Chris Ryan (12 page)

Then, as I started getting my water bottle out, I looked up and noticed a little glassed-in hatchway on the back wall, with a red glow coming through it. Standing up to peer through, I saw a small electric fire with a bar glowing. Across from it lay an Arab, huddled down in a parka and sleeping bag, dossing on a camp-bed. He was separated from me only by the thickness of the partition wall. `Jesus Christ!' I thought. 'I've walked right into this. What the hell am I doing in a building anyway? I've dropped a bol�lock here.' I tiptoed out, without any water, and crept away. I tried to give myself a shake-up. 'Well, come on. Screw the nut.' It took a fright like that to wake me up. Things had started to seem too easy. I was making good progress. The border was only a short distance ahead. Nobody had chal�lenged me for a while, and I'd started to switch off my defence mechanisms. Getting over the fright, I moved on in a state of maximum alert. I held my weapon at the ready, and moved very slowly, scanning constantly. But I was hardly clear of the pump house when, from high ground to my left, an air-raid siren went off. The noise started low, wound up to a high note, then swung down again. I hit the ground, thinking I had tripped some alarm, and lay there listening. Up and down went the metallic scream, swooping high and low. As I searched through the kite-sight, scanning the high ground, I made out anti-aircraft positions with gun barrels showing against the sky and black figures running round them. Then I saw tall, lattice-work towers, maybe a couple of hundred feet high, with what looked like cables slung between them. They seemed to be part of a communications network, and when I heard a drone start up, I thought the noise was com-ing from generators. I reckoned I'd walked into some sort of signals base. How the hell had I got in among all this without seeing anything? I certainly hadn't crossed any fence or other barrier, but somehow I had landed in the middle of the complex. I knew I wasn't far from the river; vegetation started only a couple of hundred metres below me, and I thought that 152 The One That Got Away must mark the bank. I lay still until the all-clear went up � a noise like a Second World War siren � and everything quie�tened down. Whatever had caused the alert, it hadn't been me. When I reckoned it was safe to move, I got up and set off cautiously towards the river � only to see a group of five men walking. Back on the ground, I lay still until they had passed and disappeared. Desperate though I was for water, I decided I had to get out of this thickly populated area. I had seen from the map that the river bent round, and thought I could hit it at an-other point not far ahead. But now I seemed to be in the middle of numerous scattered positions, and I had no option but to weave my way through them. I crept onwards. To my front I saw something sticking up into the sky. Peering through the night-sight, I realised that it was the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. As I looked down, I saw its circular emplacement right in front of me. I pulled back, boxed it and moved on with every sense at full alert, threading my way forward between buildings which showed up here and there, pale in the moonlight. The place was extremely confusing, as it didn't seem to be laid out in any regular pattern; perhaps because the ground un�dulated so much, the dirt roads were neither straight nor at right-angles to each other, but coming in from all directions. On the ground, insulated land-lines were running all over the place. I thought of cutting them, to put local com-munications out of action, but knew that it would only draw attention to my presence. My map was far too large-scale to show details that would have been useful to me, and it no longer bore any relation to the ground. At one point I could see a big cliff coming round in front of me, like the wall of a quarry � but of course there was no sign of that on my sheet. Then � wonder of wonders � I reached a stream, with vegetation growing beside it. The water looked crystal clear, and the moonlight shone through it on to a white bottom. I thought, 'Jesus! I'm in luck here. A spring of clean water, flowing down into the Euphrates.' The whole place was so Over The Border 153 dangerous that I didn't go down for a drink; I just filled my bottles, popped them into my side-pouches, and moved quickly away. Just as I left the stream I saw a file of seven men walk across my front, two or three paces apart. They were moving carefully, obviously on patrol. I froze, thinking, 'If they've got a dog, it's going to pick up my scent now.' But no � they disappeared, and I moved out on a bearing, going very slowly. Again I came across an anti-aircraft position; this time I was so close that I peered over a wall of sandbags and saw three men lying on the ground in sleeping bags. For a moment I felt stunned � so close were they, right under my nose. I seemed to be glued to the ground, staring. Then I felt a surge of fear, rising like acid from stomach to throat. The thought flashed into my mind that if I'd had a silenced weapon, I could at least have taken out anyone who spotted me. But nobody had: the men were all asleep, and within a few seconds I was creeping slowly away. The next thing I hit was a vehicle laager point. Mounds of rock or minerals stood about, as if in a quarry. As I came creeping round the side, I walked right up to a Russian-made Gaz 80 jeep, only four or five yards away. Again, I got a bad fright. I couldn't see through the vehicle's windows; for all I knew it could have been full of people. For a few seconds I held my breath, 203 levelled, waiting for it to erupt. When nothing happened, I turned to go back. I found I'd passed other vehicles and wandered into the middle of this park without seeing it. There were four-ton trucks with the canvas backs off, some with the canvas on, buses like ordin�ary coaches, double-deck car transporters � none of them had armour or weapons fitted, but this was a big collection of general transport. How I'd penetrated in among all these without noticing them, I couldn't explain. With hindsight, I realise that my concentration was coming and going, func�tioning at one moment but not the next. At the time I merely felt bewildered. 