Zero Six Bravo by Damien Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

no telling who the Squadron might be paired up with, and either the SEALs or Delta Force were their natural partners.
    Having spent several weeks training together, there was every chance that Jim’s unit might join M Squadron on joint ops. While Jim had witnessed the Squadron’s lack of expertise in vehicle mobility work, Grey sensed a hunger in the guy to go in alongside them. It was well known within Special Forces circles that the Brits—along with their Kiwi and Aussie counterparts—tended to get the most extreme and “out-there” kind of missions.
    “You’d like to be coming with us, wouldn’t you, mate?” Grey asked him. “All that apple pie and godliness you get in your outfit—not really your kind of thing, is it?”
    Jim paused for a second. “Honestly, mate, I’d jump at the chance, even if it meant driving one of those rat-shit Pinkies all the way to Baghdad.”
    It was a matter of a few weeks and a whirlwind of activity before M Squadron found itself heading to a forward mounting base before deploying to Iraq. But by then—and unbeknown to all but the military’s top commanders—the scenario for the coming war had shifted beyond all recognition.
    On March 1, 2003 the Turkish parliament had rejected a resolution allowing United States and allied forces to deploy via their territory. In one fell swoop, the opening of a northern front for the coming war had been scuppered, for the only other nations that have borders with northern Iraq are Syria and Iran, and neither is a particular friend of the West. Turkey’s refusal to provide access constituted a massive blow to the American and British war plans, and came as a major shock. Turkey was a fellow NATO member, and she had enjoyed a long strategic alliance with the United States. Over protracted negotiations, the American government had agreed to a multibillion-dollar aid package plus preferential treatment forTurkish companies doing business with America—all in return for the use of the nation’s territory.
    But at the last moment the powerful Turkish military—not to mention the overwhelming opposition of the Turkish public—had halted the bill’s passage through parliament. On its southern border Turkey had long been fighting a rebellion by the thirty-million-strong Kurdish people. The Kurds are spread across a mountainous region that straddles Turkey and Iraq, which they call Kurdistan. Various Kurdish armed-resistance movements had been fighting against both Turkish and Iraqi rule, seeking to carve out a Kurdish homeland.
    Over the years Saddam had suppressed such insurrections with an unbelievable savagery, and the Turkish military had also launched brutal crackdowns. The Turks feared that invading Iraq and toppling Saddam would give the Kurds their chance, not to mention risk destabilizing the entire region. Saddam was no particular friend of Turkey, but he was at least the devil they knew, and his iron rule had kept the Kurds in hand.
    In the final analysis the risks of doing a deal with the Americans had outweighed the possible benefits as far as the Turkish military—and the nation’s people—were concerned, and no NATO forces were going to be allowed into Iraq via their territory.
    The surprise rejection by Turkey had caught the American administration on the hop. Some 60,000 American troops had already been dispatched, en route to military bases in Turkey. The massive force that had planned to mass on Iraq’s northern border now had no way of doing so. Any push into Iraq would have to go in from one front alone now—Kuwait, to the far south of Iraq—and those forces en route to Turkey had to be re-routed to Kuwait, instead.
    And in the aftermath of Turkey’s shock decision, M Squadron was about to be given the mission of a lifetime.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Grey could hardly believe it when first he laid eyes on the man. He was in the stores tent, part of a makeshift camp under canvas tucked away in a discreet corner of the forward