The Siege

by Damien Lewis

  I can understand Arabic pretty well, but at the speed Skinny Guy was talking most of it was going over my head. I felt in my pocket for my wallet. I fished inside and pulled out my British Embassy ID card. It was three years out of date, and it was from when I’d run a private security team for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—the British equivalent of the State Department—in wartorn Afghanistan. On first glance it looked fairly impressive, with the British Embassy’s coat of arms, plus the red, white, and blue Union Jack flag.

  I flicked it down on the desk, knowing that this was my lastgasp chance. Most Arabs who can speak English can’t actually read it, just as I can speak Arabic but can barely read a word. With the alphabets being so completely different—our own being Roman lettering, Arabic being Abjad script—reading and writing are the real challenge. Arabic is even written the other way around—from right to left—from how we write.

  I was banking on the fact that Skinny Guy would recognize the symbols—the flag, the coat of arms—and miss the fact that it was an ID card for the wrong country and well out of date. If I’d misjudged him, I was finished, but this was last-chance saloon kind of stuff right now.

  Skinny Guy tightened his grip on the pistol. He glared at the ID card, then back at me. “What is this?”

  “British Embassy ID card. Like I said, you steal the money it’s the British Ambassador you’ll have to answer to.”

  He picked up the pistol and for a moment I thought—Here it comes, I’m gonna get pistol-whipped. It was a big, heavy, Soviet-era Makarov, and a few blows from that would be seriously bad news. Pistol-whipping breaks bones, and I wasn’t keen on having my face rearranged for the sake of thirty thousand dollars in Libyan dinar. For a second or so Skinny Guy seemed to weight the weapon in his hand, before he inverted it and slipped it back into the holster at his side.

  He stared at me. “Go. Get out. Now.”

  I started stuffing the money back into the bag, cursing the fact there was so much that it was a struggle to make it fit. I kept my eyes downcast so as not to give him the slightest excuse to change his mind. I heard Jaws open the door behind me. I feared it could be one last act to really mess with my head—show me the way to freedom, before kicking seven bales of shit out of me.

  I turned to leave. “Shokran,” I muttered. Thank you.

  I moved toward the big guy, my heart beating like a machine gun.

  The door stayed open and I slipped through, practically sprinting down the corridor.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I turned the final corner leading to the departure gate, green day pack griped tight to my shoulder. A crowd of people was milling about—my fellow passengers. Thank God I hadn’t missed the flight. I wanted out of Tripoli as soon as. I couldn’t wait to get to Benghazi and the Embassy, where we’d have a screen of American security all around, and I’d be away from the power-crazed, guntoting militias.

  But as I strode toward the gate, in every direction I looked people were staring. My fellow passengers were gazing at me mouths agape. Did they all somehow know about the money? I wondered. I was starting to get paranoid. But no doubt, people were staring. I felt like saying: What the hell are you lot looking at?

  I head a voice speaking in what sounded like an Australian accent. “Best get to the toilet, mate. You’ve got blood all over your face. That’s why everyone’s eyeballing you.” The speaker was a crew-cut white guy in his early forties. He nodded at a bathroom that was adjacent to the gate.

  I thanked him for the tip. In the bathroom mirror I could see why I’d got all the looks. My face was a mess of split lips and dried blood. I filled a sink with warm water and did my best to sponge it off. I’d taken worse beatings than this and more often than not on the rugby pitch, but I hated the fact that such scum as those Zintan Militia boys had had the power of life or death over me.

  My face cleaned up a little, I called Steve, the country manager. “I’m at the departure gate and I’ve still got the money,” I told him, “but I’ve taken a beating in the process.”

  He assured me that Dan Barnfield, the Blue Mountain Benghazi rep, would be waiting for me at the other end, and that there were no more security checks ahead of me. I guessed he’d been banking on the fact that I wouldn’t hand the cash over without a fight, so there was a good chance it would make it through.

