Free Zero Six Bravo by Damien Lewis Page A

watching paint dry.
    The soldiers had to learn the effects individual agents had on a victim so as to recognize the symptoms and know when someonehad been hit. They had to learn to suit up in all-enveloping gloves, suit, and mask. They had to learn to use a special “sniffer” device that sampled the air for deadly droplets, and how to employ fuller’s earth—a talcum-powder-like decontaminant—to soak up and neutralize an agent. And, somehow, they had to work out how the overloaded Pinkies were going to carry the bulk of all the NBC defensive equipment.
    The procedure that the Squadron hit upon for dealing with an NBC attack was designed to balance workability with defense. In truth, the British NBC suits made you look and feel like an oven-ready version of the Michelin Man. They were suffocatingly hot and impossibly bulky. Trying to operate vehicles or to move on foot was next to impossible while wearing one, let alone under a burning Iraqi sun. As for using a weapon, forget it.
    The men would operate dressed as they saw fit, which meant T-shirts and combat pants for the most part. The NBC suits and masks would be stowed on the wagons, ideally somewhere within reach. If a cloud of agent was spotted heading toward the Squadron, or if someone was seen going down with symptoms, the alarm would be raised via the radios. The first priority was to suit up and to save the lives of those not affected.
    A chemical cloud would contaminate everything it touched, including the vehicles, and there was no way they could be decontaminated in the field. If the Squadron was hit, the entire mission would have to be aborted, and the wagons rigged with explosives and blown. The surviving men would radio for extraction by Chinooks, hopefully getting pulled off the ground and decontaminated safely at a forward mounting base.
    The prospect of being hit by a chemical agent was not a pleasant one, and the men did their best to force it to the back of their minds—especially those who were going to be first on the ground in Iraq.
    It was March 7, 2003 when Reggie, the OC, decided on the Squadron’s initial probing insertion into Iraqi territory. Using satellite photographs, the HQ Troop had identified a remote airfield atAl Sahara, way out in the western desert of Iraq. It looked to be largely deserted, and it offered an ideal forward mounting base—a stepping-stone—into the territory of northern Iraq.
    The intel assessment on Al Sahara was that there were a couple of Iraqi Army trenches to either side of a dirt airstrip, but they were either unoccupied or ill-maintained by whatever force might be stationed there. The plan was to fly a lead element into the open desert some thirty clicks offset from the airfield, from where they would drive in under cover of darkness to recce and secure it. That done, the remainder of the Squadron would be ferried in by C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, and the mission to take the 5th Corps’s surrender would be well and truly under way.
    If M Squadron were simply to drive across the Iraq border, the nearest point at which they could do so was from Jordan, to the west of Iraq. That would place them south of the main impediment to the Squadron’s move into the north of the country—the mighty Euphrates River. The Euphrates runs from Syria southeast toward Baghdad, and the few bridges that crossed it would be heavily guarded. There was no easy way across the river, and it represented a major block to M Squadron’s move overland.
    But if they could seize Al Sahara, they could leapfrog the Euphrates and shave a good 250 kilometers off their journey. And in taking a working airstrip, they could get the big C-130 transport aircraft to fly in the entire Squadron, as opposed to using the far smaller Chinooks. There weren’t enough of the heavy-lift helicopters to ferry in an entire Squadron in one go, and Al Sahara offered them the only quick and covert way of getting onto the ground.
    The team chosen to