Bravo two zero by Andy McNab Page B

me."
        "Bert, what sort of reception committee would we get elsewhere?" Legs asked. "Any info from downed pilots yet?"
        "I'll find out."
        "Unless we're told otherwise, Bert," I said, "we're not going south."
        You always keep together as a team for as long as you can, because it's better for morale and firepower, and your chances of escape are higher than as individuals. But if the patrol were split, the beauty of choosing north was that you could be the world's worst navigator and still find your way there. Due north and hit the river, hang a left, heading west. But even if we managed to cross the border we couldn't count ourselves as being on safe ground. There was no information to suggest otherwise.
        The one fixing we dreaded was getting captured. As far as I knew, the Iraqis were not signatories to either the Geneva or Hague Conventions.
        During the Iran/ Iraq War we'd all seen reports of atrocities they'd committed while carrying out interrogations. Their prisoners had been flogged, electrocuted, and partially dismembered. I was very concerned that if we were captured and just went into the "Big Four"-number, rank, name, date of birth-these people wouldn't be satisfied and would require more from us, as their gruesome track record had shown. I therefore decided that, contrary to military conventions and without telling my superiors, the patrol should prepare itself with a cover story. But what should it be?
        We were clearly an attacking force. We would be stuck up in northwest Iraq, carrying the world's supply of ammunition, explosive ordnance, food, and water. You wouldn't need the brains of an archbishop to realize that we weren't there as members of the Red Cross.
        The only thing we could think of was that we were a search and rescue team. These teams came as quite a big package, especially when the Americans were out to rescue one of their downed pilots. The pilots had a TACBE (tactical beacon) which transmitted on the international distress frequency, which AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) continuously listened to and got a fix on. Of course, everybody else was listening in as well, including the Iraqis. AWACS would locate the pilot from his beacon and relay the message. A search and rescue mission would then be stood to (made ready). The package would be a heli with an extraction party of eight to ten men ready to give covering fire from the air, with machine guns mounted on the helicopter. The party might even be joined by a couple of Apache attack helicopters giving cover so that the bigger helicopter could come down and do the snatch. There would probably be top cover as well, a couple of jets like A10s to add to the hosing down if needed. There was a big emphasis on getting people back, and so there should be. Then you know that if you get in the shit, there'll be every effort made to come and save you, especially if you're a pilot.
        It's good for morale and flying efficiency, and quite apart from anything else there's the purely financial angle-millions of pounds' worth of training have gone into every single pilot.
        The Iraqis would be aware of these big rescue packages, and of the fact that inside the pickup helicopter there would be a medical team, mainly for trauma management. We were about the right numbers, and we would be dressing more or less uniformly. Contrary to common belief, we don't all walk around in what we like. You need a form of recognition so your own troops can identify you. You don't want to be shot by your own side: that's rather unprofessional. So for this sort of op you resemble some form of soldier.
        Because it was just normal PE4 that we would be carrying, we could say it was for our own protection-that sometimes we had to man an RV point while AWACS talked the downed pilot on to us. In such a case we'd put local protection out. "They've given us all this stuff," we would