Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  There was another difference between Afghanistan and Iraq—one that would become critically important to me. In Afghanistan, the contractors knew the rules about enemy contact, and they were grim. If you were wounded, you had no instant medevac—no real medical care to speak of, in fact—and certainly not the lifelong benefits so critical with war wounds. Worst of all, if captured, you had little hope of rescue. If you were hit on the wrong side of the Pakistani border and couldn’t haul yourself out, you were stuck. You weren’t even going to be acknowledged. The “leave no man behind” ethos had been left behind with the regular military. In Afghanistan, contractors were expendable.

  In Iraq, though, the contractors always assumed that if things got really bad, they could count on the Marines or the army to bail them out of a jam. The reason was simple: the regular troops knew the contractors provided many of the supplies they needed to live, so they felt enough pragmatic self-interest to offer what help and protection they could. Marines would quietly pass the contractors grenades and extra ammo, to be sure they had the best chance of survival in a crisis. Nobody anticipated things getting so hot that the regular troops would be fighting for their lives and wouldn’t have time for the cowboys who worked for bigger bucks.

  That was what happened in Fallujah, only a stone’s throw from Ramadi, where I was embedded with one of Paul’s teams. I’m not sure why Paul had his guys there, when their job was protecting a German engineer employed by the United States in Fallujah. I suspected that Paul didn’t want his guys living too close to the bigger contracting outfits. Maybe he didn’t like the way his men stacked up against the competition. They were underequipped, for one thing, though Paul was bringing more gear and assets online every week. At that time ShieldCorp owned two Mambas—armored South African vehicles that mounted a light machine gun and had gun ports for the operators riding inside. ShieldCorp also owned six regular cars, which served as escort vehicles. But the company’s pride and joy was its Little Bird, the small but doughty helicopter originally designed by Hughes Aircraft, now fitted out as a gunship that could also serve as medevac in a pinch. Paul occasionally flew the Little Bird himself, but for the hairy stuff he had a former Special Forces pilot on his payroll, from the 160th SOAR out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The guy was a bit long in the tooth, but he could fly that chopper through a parking garage if you paid him enough.

  I started in Iraq by riding along on three separate convoy escorts with ShieldCorp’s first Mamba team—Sierra Alpha—from Baghdad International Airport to the Green Zone. During those runs, our Mamba took dozens of rounds of machine-gun fire, several sniper rounds, and survived one IED detonation. After that near miss, I had the distinction of being able to say I’d been “blowed up” in Iraq. I also saw two Iraqi civilian passenger cars destroyed by Sierra Alpha for getting too close and not backing off after warning shots were fired in front of them. This happened in reasonably heavy traffic, and it reset my whole idea of America’s war tactics. What I’d witnessed was private U.S. citizens shooting Iraqi civilians prophylactically, without ever being fired upon. Such was the anxiety created by previous insurgent suicide attacks that the military was willing to overlook contractors killing civilians for getting too close to their supply convoys on civilian highways.

  Paul’s second team—Sierra Bravo—had been providing security for the German engineer in Fallujah and Ramadi. Protective detail work was different from airport escort duty. In that situation, a ShieldCorp team worked what was called a “diamond” around a VIP. In case of attack, the team’s primary responsibility was getting the protectee “off the X” and to safety. The team could return fire defensively, but its main mission was to avoid escalating contact.

  During its first six weeks of duty, beginning in February 2004, Sierra Bravo’s coverage of the engineer had gone smoothly. There’d been a couple of incidents with thrown rocks and bottles, but the team had evacuated its VIP in seconds with no shots fired and no casualties. However, the general situation in Central Iraq had begun deteriorating. That same month, disgruntled veterans from Iraq’s disbanded army had ignited a nationwide insurgency. On February 12, in Fallujah, they launched an RPG and machine-gun attack on U.S. commanding general John Abizaid and Eighty-Second Airborne general Charles Swannack. Eleven days later, they simultaneously attacked three Iraqi police stations and freed close to ninety insurgent prisoners. The situation was spinning out of control so rapidly that General Swannack placed al-Anbar Province under the direct authority of a Marine Expeditionary Force. On March 27 a U.S. special operations surveillance team was flushed out of hiding and had to fight its way out of Fallujah. Four days later, a massive roadside bomb killed five soldiers of the First Infantry Division as they worked to clear a supply road used by private contractors.

