Dirty Deeds Done Cheap (13 page)

The Fijians and the Gurkhas were fond (I must admit, I was as well) of this mad little pooch so I resisted letting her go, and I put up with the nipping. It must have looked pretty hysterical. There was I, appearing to be wrestling this little yappy dog, and, though it may have looked as if I were trying to strangle her, far from it: I was doing my best to save our beloved pet. Following the third mortar strike the Americans started opening up, firing at the mortar position.

The US military have this special detection equipment set up to find the direction of incoming fire from mortars. It turned out that it was coming from a huge hotel that was situated around 200 metres from the perimeter of the camp. All of a sudden the mortaring stopped, so our green-arsed, nasty, feral but lovely puppy dog and I carried on with our run. That dog loved running, funnily enough, but the fucker kept trying to trip me up by weaving around me or cutting me up. I had to keep her on a bit of rope, which could be entertaining.

After getting laughed at for a good thirty minutes on our run because of Kasper, I arrived back at the accommodation, showered and sat down on my small throne. We’d all been permitted at some time, or maybe not, to take some furniture out of Saddam’s palaces, so some of us even had chaises longues while some of the other guys had acquired gold-leaf chairs. I sat and relaxed for a little while, put on some chill-out music and fell asleep.

I woke and remembered that this morning we were doing weapons training. The minor problem we had with this was that, while the Fijians had been trained in the M16 American assault rifle, the Gurkhas, being of different origin and having been Pakistan- or British-trained, had not been. This meant everyone was used to a different weapon and, therefore, had to be trained with the M16 (because it was only the expats who got a
choice
of weapon – everyone else had to have an M16). At the range, therefore, we didn’t really have to concentrate on the Fijians’ training, just the Gurkhas’. The Fijians just had to do the range and zero, test and adjust their sights. It wasn’t that the Gurkhas couldn’t shoot – they certainly could – just that some things were different for them with the M16.

The safety procedures employed on the range were very strict because it was on the outer edge of the helipad. If a chopper was coming in you had to stop firing immediately, unload and generally just be very careful – chopper pilots get very nervous around guns for hire because professionalism varies quite a lot through the different companies. If you accidentally hit a chopper, you and the company you’re working for would be in deep shit, really deep shit. I’m not saying that you’d purposely do it, but there was always the chance of a ricochet on ranges. We always had to post a sentry who had a radio link with the American headquarters, and would inform us of any incoming aircraft.

Following the range practice that day – which went really well apart from a few minor mishaps – the standards were all pretty good. We then had to let the Fijians get some grub. The CIA had booked the range for the rest of the morning, anyway, so we had to get off. PMCs always came second in anything concerned with the US military, or US civilian intelligence agencies. We had also heard a rumour that an important VIP was coming in today, but we weren’t told who. As it turned out the rest of the day was uneventful – just a bit of gym and a bit of bumming around. Pretty chilled out and no more mortars, thank fuck!

Around teatime I was coming out of the canteen, after a nice steak, when I saw two Apache attack helicopters and a Black Hawk transport helicopter coming in. I guessed this could be the VIP, as it was not normal for two Apaches to be escorting a Black Hawk – normally they fly independently of each other. The Black Hawks are also pretty well armed, so wouldn’t usually need Apaches to escort or protect them. So I sat on the wall outside the citadel and waited to see who it could possibly be.

Following a short wait, a load of Triple Canopy guys came up to the building escorting ex-President Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton recognised me as a contractor because of my civilian clothes and pistol. He came up, shook my hand and said what a great job we were doing. He asked which company I was working for and I told him. He said he was hearing great stuff about us and that we had a good reputation back in Washington, DC. I didn’t really give a toss, but it was kind of cool to shake the hand of an ex-president of the United States! After my brief meeting I headed back to my quarters. I was pretty knackered and soon dropped off to sleep after watching yet another crap copied DVD.

