Licensed to Kill (16 page)

The odd man out on the team was Scott Helvenston. Pulled from his all ex-SEAL team and ordered to fill a missing spot at the last minute, he immediately knew that the group had no cohesion. Rangers tend to stick together and view SEALs as pretty boys who don't do well out of water. Now the ex-Army had on their team a man with no combat experience but who was the ultimate poster boy for the SEALs. Steven “Scott” Helvenston, thirty-eight, was a SEAL celebrity. He had acted as a military consultant on big-budget Hollywood movies such as
Face/Off,
starring John Travolta, and
Three Ninjas.
He even had screen time as a SEAL instructor who helped whip Demi Moore into shape for Ridley Scott's 1997
G.I. Jane.
His quest for celebrity and his good looks led him to star in Mark Burnett's reality show,
Combat Missions,
a survival game against other ex-soldiers and cops, and
Man vs. Beast,
where he raced chimps. He was recognizable to anyone who watched late-night TV as a fitness pitchman, since he had produced and aggressively hawked a series of Navy SEAL exercise videos—the main selling points being his blond hair, good looks, big smile, and perfectly chiseled California beach torso. Those Blackwater operators with a few rotations under their belt wondered why “Scotty Bod” didn't make the Bremer detail, or the “pretty boy” detail, as they called it.

By 2001, Scott was hurting financially. His acting career had stalled, and his fitness videos had not generated enough profit to pay off the advertising costs. He declared bankruptcy and had to sell his California home and take work as a campground security guard. With an annual reported income of under $15,000 and two children to support, his personal situation was bleak. Scott decided to apply to Blackwater, and despite their prohibition of hiring those with financial problems, he was accepted. Run by a former SEAL, president Gary Jackson, Blackwater's bending the rules to help an ex-SEAL is not surprising. Ex-military know that life on the outside is tough, and there is a sense of pride that Blackwater offers a second chance—a chance to get back in the action, associate with former operators, and serve your country. The fact that contractors work dangerous assignments for a financial lifeline is not discussed but does offer an evident incentive to skim the contract and sign on the dotted line. Scott Helvenston was about to find the fame he sought, in a brutal reality show, caught on tape and broadcast around the world.

Helvenston joined Blackwater in early March 2004, trained up at headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, and deployed to Kuwait to do convoy security for the ESS contract. For Helvenston's family, their tragedy is all the more poignant because Scott wasn't even supposed to be on the run that ended with his death.

T-Boy, a thirty-seven-year-old former marine from California, had been slotted for a position on the doomed four-man team, but missed it because of a delayed flight into Kuwait. “By the time I made it to the hotel, ‘Team November One' had already left and drove to Baghdad. Scott Helvenston took my place from another team because of my absence and was killed two days later. A few guys were very upset at me for a while after that. They didn't understand what had happened to my flight. They just knew one of their close friends that had replaced me on the team had been killed.”

Mental replays of the contractors' brutal deaths, perhaps tinged by some survivor's guilt, have haunted T-Boy. “A few of the guys I worked with didn't think I was stable enough to be here and tried to get me fired. No one really knows how they will take death until it happens. But here I am, more than a year later, still in Iraq and doing what I think is right.”

Scott's instructor in Moyock had been Justin “Shrek” McQuown, a former marine who was promoted from instructor and assigned to run the ESS contract as project manager from Kuwait. Scott and Justin had butted heads during training, and that animosity persisted in Kuwait. When T-Boy did a no-show at the airport, “Shrek” chose Scott to fill in the open slot on the November One team. While Scott was having dinner late in the evening of the twenty-eighth, Shrek told him to pack his stuff and be prepared to head up to Baghdad at 5:00
A
.
M
. At first Scott begged off, saying he wasn't feeling well. Though another contractor offered to take Scott's place, Shrek came into Scott's room later that night and began berating him, calling him a coward, confiscating his weapon, and screaming that he was fired. It was enough of a confrontation that Scott fired off an e-mail to Blackwater headquarters describing the situation and asking them to intercede. He had received no response by the next morning and so packed his stuff and headed to Baghdad.

