by Damien Lewis
“All right, mate? I’m Sulli, how you doing?” I was surprised to find he had a thick northern England accent.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Sulli told me he was Libyan by birth, but he’d lived in Manchester—a city in the northwest of England—for decades. He spent a few weeks in Benghazi every year, visiting his parents, which was what he was doing now, and the rest of the time he lived and worked in the United Kingdom.
“You working in town?” he asked me.
“Yeah, I’m a paramedic.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Is that right? Not what your mate there’s been telling everyone.”
He proceeded to relate to me everything that Tom had been saying at the gym. Apparently, he’d been going around telling anyone who would listen that I was the head of security at the U.S. Embassy and that he was my personal bodyguard.
“Everyone in here knows, mate,” Sulli added. “No one in here gives a damn, but if the wrong people find out, that guy and his mouth are going to get you killed.”
I was speechless. “Everyone knows?”
“Everyone knows. Get rid of him or he’ll get you killed.”
“Everyone knows?” I still couldn’t believe it. This was my worst-ever security nightmare.
“Yes, mate, because he keeps telling them—all the time. He goes on about being your BG all the time. I don’t care where you work, mate. That’s your affair. I’m just trying to watch your back.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
“Get rid of the idiot with the mouth, then you’ll be okay.”
“No, mate, that’s it—I can’t come here again.”
“No, no—you can still come,” Sulli remonstrated. “Just get rid of him.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
I got my stuff, got hold of Tom, and we left. I was never going to set foot in that place again. Our security had been spectacularly blown. I marched Tom to the vehicle and once we were safely on the move I related to him all that Sulli had told me.
His face was ashen. “No, no—he’s lying. I never said—”
“Tom, cut the crap. Am I supposed to believe the guy somehow guessed from out of nowhere that I run security at the U.S. Embassy? Tom, you are a liar and a liability. Fact.”
I got him to drive me direct to the villa and I sent him home. There was no point in my unloading on him. He knew how badly he’d messed up. He’d put my life and his own in danger and all in an effort to make himself look big. But my real worry was this: If this is what Tom was saying to the guys in the gym, what was he telling everyone else in Benghazi? I shuddered to think.
Another thing was crystal clear to me now: the threat level just kept escalating. Even a guy like Sulli—someone who spent most of his life in England—knew how real the danger was to an American, or anyone perceived to be an American, on the streets of Benghazi. His warning had been specific and very direct.
If the wrong people find out, that guy and his mouth are going to get you killed.
CHAPTER NINE
I briefed the RSOs on the basics of what had happened. I figured they needed to know due to the specific threat to Americans. But before we could take any action, we had our next crisis at the Embassy. Perhaps he was trying to make amends for his galactic security breach at the gym, but Tom went in early to check on the guard shift, after which he intended to roll by the villa and collect me.
Tom reached the Embassy’s main gate and there was Mutasim waiting for him. Mutasim announced he was going to search Tom and all my guards, before any were allowed to start their shifts. Tom told him to get lost. None of the QRF had ever asked to search anyone before, and it wasn’t their job. It was a guard force role. Mutasim reacted to Tom’s words by blowing a fuse.
Tom went into the guardroom to start work and Mutasim stormed off to the QRF Villa. He came charging back with his weapon, yelling at Tom: “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to kill you!” Seeing Mutasim brandishing his AK, Tom had taken off, driving away in his Chrysler at top speed. He’d made his way to me, which meant I was fully briefed by the time we made it back to the Embassy.
I told Tom to drop me fifty yards from the main gate so I could walk in and get a sense of things. I told him to stay in the vehicle until we had it sorted, just in case Mutasim was still spoiling for a scrap. I got to the gate, my guards let me in, and there was no sign that anything was particularly amiss. But I knew the RSOs would be on the case and I made my way directly to the TOC.
Sure enough, Rosie, Adam, and Jim were in there, watching the tapes of the incident on CCTV replay.