  All this was only prelude to the March 31 ambush that wiped out the four Blackwater contractors. It was then that I arrived in-country. After my “initiation” riding with the airport convoys, Paul invited me to Ramadi to live with the Sierra Bravo protection team. Compared to the War Wagon gauntlet of the convoys, protective duty seemed almost soporific.

  Until it didn’t.

  On April 4 U.S. forces launched punitive surgical strikes into Fallujah. By the next morning, they’d surrounded the city, and tension across the country rose to an ominous pitch. The climate in Ramadi, which had seemed calm only days before, suddenly made us feel like a lone outpost on the edge of civilization. Ninety percent of the Iraqis who walked past the house Sierra Bravo used as its base scowled openly at us, and the two Iraqis employed by the team—an interpreter and a cook—got so nervous that they couldn’t sleep.

  I wondered why we didn’t just evacuate until the battle for Fallujah ended, but Paul took his orders from the Pentagon, and that meant staying put. In a matter of hours, one-third of the population of Fallujah fled the city. The insurgents who remained were armed with RPGs, heavy machine guns, mortars, and antiaircraft cannons. Once American forces attacked Fallujah in earnest, all Central Iraq exploded into chaos. The Mahdi army declared itself and began attacking Coalition targets, and in Ramadi, a full-on Sunni rebellion sparked to fire. As chaos erupted around us, Paul moved the German engineer out of his private house and in with the protective team. Paul’s sources told him that many Iraqi national police officers had turned on the Coalition and he shouldn’t look to anyone in a police uniform for aid. With no other option, we hunkered down to wait out the fighting.

  The Ramadi insurgents had a different idea. They’d known about the Sierra Bravo house for months, and they had no intention of giving us a pass. At two p.m. on April 8, a hundred Iraqi men gathered in the street in front of our house, and half of them carried either Kalashnikovs or American M4s donated by the Iraqi police. Inside the house, we had eight ShieldCorp contractors, two Iraqis (the cook and the interpreter, both males), the German VIP, and me—the embedded journalist. By Paul’s calculations, we had enough food and water to last three days and enough ammunition for about the same, depending on the intensity of any assault. If the insurgents brought up mortars or antiaircraft guns, of course, the equation would change radically.

  Paul’s biggest regret was that our team’s Mamba had not been on site when the rebellion broke out. It was being serviced in Baghdad, which was two hours away on a good day. By the time Paul called Team Sierra Alpha to rescue us in the other Mamba, the insurgents had sealed off our section of Ramadi with roadblocks. A call to the Joint Task Force brought a similar answer and some free advice: Keep your heads down until we take Fallujah. Then we’ll escort you back to the Green Zone. The army didn’t seem to realize that regaining control of Fallujah might take more than a few days. (In the end it took six months.)

  The first shots near our house went off around 4:00 p.m. It was sporadic fire, directed skyward, but it rattled the hell out of me. Paul ordered his men to hold fire. Ten minutes later, the first clips were emptied against the windows and front wall of our house. Concentrated bursts chipped away huge chun
ks of brick and stone and shredded the plywood that Paul’s men had used to barricade the windows. Paul was on the first floor with me. He shouted that everyone’s guns were “cleared hot,” but they should still hold their fire to the last possible moment. The ShieldCorp guys had cut gun ports in the plywood with a jigsaw, and they’d posted their three best snipers on the roof of the two-story house. But all obeyed Paul’s order and silently watched the insurgents blast the face of the building without letup. As the walls shuddered around me, I realized that unless a JSOC team dropped out of the sky in a couple of Black Hawks, this was the Alamo.