1S4 The One That Got Away No matter how I'd got in there, I had to get out. Ahead of me were houses, with light coming from one window. Sil�houetted figures were moving across it, and I could hear voices calling. I pushed off to the right, sometimes walking on tiptoe, often crawling on hands and knees. I boxed that particular group of buildings; then ahead of me lay a single, big, whitewashed house, with a steeply-pitched roof and a pale-coloured wall maybe a hundred metres long running round its garden, and trees and shrubs sticking up over the top of it. To the left were two other buildings with lights shining from them and people outside, talking and shouting. I think there was also music playing on a radio. The big house was easily the most impressive I'd seen, and by far the best maintained. High on one wall, beneath the apex of the roof, was a mural, an outsize portrait of Sad-dam Hussein. In the dark the colours were indistinct, but I could see that it was a carefully painted head-and-shoulders representation, which showed the dictator bare-headed, wearing military insignia on his epaulettes. The picture re�minded me of the violent murals I'd seen in Northern Ireland, and for several seconds I stood looking at it, think�ing, 'You're definitely in the wrong place now, mate!' What made me stand there gawping, I can't explain. Again, as in the pumping house, I seemed to have grown blas�it was almost as if I thought I'd become invisible, and didn't need to hide any longer. After surviving so many close en�counters, I felt that nobody could see me, and I needn't be so careful any more. Anyway, as I stood there, a man came round the corner, only fifty metres away � a dark figure, silhouetted against the light. Instinct, rather than any conscious decision, made me control myself. I felt a surge of fear, but instead of bolting I simply turned away and walked casually round the side of the house. In two steps I was out of sight. Then I ran. As I sprinted, I told myself, Tor God's sake, screw the nut. Take a grip.' The man had seen me. I knew that. But he didn't seem to Over The Border 155 have followed up. Round the back of the building I spotted a ditch running along the side of the road. I dived into it, and as I lay there two family-type vehicles, like Espace vans, came rolling down. At their approach, the big house sud�denly burst into life: security lights blazed on, and people poured out to meet the vehicles, both from the building and from pill boxes at the gates. A man got out of the vehicle, and four of the other guys body-guarded him into the house. As soon as the party was inside, the lights went off, so that the place was plunged into darkness again. It crossed my mind that this could be Saddam himself. The house was an im�pressive one, and well maintained. Was this his secret hideaway? Then I realised that he would never draw atten�tion to himself by having his own portrait on the wall; more likely, this was the home of the local governor, or some simi�lar official. The whole incident took only a few seconds, and it left me thinking, 'What the hell is this?' I seemed to have strayed into a nightmare, with unexplained people and events pop-ping up all over the place. I saw that I must have walked right past the sentries in the pill boxes. Again I realised how dangerously I was switching off. In my head I began having a conversation with myself. `I don't believe I did that.' `You bloody did! Switch back on.' By this time I'd been in this complex � whatever it was �for five hours, trying to find my way out. Time was cracking on. According to my route plan, I should already have been on the border. Something had gone far wrong with my map-reading, and I was faced by the prospect of having to lie up without food for yet another day. Oddly enough, I never felt desperate with hunger, I never got pains in the stomach. My biggest worry was that I was gradually growing weaker � less able to walk, less able to concentrate. My immediate plan was to creep back up to the road and go somewhere beyond it, clear of the buildings, so that I could sneak another look at the map; but before I could move, I heard footsteps and voices coming down the path 156 The One That Got Away towards me. By the sound, there were two men at least. I was crouching in a corner beside a mound, without cover, and they were coming right on top of me. My survival instinct took over � instinct sharpened by years of training. Whoever these guys were, it was going to be them or me. To fire a shot in that position would have been fatal, so I quietly laid my 203 down and got my knife open in my right hand. As the first man came level with me I grabbed him, stuck him in the neck and ripped his throat out. He went down without a sound. When the second man saw me, his eyes