Dirty Deeds Done Cheap (6 page)

After doing the body thing I wasn’t feeling that hungry and I considered skipping dinner and just going back to my accommodation, but I knew that I had to eat because the next day would be another long one and who knew what would happen? I went for a shower and scrubbed myself clean for ages, but I couldn’t seem to get rid of that death smell. It felt as if I had absorbed it into my very pores. Once my skin was nearly raw I stopped scrubbing and just stood under the spray with my face turned upwards, letting the water wash over my head. I wanted to stay there but I knew I couldn’t.

I got out and dried off, changed and made my way to the chow tent. I queued up and got my food and joined a couple of the guys, but nobody was feeling very talkative – we ate in silence. After scran, I went down to the gym to push some weights – I definitely needed another shower after that session. The gym was situated inside one of Saddam’s presidential buildings. Being a US military gym, it had every bit of equipment you could imagine. American logistics are second to none when it comes to warfare, and they really have their shit together when it comes to looking after their troops. After a good training session, I wanted to call home. On camp we were given a satellite phone and a mobile phone each. The reception on the mobile phone was excellent and incredibly cheap, cheaper than ringing a mobile phone in the UK, actually! It worked out at about 20p a minute.

To start off, when I rang home to speak to my parents and sister in York, I’d tell them I was in some foreign country working on oil rigs, but a careless phone call from a mate – checking I was OK because he hadn’t heard from me for a while (he knew where I was) – soon put a stop to that. My mum shat a brick. She burst into tears and begged me to come home. I said that I had an internal job at the airport that was really safe. She eventually swallowed it but I carried on lying about the location. My old man never asked me any questions. He was used to my doing dangerous work in fucked-up countries.

After the gym and my shower, I went back to my hooch – my accommodation – and started cleaning my kit and weapons. It was midsummer and really hot, so, once my weapons were as clean as it was really possible to get them, a few of the lads and I sat outside our huts and had a couple of cold beers.

The US military weren’t allowed to drink, so we became very popular by giving them the occasional beer. Because we were officially civilians, we could drink. This had been a long day and we’d had a grisly task to perform, but our team had sustained no losses or injuries – so I guess that meant it was overall a good one. How can you say what is a good day? Nobody from our company had even been injured but eight guys from another security company doing, probably, the same job as we were doing had died. But we had far better backup; those poor men had none whatsoever. Poor souls!

After a couple of tins I went and got my head down. Next morning I reported for duty at 08.00 and we had a day of weapons training and vehicle drills. Nothing special, just a typical day around camp.

It’s a very strange feeling when you look back on it. I’ve never slept so well or peacefully in my life as I did in Iraq. You are so removed from the rest of the world and I think because you use up a lot of adrenalin you end up being shattered and eventually get used to the dull thud of explosions and gunfire in the distance. Your body and mind adapt to the tone and noise and rhythms. If it’s in the distance you sleep; if it comes close you jump instantly awake.

Convoy missions were our main task but each one was different. We had to take the rough with the smooth. Some went well and were almost easy; some were risky and violent and truly very distressing. After all, when you lose a colleague it’s never nice.

W
e’d been taking and getting quite a few casualties driving through all of these dangerous villages that were strongly occupied by insurgents. I think we’d had more of our guys killed on this northern mission than any other security company working in Iraq at that time. This was purely down to the intensity of the fighting up here, not down to the guys not knowing what they were doing or a lack of professionalism.

There were a lot of no-go areas for most of the private military companies in the north. However, we were often asked to actually go through some of these areas, which was always dodgy as hell. We could normally handle it because our guys were good and we had some awesome firepower. The Americans gave us pretty much whatever we wanted. Sometimes we just had to escort things and vehicles through and other times we were just asked to assess the threat level in the area for the US military. None of it, however, was a walk in the park. Far from it. There was danger lurking around every corner.

Two weeks before I arrived up in the north to start my new job, disaster struck. One of the teams – in fact the whole patrol – were approaching Mosul. Nothing out of the ordinary there for the team – just another run-of-the-mill trip. Everything had seemed normal – well, as normal as it’s possible to get in the north. You quite often got the odd opportunist insurgent shooting at you, but unless you got hit by an IED you’d probably survive it with most of our casualties just suffering minor injuries. This day turned out to be a bad one for that particular team.

