Mercenary Mum: My Journey from Young Mother to Baghdad Bodyguard

by Neryl Joyce

  Now my professionalism was being compromised. I was good at my job, but I was having to make decisions I wasn’t proud of. Jeep and I made up after the debrief, but I knew things were beginning to change between us.

  Jeep was a talker. This quality made him a great drinking buddy but a downright irritating leader. His problem was that he’d prattle on for hours about minor issues during orders group. He would bang on for ages about a scuffed car tyre, or our cleaning staff, or the state of the toilets. Understandably, most of the guys tuned out after the first five minutes of waffling. Silver became more forthright in terms of organising ID cards, missions and people, and eventually was promoted to the role of assistant project manager. It was well earnt. He was doing a good job and making things easier for the rest of the team.

  To put an exact date of when things really went downhill is hard. Soon enough, though, we had a situation where the project manager, Cat, couldn’t organise regular car maintenance or getting enough food in the house. Well-liked team members were getting all the good missions, while less popular ones were being continually rostered on for picquets at the commissioners’ workplace. But that was nothing compared to what I saw going on behind closed doors.

  Sharing a room with Jeep, I became privy to a lot of information. I began to understand how political it was running a team. There was pressure to cut costs and increase profits, and someone’s ability to gain weapons, ammunition or ID cards could dictate whether they stayed on a team or were shown the door. If you were part of the ‘in crowd’, you were guaranteed employment regardless of your actual ability. If the right people did not like someone, it was only a matter of time until they were given the boot.

  Seeing how the security business ran made me more and more critical of what was going on. I was losing confidence in the guys running this project, and gaining more confidence in my own abilities. Jeep was a great friend, but I now had real doubts about his ability to lead the team. Silver was good at what he did, but he was not without his flaws.

  Silver, Jeep and I were sitting in our room one night, having a yarn. Jeep was a great storyteller and a funny bastard, especially after a few drinks: his accent combined with his outrageous personality always made for an entertaining tale. Silver and Jeep began telling stories of the ‘good old days’ in Iraq, when suddenly Jeep’s phone began to ring.

  After a short conversation, Jeep announced that Andy was coming over for a few drinks. I hadn’t met Andy before. Silver explained that he was a medic working for another security company. Silver didn’t have a bad word to say about him. He heaped praise on Andy’s ability to assist with medical procedures. He was at pains to say that while Andy was not much for book smarts, he had excellent practical skills and a great memory when it came to performing medical procedures. Silver mentioned that he had plans for using Andy in future work.

  Andy arrived about fifteen minutes later. He was a tall bloke, with dark hair and a strong British accent. His eyes were red raw, which I assumed was the result of working many hours in a surgery. He immediately grabbed a drink and sculled it down. I guess he really needed that! He grabbed another straightaway, but went a little slower on that one. We sat around drinking as I listened to their stories. It wasn’t long before the conversation took a dark turn. One minute Andy was telling us another Jeep story, and the next he was asking for drugs. I was astounded, to say the least, and what happened next changed everything. Silver opened up his wallet and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper.

  I looked on with curiosity as he slowly unfolded the paper. Inside was white powder. Silver tapped it out onto a table and Jeep pulled out a credit card. He then used the card to chop the powder into fat little lines. Everything seemed unreal. Jeep then rolled up an American dollar bill and proceeded to snort the powder up his nose. Andy followed suit, but Silver gave it a miss.

  I sat with a blank look on my face, afraid to say something and afraid to say nothing. My friends, my leaders, my teammates were into coke. How often did they take it? Were they drug-affected when we went out on missions? How could they be responsible for the safety and welfare of our team while taking drugs? There had been whispers about steroids making the rounds of the team, but this was shocking. Merlin had alluded to smoking dope at a particular point in time back in Australia. I began to wonder if he was doing it here in Iraq as well. I’d counted these men as good friends and it turned out I didn’t know them at all.

  It wasn’t long before I feigned tiredness and went to bed. Silver, Jeep and Andy continued to drink and talk, as I lay in bed in the corner of the room, my eyes wide open. What do I do? Did I rat on my friends? Being the leaders, would they just deny everything? I had seen other contractors speak out and then get sacked. Was I prepared to do the same? I felt so alone. I had given up a promising career in the army for this shit. I was going on leave in a few weeks; I’d just have to hold on till then. I’d keep my mouth shut for now, and take advantage of a fresh perspective after a break away from these dickheads.

  I AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, tired and stressed. Everything was bugging me. It was another day at the Convention Center. I was the allocated the position of team leader for the day. Normally, I would have relished the responsibility, but today I looked on the opportunity with disdain. We had four team leaders, all of who were getting paid far more than me, who should have been doing the job. Instead, they were back at the team house mucking around on their computers all day, perving on women’s MySpace profiles.

  I was tired of putting up with this shit. They were team leaders; they should have been running the picquets and the associated client moves. The pace had been stepped up, and now five or six people were needed to work at the Convention Center. Clients were continually going to important meetings, which meant there was a lot of coordinating of vehicles and people to be done by the person in charge. That person was rarely one of the team leaders. In fact, I was certain Jeep wouldn’t have been able to even put a client’s name to their face.

