Free Zero Six Bravo by Damien Lewis Page B

insert into Al Sahara consisted of Sean Timms, the sergeant major of Four Troop, with three highly experienced soldiers under him. Like Grey, Timms had been attached to the SAS for two years, learning surveillance and recce ops, which made him an obvious choice for the job. All four men would be mounted on quad bikes for maximum stealth, speed, and maneuverability.
    With the team going in on quads, a lone Chinook was able to ferry them all in. It dropped them in the open desert just overthe Iraq side of the border, and under a night sky that was blissfully overcast and dark. Once the Chinook had disappeared in the direction from which it had come, the team bugged out from the dust-enshrouded drop zone. They searched for and found an LUP (lying-up point), and by first light they were safely hidden from prying eyes, their quads shielded by the rocky walls of a ravine and covered in camo netting.
    Back at their tented camp, the bulk of the Squadron were just finishing their breakfast. As he exited the cookhouse tent, Grey ran into the Squadron OC.
    Reggie put out a hand to stop him. “Okay, boy? All good?”
    “Yeah, boss, it’s all good.”
    “I heard your concerns, buddy, and similar from the other OAB.” “OAB” was slang for “the old and the bold.” “The Al Sahara mission should answer some of ’em. It tests the waters. Probes the Iraqi defenses. We’ll see if there’s any will to fight. Plus it shaves a good three hundred clicks off our infil, and should firm up the intel all round.”
    “Nice one, boss,” Grey replied. “They’re a good team of blokes you’ve sent in. If anyone can do it, they can.”
    All that day the four-man quad team remained in hiding, observing the desert terrain. Nothing seemed to be moving out there in the empty, barren landscape. By last light they were ready to move the two dozen kilometers to the outskirts of the airfield. The journey across the night-dark desert went without a hitch. They found the airfield easily—a clutter of decrepit buildings standing out like a dog’s bollocks on the flat, featureless horizon. It looked to be long abandoned. Even so, the four men probed the outskirts of the air base first on foot for maximum stealth.
    Finding no sign of any hostile force, they mounted up their quad bikes to do a three-sixty-degree recce. They moved in to the airfield and were just about to turn across the airstrip itself when all hell let loose. A hidden force of Iraqis had spotted the small British force. Worse still, they were equipped with heavy machine guns plus vehicles.
    The Squadron’s Honda quad bikes could really shift, and one of the team had his machine airborne for several seconds as they powered out of there. But the Iraqis were no slouches. They chased the British vehicles with fierce tracer fire, hosing down the escape routes with long blasts from their heavy weapons. Others mounted up their vehicles and prepared to follow. They were using Toyota-type four-wheel drives—powerful, fast, and highly maneuverable—and each was equipped with a mounted machine gun.
    As fast as the quad bikes were, right now they had a hunter force coming after them that was only marginally slower and by which they were heavily outgunned. The four M Squadron operators were armed only with their personal weapons—Colt 7.62mm assault rifles, plus their pistols. They had no firepower to engage the Iraqis, let alone the range.
    Timms led his team toward the open desert, where he planned to call in a Chinook to lift them out, but the Iraqis seemed well aware of the British soldier’s intentions.
    Each of M Squadron’s Land Rovers was equipped with a fixed radio antenna, one that resembled a horizontal crucifix and via which it was possible to call in a rescue force while on the move. But not the quads. The quad-borne force carried a satcom—an encrypted radio satellite communications system, one that the enemy would be hard-pressed to intercept. But the satcom worked on a