“D’you know what’s just happened?” Rosie asked me, worriedly. “Watch this.”
They rewound the tape, and played it. There was no sound, but it didn’t really need any. I saw Mutasim tearing out of his villa in what for him amounted to killer mode. I could see him pointing an AK-47 at Tom and yelling something about his intention to kill my guard force commander. But by the end the whole thing had me in fits of laughter. It was like a sketch from a bad B movie, only worse.
The RSOs didn’t seem to share my amusement. “So, Morgan, mind telling me what exactly is so funny?” Rosie demanded.
“If Mutasim can’t handle a verbal confrontation with one unarmed man, how d’you think he’ll react when faced with an armed force?” I replied. “But that’s not the funny part.” I reached forward and pointed out something on the screen. “How does he think he’s going to shoot Tom when there’s no magazine on his weapon?”
It was true. Mutasim had come rushing out of the QRF Villa screaming that he was going to kill Tom, but with no magazine on his assault rifle, which meant he had no bullets to fire.
“More to the point, how do you think he’s going to defend the Embassy when he can’t even arm his weapon? Rosie, you need to get rid of this idiot before he causes some real damage and kills someone—that’s providing he can remember to load his gun. Let’s face it: the QRF need to go. They need replacing with some proper, professional soldiers—like U.S. Marine Corps.”
I knew I was overstepping the line here, for in a sense this wasn’t my business. My role was to manage the guard force. But hell, it needed to be said.
Rosie radioed Mutasim and ordered him into the TOC. He turned up a minute later with Hamza, his fellow QRF groupie. Mutasim was actually in tears, and Hamza had his arm around him.
Hamza glared at us, reproachfully. “Mutasim, he is really upset.”
I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing.
“Mutasim, why did you pull a weapon on Tom?” Rosie asked.
Mutasim half sobbed out a reply. “He called me a motherfucker.”
“You pulled a weapon on someone for that?” I asked, incredulously. “You know what—you’re a total bloody liability.”
Rosie turned to me and asked me to leave the TOC. She would sort it out from here, she explained.
I did as I’d been asked. I actually walked across to my guardroom with a new spring in my step. At the very least this had to mean that Mutasim was gone, and maybe this spelled the end of the 17th February Militia working at the Mission. God knows, it was long overdue. I could sniff the winds of change blowing through the compound. Yee-ha, let’s get the Marine Corps in.
An hour later I was called back to the TOC, I presumed to hear the good news. I arrived and all three RSOs were in there, but the atmosphere wasn’t quite as positive and upbeat as I had been expecting.
“I’m afraid Tom is no longer allowed on the compound,” Rosie announced. “So, you’ll need to find a new guard force commander.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I take it Mutasim’s also got the boot then?”
Rosie gave a quick shake of her head. “No, I’m afraid we need to keep him.”
I forced myself to count to three. “Right, just so I’ve got this clear, ’cause I’m having some trouble understanding: you’re sacking my guard force commander, who didn’t pull a weapon on anyone, but you’re ret
aining the leader of the QRF—someone who did pull a weapon on someone who was innocent, and then started crying afterward—and all because you need him? Yeah, he sounds really stable. So, to be clear—is that it? Am I understanding things correctly here?”
“Yes, Morgan, I’m afraid you are, but—”
“Fuck this,” I cut in. “I’m out of here. I cannot work with this pathetic, tree-hugging attitude. You give the QRF far too much credit and one day you’ll see what they are made of. Christ’s sake—he doesn’t even know how to load his own weapon! When the shit hits the fan, trust me, they will be found wanting. Anyhow, it won’t be my problem. I’m resigning. I’m out of here.”
Rosie, Adam, and even Jim were shocked into silence. I turned and left. I made my way to Tom’s vehicle and gave him the news that he was sacked. For a moment he didn’t know what to say. It was the last thing he’d ever been expecting.
“But sacked for what?” he asked, disbelievingly. “I didn’t pull a gun on anyone!”
“No, you didn’t. Did you call Mutasim a motherfucker?”