The insurgents had obviously been waiting for an American patrol to come through this particular area and were well prepared for them. When that didn’t happen they just waited to pick another target – which that day was one of our patrols! The Yanks were probably avoiding the area after getting intelligence from their spooks, who then warned their own troops. However, that sort of intelligence rarely filtered down to us, so we often had no way of knowing when an attack was due or where it might come from. That was, indeed, the case for our company’s patrol that day. I shall say
our
and
us
from now on, even though I was not personally present during this contact.

On this particular day, there were dozens of insurgents lying in wait for the guys. They were all armed to the teeth and they had planted quite a few IEDs all over the place (on this occasion they were lots of car bombs). As our teams came up the street, all the locals disappeared (which is always an indication that there’s going to be trouble). Then –
boom
! The first IED went off at the beginning of the road, taking out our lead vehicle. The insurgents then started firing their AK-47s and RPKs from side streets, rooftops, windows, everywhere – you name it, they were there. Gunfire was hitting our guys from all directions, then –
boom
again! Another IED, another car bomb, then more firing.

Apparently, by this time, the teams could hardly even drive and make it up the road because of all the rubble and destruction. Our team was getting the shit kicked out of them and it was pure carnage. Our patrol then retaliated, firing back and ended up killing quite a few insurgents. They opened up with everything they had. This was a right mess. There was nothing the lads could do; they were in a right pickle.

Any civilian approaching was also getting injured or even killed for fear of being an insurgent who might have been about to chuck a grenade. Our guys had reasoned that any innocent civilians would take cover and not try to walk through the middle of a huge firefight. In fact, as the street had been so quiet, as if the locals had known what was about to go down, there hadn’t been that many people about, although there were young men throwing things – rocks, grenades and so forth – at the guys. So any person walking out and about or throwing stuff either had a death wish or, more likely, was an insurgent. The situation was extremely bad and had deteriorated rapidly.

After eventually getting out of the kill zone, one of the trucks was fucked – blown tyres, shrapnel holes everywhere – and, worst of all, two of their Fijian comrades were dead after the initial IED. Also, one of the ex-SAS guys, who had been riding in the lead vehicle, had been shot in the head by a suspected ricochet. The Gurkha who was driving the truck carrying the ex-SAS guy must have had balls as big as an elephant because, after Justin (as I will call him) was hit in the head, he was, apparently, still alive. This brave little Gurkha had broken away from the main convoy and then he’d driven through Mosul, totally on his own, with no backup – leaving his convoy behind. Justin’s injuries were so severe that the Gurkha knew that he had to get him to a hospital as soon as possible – he had been in an obviously critical condition with this very bad head injury. As he sped through town he was fired upon repeatedly, but he wouldn’t and didn’t stop.

As the Gurkha had approached the gates of the American camp, the sentries on duty saw all the bullet holes and got the medics on standby. They’d also been made aware of the contact report, so they knew of the situation. This brave little Gurkha drove his arse off to get Justin to hospital as soon and as fast as possible, but it was all in vain: Justin was dead on arrival. His head injuries were too severe. So that had been the situation: quite a few (thirty-two) insurgents lay dead and three of our guys were dead. Not good, not good at all. It had been one hell of a firefight and one hell of a mess.

Soon after the two Fijians had arrived at the same American base for medical treatment, one guy was clearly dead on arrival but, amazingly, one was still alive – just. Unfortunately, as they were lifting him out of the back of the truck, he passed away. He’d been ripped apart by one of the car bombs and most of his legs were missing, but I was told he had been a hulk of a guy and the medics had said it was a miracle that he had survived long enough to get back to camp with the extent and severity of his wounds. Everyone had shed a tear for their colleagues.

Because quite a few civilians in the town had been killed in the crossfire, the US military wanted an explanation for what had happened. However, because we were contractors, we didn’t have to fill out contact reports. Officially, as civilians, an oral explanation would be acceptable for them. It was a nightmare of a day for our guys and, every time that kind of shit happens (someone getting injured or killed), it bangs it home to everyone how fucking dangerous that place is.

After clearing out Justin’s locker, one of our guys had resigned and some of the other guys had seriously thought about it. Apparently, seeing Justin’s pictures of his wife and kids banged it home to this guy how quickly things could go bad for anybody working here and he must have thought of his own family and said, Fuck it! It’s not worth earning all this money if you’re not going to be around to spend it with your family. It made more than a few of our guys question whether they should be out there at all. Situations like that really made everybody think about their own mortality.