The next morning was uneventful, apart from the one game of touch rugby we had on the helipad with the Fijians – always a laugh if not knackering. Later that morning – after getting stuffed at touch rugby – my mate Malcolm came down to see me. Malcolm was CIA and his job was computers – monitoring them (basically computer spying) to see what the insurgents were up to and generally keeping an eye on things. He told me that things were hotting up and movements of the insurgents were increasing.

These CIA guys were the eyes and ears on the ground, but, to be frank, even if the information they gave us was accurate and correct, it wouldn’t do us much good, because the insurgents could and did move around so efficiently and effectively. We were in a no-win situation anyway and it was purely down to us to sort ourselves out. After chatting over a coffee with Malcolm I was quite interested to know that the CIA used civilian contractors as well. They were actually permitted to recruit whomever they wanted. It was always interesting talking to him, but I’m sure he came down only for the decent coffee and cold beer we had. He was a nice guy, though.

After tea we all had a couple of beers. It was always nice to relax. It was essential to be able to let off a bit of steam. We all had a pretty early night and were settling into a nice peaceful sleep when all hell broke loose. The sound of gunfire that awoke us was immense – as if it were right outside our own doors. The noise and rate of fire was tremendous. I dived out of my bed, grabbed my M16, banged a magazine on it and legged it out of the door, still in my boxers. We’d all been given ‘stand-to’ positions (this was basically emergency positions in the unlikely event that the camp came under attack or was overrun).

As I came running out of my door, I came face to face with Phillipe, who had the hooch next door to mine. He didn’t even have his underwear on, but was stark bollock naked. All he had was his gun. This was truly a bizarre sight and if the situation wasn’t so serious I would have laughed! We said we’d cover each other while we got some sort of clothes on and chucked some body armour on. Once we’d composed ourselves from our rude awakening we got into our fire positions, which were about 10 metres from our accommodation. It sounded like a shit storm was happening just outside the perimeter wall, and, because we had no comms with the Americans, we didn’t know what was going on out there. All we could see were tracer rounds going just over our heads and we could hear one hell of a racket; it was pretty scary shit.

Now we were sorted in our fire positions, Phillipe and I started laughing at what we’d just experienced – running around in the bollocky buff and boxer shorts, respectively, and armed to the teeth. But now we were prepared and in good fire positions, so if anyone came in we’d fuck ’em up good and proper. I popped a 40mm grenade into the breach of my M203 and prayed I’d maybe hit something. There was now even more firepower going down and ricocheting everywhere and the whole of our squad were legging it around in a bit of a confused state trying to establish where the best place to form a defence would be.

The next moment amazed me. All the shooting and noise stopped and a deathly quiet descended. We all, rather apprehensively, got up and gathered round for a chat. What the fuck had just happened? No one knew, so we sent one of our American guys up to the citadel (because he could get access) in the hope of finding out what had just gone down. When he came back he informed us that, as an American patrol had come out of the gate, they had driven straight into an insurgent ambush. They had encountered heavy-calibre machine-gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades, the lot. The insurgents really had it in for them. In return, the Yanks had opened up with everything they had and the noise was truly incredible! No wonder it sounded like World War Three! Pretty much all the insurgents bought it; the ones who had survived were wounded and so were arrested. No Americans were hurt or killed.

I found it quite moving sometimes watching the faces of these young American troops after they had been involved in a bad contact where they had maybe lost a mate or a lot of friends. You could practically see them age overnight, and over time their composure changed and a lot of them looked sad and homesick. As mercenaries from different parts of the world and widely differing backgrounds, we could sometimes find it difficult to understand where each of us was coming from, but we all managed to gel eventually and we formed a great team. To this day I have fond memories of the guys I served with. There were some really great characters – most good, some bad.

Green-arsed Kasper had now become a bit of a pain in the butt. The little fucker had, when I was out, left me a nice stinking message in the middle of my floor for when I came back from the shower. It was hard to be angry with her, though, but to make matters worse for me she had been going into one of the stagnant ponds that were scattered around the base to cool down in and do a bit of swimming! She now stank to high heaven and would insist on sleeping in my room most nights. Even though the little fucker often used to nip me, we were all fond of her. It was kind of a love–hate relationship. She was, after all, a wild dog. When the green paint wore off, though, she’d always get a respray for her own protection.

