Licensed to Kill (26 page)

CHAPTER 8

         

Running the Gauntlet

“'Twas the night before Christmas in Baghdad, Iraq
All the Mamba Crewmen were tucked in their rack
The defenses were set in impeccable form
And I had just settled down to surf Internet porn
When out in the street I heard such a clatter
It wasn't a mortar so what was the matter?
In full kit I ran out and what should appear
It was Rudolf, he was wounded, he was one fucked up reindeer.
He said Santa's sleigh had been hit by a Strela
The old man burned in and was captured by al Qaeda….”

—E
XCERPT FROM
C
HRISTMAS E-MAIL FROM THE
M
AMBA TEAM HOUSE

The Blackwater team house sits off the main road inside the Green Zone, through a field of smoldering trash piles and dead dogs. The pungent smell of rotting carcasses and the smoke from melting plastic burns my nostrils. In a rudimentary form of security gate system, an armored blue truck blocks the turnoff toward the house. An Iraqi relaxing in a white plastic lawn chair gives us barely a glance before jumping into the truck to move it out of our way. The Triple Canopy contractors who have driven me from the airport talk shit about Blackwater's apparent lack of security, bemoaning the Iraqi's failure to even ask for IDs. I just view it as being polite. Who else would three bulky Americans in a black BMW 7 series be, other than fellow contractors?

Most of the closely set houses lining the street look abandoned, though security firms or squatters have overtaken many. We pull up in front of the open gate of a walled compound. Two massive untrimmed date palms decorate the small front yard of Blackwater's two-story nondescript dust-coated cinderblock box of a house. Even with squalid, trash-filled surroundings, real estate prices in Baghdad could match that of Paris, London, or New York, and this slightly dilapidated structure costs Blackwater $80,000 a year, a virtual steal since now nothing is available for less than $12,000 to $15,000 a month. Sandbags cover the windows; ammunition boxes, coolers, and broken lawn chairs litter the yard; and the thrumming of an uncovered diesel generator provides the background pulse of the scene.

Inside, the Chileans are watching a Spanish satellite channel on the big-screen TV, while the Americans sit perched with large laptops, looking up briefly at my entrance before getting back to e-mails and Web surfing. Posted on the wall above them reads a sign warning,
NO PORN
, in a show of perhaps unintended irony. Men weighted down with tan utility rigs walk bowlegged in and out of the kitchen door where three smiling Iraqi women are frying indeterminate meat patties. I have arrived at what will be my home for the next month, since I've come to Baghdad to hang out with the Blackwater team and to ride along on their daily airport runs. I will be here through most of November and early December 2004, a time period that will coincidentally turn out to be the month with the highest rate of attacks on the airport road. The director of operations, Mike Rush, has been assigned to babysit me, but Mike seems to be out. No one seems to take particular notice of my presence, so I decide to take a look around on my own.

The house smells of cooked coffee, frozen hamburger patties, and sautéed onions. Past the front door is the kitchen, where most of the men will eat standing up and the coffeepot is always on brew. I note that it looks like the flies swarm as furiously inside the house as outside. The washing machine hums as it churns the sand out of tan clothes, and pyramids of glistening blue bottles of water stock all the available shelf space. Down the hall in the briefing room, a giant map of Baghdad with dozens of marker points indicating locations of recent attacks covers one wall.

I peek inside the office marked with a sign reading
KEEP DOOR CLOSED
where a barrel-chested man with a salt-and-pepper goatee is sitting at a desk talking on the phone. “Yeah, we will send in air assets….” Looking up and noticing my presence, he growls, “Whoever you are, get the hell out of my office and close the door.”

“That was Guy Gravino, former Special Forces reserve team sergeant on a mar ops team,” a contractor explains as I turn back to the hallway. Guy is former Special Forces but current C1 commander of the Mamba team. The Mamba team was initially created as a heavy, gunned-up rapid-response team for the Bremer detail but now runs contractors and VIPs to and from the Green Zone to BIAP.