November One's job for ESS was to accompany a truck convoy carrying kitchen equipment from Taji to Camp Ridgeway. Acting as security escort, they were to watch for anything unusual, deter any attacks, and, if engaged, deliver enough “lead on target” until they and the convoy could escape. Their weapons were standard M4s and Glock pistols, gear they were accustomed to in the military and knew how to use. However, they weren't familiar with the terrain and didn't know where and who the enemy was—that knowledge could only come with time and experience. The November One team was a typical security contractor detail—experienced men with enough skills between them to get out of most jams—but they hadn't all worked together before and lacked group cohesion. Additionally, they were handicapped by a deliberate shortage of manpower. Although they had the capability to send out full six-man teams, and Blackwater's contracts with ESS and each individual contractor required convoys to be accompanied by six-man teams, the manager in Baghdad, Tom Powell, decided to send out only four men that day.

Of all the questionable choices made by Blackwater management, T-Boy has been most confounded and troubled by the decision to send out only four men in the convoy. “The four-man issue is still a mystery to me as of today. Each team was made up of a six-man detail. Lessening their team by two was a decision that Tom Powell made. This was actually the first of two times this happened that I know of. My team was the second time. That morning, March 31 of 2004, my team was tasked with a mission to drive to the Jordanian border to pick up one or more VIPs and transport them to Baghdad…. Myself and another operator were held back by Tom while our team was sent out to complete this mission. We were told we would be assisting Tom with a movement somewhere, and he needed a few guys to help. I believe the other two guys from the other team were to assist as well. We never did, though…. We all know how crazy that would sound today if someone suggested such a trip under those conditions.”

Minimum standards for a security convoy dictate that an escort vehicle should have a driver, a passenger gunner, and a tail gunner to keep traffic back and respond with heavy fire to any pursuits. Rolling with just two men per vehicle meant that the driver would not only have to drive, but also watch his nine o'clock to twelve o'clock, as well as the rear sector. Even if the driver had a keen eye and quick reflexes, his gun would not be at the ready, but typically slung across his lap with his pistol rotated up to the top of his leg in the thigh holster. The passenger would have to watch the entire front right around to the back but could not respond to a threat outside of his field of fire from his front window. That left most of the vehicle open to rear ambush, hit and run, and continuous fire if the contractors had to speed away. Having another car with only two people did not double the effective force but could provide a getaway car or could double back to provide support fire if one vehicle came under attack.

Also contrary to Blackwater's contract with ESS, and each individual operator's written agreement with Blackwater, as previously mentioned, November One did not have armored vehicles. There are pros and cons to running hard skins or soft skins. Typically, a soft skin allows the team to shoot from open windows and rear tailgates if attacked. Awareness is heightened in a soft skin, since there is more access and sound coming from outside. A hard skin requires the doors to be cracked, since the windows are usually sealed and soundproofed by heavy glass. Blackwater drove hastily modified Pajeros with a steel plate crudely welded into the back to provide some protection for a well gunner, which did November One no good since the contractors chose to ride in the front seats.

Blackwater reportedly wanted to prove to ESS that they could rise to the challenge of such a tight schedule, and it seems management was under intense pressure to get men on the job. Soon after he had arrived for the ESS contract, T-Boy sensed that too many compromises were being made to get the convoys up and running ahead of schedule. “We knew even before we left Kuwait that this contract was doomed. The lack of resources and equipment were the most talked about issues. Some guys had more experience than others, but the general consensus was that this was going to be a really fucked-up contract…. Knowing what I know now, I will never operate under those conditions again. We didn't have the proper leadership or equipment to accomplish it. We were moving at warp speed and most of us had never been in a situation like this. The training was too short at that time. We deployed with semiautomatic weapons and NO machine guns, as required by contract. We were given soft skin vehicles and not hardened vehicles as per the contract. There was not enough cohesion amongst the guys to just drop into a hostile area like this and get the job done that quickly. It seemed like the only thing anyone was concerned about was the timetable, and we all know what that means—dollars. It was rush, rush, rush from the beginning. We never had a real chance at success.”

