by Damien Lewis
I was speaking English, for there was supposed to be a guard supervisor on every shift who had decent English. That was part of the State Department contract, but no one so much as bothered to volunteer a reply.
I pointed out one guy at random. “Get outside and do your job.”
He just stared at me.
“That man—he doesn’t speak English,” one of his fellows finally volunteered.
“Then you tell him from me: he’s to get outside and stand guard, or all five of you can go home.”
I was fuming. For all of them to be sitting there having a cup of tea and some laughs when they were supposed to be on duty—I knew already that none of them gave a shit about their supposed tasks. This wasn’t standing security at some downtown nightclub or bar: this was the American Diplomatic Mission, for Christ’s sake.
“Either he gets outside and does his job or you can all sod off home,” I repeated.
The guy who I guessed was the guard supervisor translated the basics of what I’d said. The guard I’d ordered outside glared at me sulkily, before slinking out to take up his position at the barrier.
I eyed the supervisor. “Let’s get one thing straight: things are gonna change around here. It’s going to be very, very different, very, very quickly.”
I’d been given free rein by Blue Mountain’s boss to do whatever it took to sort out the guard force. We were still within the sixty-day “bedding-in” period, and the State Department could throw us off the contract at any moment, which would mean all of Robert’s investment would be down the tubes.
But I knew already that the guards hated me, and I was also wondering what Dan thought of me now.
CHAPTER THREE
I stepped out of the guardroom and surveyed the wider compound. What struck me immediately was how large the place was. It looked to be at least two hundred yards from end to end. Inside the gate were two luxurious-looking villas. The one to our front left was the VIP Villa, where the diplomats would be billeted, Dan explained. It was also the main consular building, with a swimming pool, gardens, patios, and relaxation area.
The smaller building lying immediately to our right was the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) Villa. That, I presumed, was where they’d have the QRF stationed—a force from the U.S. Marine Corps, or a similar elite unit. A mission this size would warrant a dozen such troops, and somehow I was going to have to get the Libyan guard force up to something like their exacting standards. It was going to be one hell of a challenge.
Down the center of the compound ran a wide driveway paved in brick, at the end of which was the rear gate. Parked on the driveway at the far end I could see a lone SUV.
I nodded at it. “That the evacuation vehicle?”
“Yep,” Dan confirmed. “Armored SUV.”
“Keys?” I queried.
Dan mimed as if he was feeling about in the roof of the SUV. “Where they always are.”
“Fuel shutoff?”
Dan reached down like he was grabbing something between his knees. “The usual place.”
This was the standard setup for an evacuation vehicle. Keys were kept in it at all times, for obvious reasons. If you had to flee the Embassy under attack, the last thing you needed to be doing was searching for the keys. Beneath the dashboard there would be a simple fuel cutoff switch, which should prevent the bad guys from stealing the vehicle.
To the front of the main consular building was what looked like a vineyard. It was certainly very pretty, with purple-hued grapes hanging from the branches in swollen bunches. But to me it rang alarm bells. It constituted a thick patch of vegetation like the proverbial jungle, and it would provide perfect cover for any force that had scaled the outer perimeter. All a determined enemy would need to do was place a ladder against the wall, clamber over it, drop into the vineyard, sneak through its cover, and they’d be in among the consular staff before anyone could stop them.
I motioned at the greenery. “Nice grapes. But what the hell’s a vineyard doing here?”
Dan shrugged. “Yeah, I know. Bad shit.”
He showed me around the rest of the Mission. It turned out to be even larger than I’d first imagined. Halfway along its length the main driveway hit a T-junction, a dirt track striking off to the left and leading to a second half of the compound. There was a solid wall about the same height as the exterior one, separating one half of the compound from the other. Hidden away behind the wall was a second group of buildings, which contained the Embassy’s Tactical Operations Center (TOC)—in essence the nerve center of all security and communications—a third accommodation villa, plus the Mission’s canteen.
