Licensed to Kill (29 page)

Peter returns to his computer and pulls up a PowerPoint presentation, warning me not to cite any of the company names in it. Glancing down, he notices my iPod digital recorder that has been sitting on his desk throughout the conversation. “ARE YOU TAPING ME?!” he yelps, sounding panicked. I remind him of our earlier conversation in which I asked him if it was okay, but he staunchly refuses to continue unless I put it away. I tell him it's a good practice to check notes against a recording to ensure accuracy and that if he disagreed with any quotes, I would let him check it against the transcript.

Still not entirely comfortable with the idea, he at least settles down enough to continue. “We are breaking a lot of paradigms. We are outsourcing defensive operations not needing done by the military. You don't need them moving people around. You don't need them guarding the movement of supplies…. We are strictly involved in the defense of personnel, facilities, and logistical movements. We don't think we need soldiers to protect people. Let the soldiers kill people, render violence to our enemies.

“No company operating in Iraq has been hired for offensive operations. I read that they are conducting the war—that's bullshit.” Peter is getting himself worked up about the media again, so I ask for some hard numbers on how many contractors operate in Iraq.

He takes me through his own semiofficial estimates. He figures there are three to five thousand Americans working security, seven to ten thousand expats like South Africans or Brits, fifteen to twenty thousand TCNs (third-country nationals)—men from countries like Fiji, Nepal, the Philippines, and El Salvador—and twenty-five to thirty thousand Iraqi HCNs (host-country nationals). He admits that he bases his figures on anecdotal information, since the Iraqi Ministry of Interior will not give him those statistics, either, if they even exist. The thought gets him defensive again. “People think this is a clean-functioning country. Even Iraqi ministers use Hotmail and Yahoo accounts! People think that we sprinkle pixie dust and everything works!” My sitting calmly listening to him riles him up even more before he can manage to grit his teeth and return to the PowerPoint.

The next screen shows statistics about the typical security contractor. In Peter's estimation, the average security contractor working in Iraq is in his early forties and is a disciplined operator with more than twenty years in the military, including multiple overseas tours. He stresses that “just because a man gives up his uniform, does not means he gives up his professional ethics.”

He covers up the next slide on his computer monitor with a piece of white paper and asks me for my real opinion on contractors. I tell him that the Americans seem to be mainly nice people, mostly ex-marines or small-town cops with a smattering of senior special operations people. He stares at me with incredulity and asks with an exasperated tone, “No, tell me what you really think.” I repeat myself. Angrily, he lifts up the paper to reveal “Overpaid, Out of Control Cowboys.”

“Look, we are not talking about angels dancing on the head of a pin! You tell me if you have ever seen this phrase before!” he demands in rapid-fire speech as he leans forward and stares intensely into my eyes. I say no quietly, provoking a torrent of vitriol. “I expect YOU to give ME INFORMATION IF I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU INFORMATION!” I begin to silently ponder the tiny Mr. Peter's grip on reality. Luckily, a U.S. soldier comes in to discuss badge colors and something that sounds like the “MNF-ITAV sash policy procedure.”

The mundane bureaucratic exchange seems to have a calming effect on Peter, and we return to a more reasonable discussion of the public perception of contractors. Peter blames the media for not understanding the industry and for taking a few isolated examples and portraying them as being representative. “Who are the bad guys? Are they brought in maliciously? Are there unethical lawyers, priests, journalists? Or are all of them perfect?” Peter's mood has turned to one of divine absolution, seeking pardon for the sins of a few with the sacrifices of many.

“Contractors are doing it with limited weapons, struggling against overwhelming odds. I welcome Peter Singer [Brookings Institution fellow, author of
Corporate Warriors
] to come over and spend a month here. The pundits like to chuck javelins in here. We have regulation! CPA Order 17 covers the status of civilians here, and CPA Memo 17 says there is a code of law here!”

It is obvious as I leave Peter's cubicle that he doesn't get out of the Green Zone or mix with the average contractor much. If he did, he wouldn't be under the false impression that Memo 17—the CPA document that made contractors immune from Iraqi prosecution—ever significantly restrained their behavior.