  My gripes, though, were nothing compared to the bombshell I received later that morning.

  Number Three called the security desk at the Convention Center. She was in hysterics. She had just received a call from her old neighbour. The neighbour told her that insurgents had stormed his apartment, beaten up his family and held them at gunpoint. They had demanded to know where Number Three was living: she was their intended target.

  Number Three had only just moved her family into their refurbished Green Zone residence two days before. If they had not moved, her whole family would have been killed. It was a shocking realisation. The neighbour had rung Number Three to let her know that their lives had been spared, but they were frightened and hurt. I called Jeep to let him know what had happened, hoping he would step up security for Number Three.

  When we arrived home from the Convention Center later that evening, the news didn’t get any better. An insurgent had been captured and handed over to the US military in the vicinity of our team house. It was my American teammate, Outpatient, who found and then detained the insurgent. Outpatient was one hell of a tall and gangly man. He was known for his crazy sense of humour and was easy to get on with.

  Beneath his comical exterior was a man who knew his shit. Outpatient didn’t speak much about his past, but when he did it was littered with great escape and covert operation stories. Based on those experiences, he was pedantic about ensuring security operations were run correctly. On this particular evening, he was driving back to the team house with one of the guys when he noticed something strange. Sitting on the side of the road, about 50 metres from the guarded entrance to our street, was a suspicious-looking box.

  Outpatient got out of the car and carefully inspected the parcel. He instantly saw that the box had been taped up loosely and had wires protruding from the sides. After he had retreated back to the safety of his armoured vehicle, he got his mate to reverse to a safe distance from the package. He then called the army to report what he’d seen. It was as he w
as making the call that he noticed a local man appear from out of some nearby bushes and start walking away.

  Outpatient jumped out of the vehicle and apprehended the Iraqi. He began questioning him, but the man only spoke in Arabic. Outpatient demanded to see his ID, and the man pulled out a dodgy, obviously fake card. The US army arrived within minutes to speak with Outpatient about the incident. The box turned out to be a dummy IED. The man was arrested and taken away by the military police.

  A dummy IED is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a fake bomb. The military police believed it had been placed there so that insurgents could watch our response to it. Would we ignore the box? Would we stop and touch it? Would we diffuse it ourselves? The Iraqi man from the bushes was the observer. He was there to record our actions and then report back to his chain of command. The insurgents would then have had the chance to plan an attack on our team based on our actions. These sorts of attacks typically caused the greatest carnage.

  Later that night I had nightmares. Over and over I kept dreaming about my son and how I had to protect him. I dreamt about bad people coming into my room and killing me in my sleep. It was all too much. I grabbed my pistol and stuck it under my pillow. After that, I slept like a baby. It’s a good thing I managed to get some sleep that night. If I had known what was going to happen the next day, I doubt I would have slept a wink.

  ONCE AGAIN I rostered on at the commissioners’ building and once again I was designated the leader. It seemed as though it would be a day like any other in the Green Zone. We picked up our clients from their homes without a hitch. We transported them safely to work, and we discussed their itineraries for the day. Number One had a meeting in the morning, and that was it. I was aware that a visitor was due to arrive later in the morning to speak to our clients, but not much information about it had been released.

  All the commissioners’ offices were located in the same part of the building. Our security desk was set up near its entrance to ensure that only people with the appropriate level of access could enter. I was sitting at the checkpoint with another teammate when a man named Bob turned up at our station. Bob had once been a member of our team, but had switched to another project within the same company so that he could run building security.

  I said hello to him and asked him what was new. He replied that sniffer dogs would be coming through this part of the building shortly, and that I was to let them through without any questions. Obviously something was up. I asked him why they were coming through, but he would not tell me. I asked him if it had something to do with the expected visitor, but he would not answer.

  By this stage Bob was pissing me off. If there was someone important visiting my clients, I needed to know about it. If there was a threat against the visitor, I needed to know about it, as my clients would be exposed to the same threat when they met up. Bob was being a prick and wouldn’t tell me anything. In fact, he started being quite condescending towards me. I told him to pull his head in and to start working with us as a team. We were both part of the same company and we were both concerned with the safety of our clients within the building. We were the commissioners’ close protection team, so we needed to know what he knew.

  I was in charge of the clients today. If anything happened to them, it would be my arse that’d be kicked. I told Bob to rack off back to the hole he had crawled out of. I then made some calls and got Cat to come down to sort out the problem. Within half an hour, I had found out what was going on. UK prime minister Tony Blair would be visiting my clients later that morning.

  With that knowledge, I made sure that our security protocols were well and truly in place. I briefed each member of my team on the situation and highlighted the importance of secrecy concerning the visit. Number One had to attend a meeting, with 51-50 escorting him, before Blair arrived. I was clear that they were to return as quickly as possible, as Number One was scheduled to welcome the prime minister.

