Eight Lives Down Book

'If fate is against me and I'm killed so be it but make it quick and painless. If I'm wounded don't let me be crippled. But above all don't let me fuck up the task'. So goes the bomb technician's prayer before every bomb he defuses. For Chris Hunter it is a prayer he says many times over his four month tour of Iraq. His is the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world - to make safe the British sector in Iraq against some of the most hardened and technically advanced terrorists in the world. It is a 24/7 job - his team defuse over 45 bombs in the first two months alone. And the people they're up against don't play by the Geneva Convention. For them there are no rules only results. Bombs rockets grenades ambushes booby traps - death by any means necessary. Welcome to the real Wild West. The job of Bomb Disposal Officer in Iraq is a lonely one. You are alone with the sound of your own breathing and the drumming of your heart in a protective suit in forty plus degrees of heat. The drawbridge has been pulled up behind you as you advance on your goal. Playtime is over. It's just you and the bomb. But for Chris Hunter just when life couldn't get any more dangerous the stakes are raised again. Halfway through his tour he is told the following: 'They want you dead Chris. You and your team have captured their weaponry you've fingered them with forensics you've neutralised a shedload of their IEDs and basically you're making Behadli and his lot look like c**ts. They're out to kill the golden-haired bomb man in Basra...'