One morning I wake up to find the combined mental energy of ten men trying to figure out how to jury-rig their satellite hookup to broadcast on the briefing room's computer projector. It's Thanksgiving in the States today and they want to watch football on the big screen. A cooler of steaks is scheduled to arrive on a transport flight from Amman, and the Mamba team doesn't want to be late, since their only alternative for Thanksgiving dinner would be processed turkey product and questionable gruel dished out at the KBR chow hall in the main palace.

We head for the airport, and the talk of steak takes away from the constant drudgery of watching for signals of an attack. It turns out to be a fairly uneventful run on Route Irish. As we pull in to the airport, however, we notice that a car that drove in the airport gates after us has pulled up a safe distance behind on the Arrivals level. An Iraqi man gets out of the car and starts shouting at us in Arabic. He waves what we assume to be an airport badge in the air and makes an attempt to appear less menacing by smiling through his anger as he approaches, trying to speak in broken English. He looks irate, and slightly comical, but not dangerous.

One of the contractors recognizes his car and says, “Hey, he was following too close, so I lit him up.” Since the Iraqi has authorized clearance to work at the airport, where he encounters Americans on a daily basis, he apparently did not understand why he should have to stay back from the convoy. When the warning shot zippered across the road in front of him, the man was actually pulling up closer to the rear Mamba to show the airport badge dangling from his rearview mirror—an innocent mistake that could have easily cost him his life.

Though it may sound like an example of a private security contractor wantonly endangering yet another Iraqi civilian, the standard rules of engagement did actually work as they should have in this instance. In a situation such as this, when a security convoy notices a car coming too close, State Department guidelines dictate that a contractor is first to give a shout and hand signal. If they keep coming, they get a warning shot across the road in front of them. If they continue, a shot is aimed at the engine or tires of the car. If the contractor has to fire again, they get a lethal burst of bullets to stop them dead. Depending on the speed of the car, it could be a matter of only a few seconds between the hand signal and a bullet to the head.

This Thanksgiving we would be thankful for the successful warning shot, but not for a delicious steak dinner. After all that hassle, it turned out the steaks somehow never made it, and we had to make the deadly run home without our precious cargo.

Some of the contractors, too dejected by the delayed steaks to think about eating, head to the gym to unwind after the run. The others, hungry enough for the bad cafeteria food provided by Kellogg, Brown and Root, head to the KBR chow hall in the main palace. The Iraqi women who cook breakfast and lunch must be home by curfew, so the guys have to take care of themselves for dinner. The army and contractors would probably live in squalor and nearly starve if they didn't have other contractors taking care of mundane tasks like cooking, laundry, and cleaning the toilets.

Baz, Guy, Rick, and I jump into one of the tiny armored Nissans to make our way to the cafeteria. At night, the Green Zone takes on an overwhelmingly eerie feel. Thick dust turns headlights into solid beams, and the growl of tanks and trucks seems always just on the edge of where the light falters. The ever-present guttural rumbling of heavy machinery is haunting, though it is impossible to actually see the military vehicles unless they turn on their blazing spotlights. We drive past the traffic circles and pull into a massive parking lot filled with an ocean of SUVs. It takes a quick wave of ID to get past the ever-smiling Global Security–contracted Gurkhas. Guy waves to the rows of filthy dusty vehicles and tells me that the insurgents have learned to identify Americans because their cars are never washed. “Iraqis don't drive dirty cars,” Guy says.

Along the broken sidewalk and concertina wire, a steady stream of soldiers and military contractors intermingles with an army of helmeted and armored aging civilian contractors dragging their briefcases. These days, civilian contractors must wear armor and helmets inside the Green Zone because of the mortar attacks. They are not issued guns. Even so, watching them slog slump-shouldered through the dark, I think of how they are Baghdad's tired mercenary army of Samsonite-bearing bureaucrats.