widened in terror and he began to run. But somehow, with a surge of adrenaline, I flew after him, jumped on him and brought him down with my legs locked round his hips. I got one arm round his neck in a judo hold and stretched his chin up. There was a muffled crack, and he died instantaneously. When I got back to the first, he was still quivering. I could feel hot, sticky blood all down my front. There hadn't been a sound. Now I had two bodies to dispose of. To leave them where they were would advertise my presence to all and sundry, but if they just went missing, the chances were that nobody would raise the alarm for a few hours at least. Luckily the river was less than a hundred metres off, and a gentle slope covered by small, loose rocks led down to it. Luckier still, the bank was screened by a stand of tall grass. Each body made a scraping, rattling noise as I dragged it over the rocks; but I got both to the edge of the water, one at a time, without interruption. Then I loaded them up with stones inside their shirts, dragged them into the water and let them go. Knowing my bottles were full, I didn't bother to drink any of the dirty water in the river. The encounter had roused me to a high state of alert, and it had all taken an hour. Now my urgent need was to clear the complex before daylight. Moving silently, I worked my way up to a road that ran along the contour. Under it I found a culvert, and I thought I'd crawl into it for a look at my map; but as I came to the end of the tunnel, I heard a kind of growling. Thinking there Over The Border 157 must be some animal under the road, I tiptoed forward and peered into the pitch darkness. I couldn't see a thing. Sud�denly I diagnosed the source of the noise: it was some local, snoring. I felt slightly annoyed that an Arab had already nicked the retreat I fancied. Probably he was a soldier, and supposed to be on stag. Lucky for me, then, that he'd decided to have a kip. Creeping back out, I climbed up on the side of the road and crossed over. As I did that, I heard a shout from down by the houses where I'd heard people talking. I didn't think the yell had anything to do with me, but I ran across the road, made about fifty metres into the rocks and dropped down. A man came running up the road, which was raised about six feet above the ground. He stopped right opposite me and stood staring in my direction. Evidently he couldn't see anything, and he ran back. A moment later, a blacked-out land-cruiser roared past, its engine screaming in second gear, straight up the road to the junction with the MSR, and dis�appeared. For nearly half an hour I lay still, letting things settle. After getting that fright, and the violent expenditure of energy, reaction set in and I felt drained of strength. But I couldn't stay where I was, so I began to work my way round the rocks. On my left was a run of chain-link fencing, quite high. So that side of the complex was protected, anyway. Coming to a corner of the barrier, I went up on to the MSR and crossed over. As I did so, I looked to my left and saw three guys manning a vehicle control point on the junc�tion of the road coming up from the complex. Dodging back up a wadi, I peeped over the side and saw a line of anti�aircraft positions facing towards the Syrian border. I pulled back again, stuck. The ground there was almost flat. I couldn't go forward, and I couldn't go back. Dawn was approaching. My only possible refuge was another of the culverts under the road. I found three tunnels, each about the diameter of a forty-five gallon drum and maybe 10 metres long. The first looked clean, and I thought that in. daylight anybody looking in one end would see straight

158 The One That Got Away through it. The second seemed to be full of dead bushes and rubbish, so I crawled in and lay down. In the confined space, I realised how badly I was stinking. But my surroundings were no better: there was a powerful stench of decomposing rubbish and excrement. I was desperate for a drink, and looking forward to one with incredible anticipation. But when I went to compress the plastic clip that held the buckle on my webbing pouch, I found that my fingers were so sore and clumsy that I could scarcely manage the simple task. Gasping with pain, I used all my strength to force the clips together. Then came a hor�rendous disappointment. Bringing out one bottle at last, I opened it and raised it to my lips � but the first mouthful made me gasp and choke. Poison! The water tasted vicious and metallic, as if it was full of acid. I spat it straight out, but the inside of my mouth had gone dry, and I was left with a burning sensation all over my tongue and gums. I whipped out my compass-mirror, pointed the torch-beam into my mouth and looked round it. Everything seemed all right, so I took another sip, but it was just the same. I remembered that when Stan had collapsed during the first night on the run I'd put rehydrate into my bottles, to bring him round, and I wondered if the remains of it had somehow gone off. Then I tried the second bottle, and found it exactly the same. I couldn't make out what the hell had gone wrong. Whatever the problem, the water was undrinkable, and I emptied the bottles out. Now I am fucked.' I thought. I was in a really bad state. It was eight days since I'd had a hot meal, two days and a night since I'd had a drink. My tongue was completely dry; it felt like a piece of old leather stuck in the back of my throat. My teeth had all come loose; if I closed my mouth and sucked hard, I could taste blood coming from my