Escape from Baghdad

by James Ashcroft

  Crap excuse, disappointed you couldn’t make up something more believable. Cannot believe you have let me AND Sammy down.

  I knew that it would enrage him, and the thought of him gritting his teeth in fury made me chortle happily as I hit ‘Send’. Hendriks was an old hand in Africa, ex-32 Battalion, a mercenary from the old school, cropped grey hair, scars crisscrossing a face burned almost black by the sun, ice-blue eyes that missed nothing, cynical, sharp, cool as an iceberg and, of course, sadly out of action. I wondered how the fuck he had managed to break both his legs. I wondered what the other guy looked like.

  Three out. Two in. One to go. I was surprised not to have heard from Les Trevellick yet and guessed the new lady in his life was keeping him busy.

  The steak was medium-well, a touch of pink, green beans, potatoes cut in slices and pan-fried. I’d been drinking faster than I thought and poured the last of the wine into my glass. I’d intended drinking half the bottle and leaving the rest, but good liquor and good intentions don’t go together. The 2003 was a fantastic year: hottest summer on record, the grapes turning into a potent elixir and – it’s a funny old thing, but – the more you drink, the better it gets.

  I gazed about the dining room. Four tables were occupied. Three with groups of men. Directly in my line of vision was a couple with two girls aged about ten and twelve; the woman calmly dignified in a blue headscarf and gold bangles, the girls in dark green kilts and white blouses, their father paying his three women equal attention. He was clean-shaven in a beige suit and white shirt, an oil executive, I imagined, one of the 90 per cent who saw no future in fundamentalism.

  I took a sip of wine, rolled the liquid around my mouth thoughtfully and let it glide down slowly.

  Three of us so far. One pending.

  With Sammy’s family and luggage, we’d have to make a three-car packet, with at least two of us in each vehicle. Even with Cobus we were still one short, although Sammy was familiar enough with our drills. Both he and his brother would be armed. I had no doubt that the canny pilot had managed to keep hold of his old weapons passes.

  If we were still undermanned, maybe I could pick up one of the Serb dealers-in-death who hung out at the Palestine Hotel and lived for the adrenalin rush of action?

  There were a lot of maybes. Like maybe I should have asked Cobus more about the tasking. And maybe I should have considered Krista and the girls before racing back to a war zone that was just hotting up, with the Americans executing a surge of troops to inflict a decisive blow on the insurgents. So decisive that the media had already capitalised it as ‘The Surge’.

  On the face of it, the task looked painless: a three-rig packet in the midst of a US convoy armed to the teeth with .50 cals and Mark 19s. But Sod’s Law – or Murphy’s Law, as they say in the United States – has it that whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.

  I downed the last of the wine in one gulp. Sod all that savouring the hues and flavours. I had a pain across my shoulders and an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Call it instinct. Call it a 2003 Bordeaux. Call it what you will, but going back always carries the ghosts of old anxieties. Going back to Baghdad was like putting your head over the parapet just to see if there were any sharpshooters out there waiting to take a pop shot.

  All day the same cycle of thoughts had been spinning through my head. For his own reasons, Mad Dog had stuck the responsibility of getting Sammy’s family to safety on my shoulders. I had to get them out of reach of the Shia death squads, and get the team out without any dramas.

  Back when I had been a captain in the Duke of Wellington’s, whenever you deployed on operations, you had the comfort of knowing that the full machinery of the British Army was behind you and you had the immediate support of your own battlegroup, battalion and company.

  As a security contractor, the infrastructure is weaker, but at least there is some support, although your obligations are different. You look out for yourself and your comrades. If a job looks too dodgy for the money, you say no. I weighed every contract on a finely balanced scale: the money, love of family and my life on one side; on the other, the risk of violent and painful death, possibly grotesque maiming and spending the rest of my days in a bucket with feeding instructions on the side, possibly kidnap, torture and a lead role in an al-Qaeda beheading video.

  My mind drifted back to our ambushed convoy of oil tankers, the deafening racket of machine-gun fire as we had assaulted the enemy firing line, and the thud of the American Mk19 grenade launcher hammering away under a sky black with smoke. That had been a bad day at the office, and the enemy had not even really been trying to hurt us, just cause a diversion while they stole some tankers. The loss of one tanker in a fireball the size of a football pitch had been a price they were willing to pay.

