‘No questions, boss.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it. Have you finished your tea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go to it.’
Ricketts grinned, finished his tea, then stood up and left the tent. Heading back to his own lean-to, he was enthralled by the sight of so many tents on the dark plain, under the desert’s starlit sky, but even more thrilled – indeed almost ecstatic – to be back in business at last.
It was what he and most of his mates lived for.
At approximately midnight, two of the RAF’s CH-47 twin-blade Chinooks lifted Ricketts’s chosen team of 40 men off the airstrip of the FOB and headed through the night sky for the LZ. The men, packed into the gloomy, noisy interior of the helicopter, were wearing the normal beige beret, but without its winged-dagger badge and now camouflaged under a shemagh, or veil, that could also be wrapped around the eyes and mouth to protect them from dust and sand. (The same kind of veil was used to camouflage the standard 7.62mm SLR, or self-loading rifle.) The standard-issue woollen pullover was woven in colours that would blend in with the desert floor and matched the colouring of the high-topped, lace-up desert boots.
‘I feel like an A-rab,’ Geordie said. ‘What do I look like?’
‘Real cute,’ Paddy replied.
‘I always knew you adored me.’
Most of the men were armed either with the ubiquitous semi-automatic SLR or with 30-round, semi- and fully automatic M16s and their many attachments, including bayonets, bipods for accuracy when firing from the prone position, telescopic sights, night-vision aids, and M203 40mm grenade-launchers. Some had Heckler & Koch MP5 30-round sub-machine-guns. A few had belt-fed L7A2 7.62mm general-purpose machine-guns, or GPMGs, capable of firing 800 rounds a minute to a range of up to 1400 metres. All had standard-issue Browning FN 9mm high-power handguns on their hips, capable of firing 13 rounds in a couple of seconds.
These weapons and their bulky ammunition belts, combined with the standard bergens and camouflaging, made the men look awkward and bulky, almost Neanderthal. However, those weapons were only part of their personal equipment, and other, heavier weapons were taking up what little space they had left between them.
In case they were approached by tanks during the operation, the men were also carrying heavy support weapons, including the 94mm light anti-tank weapon, or LAW 80, which fired a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rocket and could be used on bunkers as well as armoured vehicles; the portable FIM-92A Stinger anti-aircraft missile system, capable of firing a heat-seeking missile 8000 metres and fitted with a friend or foe identification, or FFI, system; and two different mortars: the 51mm mortar, which, though carried and operated by one man, could launch an HE bomb to a range of 750 metres, and the larger, heavier 81mm mortar, which required three men to carry it, but could fire HE bombs 5660 metres at a rate of eight rounds per minute.
‘Tell me, Alfie,’ Andrew said, bored out of his mind, and deciding to have a bit of sport with Sergeant Alfred Lloyd, who was sitting beside him, ‘how come you’re almost as tall as me, but only half of my weight?’
‘I’m taller than you, fella, by half an inch. I can tell when our eyes meet.’
A dour Leicester man and SAS demolition specialist who had formerly been a Royal Engineer, then an ammunition technician with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Lloyd had unkempt red hair, a beakish, broken nose, and a lean face veined by booze and scorched by the sun.
‘I’m always willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt,’ Andrew said, ‘so how come, since you’re even taller than me, you only weigh half my size?’
‘I’ve sabotaged ships, aircraft, every type of armoured vehicle, power stations, communications centres, supply depots, railways and roads. It required a lot of climbing and running, which is why I’m still slim.’
Alfie Lloyd was indeed still as thin as a rake, though now heavily burdened like the others and divided from big Andrew by the boxes packed with explosives, charges, detonator caps and the many other tools of his dangerous trade. Andrew stared at them sceptically.
‘Those bloody explosives, man, are they safe?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ve heard that explosives go off real easy.’
‘Bullshit. Most explosives are safe unless they’re deliberately set off. You can hammer TNT into powdered crystals and it still won’t explode. That’s why it can be delivered by parachute. No problem at all.’
‘Mmmmm,’ Andrew murmured, not totally convinced. ‘So what exactly is explosive, man? Give it to me in simple words.’
Alfie thought for a while, wondering how to reply, not being a man of great eloquence and aware that Andrew was a poet, slick with his tongue. Finally he said, ‘You tell me.’
Andrew nodded and beamed.
‘A solid or liquid substance which, under the influence of a certain stimulus, such as an exploding detonator, is rapidly converted into another substance with accompanying high pressure, leading to the outburst of violence and noise known as an explosion. What say you, Sergeant?’
‘Is that fucking Swahili?’
‘I’m from Barbados,’ Andrew replied, ‘where they only speak English.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ Alfie said, shaking his head. ‘I thought I spoke English!’
‘They only think they speak English in Barbados,’ Paddy Clarke said. ‘All that molasses and rum goes to their heads and makes them think they’re white men. We should hand Andrew over to a missionary for a little correction.’
‘The Paddy from Liverpool has spoken,’ Andrew intoned. ‘Let us bow down and throw up.’
‘Can it, the lot of you,’ the RAF Loadmaster barked at them as he materialized from the gloom. He glanced through one of the portholes in the passenger hold and announced: ‘We’re coming in, if we’re lucky, to the LZ, so prepare to offload.’
‘Yes, mother!’ Taff chimed in a high, schoolboy’s voice, though he quickly made a great show of checking his gear when the Loadmaster gave him a baleful stare.
‘Hey, Moorcock’ Paddy said, turning to the new man beside him, eager for a little sport. ‘Where did you say you were located before you were badged?’
‘The Welsh Guards,’ Moorcock answered, giving his kit a great deal of attention.
‘See any action?’ Paddy asked him.
‘A brief tour of Northern Ireland,’ Moorcock said, sliding his arms awkwardly through the webbing of his bergen. ‘Though I didn’t see much there.’
‘Know much about the Iraqis?’
‘No.’
‘They’re