shrunken gums. I knew my feet were in bits, but I didn't dare take my boots off, because I feared I'd never get them on again. As for my hands � I could see and smell them all too well. The thin leather of my gloves had cracked and split, from being re�peatedly soaked and dried out again, so that my fingers Over The Border 159 hadn't had much protection. I'd lost most of the feeling in the tips, and I seemed to have got dirt pushed deep under my nails, so that infection had set in. Whenever I squeezed a nail, pus came out, and this stench was repulsive. With my extremities suppurating like that, I wondered what internal damage I might be suffering, and could only hope that no permanent harm would be done. With the complete lack of food, I'd had no bowel movement since going on the run, and I couldn't remember when I'd last wanted to pee. I yearned for food, of course, but more for drink � and when I did think about food, it was sweet, slushy things that I craved. If ever I found myself back among rations packs, I would rip into the pears in syrup, ice-cream and chocolate sauce. I felt very frightened. First and most obvious was the danger of being captured � the fear of torture, and of giving away secrets that might betray other guys from the Regi�ment. Almost worse, though, was the fact that I could see and feel my body going down so fast. If I didn't reach the border soon, I would be too weak to carry on. Twisting round in the cramped space of the drain, I got out my map and tried for the hundredth time to work out where I was. It was now the morning of Wednesday 30 January. What options were left to me? Already light was coming up, and whatever happened, I was stuck in the cul�vert for that day. When dark fell again, I could try to sneak back down to the river, cross over and go along the other side � but it seemed a far-fetched hope. In any case, I'd built up a deep dread of going anywhere near the river. Every time I'd tried it, something had gone wrong; one more attempt, and I might easily be captured. At the very least, I still had thirty kilometres to go. How long could I hold out? I just couldn't tell what my body was still capable of. First, I somehow had to get through eleven hours of day�light � eleven hours, when every waking minute now was agony. At least I was out of the wind, and less cold, so that I could drop off to sleep. I'd go straight off and be fast asleep, and start dreaming, usually about the squadron. I was with 160 The One That Got Away the rest of the guys. They were all round me, talking and laughing, getting ready to go. We didn't seem to be in any particular place � unless it was the actual place I was in � but their presence was completely real. Then suddenly, maybe ten minutes later, I'd wake up, shuddering violently, hoping against hope that my mates were still there, and fully ex-pecting that they would be. The dream had been so strong that I felt certain I'd find people lying near me, moving around, and that we were all together. Then I'd open my eyes and realise that I was alone in the culvert with no one to talk to. It was a horrible let-down. Sometimes, also, I was at home in England with my family. Every time I fell asleep, the hallucinations grew more vivid. The most worrying feature was that I'd become con�fused between Jan � my wife � and Susan � the woman I was engaged to for so long. I kept trying to imagine Jan's face, but the awful thing was that I couldn't remember what it looked like. I was aware that I should remember her per�fectly well, but I just couldn't see her, and I couldn't have described her to anyone else. I knew that she had blonde hair, but that was all. It was terrible to be aware that my own mind was going. Instead of Jan, I was seeing Susan all the time. I saw her sitting on a fence, or in our house at Rowlands Gill. When I saw little Sarah, it was on Susan's knee that she was sitting. I saw our home at Christmas, with all the decorations up �and the confusing thing was that this part of the dream re�flected reality, not fantasy. The three of us had been sitting at the round table in the living room, and Jan had said, `Chris, will you switch the Christmas tree lights on?' But little Sarah had jumped up and toddled across, saying, 'No, Daddy, I'll do it' � and she went over and flicked the switch. Now, in the filthy culvert, I saw the whole scene again and heard her baby voice saying, 'Daddy, I'll do it.' For hours I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness. At one point I suddenly found myself thinking of the Killing House � the special building at Hereford which the Over The Border 161 counter-terrorist team uses for a lot of its training. The walls are hung with sheets of rubber � so that live bullets can be fired without danger of ricochets � increasing the sense of claustrophobia. Visiting VIPs are often taken into the Kill�ing House for demonstrations, which usually begin with pistol shooting. My speciality was always these pistol demos, in which I would fire at a 'Hun's Head' target (like a man wearing a German helmet) while rolling around the floor �and expect not just to hit the target, but to put all the rounds through the same hole. Next, visitors are usually taken into another room and placed in one corner, behind white tape. Touching the tape, on the outside, would be one figure target. Next to that would be a live man � described as the hostage � sitting at a desk, and on his other side, a second figure target. The soldier in charge of the demo stands behind the hostage, commentating, and explaining