  When Paul finally shouted the order to return fire, the Iraqis in the street began dropping three and four at a time. There’s nothing quite like watching the effect of automatic rifles in the hands of skilled soldiers with good fire discipline. Team Sierra Bravo cleared that street in less than two minutes. The problem—as we all knew—was that the Iraqis had virtually unlimited replacements in Ramadi, while we had none. We couldn’t even replenish our ammunition. I wasn’t firing, of course, but I was absolutely part of the group. We were going to live or die together.

  After the street emptied out, Paul called a quick conference in the kitchen. So far as he knew, we had no hope of rescue. Sierra Alpha couldn’t reach us, and the army and the Marines were too hotly engaged elsewhere to bother with us. The German engineer asked about ShieldCorp’s Little Bird, which sounded like one of God’s angels at that moment. Surely, I thought, with enough covering fire, it could pluck us off the roof and whisk us to safety. Of course, with a crew of two, the helicopter could hold only six passengers, but I felt the logistics could be worked out. Maybe we could divide into two groups and escape in two runs. Paul explained that CENTCOM had grounded private aircraft in this zone, at least for the time being. Cobra gunships and low-altitude ScanEagle drones were swarming over the flat roofs of Fallujah, and the Joint Task Force didn’t want any confusion created by pilots not under its direct command. We were, Paul announced, going to have to hold out through the night.

  Silence greeted this assertion. Then one contractor, an older Ranger named Eddie Curtz, said, “Just another day in paradise. Let’s go earn our money.”

  Paul quickly outlined his defense plan, which included three-hour slots for pairs of men to sleep. He also issued weapons to the German, the cook, the interpreter, and me. To my surprise, the cook refused to arm himself. He was so afraid of what might happen to him in the hands of the insurgents that he was barely functioning. The interpreter accepted a 9 mm Glock pistol. Paul handed me an M4A1 rifle.

  “It’s set on semi mode,” he said, showing me the selector switch. “But if they get within ten yards of the building, flip it to rock and roll.”

  The weapon was heavier than I’d expected it to be.

  “The second wave will be coming soon,” Paul told me. “About dusk, I imagine. I want you to stay with me on the ground floor.” As we walked into the room he’d been covering before, he leaned in and whispered, “You scared?”

  “Shitless, buddy.”

  He laughed. “It’s just like being on the kickoff team back in Bienville. Only with guns.”

  “Those kickoffs were over in twenty seconds, max,” I said through gritted teeth. “This is going to last a lot longer.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and I saw then that Paul believed we might well die in the next few minutes.

  “Where’s the German?” I asked.

  “Upstairs, center of the building. He’s too valuable to expose.”

  We each sat at a boarded-up window and waited, staring through our firing slits like hunters in a duck blind. About twenty minutes later, as shadows slid across the street, our cook made a run for it. We knew because one of the ShieldCorp men shouted it from the kitchen.

  “Dumbass,” Paul muttered, and I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the cook or the contractor. Thirty seconds later he said, “See?”

  Two insurgents shoved our cook into view across the road, while keeping behind cover themselves. They shot him in the stomach first. After he screamed and fell to his knees, they stood him up straight and shot him in the face.

  I felt like I was going to vomit, but I held it down.

  “No chance of the Alpha team breaking through to get us?” I asked.

  “I’ve been texting them,” Paul said, not taking his eyes from his slit. “But they’d have to fight their way through two roadblocks. Burning tires, RPGs, overwhelming odds. Our best bet is the Little Bird. But if I disobey Joint Task Force command, they could kick us out of Iraq for good.”

  “Who gives a shit?! You’d be alive at least.”

  Paul grinned. “I hear you, Goose. Let me see if I can get us some help breaching a roadblock.”

  Goddamn it, I thought angrily. We’re in the fucking Alamo, and this idiot’s trying to save his business—

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Paul said in a softer voice, alternating between his cell phone screen and his firing port. “Jet’s father was from this part of the world. Yet we’re over here fighting, maybe dying, and she’s back in Bienville, safe as houses.”

  Bringing up Jet should have been awkward, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  “So what the fuck are we doing here?” I asked.

  Paul laughed. “I’m making a buck. You’re telling a story about me making a buck. Any questions deeper than that, I don’t ask. That’s your department.”

  “I hope I live to answer them.”