I'm advised that I can stow my backpack in one of the bedrooms, so I head for the stairs. On the second floor, stacks of M4 rifle cases, ammo boxes, and sandbags line the hallway. Postings on the wall outline defense perimeters and evac plans. Each bedroom sleeps three to six in a random mixture of bunk beds, foldout cots, and simple wooden-framed singles. The only common theme to the décor is that nothing looks permanent. Each man has a locker and his shaving kit, and collections of CDs, books, and mememtos. It's clear from the lack of clutter and the perfect stacks and right angles of things that the military discipline of keeping personal space impeccably clean does not wear off. Even so, I have the odd feeling that I have moved in to a frat house filled with heavy weaponry.

The roof has a deck covered with heavy netting where I will end up spending many late evenings drinking, smoking, and talking with the guys over the next month. What looks like new exercise equipment sits abandoned and coated in a thick layer of dust. Some of the apparatus looks homemade, like coffee tins filled with concrete, but some is the latest in high tech. Regular mortar and sniper attacks in the area make the open roof vulnerable, so most of the men work out at a gym in Saddam's old palace.

The roof offers a bleak view of the surrounding city—an endless panorama of featureless tan structures stretching into the distance on all sides. Just beyond the house, tanks and other tracked vehicles roar and clatter up a road that looks boxed in like a canyon with its high concrete T-walls. Concertina wire decorates the back side of the T-walls, supposedly to keep the Iraqis from getting close to the road. Blackhawk and Apache helicopters rumble low across the sky, adding a mechanical soundtrack to this vision of a war zone.

Heading back downstairs, I go into the TV room to get to know my new temporary housemates. Looking around at the guys hanging out in the TV room leaves no doubt that this is a type of tribal gathering. These men appear connected through their style of dress, manner of speaking, attitudes, and culture. Sharp-edged swirling tattoos, shaved heads, bulging biceps, and short beards or goatees comprise the common “look” they wear. Their inside jokes, reliance on acronyms, and use of nicknames makes them seem to even have their own particular way of communicating. Contractors each earn a radio call sign nickname, which often changes if the contractor does something new that deserves to be enshrined in permanence for future ribbing purposes. They can't pick their own names but have to live with whatever the others may have chosen for them. For example, Shrek and Miyagi are named after film characters they resemble, while 86 and Cougar have done something to earn their titles.

Barry, or “Baz,” an ex-SAS Kiwi, and Rick, aka “Baghdaddy,” a blond-haired American former police chief, run the house along with the gruff Guy Gravino. Miyagi leads the team I'll be riding along with on the daily Mamba runs. He explains to me that I'll meet “nothing but type A guys here.” In the peculiar parlance of the team, he says they are all “shit hot.”

Although most people would assume that guns are the primary obsession of any contractor in Iraq, it is actually the laptop. Contractors can buy generic laptops cheaply at the PX in Camp Victory near the airport, and the computers provide a lifeline to their home, family, and news from outside the sandbox.

Inquiring about the
NO PORN
sign posted on the wall brings a round of laughter from the room, and the group finally starts to relax and feel comfortable with my presence as they delve into a lengthy discussion about the best XXX sites on the Web. They all seem to enjoy Bangerbus.com. One suggests I would like GBS—Gang Bang Squad—but another disagrees and they argue. The conversation descends into bickering, and I hear other suggestions for MILF Hunter or Mike's Apartment before we return to more serious topics.

I learn in my first conversation with the Blackwater team that, for them, living in Iraq means boredom, fear, and the type of deep friendship born of shared extreme experience. Most of all, however, Iraq means money. Every time the clock ticks past midnight it means another day, another mission, and another $500 to $600 in the bank. Many of those with wives and children seek contractor gigs in Iraq because their specialized skill set qualifies them for little more than low-wage security work in the States, and the money they are able to send home somewhat tempers the pain of separation. For some without a wife and kids waiting at home, the extra income does little to assuage the loneliness of feeling disconnected from their home community. T-Boy has made some unconventional friends to keep him company during his stay in Baghdad, and they carry on in the screeching chorus that underlies our entire conversation.