that members of the SP team are planning to snatch him to safety. One day the visiting VIP was none other than the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was shepherded into the corner behind the tape, together with two bodyguards. The team commander gave his usual spiel, waffling on about the SAS until, with deceptive lack of emphasis, he said, 'Our success depends on three factors, which happen to have the same initials as the Regiment: Speed, Aggression and Sur�prise.' On the word 'surprise' a loud explosion blasted off out�side the door, simulating the demolition of the hinges. Two men in black ran in, armed with MP5s. Each put a burst of live rounds through one of the targets, so close to the visitors that they could feel the wind of the bullets. A third man dashed in, seized the hostage and dragged him away so quickly that, in the violent storm of noise, nobody noticed he had gone. In seconds the raid was over � and the only visitor still on her feet was the Prime Minister. Both bodyguards had hit the deck. As the smoke was clearing, she turned to them and said, 'What are you doing? For God's sake stand up!' 162 The One That Got Away It must have been my claustrophobic surroundings in the culvert that brought back the scene so clearly. Yet another star visitor was the Princess of Wales, who came down with Prince Charles not long after they had been married. Her hair was longer then, and although she dressed up in black to take part in an assault on what was known as the old embassy building, she declined to put on a respirator or pull her hood into position. As she came out after the attack, one of the guys asked, `How did you find that?' `It was great,' she replied, 'but I couldn't understand why someone kept hitting me on the back of the head.' `You will when you look in the mirror,' he told her. What she didn't realise was that her hair had caught fire, and her neighbour had been beating out the flames. It was this slight setback that accounted for the much shorter hairstyle that she adopted for her next official trip. Such memories helped a few minutes go by. But all too soon I was back in the reality of the drain. I wasn't worried by the occasional rumble of a car going past above me, but soon I began to hear other movement: scurrying, scuffling noises, as if troops were running around. I thought, 'Here we go. The next thing is going to be somebody at either end of this fucking culvert, and I'll be caught like a rat in a drain- pipe.' Every time I moved, dust rose around me and filled the tunnel, half choking me and making my tongue cleave to the back of my throat even more stickily. From the scrabbling, it sounded as though squaddies' boots were moving every�where. I reckoned that the bodies had been discovered, the alarm had gone up, and that a search-party was closing in on me. Most of the noise was coming from the end towards which my feet were pointing. I tried to turn my 203 to face the disturbance, but the drain was too narrow and I couldn't bring the weapon to bear. Now was the moment I needed a pistol, or better still a silenced one. The scrabbling noise came closer. I tensed myself, cer�tain that a man would stick his head into the end of the pipe Over The Border 163 at any second. If he did, my only option would be to try to scuttle out the other end. But what did the intruder turn out to be? A frigging goat! A herd was being driven up the side of the road. I watched their legs move steadily past, and the scrabble of their feet on rocks, echoing through the tunnel, sounded like a whole company of squaddies on the move. Again I was terrified that they might have a dog with them; if they did, it would surely get my scent. Tortured by thirst, by noises close at hand, by phantom scenes from home, I somehow stuck out the day. That was the lowest point of my whole escape. I'd lost so much weight that lying down became ever more agonising. Whatever atti�tude I adopted, bones seemed to be sticking out, with no padding to cover them, and every five or six minutes I'd be in such discomfort that I'd have to turn over. Spine, hips, ribs, knees, elbows, shoulders � everything hurt, and I was de�veloping sores all over. I kept telling myself, 'You've got to clear that border tonight, whatever happens.' But first I somehow had to escape from the trap in which I'd landed myself � and if the night turned out clear again, I didn't see how I was going to avoid the VCP. Eventually darkness fell, and when I poked my head out of the end of the culvert, my morale took a lift again. Until then the nights had been clear, but this one was black as pitch, with the sky full of storm clouds that looked so threatening I even thought it might rain. The very idea of moisture was exciting. If rain did come, and I turned up my face, at least my parched mouth would get some refresh�ment. Maybe I could even collect water by spreading out my map case. I crept out of the culvert. The night was so dark that when I looked in the direction of the VCP, I couldn't make it out. Moving closer, I found that the guards were still standing there, so I eased away until I could no longer see them, and when I was half-way between them and the anti-aircraft positions, I started walking at full speed. Thank God for the darkness. Behind me nobody moved, 164 The One That Got Away and I got clean away. I'd been going for nearly two hours, parallel with a road, when all of a sudden a blinding flash split the darkness. Convinced I'd walked into ambush lights, I flung myself down; but then from behind me came a heavy