With the dividing wall and the thick vegetation, this second half of the Mission was pretty much invisible from the main gate. But as Dan walked me around the compound I felt this growing sense of unease. I’d been sent in to whip the Libyan guards into shape, and the State Department contract stipulated that our guard force was to be unarmed. That was it—training and deploying an unarmed Libyan guard force was the full extent of our responsibility. But everywhere I looked I could see gaping holes in the Embassy security setup, ones that were crying out to be plugged.
A wire-mesh inner fence was being erected, but it was going to be next to useless. First off, it was too close to the outer wall. If an attacker climbed on top of the wall, they could jump from there onto the fence, and onward into the compound. It needed to be set farther back to provide a “moat effect”—so that any intruder would be forced to climb it from ground level. Second, it was going to have just the one roll of razor wire atop it, which was nowhere near enough. All an intruder needed to do was throw a carpet over it, jump onto the fence, and carry on from there.
But the worst part was this: even when finished the fence was going to be incomplete. For some incomprehensible reason there were significant gaps in it. Whoever had drawn up the design was either incompetent or had been given an impossible brief from which to work. In short, an incomplete security fence would provide incomplete protection. I could see CCTV cameras covering many parts of the compound, and they supposedly fed their images back to monitors in the TOC, but as Dan told me, most of the cameras weren’t working.
So far, the security measures here—or rather the lack of them—struck me as woefully inadequate. I’d seen not one guard on duty, nor anyone carrying any kind of a weapon. I could see few if any physical security measures befitting what was supposedly a high-risk U.S. diplomatic facility. Basically, there was little that marked this place out as being any different from any of the other compounds that we had driven by.
I told myself that I had to be missing something. Hidden away in the TOC there was bound to be a contingent of State Department special agents, or Regional Security Officers (RSOs), as they’re more commonly called. RSOs are tasked with protecting American diplomatic personnel all over the world, plus their staff and their families. It would be the RSOs’ job to draw up a security plan, one designed to deal with threats posed by terrorists, criminals, and other hostile forces.
“So, let’s go meet the RSOs,” I suggested to Dan. “I guess they’re at the TOC?”
“Yeah, but he’s out at the minute.”
I stopped dead and turned to Dan. “What d’you mean—he’s out? He’s out. What—there’s only one?”
“Yeah. There’s only one. One security guy.”
For a moment I stared at Dan in disbelief. I knew from my briefing in England that there were two diplomatic staff here already—an IT guy and a guy I’d been told was the Deputy Chief of Mission here, the person once removed from the Ambassador. How the hell could they have one lone RSO allocated to safeguard an entire diplomatic mission? I’d presumed there would be around eight for a setup this size. In the worst-case scenario you’d need a minimum of three—so two could ride in the vehicle with the client providing mobile security, and one could remain in the TOC, monitoring CCTV and communications.
But one RSO? It was impossible. Presuming that lone individual h
ad to ride with the diplomatic staff when they went out into Benghazi on meetings, he’d have no one to call at the Embassy if they got into trouble. He had no way to raise a warning, or to call for backup if they got hit. In short, he had nothing. The only mutual support he might have was if he could get a call through to the British Embassy, so they might come to his aid.
I was flabbergasted, and doubly so because I knew the strength of the British setup here. Two of my closest buddies were working on the British Embassy’s Benghazi close protection team. One was an ex–Royal Marine, so the equivalent of a Marine Corps Force Recon operator, the other an ex-Para. They formed part of a team of eight, equally capable and battle-hardened operators. Yet here we had just the one RSO. Since when did the Americans provide a fraction of the security to their key facilities as the British did?
Nothing was making any sense.
“Okay, let’s recap,” I said to Dan. “The U.S. Embassy here in Benghazi has just the one security guy, is that it?”
“Yep, just the one RSO.”
“That’s it—just the one guy?”
“Yep.”