“Yeah, but he called me it, too.”
“Well, whatever, you’re sacked. And I’m out of here, too. I’m resigning. I’ve had more than enough of this shit.”
Tom dropped me at the villa and I set about packing my gear. It was early evening by now and still I was fuming. I logged on to the Internet to search for a flight. Once I found one I’d phone Robert and give him the news. He wouldn’t be happy. He’d need to find a new security manager and at short notice. But on paper this read like a cushy little posting, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find one. In any case, once I told him what I’d been put through I figured he’d understand.
My phone rang. I answered. “Morgan here.”
A moment’s silence, then: “It’s Rosie. Listen, will you come in, in the morning, so we can talk? Will you do that for me?”
I respected Rosie hugely and I owed her that much. And because of that I said I’d be in at 0800 hours as usual.
That night I stewed on what had happened. I wasn’t falling on my sword because of Tom, although I sensed he appreciated the gesture of solidarity. Tom had his faults, as do we all. I am hardly the most diplomatic of individuals and my blunt outspokenness rubs people the wrong way. I was resigning because I could not work in this kind of environment anymore, and especially alongside the QRF.
The RSOs thought they needed the QRF, because they had so little firepower and backup. But we’d be far better off getting rid of them and bringing things to a head. If the QRF were sacked for being the incompetent and dangerous liabilities that they were, surely that would force Washington’s hand.
The following morning Rosie and I met in the TOC, just the two of us. There was zero hostility in the air, just a sense of sadness that things had come to this. We’d been pulling together as one team and making real progress. It sucked that a guy like Mutasim had come between us. Rosie made me a coffee. I was half hoping that she would have come to her senses overnight and sacked Mutasim.
“Morgan, whether you stay or go, you’ve got to understand one thing,” she began. “With Mutasim I have no choice but to keep him on. He knows too much about the inner workings of the Mission, and I can’t afford to replace him. Plus he’s the only one of the QRF who speaks decent English.”
“So, you sacrificed my guard force commander in order to keep Mutasim?”
“Pretty much, yeah. But I want us all—you, your guards, the QRF—to work as one, tight team.” Rosie paused. She looked me in the eye. “Morgan, will you stay on? Will you stay and help me get there with all of that?”
I thought about it for a moment. I tried putting myself in Rosie’s shoes. From her perspective, it was easier for me to replace Tom than it was for her to replace Mutasim. But that made sense only if you believed the 17th February lot were worth keeping on. After all that Rosie had seen of them she had to have their measure by now, so I could only presume that Washington had forced her hand.
Maybe they’d told her outright that no other force was available? The more I thought about it, the more that was the only scenario that made any sense: she didn’t have anyone else. If that was the case then Rosie had been placed in an impossible situation. She’d made the only call she could make—to retain the only armed force on offer to her—and my resigning would only serve to make matters worse.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll stay,” I conceded, “but only on one condition: I cannot have Mutasim and his lot ordering my guards around. You have to understand, Rosie, my guards have seen more combat and action than Mutasim and his lot have had hot dinners. If the QRF can order them about, my guys will be a laughingstock and we’ll lose the lot.”
Rosie said she was good with that. The QRF would have no role overseeing my guards. But even so, it was obvious that Mutasim had got one over on us, and now I had to recruit a new guard force commander. In spite of his faults guys like Tom were as rare as rocking-horse shit here in Benghazi. The only consolation was that my stint here was almost done. In a few days’ time I would be going on leave, and in truth I couldn’t wait.
I phoned Robert and told him the news: I was stand-in guard force commander until I could find a replacement for Tom. Robert had some news from his side, too. Dan wasn’t coming back. He’d declined the offer to return for his second stint in Benghazi. Robert had a handful of guys he was looking at as a replacement, but I didn’t think any of them would cut it. I told Robert I knew of a guy I’d worked with before on the circuit who would be perfect.