explosion, and I realised that an air-raid was going in on the installation I'd just left. The same thing happened twice more: a flash, and a few seconds later a really big, deep boom. I kept thinking, 'If this hadn't been a dark night, that's where I'd still be.' What effect the bombs were having I couldn't tell, but the explosions sounded colossal, and I thanked my lucky stars that I'd been able to move on. Occasionally, far away to my left, I saw anti-aircraft fire going up into the sky, and I guessed it must be coming from the airfields designated H1 and H2. No sound carried over that distance, so the tracer arched up in perfect silence � but at least it meant that the bases were under coalition attack. I knew that 'A' and 'D' Squadrons were operating in that area, and hoped it was they who were hammering the Iraqis. I knew from the map that the Iraqi town of Krabilah should be coming up on my right. Krabilah lay on the border, and there was a Syrian town beyond the frontier. The thought of it kept me going, but only just. By now my feet were so bad that whenever I sat down for a rest they went from numb to excruciating. Upright, I couldn't feel them much; sitting, I thought they were going to burst. Several times I sat there thinking, 'Fucking hell! I can't take much more of this.' Then the pain would ease off, and I had a few minutes of bliss, with nothing hurting. The worst bit came whenever I stood up again, and the pain just exploded. Starting off, I couldn't help gasping with the sheer agony. I had to shuffle my boots along the ground like some old comic, and I kept thinking, 'If anyone sees me, doddering along like this, I'll look a right idiot.' It wasn't till I'd taken about ten paces that my feet seemed to go numb again, and I could walk out. Occasionally I'd hit a sharp stone or rock � and boy, was that sore.
Never in my life had I been so exhausted. Often on selec�tion and afterwards I thought I had pushed myself to my Over The Border 165 limit � but this was something else. I had sunk to an alto�gether different plane of tiredness and debilitation. The temptation to stop and rest was almost irresistible, but I knew that if I did I would never reach the border before my body gave out. Helping me, I'm sure, were the years of training that I'd put in: not just the physical fitness which I'd built up, but the mental toughness, which life in the SAS had given me. Always competing with other guys as good as or better than myself, always determined to come out on top, I had learnt to push myself beyond what seemed to be possible. I was used to being hurt, and knew that I simply had to walk through the pain. I couldn't fall back on religious belief to sustain me, because I didn't have any. As a child I'd gone to Sunday school, but only because someone would read us a story and we played games. In school proper I'd had religion thrown down my neck until I was sick of it; but as an adult I found I was unable to believe in God, seeing how much misery and disease and poverty there are in the world. At the same time, I think that humans do need to believe in something or someone. When you're in trouble you'll always cry for somebody � whether it's God, your mother or your wife. In those dire straits I believed in my wife and child � and the person who dragged me out of it was Sarah. Without warning, the hallucinations began again. Sud�denly, out in the middle of the black Iraqi night, there she was, walking in front of me, dressed in the purply-blue top and yellow bottoms, all covered in dots, that she'd worn at Christmas. The image I had of her, and the angle from which I could see her, were exactly the same as they'd been in Hereford. As I hobbled over the rocks and gravel, she somehow kept ahead of me, toddling on, leading the way through the dark. There seemed to have been a complete reversal of roles. Now she was the one who had confidence; I was the one who was afraid. Time and time again I heard her say, 'Daddy, do it.' Her voice was so clear that I thought I could pick her up in my arms. Time and time again I 166 The One That Got Away reached out to touch her. I felt that if I could catch hold of her hand, she would pull me out of trouble. Throughout that endless night I was on the verge of tears when I found I could not reach her. And yet, even when I realised she was not there, I knew that it was only the thought of her, and my need to see her again, that were keeping me going. Towards the end I was stopping and resting on my feet. Because they were so agonising if I sat down, I took to read�ing my map standing up � which was not a good idea, as my torch was up in the air instead of close to the ground. I'd walk until I was really knackered, then prop myself against something so that I kept the pressure on my feet. I was so far gone that when I reached some houses I was on the point of giving in. 'If only I were in England!' I thought. 'There'd be milk bottles standing on the doorstep, and a milk-float coming past in the morning.' How many bottles of milk could I have drunk straight down? I watched the houses for a while. They were only small places, but I'd find water in them, for sure, and food. Sud�denly I decided I'd had enough. 