Dirty Deeds Done Cheap by Peter Mercer Page B

doors on our vehicles). It was obvious from the mess inside that one of the Gurkhas (or both) had been badly hurt or, worse, killed. There were obvious bone fragments in the footwells and on the back seat. There were bullet holes on both sides and a rip in the front passenger seat. But, as it turned out, one round had totally penetrated our armour and had passed through the back door, going right through the unfortunate Gurkha, and then carried on into the vehicle commander, Frank. As I was looking at the damaged vehicle I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was my boss. He told me that Frank had been shot in the right-hand side but he didn’t know how bad it was. It was all very confused. You have to remember that we weren’t bodyguard teams with armoured SUVs. We were carrying out a military role but more often than not without the military backup. It seemed crazy to some people.
    From the limited information we had it looked like a few rounds (not many but enough) had hit the Toyota: one round hitting the Gurkha on the driver’s side, the other going in through the back door then through the back seat and through the pelvis of the Gurkha, then carrying on through the back of the front passenger seat, hitting Frank in the right-hand side of his abdomen. I had looked at the bone and blood in the back seat and just assumed the worst, as it didn’t look at all good.
    The medics in the camp hospital (which was conveniently situated opposite our offices) were working hard to stabilise the two Gurkhas. Then we heard the great news that Frank was OK. He came out of the hospital holding his side, looking a bit sore and sorry for himself. ‘Let’s have a look then, you poof!’ someone said. Frank lifted up his T-shirt to reveal a massive round bruise, which looked sore as hell. It looked to me as if he’d been hit with a squash ball! All the Fijians then gathered round and held hands and prayed, as they always did; everyone joined in. Even after the prayers, you could tell the lads were still worried about the two Gurkhas, though. There had, after all, been a lot of blood and bone.
    We were then told to stand down and de-service all the kit. We’d got off 3,500 rounds of various types of ammunition on this contact, which is an incredible amount. This de-service included the vehicles, which would have to be checked over, and we also had to hose out all the blood. We didn’t have any spare vehicles on camp so it was important that they were kept running and in as good order as possible. If one was really trashed or we’d had to blow one up, we’d just have to travel up to Turkey to buy another one.
    After all the commotion, the prayers and the chin-wagging, all the team leaders then got together and we had a discussion to see if, with hindsight, we might have done things any differently. It was eventually concluded that the situation couldn’t have been avoided; it happened, and nobody could have predicted or prevented what had occurred – it was just one of those things in this fucked-up place. We just had to move on.
    After the trucks had been checked over, we drove down to our accommodation, all of us now in a bit of a sombre mood. I greeted Kasper the dog, unlocked my front door and went inside. I took off all my gear and then sat down on my bed and tried to mentally absorb what had just happened. I was still deaf as a post from all the firing. I couldn’t hear a fucking thing over the ringing in my ears. Also, I was still shaking from all the adrenalin – well not so much shaking as a gentle, tiny tremble. I still felt edgy and ready to go, though – my adrenalin was still pumping. I made myself a coffee and stripped my weapons down to clean them. I didn’t feel hungry any more and we had a big debrief scheduled for 16.30, so I just put some chill-out music on and got on with my admin work.
    If you don’t keep M16s clean you can get quite a few stoppages, but they have a device fitted to them called a forward assist,