The Circuit (9 page)

I was stunned. Coverage of the Terry Lloyd story had died down but that interview threw it right back into the spotlight, a highly dangerous development from my perspective. Martin and I had to assume we weren’t the only ones interested in finding Fred and Hussein. If Iraqi hardliners wanted to get their hands on the men, that story would give them an excellent reference point to start looking (assuming they weren’t holding them already). I ripped the article from the newspaper, folded it up and tucked it in my shirt pocket.

We landed in Kuwait City at midday local time and headed straight to the hotel where ITN had set up a temporary bureau to coordinate its war coverage. We needed to talk to Daniel personally to see if there were any additional details he could offer that he hadn’t already discussed with the press.

We were met in the lobby by an ITN senior producer who led us to a suite where Daniel was waiting to speak to us. Martin and I were anxious to get the briefing over with as quickly as possible. We desperately wanted to get across the Iraqi border and to the incident area before sundown. Also, the hotel was very plush and I didn’t want to get too comfortable. For five days I’d been gearing up mentally to live rough in a desert hellhole.

The producer began the brief, calmly relaying information ITN had been able to gather behind the scenes. She told us that Terry’s body had been identified in one of Basra’s main hospital morgues by a news crew working for the Arab television news network al Jazeera. ITN was working with the Iraqi Red Crescent to repatriate his remains. As for information on Fred and Hussein, ITN had nothing.

Throughout the producer’s brief, Daniel remained remarkably composed. When it was his turn to speak, however, his unruffled façade grew more and more agitated. What Daniel told us was almost word for word what I’d read in the paper that morning. On 22 March, he and the rest of his team headed towards Basra believing the city’s fall was imminent. The crew were travelling in two Mitsubishi 4x4s, clearly marked with the letters TV. Daniel drove the lead vehicle with Terry as passenger, while Fred and Hussein followed behind. Anticipating a long assignment, the crew had mounted extra stores of petrol, food and water on the roof of the front vehicle.

En route, the crew were stopped at a British military checkpoint and warned not to go any further. They were told that battles were going on and it was very dangerous. The crew ignored the warning and pressed on towards Basra.

Daniel recalled that as the crew neared the outskirts of the city, they passed a US mortar position to the right off the main highway they were travelling along. Half a mile further up on the left, he remembered seeing a row of tanks and APCs set 100–200 metres off the road. Both military units were facing north towards Basra.

The crew pushed past these positions and continued towards Basra. Approximately one kilometre outside the city, they came to a hump bridge that crossed a canal (Basra is built on marshland with small canals criss-crossing reclaimed areas). According to Daniel, it was at that point he and Terry saw armed Iraqi men coming towards them. The Iraqis were on foot and riding in vehicles including a white pickup truck with a large machine gun mounted on the back. The occupants of the pickup were waving their hands. Daniel thought they were trying to surrender to them.

Daniel and Terry didn’t like the look of the situation, so they did a U-turn. Daniel was certain Fred and Hussein followed suit. The Iraqis pursued them. After two hundred metres or so, Daniel recalled seeing Fred and Hussein’s vehicle slow or possibly stop before speeding up again.

As Daniel and Terry drove back down the main highway, the white pickup truck pulled up along their left side – an action which effectively sandwiched them between the Iraqis in the pickup and the US armour positioned off the main road. The Iraqis in the pickup were waving at Daniel to stop; he still thought they wanted to surrender.

Daniel described what happened next as an explosion of gunfire, windows shattering and the sound of bullets ripping through the vehicle. Daniel remembered seeing Terry’s passenger door open; Terry wasn’t there anymore. Daniel ducked down and tucked his body underneath the steering wheel until the vehicle came to a stop. The next thing he remembered was the petrol cans on the roof exploding. He abandoned the vehicle and scurried for what little cover he could find on the ground.

Daniel said he lay low while machine guns fired all around him. He was sure that the Americans were the ones doing the firing, not the Iraqis. While he was taking cover, Daniel spotted Fred and Hussein’s vehicle stopped about thirty metres away from his position on the same side of the road. Daniel said he saw Fred wave to him from a piece of shallow ground.

I interrupted and asked him whether he thought Hussein would have stood a chance of escaping the vehicle and finding cover as well.

Daniel said it was entirely possible but he didn’t recall seeing any sign of Hussein. He was convinced, however, that the US military were the only ones firing at the vehicles. On this point Daniel seemed adamant: the Yanks had shot Terry.