  I tore my mind away from thinking too much about the last time I had been in Iraq. It was a dangerous thing to do and at any moment I might remember that I had left there after being betrayed by my own Iraqi guards in an incident that had me running alone and bleeding through people’s back gardens, pursued by an armed mob of over a hundred men. No, not the kind of thing to dwell on before jumping on a plane back there.

  I usually spent more time reminding myself about the money. A week’s job like this would have been worth a nice five grand. Oh, I nearly forgot, we weren’t getting paid on this one.

  On this job there would be no pay cheque and no supporting infrastructure. We were totally reliant on Colonel McQueen to plug us into the CF convoy and even to get us safely back and forth from the BIAP to the Green Zone. He would be the key to this whole trip. Without him we were just a handful of lunatics jumping on a plane into hell.

  The waiter shuffled up with the bill. I signed the chit and dropped five JDs between the covers of his little leather booklet. Hopefully the wine would help me sleep.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’D WATCHED THE news clips and listened to the reports coming out of Iraq and, despite the positive media spin, knew that things had not improved since I left in mid-2005. The opposite, in fact. A year and half had passed and I had a feeling of déjà vu, that Baghdad was in a time warp. That I’d never really been away.

  The flight from Amman to Baghdad was the same as ever, with the usual bizarre mix of security contractors and other unidentifiable odds and sods, all of them eyeing up the South African stewardess, since she was likely the last attractive woman they would see for several months. In the meantime I was considering a slight problem as the flight pulled in to the terminal. How to get through passport control.

  There was no problem booking flights to Baghdad, especially if a US military colonel could email the booking in for you; the only drama might come at Immigration when you disembarked. Previously, if you were stupid enough to get on a plane to Baghdad, people assumed you were supposed to be there, although I remembered that you could still run across the odd peace-loving hippie, independent journalist, armoured-car salesmen, even the occasional missionary, turning up on spec, smiling in a bewildered fashion and looking around for a ride into the city.

  All you needed was to show the immigration officer a passport from one of the Coalition countries. Hell, when I first came into Iraq in 2003, there hadn’t even been an immigration department. Once past the Jordanian border controls you could just walk, drive or fly in, and abandon hope all ye who enter.

  Just before I left in 2005, the Iraqis had stopped the influx of lunatic tourists and you now also needed some form of ID to state that you were either working for one of the embassies or for the MNF, Multi-National Force. Unfortunately, although I still had a pocket full of MNF and Department of Defense identity cards, they were all out of date.

  The catch-22 that most people faced was that new cards were issued in Baghdad, so if you were not bypassing immigration by coming in on a military flight, you needed a formidable letter to assure immigration that you were formally invited and would be picking up said ID card upon
arrival at Camp Victory. Mad Dog had not managed to get me that letter yet, so I would just have to try and bluff my way through.

  When I strolled up to the immigration desk I gave the official my biggest smile and happiest ‘salaam alaikum’ as I slapped down my British passport. He smiled politely, looked through the passport and held out his hand.

  ‘CAC card,’ he pronounced it kak, Afrikaans for ‘shit’, but I knew he was asking for my DoD Common Access Card.

  I dutifully pulled this out and presented it with another blinding smile and my finger helpfully covering the expiry date a year earlier.

  The officer looked at me unamused and pulled it out of my hand to examine properly. The smile disappeared. A torrent of Arabic followed, which I presumed indicated that he was unhappy and that my card was out of date.

  ‘They told me in Jordan’, I murmured quietly, ‘that I could buy my visa when I arrived here.’ I pulled out fifty US dollars and tucked them into my passport in front of him and said, ‘VISA?’ more simply.

  ‘La, la, la!’ No, no, no! He looked around nervously.

  I couldn’t believe that I had come across the only honest Iraqi official in the country. I looked around with interest to see who might be watching him.

  ‘Ta’al,’ Come. He gestured for me to follow him as he held my passport in one hand and the expired CAC card in the other as if it were a snake.