It was one of the first things I was told when I first arrived, however. I was single and I must admit that I had a bit of a ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude at the time. Things weren’t good at home and I just wanted to earn some good money. Getting up there (to Mosul) had been traumatic enough, and then you get some arsehole giving you war stories and trying to scare the shit out of you. Not a tactic I’d ever employ, but it happened a lot.

As I’d put myself up for this job I fully realised that the mess I was in now was entirely of my own doing. Hell, I’d even badgered the boss in Baghdad to send me up here. The contacts we were encountering up here were very intense and you had to have your wits about you all the time. As I said, on most of our missions we were losing men at quite an alarming rate and this wasn’t including the major and minor injuries that we sustained on a regular basis.

So here I was with a bunch of guys who were constantly getting their arses shot off but, on the bright side, they were great to work for and with. This was certainly the craziest job I’d ever undertaken. Danger was everywhere.

T
he Gurkhas never ceased to amaze me. We had a mixed bunch. There were the British-trained and the Pakistani-trained Gurkhas, but apart from their training differences they had one thing in common: their unwavering loyalty. These guys would often be involved in very nasty contacts, losing comrades sometimes on a daily basis. Even when one or more of them were maimedx or killed and you told them the next detail, or job, was at, say, 04.00 the next day, they would all be there, ready and raring to go. No moaning, no complaints – just ready. These little guys were fearsome. What some of them lacked in their training they made up for in their courage. You could always train them in tactics but you could never give them balls.

I woke up that morning and did my normal routine of shaving and showering and going for a good breakfast, after which, as I walked back to the accommodation, I saw Triple Canopy drive past. They must have had a VIP with them, because in front and behind the armoured SUV that they were escorting they had their armoured Hummers with .50 cals on the turrets. These guys used to take care of all the American VIPs (senators, ex-presidents and what have you) who came to visit. They were a friendly bunch and we all got on well, but we didn’t discuss many missions between companies that much.

Once up at the ops room I was told we would be taking a route through Tal Afar for this mission. This wasn’t my normal patrol route, but I’d asked to go because this was a route I’d never taken before. I’d been in this job only a few months, and it’s advantageous to know as many routes around the north as possible, because you never knew what diversions or evasive routes you might have to take if you hit bad trouble. As my own personal patrol was doing weapons training that day, it would be no problem for me to miss it. The other patrol commanders could do the instruction.

After the Gurkhas had finished their breakfast they started to get the trucks ready, which always put a smile on my face. The Fijians, when they loaded their trucks, would just pass the heavy weapons up to one another as if they were toy guns. This was because of their huge size and strength. The Gurkhas, however, had to get five or six of themselves around the .50-cals to get them up. Another funny thing was the winter Gore-Tex jackets they were all issued with: they came in only two sizes and those were large and extra large. Even the extra-large jackets used to look tight on some of the Fijians, but the large jackets would swamp some of the Gurkhas, making them look as if they were wearing trench coats. The gunners on the back of the Hiluxes had to be kept warm, though, because the temperature was now very low. Plus, with the wind-chill factor, they sometimes had ice on them after a particularly long and cold run. We tried to incorporate more stops on our missions to keep them warm and make them more comfortable, without compromising our security, if it was possible. Neither the Gurkhas nor the Fijians ever moaned, though. They were professionals and hard as nails. I had a lot of respect for these men.

As contractors working in northern Iraq, sometimes we walked a fine line between being security personnel and mercenaries. To look at us and the weapons we carried and our tactics, you’d think we were some kind of paramilitaries. You can argue the toss all day: contractor, private military or mercenary. All I know is that I got paid a lot of money to look after and protect people and property. If trouble ever found us, so be it! We would deal with it using all the resources available to us – and we had a lot. We wouldn’t look for trouble, far from it. It was the team leader’s job in each of our patrols to avoid it at all costs, but we would not shy away from it, either. In the job we were doing people die; it’s part of the job. We were all there by choice and were there for the dosh. If you don’t agree or don’t want to do it, you go home. Period.

