Chris Ryan by The One That Got Away

Andy, Mark, Stan and Dinger decided to take a look round. `We'll leave in this direction,' Andy briefed the rest of us in whispers, 'and we'll come back in the same way. The pass number's the sum of nine. We shouldn't be more than three or four hours. As we come in, the first man will walk down with his arms extended and his weapon held out sideways in his right hand.' If the rest of us heard a contact, he went on, we were to stand-to, wait five or six minutes for the recce group to come through our position, and put fire down on anyone following them. If our own four guys didn't appear, we were to make for the drop-off point, and they would join us there. They left at 2300, hoping that by then all the natives would have got their heads down. With the recce party gone, the rest of us took turns to do an hour's stag. Not a sound broke the silence; the night was utterly still, but not nearly so light as the one before, because the sky was full of clouds. In the event, the recce party returned safely at 0330. They came back to the wadi from the agreed direction, but they were never challenged, because Vince, who was on stag, had fallen asleep. I happened to be awake and saw their black figures appear on top of the bank, against the sky. A moment later Andy was bollocking Vince for not being alert. The recce group had found that the MSR was not a metalled road but a series of dirt tracks running parallel through the desert, and spread out across nearly a kilo�metre. They'd also discovered a single white post standing in the ground, about 300 metres from the LUP, but they could not make out what it was marking. Then they'd checked out a little tented encampment beyond the spot on which the lorry had been parked. It was a second AA posi�tion, with a few vehicles parked round it. When dogs started barking, they pulled off and moved round to see if they could find mounds or ditches or anything marking a fibre-optic line, but there was no sign of one. They also looked for a better position for us to move into � but, again, with no luck. 52The One That Got Away For what was left of the night they got their heads down, and the rest of us stagged on again. In the morning we at least felt confident that we had got in without anyone know-ing we were there, but we had decided that it was too dicey to stay; there were too many people about, and we were too close to the site that the AA guns were guarding. When I crawled round to where Andy and Dinger were sitting, I found them composing a message. `What are we going to do?' I asked. `We're asking for permission to attack the AA position.' `What the hell's the use of that?' `We might as well do something while we're here. Half of us'll sneak up the back and take the position out while the rest of you guard the kit here. Once it goes noisy, you get on the radio and call in the chopper to lift us out.' As I listened, I was thinking, 'This isn't our mission. If we start messing around, they'll get annoyed back at RHQ' In fact they'd get infuriated; to do something as reckless as that, outside our remit, would constitute a serious offence in regimental terms. It was pretty obvious that the installation which the AA positions were guarding must be manned by a fair-sized force of regular army or militia. Whatever the out�come of an attack, we would have to hustle back to the drop-off point wearing our bergens. With the sandbags and OP kit removed, their weight had come down to about 100 lbs each, so that they were more manageable � but a sudden pull-out such as Andy had outlined would mean leaving all the OP gear behind and giving away what we'd been up to. Until that moment we'd taken great trouble to leave no trace of our presence, pissing into a jerrican and shitting into plastic bags which, in an orderly withdrawal, we would take. with us. Another serious objection to the plan was the erratic be�haviour of our radio. As far as we could tell, there was nothing wrong with it, but if we