  Iraqi soldiers pointed guns at me and followed. The rest of the queue watched open-mouthed with interest. I felt even more conspicuous, bearing in mind I was wearing yet another colourful Hawaiian shirt.

  The immigration officer led me into a small room with two older, fatter uniformed officials with impressive shoulder boards and even more impressive moustaches. Much jabbering in Arabic followed and I was relieved to see that there was no anger in their expressions, only curiosity.

  ‘Letter?’ The older one said, miming opening a letter at me and waving a piece of paper by way of illustration.

  ‘No, no letter, it didn’t arrive yet.’ I shrugged. ‘I have to pick up my new CAC card in Camp Victory.’

  There was more discussion amongst the moustaches before they turned back to me. Apparently there was some confusion over my place of birth.

  ‘Inteh inglizia?’ Are you English?

  ‘La, la.’ I was properly horrified and it must have shown on my face. ‘I am Scottish, from Scotland.’ I waved my hands in a Scots manner. ‘You know Scotland?’

  The moustaches looked at me blankly.

  ‘Al Haw-rus-tralia?’ one of them ventured.

  ‘La.’

  ‘Al Sa-houth Hafrica?’ The most senior one smiled at me triumphantly.

  ‘La.’

  The smile faded. I racked my brains but had no idea how Scotland had been translated into Arabic. I tried to remember the conversations I had had with Sammy about the Scots. Suddenly I was struck with inspiration.

  ‘You know Mel Gibson?’ I looked from one face to another. ‘Mel Gibson?’

  They all looked at each other and muttered. One of them said ‘Dirty Harry’ and there was a flurry of ‘la’s as the rest shouted him down and I heard one say ‘Lethal Weapon’.

  ‘Na’am! Lethal Weapon – Mel Gibson!’ I jumped in. God bless Hollywood. ‘Do you know Braveheart? Braveheart, anyone?’

  I acted out wearing a kilt and painting my face blue, finishing by riding a horse and booming out, ‘FREEDOOOM!’

  ‘Na’am! Al Braveheart,’ cried one of them. ‘Freedom, yes, freedom very good, mister. Freedom from Saddam!’

  Finally I used my hands to indicate England with Scotland on top and tapped my chest to say ‘Scotland. Braveheart. Freedom’. They loved it and all laughed and clapped. Yup, that was us, all the best of friends.

  ‘You, mister,’ wheezed out the most senior man, ‘you are Scotland man, yes? You come,’ he motioned with his hands carrying something, ‘freedom to Al Iraq, yes?’

  ‘Yes, I bring freedom to Iraq.’ I knew that by now nearly every Iraqi hated the foreign jihadis with a passion. ‘I come kill Al-Qaeda,’ I said, drawing an imaginary sword and hacking off heads. They all liked that.

  Guns were pointed at the floor, moustaches beamed and within seconds my passport was stamped, hands shaken all around, and after a cup of sickly sweet chai I was escorted through immigration by the chief himself, plus entourage all chanting ‘Freedom’ and pretending to wear skirts. They even gave me my fifty bucks back in the passport.

  Finally.

  I walked out into the sunlight, namastayed the heavily armed ex-Ghurkhas employed by Global, who grinned back happily as I crossed the concourse.

  No running kids and crowds of tourists here. Just men in uniform, a couple of VIPs in suits being picked up by their PSD teams, and men like me in combat pants and desert boots. I watched a couple of USAID staffers packing their bags into the armoured bus taking them to the Green Zone.

  Cobus was waiting by a couple of Humvees in his dusty body armour, covered in guns and knives and carrying enough ammunition for ten men. He looked exactly as I had seen him two years before, although his bronze hair was touched by new flashes of grey. At least that was a change. We shook hands and hugged fiercely. I felt a couple of bones crack. His blue eyes were piercing, and alive with laughter.

  ‘Very colourful, you fokken doos,’ he said, smiling and fingering my Hawaiian shirt.

  ‘I’m on leave, remember? Not working.’

  He leaned forward and his voice deepened. ‘Good to see you, man.’ He demonstrated a plane taking off with his hand. ‘You’ll be back in London for the weekend.’

  ‘Good. It’ll be nice to spend some more time at home with the mortgage.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You bought that new place for Krista?’ he asked.

