.’
‘Aw, come off it, Geordie!’
‘No, kid, it’s true! I’d be pissing in my pants if I was you. He’ll blow up any minute now.’
‘That’s bullshit, Geordie,’ Trooper Stone retorted. ‘We all heard what Sergeant Lloyd said in the plane – explosives don’t blow up easily.’
‘Besides,’ Trooper Gillett added, ‘that sapper’s practically out of sight already. If the stupid bastard blows himself up, we’re well out of range. Pull the other one, Geordie.’
‘Shut up, you men,’ Sergeant Lloyd said, glancing down at the men digging the holes, ‘these men have to concentrate. If you’ve got nothing better to do, I can always hand you a shovel.’
‘No, thanks,’ Geordie said, edging away. ‘I have to go and stand out on point. Have a nice day!’
‘Fucking nerd,’ Sergeant Lloyd said.
The digging alone took forty-five minutes. During that time two vehicles, about half an hour apart, came along the road, heading away from Baghdad, their headlights cutting a swathe through the darkness but not picking out the men who were concealed in LUPs, guns at the ready, only twenty yards or so away. The first vehicle was a Mercedes saloon filled with white-robed Arabs; the second was a soft-topped army truck packed with Iraqi soldiers. Both passed by and disappeared into the night, their drivers and passengers, probably fleeing from the air attacks on Baghdad, not knowing how close to death they had come in what they thought was an empty, safe area.
About twenty minutes after the army truck had passed by, one of the men uncovered a fibre-optic cable.
‘That’s it,’ Sergeant Lloyd said, glancing down into the hole as the trooper who had reached the first cable wiped sweat from his brow. ‘I want that whole stretch of cable cleared, Trooper, so get back to your digging.’
‘Right, Sarge,’ the trooper said. He continued his digging. When the