“All I can say is the guy must be Captain bloody America if he can secure this place on his own.”
“They do have a QRF,” Dan volunteered.
“Great. Thank fuck for that. What are they—U.S. Marines or Rangers?”
Dan shifted about uncomfortably. “Neither. They’re Seventeenth February Militia.”
“You—are—fucking—kidding me.” I spat out the words slowly, and in total disbelief. “You’re saying the same kind of people who tried to rob me at the airport are the Embassy’s QRF?”
Dan nodded. “Militia.”
“What the hell? How many?”
“Four. And it’s worse than that. You wait till you see them.”
I was stunned into total silence.
The 17th February Militia had fought in and around Benghazi to drive out Gaddafi’s forces. They’d received significant military aid from the British, French, and American governments, but it was the Qataris who had given them the most sophisticated military hardware, including heavy machine guns and surface-to-air missiles. Yet in spite of being so well armed, they had performed poorly in battles against Gaddafi’s military. In reality, it was NATO air strikes and our Special Forces that had toppled Gaddafi’s regime. And now that the revolution was over, there was little to distinguish the 17th February Militia from any of the other militias, including those who had tried to rob me at Tripoli airport.
Yet they were the QRF.
I was struggling to get my head around all that Dan had told me, but there was no escaping the fact that the American Mission in Benghazi had just one lone American protecting it. I couldn’t stop swearing. A string of curses erupted from my lips. I’d been slammed about by a bunch of thuggish, corrupt militia at the airport, risking my life to get the wages here for a bunch of useless, ungrateful local guards, it was my birthday, and now this . . .
“Dan, tell me you’re joking,” I practically begged him.
“Sorry, mate, I’m not. It is what it is.”
Back in 2007 and 2008 I’d run a twenty-man security team in Iraq made up mostly of Brits, Europeans, and Americans. We worked for Erinys, a PMC contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (U.S. ACE), those who were tasked with building hospitals and prisons across Iraq’s Northern Sector—an area encompassing Tikrit, Mosul, Kirkuk, Tal Afar, and Kurdistan. Ours was one of the largest security contracts ever awarded in Iraq, and we were tasked to secure visiting VIPs and U.S. State Department officials.
In Afghanistan later I’d been security team leader for G4S Secure Solutions, contracted to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in war-torn Helmand Province. Our tasks had included securing visiting diplomats and heads of state, and operating closely with the U.S. Marine Corps, with whom we’d been in several fierce firefights against the Taliban.
In short, I was an experienced security professional and I knew how things should be done. It was in that light that the Benghazi Embassy setup so shocked me. The physical defenses that should have been in place were all but nonexistent, and there was one lone American tasked to defend the entire Mission. It was mind-boggling.
I glanced at my watch. It was past one o’clock and I’d not eaten since an early breakfast back in Tripoli. “Okay, mate, fancy showing me the canteen,” I remarked to Dan. “I mean, they do have a kitchen and cook, don’t they? Or don’t tell me—they get the locals to send a burger van around?”
Dan gave a short bark of a laugh. No matter what, you had to try to keep your sense of humor.
The canteen lay adjacent to the TOC in the far half of the compound. Inside there were three dining tables, a large plasmascreen TV, a leather sofa set before it, and a massive fridge loaded with soft drinks. To one side were the hot plates, plus a counter laden with homemade cakes, biscuits, and chocolate. The kitchen lay off to one side, and there were two bedrooms for any visiting RSOs—not that there ever seemed to be any, Dan added.
The place seemed to be deserted, but there was bound to be some food on the go. There always was at every American base or diplomatic mission I’d ever worked on before. I could hear someone banging about in the kitchen. I figured I’d load up on the cakes while I waited for the staff to serve whatever was for lunch. But as I went to grab a muffin Dan stopped me.
“Er . . . We’re not supposed to eat in here.”
I did a double take. The one thing Americans were always faultless with was their hospitality.