  ‘The day before prices started falling.’

  ‘Ach, yissss,’ he hissed, grimacing in sympathy.

  Cobus had bought a piece of land when he left the army and planned to settle down as a farmer as soon as he’d paid off his loan – bonds, they called them. Most of the South African contractors were ex-military and ex-police who’d begun their careers in the old apartheid days and had found there was no place for them in modern South Africa. After twenty years fighting bush wars in Namibia, Mozambique, Angola and who knew where else, Cobus had taken to life as a hired gun, but never forgot to say grace before slicing into his roast lamb. He saw no contradiction in being a committed Christian and being paid to fight. He always believed that he was on the right side.

  Self-justification? Self-delusion? We all have these thoughts rattling around inside our heads and we all have to look at ourselves in the mirror at the end of the day and be proud of what we do and who we are.

  There are on the Circuit some trigger-happy adventurers who shoot and scoot with little provocation, Rambo lookalikes in headbands with bandoliers of cartridges. Sometimes you come across some cold-blooded killers. But these men are in the minority. As PSDs, we don’t get paid to kill people. We get paid to protect people, protect the water supply, bodyguard journalists and aid workers, keep our heads down and keep our clients out of trouble.

  ‘Do you know what happened to Hendriks?’ I asked.

  ‘An accident clearing some land on his farm,’ he said, and lowered his voice again. ‘He’s spending three months in bed, with his wife looking after him.’

  Hendriks was hard as steel, the most accomplished piece of military machinery any of us had ever known, but rumour had it he was terrified of the little lady at home.

  ‘Time to get your boots and spurs on, Ash.’ Cobus opened the door of the Humvee and started pulling out weapons and ammunition.

  I nodded up at the 240 gunner in his turret, who nodded back. I noted the factory-produced shield, armour and ballistic glass panels that surrounded him. It was a far cry from the old days when all of us, contractors and CF both, were welding on home-made armour plates.

  There was a nip in the air, but the sun was breaking through the city smog. Use
ful, seeing as I’d packed my fleece away in my day sack. I glanced back at the lintel above the exit. They had taken down the letters spelling out Saddam Hussein the moment the war ended, but the faded outline on the concrete below the letters was legible last time I was at the airport and Saddam Hussein’s name was present still, a ghostly reminder that among the Sunnis there were some now calling those the good old days.

  The machine-gunner gazed at me through protective goggles – admiring my shades, I guess – and watched with interest as I opened up my Bergen to extract my gear. I put on my body armour and helmet, my tactical vest and filled pouches with AK magazines as Cobus handed them to me. I stuffed the Beretta M9 pistol he gave me into a chest pouch. I didn’t want the hassle of looking through my luggage for an appropriate holster. Time enough for that later.

  Finally Cobus passed me a Russian-made AKM and reminded me to keep it unloaded until we exited the BIAP. I filled a couple of other pouches with field dressings, put my map and compass into another pocket and did a quick radio check with the little Motorola walkie-talkie Cobus provided. I checked myself one last time, slung my Bergen into the rear Humvee and jogged forward to join Cobus in the back of the front vehicle. He was holding the all-important ID and weapons passes, which I slotted into the passholder around my neck.

  The US soldiers with us got themselves comfortable and eventually we moved off down the road. I looked past the booted feet of the turret gunner sitting above us to the other side of the Humvee, at Cobus. He saw my questioning look and I swirled my hand in a wave that encompassed the vehicle and its crew.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting the limo and chauffeur service?’

  ‘Someone owed Mad Dog a favour after we checked out something for them in Aradisa Idah,’ he said, reminding me of our old home, ‘and they run us around once in a while if they have no missions on.’

  As we approached the final roadblock everyone loaded up – magazines and belts of ammunition on to their weapons. Cobus and I magged up, cocked our rifles and put safety catches on. I rested my AK barrel on the window sill while I loaded and made ready my pistol, before holstering it in a spare mag pouch. Then I picked up my rifle again and got into character as we rolled left and right through the chicane and out of the BIAP on to Route Irish. The engine roared and the convoy raced off like a pack of wolves, the traffic parting like antelope as we hit the highway at a steady 100 klicks.