Bob Raymond had spent ten years working as an undercover policeman in some of the United Kingdom’s toughest urban environments, busting drugs gangs. There were six British cities that he could never return to, or his life would be in danger. He had the ideal background and skill sets for the Benghazi job. I shared his credentials with Robert and Rosie and we agreed that Bob was the one.
Bob flew in two days prior to the start of my leave, so I had time to do a proper handover. By now I’d managed to recruit a new guard force commander, a guy called Omar. He was an older, skinny waif, but at least he spoke reasonable English. Most important, the guards had recommended him and seemed to trust him. Omar was harmless, if a little sycophantic, especially where the Americans were concerned. He was also incapable of shutting up. He could talk the proverbial glass eye to sleep.
Bob seemed more than happy with his role—managing the guards—but he was visibly shocked at the lack of any American forces standing security at the Embassy. He was a cool, calm, unshakable kind of a guy. You’d have to be to do the kind of undercover work that he’d done with the drug gangs. Yet the same security failing that had so unsettled Robert and me had Bob ill at ease. I told him the obvious: we could only work with what we had.
At the same time that I was leaving Rosie, Adam and Jim were on their way out, which meant it was all change at the Embassy. Rosie knew she was leaving the job half done and she was troubled. She confessed to me that she’d happily have served twelve months here, if that was what it took to get things in shape. I told her it was due to her “take-no-shit” attitude that they were as good as they were.
Under Rosie’s watch my guard force had been transformed. They were smart, alert, and slick with their drills. Each of my guards was equipped with a fob, via which they could activate the duck-and-cover alarm from anywhere in the compound. Construction on the security fence was done. All three gates could be opened and closed from the TOC, and the CCTV cameras were working. This was serious progress compared to how things had been, and it was all down to Rosie.
Rosie was one of the best security professionals I’d ever had the pleasure to work with, and I told her as much. She would be sorely missed at the Embassy . . . and especially as it was about to get hit big-time.
It was 0330 hours when a massive blast tore apart the peace of the night. Luckily, just a few minutes earlier the guard force had spotted trouble. They’d seen a man in traditional Islamic robes crouched by the front gate
fiddling with something on the ground. His dress alone had roused their suspicions: Libyan men tend to wear Western clothing. It was only the Shariah Brigade and their ilk who dressed in turbans and robes, and as tonight’s attack would indicate, their ranks were very often filled with foreign fighters.
Moments before the figure had dashed off into the night, yelling “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”—God is great—my guards had hit the duck-and-cover alarm. Luckily that night’s guard force supervisor was Nasir, one of my best. He’d radioed for an RSO, and from the guardroom window they could hear a hissing noise and detected the acrid smell of burning. The RSO had ordered an immediate evacuation, and as they’d sprinted from the guardroom the device had detonated.
The explosion was powerful enough to blast a hole eight feet wide and twelve high through the Embassy’s outer wall, tearing apart the inner security fence and hurling debris far and wide. A cloud of pulverized concrete and thick smoke had engulfed the front gate, and it was only the fact that they were running away from the attack point that saved my guards and the RSO. They were no more than twenty-five yards from the gate when the device exploded, and by anyone’s reckoning the fact that no one was killed or injured was a miracle.
It was highly unusual to see a guy dressed in traditional turban and robes in Benghazi. I’d only noticed a handful myself, and I was out on the streets more or less every day. That alone suggested this was an attack by foreign elements, as opposed to a homegrown affair. More to the point, the explosion was caused by an IED, and seldom had IEDs been used in the war to topple Gaddafi. That made this a first for Libya.
IEDs are a very deliberate, premeditated form of attack. If someone had hit the Embassy with a grenade, or even an RPG, we could have put it down to opportunism. But not an IED. An IED needs to be manufactured by a competent bomb maker, someone with the tools, the knowledge, and the raw materials. Such skills do not come easily. British soldiers aren’t taught them. Neither are Americans, and neither were Gaddafi’s armed forces. In short, IEDs are the domain of professional insurgents and terrorists.