  I returned to the gate, and got a nod from the Aussie guy who’d given me the heads-up. I figured he had a good idea what had just happened, and he was letting me know I looked half presentable again. A few minutes later the flight was called and I was settling down in my seat for the hour-long trip to Benghazi.

  I felt a wave of relief wash over me as we took to the skies. Until the moment of takeoff things could still have gone horribly wrong. Had Skinny Guy realized the bluff I’d just pulled, I could have been hauled off the flight and I’d have taken a horrific beating or worse, plus the money would have been gone. As it was I’d made it through with a mixture of luck, front, and pure guile.

  As I relaxed into the flight, I reflected upon the fact that that was about the worst Libya was likely to throw at me. Compared to Iraq and Afghanistan, this place should be a breeze. There had been few if any IEDs—improvised explosive devices; roadside bombs or car bombs—and no suicide bombings here yet. Presumably, we—the Brits and Americans—were seen as being on the side of right, which wasn’t always the case in Iraq or Afghanistan.

  It was our NATO warplanes that had bombed Colonel Gaddafi’s forces into oblivion, and our Special Forces soldiers who had helped battle his troops on the ground. It was our governments that had armed the rebel militias—though how wise that had been I was starting to doubt, especially after my airport beating. Even so, in Libya we should be seen as those who’d helped topple a decades-long dictatorship, and by rights that should make us and the Libyan people the best of friends.

  My expectations of the Benghazi Embassy were based upon what I’d experienced in other U.S. missions over the years. At the height of the conflict in Iraq, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was massive, with hundreds of Americans based there, and it even came complete with fast food outlets like Burger King and Pizza Hut, plus shopping malls. The U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, is pretty flash as well, with hundreds of staff posted there. I knew the Benghazi Mission wasn’t anything like those operations in scale, but still I expected it to be tight and slick.

  I figured the Mission, being a small slice of America, would be suitably fortresslike, with security of the type that said to the bad guys—You are not getting in. By rights, my Tripoli airport beating should be the worst the present contract held in store for me. Ahead lay a cushy gig training the Libyan guard force, interspersed with all that a U.S. Mission normally has to offer—great food, a top gym, and some fine American colleagues to work with.

  Having soldiered alongside most nationalities in the security business, I preferred the Americans even over my fellow Brits. I tend to get on with Americans fantastically. Generally, they are openhearted, genuine, warm, and trusting—especially where the British are concerned—and loyal to a fault. Most have been brought up with guns as a constant in their lives, so they’ve got great weapons-handling skills, as opposed to the majority of Brits, whose first experience of weaponry is when they join the Army.

  The Americans also tend to be less obsessed about unit or cap badge. In the British private security world everyone wants to be able to say they’re ex-SAS. The Americans didn’t seem to care much what unit you hailed from—they just wanted to be certain you knew how to do your job. They seemed more willing to take an operator at face value. I’d worked a lot with American Special Forces and they were fantastic. They were matchless soldiers, and they were always happy to pass on their elite experience and specialist skills.

  A part of me wondered why the Americans needed a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, when they already had an embassy in Tripoli. But the British and most other key players had established missions there, so I guessed the America
ns needed one, too. Benghazi lay in the heart of Libya’s oil-producing zone, so in a sense it was where the wealth and the real power lay.

  I was being sent in to train a Libyan guard force to secure the American Mission—or at least to augment the Americans based there. I presumed the Libyans would provide the outer ring of defense, with American operators providing an inner core. From my experience of other U.S. missions that was how things were done. I was expecting a tight operation, with a sizable American security contingent and a well-guarded, inviolable perimeter. The challenge was going to be to get the Libyan guards up to such exacting standards, and quickly.

  Thankfully, I breezed through arrivals at Benghazi airport with barely a hint of trouble. In fact, there were no passport or baggage checks at all, and I couldn’t see that any were being made for the departing passengers, either. If Tripoli International Airport had been dangerous and chaotic, this place was sheer anarchy. It didn’t bode well for anyone who might be flying out of the country, myself included, when three weeks from now it came my time to leave.