Just outside the palace entrance, contractors and bureaucrats stand around and smoke just as they would outside any other office building where smoking is banned. The Green Zone seems, in effect, a miniaturized quasi-America with U.S. rules imposed on a secured island in the midst of chaos. Or perhaps more accurately, the exaggerated architecture of Saddam suggests an Iraq pavilion at EPCOT, if Disney would duplicate the background soundtrack of mortar fire and bomb blasts.

The surreal effect continues once inside the palace. A massive central hall with an impressively high arching ceiling dominates the entryway, designed by Saddam to intimidate by invoking the type of scale and drama found at the Vatican and other famous public buildings. Down below on the marble floors, lines of drably uniformed soldiers, young volunteers, and paunchy bureaucrats line up for a cafeteria-style dinner. Signing in on the contractor clipboard means the meal will be billed back to Blackwater at $27 per person. A row of smiling Filipinos, all workers subcontracted to KBR, serve the lukewarm food. Much of the food is flown in from the States, with all the familiar brands and logos found half a world away. The Green Zone even has an American telephone area code.

The main chow hall brings together a spectacular gathering of khakis and bad haircuts. Long-haired civilians, young Republicans, contractors with T-shirts and sunglasses, Americans of every shape and size have all come to Iraq for their own reasons—some out of patriotism or a sense of duty. Most civilians, if not all, have come because they can make more money working in Iraq than they ever could back home.

In the crowded field of cheap banquet furniture, we find a big round table left over from Saddam's days. Guy waves at other contractors wearing armor plates and carrying weapons along with their food trays. Those in civilian dress stand out. A young man of about twenty-five with long hair, sunglasses, and a loud shirt—an out-of-place hip dude with a big camera—comes over to join us at our table. He is one of many Republican congressional aides recruited and sent over to work for the CPA. He starts chattering immediately and gives an introductory self-description: “I was a congressional aide in Miami making up numbers to get money. I signed on for this and came over for a job that didn't exist. I have done all kinds of jobs I know nothing about. Now I am doing accounting. I hate accounting. I hate numbers.”

He calls himself a New Yorker, which catches the attention of a Blackwater contractor, a former cop from New York, who says, “Hey, stop telling people you're from New York. Just tell them you're from wherever you live. You make New Yorkers look bad.” The contractor with the Brooklyn accent then apologizes and explains his crankiness by telling of the difficulties he has had repatriating the bodies of dead Blackwater contractors. The experience has made him sick of the bureaucracy in the Green Zone. “We're trying to send an American citizen home with his brother on the same flight, and they're making us jump through hoops. When a government employee dies, he is a ‘special agent'; when one of us dies, we're ‘security guards.'”

There are no “heroes” in the private security world, just dead employees adding to a company's tragic attrition statistic. Mike says that Blackwater tries to take care of its own, but that can make for a delicate balance since each contractor does sign on fully aware of the risks and without any promise of postmortem benefits other than basic DBA insurance. Perhaps this offers the coldest and clearest sign that the business end of warfare requires a mercenary attitude. Private security has no ideology, no homeland, no flag. There is no God and country. There is only the paycheck. If a contractor dies in the defense of his paycheck, his employer sends his family a final one, often calculated to the hour of his death, along with a cardboard box containing his personal effects. Beyond that, neither the contractor's employer nor the U.S. government has any legal responsibility to the surviving family members.

A contractor's death does not dictate any formality other than repatriation of the remains and the filing of forms for insurance purposes, though Mike Rush personally flew to Hawaii to inform Wes Batalona's wife of his death. “We think of these people as our family, and we do what we can.”

Dinner wraps up on a fairly somber note and we head home. At the final U.S. military checkpoint before the house, a massive spotlight blasting into our SUV turns the dirty windshield into a glow of brilliant white. We are supposed to wait until waved forward, but it's impossible to see the marine at the gate. “You would think they would buy these guys flashlights,” Guy says.

He rolls down the window as we pull up, taking time to talk to the soldiers manning the checkpoint as he shows his ID on his arm band. “How you guys doing tonight?”