“Sorry, we’re not allowed to eat here? What’s the crack with that, then?”
“Apparently, we’re not budgeted to eat on-site.”
“You are kidding me. Come on, mate, money doesn’t come into it with the Americans.”
Dan shrugged. “Apparently, they’re not budgeted to feed any of us.”
This really didn’t add up.
Dan offered to show me around the TOC. We went in via the main entrance and took a right into the Operations Room. There were five workstations with computers, but only one terminal was occupied. There was a local girl dressed in a traditional robe and hijab—a Muslim headscarf—tapping away at a keyboard. She greeted us in a friendly enough way, and explained that she was one of the Embassy secretaries.
At the rear of the Ops Room was a row of lockers, which contained the Embassy’s weaponry and ammo. They were kept locked and to be opened only in an emergency. It went without saying that the lone RSO had the only key, and right now he was out on Embassy business—so if there was an emergency we had no way to break out any of the guns.
Opposite the makeshift armory was a row of CCTV screens. They looked like high-tech, costly pieces of equipment. The trouble was, none of them seemed to be working. They showed a row of blank screens. Next to the Ops Room was the IT Room, one crammed full of computer stacks, spools of cable, and satellite communications gear. There was a lone figure in there, and it was now that I got to meet my first American at the Benghazi Embassy.
Rick Daltree introduced himself as the Embassy’s IT guy. I could tell at once he didn’t have a bad bone in his body. We got chatting and it turned out he had just three weeks left here, and then he was getting posted to Sri Lanka. He’d secured a three-year stint at the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, the nation’s capital. I’d spent a lot of time in Sri Lanka, it being a convenient starting point for security teams boarding ships sailing into the Indian Ocean and pirate waters.
Rick was being posted there with his wife and kids, and he seemed a little apprehensive about the trouble with the Tamil Tigers, a separatist rebel group in Sri Lanka. I reassured him that the civil war was pretty much finished, and that Colombo was safe. I told Rick how Sri Lankans loved to gamble. I’d not been able to resist a visit to the two Colombo casinos named after famous Las Vegas joints—the “MGM Grand” and the “Mirage.”
“I tried to play a little poker in both, but Las Vegas it was not.”
Rick laughed. “Yeah, a
whole long way from Vegas is my guess.”
Rick seemed like a solid, noncomplaining type of guy, and I was about to ask him what the score was about using the Internet, when Dan pulled me to one side.
“We’re not allowed to use it,” he hissed. “The Internet. It’s out of bounds.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “There’s wireless in here, right? And you’re saying we’re not allowed to use it?”
“Yep, it’s wireless, but we’re not allowed to use it,” Dan confirmed.
“Look, Dan, there’s no security to speak of, no food, no Internet, and the one lone RSO is out on business. It’s pretty much pointless us being here. Mind showing me the Blue Mountain villa? We’ll come back tomorrow when we can see the RSO, and maybe start to make some kind of headway.”
Dan said he was good with that. We left via the main gate, the guard force giving me the daggers. The guy I’d sent out to man the barrier was still there, but sulking heavily, and as far as I was concerned his days were numbered. Tom joined us at his vehicle, and we made the short drive across Benghazi to the Garden City area of town. Garden City is a more modest, residential part of Benghazi, one that had been popular with expats prior to the war. It constituted an area of small but comfortable villas, each with its own compound.
Ours turned out to have double gates and a wall around it up to shoulder height. It would be easy enough to jump over the wall, so security left something to be desired. Inside, every window had heavy bars and the front door was very solid-looking. If someone did try to get to us, at least they’d have a problem breaking into the building itself. But as we had no weapons with which to defend ourselves, if they did get in we were going to be pretty much toast.
I asked Dan the obvious question. “So, do we have any kind of QRF here at the villa?” If we did, we could maybe keep the bad guys out long enough for the QRF to get to us.
“We don’t have one, no.”