  I’d never worked with Dan Barnfield, Blue Mountain’s Benghazi security rep, but I knew him by reputation. He was a good fifteen years older than I, and a grizzled veteran of British Army operations. He’d been best man at the wedding of one of the most famous SAS soldiers of all time—Andy McNab. Dan and Andy has soldiered in the Royal Green Jackets, a tough infantry regiment, and McNab had gone on to undertake one of the most epic missions of the Persian Gulf War.

  McNab had commanded an eight-man SAS patrol—call sign Bravo Two Zero—sent into the Iraqi desert to hunt down Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles. They had been compromised when a goatherd had stumbled across their place of hiding. Barely an hour later they’d had half the local population coming after them with guns, not to mention the Iraqi military. The patrol had been scattered and forced to go on the run. Three men died, four were captured, and only one escaped. With Dan Barnfield sharing some of that pedigree, I didn’t doubt he was a top operator.

  He greeted me with a raised eyebrow. “Good to have you here, mate, but what’s with the face?”

  I shrugged. “I took a good pasting at Tripoli airport. They were after the money.”

  He steered me toward a waiting vehicle, shaking his head, worriedly. “Tell me you have got it . . . It’s a new contract, the first time we’re paying them and we’re late. It’s not even our guard force—it’s one we took over from the Americans. But we’ve still got to pay them, as they’re Blue Mountain staff . . .”

  “I’ve got the money,” I reassured him. “But they’d better be bloody thankful. I’ve taken a good beating so they can get paid.”

  Dan snorted. “Fat chance. They’ve held a protest outside the Embassy already. They’ve even sprayed graffiti over the T-walls.”

  T-walls are concrete barriers used to protect vital installations from explosions.

  “Just how late is it?” I asked.

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “You what? Their wages are a day late and already they’re up to that kind of shit?”

  Dan looked uncomfortable. “You haven’t seen the half of it, mate. Wait till you meet ’em . . .”

  He shoveled me into the waiting vehicle, a cream-colored Chrysler. His interpreter-cum-driver was seated at the wheel. He looked very Libyan, but his name was actually Tom Ghazi, and it turned out he had a British mother and a Libyan father. Tom had spent half his life in the United Kingdom and half in Libya, before marrying a Benghazi girl and starting a family here. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, and he was a six-feet-four bear of a man. I was sure he’d prove immensely strong, but at the same time I could tell he was seriously out of shape.

  Dan was like an imp beside him. He had to be a good fifty-five years old, with a shock of gray hair, and he had the lean and wiry physique of a runner. But he’d injured his leg on a recent contract, and he was still in some pain and limping badly. It gave the impression that he was older and less fit and capable than he really was.

  He settled into the rear seat of the Chrysler and turned to me. “All I can say is—thank fuck you’re here and that you’ve got the money.”

  I patted the green day pack that lay on the seat between us. “I got it. Let’s go tell them it’s payday.”

  Before heading to the Embassy, Tom needed to fuel up the Chrysler. Gas was the equivalent of twenty-five cents a gallon, so it took six dollars to fill her up. That was one of the perks of being an oil-producing nation, I guessed. We set off and I gazed about myself, trying to get a feel for the city and any security risks we might face. Apart from the odd roadblock manned by gun-toting militiamen, there was little to suggest that six months ago this was a city torn apart by civil war.

  Quite the reverse seemed to be the case. My overriding impression was one of wealth. The roads were wide, multilane highways crammed full of gleaming vehicles. I spotted top-of-the-line Hummers and Audis, each being one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of vehicle. Downtown Benghazi was a mass of glitzy superstores. Tom drove via the aptly named Dubai Street, which was lined with designer-label boutiques. I was amazed to see a Rolex store, plus Armani, Gucci, Bose, and other luxury brand-name outlets. I’d yet to see a single donkey cart like you’d get in Afghanistan. There was clearly a great deal of money here in Benghazi.