  Time ticked on. Some of the UN workers who knew of the visit were getting excited and restless. I looked at my watch: Blair would be here in twenty minutes. I called 51-50 and told him to bring Number One back straightaway. He said that Number One was on stage giving a presentation to an audience. I told 51-50 to slip him a note, telling him it was time to go.

  Five minutes later, I still had not heard from 51-50. I called him again. This time he told me that Number One was still on the stage talking, despite being handed a note saying that the prime minister of Britain was arriving shortly. This is the sort of situation that earns a leader their pay packet. I paused for a second before telling 51-50 to escort him off the stage immediately. I told him to be as gentle and inconspicuous as possible, but that he was to remove him from the stage and get him here ASAP.

  I said to 50-51 that I would take whatever heat came down as a result of forcing Number One to curtail his speech. What choice did I have? Either I could get him back on time, or let him continue and miss the visit completely, which would have resulted in a loss of face for all the electoral commissioners.

  So, imagine if you can, Vin Diesel’s doppelganger ‘discreetly’ escorting the head of the country’s electoral commission off a stage. It must have been quite a sight.

  Number One was brought back into the office a full minute before the prime minister arrived to shake his hand and exchange a few polite words. Blair’s entourage and other VIPs, including high-ranking UN officials and Iraqi government members, had also entered our building. Each VIP was accompanied by their own close protection team, and suddenly our secure area was teeming with visitors. Then my team leaders and even some of the company’s head shed turned up. Word gets around quickly, I thought. It was typical that they couldn’t give a rat’s about anything we did on a daily basis with our clients, but the moment a VIP was on the scene, they couldn’t keep away.

  Tony Blair left as quickly as he’d arrived. Number One confirmed to me that he was not annoyed that he had been pulled away from his speech. In fact, he was grateful. I was pretty pleased with the way things ran despite all the commotion, and the guys I was working with did a superb job.

  It was Christmas Eve. The company house had a landline phone that the team were permitted to use to call home, but gaining access to it proved difficult. Every time I made the walk over the house, there would always be a queue of other teams lined up waiting to use it. It was just before Christmas that my team was allocated a mobile phone, which meant I was finally able to talk to Kane, rather than send him emails for his dad to read out. It was wonderful. He was really talkative and very excited about Santa coming. We talked about presents, games and everything he was going to do for the holidays. I wasn’t due back home until January, but I planned to spoil him rotten when I returned.

  Kane then told me that I was getting a present from Santa too. He told me Santa had a letter for me and that it was going to arrive in time for Christmas. I choked back a sob. Bruce must have sent a card from Kane several weeks ago. The postal service here was slow and unpredictable. It was more likely to arrive early next month. I hoped it came before I left for home.

  I missed my little boy so much. I couldn’t wait to hold him close. I wanted to play fighting games with him on my bed, just as we used to. I wanted to wrestle him to the ground and tickle him until he cried. After a sad goodbye, I went and had a quiet moment to myself.

  *

  That night, there was an informal barbecue to celebrate Christmas Eve. The most delicious steaks were cooked on the barbie and a couple of drinks were also consumed. I had to work the next day so I didn’t have a late one. During the course of the evening I met Lizard, the country manager from another security firm. I was surprised when, not long into our conversation, he told me he wanted me working for his company.

  I was flattered by the job offer, but declined. I still had to finish this contract and did not want to desert the company that gave me my first break in the industry. Lizard understood my reasons, but told me that the offer was good for when I finished up t
his contract. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be taking up another contract at all. Even so, I was amazed at how relieved I felt, knowing that I now had an out if I needed one.

  “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Jeep woke me up early Christmas morning by standing over me and shouting excitedly. I rolled out of bed, grinning. I loved Christmas. Silver came into the room and they both handed me a present. It was a DVD: season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They knew I was a bit of a Trekkie and loved that series especially. I kissed them both and thanked them profusely. I then pulled out the presents I had bought for them. I had got them a Leatherman set of pocket tools each. I had their call-sign names engraved on them, to give it a personal touch.

  After the exchange of presents, I got dressed for work. It was disappointing to be rostered on for Christmas Day, but I had no choice. It was just an ordinary day on the local calendar so it was work as usual. Blade, Wolf, 51-50 and I trudged off to pick up the clients, while the rest of the team geared up for a big Christmas party at the company’s headquarters. They were putting on a delicious-sounding lunch, complete with turkey, roast potatoes and alcohol.

  It was late afternoon by the time we dropped off the clients at their homes. We arrived back at the team house, but it was deserted. Everyone was still at the other house partying. I had a shower and got changed. As I turned to leave, I noticed there was a letter sitting on my bed. I couldn’t believe it: Kane’s Christmas letter had arrived. I opened it up and a photo of Kane with Santa fell out onto the floor. Wow, he has grown! I wiped a tear from eye as I read his card. I would have to tell Kane that Santa had dropped off the card to me on Christmas Day.

  I stuck up the photo on the wall near my bed, and joined the rest of the team at the Christmas party. By the time I arrived, the food was all gone but the alcohol was still flowing freely.