Free The Circuit by Bob Shepherd

equipment: mobile phones, a set of two-way hand-held radios and satellite phones. We made sure our medical grab bag was handy as well as our helmets should we drive into mortar fire or any such dramas. Finally, we performed one final check of all the equipment and vehicle ancillaries, fitted our body armour and headed towards the border. In some respects, it was like being a soldier again, with one crucial exception; we were heading into a war zone unarmed.
    I had a feeling of déjà vu as we drove through the desert, especially as we approached the border with Iraq. The smell of wild herbs growing on rocky outcrops and the brilliant orange of the late afternoon sun reminded me of the first Gulf War. Back then, however, I crossed into Iraq from Saudi Arabia in the middle of nowhere under cover of darkness.
    My entrance this time would prove much more bureaucratic. Martin and I were forced to queue at a border checkpoint with loads of other vehicles. Driving around it through the desert wasn’t possible as the border was lined with a fifteen-foot-high berm that ran as far as the eye could see. APCs and other armoured vehicles were spread intermittently along it, all of them facing north towards Iraq.
    I looked at my watch. We still had a couple of hours of daylight left; enough time to get to the incident area for a quick sweep. Unfortunately, the Kuwaitis couldn’t give a toss about our timetable. They refused to let us cross, saying we didn’t have ‘official’ clearance.
    As fate would have it, a convoy of British Royal Military Police came along. We explained our situation to them. They understood the urgency of our mission and put in a call to their Colonel back in Kuwait City. After a few nerve-racking exchanges between the British Colonel and Kuwaiti border officials we were cleared to go.
    We cracked over the border and drove as fast as we could towards the incident area. Time was now very much against us. The desert highway was initially very quiet but as soon as we hit a small village we encountered hostile crowds along the roadside. We had no time for dramas, so we pulled off the road and drove through the desert. Only when the village was well behind us did we return to the main highway.
    The sight of the aggressive crowds left me feeling a bit unsettled. It was a stern reminder that we were travelling in a war zone unarmed and in a soft-skinned vehicle. There was little we could do about our transport, but it was down to us to rectify our ‘unarmed’ status soonest.
    By the time we reached the incident area, there was only ten minutes of daylight remaining; not nearly enough to leave our vehicle and examine the site up close. Through our windscreen, we could see the burnt-out wreckage of the incident lying virtually undisturbed on either side of the highway. Even from a distance, the violence of the encounter was brutally apparent. To the west was the charred chassis of Daniel and Terry’s vehicle stuck in the mud twenty yards from the road. To the east lay the remains of the Fedayeen pickup truck with the machine gun monopod mounted on the rear. We also identified a burnt-out saloon car. There was no sign of Fred and Hussein’s vehicle.
    It was an incredible let-down to have waited so long and come so far only to have to postpone our investigation yet another day. At least we’d got our bearings to give us a running start in the morning.

CHAPTER 9
    With twilight descending, we turned around and headed for a holding area or ‘hub’ the British military had set up for the press corps approximately four miles south of the incident area. ITN had alerted the hub commanders about our mission and got permission for us to stay there.
    Roughly the size of a football pitch, the hub housed around a dozen journalists and a mix of about three dozen full-time troops and part-time Territorial Army soldiers. The first thing Martin and I did when we arrived was check in with the commander to make sure he was OK with