  We drove past a massive sports stadium that was in the final stages of construction. The cranes hung dinosaur-like over the concrete sarcophagus, and work had obviously come to a standstill. Tom explained that Libyans rarely did any manual labor. Instead, it was all done by Chinese, Koreans, and Bangladeshis. The workers building the stadium had left due to the war, but they were expected back at any moment to finish the construction.

  I’d been expecting a lot more gunmen on the streets, and I wasn’t getting a particularly bad vibe about the place. Everyone seemed to be going about business as usual—as if toppling Colonel Gaddafi had been but a small blip in the otherwise serious matter of making money and getting ahead. Yet still I didn’t feel particularly comfortable about our setup here in Benghazi.

  Tom was taking no obvious security precautions as he drove us to the Mission, and it wasn’t as if Dan had been able to pass me a weapon just as soon as we were in the vehicle. On just about every contract I’d ever worked you’d get a weapon in your hands from the get-go. But here in Benghazi we were going to have to go about our business unarmed. Under Libyan law the only foreign contractors allowed to carry weapons were those doing close protection (CP) work for diplomats. As our role was to train the Libyan guard force, it didn’t allow us to carry arms.

  If Benghazi turned out to be as benign as my first impressions suggested it might be, perhaps it wasn’t going to be too much of an issue. But still, being weaponless didn’t make me feel particularly comfortable.

  We’d been on the road for a good thirty minutes when the buildings began to thin out. We were clearly entering some kind of upmarket neighborhood. To the left and right were these massive, plush-looking, white-walled villas, set amid lush groves of palm trees. All the vehicles were massive V-8 Mustangs, Chargers, and Hummers, and we had to be in among the real wealth here.

  We came to a halt outside one of the white-walled compounds. There was nothing to announce that this was the American Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi. It was indistinguishable from any number of large residences that we’d driven past. I figured they were keeping everything deliberately low-profile, which was fair enough on security grounds. Tom drove past the T-wall blast barrier that funneled any official traffic into the gate, and we parked up at the far side of the entrance on the gravel roadway.

  It struck me as odd that we were making our way into the compound on foot. At the entrance to the T-walls there was a manually operated barrier. It stood to reason that at least one member of the Libyan guard force ought to be manning it, so as to check any incoming vehicles, but there was no one to be seen.

  I nodded at the deserted barrier. “So where’s the guard?” />
  “Dunno.” Dan shrugged. “He should be here.”

  We walked toward the gate, the T-walls channeling us for twenty yards against the exterior wall of the Mission. It was twelve feet high and of concrete block construction, so good for blocking visibility into the interior, but there were no additional security measures that I could see: no coils of razor wire atop the wall, or security lights, or CCTV cameras facing out at us, or watchtowers. In short, it looked as if it would be easy for a determined force of attackers to scale the wall and get inside.

  The gate itself was a large, black steel structure set within an arched gatehouse. It wasn’t reinforced as far as I could tell, but at least it was secured with a padlock and chain. To the right was a concrete guard hut, like a small bunker. It could be accessed only from the inside, using a doorway set to one side of the main gate, and the window was barred. But even so it would be easy enough for an attacker to poke an AK-47 assault rifle through the bars and unload on the guard force inside.

  But most important, I’d yet to see any sign of the Libyan guard force—our guard force—that was supposedly standing security. I glanced through the window. Half a dozen guys were in there drinking tea and playing cards. They were dressed in the standard Libyan male dress—skintight T-shirt, jeans, and trainers. None of them had noticed us. If I had been carrying a weapon and I had wanted to murder them all, it would be like stealing candy from a baby.

  Dan tapped on the window. One of the guards glanced up and buzzed us in via the pedestrian gate. We stepped inside and no one so much as saluted us, or even bothered to sign us in. I was starting to get a sense of just what I was up against here. As far as I was concerned these guys were finished. I was going to sack every last one of them and recruit a completely new guard force.

  I turned right and poked my head into the guardroom. “So, who’s on barrier duty?” I demanded. “Who’s supposed to be outside?”