Juggernaut

‘How far?’ I asked.

‘Two miles, maybe three.’

We walked to the impact site. There was nothing to see. Featureless desert.

‘You are sure this is the spot?’

The farmer refused to answer. The memory of the crash reduced him to whimpering terror. He ran back to the village. No amount of gold would induce him to help us further.

I gave the order to dig.

I immediately faced a near mutiny. The dunes presented a double threat. Not only was sand likely to be contaminated with the residue of chemical warfare but, in his attempts to subdue local guerrillas, Saddam had ordered the region pounded by cluster-bombs and artillery fire. There was every chance we could unearth unexploded munitions.

My men simply wanted to hide from the war. They were Republican Guard, elite troops, chosen for their fanatical loyalty to Saddam. They had taken a solemn oath to lay down their lives at his command. But they were also realistic men concerned for the welfare of their wives and children back home. They had no interest in our Quixotic mission. They were happy to camp in the desert, listen to the war unfold over the BBC World Service, then return to Baghdad when the shooting had stopped. I could sympathise.

Four of the men tore the badges from their uniforms. They climbed in a Jeep, replaced the Iraqi pennant clipped to the radio antenna with a white rag of surrender and headed for their homes in Fallujah. I could have ordered them shot as they drove away but there was little point.

I explained to the remaining troops that American satellites and drones would be watching the highways. If they took to the road in a military convoy they might be targeted and bombed.

I also explained that whatever was taking place elsewhere in the world, I was still their commander and I intended to complete my mission.

They men could have mutinied, simply walked away, but they had lived in fear of Saddam’s intelligence agencies all their lives. They were obedient as dogs.

I organised a grid search. We had brought Vallon mine-clearance metal detectors, sensitive enough to locate a bullet casing buried feet beneath the ground. We drove stakes into the desert to mark our path.

We must have covered acres of dunes. We trudged morning until late afternoon, walking in a line. We swung the mine detectors in sequential, one-eighty arcs.

A detector sang out. A small hit at the edge of the search field. The soldiers gathered round as I crouched and brushed away sand.

A buckled scrap of metal little bigger than my palm. A lightweight alloy. Aluminium, or maybe zinc.

We continued our search. Two hours later we scored a big hit. An object six feet long. The men dug with spades. Then I crouched in the crater and probed the sand with my knife until I struck metal.

I ordered the men to stand at a safe distance. I brushed away sand with my hand, gradually exposing hydraulic rams, ropes of frayed cable, shreds of rubber. Thick tread. Fragments of a steel-ribbed tyre. We had discovered part of the under-carriage of an aircraft. The remains of a large double wheel attached to a hydraulic shock-absorber.

I took pictures. I had a soldier stand next to the wreckage for scale.

Minutes later we found more scraps of metal hidden beneath the dunes. Tubular titanium spars. Scraps of aluminium fairing. Black hexagonal blocks that appeared to be carbon-fibre heat tiles.

It quickly became apparent we had found the debris trench, the trail of wreckage left by this strange vehicle as it fell to earth and gouged into the sand.

The sun began to set. We slowly walked across the dunes in a wide line, sweeping the spade-heads of our metal detectors left and right. Then, in unison, our detectors began to sing. A rising chorus of clicks and whoops like whale song.

We surveyed the ground around us. A strong and constant signal. We had found the body of the craft. Whatever had fallen from the sky, years ago, was directly beneath our feet.

We drove stakes into the sand to chart the dimensions of the object. An aerofoil shaped like a giant arrowhead. Sixty feet long, thirty feet wide.

I summoned the trucks and had them parked in a ring surrounding the crash site. I gave the men shovels and told them to dig.

They threw spadefuls of sand. I paced, and watched their progress. They dug for hours. Then they scraped metal. I jumped into the hole and pushed the soldiers aside.

I scooped with my hand and exposed a metal blade. Scorched hexagonal tiles, like snakeskin. I dug some more. I quickly realised we had exposed the tip of a big tailfin.

Night fell. We ran the truck engines. Head beams gave light while the men continued to excavate the craft.

Two teams. They dug for thirty-minute shifts. Downtime gave them a chance to smoke and rehydrate.

Midnight. The soldiers were exhausted. I ordered them to cease work. We ate, we drank. The night turned cold. We had no wood for fire. The men wrapped themselves in blankets, huddled together in the trucks and slept.