On this particular day it wasn’t much different from any other, as always the heavy weapons were fitted to the vehicles and all the spare ammo was loaded into the back along with, if you couldn’t guess, boxes and boxes of MREs (the American emergency food rations). It wasn’t unknown for us to sometimes get through 3,000–4,000 rounds in a large contact, our main tactic when being hit was to put down a large amount of fire and get the fuck out of the area as fast as possible. Being fully financed by the US Government, we had no shortage of weaponry and ammunition. We went through our usual routine of checking and double-checking our radios, weapons, bomb-jamming equipment, sat-nav and other communication means. We then went through the IA (immediate-action) drills quickly. These were mainly generic, but, for the mission we were now tasked with, we would be travelling through an insurgent stronghold so we really had to hammer it home to the lads to be on their toes, as this was going to be fucking dangerous, more dangerous than Mosul.

Tal Afar is a city in northwestern Iraq in the Ninawa Governorate, located approximately 30 miles west of Mosul and 120 miles northwest of Kirkuk. While no official census data exists, the city has been assessed as having a population of approximately 220,000 people, nearly all of whom are Iraqi Turkmen. The population’s religious affiliation is split roughly in halves, between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. While most residents do speak Arabic, a dialect of Turkish is also used almost universally throughout the city.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, insurgents used Tal Afar as a staging point for most of their attacks. In September 2004, American forces stormed in and defeated the insurgents and left roughly six-hundred troops in the city, and this was the time we were tasked to travel through this stronghold. This was not good. Later, however, the Iraqi authorities lost control over the city and in May 2005 the insurgents began taking over again.

Military operations in June 2005 did not quell the violence. Final offensive operations involving eight-thousand Iraqi and US troops were launched in September 2005. They tried, and successfully used, a new strategy of clearing, holding and building in the areas that they had purged of insurgents. An ambitious reconstruction effort was implemented. Most of the sewers had to be replaced after the attacks and this was done within a matter of weeks. Tal Afar has also been the scene of sectarian violence between the Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims. In May 2005 clashes broke out between the two groups. In March 2006 President George W Bush highlighted Tal Afar as a success story, but I personally feel that this was a bit premature, as the fighting continues to this day with some ferocity. On 27 March 2007 a truck bomb exploded, killing 152 people and injuring a further 347.

However, for us in 2004, there was going to be a lot of resistance, but I’ll tell the whole story, to give you an idea of how bad it actually was. We were to be travelling through this place at the height of its violence. With a total area of approximately 10 square miles there were a lot of places from which we could get ambushed, bombed or shot at. At the brief before going out on patrol, we gave the lads a heads-up and told them that this was going to be a dangerous one. But nothing fazed these guys.

As we left the gate as normal, I prepared the guys, explaining that it was likely we would have a contact of some sort today, be it a major one or minor. I just knew it was going to come at some point. We knew this was going to be a bit dodgy. You can’t expect to breeze through an insurgent stronghold without an incident of some kind. We’d studied the map and it was the only route we could travel to get to where we were going. On this particular job, we had to escort one of the American special-ops guys to the other end of the town and, hopefully, get him and us there in one piece. This job we were doing was outrageous and hard to take in sometimes, but I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t enjoying it a little bit.

We burst out of the gate in our typical style – fast and aggressive – and then cleared the chains, so now we were definitely on our way. I was slightly apprehensive about this mission but excited nevertheless. I always worried about the guys in my team. They were like brothers to me now and I was always trying to make sure they were OK. Being responsible for the lives of four guys always adds pressure and a certain level of stress in situations like these. If or when any of our guys were killed or badly injured, you always tormented yourself with thoughts of how you could have done things differently – hindsight always being 20–20.

As we started to travel through Mosul, we heard the occasional gunfire; we always did, but it was nothing we weren’t used to. We travelled past the familiar places on our new mission to Tal Afar. Noticeably, one of them was the giant mosque that the US government were paying to be built to try to pacify the local community. Unfortunately for us and the US troops, it was becoming popular with insurgent snipers: because of the height of the building, it had great vantage points for them. In situations like these, where you were going into the unknown, you had to be spontaneous and improvisational. A lot of the time there was no bloodshed, but the energy was often ugly and violent. You can often sense bad vibes: sometimes it’s like the calm before the storm; sometimes it’s the look in people’s eyes. It can be many things, but you know – you sense it. Gut instinct, if you like.

