More Than You Can Say by Paul Torday Read Free Book Online Page B

set-up where we were going was unusual. The Multi-National Force was headquartered in Baghdad but the city and all of central Iraq were under the control of the US military. We had been sent there in support of an operationcalled Task Force Black. This was a special forces job: SAS and Delta Force working together to suppress the spiralling violence on the streets of Baghdad – and practically every other town of any size in central Iraq. Our job was to provide an outer cordon: security cover for the special forces teams while they did what they were good at.
    ‘The squadron is located in a compound in the Green Zone,’ my commanding officer told me before we took the plane to Baghdad. ‘But the quartermaster has run out of room for the moment. Your platoon will be quartered on a temporary basis in a villa near by. There’s a Yank PMC called Green Park based there.’
    ‘A PMC?’ I asked. It was spring 2005 and some of the jargon of this war was still new to me.
    ‘A Private Military Contractor. They are there to provide logistical services to the task force – food, accommodation and so on. You will get your orders from Squadron Command at the Task Force Headquarters in the main compound. Intel comes into the squadron via the Joint Support Group. You may remember them from Belfast. You’re there in a support role, to watch the backs of the SAS.’
    I did remember the Joint Support Group from the time we’d served in Northern Ireland. Its name made it sound as if it was one of those organisations set up to help distressed gentlefolk but its mission was somewhat different. In Northern Ireland it was responsible for agent-handling. I didn’t know they had become involved in Baghdad, or what their new job might involve, but not all of the agents that the JSG handled in Belfast had lived happily ever after.
    ‘Do we have anything to do with Green Park, sir?’
    ‘Yes. Green Park are operating a Temporary Screening Facility. Any prisoners you collect should be handed over tothem for questioning before being sent to the interrogation centre at Camp Nama, up by the airport.’
    I’d heard of Camp Nama. It was a ‘black’ prison similar to the ones at Bagram or Guantanamo.
    ‘Anything else I need to know about them?’ I asked.
    ‘They know the city so they will give you a briefing on arrival. They’ve got a consultant advising them called Mr Harris. He’s also a consultant to Delta Force. One of their jobs is to obtain local intelligence, which they pass on to JSG. This is going to be different to any operation you’ve been on before, Richard.’
    ‘I’m not sure I understand, sir.’
    ‘Rules of engagement are different to what you are used to.’
    ‘In what way, sir?’
    In every other place I’d been our rules had been very clear: don’t shoot unless someone is about to shoot you. Sometimes you had to wait until they’d actually tried to kill you before you were allowed to return fire. Sometimes you had to have written clearance in triplicate from some staff officer sitting safely in London before you could even take the safety off your gun.
    ‘It’s more flexible here, Richard. You can shoot if you perceive a threat.’
    ‘What does that mean exactly, sir?’
    ‘It means whatever you want it to mean, Richard. It means use your initiative.’
    Our convoy was thundering along Route Irish into the city. I had been expecting the sort of landscape I’d seen on the television reports in 2003: miles of flat, sandy desert, across which the all-conquering armoured columns of the US 3rd Infantry Division had charged. But this was the Tigris valley,where the great wide, mud-coloured river flowed down to its confluence with the Euphrates at Shatt al-Arab, then on to the Persian Gulf. It was much greener than I had expected. Palm trees lined the road, and there were green fields and banks of vegetation. There was also an extraordinary profusion of litter. Piles of refuse lay by the roadside or on patches of