Sniper One

slowly surrounding us.

Shit, this is getting serious now.

Literally hundreds of the lunatics had now joined the battle against us, and their numbers were growing every minute. Word had obviously got around. They’d all gone home to get their weapons and have a go at the foreign jundi. We were massively outnumbered, and it was getting a little scary.

We had only a few minutes left to get the fuck out of there before an RPG finally came in on target and turned us all into a big vat of claret. There was only one option left open to us. The lot of us would somehow have to extract in the Argylls’ three Snatches.

Colonel Gray and I thrashed out the new plan.

‘OK, Sergeant, I think this might work. Our Snatches aren’t that far away on the main road, maybe about 40 metres at the most. If we’re quick, with your help we can reach them. Cover us going out to them, and then we’ll cover you coming to us.’

In groups of two and hard targeting, the Argylls started to leg it. Rounds pounded into the tarmac around them, and I just waited for the first bloke to drop in an agonizing body twist. But they all reached their vehicles unharmed.

Safe under the vehicles, the Argylls started to return fire on the enemy’s positions. That was my patrol’s cue to start legging it. Smudge was next out, but just as he peeked into the main street, a gunman opened up with his AK out of a window almost directly above his head, from the nextdoor building to the lip. He hurled himself back in just in time.

‘Fucking bastard. That cunt’s completely cut us off.’

I stuck my head out to look for the guy and another burst of rounds smacked straight into the wall behind me less than a foot above my head. He was right. The gunman was right between us and the Argylls.

We had to clear another route round to the Argylls. That meant going back out into the original alleyway and into the direct fire of the enemy again for a few metres until we found a way into the next compound down. We had to outflank the bloke who was cutting us off.

‘You’re fucking crazy aren’t you, Dan?’ said Chris. ‘That’s whistling death out there in that alleyway.’

‘Don’t worry lads. I’m leading the way. If anyone’s going to get shot it’s going to be me. Just follow me and you’ll be all right.’ It was a lie. I had no idea if we were going to be all right. ‘Come on boys, let’s fucking do this.’

We ran at the alleyway at full sprint, sparking a crescendo of noise. I could feel the air parting as the rounds whizzed past my head, with a zipping and a slapping sound. Puffs of brick and dust kicked up when bullets hit the walls and the ground around us.

Luckily, Iraqis aren’t very disciplined with their fire. They think nothing of emptying a whole magazine at you in one go. You can’t aim properly on automatic. They also think it’s very uncool to shoot from the shoulder, so they all blast away from the hip like Rambo, which reduces their accuracy even more. In that moment, their overexcitement was the only thing that saved our lives.

Thank Christ that three metres down the alley on the side we needed was a door. I kicked at it manically and broke the lock. All seven of us all pretty much piled through it at the same time. Inside it was a small single-storey house.

Nobody was inside. A good job too, because being confronted by seven sweating blokes, eyes bulging out on sticks with adrenalin would have given them a heart attack.

It was pitch dark and we couldn’t see a bloody thing. Every window was covered by drapes or boards. And the whole squalid place stank of piss. Chris and I cleared the house’s three rooms. I fell arse over face on a coffee table in the first room, so we did the rest of the place on our hands and knees.

‘Clear,’ I shouted, after the second room. Chris crawled into the third, ripping at everything on the walls in the search for light.

‘Fucking hell,’ he shouted. ‘There’s no fucking way out of here. Fuck it.’

It was a dead end.

We had no choice but to go back out into the alley of death and try again elsewhere. But the thought swiftly came to me that it could take us hours to find a successful way through that maze of shit holes.

Meanwhile, the enemy was getting closer. We could hear them shouting commands from the nextdoor compounds. If we didn’t keep moving, they’d be on to us in a few seconds. Don’t think any more. Just do.

‘Fuck it, lads, we’re just going to have to leg it the 100 metres to the end of the alleyway. We’ll do a right, then a right again and that will take us back to the Argylls.’

If they were still there, that is.

‘OK, Danny, whatever. Let’s just fucking get on with it then,’ said Chris.

I switched my SA80 to automatic. It was trench-clearing time. I led off out into the alleyway again with my index finger already semi-depressed on the trigger. The first person that appeared at the other end of the alleyway was going to get the full mag and no mistake.

As I sprinted down it as low as I could, I could hear gunmen chattering on the other side of the alleyway wall. They could hear us too. Halfway down, two hands and an AK poked over the lefthand wall just in front of me and squirted a burst down into my path. I threw myself tight against the wall and the rounds narrowly shaved past me.

I heard the bolt go in the bloke’s rifle. Dead man’s click — his mag was empty. I returned the compliment, and gave a similar burst back over to his side of the wall also without looking at what I was firing either. There was a groan. Then nothing more.

I carried on running. The closer we got to the end, the more I felt we were going to make it. It was foolish optimism.

‘Come on lads, we’re almost on the road.’

And with just 20 metres left to go, we saw it. It was obvious it would be there. Only the most deluded of all wishful thinking had persuaded me otherwise.

Straight in front of us, on the other side of the road from where the alleyway ended, was an RPK medium machine gun. It was set up on a bipod underneath a red Toyota car, and it was pointing straight at us. Two gunmen with AKs raised were standing either side of the vehicle.

They had waited until we were close enough to be sure they could hit us. Then all three opened up at once.

‘Contact front! Contact front!’

Immediately we were down on our knees and aggressively returning fire. Then, we slipped into pairs. The years of training took over. While one bloke got up and sprinted ten feet back up the alleyway, the other emptied all the rounds he could in the direction of the gunmen. Then, the pair swapped roles. Fire and manoeuvre, fire and manoeuvre.

It was just like the bank robbery scene in Heat. It’s amazing how well you remember it when you need to. But still the RPK poured lead at us. A whole burst went straight between my partner Smudge’s legs just as he was stopping to turn and cover me. We looked at each other in amazement.

‘Average,’ I said, and we carried on. ‘Go.’

It was working. They weren’t hitting us, because our fire was causing so much havoc they were screwing up their aim. And it felt awesome. So we did it all the way back up to the top of the alleyway.

‘Go,’ screamed Smudge for the umpteenth time, adopting the cover position again. And I spun round to see 33 beautiful tonnes of Warrior sitting right there a few metres in front of me.

The methodical thumping sound of the Warrior’s chain gun was slapping a target good and hard on the other side of the road, and its heavy diesel engines were still ticking over with a permanent growl. Yes please, I’ll have some of that if you don’t mind. The battle group QRF had turned up at last, and were waiting to extract us.

Colonel Gray was crouching down beside the Warrior, waving frantically and shouting at us to jump in.

‘I need to get my other blokes in there first, sir.’

‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, they’re all in already. Jump in quick.’

I did as I was told.

‘All in,’ someone shouted to the driver, and the door closed automatically with a heavy metallic clunk.

An overwhelming and incredible relief rushed through me like a drug. There were ten of us fully tooled up in a