I took everything Daniel said with a grain of salt. I didn’t think he was trying to mislead us, but I was very much aware of the fact that Daniel was a civilian who had suddenly found himself in a combat situation. It would have been nothing short of remarkable if his recollections were 100 per cent accurate. It must have been horrendous for him; a series of flashes and bangs, the shock of looking to the passenger seat and discovering Terry wasn’t there, the terrifying prospect that he himself might not survive.

I knew Daniel had been traumatized but I had to press him for the sake of Fred and Hussein. I asked him if he was absolutely certain he had seen Fred wave to him. The question must have struck a nerve; Daniel snapped at me from across the table ‘Of course it was him! We’ve known each other for years. He’s my best friend!’

I apologized but told him that Martin and I were about to go forward and risk our lives in much the same manner as he and his team had done; unilaterally and without immediate backup if things turned ugly. I also reminded him that we too had families waiting for us back home.

Recalling the incident in detail had clearly left Daniel shattered, but we had one last point to cover with him. I took the newspaper clipping from my pocket, unfolded it on the table, stared him right in the eye and asked him why he had given an interview. He said, rather defensively, that he had told a media friend what had happened and that he never intended for the story to be published. When I pressed him about the photograph, he claimed that it was just an innocent snapshot.

I wasn’t trying to harass David. The only reason I had brought it up at all was to make the point that, from a security perspective, the more the incident was discussed in the press, the more it could compromise our mission and possibly the safety of Fred and Hussein.

At the end of the briefing the producer handed us a stack of ‘missing’ posters with pictures of Fred and Hussein and captions underneath in Arabic and English. Martin and I thanked her and told her we were sure the men’s families would appreciate her efforts.

After the briefing, we lost no time preparing to leave for Iraq. ITN had hired us a soft-skinned Mitsubishi Shogun which they’d kindly stocked with plenty of food, water and spare fuel. They’d also included baby wipes which more than likely would be our only means of personal hygiene for the foreseeable future. Martin and I promised each other we’d refer to them as ‘man wipes’ for the duration of our assignment.

We checked over the vehicle and changed a few things around to suit our requirements such as fitting our GPS and satellite communications and taping the letters TV to the sides and bonnet. Our thinking was that all foreigners operating around Basra would be thrown into two categories: military and press. Though technically we weren’t either, we were working in the service of the media. By taking on the appearance of journalists, we could maintain a lower profile.

Next, we checked all our communications 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 us staying there. He told us it wouldn’t be a problem. We were chuffed to bits. We were prepared to sleep rough in the desert on our own. Now we had the luxury of sleeping rough surrounded by barbed wire. For the media, however, the hub’s facilities – tents, trailers and no showers – must have seemed dreadfully basic.

We set up camp in the car park on the ground next to our vehicle. That way, if the hub was attacked in the middle of the night, we could move off quietly and crack on with our assignment. It may sound harsh, but we couldn’t afford to get side-tracked into a battle between the Fedayeen and the troops at the hub. Our sole reason for being there was to find Fred and Hussein. We had to stay focused on our mission for their sakes.

The temperature had plummeted to near freezing by the time we settled in for the night. The Iraqis had set fire to oil pipelines around Basra to deter missile strikes from coalition aircraft and the smell of burning oil polluted the crisp night air. As I crawled into my sleeping bag, images of the incident area flooded my head. I wondered if Fred and Hussein were alive somewhere behind the fires encircling Basra. I dearly hoped so.

Martin and I woke just before first light. We’d spent the night in bivvy bags; Gortex covers that can serve as one-man tents or as an extra layer over a sleeping bag. They were just the ticket for protecting us against the freezing climate. Thankfully, I knew what to expect weather-wise. During the first Gulf War, Iraq had one of its coldest winters on record. I spent six weeks with my squadron sleeping and operating in the open air; no tents, not even covered vehicles. The conditions were so bitter that the skin on our hands cracked and bled to the point where we found it difficult to cock our weapons.

I only wished that this time we had weapons to handle. Not every assignment on The Circuit calls for an adviser to be armed. I’ve worked in places for example where local law wouldn’t allow me to carry weapons. Arming in the West Bank and Gaza made no sense; it would have increased the risk to myself and my clients by classing us as combatants.

On this assignment, however, weapons were a must. Not only were we in an active war zone, but Terry’s fate had demonstrated that the Fedayeen regarded all westerners, including journalists, as targets. We needed to be able to defend ourselves effectively. That’s not to say that if we did manage to procure weapons we’d flaunt them or abandon our TV cover. We wanted to move around as inconspicuously as possible.