  He looked over at me then, without guile or intent. “Let’s hope one of us makes it back. If not, Jet’ll have to start over again with God knows what loser.”

  The second wave came as Paul predicted, when the whole street had fallen under the shadow of oncoming night. Team Bravo knocked down twenty more Iraqis in the first two minutes, but the hajis—as the ShieldCorp guys called the insurgents—were getting smarter about cover. They’d also brought up some real shooters this time. Ten minutes into the second fight, we lost two guys almost simultaneously. One had a sucking chest wound; the other caught a 7.62 round in the forehead. After that, Paul had to take over one of the dead guys’ positions, leaving me to cover our room alone. Before he left, he drew a small automatic pistol from an ankle holster and passed it to me.

  “You know what that’s for,” he said in a taut voice.

  “No way,” I told him.

  “Goose.” He looked hard into my eyes. “A .380 round beats the shit out of having your head sawed off and your parents watching it later.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I love you, brother.”

  I nodded, my throat sealed shut with fear.

  Then he left me.

  In that moment, the terror of every nightmare I’d ever had came to vivid life. I was utterly alone, surrounded by men bent on killing me—or, worse, hurting me very badly, then killing me, and doing it all on camera. Worst of all, I wasn’t trained for the situation. I had only the vaguest notion of how to defend myself. My only consolation was that a lot of the insurgents outside probably knew less about guns than I did.

  I was visualizing the Little Bird landing on our roof like the angel Gabriel when the hajis rolled an antiaircraft cannon into the street before our house. The mere sight of its gaping muzzle loosened my anal sphincter. What remained of our shelter could not possibly stand against that weapon.

  The first round from the cannon blasted our front door into metal splinters, announcing the terminal phase of the battle. A Bravo sniper on the roof killed several hajis in succession as they manned the gun, but the fourth gunner finally obliterated our sharpshooters. Then the cannon opened up in earnest. When the front wall had so many holes in it that collapse seemed imminent, the insurgents charged across the street.

  At that moment, my conscious mind departed the proceedings. With weird detachment I watched my right thumb flip the selector switch to auto. Then I shoved my muzzle back through the slit and emptied a clip into the mass of charging bodies. For three dilated seconds the rifle shu
ddered against my shoulder. Blood and tissue exploded into the air, men screamed like women, and I saw my fire stagger the charge. Then my clip ran dry. The insurgents recovered, and they kept coming.

  Whoever was still alive on our upper floor kept knocking men down, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Seeing an extra magazine on the floor at my feet, I ejected the clip and reached for it. Then something slammed into the side of my head, and the lights went out.

  I woke up to find myself lying on the table we had eaten at, with four wild-eyed Iraqis standing over me. I didn’t know how much time had passed, and no one would tell me. So far as I could tell, only one spoke any English, and all he would say was that my comrades were dead. When I protested that I was a journalist, they laughed and held up the M4 I’d used against them. A haze of unreality descended over me. My limbs went numb. My heart slammed against my sternum, yet I felt disconnected from my body. I don’t know if my blood pressure was crashing or at stroke level, but I remember thinking, If they cut my throat, it’s going to spurt ten feet.

  I wanted to ask if Paul was really dead, but it seemed pointless. They didn’t know who Paul was. And if he was alive, admitting I cared about him couldn’t possibly help either of us. One of the Iraqis was shouting into his cell phone, and I got the idea that he meant to deliver me to someone higher up the chain. Or maybe that’s what he was being ordered to do, while he preferred to kill me on the spot and film it with the camcorder one of his buddies had aimed at me.

  They went back and forth about this for five minutes, and during that time I pissed myself. I don’t like admitting that. I felt strangely ashamed in the moment. I remember thinking that John Wayne and Robert Mitchum never pissed themselves in this kind of situation. At least not in the movies. I felt I was regressing to infancy in the presence of men who already despised me. I suppose I was. I thought of my mother and how she would mourn me, her second son, who had also died before his time. I also wondered what my father would feel, hearing of my death while on assignment. Would he finally respect me? For dying in pursuit of our shared profession?