'Bollocks to it,' I thought. `I'll go in, and if I have to, I'll do the people in there. I'll get something to drink and take their vehicle.' I slid along one side of the nearest house, and found a window in the wall. It had iron bars down it, with a hessian curtain inside. Music was being played inside the room, and a candle or oil-lamp was flickering. I went past the window and reached the front of the building. Outside the door stood a car. Now!' I thought. lust let the keys be in it!' As I came round the corner I looked down, and there was a blasted dog, lying outside the door. The moment I saw it, it saw me and went berserk, barking frantically. Back I scut-tled, along the side of the house, and away off into the wadis. The dog came out, and more dogs from the other buildings joined it. They followed me for about a hundred metres, barking like lunatics, then stopped. Oh for Turbo, I thought. He'd sort them. Up in the wadis, I came to a railway line, scrabbled under it through a culvert, and was back in the desert. With a jolt I Over The Border 167 realised that this must be the same railway that Stan and I had crossed all those nights earlier. If only we'd tabbed straight along it, we'd have been out of Iraq days ago. Galvanised by my latest fright, I kept walking, walking, walking. According to my calculations, I should have been passing Krabilah on my right, but there was no sign of the town. What I didn't realise was that every house had been blacked out because of the war, and that I had already gone clean by the place in the dark. I reached a refuse heap, where loads of burnt-out old cans had been dumped in the desert, and sat down among them to do yet another map-study. I couldn't work things out. Where was the town, and where was the communica�tions tower which the map marked? Where, above all, was the bloody border? I started walking again, on the bearing, and as I came over a rise I saw three small buildings to my front. With the naked eye I could just make them out: three square bulks, blacked out. But when I looked through the kite-sight, I saw chinks of light escaping between the tops of the walls and the roofs. As I sat watching, one person came out, walked round behind, reappeared and went back indoors. I was so desper�ate for water that I went straight towards the houses. Again, I was prepared to take out one of the inhabitants if need be. I was only fifty metres away when I checked through the kite-sight again and realised that the buildings were not houses at all, but sandbagged sangars with wriggly tin roofs. They formed some sort of command post, and were undoubtedly full of squaddies. Pulling slowly back, I went round the side and, sure enough, came on a battery of four anti-aircraft positions. If I'd walked up and opened one of the doors, I'd almost certainly have been captured. Once more the fright got my adrenaline going and revived me. On I stumbled for another hour. My dehydration was making me choke and gag. My throat seemed to have gone solid, and when I scraped my tongue, white fur came off it. I felt myself growing weaker by the minute. My 203 might 168 The One That Got Away have been made of lead, such a burden had it become, so much of the strength had ebbed from my arms. My legs had lost their spring and grown stiff and clumsy. My ability to think clearly had dwindled away. At last I came to a point from which I could see the lights of a town, far out on the horizon. Something seemed to be wrong. Surely that couldn't be Krabilah, still such a distance off? My heart sank: surely the border couldn't still be that far? Or was the glow I could see that of Abu Kamal, the first town inside Syria, some twenty kilometres to the west? If so, where the hell was Krabilah? According to the map, Krabi�lah had a communications tower, but Abu Kamal didn't. The far-off town did have a bright red light flashing, as if from a tower � and that made me all the more certain that the place in the distance was Krabilah. Morale plummeted once more. Like my body, my mind was losing its grip. What I could make out was some kind of straight black line, running all the way across my front. Off to my left I could see a mound with a big command post on it, sprouting masts. Closer to me were a few buildings, blacked out, but not looking like a town. I sat down some 500 metres short of the black line and studied the set-up through the kite-sight. Things didn't add up. With Krabilah so far ahead, this could hardly be the border. Yet it looked like one. I wondered whether it was some inner frontier-line which the Iraqis had built because of the war, to keep people back from the border itself. Sud-denly I thought of the Int guy back at Al Jouf, unable to tell what the border looked like. 'What an arsehole!' I thought. `He should have known. That's his fucking job.' Whatever this line ahead of me might be, all I wanted to do was get across it. I was gripped by a terrific sense of urgency, but I forced myself to hold back, sit down and observe it. 'This is where you're going to stumble if you don't watch out,' I told myself. 