We sped across this dangerous city and we were soon clearing the outskirts of Mosul when I saw two white camels tethered at the side of the road; I couldn’t believe my eyes, this place was mad. We sped along into the desert and, as we’d now cleared Mosul, everyone started to chill a bit. I radioed ‘Patrol clear’ as we cleared the town. ‘Roger. Out,’ came the reply from the patrol commander. I was still tail-end Charlie at this point. We were all a bit more relaxed now. The only threat to us was from IEDs, and there wasn’t much you could do about those except keep your eyes peeled and look for something that could contain one. But, as we’ve seen, the insurgents would hide them in the most ingenious places. Most of the time you knew one was there only when it went off, and then it was too late – you were fucked.

When we could no longer see civilisation, we pulled over into a bit of cover and went into all-round defence (all of our tail gunners facing outwards) so the guys could have a piss stop and, you guessed it, some elevenses. They’d gone a couple of hours now with no food and they needed topping up! We got the flasks out. We tried never to use the same place to stop at twice within, say, a month to prevent the insurgents from getting familiar with our movements and planting booby traps or mines.

The temperature was coming up a bit now and the sun was warming the desert by a few degrees. After some coffee and some American MRE (meal, ready-to-eat) rations, we loaded up and carried on. Everyone was now feeling recharged and raring to go. I was mentally going through my contact drills and did a few radio checks with the other call signs. I reiterated to the lads that something would probably happen (major or minor I couldn’t say; after all, we weren’t fortune tellers). They all now had their serious heads on – this was almost coming up to show time.

We were now about 5 kilometres away from Tal Afar and could clearly see the outskirts of the city. Also, we had started to drive past some basic little huts by the sides of the road, complete with wild dogs barking and running out at us. This was new territory to us and we didn’t really know what to expect, so, a few kilometres later, before we got to this hellhole, we pulled over and had a pow-wow. There wasn’t much to plan for. The main reason we’d stopped was to make sure everyone was ready for a bad firefight. Minutes later we were tearing off again into the unknown. We were averaging about 60 m.p.h. and we’d got our spacing spot on. Everyone was covering his arc of fire. I put my thumb on the safety catch of my M16 and popped a 40mm grenade into the breach of my M203 grenade launcher.

We were now approaching the edge of the city and my concentration was honed. Everyone started hard-targeting (moving the weapon in the direction you are looking), scanning for likely ambush positions. The main road coming into town was actually really quiet. As our convoy approached we were fired upon from quite a distance – nothing serious as of yet, but we couldn’t afford to take any chances. Any way you looked at it, it was incoming fire and a 7.62mm round can be effective up to 1,600 metres. That’s not too far off a mile. Even if they couldn’t see us properly and they just sprayed a burst of automatic gunfire in our direction, there was a very real chance that a stray round could hit one of us.

There were wadis (valleys or dry river beds) either side of the road which we could drive the vehicles into, if needs be, and turn around if we had to, or take cover in if things were to get too serious. The insurgents’ fire at this time wasn’t effective, though, and we weren’t 100 per cent sure it was even aimed at us, as there were American patrols in the area and they (the insurgents) could be having a pop at the Yanks rather than at us. But it made it more difficult for us to be sure if we were the targets, because we couldn’t identify where the insurgents’ fire was coming from. We carried on regardless. In the next moment the vehicle in front of us swerved. Hmm, this was not at all normal.

It was etched on my consciousness how badly and rapidly situations could deteriorate in Iraq. My worst fear of all was capture, for this would surely mean days or weeks of horrific torture followed, almost certainly, by beheading. I’d rather top myself. For any contractor working in Iraq this would be the absolute worst-case scenario and it was just totally unthinkable.

The front vehicle came to a stop on the side of the road. The front right-hand-side wheel and tyre had been shot out. We had a choice: torch and blow up the vehicle and leave it for dead, or assess how effective the insurgent attack was and then stay and fix the tyre. We were quite a way from the enemy fire point, which we’d assessed was a block of flats to our right (a good 1,000 metres away). We didn’t want to let rip with the M19 grenade launcher or the .50-cal and take the complex totally out because, knowing the insurgents, that block of flats could be populated by women and children and we always did all we could to avoid collateral damage. Killing innocent civilians was not in our code. While we were deciding what to do for the best, the Gurkhas, cool as cucumbers, just calmly got out of the truck and started changing the wheel. One Gurkha had the jack and another had the wheel brace and they carried on as if they didn’t have a care in the world. We started putting down covering fire for them. Mad little fuckers!