Life around camp was never dull. There was always something going on. We’d now had a day or two off and managed to get some time to patch up some of the vehicles (which we had to do quite often) when a US Major came over for a chat – he was a commander in charge of the Stryker armoured personnel carriers. We all got chatting about missions that we’d been on and he started asking about Tikrit, which we used to travel through every now and then, and Tal Afar. I told him about our wheel-changing fiasco, which made him chuckle a little. I said to him that when he took his guys through there he should watch his arse, and he gave me a sly smile in return – as if saying to me, ‘Don’t patronise us, we’re the US military, we know what we’re doing.’ I left it at that. If he didn’t want advice on an unfamiliar hostile area so be it – more fool him. In my book any free advice is good advice. We went our separate ways and I carried on helping to fix our ravaged, bullet-riddled trucks.

Later in the day I saw the same major. I had to laugh, because he’d been shot in the arm and had it in a cast. I know that this sounds a bit cruel, but apparently, knowing best (of course!), he’d stuck his head out of the Stryker to have a look and observe a few places in this most dangerous of towns and he’d been taken out by a sniper. Poetic justice I would call it, and I have to admit to feeling a little smug about it all. Of course, it would have been no laughing matter if he had been killed, but he’d got off lightly considering his audacity, and the sniper had only winged him. He’d be OK and maybe a little wiser.

It was some of the Yank forces’ tactics to try to bribe local tribal leaders with dollars in order to get some insurance, we hoped, that we wouldn’t get hit or caught with an IED going through trouble spots. This was extremely cost-effective for us – if it worked – for a couple of reasons: (a) you didn’t have to get a new vehicle if you were taken out and (b), more importantly, you’d have safe passage through that area. For a few bucks you could save the lives of your guys. We had good heads on our shoulders and we knew what we were doing. As always, our aim was getting from A to B in one piece.

We’d already gone through twenty-seven vehicles so far on this tour, which is a shocking number, but the job we were doing was never going to be easy. Difficult as it already was, though, things were going to get worse – far, far worse – and this was going to be a hard lesson to learn. You have to try to expect the unexpected, but there’s only so much you can do.

The insurgents were now blowing up oil pipelines, trying to fuck up the country’s infrastructure. It was going to be our job to prevent this if we could. I could see this getting messy, very messy. When you have a committed force of guys hell bent on trying to kill you, you could all be in deep shit. With insurgents, you can’t piss around with warning shots or shouted warnings. You shoot to kill. You aim for the biggest body part. The chest area is the easiest to hit, and a strike there normally does the most damage. Unless you are extremely close, head shots are a myth unless you are a sniper in a good static position. That’s why, when we’d got into the contact outside the CIA safe house (see Chapter 5), I’d tried to blow up that motherfucker who’d tried to jump over the wall with my M203 – it’s a bigger weapon than my 5.56mm M16. It’s a nasty business having to take someone’s life, but of course it’s a necessity in our line of work. A few days after that gun battle had caught us with our pants down, the most bizarre thing happened to us. We were all relaxing when the unimaginable happened – a big chunk of the camp’s perimeter wall, which was just outside our accommodation, unexpectedly fell over! I think it was purely down to structural weaknesses, not anything to do with sabotage. We were now totally open and exposed to the main highway in Mosul and in an extremely vulnerable position.

Phillipe, Dwight and I grabbed our kit and stood there guarding the 30-metre gap. What we were doing was fucking dodgy but was obviously essential not only for our safety but for the safety of the whole camp – who knew what might happen? So there we stood waiting for the might of the American military to turn up and relieve us and take charge. We got into the best cover we could manage, and then we spent a very nervous night on tenterhooks. We were jumping at every shadow and noise and frantically scanning the darkness looking for any movement. It was a safety-catches-off situation.