'This is where you'll fall down. Take time over it.' There I sat, shivering, watching, waiting. A vehicle came out of the command post and drove down along the line � an Over The Border 169 open-backed land-cruiser. Directly opposite my vantage-point two men emerged from an observation post, walked up to the car, spoke to the driver, jumped in, and drove off to the right. It looked as if the Iraqis were putting out roving observers to keep an eye on the border. I couldn't tell whether this was routine, or whether they suspected that enemy soldiers were in the area; but after a few minutes I decided that the coast was clear, and I had to move. At long last I came down to the black line. Creeping cau�tiously towards it, I found it was a barrier of barbed wire: three coils in the bottom row, two on top of them, and one on top of that. Having no pliers to cut with, I tried to squeeze my way through the coils, but that proved impossible: barbs hooked into my clothes and skin and held me fast. I un�hooked myself with difficulty, and decided that the only way to go was over the top. Luckily the builders had made the elementary mistake, every twenty-five metres, of putting in three posts close to each other and linking them together with barbed wire. Obviously the idea was to brace the bar�rier, but the posts created a kind of bridge across the middle of the coils. I took off my webbing and threw it over, then went up and over myself, sustaining a few lacerations but nothing serious. Still I could not believe I was clear of Iraq. The barrier seemed so insignificant that I thought it must only be mark�ing some false or inner border, and that I would come to the true frontier some distance further on. The real thing, I thought, would be a big anti-tank berm, constructed so that vehicles could not drive across. Maybe this was why I had no feeling of elation-' for days I had been thinking that, if I did manage to cross the frontier, it would be the climax of my journey, but now I felt nothing except utter exhaustion. With my webbing back in place, I set off yet again on the same bearing. Never in my life, before or since, have I pushed myself so hard. I think I was brain-dead that night, walking in neutral, moving automatically, stumbling grimly onwards. Once or twice Sarah returned to keep me com�pany and lead me, but mostly I dragged myself on without hearing, seeing or thinking. 170 The One That Got Away In the end I could go no further. I simply had to sit down and rest. I took my weapon off my shoulder, and just as I was lifting the night-sight from where it hung round my neck, I seemed to click my head, and felt what I can only describe as a huge electric shock. I heard a noise like a ferocious short-circuit � krrrrrrrrk � and when I looked down at my hands, there was a big white flash. The next thing I knew I was sitting in the same place, but I couldn't tell if I had been asleep, or unconscious, or what. I was aware that time had passed, but had no idea how much. Nor did I know what had happened to me. But it was a weird feeling, to have been out of the world for a while. I got my kit back on and stood up. This time my feet were real torture, and I was barely able to totter forwards until they went numb again. It was still dark. The night seemed very long. Nothing for it but to keep going. Was I in Syria or Iraq? Couldn't tell. Better steer clear of the odd house, then, because every one had a dog. What would I do when it got light? Didn't know. Couldn't think. Should be in Syria. I woke up a bit when I found I was crossing vehicle tracks � many wheel marks imprinted in dry mud. Then after a while I thought I heard something behind me. As I turned to look, the same phenomenon hit me again: a big crack of static in the head and a blinding flash. This time I woke up on the ground, face-down, and I said to myself, 'Jesus! You picked a stupid place to fall asleep. Get a grip.' On my feet again, I checked my weapon to make sure I hadn't pushed the muzzle into the ground as I fell, and went forward once more. Now I was walking towards a red light, which never seemed to get any brighter. I would approach the next crest in the ground thinking, 'When I get there, the light will be close in front of me.' But that never happened. The glow must have been miles away. All this time, although I did not know it, I was drawing away from Krabilah, which lay down to my right in the dark�ness. I had walked clean past it without seeing the least sign of it. But that was hardly surprising, because things were Over The Border 171 becoming blurred now. I was in and out of wadis, staggering on. I was on a flat area with more tracks. Presently I came to the wall of one wadi and had another attack: a big crack in my head, the same krrrrrk of static, a flash... The next thing I knew, I came round to find my nose blocked and aching. How long I had been unconscious I could not tell. But dawn had broken, so I presumed that an hour had gone by, at least. In my compass-mirror I saw that blood had run down my cheeks and neck, matting in the stubble. Somehow I'd fallen flat on my face. I propped myself against the rock wall. If ever I had come close to dying, it was then. I seemed to have nothing left. My strength had gone, and with it the will to move. I lay back with my head resting against the rock, feeling almost drunk. Now that daylight had come, I knew I ought to lie up. But no � I couldn't last another day without water. For minutes I sat there in a heap. Then I got out my precious flask and drank the last little sip of whisky. It tasted horrible, like fire. I was so dehydrated that it burnt all the way down into my stomach, and left me gasping and desperate, so that I wished I'd never drunk it. Then suddenly, to my indescribable relief, out of the wadi wall came Paul, the guy in Bravo One Zero who'd burnt his hand before we left. He was dressed in green DPM, not desert gear, and stopped about twenty feet away from me. `Come on, Chris,' he said, 'hurry up. The squadron's waiting for you.' It seemed perfectly normal that the squadron should be there. Painfully I levered myself to my feet with the 203 and shuffled down the wadi, expecting to see the rest of the guys lined up, sorting themselves out, ready for the off. In my mental picture, everyone was in as bad a state as I was � knackered, but preparing to go. Yet when I came round the corner, there