For their first security escort for ESS, which was scheduled to run days before the Blackwater contract was even scheduled to take effect, Powell was essentially sending out a token force that would barely be able to defend itself, let alone the large red trucks they were hired to protect. Essentially providing a security force in name but not in effectiveness, Powell's decision sent undermanned and underprotected teams into not just “a” danger spot but “the” danger spot, since the area around Fallujah was then a well-known base for anti-American insurgents.

In the spring of 2004, after a year of American presence, the violence in Iraq seemed to be evolving into near chaos, with kidnappings and armed attacks mounting. Residents of the Sunni Triangle in particular expressed a growing sense of anger as it appeared that the United States could not stem the tide of violence, but actually seemed to be exacerbating the insurgency by issuing “orders” that crystallized a view that Iraqis were living under American occupation. The perception of America as oppressor increasingly began to replace the idea of America as liberator.

Fallujah, along with Ramadi and other cities in the Sunni Triangle, were the strongholds of a rapidly expanding Sunni insurgency. Kidnapping gangs, insurgents, and former Baathists were using Fallujah as an operating base. In early March, the marines had taken over positions on the outskirts of the city from the 82nd Airborne, but their policy was to not venture into the urban combat zone that was the center of Fallujah. Instead, they decided to get tough on the growing insurgency by shutting down main roads and doing reconnaissance in force. On March 29, in an event cited by local leaders as the precipitating event that led to the violent orgy of bloody celebration after the contractors' murders, American soldiers opened fire on a crowd of protesters. Residents of Fallujah had come out to protest the U.S. military's occupation of a school building, but the soldiers said some among the crowd carried weapons. Seventeen locals died in the incident.

Fallujans had noticed that in addition to the military presence, groups of military-looking Westerners dressed as civilians were shuttling around the region working in support of the U.S. occupation. They could be easily identified by their sunglasses, short hair, safari-style clothing and, of course, their weapons. They shuttled between military bases and hotels in Iraq in tan pickups and white SUVs and had adopted an abrasive “guns up” attitude to keep plenty of distance between ordinary Iraqis and convoys. The word on the street was that these were CIA and their mercenaries. The Fallujans had no interest in the fine distinctions between real military OGA and civilian military contractors; they were all the enemy.

On March 29, the November One team stayed at a run-down hotel in Baghdad used by Blackwater as their Iraq headquarters. The next day, they were to drive to Taji, north of Baghdad, to meet up with three empty ESS trucks and escort them to Camp Ridgeway, west of Baghdad and Fallujah, in order to pick up some kitchen equipment. T-Boy thinks the men knew they had not been thoroughly prepared for the drive: “I know that Wes and Jerry didn't want to do this mission. I had heard that they protested this mission. This, I believe, was the day or evening before to Tom, but of course they went on and did as they were told.”

Batalona and Zovko had worked the area, but Helvenston and Teague had never been there before. The four men didn't seem to be sure of how the move was set up, and one Blackwater source says that the night before the move, the men asked the staff at the hotel for directions. Much public controversy has surrounded reports that the contractors had headed into unfamiliar and extremely dangerous terrain without even the benefit of maps to guide them. While T-Boy knows that the men were not issued maps by Blackwater management, he finds it highly unlikely that the men would have commenced their drive without tracking down a map from another source.

“It was reported that they didn't have any maps of that area. I'm not sure how true this is—that is, if they had maps in the vehicle with them from another source. I know Blackwater didn't issue them any maps because we were told they didn't have any of that area. This was untrue, of course, and I personally found several maps of Fallujah the day of the incident—but before we knew it was happening—amongst many other maps of the entire region of Iraq. I was tasked with sorting maps that morning, and knowing that we had been told that there were no maps of Fallujah, I was surprised to find them.” T-Boy didn't really think about the maps again until he read about the various charges made by the families.