Just outside the door and under the stairs, T-Boy keeps a large cage housing two budgies, small colorful and speckled birds. T-Boy shows me their nest and explains that they lost one baby, and he is hoping their last egg hatches. Most of the house can't comprehend why the former marine loves the little things so much. They can't get past the damned shrieking. During my month in the house, I will come to enjoy the incongruous portrait of this muscular, shaven-headed man, dressed head to toe in black with a variety of aggressively macho T-shirts and festooned with skull tattoos, who spends time quietly cooing and talking to these delicate little birds after hard runs to the airport.

Blackwater VP and head of security Mike Rush arrives, to the relief of the team charged with keeping a “reporter” occupied. Tall, quiet, focused, and intense, Rush gives the immediate impression of being a man with too much to do. He has no shortage of problems to manage, considering that he not only handles operations for such a rapidly expanding company as Blackwater, but also must do so amid the chaos of Iraq. His only chance to unwind comes at night, up on the roof.

That night is cold and clear on the roof of the team house. Two big bottles of Crown Royal, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and a case of Belgium-made Corona appear. Baz brings out a black Pelican case that holds his best expensive cigars—Macanudos, Monte Cristos, and a selection of various special-edition Cubans, all shipped in from a cigar business he has on the side. The team gathers around and starts the joking and ribbing. The sound of our laughter echoes off the square ugly buildings around us, while the generator hums quietly below.

Then we hear a small boom followed by a massive ba-DOOM! It sounds like a car bomb, somewhere in the direction of the palace a few hundred yards away. The men cock their ears, listening for more. It's apparently unusual that they haven't heard the spinning, whooshing sound of mortars all evening. Four Gurkha contractors were killed in a mortar attack yesterday, Mike tells me, pointing off to one side of the roof. They lived in tents about a hundred yards away and were attacked while they slept. Four dead makes for a particularly bad day in their world, since Mike recalls that during one of the statistically worst periods there were 3.24 contractors killed every week. The sound of a loud hailer and sirens emanates from a nearby military checkpoint, but the drinking, smoking, talking, and laughing resumes, unfazed by the sounds of war floating up through the darkness.

Despite driving daily on what is arguably the most dangerous road in the world, the contractors say the job is boring. The car bombs, road closures, snipers, IEDs, and endless morning briefings have grown routine. Some days, incoming intel about a possible attack causes a delay. Sometimes Route Irish closes while the army cleans up yet another massive explosion. Occasionally the Little Birds will ferry the VIPs to the airport, leaving the contractors at the team house to putter around doing maintenance or cleaning, but on most days the Mamba team has to gear up and psych up for the drive themselves. I have a hard time imagining how a four-mile, high-intensity, hard-rolling run through the gauntlet could ever become boring, but my new friends tell me I will learn differently soon enough. Around midnight, the trash bag clinks with the sound of empty Corona and Crown Royal bottles as the contractors drift off to catch a few hours of sleep before the sun rises.

The next morning the routine begins. The Mr. Coffee hums on constant perc as contractors dump each freshly brewed pot into their large mugs or flasks. Iraqi gals arrive to fry up a greasy breakfast of potatoes, eggs, and some type of ground and compressed meat patties. The smart contractors settle down in front of their own recently purchased personal laptops with wireless connections, while the others have to compete for the two house computers. With their mugs of coffee nearby, and amid a din of raucous banter, the contractors settle into the overstuffed chairs of the TV room for a long morning session of instant messaging, Hotmailing, and Yahooing across time zones. For those who don't have girlfriends or wives, bills need to be paid or online finances need to be otherwise managed, since the general crap of life continues regardless of the circumstances of their job. Griz opens an e-mail to discover that his wife has painted the walls of his house brown. “What the fuck!” he complains loudly, calling over the rest of the team to look at the photos. As the others huddle around his computer, expressing their sympathy for his wife's bad taste, Griz continues to grumble, “It's too dark. Fuck! Fuck…”

The team mechanic, Tool, so named for obvious reasons, has already gone outside to start his work for the day. Tool inspects the Mambas to make sure they're all running smoothly, particularly checking for water in the diesel fuel tanks since they have had some problems recently. Tool takes extreme care with his routine once-over, since it could be disastrous to have one of the Mambas come to a sputtering stop at mile two on Route Irish.